Of Crowds and Calculations.

50 days of vacations over! What have I been upto? Well, I played a little, learnt a little, traveled, ate, thought, slept and oba wasted time (In some of the aforementioned activities and others!).
One thing that hasn't happened to the extent to which I thought it would is meeting up with friends :( !

Anyway about what _has _ happened, I am just back from a fortnight long tour -- or rather pilgrimage to Maharashtra(something like a suravali suttruppayanam of the state)! Had darshan at 5 jyothirlingams, Satara, Shirdi, Pandaripur, Nashik, Pune, Ellora, Tuljapur,Uttara Chimdambaram etc! Was a great trip! I felt important all thru because I was one of the 2 ppl out of 10 in our group who knew hindi and man it was useful! I guess it was useful developing my skills in this field by talking to the northie gang in my wing! I pray to God that the purpose of such a tour be achieved and we get spiritually lifted and our "standard of living" improves in the real sense!

Anyway the origin of this post is from the thoughts that arose in me when standing in the loooooooooooonnng Queue s of some of the temples like Tuljapur Mahalakshmi, Shirdi etc (Though the seeds were planted in Thirupati where u can find the "Queues ka baap"). Well, this is also from the times that i have wasted - without thinking of good thoughts while standing inside a temple.

I was standing there wondering if the process of people moving in the long Qs(fr shrt frm nw) could be hastened with people getting the darshan without having to wait for so long -- just as those around me were complaining and cribbing.(in case the 2 words dont mean the same).
So the first idea that came to me was that it would be better if they have a Q in which people have to walk one behind the other, like this :



rather than allow them to move as a group, with many doors along the path that will be closed and opened based on many factors. Like this --



I thought so because as soon as you manage to squeeze your way through a door in the latter, you feel a shortlived sense of freedom. The place will suddenly be little extra free. This is because the door restricts number of people who can get in per unit time and many people are competing to get in through it. (with a lot of pushing and pulling)!


The theory is that we can actually be sure of which is the better method for the devotees by conducting some experiments! The funda is to use water( or some suitable liquid) to represent the people ... ( Ppl are incompressible, they fill up whatever place becomes available to them in the queue path, theres some inertia involved in the movement of both... etc)
One problem though is that water will get on top of itself and more and more layers piling up, whereas people generaly -- atleast the average person will not climb on top of the others to reach the end quickly. This problem can be sorted by fixing the height of the simulated Q complex -- thereby preventing the water from forming huge mounds.

Next we need to model the Q complex and make it resemble the temple's as much as possible, with the same number of doors etc (which should be water proof and water tight :P). At the same time we need to give the water some motivation to move in the forward direction towards the garbagriham and not away -( human equivalent of bhakti) . This can be achieved by giving a gradient to the floor of the simulated complex in the correct direction! Then other factors can be included like including some drops of denser fluid for the ppl who like to push and get ahead more. The inclination of the floor can be adjusted in different places. And so on! Near the exit ( close to deity inclination can be made very small, for example, as you'll be moving not because you want to move fast but because of the number of people behind you!

Finally our model is now ready to go. All we have to do is fill the entrance with the liquid, open the gates, and let it flow. We could use some small light object as a marjker to find out how long it takes for this to reach the exit under the given conditions of the path to be traversed. Or we can also collect the volume of water at the end and relate it to the number of people who have reached there. To achieve the actual purpose of the experiment, we can now change the width of the path to model a Q where people *have* to go one behind the other and see how much time this takes!

Now, this method can either be tried out in a physical model or on the comp. Once this is done I can advice the temples on how to model their Q complexes. By the way do remember that all the ideas expressed in this post are copyrighted, and to-be-patented. :-D

Radical new Biology theory

The human body is made up of 100000000000 individual cells. Don't start counting the zeroes. Its ok even if I put one or two, too many or too few. The point is it is a very very BIG number. The word individual is debatable as you and I refer to the whole lump as one entity and end up calling it my body or your body. But the fact remains that each and every cell in the body lives for itself as exposed by modern science. It breathes, takes in food ,produces energy and assimilates it. It is in fact leading a complete life (i mean it does all the essential things to keep it alive). The only feature that actually differentiates it from a protozoan single celled organism is that it performs a certain specified function or two (in most cases) AND does not do a few things actively.. (like for example look for food). Another thing is that it takes its orders regarding when to do what from somewhere outside. The brain. But as far as the cell goes it doesn't know the brain exists. I mean even the protozoan knows when to do what from the outside so to say. It also does things only in response to external impulses/stimuli. The cell just knows from experience that if it does whatever it has to do whenever it gets those electrical signals from the outside it can live peacefully and it'll continue to get its supply of air and food through blood.

So I guess the issue is cleared and we can call them individual entities. But the point is why is it that it never disobey these orders from 'outside'. Simple probability should tell us that the a cell is bound to 'think' of the outcome of disobeying an order now and then. Just to see if the effect is rewarding or not. But again by simple numbers we can see that the same instruction would have been sent to a whole bunch of cells surrounding our rebel one and so even if our guy decides not to do something for a change the effect isn't big on the large scale and our cell also learns that it isnt rewarding to abstain from work and would also realise that it is quite boring to sit idle.

Okkkk here goes !!!

