Rites of Love and Math

How extraordinary…

Rites of Love and Math - the Official Trailer from Edward Frenkel on Vimeo.

 

I quote

In any case, the evening began with Frenkel comparing the lack of appreciation for mathematics in society at large to a fictitious scenario in which painting is studied without any reference to the great masters such as van Gogh and Picasso. As one can imagine, the subject of painting in such a world would be devoid of lineage and it may very well be reduced to the art of repetitive brush strokes. This, unfortunately, quite accurately describes how mathematics is commonly taught in schools, where rules and formulas are introduced rather mechanically and without reference to their origins.

From this starting point, Frenkel goes on to argue how mathematics and art contain many elements in common. One of these is the central role that abstraction plays. To illustrate, Frenkel described the concurrent introduction of higher dimensions into mathematics and physics as well as art in the early twentieth century. In the former scenario, we have figures such as Poincaré and Einstein who developed the mathematics of special and general relativity, and in doing so, revolutionized our conception of the universe in which we live. Indeed, whereas Euclidean geometry had been the model for reality for over two millennia, and its absoluteness was even regarded in Kant’s philosophy as being fundamental to our ability to perceive the world, the new vista of a curved spacetime was now provided solely by the powerful abstraction of mathematics. In the world of art, we have in the same period, the workNude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 by Marchel Duchamp in 1912, in which Duchamp departs from traditional painting and attempts to incorporate the dimension of time into a static, two-dimensional canvas. Frenkel, via this example and others, suggests that it is through such novel and powerful ways of introducing abstraction that we soar to higher levels in mathematics and art.

Frenkel goes on to explain briefly the relationship between love and math. Despite tattooing a mathematical formula on his lover in his film Rite of Love and Death (a formula discovered by Frenkel by the way), Frenkel explains that it is not that the case that he thinks there is a formula for love (thankfully). But rather, he believes (if I understood him correctly) that math and love can share aspects in common, namely, its ability to infuse passion and desire. On this point however, I do not recall if Frenkel explained what is unique about mathematics’s intersection with love (in contrast to any other creative pursuit), something I personally would have liked to be clarified…..

absolutely fascinating. I am always reminded of the quote from Bertrand Russell in his magnum opus, A History of Western Philosophy, on this matter

“Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.”

Do you meditate differently when you are a Hindu Vs a Buddhist?

Apparently you do! See this fascinating paper.

The most diffuse forms of meditation derive from Hinduism and Buddhism spiritual traditions. Different cognitive processes are set in place to reach these meditation states. According to an historical-philological hypothesis (Wynne, 2009) the two forms of meditation could be disentangled. While mindfulness is the focus of Buddhist meditation reached by focusing sustained attention on the body, on breathing and on the content of the thoughts, reaching an ineffable state of nothingness accompanied by a loss of sense of self and duality (Samadhi) is the main focus of Hinduism-inspired meditation. It is possible that these different practices activate separate brain networks. We tested this hypothesis by conducting an activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies. The network related to Buddhism-inspired meditation (16 experiments, 263 subjects, and 96 activation foci) included activations in some frontal lobe structures associated with executive attention, possibly confirming the fundamental role of mindfulness shared by many Buddhist meditations. By contrast, the network related to Hinduism-inspired meditation (8 experiments, 54 activation foci and 66 subjects) triggered a left lateralized network of areas including the postcentral gyrus, the superior parietal lobe, the hippocampus and the right middle cingulate cortex. The dissociation between anterior and posterior networks support the notion that different meditation styles and traditions are characterized by different patterns of neural activation.

Whilst I do meditate, I am not really sure if I know the difference between these two modes, do tend to work to the Hindu mode while starting in the Buddhist mode. Does that make sense?

but absolutely fascinating, we are different…

Dirty medicine - Fortune Features

Kannu

This is one of the reasons why I wasn't a success in India. Not so much anyway. The amount of corruption and decay present is just breathtaking. Even in the university sector where I spent so much time, I was gobsmacked at how professors and administrators would steal. Left right and centre son. It was crazy. 

