Strength is Life......

The Turing Test: Doggo version

2016-12-30T23:54:00.001-08:00

If you know what the Turing test is, skip the next two paras.

AI - Artificial Intelligence - the phrase is thrown around a lot, and loads of sci-fi movies have come off it. I am very excited about intelligent machines too, ones that can learn to do stuff all by themselves without having to be precisely programmed (I'd then be jobless, but that wouldn't matter when the robots take over the world anyway). For some reason, a lot of people seem to be really interested in machines that can pretend to be human - screw the machine that can cure cancer, let's build one we can have a touchy-feely chat with. I'm not saying human-like robots are useless, I'm just saying that's not what we should focus on. Okay, I was just messing around. There are good reasons that people are interested in robots that think and act like us:
1) Human intelligence is the only kind of intelligence we know anything about,
2) If we want robots working with/for us, we need them to be able to understand us, and
3) If we can build robots that can think like us, then we learn a lot about our own intelligence and consciousness.

When there's a demand for something, we all know someone would start a pyramid scheme that scams people with a phony product. People want human-like robots, someone comes along and produces a chat-bot and claims it thinks like a person- when it doesn't, they say it thinks like a stupid person (or, only wise people can understand this robot- the emperor's clothes approach to scamming people). This raises an important question. How do we tell if a robot's really intelligent (human-like)? One popular test is the Turing test. The test involves two participants, a person and a supposedly intelligent computer, and an interrogator who has to identify the two. The interrogator has to do it from a simple Q&A session over a web chat (without video or audio). The human is honest and tries to convince the judge he's human, while the computer has to lie so the interrogator is convinced it's also human.

There are some issues with the Turing test though. The biggest one I have is, why anthromorphise intelligence? Why suppose that something has to think like a human for it to be intelligent? Suppose an alien species builds spaceships that can bring them to Earth. We make them take the Turing test for fun, and they fail it. Does that mean this species isn't intelligent, even after they mastered interstellar travel while we can barely explore our own solar system? No, that's stupid. The Turing test places too much emphasis on acting like a human.

I have been thinking about a different way to go at this. The doggo version. It's the same as the standard Turing test, except the computer now simulates the behaviour of dogs instead of people. Clearly, this can't be a Q&A thing. This is what I imagine the test should be:
There's two rooms behind two identical doors. One room has our participant computer which simulates the behaviour of dogs and renders it in video, while the other has a few dogs in it. The room with the dogs has enough stuff to keep the dogs entertained- toys to play with, furniture to destroy, food and water dispensers, and alarms and TVs to distract them. Of course, there's multiple dogs so they can also play. There's a bunch of cameras in the room that record what the dogs are doing. Outside the rooms, there's a control panel with a bunch of switches that control what goes on in the room- ring an alarm, dispense food, turn on water sprinklers, and so on. The interrogator outside the room, who is an expert dog-handler, has access to the control panel and the videos, and, as with the classic test, they have to figure out which one's the computer and which one's the dogs. Just to ensure that video quality doesn't influence the decisions, we let the video from the room with the dogs go through some software so that videos from both the rooms are of the same quality, graphics-wise.

And that is the doggo version of the Turing test. This version still tests for intelligence. Dogs are intelligent, I'm sure we can all agree on that. If a computer passes the test, it means it can successfully simulate intelligent behaviour, which, some would argue is indistinguishable from actual intelligence. This test would be superior to the standard test because it places the computer on equal footing to the interrogator. When the other participant is a human, there are a lot of subtle things about conversation that might just be social conditioning and have nothing to do with intelligence. With dogs, there isn't as much conditioning, at least not enough to throw off an intelligent computer.

Training Journal: October

2016-10-06T02:56:00.002-07:00

October 6

I went for a morning session today. After staying away from cleans for the last two weeks, I decided to give it a shot again today. The wrist felt okay. Warmed up as usual with just two sets of complexes with the empty bar: 10 first pulls, 10 arm cleans, 10 military presses, 5 split jerks, 10 back squats.

P.Clean+P.Jerk: 40kgx(5r+5r)x2s, 50kgx(3r,3r), 60x(2,2), 70x(1,1), 75x(1,1), 80x(1,1)x3s

The last time I did CnJ, I only hit 70kg, but I decided to go at 80 today. Mainly because I was quite embarrassed that I started worrying about 80, which I was P-Cleaning way back when I was in the U62kg class. I weigh 82kg now. Anyway, all three singles were solid standing cleans. The push jerks were too easy- they felt heavy, but still went up quite easy.

B. Squat: 60kgx5rx2s, 80kgx3, 100x3, 110x2, 120x2rx3s

Added another 5kg to the squat today. As usual, it felt quite heavy. I could get up, but there was always a lingering feeling at the bottom that I might not make it. I guess I'm getting close to my current max.

Military Press: 40kgx5, 50kgx3

Thought I'd train the shoulders today, since the P.Jerks aren't that effective, and I didn't do a lot of reps anyways. But I didn't. The arms felt a bit weak, and I decided to give up.

Pull-ups: 4rx3s

The fourth in the first set was actually quite good today. In the second and third, it was as usual- could only get the bar to my forehead.

No good mornings or BB rows today. I just didn't feel like lifting anymore. It could be because it was a morning session, or because it had already been more than an hour. Either way, I need to split my training sessions. I can't be hitting near-PR CnJs and Squats, and then go on to do lots of assistance work in the same session.

Starting next week, I should hit the gym on at least one other day after the volleyball/badminton. Just some military/push presses, good mornings, BB rows, and bar dips should do. In the proper gym session, I'll stick to just the olympic lifts and squats, and some pull ups.

Training journal: August/September 2016 (the comeback)

2016-08-31T13:08:00.000-07:00

I decided to get back to Olympic lifting after a long break of three and a half years. The goal I set for my comeback is to hit 90kg Power Clean and Push Jerk in 10 weeks after the restart. Weightlifting is not my primary focus anymore, and I plan to train only about once a week. I will be logging in each of these sessions in this blog.

I shall be doing only compound lifts, all aimed at improving my power clean and jerk. Like I did during my lifting days, I'm ignoring all chest and biceps workouts. The routine I chose for the month is:
Power cleans, military presses/push presses, and front squats (complex)
Back squats
Upright barbell rows and Good mornings (super sets)
Bar dips and Bent over barbell rows (super sets)

August 31

First day back in the gym. I decided to not go for a conventional warm-up. I started with the 20kg barbell and did lots of deadlifts, arm-cleans, military presses, and front squats. Then I moved on to some snatch squats- these were scary, my balance was totally off and even the 20kg barbell felt a bit heavy. I started the actual routine. I'm only recording the max sets.

P.Cleans+M.Press- 30kg x (5,5) - 2 sets
P.Cleans+P.Press - 50kg x (3,3) - 2 sets
Hang cleans were much easier than cleans from the ground. My grip started to give out at 50kg. Hook-grip felt too strange to use today. The gym doesn't allow using chalk, so that sucks. I also have a minor pain from playing badminton last week, and this made the cleans quite uncomfortable, especially the resting part- my flexibility is totally gone now, need to work on that.

Back squats- 70kg x 5 - 3 sets
The old injury in my left knee seems to have resurfaced in the first few reps. It disappeared when I got up in one particular way though, I don't know what this means to my form. The weight did feel a bit heavy, but I could still squat with some good speed. The balance was a bit off though.

I tried to do some pull-ups. Did a set of 5 and then a set of 3, my wrist completely gave out in the last rep, felt like I'd fall to the floor.

Upright barbell rows, Good mornings: 20kg x 8, 20kg x 8 for 3 sets
No issues here.

Bar-dips, Bent over barbell rows: 5, 40kg x 5 for 3 sets
Went for 8 reps in the first set of bar-dips, that was a bad idea. Barbell rows were peaceful though.

And that was the end. I didn't stretch after the training. Tomorrow should be fun.

September 1

I was bored at work today, and my muscles were sore from yesterday, so decided to get a workout today too. Started without a conventional warm-up, with some cleans, squats, presses, and split jerks with 20kg for a couple of sets. I decided to add split jerks into the mix so I'd be ready if I decide to do some classical CnJ- started some sitting cleans too.

P.Cleans+M.Press+S.Jerk+F.Squat: 30 x (3,3,2,3) - 3 sets
P.Cleans+P.Press +S.Jerk+F.Squat: 40 x (3,3,1,3) - 2 sets
50 x (3,3,0,0) - 2 sets
My right wrist was still uncomfortable. The front squats were no fun either, my left rhomboid was especially under stress (old injury resurfacing?). The knee didn't hurt, but I could feel some pain in the my glutes. Thought I should call it a day after the first set of 50; didn't want to waste the warm-up, so went through with the rest of the workout. Avoided the split jerks because I started worrying about hitting my chin; my wrists and my balance weren't ready for the jerks either. All in good time.

P.Cleans+P.Jerk+F.Squat: 60 x (1,2,2) - 2 sets

Clean pulls: 75kg x 2
Got some decent height in the first two. Attempted a third, grip gave out during the first pull. I have to figure out something for the grip. My arms seem to be pretty weak right now, but no-chalk and the worn-out threads on the bar aren't helping either. It could be a good thing though since I don't seem to have to worry about calluses. Maybe do all the cleans with wraps, and do some deadlifts to build grip strength?

Back squats: 70 x 3 - 2 sets
80 x 3 - 2 sets
Started with 70kg straight away. Felt pretty light today, I could even focus on getting some speed on the way up. 100kg should be fine for next week.

Bar dips + Bent over barbell rows: 5 + 40 x 5 - 3 sets
Pretty peaceful, especially the bar dips. After the first set of 8 yesterday, later sets were hard. Not today.

Good mornings + Upright barbell rows: 20 x (5,5) - 2 sets
30 x (5,5) - 2 sets
Good mornings were fine, I'm not aiming to go heavy on them anyway. Upright rows weren't bad either, but felt a bit awkward at the end with the wrist. I can never get a proper grip for these ones.

Did a little bit of stretching towards the end. Over all, it was a good workout, although there were a few times I thought I should just call it a day.

September 15

I was playing everyday since my last training sessions, so couldn't go to the gym. Good thing is, I'm getting used to training/playing everyday without burning out (today was my 19th day without a break). Bad thing is, I'm not allowing my wrist to heal. There were a few days when I only played with my left hand, I'm using less wrist power in Badminton, and am using crepe bandage whenever I play/train, but I still haven't rested it properly.

Anyway, despite the non-stop activity, I could progress with the lifts today. As usual, the warm-up was just two complex sets with the empty barbell- 10 first pulls, 10 arm cleans, 10 military presses, 5 split jerks, and 10 front squats. Today I rested the bar on just three fingers in the rack position, took away some strain from the wrists. Then the sets went

P.Clean + M.Press + F. Squat: 30x(3,3,3) - 2 sets

P.Clean + P.Press + F.Squat: 40x(3,3,3) , 50 x (3,3,3)

P.Clean + P.Jerk: 60 x (1,2) - 3 sets

P.Clean: 65x2rx2s, 70x1rx2s

P.Jerk: 60x2rx2s, 70x2reps

Wanted to do a second set with 70kg for push jerk, but I was a bit scared about the wrist.

Clean pulls (with straps): 70x3reps, 80x3repsx2sets

Deadlifts: 100x2r

The plan was to use deadlifts to improve grip strength with 2 sets of 5 reps each at 100kg. Grip started to give out in the third rep, so dismissed. Clean pulls with the straps felt good, although I was slacking off quite a bit in the second pull. I got the jump and the bar reached my chest, but it was way too slow for 80kg. I can't imagine power-cleaning 90kg with that sorta pull.

B. Squats: 70x3rx2s, 80x2r, 90x2r, 100x3rx2s

The 100kg reps were quite slow. It didn't feel like I wouldn't make it, but they were slow enough to feel crappy about. I should have gone for some drop sets to get train for some speed.

Next was supposed to be two super-sets: Bar Dips+ Bent BB rows, and Good Mornings + Upright rows. Again, was scared for the wrist to do the bar dips, and I never felt comfortable with upright rows, so I ditched the two and went for

Good Mornings + Bent BB Rows: (40x5r+ 50x5r)x3s

I finished with a bit of stretching. The glutes felt a bit uncomfortable during the heavier power cleans, but it went away. It felt good to stretch the glutes and the hamstrings. But when I stretched my calves, I found that I didn't work them AT ALL. I always knew my calves were pretty weak, but I never realized I worked them so little in the gym.

To summarize, gotta do- something about the grip strength, drop sets with squats, loads of clean pulls focusing on the second pull speed, and work the calves.

September 23

Today was again a decent session with some progression. I'm not playing any badminton for the next 10 days, and volleyball doesn't seem to strain my wrist so much. I decided to not do anything that stresses the wrist and let it heal in the meantime, so had to change my routine quite a bit. The warm up was as usual, but with no arm cleans and front squats, 10 first pulls, 10 military presses (without loading the wrist in shear), and 10 back squats with the empty bar.

Clean pulls: 70kgx3r, 80kgx3r, 90kgx2rx5s, 70kgx3rx3s

Lots of clean pulls. I did 80kg and 90kg with straps. That didn't stop the calluses. The lighter pulls felt weird, I kept losing balance until I completely slowed down the first pull and used mostly an arm-pull for the second. 80kg was okay, 90 only reached the lower chest, a half-clean seems possible in the next few weeks. Did some drop sets to feel better about the pulls.

