History of geography

My children are very much into reading maps and atlas now a days. They come up with all sort of questions like 

•    Why do we need boundary and mainly who decides it.
•    Why cannot we have a polygon shaped countries - easier to maintain
•    Why some countries do not have access to sea/ocean. they miss out the fun, similarly for snow.
•    Why the old kings were always fighting

In fact they have their own map of world, where they try to divide the land/ocean mass equally for all countries.

Though I try my best to answer their questions, most of the things that I do not even know. unlike science queries, these things does not fetch satisfactory answers when we start googling. One such expedition fetch me a book written by Sanjeev Sanyal, Land of seven rivers. I find this book to be special for the reasons that, it touches the topic the children are  discussing and the very casual tone of the writing. It gives the feeling of someone sitting with you and explaining about it. More of Bill Brysonesque .

"History repeats itself" - this is what I got after reading this, though never mentioned anywhere in that. Events and people mentality goes in a cyclical way throug h out our history. In fact some dates and symbols are also that way. Why August 15 was chosen for our Independence and why certain symbols keeps appearing.

Some of the interesting reads were, 

• How they try to figure Tsangpo river from Tibet flows to India as Brahmaputra
•  Role of Tanjore temple in cartography
•  How the border was marked during partition
•  Portugal influence

I think our text books should have been more like this, rather than the usual "Kings  planted trees . blah blah battle happened duh duh year "

Reason I am reviewing is NOT due to the content of the book. But this will be the last physical book I would have read. YES YES..I am moving to kindle. I will miss their texture and smell. Bye Bye...

Happiness

Happiness means various thing at different stages of life for me. Early stages it was little materialistic, later on friends, travel, music ,playing,  helping others and ( some rare cases hurting others )  But all throughout reading a book always lifts me up. I read anything that I come across, there is no pattern or genres. Sort of read it and throw it approach. Turning point for me was reading Mystic river, Thomas Harris novels and Pudumaipithhan. Left very thought provoking questions and I realized that most good books require us to read many veiled references to know some other books/concept. From that time, my way of reading has changed and reading another time gives different perspectives. But I never got an opportunity to discuss my understanding with others.

I Introduced my kids to books at very early stages. Everyday i read to them as bedtime stories and mealtime stories. three years back they started reading proper books without my help. They regale me with their stories during dinner time. It is sort of established ritual for us.

When we are discussing about Mars mission/mangalyaan, I told them about "2001: A space odysessy" book and searched the book and gave it to them to read. My son was hooked to that. Whole of this week he keeps raving about HAL computer (which happens to be my favourite character) and comparing with Google Voice assistant. I am extremely happy that I found someone to discuss about my favorite character.

I am not sure how I have evolved as a person, but my evolution as a READER gives immense satisfaction to me.

Mythological Figures

Always fascinated with Mythological figures and imagining what type of persons they would be, I decided to write about Indian Gods/Goddess (It is easier for me to imagine them as person, rather than as Gods)
Meenakshi:
(Wife of Shiva(destroyer) and sister of Vishnu(protector))
Pandya king Malayathuvasan was childless and seek some divine help by performing yagna. King got a girl, whose eyes were like fish and so he named her as "Meena" "Aatchi" (fish eyed girl ruling the kingdom) Also she was having 3 nipples and at that time astrologers told the king that her third nipple will disappear, once she looks at her husband. Since he did not have any other sons/daughters, Meenakshi was involved in ruling the kingdom along with her father. She was ruling the kingdom efficiently, protecting/helping the people and by conquering other weak king's kingdom and annexing it to hers.
At Himalayas she was fighting Sunderasan, and she figured that he will be her husband. Got married to him at Madurai. Her brother was Kallalagar and two contradicting stories on who gave her hand for Kanniyadhanam. Most of the painting depict her brother Vishnu performing the kannika dhanam. Also the parrot at her hand depicts knowledge. But Madurai Chittirai festival gives a different version. Kallaalagar was stopped at the outskirts of Madurai, preventing to reach on time for the wedding.
After that their son"Ukra Pandian" (Murugan??) ruled the kingdom.
Poem depicting Meenakshi in pillaiThamizh,
Shiva wanders through the courtyard of space
destroying your work again and again, and
then comes before you dancing.
yet You never get angry.
Every day, you just pick up the vessels.

My experiments with ...