Having integrity is vital Kannu. You have to have the ability to sleep peacefully. It could be moral or religious but never compromise with your integrity or honour son. You, your colleagues and your company, rise and fall by this factor. I've been in several situations where the company fell down and it's been punished badly. But not badly enough son as you could have noted from the press articles. What really makes me upset is that because nobody was punished, everybody is punished. So by default I'm guilty of something that somebody else did in a country far away. It's no good telling me that we won't do it again. You can bloody well believe that we won't do it again. But there is a very good case to fire and ban people who did do fraud. Like in this company. 

Keep your head up son, no hanky panky at work and nose clean. Honourable with high integrity. 

I'm proud of you son

Love

Baba 

Dirty medicine - Fortune Features
http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2013/05/15/ranbaxy-fraud-lipitor/

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By Katherine Eban

1. The assignment

FORTUNE — On the morning of Aug. 18, 2004, Dinesh Thakur hurried to a hastily arranged meeting with his boss at the gleaming offices of Ranbaxy Laboratories in Gurgaon, India, 20 miles south of New Delhi. It was so early that he passed gardeners watering impeccable shrubs and cleaners still polishing the lobby’s tile floors. As always, Thakur was punctual and organized. He had a round face and low-key demeanor, with deep-set eyes that gave him a doleful appearance.

His boss, Dr. Rajinder Kumar, Ranbaxy’s head of research and development, had joined the generic-drug company just two months earlier from GlaxoSmithKline, where he had served as global head of psychiatry for clinical research and development. Tall and handsome with elegant manners, Kumar, known as Raj, had a reputation for integrity. Thakur liked and respected him.

Like Kumar, Thakur had left a brand-name pharmaceutical company for Ranbaxy. Thakur, then 35, an American-trained engineer and a naturalized U.S. citizen, had worked at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) in New Jersey for 10 years. In 2002 a former mentor recruited him to Ranbaxy by appealing to his native patriotism. So he had moved his wife and baby son to Gurgaon to join India’s largest drugmaker and its first multinational pharmaceutical company.

Peloponnesian War

This ancient war son, has had a hold on human history and still has lessons for us. Not just because Thucydides wrote about this war, we've got a copy of the book so do read it when you get a chance, but because it had implications on democracy, ethics etc. 

We praise democracy but democratic Athens became a hegemonistic state. Athens protected against the Persian imperial power but it itself became imperial and setup an empire. If you get a chance son, read Kennedy's rise and fall of the great powers. 

Sparta, a fascist state which relied on slavery and was heavily militaristic won this war. So the bad guys own and the good guys lost? Turns the usual story of good versus evil on its head no? 

But you don't hear about this son. People don't like to hear about facts that don't fit into a narrative. Like the joke I read today. God's good but he allows evil so that you can recognise goodness. Well if that's the case, logically god can be evil who allows good to happen so that you can recognise evil. 

Fascinating. 

Love

Baba

Peloponnesian War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloponnesian_War

 

The Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC) was an ancient Greek war fought byAthens and itsempire against thePeloponnesian League led bySparta. Historians have traditionally divided the war into three phases. In the first phase, the Archidamian War, Sparta launched repeated invasions ofAttica, while Athens took advantage of its naval supremacy to raid the coast of thePeloponneseattempting to suppress signs of unrest in its empire. This period of the war was concluded in 421 BC, with the signing of the Peace of Nicias. That treaty, however, was soon undermined by renewed fighting in the Peloponnese. In 415 BC, Athens dispatched amassive expeditionary force to attack Syracuse in Sicily; the attack failed disastrously, with the destruction of the entire force, in 413 BC. This ushered in the final phase of the war, generally referred to either as the Decelean War, or the Ionian War. In this phase, Sparta, now receiving support from Persia, supported rebellions in Athens' subject states in the Aegean Sea and Ionia, undermining Athens' empire, and, eventually, depriving the city of naval supremacy. The destruction of Athens' fleet at Aegospotami effectively ended the war, and Athens surrendered in the following year.

“Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives.

Kids
I read this quote or rather poem. Before I talk about what I think, read this first. 

“Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself.”

William Martin

Small ordinary things are indeed important. Like cooking together. We have fun. Like how we cook the 10-12 course meal during Christmas. Small thing no? All 3 of us in the kitchen. Singing sometimes. Talking all the time. Teasing and laughing. Working our way through the menu. And that's an ordinary thing. And that's what makes it fun. Ordinary things. 

We've got to admire small things. I've noticed that since I've started photography, my eye for detail has changed. I look for interesting things in the simple aspects of life. On Thursday morning, was walking to the tube station and saw this little branch sticking out with little droplets along the branch. And it really brightened up my day. Take a look at the picture on Instagram. So yes. Do enjoy the little things in life. 

But I disagree about the extraordinary things kids. Totally. One can do both. One can aim at the stars. One can aim to do massive things. One can aim to live 5 lives in one life. One can aim to do things which others can't or wouldn't do. Teach. Do charity. Look after sick animals. Read up a storm. Make a difference to the world. Passion. Kids. Passion. Have a passion for life. Huge huge passion. So much that you feel like you will explode from the pressure inside you. You have to feel frustrated with your limitations and only then will you exceed them. 

The counterpart to the above quote is 'the heights of great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight. But they while their compatriots slept, were toiling upwards in the night'. Extraordinary things don't happen just like that. You've got to work bloody hard and have extraordinary passion and dedication for it. 

I'm proud of both of you. How kannu studies hard and is a good friend and how he reads and listens and saves and invests and and and. He's doing well. So is Diya. Your attention to detail, your intelligence, your artistic abilities, your math skills, your reading and your cuddling. All are perfect conditions for you to love the small ordinary things but also to achieve extraordinary things. 

Love

Baba

The effect of education on religion: Evidence from compulsory schooling laws

Hmmm, very curious set of findings..

For over a century, social scientists have debated how educational attainment impacts religious belief. In this paper, I use Canadian compulsory schooling laws to identify the relationship between completed schooling and later religiosity. I find that higher levels of education lead to lower levels of religious affiliation later in life. An additional year of education leads to a 4-percentage-point decline in the likelihood that an individual identifies with any religious tradition. This is a reasonably large effect: extrapolating the results to the broader population would suggest that increases in schooling could explain most of the large rise in non-affiliation in Canada in recent decades.

but I am wondering if this holds for all religions….outliers are of course people who are all smarty pants (the Islamists and Internet Hindus…) but are frankly crashing bores at best and totally idiotic at best. I am reminded of Churchill’s point, “a fanatic is a person who wouldn't change his mind and wouldn't change the subject” :)

but interesting..more education indeed is required.

Little book of magic

What a wonderful little book.

this is the little book of magic, a 17th century Icelandic manuscript written on animal skin and contains magical spells and stuff.

the full book is available here.

Appropriating Wives’ Income: New Form of Dowry

Dear son

Here's something that you will find of interest. How men steal the earnings of their wives. Despite the fact that it's religiously not mandated. There are two philosophical questions here. 

One, how can you ensure proper division of rights? Between man and woman, husband and wife. And what needs to be done from a legal perspective. Is that law from the sharia law? Or shall you do this from the perspective of universal law like the convention of rights of women or United Nations universal declaration of human rights. 

Second is what is religion? What has been written down or what is practised? Take this example in this situation. Islam in the majority version clearly says they the monies due to the wife are her's. But the way Islam is practised in Bangladesh is different. Then the question is, who determines who is right? Acres and tomes have been written on pretty much every topic under the sun and there's no consistency. 

For both questions, it's vital to remove religion from the public sphere. Absolutely vital son. Because most if not all religions are a way of controlling the populace and more importantly are skewed towards male patriarchy. It's one when you kick out morons of the religious orders that true civilisation exists. 

But it will be a long haul. Specially with these abhrahamic religions. Christianity has been controlled by and large. Judaism is still having challenges in Israel and well you know what's happening with Islam across the world. Both your and my generation will struggle with this religious genie son. It has to be forced into the bottle and capped hard. Long fight. 