Back squats: 60kgx5, 70kgx3, 80kgx2, 90kgx2, 100kgx2, 110kgx2rx3s, 60kgx5rx3s

The weights still feel quite heavy, but had some decent speed with 100kg, and 110kg wasn't uncomfortable either except for the heavy feel. Knees don't hurt anymore, but they do feel a little bit uncomfy at the bottom with the crackling. The drop sets again to feel good about the lifts.

Pull-ups: 4rx4s

Threw these in since I wasn't doing a lot today. The first three reps were until the eyes/nose, fourth was bad in all four sets, probably got only the hair or forehead to the bar's level.

Good mornings: 50kgx5rx3s

I keep thinking this was a bad idea, going too heavy too soon. But training just once a week, I should get some heavy good mornings in. The lower back's going to hurt tomorrow.

Bent Barbell rows: 40kgx5, 50kgx5, 60kgx5rx3s

Not bad. I'm not really sure if these are going to be of any use, but with my pull-ups being as weak as they are, and my general dislike for the lat pull-downs, I have to sneak some of these into the workout.

Single-legged calf-raises (no weights)- (10+10)x3s

Did a few of these just so my calves could get at least a bit of a workout. Super-setted these with B.B.B.Rows.

I really wanted to sneak in some workout for the forearms and triceps, but couldn't think of anything that doesn't strain the wrist. Did a bit of stretching in the end. All's fine, except the lower back's complaining a bit. I'll probably have to stick to the same routine next week too.

September 28

I was a bit skeptical about today since I haven't rested since my last session (played volleyball for the last 4 days). It turned out okay, with the marginal progress I've been making. I stuck to last week's routine to rest my wrist. The first callus of the season ripped open tonight, I should have prepared for this.

Warm up was as usual- empty bar for 10 each of first pulls, arm cleans, presses, and back squats. Didn't do a second set.

Clean pulls: 40x5rx2s, 55x5, 70x3, 80x3, 90x2rx5s, 70x3rx2s

The lighter weights didn't feel all that good today. I got the height but it just didn't feel right. Got 80 to upper chest, high enough for a decent clean. 90s were to lower chest. Used straps for 80 and 90. The callus ripped in the second drop set of 70. Stupid.

Back Squats: 70x3, 80x3, 90x2, 100x2, 110x2, 115x2rx3s, 70x5rx2s

Again, the weight felt quite heavy. The knees were crackling quite a bit, but didn't hurt. The 115 doubles were alright, finished without issues. Still, it felt REALLY heavy, heavy enough I started to wonder if I should give up half way through. Strange how this works- if I hadn't know about my lifts from 4 years ago, I probably would have given up, or not attempted in the first place.

Pullups: 4r x 3s

First 3 reps in all sets were better than last time. Fourth is still a bit of a pain, could only rise till the forehead.

Good mornings: 55x5rx3s

No issues here. I wonder if I should keep loading these up till 70 or settle down at 60 or something.

B.B.B.Rows: 55x5, 70x5x2, 70x3

Was probably being over ambitious with the 70. Last week was 60, and today's 55 was easy peasy. First 3 reps with 70 were alright, but I kept thinking I was using my lower back in the last 2 reps. The ripped callus was an excuse for stopping at 3 in the last.

Single-legged calf-raises: (10,10)x7

Kept doing these between sets of the last 3 exercises. The last couple reps of the last couple sets weren't good. At least I'm doing something with the calves.

Summary

That's the end of the month. I'm satisfied with the progress. However, training in this gym, I can't help but feel inferior. Back in insti, I was one of the strongest guys around. During my previous session here, some guy was squatting 160kg for 5 reps. They were powerlifting squats, but still. A couple weeks ago, I saw this other guy bench 140 for reps. Clearly, my ego isn't getting the boost that it did back at IITM. With all the work I have to do in the next couple months, and all the volleyball and badminton, I'm not sure if I can actually join the uni's WL club. I'm seriously reconsidering the goal I set for myself.

For now, I'll wait and see how it goes. It does feel good to be back in the gym- the calluses are a pain, but I just need to not be stupid about caring for my hands. In any case, I'm avoiding this guilt I used to have for throwing away the years of training. I'll think of this as preparing for the time when I wouldn't have access to a sports hall and all I could do was hit the gym for exercise.

A case for atheism: Part 1

2016-02-22T11:31:00.000-08:00

Some years ago, I wrote a blogpost arguing that followers of the scientific method cannot be atheists. I argued that the only reasonable position on the question of gods is one of agnostism- the position that one cannot be sure that gods exist or do not exist. Since then, I have grown, I have read a fair bit on religion, I have been part of debates, and now my position is that of a strong atheist. I'm fairly sure that gods do not exist. Of course, I don't say that about every possible definition for gods. If one defines god as "the universe", or "the entity that created the universe", or "a coat hanger", then the answer to "Does god exist?" is "yes", "maybe", and "yes" respectively.

The gods I refer to are the standard gods used by religion- a being that cares about human beings, a being that created human beings, a being that created an afterlife for human beings, a being that made up rules that must govern human behavior. These gods cannot exist. And in what follows, I will show why these gods cannot exist.

First, I must counter the argument that is often made for gods- "So many people believe in gods. Surely, all of them cannot be wrong."

It is precisely because so many people believe in gods that we must be skeptical about the existence of gods. People don't all believe in the same god. Gods come in different flavors, from the element-of-nature-gods of Hindu, Greek, and Norse mythology, to the one-god-to-rule-it-all version of Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). There are also shamanic gods- the tribal gods that supposedly speak to priests in the tribe- gods that tend to respond to sacrifice and gifts (to the priests, of course).

There are so many religions that tell you so many mutually contradictory things that it's fairly obvious that most of them were invented by people. We need to accept the fact that gods can be invented, and that they are routinely invented. We also need to accept that entire civilizations would believe in invented gods without reservation. Norsemen believed for a long time that the best way for a man to go would be to have a glorious death on the battlefield, so they could be chosen by Odin to join legendary heroes and kings in Valhalla. Most people today would agree that they followed an invented god, that their god does not exist. But people of the time did believe in the god without question, and tons of people took to arms for a place in Valhalla.

Gods can be invented. Gods are invented. Tons of people believe in invented gods. A child born into a society that believes in an invented god also believes in the invented god. If you, the reader, can let this sink into your mind, you would start to understand my position of skepticism. "So many people believe in gods. Surely, all of them cannot be wrong." That is not an argument. It only shows us that people are gullible, that people would believe in gods if everyone around them believed in a god. People believe all sorts of things if that is what they are taught to believe.

What is science?

2015-10-25T10:37:00.000-07:00

There are tons of articles out there that address this question. I realize that anything I write, with the awkward style that I can't seem to improve on, would add little value to the wealth of resources on the internet. Yet, I really want to write about this. I realized that this blog of mine is more a journal than it is a blog- about 1% of all the views it has come from myself, and I find it quite interesting, or amusing, or even embarrassing, to read things I wrote a few years ago. It's like looking at a stupider version of myself. It makes me feel good that I didn't stay that stupid later on.

Anyways, that little "Note to self" aside,
What is science?

Different people refer to different things when they say "science". Even I refer to different things at different times, and sometimes different things AT THE SAME TIME.

Sometimes, the word "science" refers to the body of scientific literature. All of the conjectures, hypotheses, and theories that are currently accepted to be sensible. Sometimes it also includes hypotheses that we, today, say are invalid. The geocentric theory, for instance, is sometimes considered part of science- but we all know today that celestial bodies do not revolve around the earth.

And at other times, the word "science" refers to the scientific method. One phrase I love using is, "Let's do some science". It carries that feeling of adventure, of invention, and of altruism, the excitement that goes with doing something that no one has done before, knowing something unknown to the rest of humanity.

When one says, "We are doing science", they are referring to the scientific method, not the body of literature.

But then again, not everything that follows the scientific method is called science. Learning to hit a target with a projectile isn't called a science, although the mind does do a bit of experimentation, a bit of modeling, and in the end produces skill in being able to predict and control projectile motion. No, "science" requires more rigor. More data. MORE MATH.

And this is what makes me embrace this definition for science:
Science is the practice of mapping the physical world to the mathematical world.

I don't remember who said that, but this definition for science is the one I've been using for quite some time now. The scientific method helps identify the right mapping, and the scientific literature is the collection of maps.

With my definition for science, three things become clear:
1) If a "hypothesis" does not involve mathematics, it cannot be science.

2) It pisses me off when someone says "I came up with this super cool theory, and it doesn't even need math." I'm sorry, but if there's no math in there, it's not worth squat.

3) Mathematics has a special, some might call it mystical, connection to the physical world.

(Note: There are the so-called "soft sciences" that don't involve much precise math. Medicine, for instance. I don't think that these sciences don't involve math. Rather, the complex dynamics of these systems make the math so hard that we are simply not competent enough to deal with it.)

The first consequence makes sense. After all, one of the biggest motivations for doing science is the ability to make predictions. And except for the most mundane things, predictions involve math.

The second, well that's a given. We wouldn't need to spend billions of dollars on funding mathematicians, and building super computers, if all it took to understand the universe was for little Johnny to scribble some ignorant non-sense on a piece of paper.

The third one, that's quite philosophical. I guess it's obligatory to cite this article here: The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences
Why math? What's special about it? And, this is where it gets interesting, WHAT IS MATHEMATICS?

People have different definitions for math too. And, again, the one I embrace is:
The art of (finding) (non-trivial) tautologies.

That's all I can think of when I try to understand what math is. You start with a bunch of axioms, and you use logic to arrive at non-trivial conclusions. Well well well.. And what exactly is logic? (shit just got real)

Let's see. Logic is a consequence of language, it's the practice of mapping "statements with the same meaning" to one another. Again, that's how I choose to understand logic.

So, this is what I understand of what we're doing:
We have two, apparently separate, worlds.
1) The natural world that just does its thing without caring for our desire to understand it.
And
2) The mathematical world, which is a huge collection of statements that all, after loads of manipulation, mean the same things as a small set of statements put together (the axioms).

Some of the greatest geniuses of our species devote decades to find more statements that mean the same thing as others we are interested.

And some of the other geniuses devote decades to map things in the natural world to something in the mathematical world- either to the axioms directly, or something derived from the axioms.

As long as the axioms are sensibly chosen, and the mapping from the natural to the mathematical world is well-made, we can make all sorts of predictions- thanks to all those mathematicians who have already worked thousands and thousands of things that follow.

And this leads to the question that's really been bugging me- can we come up with a better math?

After all, all we need is a set of consistent axioms, and a mapping from the physical to this new mathematical world. Is our math the ONLY possible math? Is there a better math "out there" that can do a better job at explaining nature? Would artificial intelligence be able to come up with different maths than we did?

If there are different sorts of math that can explain nature, which one do we hold? The best one? The worst one? A mediocre one? Supposing there's an intelligent alien life a few thousand light years away, could they have identified a better math?

Bonus reading: The reasonable ineffectiveness of mathematics

Should we celebrate wealth?

2015-09-09T11:11:00.002-07:00

Just about a week ago, my family moved from a flat we owned to a house we're renting. My mum had taken a loan to buy the house, and after 4 years of payments, the principal amount of the loan has barely decreased. I told my mum, "We're not using that flat anymore, and we have no plans of moving back into it anytime soon. So why don't you just sell it off and repay the loan, and keep the rest of the cash as your retirement fund."

I thought I made a sensible suggestion. It seemed to make little sense to be paying interest on a loan taken for something we didn't use. Yet, after hours of trying to convince my mum, she didn't want to sell that flat. Her reason was this- Owning property is 1) an investment, and 2) a status symbol.

The investment part of it didn't make much sense, since she would have to pay the interest on a loan, and the price of the flat may not keep up with inflation in consumed goods. I could easily convince my mum that keeping that flat wasn't a good way to invest her cash.

But it was the second reason that was more important to my mum. My parents had very humble beginnings, having to work full-time throughout the year with no properties to their names. After 20 years of hard work, steadily rising amongst the ranks from a typist's position to that of a manager in a company, my mum finally saved enough cash to buy a house, and then another. Having gone from not owning any property to owning a house outside the city, and a flat close to the city, apparently her status in her social circles rose. And selling that flat would chip away at that status.

This, I can't wrap my head around. There's absolutely no reason for people to be owning multiple houses. And yet, when we know of someone who owns several houses, people tend to think of them as being a successful person. They might have taken out loans, or been involved in some corrupt business, or cheated someone into selling property. All of that, for nothing- people can't use multiple houses.

This is especially bad when it happens in cities. Cities have limited space, and there are lots of people moving into cities for work. People need a place to stay. But thanks to property owners, people have to either pay lots of rent for space, or pay tons of cash to buy a place.

Think about it- a flat close to a city (I'm using Hyderabad for reference) would cost about INR 20 lakh. Even skilled workers probably make only INR 3-4 lakh per year. That means it takes 6 whole years of salary for someone to be able to buy a flat. For semi-skilled or unskilled workers, it would take a decade or two- that is, if they saved all of their income without spending any of it.

After all, a flat is just a little bit of empty space (construction doesn't cost much). It shouldn't cost years and years of hardwork for someone to own a little bit of empty space close to a city. Think of it in terms of resources- picture the amount of resources (say, rice and vegetables) that can be bought with an years worth of rent or a part of a flat's cost. The farmers and factory workers have had to exchange all those resources for that lump of empty space.