So... ya... after loads and loads of perseverance, commitment and vettiness, I have successfully managed to force myself to type in this entry. One of the important factors inducing this decision, was the feeeling of guilt that this absolutely STUD domain name (prematurethoughts! Pa! lol. thanks!) is lying unused and vacant just because I managed to get it. Ok , so why did i go and reserve this name in the first place then? Well, the same reason why many people do many other things. Cos ‘N’ other ppl I know blog. And some of them are very interesting to read.

I've been sort of jobless for a few days now. Physical activity has dropped to a previously unseen low. The most notable physical activity nowadays being racing against time on my cycle to reach classes... I make sure I reach just as late as to make sure I feel proud about the achievement and at the same time early enough to make sure the prof doesnt throw me out. This is something I’ve been subconsciously practising ever since VM ( :-) couldnt contain the smile at the mention of my school.. :-P) days. I mean, just imagine going late approximately THIRTY times in a term considering the facts that

1. My house is 5 minutes away from the school by foot

2. I used to go on my cycle

3. School started at 8 am (not 4 am like say Ramaiya.. for those of u who know it)

4. You are supposed to meet the vice principal (MK) everytime you are late and get your diary attested before you can actually enter.

5. Punishment was awarded for repeated late coming (which meant coming late more than THREE times.
(Compare it with my 30 times... ha ha ha.. Ofcourse I found ways of not getting caught and that’s how I managed the incredible feat. The methods basically involved using other very less used gates to enter, hiding in the toilet etc , to waiting outside the gate and coming 15 mins past time instead of 5- Cos if you did that there wont be anyone to catch you! Seriously! I guess they weren’t against you coming late. They just dint want you to be too early when you come late. If that makes sense).

The level of punishment totally depended on MK's mood and to an extent on student’s reputation (I had a good one compared to the mean reputation of the class.)
He usually greets me with the dialogue - "Good studentss will not come late".
And I can’t help but smile.

For ex. the punishment could be
a. just a warning with a big smile on his face(which in his case means trouble)
b. Asking the latecomers to get parents and teachers sign. Never a problem for me.
c. Once in 10th i was made to work out 10 problems from the math text book. Ha! He calls this a punishment? I thought to myself.. Had fun solving the problems and even helped out few others who had got the same punishment that day! Also got to bunk Physics or Chemistry, or both and man .. was i happy. But the happiness was short-lived. As soon as I go submit the paper he strikes out all the questions. I was surprised. How could all be wrong! Then i saw that he had circled the "implies" and "=" signs in all the problems. Supposedly implies sign is to be used only while solving equations and not when generally proceeding from one step to the next. WORST. And the = looked like a 2 to his eye it seems. (it actually DID look that way only – I say it that way just for the cribbing effect! :P). Was asked to do the whole thing again, but again as usual using my God given skills I managed to escape ( by begging ofcourse :P) .
e. Once he got pissed off and wrote "Sent back home. Last warning".
Eventually though I did manage to stay on.
f. Once in one of the lower classes, on a particular bright and sunny day there were these 30 odd latecomers. You guessed it. I was one of them. He made us all stand in the ground for an indefinite period of time (turned out to be 3 periods) and except the muggumax ppl and those who had tests everyone else was more than happy. A guy took out his tennis ball and we stared playing bench tennis right there.

In spite of all this I was never deterred. Look on the bright side. I made soo many new friends, by coming late and standing with all those of 'my kind', spread across all classes. Whenever I met one of those guys a smile automatically surfaced. I also happened to be the unofficial late comers’ counsellor. There always used to be these first timers who had to be convinced that nothing was gonna happen to them. This usually involved just telling them this in a sweet tone to showing them my diary filled with late coming entries (in the more extreme cases of worried people.)

Hey...... why did I start talking about latecoming!? Well...... have to refer back... now you know how bad I am at this...
Oh ya. Going late to classes here in insti.

Basically this habit of starting things so late that I end up doing them late is because of this part of me that tells me don’t waste time. Like for example assume I go sit in class 5 minutes before the beginning. In effect those 5 mins are being wasted sitting there staring here n there (Besides the 50 mins that follow these 5 mins like in say Applied Mechanics). Thats how I think of the issue. Instead I prefer to spend that time wherever I am before the class and leave for just 2 mins or so before it actually starts. This way I actually believe I’m making sure I don waste time.

Well. I'm actually quite proud of this theory of mine cos it justifies my actions. But the theory, upon proper inspection fails. I mean in the past 4 months that i ve been in college I have eaten breakfast only on some 20 or so times, despite the food in the mornings being quite good..! This is a direct result of my laziness. Also I’ve been late and been not allowed to enter the class 3 or 4 times (most profs are peaceful and dont mind it.. still!!!). So I’ve been putting some thought into this. And decided that it is high time I trained myself in being punctual. After all, this habit has made me lose quite a few marks in tests when I manage to go late even for them, made me miss trains, miss the beginning scene of most movies, and the list goes on... Seriously punctuality does seem to be a good habit to develop. I used to think its boring for one to be punctual. But now I guess I’m bored of being otherwise :). So hope this thing works out and I’m able to make myself do what i want.

P.S.
The topic of this post should’ve been PUNCTUALITY or some high level thing like that, BUT I had no idea that I would even be mentioning it, when I actually started writing. LOL. Anyway one successful full length post over! Yaaaaay! :D