Stereotypes really?

The Girl in the Hat wrote:

Is it true, she asked,
That you
Wash your clothes in rivers
Sleep on nails
Climb up ropes...
Levitate
Burn your widows
Alive...

Hmm. Looks like we do.

The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Sometime back, on the urging of my friend PM (an ardent Matrix fan), I watched the first part of the trilogy. At the scene where Morpheus tells Neo, "Free your mind!" and jumps from the top of one building to another, I asked PM, "Have you read Richard Bach's Illusions?"

On becoming a Master

I received my master's degree from Carnegie Mellon today. The Commencement ceremony (as the Convocation is called in the US) was marked by tradition, colour, and meticulous planning. It was wonderful being a part of it!

Some notes on the occasion:

The academic dress worn on the graduation day is derived from the clerical attire of the monks who taught at the medieval European universities. While all graduates wear the gown and the mortarboard (the flat square hat) with tassel (that hangs down from the hat), it is only the masters who wear the hood.

The hood (originally used to cover the head to protect it from cold) is usually left hanging down at the back, and thus resembles a pouch. Since the monks were sworn to poverty, they could not earn their living. So when they went on procession (explained my professor) the laity dropped offerings into the hanging hood.

* * *

Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate and founder of our university, was born in Scotland and was proud of his roots. Carnegie Mellon shares this pride. The checked pattern that make up a Scottish clan's insignia (called a Tartan) is ubiquitous in the campus, lends its name to the university newspaper and makes up the lining of the hood as well.

The other major Scottish symbol is the bagpipe. Like the nadaswaram, this wind instrument occupies the pride of place on all important occasions, including the Commencement. Just as the nadaswaram weaves an atmosphere of sanctity and auspiciousness for the deity that follows, the band of bagpipes (the "Kiltie Band") lends an air of majesty and dignity when leading the procession of university heads and professors.

[And the School of Computer Science diploma award function was inaugarated by a tune from the bagpipe playing robot, McBlare!]

* * *

The Americans are predominantly an outdoor people. On weekends, they love to go hiking, camping in the jungle, biking long distances. Hence their idea of a perfect weather is sun shining brightly, with no showers. However, Nature takes a particular relish in playing spoilsport to their plans: It has been statistically observed that most rain or snow occurs during the weekend. This phenomenon is called Weekend Weather. There is even a joke: "If there is a clear sky after two days of rain, it is probably a Monday."

Thankfully, it was a perfect day for my Commencement, despite it being a Sunday. Probably it is a knack I bring from Madras.

Thy neighbour is a good man

At Carnegie Mellon, there is what is known as the Reasonable Person Principle (RPP). Put simply, it says, "Expect people to act reasonably." Hence students are not burdened with zillions of rules, and in return are expected not to find technical loopholes that violate the clear intent of these guidelines.

So, instead of saying something like:

"The student together with the delegates, officers, agents, servants, and employees of the Department and the Administrative Bureau, shall be, and hereby are, enjoined, during the pendency of this complaint (including any appeals and/or remands) and until entry of final judgment..."

a lot of handbooks (such as the one for the computing facilities) call upon this principle, or often simply say,

"Follow common sense and RPP."

Mostly the RPP is not even explicitly invoked. A sign on a coffee-maker in the Computer Science lounge reads, "Making coffee is not free. Please drop 20 cents in the bowl for every cup you make."

Even outside CMU, a lot of things assume the law-abiding nature and reasonableness of people.

• At the public library in Mountain View (in California, where I stayed before coming to Pittsburgh), people check out ("issue" in Indian terminology) books they want themselves. There is no librarian with a specific duty to issue books and no security guard at the exit to inspect them. Similarly books are not "returned" to a librarian, but simply put into a box. Furthermore, if fine accrues on a book out of late return, members are not barred from borrowing till they pay the dues -- fines are paid voluntarily.
  
  
• In the case of wrongly parked cars, the police simply place a ticket on windshield beneath the wiper. The owner is expected to go to a court on a specified day and pay up the fine.
  
  
• But this really takes the cake, merely because the involved parties were all Indians: I visited the Pittsburgh Venkateswara temple this week with friends and we bought tokens for 2 prasadam packets which we had to exchange at a counter. There was no one at the counter (on which all packets were neatly stacked). When we called out, a person from within a room answered, "Please put the tokens in the box and take the prasadam." We dutifully dropped in the tokens; and two packets were all we took!
  