The best thing, for society, would be if people only owned one house/flat for themselves. Anyone who finds work in a city should be able to rent or buy a house/flat for a tiny cost. Owning multiple houses is bad for society- because- supply and demand. When people own more property than they need, they're simply hoarding valuable city space. That's bad. We should be deriding people for doing that. But we don't. For some reason that I cannot understand, we have decided to praise and respect people who hoard property. This has to stop.

So, the next time someone comes to you and says they bought a new house they don't need, think about what you should say to them:
"Well done. I respect you for your success."
or
"What's wrong with you? Why do you want to spend all that cash on something you don't need, something that someone else could really use? I'm appalled at your lack of consideration for others."

Because society isn't something separate from us. We build and shape society, through our thoughts, words, and deeds.

Missed connection, and Turkish treats...

2014-12-10T06:57:00.006-08:00

I was on only my second ınternatıonal flıght yesterday, flyıng wıth Turkısh Aırlınes, from London to Istanbul to Mumbaı. The fırst one got delayed, and here I am, usıng a Turkısh keyboard to type thıs post, tryıng to get used to the bunch of addıtıonal alphabet and the Turkısh key posıtıonıng... They have thıs letter: ı, whıch ıs located where i ıs supposed to be, and I decıded ıt´s too much of a paın to try to go for the i.

Anyways, I´m quıte jobless at the hotel, so here´s an account of how I ended up here...

So I booked a tıcket wıth Turkısh Aırlınes- London to Istanbul to Mumbaı. I was supposed to land ın Istanbul yesterday at 6 35 PM, and then take another flıght at 7 35 PM to Mumbaı. I was quıte aware that just an hour for the connectıon ıs pushıng ıt a bıt too much, but the aırlınes gave me that tıcket and they run both flıghts, so I fıgured they´d hold the second flıght ıf the fırst got delayed (but apparently not).

I was ın the fırst flıght, at Gatwıck aırport, London. Everythıng was goıng nıce and smooth, ıt was all on tıme. Plane´s loaded, pılots goıng through all the checks. When I thought they´d turn on the engınes and start to taxı, the cabın crew announced that they´d have to waıt to check all our luggages- because someone apparently lost somethıng. And just lıke that, ıt went from everythıng beıng on schedule to a 40-mınute delay at take-off, because someone couldn´t manage handlıng a couple of bags. As one can ımagıne, I was quıte pıssed off. Holdıng a plane for 40 mınutes for a bag of stuff- that´s completely unreasonable. And ıt wasn´t lıke ıt was the aırlıne´s fault eıther, just some schmuck who dıdn´t gıve a shıt about other people´s tıme.

The flıght eventually took-off. Beıng run by Turkısh Aırlınes, all announcements were repeated ın Englısh and Turkısh. I can´t understand Turkısh, so I don´t know what they saıd, but ıt seemed lıke the crew dıdn´t even bother to make an effort for the Englısh announcements- except for a few keywords, I never understood what they saıd and had to guess what they were sayıng based on the sıtuatıon.

Other than that, ıt was all pretty smooth- they served a regular Turkısh meal- whıch felt a bıt weırd sınce ıt was totally dry wıth no sauces at all. It was boıled rıce wıth grılled chıcken, somethıng that tasted lıke a mınced steak fıllet, grılled peppers, grılled brınjals, and cheese. As I saıd, no sauce at all. But ıt was stıll a good meal. And the programmıng ın those tıny screens on the back of the seats also ın Turkısh and Englısh, but the optıons for Englısh were quıte lımıted and I had to watch one of the few Englısh movıes.

The flıght landed ın Istanbul, 30 mınutes late. That meant I stıll had 15 mınutes before the boardıng closed on the flıght to Mumbaı. And thıs tıme ıt was a woman who decıded she´d take her own sweet tıme to play wıth her kıds ınstead of gettıng on the shuttles that took the passengers to the termınal. I understand ıt´s not easy handlıng kıds, but the lady dıdn´t even ask for the crew´s help. A bus fılled wıth passengers watched her and her kıds (there were 2 of them) take 4 mınutes (yes, someone dıd check the tıme) to clımb down the staırs, after already havıng waıted about 10 mınutes for them to get to the exıt. There were about of couple dozen others who had to make the same connectıon as mıne, and all of them were pıssed.

The shuttle dropped us off at the termınal and we all rushed to the gate (gate ınfo was provıded on the prevıous flıght). The ınfo boards ın the termınal already showed that the gates were closed for our flıght, but I hoped they would let us on sınce the connectıng flıght was delayed, or at the very least, to talk to the staff about what flıght they would put us on. But when we dıd get to the gate, the staff had already left. And then the weırdest thıng happened. Everyone was just sıttıng at the gate- as ıf someone would magıcally turn up ıf they waıted long enough. And no one dıd. Gıven that there were a couple dozen people wıth the same story, I wasn´t sure ıf ıt would be best for me to go talk to the aırlınes by myself. But after waıtıng for about 5 mınutes, I left to fınd the aırlınes´help desk. I wasn´t very effıcıent wıth the search and took quıte a long tıme to fınd the rıght desk. And when I dıd, I was ıssued a boardıng pass for a flıght for the next day rıght away, no questıons asked.

The questıon came from me though- I had a day to spare and I needed the place to say. Agaın, the aırlıne saıd they would accommodate ın theır hotel. The problem was that theır hotel was outsıde the aırport and I dıd not have a vısa. They asked us to get a tourıst vısa (valıd for a month), whıch cost USD 43, and told us they´d refund us for the vısa after arrıval at Mumbaı.

And then started my journey across the entıre termınal- I´m not kıddıng, I dıd go through the entıre termınal. For the vısa, we had to pay ın cash, but only ın USD or Euros (or Turkısh Lıra), and I only had UK pound sterlıng. I kept askıng people for dırectıons to an exchange counter, but I kept gettıng lost and ended up goıng to all of the gates, everywhere except the lounge. I fınally decıded to just use an ATM machıne next to the vısa offıce, whıch I avoıded because the exchange rates are bad and commıssıons are hıgh. And then I had to run back and forth between passport control and vısa counters, and fınally got my Turkısh vısa after about an hour and a half of runnıng around.

After I got the vısa, I realızed I forgot to ask where I needed to go to get to the aırlıne´s hotel. And agaın, I vısıted several desks of the aırlıne before I ended up at the rıght one. In the process, I met a bunch of Pakıstanı guys who thought I was from Pakıstan too- these guys were ıllegal ımmıgrants and they dıd not know much about aırport procedures. They were beıng deported, wıth tıckets arranged by theır embassy. After a brıef chat about Indıa and Pakıstan and how people ın Pakıstan thınk of Indıans as theır brothers and all that, I told them I had to fınd the help desk ASAP and took my leave. When I dıd fınd the rıght desk, the aırlıne´s staff took a look at my boardıng pass and arranged a shuttle to take me to a hotel ın about 15 mınutes, and I ended up at thıs hotel called ``Radısson Blu´´. The hotel looks pretty good, although there are a few thıngs they could ımprove upon. And the aırlınes- although I would have apprecıated ıf they had sent a representatıve to meet us rıght after we came to the termınal- ınstead of us havıng to fınd theır desk, they have done quıte well. When they heard the connectıng flıght was delayed, they ıssued us boardıng passes for the next flıght and they arranged for a hotel rıght away. Some of theır staff had trouble communıcatıng ın Englısh, but they were stıll quıte polıte. And now I waıt for theır shuttle to come pıck me up from the hotel.

And about the Turkısh treats I mentıon ın the tıtle- that has to do wıth the breakfast they serve at the hotel- lots of kınds of cheese, olıves, pastrıes, fruıts, and nuts- probably the best breakfast I´ve ever had.

The duty of the privileged

2014-11-06T11:01:00.000-08:00

I have been on Quora regularly for about an year now. And I got into some interesting discussions, one of which has motivated the current post.

First, I must say that I'm not religious. I do not believe in any deities, and I do not believe that people have been created and assigned a specific role that they need to serve. I also do not believe that humans are "special" compared to other life forms. We are born with improved mental faculties, and physical abilities compared to some, and that's it.

So, the world's not fair. A hen that's hatched in a cage, with no option but to get killed by these huge monstrous species called humans, definitely has circumstances much worse than a lot of people. The hen didn't choose to be born like that, that's just how it is. The world is not fair.

And even among humans, a prince in a monarchy has a life that is much better than that of a unwanted child in a backward country. Or even in the same neighbourhood, a kid with caring parents has it much better than one with ill-tempered ones. I don't even have to talk about how hard life is for women. The world is not fair.

But people did not think like this in earlier times. Small groups of people came up with schemes to control larger groups of people. A king living in a castle, surrounded by knights in armour, told the people that it was God's will that the king rule the people. And opposers were executed by the king's soldiers.

The priest living in a mansion, funded by the kind and guarded by his soldiers, told the people that what the king said was true. There indeed was an invisible man in the sky who was all-powerful, who knew every little thing that everyone did. And he was going to torture them in hell, unless they followed all the rules that the priest had set. And it was God's will that some people were born into unfortunate circumstances, because they had sinned in a previous life, or their ancestors had sinned, or it was all a test and the best performers would be rewarded. And disbelievers were stoned and burnt by the believers.

And there were nobles, favored by the king, who got away with whatever they did. And feudal lords, favored by the nobles, who owned lands where workers slaved. And they got away with whatever they did. Then there were merchants, who owned trades and manipulated markets. And law enforcers, who cared only for their own gain.

So these small groups of people controlled much larger ones, with cunning schemes of tempting rewards and horrible pains. And what did the large groups do? Well, they believed in all that shit. That there was an invisible man in the sky. That he communicated exclusively with a bunch of priests. That some wimpy kid was chosen by the invisible man in the sky. That lands belonged to someone for no apparent reason. That there are rules that must be followed, which are arbitrarily set and always seem to favor the merchants. That some people are born to rule, and some are born to slave. That women had no role but to serve her man. That the stars hold their future and cats can cause their death.

These large groups of people who gave in to those unfair schemes, a lot of people call them victims, but I disagree. A grown man or woman has no excuse for being ignorant, for blindly believing in whatever someone else says. Each person is responsible for their own decisions.

But what of the generations that follow, the kin of this man and woman who submitted to others of their own will? Who agreed that they would slave their life away for promise of imaginary protection from the wrath of imaginary beings? What can a kid born into a backward family in a messed up society do?

The world is unfair.

Gullibility, ignorance, desire, and insecurities of people who lived decades and centuries ago have screwed up the lives of those that live today. A kid is born in the powerful nation with every resource he/she can want. A kid is born in a place where water cannot be found. There are some who are highly privileged, and others with none.

Do the privileged owe something to the under-privileged? Should they give it out to them? Or should the under-privileged fight for it themselves? And what about animals? Should we recognize that they were unfortunate to be born the way the are, and extend them the same care that we may owe to the less-privileged of humans?

Is there a duty that the privileged must dispense? Or should we all simply accept that the world is not fair and let the less-privileged fight their own battles?

Suppose God does not exist- Part 2

2014-04-13T06:30:00.003-07:00

Please read part 1 of the article before you read this one.

In part 1, I talk about a world without God or Morals. A world where a lot of people are irrational. This world is influenced by a few smart people who realize that people must work in teams, and these teams must have some rules. To give weight to the rules, we say they are given by an all-knowing, all-powerful, invisible man in the sky.
Now, suppose this world IS OUR WORLD.

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Think about what that means. The implications. There is no God. There are no morals. There are just a few rational people surrounded by a sea of irrational people.

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Do you feel like you have lost something? What do you lose when you assume that there is no God and there are no morals?

You lose everything you have learnt from religions and morals. Or do you? When you understand morals as rules that we need so that our society can work properly, and religion as a way to make people strongly believe in these morals, what else do you lose?

You lose answers to the big questions, such as
1) Who am I?
2) What is the reason for my existence?
3) What is right, and what is wrong?
4) How does the universe work? How and when did it start, and when will it end?
5) What happens to me after I die?
6? What is the most important thing in my life?

The answers to these big questions are lost when you discard religion. But is that really a bad thing?

If you do not have these answers, you can set out to find our own answers- try to comprehend your own existence, understand your purpose in life. Isn't that more exciting than listening to some stories?

I have asked these questions, and I have arrived at answers to some of them. The answers I have are not complete, and they are not the same as the ones I had 5 years ago. The interesting thing that I have figured out is, I had to define some of those answers.

If you can figure out some of those answers, ask yourself if what you are doing is in line with that answer. If the answer to "Who am I?" is, " I'm a super-hero who can fly", then what are you doing sitting in front of a computer for most of the day (or whatever else you may be doing)? Shouldn't you be trying to fly? (Please don't jump off a building and hope to fly, the super-hero thing was just an example)

What is holding you back from doing what you want to?

Or, you can always be happy with the answers given by your religion or your community. But what fun is it to be content with answers given millennia ago by someone you never knew?

Suppose God does not exist- Part 1

2014-04-13T06:05:00.003-07:00

Suppose God does not exist, just for the sake of argument. To be more accurate, suppose that all the major religions are just playing a guessing game, and everything they say about 'God' is just a fairy tale and none of it is true.
Taking a step further, suppose that there are no morals either. Suppose that there is nothing inherently wrong in killing another person.
Going into more improbable territory, suppose that human beings are not completely stupid. That is to say, assume that some people are capable of being smart, some of the time. Suppose that some people can be rational.

It must be quite clear that I say that a lot of people are irrational. I do not mean it as disrespect to anyone, but look around and you know that people are not rational. I subscribe to evolution, and I think human beings have not evolved enough for the entire population to be as rational as we usually think we are.

