The Hindu : Opinion / Open Page : The phenomenon of Satya Sai Baba

The Hindu : Opinion / Open Page : The phenomenon of Satya Sai Baba

Sai Baba's unusual accomplishment was to recruit such a large number of the rich and the powerful, politicians and bureaucrats, law-makers, law-keepers, and law dispensers, amongst his followers. Perhaps this is more of a reflection on his followers than him!

My answer to atheists

Why I believe in GOD:

READ ME FIRST: Read this article with an open mind. Think you are yet to know and you will see how obvious it is.


The Rice Grain metaphor: Take a handful of rice grains. Place them on the floor so that a certain pattern appears (for example, a rectangle).

Now, throw them on the floor. What is the probability that you get the same pattern? We all know that the possibility would be there, but so low that you cannot take it into account.

Now considering that certain obstacles have been placed to aid the grains to form the shape needed, (representing the laws of the universe like the fact that light stays at the same speed, that certain molecules are stable while others are not, etc) the grains have a slightly higher chance of setting themselves into the shape. But this still is a very unlikely outcome. And even if they form the shape, it can be seen that external guidance is needed.

The universe is huge, much much more larger than a handful of grains. The order and elements in the universe are a thousand times more precise than the rectangle pattern given in the Rice Grain example. What would be the probability that the universe created itself when energy was randomly thrown out?


Consiousness:  "It has been defined, at one time or another, as: subjective experience; awareness; the ability to experience feelings; wakefulness; having a sense of selfhood; or as the executive control system of the mind", says Wikipedia.org .

A child is created from the zygote, the first cell formed when male and female reproductive cells merge. The zygote multiplies, new cells are created and slowly, various body parts are formed, all in nine months.

All is fine. but where in the process did the physical human body of the child acquire its other set of "HUMAN" characteristics like its ability to think, to learn all the way, to a stage where it learns all by itself. But most of all, where did its consciousness come from?

If this is a bit hard to grasp, consider this: A person is happy with his life. He is loving and good person, hence keeps people around him happy. He has an enchanting character. One day, in his sleep, he has a stroke and passes away. The next morning, his wife finds him lying there in his bed, in the same position. His same body is there, all of it physically, but there is no LIFE there.

Here, thinking carefully, we see that LIFE is not actually part of the physical body created in the womb. It must have come into the body at some point of time. It is something that is external, since it leaves the body and goes to somewhere we as humans cannot sense.

To anyone who looks at the universe in the right way, the presence of a greater being, someone who has clearly, designed the universe is obvious.

There are numerous more examples that I could mention. The list is endless once you are able to see.

Here is one from http://www.everystudent.com/features/isthere.html :

Water...colorless, odorless and without taste, and yet no living thing can survive without it. Plants, animals and human beings consist mostly of water (about two-thirds of the human body is water). You'll see why the characteristics of water are uniquely suited to life:

It has an unusually high boiling point and freezing point. Water allows us to live in an environment of fluctuating temperature changes, while keeping our bodies a steady 98.6 degrees.

Water is a universal solvent. This property of water means that thousands of chemicals, minerals and nutrients can be carried throughout our bodies and into the smallest blood vessels.

Water is also chemically neutral. Without affecting the makeup of the substances it carries, water enables food, medicines and minerals to be absorbed and used by the body.

Water has a unique surface tension. Water in plants can therefore flow upward against gravity, bringing life-giving water and nutrients to the top of even the tallest trees.
Water freezes from the top down and floats, so fish can live in the winter.

Ninety-seven percent of the Earth's water is in the oceans. But on our Earth, there is a system designed which removes salt from the water and then distributes that water throughout the globe. Evaporation takes the ocean waters, leaving the salt, and forms clouds which are easily moved by the wind to disperse water over the land, for vegetation, animals and people. It is a system of purification and supply that sustains life on this planet, a system of recycled and reused water.

Putting all those facts into one group, we can see how meticulous the working of things are in our universe.

The Atheist-urge: Personally I do not know if this is true, for I have never been an atheist. But some atheists themselves have mentioned that while they remain unbelieving, they would always have this urge to know if GOD actually exists at the bottom of their minds: like someone was pushing them to search!

Most holy books do not provide any reasons as to why one should believe in GOD. They say that it so obvious that an argument is unnecessary.

So think and find for yourselves, for what is the purpose of this HUGE brain of ours if not to think, including thinking of our purpose here.

Biggest Serial killer: The US. Evident to any sensible person.

This video is a must for every American:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ksatFd8gkY&feature=topvideos_news

After that check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Tillman . In particular read this paragraph under the title "Cover-up surrounding Tillman's death":

Jones reported that members of Tillman's unit burned his body armor and uniform in an apparent attempt to hide the fact that he was killed by friendly fire. His notebook, in which – according to author Jon Krakauer —, Tillman had recorded some of his thoughts on Afghanistan, was also burned; “a blatant violation of protocol”.

