Maths, Physics and Chemistry

Last week, I shared an interesting article on singularity that I came across on facebook (thanks for sharing it, N) with a bunch of friends. You can read the article here.

This is how one of my friends (who wishes to remain anonymous) responded :

Don't know physics and can't do the numbers
You send me these reads that induce more slumbers
What about something a tad exciting
Think about the opposite sex stripping

A man's a beast and it all bears out
Over numbers he'll flip for a pout
So save this sophistication for the women
Oh woman! Why can't your kind be more like men

Girl and Boy

There was once was a boy
Who needed a toy
So he got himself a girl
But the girl was a witch
With a hypnotic twitch
And she made the Boy plain twirl

So he twirled and he twirled
Till his life was in a whirl
And couldn't tell his west from his east
But the girl was a beast
And she didn't care in the least
As she saw her toy boy unfurl

By,
Anonymous

Unimportant Musings

If you were me and I was you
And we met on a summer's hue
I wouldn't know what to say
Probably Parlez vous anglais
And you'd laugh and walk away

I have small errands to run
Only I cant seem to get them done
A car to fix, a bulb to replace
Whom to ask - not a shop to trace

I wake up one morning
Take a train to nowhere
Nowhere comes and goes
Cities in droves
One just like another
All equally unfamiliar

Futile I walk home to the sunset
With not even the light for company
Dinner- Alone but I cook and dress
Some chapatis and a curry
A taste of home and smells from far away
Tomorrow will be another day

I take the train to Nowhere
I get down Somewhere
I could be elsewhere or back at home
It doesn't matter- i am just as alone

There's something to be said for going back home
Back to people and familiarity
Where if I met you and you met me
Our eyes would dance
And I would not miss that chance
To ask for dinner and some fun
And we'd walk a lonely road in the evening sun
Lesser people around
But enough to make a crowd
And you'd see me and I'd see you
And we'd be happy just the two

By,
Anonymous
(Note : Check earlier by poem submitted by anonymous last year - http://entropymuse.blogspot.com/2008/09/me-and-you.html)

Me and You

If I were you and you were me
And we met on some sunny street
Would you look at me and say
Lets have some coffee to brighten my day

Or would you be scared stiff and blue
Scared I might say a word or two
But that’s not something I would do
For I am not me but playing you

Tell me how would we be as us
With me as you and you as me
Who would make the greater fuss
You or me or none of us

By,
Anonymous

Old Favourites - Part 2

And in keep with the old old favourites theme, here in another of mine.
It started with two poems being run on the poetry site called the Wondering Minstrels ( http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1763.html and http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/83.html) - one each by William Carlos Williams and F.J.Bergmann.
And then Anita and Rohit joined in too.
All the poems are reproduced below :

The Red Wheelbarrow
-- William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon
a red wheelbarrow

glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.


"An Apology"
-- F. J. Bergmann

Forgive me
for backing over
and smashing your red wheelbarrow.

It was raining
and the rear wiper
does not work on
my new plum-colored SUV.

I am also sorry
about the white
chickens.


Inspired by 'An Apology'
by Anita. B

forgive me
for overtaking
and grazing
your red scooty

it was raining
and you were
at the blind spot of
my green scratched esteem

I am also sorry
about that guy
at the adyar signal.


Rohit's Reply
-- Rohithari Rajan

Forgive you?
I was in a hurry,
And that was a NEW scooty!

I was getting soaked
while you blindly (bull)dozed
in that ghastly green thing
(A blow, I say, to anyone's esteem)

But don't worry about that guy
I never really liked him anyway.

Old favourites - 1

Now that this blog is almost two years old, have decided to select favourite posts from the past and run them again. Today's is 'Fairy Tale Phobia' by Rohit Grover, which I have read again ang again and over again, and continue to enjoy.
Do mention your favourite posts - by commenting or emailing - and those will be run too.
Our blog is almost two years old. Yippeee !