Imagine the world that we have just supposed: There is no God, there are no morals, and some people are smart. Would this world be different from the one we currently live in? How different would it be?

Think about a game of football. Suppose you're playing the game. Your aim is to score as many goals as you can, and also make sure the other team does not score any goals. Suppose you hate all your teammates and you don't want to work with them, and it's the same story with the rest of the people on the team. You don't pass the ball to your teammates, and you tackle them whenever you get the chance. Now, suppose the other team is not like yours, and they are all good friends and they co-ordinate well amongst each other.
Assuming that all the players in both the teams are at the same skill level, the other team will easily win the game.

What can you take away from that game of football? When you share a common goal with others, you improve your chance of achieving it if you co-operate with the others. This is what happens with any regular football team- all of them want to win the match, and they help each other. But they don't all run after the ball. One guy has to be the goal-keeper, some of them have to be defenders. Even the attackers don't always get a shot to score, they usually pass to the striker. While each player would want the glory of scoring, they sacrifice that desire, because they realize that they will definitely lose if all 11 players just run after the ball. They all stick to their roles and take pride in the team's victory, rather than think about how many goals each of them scored.

In the world without God and morals, there are still some smart people who can realize that if they want to survive, it is better to team up with the others. If you are stranded with 10 other people on a deserted island, you can fight with the rest of them till there's only one person left alive. But after this happens, how long will that single person be able to survive?
If the group of stranded people had a few smart ones, they could persuade the others to work together- to help each other to survive, just like in the game of football. Except that it is not about winning, it's about surviving. It's not against another team, but against nature, or may be a tribe that lives on the island that doesn't like outsiders.

You can see this kind of living anywhere you look. Team sports- everyone in the team takes up a role so that the team wins. War- each soldier protects the others, sticks to his orders, and carries his mission out. Lions - they hunt together, defend each other, and protect their territory. Bees- some go looking for nectar, one lays eggs, some look after the infants, and if there is a disturbance, all of them attack the invader. Ants- same as bees.

Working together means that the members of the team must support each other. Over time, they grow to have faith in each other. A lion knows that the other members in the pride will support it when it attacks a bigger animal, like a buffalo. A soldier knows that if he tries to advance to the enemy lines, others will cover him. The striker in a football game knows that the other attackers will pass the ball to him when he is in good position to score.

But the whole team thing comes with a price. Some rules need to be set up, roles need to be assigned. In a football game, the players are assigned roles (based on their skills, unless the captain or the manager is corrupt). Each of them may want to score as many goals as he can, but he does not do that, because then the team breaks down.

The rules in the football game are quite straight-forward. Goal-keeper saves, defenders and attackers pass, striker scores. But with the people stranded on the island, it is not so simple. They need a more elaborate set of rules. First, they need to get food. Some of them may not be as good as the others in hunting. Should these people be left to starve, or should the others share their food with them? Suppose there are 3 women and 8 men, and each of the men wants to have one (or more) of the women to be their partner? How do they decide who gets who and who is left without a partner? Should the men fight to the death? Play a sophisticated version of rock-paper-scissors? Have a hunting contest? Or should the women be allowed to choose? Will the men without a partner respect that decision? Suppose they finally managed to gather enough material to build a canoe to escape the island, but it can only carry 8 out of the 11 people. Which 8 should be allowed to use it?

These and a lot of other difficult situations tend to arise when people team up. Each person has desires that cannot be met with the available resources. They could settle these things with a fight to the death. Or, they can all agree on a set of rules that they will all stick to. Let's call these rules, 'Morals'. People can always decide not to follow the rules, and even if a few of them stop following the rules, the team can easily break down. So, make up another rule- If someone does not follow the Morals, the rest of them beat the crap out of him.

Suppose that this group of 11, stranded on the island, managed to survive and reproduce. A 100 years later, when the original 11 have passed away, there's a larger population that doesn't really appreciate all the rules. What if someone is not happy with the rules? Or if he is too strong or fast for the others to beat him up? If he's secretly breaking the rules? Or, if he's not breaking any of the rules and someone else accuses him of breaking the rules? What if one of them is not scared of the others anymore and decides to do whatever he wants- starting with stealing their food and forcing the women? And just beating him doesn't work.

Here's an idea- Tell them that there is an invisible man in the sky who watches everything you do. And the 'Morals' were actually rules that the invisible man had given to the people. And there is a special place called hell, far away from the island and in the depths of the earth, for anyone who breaks the rules. And people who break the rules go to hell and will be tortured for eternity.

The people don't buy it? Make it more appealing. The invisible man is not all evil. If you stick to the rules, he takes you to another place where you can enjoy in any way you want to. And as a side note, tell them that the invisible man talks to you and everything you say is true. They still don't buy it? Make a deal with some of the others- tell them you will help them if they spread the rumor that there really is an invisible man who is all-knowing and all-powerful, and he talks to you. How do you help these guys who spread the rumors? Simple- tell the people that the invisible man told you that your supporters must be allowed to rule the rest of the people- The divine right to rule.

The story of the 11 people on the deserted island, this could very well be the story of the world without God and Morals, with a few smart people. And if you can imagine this world- where smart people realize that it is easier to work as a team, and that teams need rules, and that these rules can be made more appealing to the people if you say that they come from an all-knowing, all-powerful invisible man in the sky who will give them all kinds of pleasures if they stick to the rules, and all kinds of pain if they break the rules; how different will this world be from the world we live in today?

TV Series I've watched

2014-04-10T13:28:00.003-07:00

This post doesn't go with the tone of the blog, but still.... I thought I'd make a list of all the TV series I've watched, and then rank them. This is my ranking of the 40+ TV series I have watched in the last 3 years.
If you plan to watch any of the anime on the list, watch the Japanese version with English subs. The English dubbed versions are not nearly as good as the subbed ones.

48. Californication
Tried watching about 6-7 episodes, didn't like it at all.

46. Breaking Bad
A chemistry teacher who starts cooking meth. Too slow. Too many annoying characters. People say it's the greatest show ever made, so I put up with it. But it sucks. After 4 seasons, I had to give up.

45. Kuroko no Basuke (Kuroko's Basketball) (Anime)
There are these freakishly good high school basketball players, and then there's this guy called Kuroko who prefers to play with a team with his own style. Wasn't too bad, but was slow and failed to take-off.

44. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (Anime)
Huge robots. Fighting. With special powers. There were some moments when it was a bit exciting, but on the whole, it's quite boring.

43. Boondocks
About a couple of black kids (and their racist uncle). The first few seasons were awesome, but got boring later.

42. Spiral: bonds of reasoning (Anime)
About a genius kid, whose elder brother was also freakishly smart. But the elder brother leaves the house for some reason and the younger one tries to figure out why. The first 5-10 episodes were good, but they just lost it after that.

41. Gantz (Anime)
When people die, they are recruited into a game. And these people have to complete missions. The plot was good and I felt it had great potential. But the anime was filled with stupidity and the ending really sucked.

40. Naruto (Anime)
It's based in the Japanese ninja tradition, and the ninjas have these awesome techniques. And there's a kid who was very lonely once and doesn't want anyone else to go through the same. It was okay in the beginning, but got really annoying after a while. The lead character is annoying, and the mangaka seemed to not care about consistency at all.

39.5. The Simpsons
People say it's awesome. I didn't find it to be funny enough.

39. Fairy Tail (Anime)
It's about people who can do magic, who form guilds, and then fight for their guilds. Some people like this anime, but I just can't seem to get into it. Too repetitive, boring battles, too much sentimental stuff (which is also pretty repetitive).

38. Bleach (Anime)
So there's three worlds, the regular one we know, and a couple for souls. And there are people in both soul worlds that try to either mess things up or save the world. It was pretty decent, but battles stretched on for too long. Becomes a bit too repetitive after a while. The characters don't seem to have any depth.

37. D. Grayman (Anime)
A world where souls are turned into machines by something like the devil, and there's a group of people trying to free these souls.. I thought the series had a lot of potential. I haven't read the manga, so I don't know if it was the mangaka who messed up or if it was the animators. The plot was pretty well thought-out, but the implementation couldn't keep up.

36. VEEP
A sitcom that wasn't funny at all. Although I'm all up for commedy, the show shows some of the top politicians (and their staff) of the US to be stupid, petty, and incompetent- which starts getting a bit annoying at times.

35.5 Sayonara zetsubou sensei (Anime)
It's about a high school teacher who's too pessimistic, and his class filled with weirdos. It's as unpredictable as a show can get. Seriously. It's the weirdest show I have ever watched. The first season was good, but then it got boring.

35. Only fools and horses
A British sitcom. It's alright, but again, not funny enough.

34. Avatar
A cartoon about a monk-kid with special powers based in a fantasy world. It was okay, felt like it was stretched a bit too much. The characters had no depth. But it was still funny enough to make me watch 3 seasons. And the spin-off that came after, which followed the next avatar, sucked (that's what I felt after 4-5 episodes and gave up).

33.5 Prince of tennis (Anime)
It's just as the title says, a new kid appears in high school tennis. It was good in the beginning, had some humour, seemed to have a decent plot. But it's the same thing going on and on.. And the sport itself is very poorly represented.

33. How I met your mother
A sitcom. Has its moments. But there's too much of nothing between funny scenes.

32. South Park
A cartoon with lots of gross scenes, but it's hilarious. At least it used to be. The new seasons suck.

31. Seinfeld
It's a sitcom. I liked it, but not as much as Friends or TBBT. And it does get boring quite often.

30. Dexter
A serial killer who only kills bad guys (with some exceptions). The story was well-paced, but has too many stupid characters in it.

29. True detective
Its about a couple of cops trying to solve some cases. There's one guy who's religious, and another who thinks religion and morality is all a load of crap. It can get interesting sometimes, but has too much drama with not much happening with the plot.

28. Magi (Anime)
In its universe, there are wizards who are supposed to choose someone worthy of being a king, and then help them become one. There's a lot of magic involved, and some battles. It has its moments, but on the whole, it's far from being a great show.

27. Prison Break
Sometimes too good, sometimes boring.The first season was especially good.

26. Two and a half men
First 5-6 seasons were awesome.

25. House
Liked it when House wasn't involved with the other doc. It had some humour, some satire, and a hint of philosophy. But then all of that was gone and there was just drama left, which I don't care for.

24. The Big Bang Theory
The geeky version of "Friends".But it went downhill after about 3 seasons.

23. Detective Conan (Anime)
It's quite a childish anime (it was made for kids). It's sometimes funny, and it never gets boring. Although the cases that the detective solves can get monotonous, there's still not boring. I have watched about 220 episodes now, and it has 500 more to go. Good for me.

22. House of Cards
There's nothing special about it, but it never got boring.

21. Sherlock
Need I say more?

20. Code Geass (Anime)
A bit boring some times, but awesome most of the time.
There are huge human-controlled robots, and some of the characters have superpowers.

19. Game of Thrones
Again, need I say more?

18. Samurai Champloo (Anime)
Short and awesome.
The story follows two swordsmen with conflicting personalities, who promise to help a girl find her father.

17. Dragon Ball Z (Anime)
Follows a guy who wants to be the strongest fighter in the universe. And while he's trying to do that, he saves the earth and a bunch of other planets from bad guys. It got a bit too serious, with too many battles and power-ups. But it's still way better than a lot of TV series out there.

16. Gin no saji (Silver spoon) (Anime)
It is what is called a "slice of life" anime. Set in a school of agriculture, it follows a kid from a city as he adapts to life as a farmer. It flows smoothly, has good humour, has no annoying characters, and could be a bit philosophical for some people.

15. Hunter x Hunter (Anime)
There are these professional people who are called hunters, because they have a range of skills and do all kinds of stuff. A kid, whose father was apparently a famous hunter, sets out to become one. Except for some episodes where it just stretched on without much happening, particularly the Chimera ant arc, the series was pretty damn good. I'm not really sure why I'm not putting this in the top 10 series, but I'd definitely recommend it for anyone who likes anime. Personally, I was more interested in the kid's friend's story.

14. Spartacus
Set in ancient Rome, where people owned slaves. And a bunch of slaves, who were also gladiators, fight for their freedom. The battles were awesome.

13. Steins; Gate (Anime)
Sci-fi. Based on time-travel. An amazing plot, beautifully animated. Especially episode 13. It was so awesome that I watched it over and over. I rarely re-watch episodes that aren't hilarious, but I couldn't stop watching this particular episode.

12. Eyeshield 21 (Anime)
A sports anime- about American football. The lead character's a wimpy kid, who I didn't care for at all. But the characters around the kid are interesting, the humour is good, and despite the length (125 episodes), it didn't get boring. I hated the way it ended though.

11. Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime)
Alchemists can make things out of raw materials, or break stuff, based on what they call "the principal of equivalent exchange". But things are screwed up when a kid tries to bring his dead mother back to life. It's a beautifully made anime. It has an amazing plot (you can't predict what's coming), the characters are well made, their back stories make sense, and the soundtrack is also very good.

10. Shingeki no kyojin (Attack on titan) (Anime)
Out of nowhere, giants appear and start eating humans. Humans build concentric walls, and live inside them. After a hundred years, the giants manage to break through the walls, and that's where the anime starts. Battles aside, human nature is so wonderfully explored in the anime- If one wants to understand morality or religion or fear or courage, forget books and discourses; watch this anime

9. Hajime no Ippo (The first step?) (Anime)
Follows a high school kid who takes up boxing, because he thinks boxers are really strong and he wants to understand what it means to be strong. The first season (76 episodes) was brilliant, on par with the best series on this list. But it went downhill afterwards. The second season was decent, and the third was a total let-down.