As a child I was always interested in finding things on my own, rather than believing what my teachers/books said. Listing out few of my funny experiments. It might look funny at this point, but at the point I did those experiments, I was damn serious about finding things...
1. Making Diamond/petroleum
Very early I was taught that coal turns into diamonds after sometime. Having never seen any diamond till that time, I was fascinated that a black colored coal can turn into some white color
substance. Decided to make diamonds at my house backyard, by burying a piece of coal in the ground. I have been told that coals turn into diamonds after a lot of time. So i waited for whole of 30 minutes... and then dug up the ground to find my coal lying as coal only :-(
Something was wrong in my experiment, since I did not get any white shining object. This time I decided to keep the coal buried under for one whole day (boy.. sure that's lots of time..)
and then the ground was marked with two sticks so that I do not have trouble digging up the ground for next day.
Much awaited next day morning came (and sure it looked millions years for me at that point of time) and again to my disappointment, I find my coal lying exactly I placed.
Being that sort of person, who never seize to work till the gaols are achieved, my next step was to consult experts for making this a successful project, without giving the complete details on my research. Wisdom from my teachers indicated that pressure/temperature plays a major role in the conversion of coal to diamond. Now I know what went wrong with my previous set of experiments. I was waiting till weekend so that by Saturday afternoon after school I can start the process of making diamond and make sure by Monday morning I have a fresh diamond, for the proof of my experiment.
Much awaited Saturday afternoon came and after lunch I started my serious preparation for my breakthrough experiment. Lamp/oil from Tulasi Maadam was taken out and wicks were placed in all four faces of the lamp and coal was placed in the rut after digging deep with a small spade and I decided to alternate between raising temperature and putting pressure (me jumping/stomping) up and down on the ground. By evening I was pretty much done with alternating between heating the ground (whole box of match sticks were used on that day to light the all 4 faces of the lamp after every episode of putting pressure. This time I was confident of my experiment and with the air of mystic appearance I came inside for dinner.
Again the whole experiment of heating and pressurizing the coal took place after my Sunday oil bath and drinking ginger juice. I could not wait till Monday morning to take out the diamond. Whole of remaining Sunday was spent on dreaming how that white substance Diamond will look like and the process of how coal is changing into diamond.
Monday morning I could not contain my excitement, as I got up and rushed to our backyard to check the status on Diamond. Alas... Destiny had something in mind for me...My coal was remaining as coal as it was on Saturday afternoon and I was raged and decided to go public with the fraud thing mentioned in the book.
First thing in the class, I told the teacher about the fraud mentioned in the book, by outlining the experiments I did in my backyard. My teacher was very short and because of her height they had trouble finding suitable groom for her and she was around 30 years at that point of time. This age is pretty high to remain spinster in that small village. Anyhow she explained that coal does not turn into diamond in such short period of time. So my next question was, at least it should have turned petroleum by this point. She patiently explained that it takes around generations to become diamonds/petroleum and gave a practical example of having my seventh generation grand daughter might find it as diamond, if I keep coal on that day.
So S-CUBE + 1, take note of this and pass it to your next generation....

2. Becoming immortal
This experiment has nothing to do with science as such. It is believing my neighbour aunty's word on the proverb, "Erumbbu thinna ennuru varusham uyiruda vazhalam" (if anyone eats Ant, then they will live for 800 years)
This time I decided to include a partner for becoming immortal, since I thought it will be boring life for next 800 years without any friends. After carefully weighing with whom I want to continue my friendship for 800 years, I selected R and S. Other than these two I did not have any other friends also, so no time was wasted on the speculation for the selection. S shot down the idea immediately with the practical perspective on that she does not want to live 800 years without parents, as she does not know cooking and so food will be a problem after sometime. Being a practical person as she is always, she pointed another aspect, if our parents come to know of this, they might spray disinfectant/ant-killing powders in our mouth to kill the ant that had gone into the stomach. If the smell of disinfectant is bad and so the taste will also be bad.
With this fresh perspectives, R also decided to back out from becoming immortal and since I did not have any other friends, with whom I want to continue my friendship for next 800 years. I decided to go solo. I caught 2 black ants and put it in water and gulped it down.
I have to wait a long time to find out the result of this experiment. Either I will live forever or in the process of attempting to live forever I might die.

3. Measurements
First day when we were taught how the objects are measured in Kilogram and gram, we decided to weigh for ourselves and find out how much kg. Things would had been ok, if we had stopped with our own weight. Decided to figure out the weight of my science book and pencil. Weighing these things would not have been a problem, if we had normal weighing machine as found in hospitals. All the experiements were done at lorry weighing machine site (TVS office)

Metcalfe Law

Bang the Bell

I am very interested in getting some comments/views regarding, fitting people's performance/capability into the Bell Curve. The original framework was from, The publication of The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life by the late Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray. The book is about grouping people's IQ based on various controversial factors. Maybe Gaussian distribution also suggested the similar curve with random data.
In order to satisfy any probability/theorems, I always consider two major assumptions. Size of samples have to be big enough. Sample selection has to be random.
For any organized sector, I feel point number two is mostly invalid, since people will have similar qualifications/background. Also the original Bell Curve is for the distribution based on IQ and NOT for the outputs based on IQ.
Why all companies are behind force fitting Bell Curve?

Ideas for my next cube!

Future of office cubes!