Black Irony

Times of India: Government commissions study to estimate amount of black money

Why waste time and effort to come up with what is only going to be a piddly estimate? Shouldn't the mantris just ask their CAs ki account mei kitne paise pade hai??

Zero is NOT equal to Zero

Its a long time since I have blogged about mathematics. Dont worry though, these are simple thoughts.

So what I want to talk about today is zero. We have been taught since childhood that Zero is a great number (invented by Indians no less, hence all the pride). Granted. We were taught that arithmetic was able to leap ahead because we gained the capacity to express large numbers using zero at the end (10, 100, etc.). So far so good.

But if we dig deeper, the function of zero which allows us to use a base-10 system is what we call 'Positional Notation' (see the link to understand better). In fact this Positional Notation applies for all other base systems as well. My grouse is, why the hell did the ancient Indians use the number Zero (as in, nil) as the positional notation instead of a brand new symbol - say, x? I (with my limited mathematical faculties, admittedly) don't see any reason why it makes sense for the Positional Notation to be equal to the number Nil. Lets see how things could have looked otherwise.

100 could be represented as 1xx

105 as 1x5

50 - 40 = 10 as 5x - 4x = 1x

50 - 50 = 0 as 5x - 5x = 0

(Here finally the zero appears in its true role - that of poverty - instead of masquerading as a multiplier, a giver of power!)

I continue to think: is there perhaps some mathematical reason why the positional notation needs to be the number nought? Perhaps 2^0? But the zero here is the number zero, not the positional notation. Cant think of anything else.

If I am right about this, then I am forced to conclude that the ancient Indians simply had an amazing sense of humor. They made a zero, the lack of something, a scarcity, a poverty, a failure, into the most important digit in math!

Pictured: Chanakya

Dream On

So I had this weird kind of dream the other day. Its not the dream itself - a pretty mundane dream it was - but the style of the dream that was weird. This was early in the morning and I was trying to drag myself out of bed. My body refused to yield until finally I got up. I got out of bed and brushed my teeth and shaved. I began planning my day, and entered the shower. Which is when it suddenly hit me that I wasn't actually doing all of these things - I was dreaming! I quickly jumped out of bed and redid all those activities, this time for real. My first thought was: Wow my mind had me mindfucked out there for a while!

Now, I don't know if you found it out of the ordinary at all, but to me having such a vivid dream which exactly followed the expected course of events as reality would demand, was disconcerting. I saw the dream in full detail, and while it was still on there was no way I could tell it apart from reality. Painters and creative folk - and even regular folk - will tell you about the fantastic nature of most dreams. In their surrealistic fashion, dreams defy the laws of gravity and reason, bend physics and sort out metaphysics. They question ethics and challenge boundaries. They bring back old wounds and forgotten joys, bring back those we love and those we hate. I read up on dreams after this particular dream of mine, and found fascinating stuff such as this, this, and this.

And so while dreams are usually manifestations of the complex un-hingeing of the brain, I find it odd that they can also act as receptacles of the purely mundane. Not so much the ability, as the intent. Its hard to imagine a dream that stoops so low as to mimic plain, old, boring, drab, real, reality, just so that my body can catch two more winks of sleep! And the funny thing is, this is not the first time such as dream has occurred to me. I remember now that as a child I had once peed in my bed because my stupid brain fooled me into believing that I had woken up and walked into the bathroom and opened my fly, all ready to let fly. The rest is, as they say, watery.

U.N. Forecasts 10.1 Billion People by Century’s End

U.N. Forecasts 10.1 Billion People by Century’s End

10 Billion people! Gets me thinking yet again: Why don't our policy makers give more importance to population control?? Nowadays the sexy areas of policy are all education, healthcare, and economic growth (healthcare to a lesser extent). These are all important issues, but if you ask me, Population Control is the one area of policy that should receive the most attention (media coverage, planning, and resources). A rupee spent on a free condom well used would probably save the state a few thousand rupees in life time costs, if not more. As also save the world from the stress of one more human being with all his/her needs.

Note: I am not advising forced sterility, or anything of the sort! Just large scale availability of condoms alongside high intensity awareness programs (in each and every settlement in each and every village). That would itself reduce female fertility a lot - no need to coerce the unwilling lot!