8. shijou saikyou no deshi: Kenichi (History's strongest disciple: Kenichi) (Anime)
A bunch of expert martial artists of different styles take in a disciple, and train him like shit. And this disciple is challenged by other people, usually bullies in school or gangs, but later by strong disciples of other teachers. It's quite entertaining- got good battles, a fine story, and tons of funny scenes. But it lacks a soul- the anime ranked better than this are all captivating, this anime isn't...

7. Death Note (Anime)
So a guy finds a book owned by a death-god. And if he can visualize a person and write the person's name in the book, they die. The first half of the series is just too good.

6. Haikyuu (Anime)
A sports anime, about Volleyball. A couple of guys passionate about the sport join a new school, one's goofy and the other's a genius. It's extremely well made- the matches, characters, back stories. It's funny, got a bit of drama, doesn't get boring- it's just perfect. I watched 25 episodes back-to-back, except for 9 hours of sleep. I would actually rate it as the best anime, except that it's too short to compare with the others.

5. Gintama (Anime)
A lazy, idiotic samurai who takes up minor jobs to earn a living, and has a wimpy kid and a super-strong, stupid girl as his assistants. Humor, parody, battles, emotional stuff- it's got everything. It's got a whole bunch of characters that keep making you laugh. Some episodes are slow, but most of them are brilliant.

4. Friends
Forget reviews. Just go for it. I watched the entire series (about 240 episodes) 6 times.

3. Dragon Ball (Anime)
It's a prequel to DBZ. It's funnier than DBZ, especially kid Goku. Although the animation was pretty bad compared to others, it gets points since it started out way before the rest of the anime on my list.

2. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (Anime)
Upgraded version of Fullmetal Alchemist. The first series did not follow the manga and the plot got a little too simplified. The manga version is absolutely brilliant. But the characters don't get enough time to establish a back-story, and the soundtrack isn't as good.

1. One Piece (Anime)
Follows a kid who wants to be the greatest pirate on the planet. In his crew, one guy wants to be the greatest swordsman, one guy wants to find this place in the ocean where there's fish from everywhere, a girl wants to draw a map of the world from her experience, a wimpy guy wants to be a warrior of the sea, one wants to be the greatest doctor, one wants to build a ship that sails all the oceans, one's an archaeologist trying to figure out some secret history, and finally, there's one a musician who's trying to keep a promise he made to someone 50 years ago.
Best.TV.Series.Ever. If you haven't watched this, you've missed out on loads of fun and tons of epic battles. Zoro and Shanks- Most bad-ass characters in any story, ever. I want to say "TV series can't get better than this", but One Piece has slowed down recently. But that's to be expected when an anime has been running for 15 years. I hear the manga is still as awesome as ever.

Science vs Engineering

2014-03-20T03:51:00.001-07:00

I attended a couple of seminars this week- one by a colleague and another by a famous professor. They both talked about models in different fields. One of them gave an accuracy of 75% (work in progress), and was quite well received, while the other had an accuracy of 99.99%, and researchers asked if it was good enough.

People often think of science and engineering as synonyms. They are not. Science is all about understanding nature, or rather, reducing the complexity of nature into a small set of mathematical equations. It deals with 'pure' substances. A scientist's job is to- Look at nature, understand what it's doing, see if we can figure out a mathematical law, and see if this mathematical law is always valid (if there are exceptions, the cycle starts again), and maybe build a new material using this understanding. Engineering is about practical applications. A mathematical law cannot run a car. It is an engineer's job to use these laws 'sensibly', and build things that can be used in our daily life.

Consider this simple question: How long does it take for a ball dropped from a height of 10 metre to reach the ground? A high school student could probably answer this in less than half a minute. But, is it an answer from science, or was engineering included?

First, we assume laws of classical physics- big objects, low speeds: Fair enough. Next, we can use a simple kinematic formula: h = 1/2 *a*t*t, and calculate the time of descent. But, whenever we use this formula, we assume zero air resistance. Or rather, we assume it is negligible. This is an engineering approximation. Scientific accuracy requires that you account for everything, engineering accuracy lets you get away with small approximations. In fact, this assumption, that air resistance is negligible, is not always valid. If you drop the ball from 500m instead of 10m, air resistance becomes very important.

There are actually even more assumptions. We always neglect the earth's rotation, and the fact that the acceleration due to gravity decreases as one moves away from the earth's surface. We can include them in the calculation, but - engineering accuracy : neglect them. If you are doing this for a satellite, you can't ignore any of these.

Now, this may make engineers look like a bunch of lazy guys who just hate solving everything. Say, we want to account for the air resistance. How do we include it in the equation for time of descent? We can say that the drag force is given by an equation like 1/2*density*velocity*velocity*area*drag coefficient. But then, this equation is also an engineering approximation. The more exact equations to solve are what we call 'Navier-Stokes Equations'. These equations are so hard to handle, that there is a million dollar prize for proving that unique solutions exist to the equations. And we haven't even talked about the elasticity of the material of the ball, or the surface texture.

And, did I mention that the Navier-Stokes Equations are also based on an approximation called the continuity hypothesis? This is how hard a very simple problem would be if we do not use engineering approximations. An engineer's job is to figure out what approximations work, and use them to build practical stuff. That does not mean that science is not a big deal, it is. Scientific laws are the basics over which we make approximations. These laws give us confidence in our work. It is just that without approximations, even the simplest of problems become extremely difficult to solve (but not impossible, hopefully). Imagine what it would be like to calculate the thrust of a rocket engine without using any approximations.

Population control- The way forward.

2014-02-27T12:03:00.001-08:00

In medieval ages, countries needed armies and man-power to do all kinds of things. But today, we don't. A huge number of people are in the service industry, which is big only because it has to serve a lot of people. If towns A and B have populations of 1,000 and 100,000 each, then town A may have just 1 bank with 3-4 employees, while town B may have 10 banks with 10 employees each. And what are these extra bank employees doing in town B? Serving the people of town B.

There are hardly any labor-intensive tasks these days. Machines are everywhere. The need to have a lot of people in order to develop a country is gone. Another country is invading you? Launch a missile. Send drones. Use tanks. No country is going to send out an army of 100,000 soldiers into a war front. Machines have been invented for this and a lot of other stuff.

I have just read that China, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh are the world's 1st, 2nd, 6th, and 8th respectively with respect to population, making up a little over 40% of the world's population. Now, do these countries need so many people? Definitely no. Life would be a whole lot easier if the populations were lower.

Suppose that the population of South Asia is suddenly reduced to half of what it is now. The state of agriculture more or less remain the same, since it is quite industrialized now and there are already too many people farming too little land. Industries won't suffer either, since almost all the work is done by machines. The number of banks and Tech support companies and other service companies will reduce, but that's not a big deal since the loss in jobs is compensated by the reduced population. The unemployment rates will definitely go down. The quality of education will go up.

The social structure may not change and there may be social and economic class divide. But, the quality of life will definitely improve. All we have to do is to reduce the population. So, how can this be done?

The most obvious thing to do is to kill a lot of people. Killing people to give them a more comfortable life is something that crazy dictators and politicians will say, not me.
Next solution? Reduce quality of health care- If someone's going to die, let him die. Again, same as above, not a useful idea.
Ship people to other countries (or planets?)? Nope, the other countries are not stupid (science not that advanced yet).

So, we can't kill people, we can't let diseased people die, and we can't export people. What's the one other option that's left?
Don't let more people be born.

Pretty obvious, isn't it? I had thought of this before, but thought that it's not an easy thing to do. You have to explain it to people, but you can't really reach out to everyone- lots of logistic issues. Or so I thought. Then I saw the demographics of India, and apparently the urban population is now 31%. And in this age of the internet, it's not really that hard to reach out to the urban population. The internet has penetrated into the rural areas too, but even if we focus only on urban areas, and reduce the population by 50% in the next 50 years, that should be a great improvement.

If we just reduce the birth rate, population will go down by itself since people keep dying. Family planning stuff is good, but I have a better idea.

Don't have kids till you are at least 32.

Get married if you have to, but just don't have kids.
Why is this better? Because a lot of people die between the ages of 20 and 32 (I'm assuming that on average, people have kids when the wife is about 20, may not be accurate, but the argument still holds). First, this itself reduces the birth rate. Secondly, If a man or a woman is to be widowed, isn't it better to be widowed before having any kids? Or if the marriage is not working out, and they think a divorce is better, isn't it better for both the couple and the kid if it happened before the couple has a kid? At 32, the parents have matured enough, and are probably more financially secure, to raise a kid.
Also, the next generation will be replenished slower than it is now. This will also reduce the birth rate for a few decades, before it saturates.

In addition to telling people to postpone having kids, what else must be done? Most importantly, contraceptives must get a lot of publicity. But every now and then, there will be accidental pregnancies. In that case, abortion is the only option. I guess parents get too attached to the fetus, but hey, it's a lot better to live with that little pain than to screw up your life, and the kid's. So, abortions- not totally legal in India (unless the pregnancy poses harm to either the mother or the child, or if its the case of a failed contraceptive). This makes absolutely no sense. When it is so clear that population is a problem in the country, how can abortions be illegal? Do people value the life of an unborn baby more than the life of people who are alive?

As always, I just think of stuff, I'm too lazy to act on it. I can only hope that some one who reads my blog gets inspired to actually do something.

Make love, not babies.

From Hyderabad to Southampton

2013-12-05T13:13:00.000-08:00

Quite a bit has happened since my previous post on the blog. The last one was a workout update published on August 29th. The following week, I had received my offer letter for a fully PhD position in the Aerodynamics and Flight Mechanics group at University of Southampton. The first thing I had to do after getting my offer letter was to apply for an ATAS clearance. This was a scheme that the UK government had, its job was to make sure that people coming to the UK from outside do not use the knowledge that they have gained in UK to make Weapons of Mass Destruction. And it took me 53 calendar days, or about 37 working days. They are supposed to process an application in 20 working days. I can understand the delay if I was studying nuclear physics or microbiology or something like that. But my research was about fluid flows in pipes (its actually about characterizing skin friction on rough surfaces using lower-order models, but I know that only mechanical engineers can appreciate this stuff, so there I'm working on flows in pipes).

During the time I was waiting for my ATAS clearance, my gym subscription had expired. I was already getting bored at that gym. There were no good training partners, the gym was too cramped to do any olympic lifts, doing deadlifts with the barbells was not possible, my knee was still hurting, and I couldn't count on anyone to spot me for bench presses. So, I didn't renew my subscription. I decided to learn tennis. There was this tennis academy about 4 km away from my home and I went there every morning. It was nice, there were three good coaches and they had enough courts for all members to play. I went there for about 8 weeks, but I couldn't play for 2 of those 8 weeks due to rain.

I finally got my ATAS clearance in the last week of October, and booked a visa slot for the next day. When I had gotten to the visa office with all my documents, they said I needed to get a mandatory Tuberculosis test done, which was frustrating since it was not mentioned in the website or on the document checklist. So that delayed my visa application for 4 more days. I finally applied on 28th October, I think. And the next 3 weeks were spent having farewell parties with friends. I've heard of people getting their visas in just 5-6 days. Considering that I was going from a reputed Indian college to a reputed UK university, to take a fully funded position, and with a clean passport and complete documents, I thought mine would be done in just a week. So every day I told myself that I may get my visa the next day, and every weekend I went and partied with my friends.

Finally, I'd gotten my visa on 21st, I booked flight tickets for 23rd. My friends had come to see me off at the airport, but turns out people without a ticket aren't allowed in (I didn't know that). I had to transfer in New Delhi, met with more friends over there, then took my flight to London. It was a long one (8 hours or so), but it landed ahead of schedule and the flight itself was good- clean airplane, good service, movies and games on a personal screen- pretty good for a cheap ticket (32k INR for the two flights-Hyd to Delhi and Delhi to London, including food and drinks).

The first thing I'd noticed when the flight was landing was that it was quite dark at just 4 30 PM. Back in Hyderabad, it would still be pretty hot at 4 30 PM, but here, the sun sets at around 4 PM and by 6 PM it gets totally dark. From London Heathrow airport, I'd taken a local train to Greenway and then to Waterloo. I had to carry about 22kg of luggage in those busy train stations at peak hour, but I somehow managed it. The train wasn't very different from the Metro in Delhi, it wasn't faster either. From Waterloo, I'd taken a train to Southampton airport, and this train was quite expensive (35 pounds, about 3,500 INR, for a 200km ride). It wasn't a first class ticket or a superfast train either. I'd met an IIT Kanpur alumnus in the train, this dude graduated around 2000 and works at IBM. He got off a few stations before mine, and I finally got to Southampton at around 9 45 PM.

I took a taxi, and we went looking for an inexpensive hotel. There weren't as many hotels in Southampton as I'd expected (considering that there are a lot of international students arriving here). I took a room in a good hotel, it cost about 60 pound a day, breakfast included. That was where I first found that the tap water in UK is drinkable-everyone drinks tap water. I'd seen this in a sitcom from the 80s, but thought it would have changed now. It was a very comfy stay, I was there for 2 days and then I moved into a shared house. There are a lot of shared houses here owned by landlords. Sometimes the landlords, sometimes letting agencies, rent out either individual rooms or the entire house to students. All houses have a kitchen, a few bathrooms, a lounge, and maybe a garden and garage, which are shared by the residents of the house. I was introduced to a really nice landlord by one of his tenants, and I'm quite comfy with the house.