Fairy Tale Phobia

Now that I am a father, who is regularly called upon to read stories to his daughter, I have developed a very healthy dislike for fairy tales. I am okay with bears that talk and discuss the matters of the day, such as how the porridge is so much hotter nowadays than when they were little bear cubs, thinking nary a thought but those of porridge at just the right temperature, not cold and congealed, not so hot that it would burn the roofs of their mouths, just right. I can imitate barnyard animals till the cows come home -- mooing and snorting and clucking come to me like fluorescent lamps to the energy conscious. Zoo animals -- oh yeah, bring those on.

But fairy tales I hate. I can't stand the message I'm sending to my kid. Everytime I read 'Sleeping Beauty' I think of how vacuous and shallow the whole thing is. The fairies give her gifts of beauty and a singsong voice and, presumably, more gifts of a similar nature (maybe an hourglass figure, two well-defined eyebrows, and the like). No one gives her gifts of intelligence, the ability to do math, solve quantum mechanical problems, solve analytical mechanics problems, to see beauty in biology, the ability to tell fact from fiction, science from religion, not to mention the ability to kick the freaking prince who will later come up and kiss her without so much as a how-do-you-do.

If my daughter is to marry a prince, or an heir to a vast fortune, so be it, but I hope she will at least google the guy, pay some agency to do a background check on him, and spend enough time with him to figure out if it's really worth the trouble.

All the stories about evil stepmothers? How about some stories about kind stepmothers? Let's balance things a little, shall we? My daughter might have to be a stepmother some day -- I don't want her to feel like a failure if she doesn't have a hooked nose with a wart on the end, a cackly laugh, and a propensity to do evil. So I just avoid those. Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, and Snow White will have to wait. Other stories I find myself changing on the fly.

Fauna, Flora, and Merriweather give gifts of being good at math, feeling relaxed during examinations, and an independent streak, but not one that leads Sleeping Beauty (how about calling her Aurora, her given name, for chrissakes) to do drugs or tobacco. Aurora gets into an accident on her way home from the art academy (she was straying from the path of science). Because she wasn't wearing a seatbelt, she goes into a coma, but a very intelligent surgeon saves her, and when she finally wakes up, he mentors her and she becomes a neurosurgeon herself. Then they get married and have kids, because let's face it, I want to make sure that message is conveyed so that my genes should get passed on -- that's my evolutionary right.

The miller who had a beautiful daughter who couldn't really spin straw into gold? How come the king gets to decide if he wants to marry her -- doesn't the girl get any sat? There are many versions of that one. The simples? It was a foolish miller, who's daughter packed an AK-47, and when the evil ruler tried to make her do stuff she didn't want to, RATATATATATATATATAT. That story ends rather fast. Then there's the one where she does the spinning of straw, but turns him down and goes to law school and proves that the monarchy is not right and introduces democracy to the country and becomes the first president (She shoots Rumpelstiltskin when he tries to kidnap her first-born kid).

The three little pigs -- actually, I like that one. But after having read it out loud a few hundred times, complete with the song about the big bad wolf, you want to end it sooner, so sometimes the wolf wins and has ham sandwiches for breakfast the next few months.

You get the picture.

I also hate tabloids and celebrity news magazines. I hate Aishwarya Rai, Lindsay Lohan, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Britney Spears. I want someone to publish a magazine with, say, glamor shots of Madame Curie's experimental apparatus (maybe Madame Curie also, but in opaque, sensible clothing). But that's another rant.

By,
Speck 42 ((speckfortytwo)(at)(gmail)(dot)(com))

An Admission

I wish I could write like Dorothy Parker,
Wendy Cope or Emily Dickinson;
Reality relieved by whoops of laughter -
Their barbs pointed and verse sharpened.

Wish I could describe like Bill Bryson,
My travels to lands far and near;
Love-story scented with cherry blossom,
‘The Lady and the Monk’ – Pico Iyer.