Another true incident to conclude. A classmate lost her purse, containing college ID and debit cards. Someone had picked it up and tried using the cards (she learnt this later from the bank). On being unable to use it, he put the cards and ID in a cover and placed it on a post-box. It was returned to her by a postman a couple of days later.

I have written a new article

I was today at a Hindustani concert by Padma Talwalkar organised by Spicmacay at the University of Pittsburgh. Seeing the accompanying harmonium unable to keep up with the fluid voice of the singer made me wonder How the Harmonium Came on the Hindustani Stage.

Look forward to your comments!

A new kind of pollution

Everyone of us, at some point in our schooling, would have written an essay on "Pollution." So we are well-educated about the evils of air, water, soil and noise pollution. And wait, even light: In major cities which are lit up brightly even in nights, there is never ever sufficient darkness, causing discomfort to all creatures, large and small.

Let me introduce to you a recent member of this gang, window pollution. How many of us surfing the web have not had useless windows popping up all over the place? Annoying. They are a scourge.

One of the worst perpetrators is... (guess who?) the prestigious Indian daily: the Times of India. Dear Editor, it is time you start showing some basic courtesy to your visitors, instead of throwing noisome pop-ups on their faces.

Thank God It's Friday!

The American likes to celebrate the arrival of the weekend with as much glee as the Indian farmer welcomes the arrival of the monsoon.

Last Friday week, we all gathered (courtesy of the student organisation) to munch french fries with ketchup, sour cream and lemonade. A couple of weeks back we had cake, cookies and soda. Today's fare was fruits, chips and juice.

And it's all gratis: TGIF!

20 bucks for KISS

Long long ago in Europe, when Leonardo Da Vinci's great-grandfather was not yet born and long beards were the raging fashion on the streets of London, walked young William home from his Sunday school on a misty day. Billy, if we may so call him, knew the scriptures to the letter and all numbers unto 90,000 (infinity was unknown then) were his best friends. His intellect was so sharp, listen ye, so sharp that on his approach his teachers in the seminary would whisper in each others' ears, "Oh, here comes the Razor." Which morphed over the course of time to "Ockham's Razor."

Just kidding! William of Ockham, a 14th century English friar, stated that "Of two equivalent theories or explanations, all other things being equal, the simpler one is to be preferred." Seth, a CMU philosophy student has created a site that attempts to explain this principle, called Ockham's Razor, in a friendly manner. To see if it was friendly enough, Seth entreated all brave and sporting denizens to rally forth and try out the site in exchange for a score of dollars. I was game and toiled for 90 minutes and was duly showered with riches.

Ockham's Razor can be shortly put as "The simplest explanation is the best." Or shorter still, "Keep It Simple, Stupid" (KISS). Hence the blog's title.

Got your attention, dintcha?

Virus, License and... RMS

From my rambling reading of various blogs, I always had an impression that open source software, free software, Unix, Linux (sometimes even Mac) users all make up a monolithic camp, united by their common antagonism towards Microsoft. So when I learnt this morning about a seminar on open source licensing, I went to attend just out of curiosity - to know more about the inner workings of the camp.

Before I get into the details of the seminar, let me share with you what a software license is. It is an agreement between the creator and user of the software, generally dealing with copyright. The common "Do you accept the terms?" screen that one sees when installing software is an example of a proprietary license (known as EULA - End User License Agreement). With this hotch-potch introduction, let us get on with the story...

"Infectious" Open Source Software: Spreading Incentives or Promoting Resistance, was the full title. Greg R. Vetter of the University of Houston Law School explained the differences between the Apache (BSD-style) license, the Open Source license and the GNU General Public License (GPL). The GPL is the oldest of the open/free licenses; it requires that the code be public and royalty-free and that any GPL software derivative must also be released under GPL. It is the latter provision that Vetter referred to as "infectious." If even a small part of the software I am developing is made of GPL code, my entire software (now, don't cry) should be given under GPL too -- The GPL "virus" spreads to non-GPL code. This was all new to me and I was drinking it in pretty happily, along with the caffeine-free coke that came with the free lunch (pizza!).