The second thing I have noticed about UK (first thing being the sunset), especially Southampton, is that people are very nice and cheerful. Anytime a guy (or a girl) in a car sees me waiting to cross the road, he stops so that I can cross. Imagine that. That never happened in Hyderabad, and never will. And there is good reason for that. Life here is very peaceful. There are too many cars and very few bikes, and signals at most intersections. Cars don't overtake each other, they just keep moving in a line. There are footpaths everywhere, and pedestrians just need to press a button on a signal to stop the traffic and cross. No one every honks. Most stores close at 5 PM. Even PhD students and professors are not allowed to work in the University after 11 PM. If someone's working after 11 PM, security chucks them out.

The university is not bound within walls, its not even a single campus. There are a lot of buildings, randomly numbered. There are rules and regulations for everything, these people take safety extremely seriously (it is not just a matter of being safe, but it's actually required by law). There are lots of students and researchers around, a lot of them are Chinese. Apparently there has been some university policy that has opened the door to a lot of students from China. And each floor in my building has a kitchen, sometimes two kitchens. There are microwaves, fridges, coffee machines, and even cups and spoons in the kitchen. There are vending machines for soft drinks, candy bars, and crisps and stuff. People are not allowed to smoke inside the building but just outside is fine. There are some cafes, and also a couple of bars, in the campus itself. I have two supervisors for my PhD work. I was worried about ending up with not-so-good supervisors when I had applied for the position. I'm still not used to the life of a PhD student, or to interacting with supervisors, but my supervisors here are like cool nerdy dudes. I have just started working, but I already know I'm gonna love my work. But then, research is always exciting.

I've been to the gym in the university, seen one guy bench 140kg for 3 reps, and he must weigh about 90kg or so, which is qutie impressive. They have good equipment at the gym, including 6-7 Olympic sets, and there is another gym coming up with new equipment for Crossfit and Olympic lifting. I've joined the volleyball and table tennis clubs, looking to join the tennis and rugby clubs too. They have clubs for everything here, and students need to pay to become members. This is one of the few things (like the boring traffic rules- I prefer riding a bike like a boss to stopping at each signal) that I don't like. There was never any membership fee for any sport back at IIT Madras, and it should be that way. The volleyball court is indoors, on wooden floor, and compared to the outdoor courts at IITM, these courts are great to play on.

I haven't done a lot of stuff here yet, I haven't even been to the city centre,but I'm already loving the place. The university closes down for 10 days from 20th December or so, for Christmas (which is a very big thing here). I'll probably get around the city then. And it is already quite cold here, the minimum is about 5 degrees and the maximum is only 10 degrees . And "Winter is coming". It doesn't snow every year, but it did last year, and apparently this time it's going to be colder. Hopefully it will snow, strange how life can change so fast- I got from a lazy dude partying every weekend in a warm, vibrant city, to an excited researcher working everyday in a cold, relaxed city in just a few weeks. This was a much needed break from my habit. Other than the horrible Chennai climate and the crazy admin, this was one of the biggest reasons for wanting to go to a new place- I had just gotten used to the way of life at IITM, and going to a different insti in India would not have made much difference either. I had to start new if I wanted to get off my ass and do something. Only time will decide if I've made the right call. I now sign-off and go to sleep. I have installed Debian Linux on my system today, and tomorrow, I'm going to learn Python and write my first code as a PhD student, and read very good journal papers. Tomorrow's going to be an exciting day.

Workout update

2013-08-29T23:26:00.001-07:00

My earlier plan was to attempt my max bench press and push press in the second week of September. But around August 15, I had gotten a couple of days of rest after two days of light workouts. So I had decided to test my maxes during that weekend.
On 17th August, I had attempted my max bench. My previous max was 98kg (or 99kg, used a barbell whose weight I didn't know exactly) done in April 2013. This time, I did 100kg, then 105kg, and then failed at 110kg. I wanted to go for 107kg after 105kg, but the gym didn't have plates smaller than 2.5kg.
On 19th August, I had attempted my max push press. My previous max was 87kg, done in November 2012. This time, I hit 90kg, and then 95kg. The 95kg itself was a critical lift, so I hadn't attempted 100kg. Two days back, on 28th August, I had hit 95kg again.

In addition to the presses, yesterday I had squatted 110kg for 5 singles, Powerlifting style, without belt or spotters. Although it is in no way an impressive lift, this is the first time I have squatted 100+ without any knee pain. And I have also started feeling more confident with my Powerlifting style squat (I have switched from Olympic squats to Powerlifting squats in March). I am not rushing to load more weight on the squats yet, I'm allowing for my knee to heal sufficiently before I start to hit new maxes. Though PL squats are going fine, it hurts when I attempt a deep front squat. Classical cleans and snatches are still a strict NO for me. And in addition to squatting, I'm now hitting heavy deadlifts - 65kg or 70kg for 2 or 3 reps.

My gym subscription expires in two weeks. I'm hoping to push my maxes a little further in this short period- 100kg push press and 110kg bench press are what I have in mind for the second week of September.

Nausea and Acidity during and/or after workout

2013-08-13T05:15:00.001-07:00

A lot of people might have had this problem at some point or the other. I have been having a problem with acidity in the last 1 year or so, but I mostly neglected it. In the last 6 weeks it really started to affect my training. I had to cut short several training sessions when I started feeling nauseated. So, as always, I did a little bit of research on google and tried a few things. And after a couple weeks of trying different stuff, I am now totally fine. And now I share my wisdom.

One of the biggest reasons for nausea is excessive caffeine consumption, in whatever form you take it- coke, coffee, energy drinks, whatever it is, too much caffeine is bad for you. Earlier, I used to drink tea for 3-4 times a day and it was okay. I slowly switched to coffee and recently I have been drinking coffee for 3-4 times a day and I'm guessing that is when I started getting nauseated. It is also possible that this acidity and nausea are because of my change in lifestyle (I've gotten really fat in the last 15 months, and my physical activity has also gone down). Whatever it is, coffee is bad for you. Stopping coffee suddenly is not good since there are some problems associated with caffeine withdrawal. If you can't cut down on coffee, at least stop drinking it a few hours before workouts. Chocolates also cause acidity.

Another reason for nausea during workout is lack of endurance. If you have not been doing a lot of cardio and endurance training, chances are that you are getting tired too easily. People often get tired during their workout and start feeling light headed. Whenever this happens, nausea follows. I have found a simple way to work around this.
Usually, if you push for too many reps in a set, you start feeling light headed. Instead of that, split the reps into more sets. For example, if you have to do 3 sets of 12 reps with 90 seconds rest between sets, split it into 6 sets of 6 reps each (with a rest period of 45 seconds) instead. When you do this, you will still be training with about the same volume, the muscle will still be fatigued sufficiently since you are not allowing enough rest between sets, and your cardiovascular system gets sufficient time to recover from one set and start producing blood glucose again (This is all my theory. What matters is, splitting high-rep sets into low-rep sets with reduced rest period has worked for me, and I expect it to work for someone else too).

The final and the most effective suggestion is- start eating bananas and drinking curd. Even at times when I feel like I'm definitely gonna puke, I drink a couple of glasses of banana lassi and it goes away in a couple of minutes. Last month, I used to take antacid tablets to get rid of this problem, but the relief was extremely short-termed. A glass of banana lassi (put a banana, about 200 mL of curd, 50 mL of milk, sugar, and some flavor if you want) a couple of times in the morning and a couple of times in the evening, especially before workout, totally relieves you from acidity and nausea.

Randomly answering Multiple choice questions

2013-08-12T00:34:00.001-07:00

Most exams these days have multiple choice questions. When I was preparing for one such exam- EAMCET, one of our math lecturer had strongly recommended one technique- to verify if the equation/expression is satisfied by the options, instead of solving the equations. Though it is not in the best interest of the students, at least that involved a little bit of solving. But what if a student just randomly answers all questions?
Considering that these exams typically have more than a hundred questions, and that tens of thousands of students take these exams, it is safe to assume that when a typical student randomly answers a question having 'n' options, the probability that the answer will be correct is 1/n. In questions with 4 options, if a student randomly marks an option, the probability that it will be correct is 25%.

Now, consider the case where each correct answer is awarded 4 marks, and each wrong answer is awarded -1 marks. If a student randomly marks 1 out of the 4 options, the score he will gain is (4)x (1/4) + (-1) x (3/4). 1/4 is the probability that he is correct, 3/4 is the probability that he is wrong. So, this student will, on average, score 1/4 marks out of a maximum possible 4 marks. i.e, he scores 1/16 of the maximum.
Suppose the student puts in a little effort and somehow confidently eliminates 1 out of the 4 options, and then randomly marks 1 out of the remaining 3. Now, the probability of him being right is 1/3, and being wrong is 2/3. In this case, he scores 4x1/3 + (-1) x 2/3 = 2/3, out of a maximum of 4. So, he scores 1/6 of the total marks (in the previous case, he scored only 1/16).
If he confidently eliminates 2 out of the 4 options, he scores 4x1/2 + (-1) x1/2 = 1.5 out of 4, or 3/8 of the total marks.
If he confidently eliminates 3 out of the 4 options, he scores 4 out of 4 marks.

Comparing different other cases, like no penalty for wrong answers, 6 options, etc:

	4 options +4, -0	4 options +4,-1	4 options +4,-2	4 options +4,-3	6 options +4,-1	8 options +4,-1
Random	25%	7%	-12.5%	-31%	-4.2%	-9.4%
Eliminate 1	33%	17%	0%	-66%	0%	-7.1%
Eliminate 2	50%	38%	25%	12.5%	6.25%	-4.2%
Eliminate 3	100%	100%	100%	100%	17%	0%

I suppose that most exams have either no penalty, or a +4,-1 system with 4 options. Having no penalty is a huge incentive for those who can't solve all the problems to randomly mark answers. They have nothing to lose. Considering that even the best of students often fail to score a 100% owing to various reasons such as time constraints or exam pressure, and that the cut-off scores (especially for reserved seats) are usually quite low, the current system is really not fair. If the boards decide to go for 6 options instead of 4 options, the equation drastically changes. If they move to 8 options and also impose penalty for wrong answers, no one will ever try to randomly mark answers. Also, students will be discouraged to verify the options by substituting into equations- simply because there are too many options to try and check.
It really surprises me that the IITs are really not considering something like this. Increasing the number of options is not a difficult thing. It takes a little bit of extra effort, but it would definitely limit the role of luck in the exams.

Workout update: Cluster sets, singles and dynamic sets

2013-08-08T01:47:00.001-07:00

Most importantly, I'm have started to squat again. I did 90kg back squat for 4 sets of 5 reps yesterday. Although it wasn't hard, I'm taking it slow. I have switched from deep Olympic squats to Powerlifting squats. I'm hoping to get to 110kg or 120kg in the next 5-6 workouts and work at that weight for the next 1 month.

A month ago, I was cribbing about my knee injury and about how the gym near my home is not good enough. But thanks to that, I am trying new workouts. All my earlier workouts were built around squats. Now, I can't squat as much as I used to (due to the injury), and can't deadlift heavy (the barbell isn't good, no proper plates). So I am focusing on improving my upper body strength and a little bit of conditioning. Although it is still a bit early to vouch for the routine, I am going to do it anyway.

My earlier routines usually contained several compound exercises- squat, deadlift, bench press, military press, push press, barbell rows and pullups/pulldowns. I used to go for 3-5 sets of 2-5 reps for those exercises and call it a day. But now I am doing it in a totally different way. I have included cluster sets, singles, dynamic sets and complexes.

Cluster sets: For proper muscle growth, both weight and reps are important. But its hard to hit more reps with heavy weights. In a cluster set, you break down a set into 2-4 mini-sets with a little break between these mini-sets. I usually do it this way- In each set, I do 2 reps, rest for 20 sec, do 3 more, rest for 20 sec, and then 2 final reps. Between sets, I usually rest for about 2 or 2.5 minutes (I decide on a rest period stick to it). The set I just described is a 2-3-2 set, a total of 7 reps. I sometimes hit 2-3-2 sets, sometimes 2-2-1 sets. Two days back, I benched 90kg for 4 sets of 2-1-1. I am training without a spotter, so I have to limit my sets to only those with which I'm completely confident.

Singles: They are just that- single reps. Each set has only 1 rep. Between each set, I usually take about 45-60 seconds rest.

Dynamic sets: These sets are to build speed. The idea is to push a light weight (~50% of max) as fast as possible. I usually go for 3 reps in these sets.

Complex: Complexes are for conditioning. I take a barbell- either 30kg or 40kg loaded, and do a series of exercises. The exercises I am currently using are - Power clean, Jerk, Back squat, Military press, Good mornings, Barbell rows, Deadlifts. A typical complex will be 30kg x5 reps. In that set, I do 5 cleans, then 5 jerks, then 10 back squats, then 5 presses, then 5 good mornings, then 5 rows and finally 10 deadlifts (I do twice the number of reps for squats and deadlifts). I use complexes for fat loss, conditioning, endurance and cardio.