An Indian Enid Blyton would be nice too -
Magical folk on the faraway tree;
And mysteries solved by Chinky and Bablu,
Not scones, but samosas for tea.

Arun Shourie, once a mighty crusader,
Exposed scams and toppled governments,
I doubt I’d topple a glass of water,
Unless it shook from the force of derision.

Hemingway, Austen, Auden, Dostoevsky,
Let me not think of venturing there;
Even I must respect a boundary
Between wishful thinking and impudence bare.

I wish I could be Anita or Leo
With their ready verse and sparkling wit
Then we would be a triumphant trio.
(Your guess is right - Anita wrote this bit !)

But one cuts the coat to fit the cloth,
No point fretting over what I haven’t got;
To literature though I pledge my troth,
The literary muse – away he trots.

By,
Zenobia D. Driver

Anita's Anthem

Anita's Anthem
(Best read along with the previous post 'Tam travails')

From Anna Nagar to Mahabalipuram,
From Pondy Bazaar to Vrudhhachalam,
Rajnikanthaku Vanakkam !
May his blessings be on this po(y)em.

"I'm the Sambar Mafia Queen,
I have the Guilty Guindy Gene."

No one in TN is spared this effect,
It matters not what religion, caste or sect;
Short or tall, fat or lean,
All possessed by the ‘Guilty Guindy Gene’.

Training begins right from infancy,
The best vie for admission in PSBB;
Allowed few things that are more fun
than warm coffee and soggy uttappam.

Studious, sincere, all-knowing and righteous,
Often seen as a wee bit pompous,
Accustomed to loads of hard work,
While the rest aimlessly idle and shirk.

The burden of guilt weighs me down,
Lines my brow with a worried frown,
Causes my instincts to revolt and shout -
Any enjoyment trampled in the rout.

Nothing less pious than a visit to the temple.
Nothing motivated by a goal less noble
than doubling the GDP growth rate,
Or finding oneself a well-educated mate.

"I'm the Sambar Mafia Queen,
I have the Guilty Guindy Gene."

By,
Zenobia D. Driver

Diwali 2005

Diwali 2005

All across the city tonight
White, austere rooms hold
The smoke of God in their hearts.

Outside,
The night puts on its jewels,
Shy lamps lift
Their trembling eyes.

Fireworks,
Self-righteous like priests,
Sprinkle the sky with fire.

Little by little
The city sputters into life.

Time is a wheel of spinning light now,
A spitting and indignant eye
In which
The festival dances like a child.

We stand on rooftops
Holding our breaths,
Our hearts racing like fuses.

Happiness, when it comes,
May be too loud an explosion.

Rohit's Reply

Rohit's Reply

Forgive you?
I was in a hurry,
And that was a NEW scooty!

I was getting soaked
while you blindly (bull)dozed
in that ghastly green thing
(A blow, I say, to anyone's esteem)

But don't worry about that guy
I never really liked him anyway

- Rohithari Rajan

Inspired by 'An Apology'

forgive me
for overtaking
and grazing
your red scooty

it was raining
and you were
at the blind spot of
my green scratched esteem

I am also sorry
about that guy
at the adyar signal
- Anita B.

"An Apology"

Forgive me
for backing over
and smashing
your red wheelbarrow.

It was raining
and the rear wiper
does not work on
my new plum-colored SUV.

I am also sorry
about the white
chickens.

-- F. J. Bergmann


The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon
a red wheelbarrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

-- William Carlos Williams

Inspired by 'An Apology'

Inspired by 'An Apology'
by Anita. B

forgive me
for overtaking
and grazing
your red scooty

it was raining
and you were
at the blind spot of
my green scratched esteem

I am also sorry
about that guy
at the adyar signal

"An Apology"
Forgive me
for backing over
and smashing your red wheelbarrow.

It was raining
and the rear wiper
does not work on
my new plum-colored SUV.

I am also sorry
about the white
chickens.

-- F. J. Bergmann

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon
a red wheelbarrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

-- William Carlos Williams