The notebook was never found. I can't imagine what prompted them to burn his notebook!! Even if we consider that the military only wanted to cover his death being from friendly fire, the notebook-burning was totally uncalled for and should not have been done since protocol tells them to return his belongings. Unless, the notebook contained something that could cause problems if it got out.


Heres another link of a page in the video: http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/july2007/270707tillmanexecuted.htm

Heres something from the Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/al-qaeda/8493391/Osama-bin-Laden-dead-Blackout-during-raid-on-bin-Laden-compound.html

Check out the second photo on this page. Funny :) http://govtslaves.info/2011/05/05/lies-no-live-footage-of-osama-bin-laden-raids/

I had no idea!!

....the more extreme assertions about squatting—that it prevents cancer, for example—remain untested. But when it comes to hemorrhoids—a painful swelling of the veins in the anal canal that affects half of all Americans—new research suggests that you may want to get your butt off the toilet.

Check this out!!! A must for every Indian and American!! For the opposite reasons though!

Tex resources!!

http://www.ctan.org/ : A good place to start. Tells you the history and the difference.

Inspired to test TeX

Today, I am officially beginning to test TeX and friends: see if they are worth the fuss. Was inspired by a classmate at college. Least expected :)

Sorting a list of complicated tuples in Python

Consider a tuple of the form:

("URL of page", "Title of web page", ['word1' ,'word2', word3'], len(words), priority index - int)

where word1, word2 etc are the words in the web page, the priority index is an integer representing the priority of the web page.

We have a list of such tuples.
Example:
[
("www.yahoo.com", "Yahoo! - International", ['yahoo', 'mail', 'news', 'sports', 'messenger'], 5, 2)
("www.google.com", "Google Web search", ['google', 'mail', 'search', 'docs'], 4, 1)
("timesofindia.indiatimes.com", "Times of india - Latest news", ['timesofindia', 'news', 'india', 'sports', 'world'], 5, 3)
...
...
]

We are to sort this list based on the following criteria (in the order given):

1. Length of words in the words list
2. Priority index
3. Alphabetical order of titles

Simplest way would be to make the tuples conform to this format:
(priority index, length of words, title , ... )
Python would by default sort the list using elements from the start to end when one uses list.sort() or sorted(list)

But  what if we wanted the sorting to be done so that the numbers are sorted in the descending order, while the titles are sorted in the ascending order?
Here's when a custom sort function like the one below would prove useful:

def tupleSort(t1, t2)
    #first sort according to word length
    t1wordlength = t1[3]
    t2wordlength = t2[3]
    if t1wordlength >t2wordlength : return 1
    elif t2wordlength >t1wordlength : return -1
    #next sort according to the priority index
    t1priority = t1[4]
    t1priority = t2[4]
    if t1priority >t2priority : return 1
    if t2priority >t1priority : return -1
    #finally if both of the above are same, then sort according to the alphabetical order of the title
    t1title = t1[1]
    t2title = t2[1]
    if t1title >t2title : return -1
    if t21title >t1title : return 1
    #if even that is same then the tuples match, so return 0
    return 0

Giving this funtion as the parameter to the cmp parameter of the list.sort() function of sorted() BIF with reverse parameter set to True would cause the list given on top to be sorted in the way we want.

Publicity for a friend

CARes - We make every car that comes our way shine.

What hooks programmers

The joy of programming is the joy of building and creating something. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we can build and create something useful for other people? If yes, why aren’t we doing more of that? After all, there is no dearth of things that we can create.

Courtesy: http://www.swaroopch.com/blog/how-fresh-graduates-can-grow/

Personally, I feel coding is the fastest way to see your creation in action. As best as worldly creation gets :)

The best end to a fight

The best end to a fight is when

1. The party that is pissed forgives
2. The party that errs understands his fault, and decides to change. Asking a sorry is VERY important

And everyone else who looks learns :)

Programming?? Whoa!!

This one day I was trying to explain the concepts of computer programming to a civil engineering student. I was so lost ...  this girl wasn't getting anything at all. That was when I hit upon a new way of looking at programming. It is simple problem solving.

Consider this example. You are given a problem: 


What you have are the following:

1. A list of numbers represented as myArray(1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
2. You have only a certain words (and characters) to express yourself:
3. while
4. print
5. "(" and ")"
6. "{" and "}"

 etc .. (You would only need a few more).
Write down the steps to find the sum of all the numbers in the list, given certain ways of defining which steps are to be executed multiple times and so on.

If programming had been explained like this to me when i first learnt it, it might be that I would have looked at programming in a totally different light. :)