In a typical workout, I use 1 main compound movement, and 1 or 2 assistance movements for that muscle. Till last week, I used to load up on both the main and assistances. But now, I'm going heavy on the main movement, and going for light fast reps with the assistances. I am not posting any pics yet, but the cluster sets have really been a revelation. They are great for both strength and building muscle. As for warm up, stretching and warm down, I have totally abandoned stretching and warming down after workout. My warm up consists only of performing 2-3 sets of benchpress or push press for 20-30 reps with empty barbell.
If my work sets in bench press are of 85kg, I do something like
20kg: 3 sets of 20-30 fast reps (warm up)
40kg: 8-12 reps
55kg: 5 reps
70kg: 2-3 reps
75kg: 1 rep
80kg: 1 rep
85kg- Good to go.
The weights between 20kg and 85kg are usually decided by what plates are lying around.

My workouts go something like this:

I train on all weekdays, and take off on the weekends- that's 5 days of training per week.

Day 1
Flat bench press - Complex sets: 80% for 5 sets of 2-2-2
Inclined dumbbell press (Chest -Assistance 1) 2-3 sets of 5-8 reps
Dumbbell pullovers (Chest -Assistance 2) 2-3 sets of 6-10 reps

Close grip bench press - 3 sets of 5 reps
Back squat- 4-5 sets of 5 reps
Skull crushers (Triceps -Assistance) 2 sets of 5-8 reps

Day 2
Push press - Singles : 5-10 sets
Dumbbell/Military press (Dynamic, superset with push press) : 5-10 sets of 3 reps
Dumbbell upright rows (Deltoid- Assistance 1): 3 sets of 4-8 reps
Dumbbell lateral raise (Deltoid- Assistance 2): 2-3 sets of 10-15 reps
Lat pulldowns: 4-5 sets of 4-8 reps
Kroc rows: 2-3 sets of 15-20 reps
Forearm, biceps curls: 3-5 sets of 5-10 reps
Clean complex - 3-5 sets of 4-5 reps for each exercise

Day 3 same as Day1
Day 4 same as Day 2

Day 5
Power clean and Jerk - Upto 60kg
Power snatch - Upto 40kg
Bench press/ Push press - Dynamic sets: 10-12 sets of 3 reps each
Dynamic assistance work
Squat- Light weight

For Day1 and Day2, I use heavy weights on the main movements. For Day3 and Day4, I reduce the weight slightly (by 5% to 10%) and increase volume slightly.

In the first 2 days of this week, I have done bench press for cluster sets of 2-1-1, and Push press for 5 singles of 85kg (supersets with 5 dynamic sets of 45kg for 3 reps). I hope to hit new PRs in about 3 weeks- 110kg in bench press and 95kg in push press.

Back to the gym

2013-06-22T10:31:00.000-07:00

My training in the last 7 months has been extremely inconsistent. I have always loved Olympic lifts and squats, and since I injured my knee, I couldn't train with routines I like. Since mid-March, I had not gotten more than maybe 10 workouts. I'm done with IITM and am back home now. I didn't find a good gym here, just a regular fitness centre. But luckily, they have a decent barbell, though its very hard to get a good grip on it. These gyms don't have chalk powder either. I tried several times to deadlift beyond 120kg, but had to abandon each of the attempts halfway when the barbell started to slip off my palms.
Currently I'm not using any of the famous routines. I'm just working till a few heavy sets (for 1 or 3 reps) and then dropping back for a few more sets of 5-8 reps. I'm training for 4 days a week. Owing to the knee injury and the give up barbell, I can't squat or pull or deadlift. But I'm steadily getting my strength back on the upper body stuff. In the last 10 days, these are the lifts I've gotten to:

Bench press: 95kg single
Military press: 70kg single (The smallest plate in the gym is a 2.5kg plate.No 1.25kg or 1kg plates)
Push press: 85kg single
Barbell rows: 75kg for 3 sets of 5 reps
Back squat (PL style): 100kg for 3 sets of 3 reps
Deadlifts: Several missed and completed attempts at 120kg

I start each workout with power cleans from the hang, working up to 70kg for 3 sets of 3 reps. Power snatching more than 40kg is also pretty difficult because of the barbell. Since squats and deadlifts are now out of the question for me right now, I'm going for split squats and good mornings instead. Just got to 50kg on both exercises, and I'm going to push both of them upto 75kg soon.

This is how it has been till now. For the next 10-15 days, I'm going to use my stock routine and a few high rep sets in the end of the workout (hoping for a little fat loss). Once I feel like I'm back in form, I'll start up on either of Westside conjugate method or Wendler's 5/3/1 routine. I've signed up for the gym for 3 months. Hopefully I'll stick to my schedule and make some decent gains in this period.

The issue of rape and sexual abuse

2013-04-29T01:11:00.000-07:00

This is one of the most serious things I ever wrote on, or will write about. It will be long, but I plead everyone to read this to the end. This article has made me pack my DDP work for a while to write on the issue:
http://tehelka.com/what-are-we-doing-to-our-kids-2/?singlepage=1
There is a strong movement in social media now against this issue. I strongly believe that the people who are involved in speaking up on the issue are missing a fundamental point- The strong exploit the weak. Rape and sexual abuse is just one manifestation of that. While we sit in our rooms condemning rapes and men in general for this attitude towards women, millions are dying out of hunger. We say all men (and women) are born equal, but they're not. Some are born strong, some are born weak. Circumstances decide that. A European is in general stronger than an African, simply because the former has better facilities than the latter.

Before I write further, I have an appeal to make. I believe that a lot of people who read my blog disagree with my views, but not based on logic and reason. People do not want to think that I, just another student, can understand things better than themselves. They want to believe that I am not better than them, and hence disagree with me without even caring to think about whatever I write. Some agree with me simply because they think that I am a reasonable guy and hence whatever I write must have some merit. I urge whoever's reading this to think clearly, on the merit of the reasoning, and not based on who's writing this.

Coming to the issue at hand- sexual abuse against women and children. It is not just sex, it is about the strong exploiting the weak. It happens everywhere, with countries attacking others, with economic classes, with social classes, with bullies in school, with intellectually strong people stealing jobs from intellectually weak ones. It is a fact of nature, a rule of life. This issue of rape blames men for their conduct. That is just senseless. It is just about the strong trying to exploit the weak. If the women were stronger than men, they'd do something else to exploit men.

Throughout history, strong tribes have annihilated weak ones. Women are weak. I'm no male chauvinist, I'm just stating a fact. Women are physically weak. And men will look to exploit them, forever. Unless women can show that they are not weak. The only reason that women, as a species, are not extinct is that men had realized that women are needed to entertain their sexual desires and to perpetuate their race. The whole equal rights to women, job opportunities to women or anything else you see is just a way to pacify them, to give them an illusion that there's a chance for them to not be exploited. And this is all a simple result of the fact that men are, in general, physically stronger. Physical strength was the important thing when civilizations started. Men have defined the rules of the game, the constructs of society. If women had pioneered the rise of our species, we would be living in an entirely different world.

This can be seen in other situations too- whenever the economically strong are threatened by the economically weak, they pacify them by making populist policies, promising better living conditions, offering some hope. When the socially lower classes threatened the upper classes, the upper classes gave them some social rights. All of that is just a way for the stronger ones to survive by pacifying the weak ones.

This is all just a rule of life. All of us want to dominate others, we want to be better than others, we want to have more cash, more fame, more happiness than the others. That's the reason we play sports- to win and hence show our domination over others. We want that we are better than most of the people. We have the top 10% of the people having way more cash/power than the other 90%. But what would happen if the 90% revolted against the 10%? It is too scary for the 10%, so they devise ways to pacify the 90%.

Would stronger laws change anything? No. Read the article I first referred to. Its not just the law, its a failure of the system. There are laws. But what good are they if no case ever gets to the court? First, the victims don't dare to speak about sexual assaults against them. Even if they do, they are humiliated. Their families threaten them to be silent. They cover things up. If the family dares to file a case, the police won't accept it so easily. The society threatens or even banishes the family. If the police do register the case and it finally comes to the court, the victim must then go through even more humiliation. And even after all that, there is no guarantee that the case would stick.

And then, what about an average citizen who doesn't have the means to go through a case? Not everyone has the support of activists or NGOs. Or a child who doesn't even know what to do? How would a law help any of it? Who will save a child from being molested by her own father? And even the law has certain standards. What about groping or molestation or teasing? Can a law take care of all that?

The only solution to this, or any other such problem, is for the weak to get stronger. We hear about 5-6 guys gang-raping a girl, but have you ever heard of 1 guy raping 5-6 women? Its not possible, 5-6 women would easily overpower a single man. That is what must happen, more women must be present in offices, in buses, on the streets. That will discourage any man who sees a woman to be weak.

How can a mother save her child from being harassed by her husband? Physically overpowering him is rarely possible. Even if she does, what will she do without him if she is not financially secure? First thing for a woman is to be financially secure, she must not be dependent on a man for her basic needs. Being financially secure is not enough, she must be ready to end her marriage with any husband who does not respect her and her children's rights. All the women in a community must be ready to support each other whenever a man threatens any of them. They must be well connected socially.

This problem can't be tackled by just sitting and commenting on it. Women must take to the fight. Protests and debates achieve nothing, things have to change at the grass root level. All women must understand the threat and come out of their houses into a larger community. Remember how it was with the Indian freedom struggle? There were traitors within the country. Millions of Indians could not take on thousands of British (due to the modern weaponry of the British, each British soldier was stronger than a single Indian soldier, just like a single man is physically stronger than a single woman). The first revolutionaries were brutally killed. Even sympathizers with the cause were punished. But when it turned into a mass movement, the British had no option but to leave the country. This has happened through out history- the weak must rise in numbers if they are to defend themselves.

But then, this is no war, even the enemy is not clear. How can any woman say which man is an enemy? The only option is to have a sufficient number of women in every aspect of life to discourage any attempt to assault women. The families are what decide what children do, and families are still headed by men. Its not going to be easy for women to come out of their houses. Speeches are not enough, a mass movement is what is required.

Having said all this, am I willing to give up on my career and fight for the cause of women. No. I am not going to fight for it. Not because I don't believe in whatever I said, but simply because it is pointless. It is the women that must rise and fight. There are enough strong and secure women to take it up. I have my own demons and battles to fight.
Throughout the article, I maintain that women are weak. If someone thinks that I'm wrong and women are in fact stronger than men, then women must be plain stupid to have men exploit them for so long. Solving any problem is possible only by first accepting that there is a problem. Living in denial changes nothing.

Being nice

2013-04-28T07:15:00.001-07:00

If in an exam most of the students score 70 out of 100, and some guy scores 95, then 95 is a very good score. But if everyone scores 95, then 95 is just an average score. By definition, most of the people are average, ordinary, just like the others. Everyone cannot be special. If everyone is, then the word "special" makes no sense. But the ego of people makes them think that they are better than the others, that they're special. We like to be complimented by others, appreciated by others. Being praised makes us "happy".

Consider a guy, Mr. A. Lets say he tries something and does an average job of it. He asks Mr. B and Mr. C to judge his work. Mr. B gives an honest opinion, he says the work is mediocre, nothing great about it. Mr. C tries to be nice and says that the work is extraordinary, outstanding, wonderful, best ever and all that crap. Mr. A is happy with Mr. C and is offended by Mr. B. Being "happy" is said to be a wonderful thing, the ultimate goal of life. People think happiness is so important that "pursuit of happiness" was mentioned in the US declaration of independence.

In a society where most people are mediocre and yet expect others to appreciate their work, where happiness is one of the most important goals of life, is it better to be honest or to be nice? In the above example, it is very clear that Mr. B will make a lot of enemies just because he speaks the truth. That is what statistics say- too many mediocre people asking for opinions, and honest opinions are not appreciated. Another advantage of "being nice" is, from the above example, Mr. A will also "be nice" to Mr. C and praise Mr. C for his mediocre work later on, because Mr. C was nice to Mr. A. And so the world goes on, praising each other for their mediocre work.

I personally prefer being honest to being nice. That is one reason why I can't get along well with people unless they're good friends of mine. My friends know that I don't easily appreciate their work, but others do not know that about me. Every time I go to meet any of my relatives, my mom strictly warns me to "be nice". People who don't know me think that I am shy or arrogant or whatever else, but the thing is- I like to be peaceful. I don't want to get into arguments or offend anyone.

Whenever I talk, I piss people off because I prefer honesty to "being nice". Sometimes people say such stupid things that it becomes very hard for me not to point it out, and I just have to get away from there if I want to avoid offending or arguing with them. I don't mind a debate, I actually welcome one since it'd test my own reasoning. But the problem with these kind of arguments is that people get extremely personal and unreasonable. They go nuts, their statements contain no logic whatsoever. If you want to see what I mean, go to an acquaintance of yours and ask him/her why she believes in something (religion, some important ideal, favorite sportsman, etc..).

I didn't give serious thought to this whole "being nice" thing until about a week ago. First it was our hostel night. I was there, it sucked. My friends say the food was tasty, but otherwise, it was no good. But that night, and for the days to follow, the hostel's facebook page is filled with posts like "awesome hostel night", "best hostel night ever", "No hostel night is as good as ours" and stuff like that.And I just kept wondering, "Really? Did I miss something? What was so great about it?". Of course, the rules by Dean made it impossible to have hostel nights on the lines of those that we had a few years back, but still, our hostel night wasn't so good.

Then, I was putting enthu for Lit-Soc dramatics. Pampa was going to perform a play. We adapted a movie, practiced some 10 times and then performed. On stage, we totally fucked up. I walk out of CLT (the hall where the play was performed), thinking "That was a disaster, we seriously fucked this up... " but the rest of the cast come out and congratulate each other. They were all thinking we did an awesome job, we owned the stage, we mesmerized the audience. And then we celebrated. Everyone started praising everyone else. They believed we were going to win, or atleast get one award (there were special awards for best actor, director and set).