Love

Baba

Appropriating Wives’ Income: New Form of Dowry - Dissertation Reviews
http://dissertationreviews.org/archives/7942

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A review of  Appropriation of Wives’ Income: a New Form of Dowry in Bangladesh, by Farah Deeba Chowdhury.

Farah Deeba Chowdhury’s dissertation investigates the interrelationship between law, culture, patriarchy, and Islam in the context of contemporary Bangladesh.  The dissertation has nine chapters.

Chowdhury has concentrated on the situation of Muslim married women in her dissertation. In the introduction, she argues that many practices in Bangladeshi society are based on misinterpretation of Islam and the main purpose of such manipulation is to seek control over wives’ income, financial resources and other assets. The author characterizes such practice as “appropriation of wives’ income as a new form of dowry” (p. 1). As the dowry system has been legally banned in Bangladesh, the income of working women is now considered as a source of earning for their husbands.  The author argues that the root of such practice lies in the norms of patriarchal society. Women are deprived as the patriarchal society never conveys their role to the broader society. Instead, the dominant fallacy is women are only obliged to perform duties towards their in-law’s family.

The Transformation of the World, by Jürgen Osterhammel

Kannu
This is what I'm talking about son. Having a vision. Have a biggest baddest  hugest vision son.
Forget about the books. We've got Toynbee and Eric hobswawm and Macaulay and gibbon. Btw, gibbon's book and language is perhaps the best ever. He writes well, so beautifully. Do you know how he wrote? He would walk around thinking his paragraph in his head and then would just come back and drop the paragraph on paper. Every para he did this. Can you imagine the idea? His paragraphs are a word of art. I learnt that trick son. Before I respond to an important email, I walk around. But even better I sleep over it. Do that son. Never. Respond to an email when you are angry otherwise you will make the best response that you will always regret. same with the any fights. Walk away. No point fighting. Can't do it all the time but walk away. Then you have a better way to manage the situation.
But I'm digressing. Go back to the vision son. You're at the age when you need to have a vision. Something for the world. Something for the country. Something for the family and something for the man inside you. Dream wild dreams son. Have a huge thing.
Don't be an insect grubbing for dirt but a man who is a dragon son. Flying over the world. World domination. Never accept limitations from others other than what people put on you son.
Nothing like hearing, he had a vision and made it happen. Do it son.
I'm proud of you.
Baba

I saw this article when using the Financial Times app and thought you might be interested:
Financial Times,
The Transformation of the World, by Jürgen Osterhammel
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Review by David Cannadine
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A monumental study of the 19th century takes the widest possible perspective on a globalising age
Read the full article at: http://on.ft.com/1mlTTUM

The 5 Stupidest Habits You Develop Growing Up Poor

Kids

I've told you about being poor. But we aren't poor now. But I still make these mistakes kids. I'm a banker and I'm supposed to be good with money. And I'm terrible at spending. Spend too much on gifts. Spend too much on bonus or tax refund time. Or not save enough or properly. These are terrible habits kids. Don't make the mistakes I made. Very bad terrible habits. 

Love

Baba

The 5 Stupidest Habits You Develop Growing Up Poor
http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-stupidest-habits-you-develop-growing-up-poor/

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Cracked Columnists

As some of you know, until the last couple of years, I was poor as shit. The first 18 years, I was a kid and couldn't do anything about it. The next 17, I was still a kid and wouldn't do anything about it. I take full responsibility for that, and I don't point a finger at anyone for the way I lived. I dug my own hole.

But along the way, a few miracles happened (including landing a job that doesn't suck), and I've finally found myself living the way I always pictured a normal person would: bills paid, groceries in the fridge and two gold-plated nude statues of myself standing proudly in my front yard.

But as anybody who's been through the poverty gauntlet can tell you, it changes a person. And it doesn't go away just because you're no longer fighting hobos for their moonshine. For instance ...

#5. You Develop a Taste for Shitty Food