Author: admin

Posted on

Delusions and Inaction

Often times we want something to be true, we want our world view to be the truth when it would be infinitely better for us if we accept and to just try to change the world we know. It is of little use to keep on pretending about something when it limits our actions on making our aim to be reality!
from Eugene Wallingford’s blog Knowing and Doing
But my favorite passage came near the end, in response to the question, “Do you believe in magic?”

Hopefully I’m a nice guy, but I’m a really grumpy scientist, and in the end, I’m a reductionist. So if you can show me, [I’ll believe it]. As a scientist, I have to be grumpy about everything and be able to be willing to believe anything. … If you care what you believe, you should never be in the investigative fields — ever. You can’t care what you believe; you just have to care what’s out there. And when you do that, your bandwidth is as wide as that sounds, and the rigor … has to be as narrow as as the biggest bigot you’ve ever seen. Both are resident in a scientist’s mind at the same time.

Posted on

What Once Was Stupid To Me!

I got an email from a friend on a research about longterm effects of sugar replacements (aspartame research here) on mice. One of the things that struck me about the research was that the author was going against established, testing practice, and did not use genetically close mice as test subjects, His rational was that it is not life like so why should he experiment on just one type/set of genes. i didn’t understand his reasons well, and judged his research with a little more bias against his methods. I think I finally understand what he was trying to say.
from here:
Like what? Alan Kirman, of the Univerity of Aix-Marseille, France, a much-decorated veteran; and Robert Axtell, of George Mason University, an up-and-comer; laid out the case for a point of view known as “agent-based” modeling. They describe this as a “bottom-up” approach to thinking about economic phenomena, made practicable by modern computers, in which people are heterogeneous and react directly with each other; in which their information is local and their behavior governed by rules of thumb; and in which the aggregate behavior of the system emerges from behavior of individuals rather than a “representative” agent.” Simulations of this sort by Thomas Schelling, which had formally identified the “tipping point” phenomenon (a fairly concrete discovery, after all) and elucidated mechanisms that give rise to residential segregation, had been laboriously worked out on a checkerboard in the 1970s, Axtell noted; with today’s models, 5 million more intricate calculations can be performed in an instant.
With new tools and ever more powerful computers and algorithms at our disposal it is really a shame that advanced techniques in doing experiments and simulations would take a long time before gaining widespread use. It saddens me to think how many lives could have been saved if different fields just communicated more often. Lets just blame our overspecialized world!

Posted on

Funny Not So Much But Funny Enough

hmm! my respect for Harvard grad students just went done a notch!
link here:
One commenter asks if I had the same experience with my own students. My students are not precisely representative, but it’s worth noting that they’re not immune. I once had a Harvard grad student call me at 10pm the night before the exam (not sure how she got my mobile number) to berate me for discussing something called the “Cold War” in class as if everyone was supposed to know what it was about. She said she hoped it wasn’t testable.

Posted on

This Is So Not True!

Studies have shown (got a deadline and just don’t have the time to search google for this!) around 90% of what someone achieves is based on the circumstances he/she is put in! Nuff said!

from here:

The working classes have lower IQs than those from wealthier backgrounds and should not be expected to win places at top universities, an academic has claimed.

Bruce Charlton, reader in evolutionary psychiatry at Newcastle University, suggested that the low numbers of working-class students at elite universities was the “natural outcome” of IQ differences between classes.
In a paper shown to the Times Higher Education magazine, Dr Charlton questioned the Government’s drive to get more students from poor backgrounds into top universities like Oxford and Cambridge.
He said: “The UK Government has spent a great deal of time and effort in asserting that universities, especially Oxford and Cambridge, are unfairly excluding people from low social class backgrounds and privileging those from higher social classes.
“Yet in all this debate a simple and vital fact has been missed: higher social classes have a significantly higher average IQ than lower social classes.”
The fact that so few students from poor families get into Oxbridge is not down to “prejudice” but “meritocracy”, he said.
The Government criticised Dr Charlton’s comments. Higher education minister Bill Rammell said: “These arguments have a definite tone of ‘people should know their place’.
“There are young people with talent, ability and the potential to benefit from higher education who do not currently do so. That should concern us all.”
Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union, said: “It should come as little surprise that people who enjoy a more privileged upbringing have a better start in life.
“It is up to all of us to ensure that not having access to the social and educational benefits that money provides is not a barrier to achieving one’s full potential.”

Posted on

Road Less Travelled and an apology

I may be day dreaming, I may be rewriting my story I may be delusional, I’m not really sure. But I’ve always tried to take the road less traveled. I apologize to the people who  are hurt along the way. I ask forgiveness for causing you pain, Not for what I have done, but the pain it caused you. I never meant to hurt anyone. It just had to happen the way it did!
Road Less Traveled
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth
Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference
– Robert Frost

Posted on

A Letter From DAD to SON!

An excellent letter written by leo of zen habits. Letter is here:
Best Part for me:
Love Should Be Your Rule
If there’s a single word you should live your life by, it should be this: Love. It might sound corny, I know … but trust me, there’s no better rule in life.

Posted on

Best Sentence Read Today!

Part of me always hated taking any exam, that’s why this kind of hits home for me.  More on this later!

The U.S. system may be too lax when it comes to rigor and memorization, but it is very good at developing the critical faculties of the mind. It is surely this quality that goes some way in explaining why the United States produces so many entrepreneurs, inventors, and risk takers. Tharman Shanmugaratnam, until recently Singapore’s minister of education, explains the difference between his country’s system and that of the United States: “We both have meritocracies,” Shanmugaratnam says. “Yours is a talent meritocracy, ours is an exam meritocracy. We know how to train people to take exams. You know how to use people’s talents to the fullest. Both are important, but there are some parts of the intellect that we are not able to test well — like creativity, curiosity, a sense of adventure, ambition. Most of all, America has a culture of learning that challenges conventional wisdom, even if it means challenging authority.” This is one reason that Singaporean officials recently visited U.S. schools to learn how to create a system that nurtures and rewards ingenuity, quick thinking, and problem solving. “Just by watching, you can see students are more engaged, instead of being spoon-fed all day,” one Singaporean visitor told The Washington Post. While the United States marvels at Asia’s test-taking skills, Asian governments come to the United States to figure out how to get their children to think.

–Fareed Zakaria

Posted on

Longing For May 12!

May 12 is a red calendar day for me. Back to everyday blogging, back to java (goodbye C#, joke lang , C# I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship, Java, C don’t poke C#’s eyes!)