After all the questions were asked and answered, the audience began to disperse... when a short, bearded gentleman (with a pot-belly to boot) stood up from a corner and said, "Is there no one here who will say something in support of GPL?" [Long silence.] He continued, "My name is Richard Stallman. I wrote the GPL."

(What happened next? Read on here.)

Playing guinea pig

Various CMU departments invite students to participate in experiments to collect data for research. I volunteered to take part in an experiment at the School of Psychology for half-an-hour. And yes, I would be paid $5 to compensate for my time...

I would have to interact with another person for ten minutes, by asking each other questions from a list we were given. Before this started,, Ed Lemay, the researcher, said he would give some fictitious details about me to the other person "to gauge the importance of first impressions." I nodded smiling.

The interaction (with Mae, a psychology junior) consisted of questions like "What will you do after graduating," "what was the most frightening experience of your childhood," etc. that we would alternately ask and answer.

When I was alone after the interaction, Ed said calmly that he had told Mae I was a sensitive person who would easily take offence and feel rejected at the slightest unpleasantness! Then he gave me a questionnaire to fill up about my impressions, such as "Do you think the other person was honest with you?" and "Do you think the other person likes to start a friendship with you?" etc.

I answered the questions as truthfully as I could, with most answers neutral tending to positive. For there isn't much you can infer in a brief regulated conversation with a stranger, who was there mainly for the dough too (why else would anyone waste a wonderful evening?)...

As I handed in the form, Ed informs me nonchalantly that Mae was not another volunteer but an accomplice from the same department. No, she was not told anything "about" me in the beginning either. The aim of the experiment was to see how that kind of information would colour my feelings about the person. Pretty neat, eh?

Anti-Indian put-down

A post on Slashdot, lately very hostile to India because of the outsourcing of jobs, referred to Srinivasa Ramanujan as "the Indian math guy." Hmm...

Books from Google

Google returns link to scanned copies of books. I googled "P G Wodehouse" & "R K Narayan," and found Introducing Jeeves & Financial Expert respectively.

While this is no match for the sheer volume of Project Gutenberg, it gives the feel of reading from paper, since we get scanned images.

"One dollar! Pie the Professor! One Dollar!"

American universities celebrate today as π Day. (Guess why?) The CMU Math Club organised (what seemed to me a trifle barbaric) event called "Pie the Professor," with an entry fee of $1. Curious why I called it barbaric? Hint: Pie is used here as a verb. Still don't get it? Watch the video! (1.92MB)

(Click on the thumb-nail picture to view the video.)

Enna, soundu vidare?

Madras Tamil, that lingo of auto drivers and college students of the south Indian metropolis, has been sighted in Wikipedia! Tuckeraa keedhu ma...

Thanks, PM for the link.

First day at CMU

It was a freezing day (-5 Centigrade max) when I set out late morning for our first day at Carnegie Mellon, which is a 15-minute walk from our apartment. I was swathed in a muffler, woollen cap, 2 layers of gloves, jacket (over shirt) and jeans (over long john) and two socks each in my sneakers to brace myself against the elements: This was just about enough.

Since I could not cook today (just moved in yesterday), my friends here took me to a guest lecture ("Using Reflection and Abstraction in Software Engineering") - free pizza and coke!

After food, I went round the campus and was taken in by all the facilities here. The sports and fitness areas at the University Center (UC): basketball, squash, badminton, table-tennis, tennis courts and a sprawling football field. There were two gyms: one with machines at the UC and another predominantly with free weights. After seeing the libraries, I felt I would frequent the humanities one (Hunt Library) more than the Engineering & Science Library.

Later in the day, I visited (meaning, had a darshan of the building; not everybody is allowed inside) the famed Software Engineering Institute that revolutionised the way we do software development. It pioneered, among others, software processes (remember CMM?) and software architecture. I don't know how many other universities have a Master of Software Engineering degree.

I returned home at 8:30 in the night by the Escort Service van (run by the university police to take home the students safely in the late hours).

(Click on the thumb-nail picture to view photos.)

Trans-continental migration

Our course moved from CMU's west coast campus in California to the main campus at Pittsburgh - right across the North American continent. So our class of 19 too effected a mass exodus today, moving into snowy region for the first time. And into a great apartment, thanks to our university.

There was delay in the departure of our America West afternoon flight. So the airport staff transferred us to a Continental airlines plane that was to leave a little earlier. Because of this, six of our friends who could not make it to the airport early enough were forced to miss this flight and others (of the 13 that went on the afternoon flight) could not get their luggage in time to check them in. The airlines authorities got them on a direct flight from San Francisco that night. They did not have to pay again (imagine missing a train in India and getting a free ticket on the next one) but the missed luggage was charged.

On the flight, we were served some snacks, chocolate, chicken sandwich and juice. I could not have the sandwich since I am a vegetarian.

Travelling east, we lost three hours when we arrived at Pittsburgh at around 11 in the night. We were taken from the air terminal to the baggage claim area on a train. I am not sure whether this is because the place is quite a distance away (it was around 5 minutes on the train) or because the climate is such that we cannot walk in open spaces.

We experienced our first snow-fall (as we got down from the van arranged by the university to take us to the apartments). Touching the smooth powdery snow, I realised what a long way I have come from the humid tropical city of Madras. I do not wish to waste any more words - go have a look at the pictures: they tell the whole story!

(Click on the thumb-nail picture to view photos.)

Poetry

It has been ages since I read any poetry. I cannot remember most poems I studied at school, except for a few that are etched in my mind.

One is Shelley's Ozymandias, where the pedestal of that colossal wreck proclaims: "Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair." Another is Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (much of the Bard's plays is blank verse), taught to us wonderfully by Mrs Rani Chandran. It is after Brutus justifies Caesar's assassination to the people, when someone in the mob cries, "Let him be Caesar!"

Now, thanks to my uncle here, I started Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet. And I am hooked...

Excerpts from "On Giving:"

You often say, "I would give, but only to the deserving."
The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture.
They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.

And you receivers - and you are all receivers - assume no weight of gratitude, lest you lay a yoke upon yourself and upon him who gives.
Rather rise together with the giver on his gifts as on wings;
For to be overmindful of your debt, is to doubt his generosity who has the free-hearted earth for mother, and God for father.

Caught Napping

Our project team was chasing a deadline for a demo with our main customer. The work hours turned irregular. Sometimes when I was very sleepy, I would feel too lazy to walk back to the hostel (or dorm as they call it here) and would fall into slumber on my chair itself.

Picture courtesy of my project-mates, PM and Rajat.

The Wodehouse Effect

Valentine's Day (as far as I am concerned) is less a celebration of the antics of the Winged Archer, than it is in memoriam one of my favourite authors, Pelham Grenville Wodehouse. For it was on this day, thirty winters back, that the Perveyor of Delight left this world. And left us an enchanting world of erudite butlers and half-crazy earls with their much-despised second sons.

There is Lord Emsworth who prefers pottering about in his garden to attending to his duties as the Master of Castle Blandings. When he is not thus pottering about, he dotes on his prize sow: watching her during day-time, and listening to her breathe in the nights (since it is too dark to watch).

The most famous of his characters is the duo of Jeeves (the omniscient valet: "gentleman's personal gentleman") and his aunt-fearing employer Bertie Wooster, on whom Ogden Nash has written a joyful poem.

But my personal favourite is Rupert Psmith (P silent as in pthiasis, ptarmigan and pterodactyl) the monocle-wearing socialist Cambridge graduate. I have read Psmith Journalist a trillion times.

Wodehouse made woolen-headed half-wits like Wooster and Emsworth heroes. O master, can you please work the same magic with me...

Judgment Day

For a couple of days I have been pre-occupied by the 360-degree evaluation. In this, we are judged not by the conventional exams, but by the feedback from peers, project stakeholders and professors. This is how the system works:

1. There are 20 of us scholars (yes, scholars [fanfare]) at the PDC. Each of us is given 20 forms to fill in, one for each scholar.

2. These forms have sections on the skills acquired through the various course work we took up. Plus one section on Team and Leadership skills. We have to rate each person on a scale of 5 on different aspects of the skill, giving elaboratory comments. So you can't get back at your PHB team-lead just by saying "This friend of mine is a #$%& dunderhead with IQ less than that of a dead dodo," but must support with substantial evidence indicating how it is indeed so.

3. We then send these filled-up forms to our professor, who would edit the feedback to ensure anonymity. (And to delete flames, if any...) So our carefully constructed feedback in step 2 might be bowdlerised to "Must practise Mensa puzzles twice a day..."

4. Our professor would then send the distilled comments to us. Look Momma, my grade sheet!