Pampa doesn't have a great tradition in these stuff like other BTech hostels do. The hostel night needed quite a bit of effort from the organizers. For our play, we had only a little practice and most of us never performed in a play. But still, we could have done a lot better on stage, and our rehearsals were better than our on-stage performance. Some of us were just not good enough. We put in some effort, and under the circumstances, we pulled something off. That was a good thing. But it was in no way "the best ever" or "worth winning awards". No, we sucked. It took me a great deal of restraint to not say it out loud after our performance- they were all happy and celebrating, I didn't want to offend them there. I choose to remain silent, as I most often do.

I do accept that it is good to "be nice" to others, it helps build better social relations. It keeps a positive spirit among people, it encourages them to go on. But at what cost? It seems that it is just too hard now for people to accept that they are not good, that they fucked up. People are so used to being nice and hearing good things that criticism is just unacceptable to them. If anyone ever offers an honest opinion, that person is labeled as rude and arrogant. I have just one thing to say here- If you are not open for honest criticism, don't ask for an opinion.

Every time people realize they screwed up, they just blame others or their circumstances for it. I once read an article on the notice board of a prof, about self-pity. How it could be the worst enemy of a man. Instead of accepting a mistake and trying to correct it, people just pity themselves for the situation that made them screw things up. If being happy is all you want in life, then self-pity and "being nice" are very appealing. But if you have a serious goal in mind, then this whole "being nice" business would do you no good. How can you ever know how much more you need to work if you are always told that you're awesome just the way you are?

How men see women

2013-04-24T00:47:00.000-07:00

In almost 5 years of insti life, I have noticed that guys think girls are very arrogant. That the girls go to guys only when they need some help and then ditch the guys later. All around I hear stories about break-ups, friendzones, crushes, etc.. Girls have a different opinion- they think that guys are just sexual predators. The confessions page was full of this stuff. This way of thought is not limited to insti, it's the same story everywhere. Men are stereotyped as sexual predators, women are stereotyped as selfish bitches. These kinds of things interest me. I know for a fact that girls are in general not arrogant and selfish, and that sex is not the only thing in a guy's mind. So why this popular opinion?
The problem is mostly because of the way men see women. What I'm going to say next is my theory based on what I know about how men usually think. I know very little about how women think, so whatever little I write about that is just speculation. I only intend to explain the general mindset, exceptions are always present.

Before I say anything more, I must say that the bigger problem is that what people think and what they say are rarely the same. That is usually because of the fear of being judged by others. I'm sure that if a girl reads this post, she'll be like "Are all guys like this? That's really gross. Why can't you see a girl for what she is..." and all that crap. Some guys may deny that they think like this. My theory is based on the hours of discussions we guys usually have when we're joblessly having tea or gen fart about relationships, and a bit about how I think too. But then, I may be wrong or my theory applies only to the kind of people I know. Whatever it is, if you're not open to theories on such sensitive issues, I strongly recommend that you don't read the rest of the article.

Quite often men become friends with women. That usually happens when they are involved in the same activity, like taking a common class, working together, being neighbors, etc.. I'm not talking about the kind of friendship where it doesn't really matter if the friend's a guy or a girl. What I talk about is when a guy gets "interested" in a girl without even talking to her. The interest is based on only her appearance. He may or may not know her. Sometimes they're just acquaintances, and sometimes they're complete strangers. Whatever the case, when a guy's interested in a woman, he usually looks at her as one of these two things - 1) A potential sexual partner, 2) A transcendental beauty. How a particular guy looks at a particular girl depends on the guy.

1) A potential sexual partner
I don't have to say much about this. Guys love to have sex. We tend to think of most girls as possible sexual partners. And we find some girls to be particularly seductive. That doesn't mean we want to force them into anything. It means that, in general, we try to make things move in that direction. It also doesn't mean that we talk to a girl only to have sex with her. Sex is not the only thing in our mind, but then it is also there in our mind. We see some girl who is particularly sexy, think it'd be nice to do it with her, and then get back to the more important things in life. Just like with anything else, there will be some guys who'll be obsessed with sex and have all of their life built around that, but that's a very small fraction of the population.
We are in general not subtle, and we are also quite loud. We talk about a lot of things- politics, movies, sports, sex, policies, philosophies. Some guy would indiscreetly talk about girls he finds sexy, among a lot of other things we talk about. Girls usually pick up that single sentence, which they find extremely offensive, and stereotype guys as sexual predators. Consider a guy and a girl who know each other quite well- they could be friends, relatives, be in a relationship or are just neighbors. Sex would always be in a guy's mind, and at some point or the other, the girl may see that. That only adds to what girls think about guys- sex is the only thing guys think about.
The fact is, we think about a lot of other things but they are not of much interest to girls. The gen things we say are mundane, nothing special, and always go unnoticed. But sex, however low priority it may be, however rarely it is talked about, catches the attention of girls and hence the perception.

2) A transcendental beauty:
I say transcendental because, for a guy, nothing else compares to the beauty of a woman- not sceneries, not paintings, not the cute faces of kids, not majestic animals, .. nothing. Sometimes guys may find some moves in sports to be very beautiful, but those things come and go. The beauty of a lady, that is something that stays in a guy's mind for a long long time. When we see a girl and find that she's gorgeous, we usually stop thinking of her as a person. All of her qualities- good or bad, are totally forgotten. She could be the rudest and the dumbest girl ever, it doesn't matter. When she's there in front of us, we think only about her beauty. When we think of her, her beauty is all we notice.
Being beautiful is not just about the color of a girl's skin, its different for different guys. Sometimes its the way she conducts herself, the way she talks or smiles or laughs or walks, the look in her eyes, sometimes its her figure, sometimes the way she dresses. Whatever it is, that is the only thing that matters to a guy. The girl's beauty is held way above everything else, we crave to see her, meet her, talk to her. Guys do all kinds of things just to be noticed by the girl, so that if she notices the guy, she may want to spend time with him.
If a beautiful girl walks by, we can do nothing but admire the beauty, we can't take our eyes off her, the world stops. That's why a lot of times guys are found just staring at girls. The girl may find it offensive, but it is meant as a compliment. Against the backdrop of the few sexual comments on some girls, this admiration of a lady's beauty is almost always seen by girls as "checking them out".
We admire a beautiful lady for a long time, forget about everything else about her, do whatever she wants us to do just so that we get to spend a little time with her. The ladies are like goddesses, not to be judged, not to be bad-mouthed, not to be embarrassed, not to be denied any kind of service, but only to be admired and worshiped. But after sometime- days or weeks or months or even years, when the guy either takes her for granted, or when he's frustrated that he doesn't get to see her anymore, or she gets a boyfriend or gets married, or he talks to his friends about something or whatever else, that guy starts to look at the girl as a person. The dream world he built around her shatters to pieces, the lady he had seen as an object of perfection is now just another person with all kinds of defects, and its hard to make peace with that. Every quality in her that he does not like, starts to hurt the guy. All her mistakes are now magnified.
Once the guy starts seeing the girl as just another person, he would think about everything he did to woo her. Instead of accepting that it was him who decided to do all that stuff to win her over, he blames the girl for being arrogant and using him. He doesn't understand why the girl did not choose him over the others, he cannot think that he may not be good enough for her. He starts comparing himself with any guy she goes out with. His ego strongly confirms to him that the other guy is just a douchebag. Like the jackal that couldn't reach the grapes, the guy ends up believing that the girl's a bitch. This happens with a lot of guys and we end up stereotyping all girls as arrogant bitches who think very high of themselves.

Breaking Plateaus in Squat and Bench Press

2013-03-22T07:19:00.000-07:00

(Note: This post has turned out to be the most viewed post on my blog. I strongly testify to the routine I suggest here, and it is a definite ball-buster. I am curious to know how many people actually implement the routine I suggest. I am a little suspicious that a lot of people read this post only in hope of finding some tweak or short-cut, and do not actually go for such a non-orthodox routine. So, please drop a comment if you have implemented this routine, or a variation, along with your gains. )

Plateaus are very common in Weightlifting. I have only been training for about 4.5 years, so I'm not sure if I can label my no-gain periods as plateaus. Most of the time, I wasn't focusing on any single lift and hence it hadn't improved. Especially my squats- I squat throughout the year with a frequency of about twice a week. And yet my gains did not reflect my training- I have been improving about 10-12kg per year. The slow improvement is quite frustrating. What I write now is the routine I used to speed up my gains. Although I haven't used it to break through a plateau, I believe the same can be used to break plateaus. First, I'll briefly mention the gains I'm talking about.
In 2009, my max squat was 100kg. In 2010, my max squat was 110kg, in 2011 it was 117.5kg. In April 2012, I hit a max of 127.5kg in a Powerlifting competition.
In my 9th semester (Aug-Nov 2012), I was focused on Olympic lifting. I did not hit a max squat during the summer. The improvement in my lifts from August 15 to November 5 was:
Back squat: 130kg to 150kg
Front squat: 115kg to 132.5kg
Push press: 70kg to 87kg
Power snatch: 70kg to 77kg
Power clean: 90kg to 97kg
Snatch: 80kg to 92kg
Clean: 105kg to 117kg
Jerk: 105kg to 117kg
Even after these significant gains, I was hungry for more improvement. Instead of going easy on the intensity, I maintained it through November. Around December 10, I injured a knee (still recovering from it) and a rhomboid (recovered at the end of January)
During this time, my bodyweight went from 73kg to 77kg, which is kind of inevitable.

My bench press max was 80kg in 2010, 85kg in 2011, and 82.5kg in 2012. I do bench press only from January to mid-April. The rest of the year, I never do bench press, except some close grip bench press 2-3 times a month. On January 10th this year, I benched 80kg. But in the first week of March, I benched 95kg for 2 reps and 99kg for 1 rep.

During both periods, my improvements were quite significant for me. In 2.5 months, I improved more than what I would usually improve in an year.
Please keep in mind that I have been training for 4 years when I tried my new routine. Such routines may not be suited for beginners and must be used only in times of desperation.

I once read this somewhere (not the exact lines, but with the same gist)-
"How much would you usually improve on your squat in a month? 5 lb? 10 lb? What if someone came along and kidnapped your family and said that they would be released only if you improved 50lb on your squat in 1 month, or else they will kill your family? Would you still squat only once a week? F**k that, you'll be squatting every freaking day. You would either gain 50lb in that month, or kill your legs trying to do that."
"A lot of people talk about why its not good to squat more than once or twice a week. But look at factory workers, or workers in construction and in mines. They lift some serious weights. In the first few months, they may find it very taxing on themselves. But later on, they get used to it. They get used not only to lifting heavy loads, but also to lifting them everyday. You can do the same to your squat or your bench press. If you start squatting everyday, your body will get used to squatting everyday."

So, between August and November 2012, I started squatting 4 times a week instead of my usual 2 times a week. I cycled the intensity and reps. One day I would do 105kg for 3 reps, one day I'd do 100kg for 5 reps, one day I'd do 115kg for 2 reps, or 120kg for 1 rep. Sometimes front squat, sometimes back squat. But I kept squatting in every training session. I did good mornings and push presses on alternate days, with the same approach - varying intensity and reps. I did the same on my pulls. Usually I'd do snatch or clean pulls only once or twice a week, I started doing pulls 4 days a week. I trained for about 15-20 days like this. The following week, I dropped down on the volume- only singles upto 120kg, and squatting only twice a week. I took 3-4 days of rest after my previous squat session, and boom, I hit a max after that. 2 cycles of this routine, and I hit 150kg back squat and 87kg push press.

To summarize the routine:
1) First 15 days: Perform the exercise more often- 4 or 5 times a week. Cycle the load and the reps between 5 reps at 80%, 3 reps at 85%, and singles at 92%, all of them for multiple sets. Maintain a sufficiently high volume. Expect to feel like shit after the two sessions.
2) Next 7 days: Reduce the frequency of the exercise to twice a week. Reduce the volume drastically. Hit heavy singles- around 90% -95% for 3 to 5 sets.
3) Next 5 days: The second or third day after the previous session, do the exercise with very light weights for very low volume- 3-5 sets of 3-5 reps each at 50% should do. Two more days after this, attempt your max.
For a week after your max attempt, train with light weights- 50-60%. Go for another cycle if you dare.

Do not start on this routine right after a break from training. I have left out a lot of details such as warm-up, rest periods, assistance works, diet, etc.. This routine is not intended for beginners, and I expect anyone with a few years of training experience to fill out the details depending on their goals, conditioning and weaknesses.

Notes of caution:
1) There is a strong reason for not training like this through out the year- there is an increased chance of injury, and you'll hate going to the gym. So attempt this only in times of desperation.
2) When training with a team, it'll be very hard to use an exclusive routine. Adapt it accordingly.
3) In routines like this, weights must be properly chosen. They must be light enough to allow you to train continuously for 8-10 sessions, but heavy enough to stimulate growth.
4) Its very easy to give up with these kinda routines- after 3-4 sessions you may not even want to set foot in the gym. You must go through that phase and keep training.
5) Attempt this only if you can listen to your body. There is a fine line between massive gains and serious injury, ensure that you can differentiate them.

I did get injured, but about a month after the gains I mentioned. I was preparing for a competition due to be held on December 20. My training from November 25 to December 10 was unforgiving. My body was already screwed up, and I was doing 110kg cleans and 80kg snatches everyday (and training 3 times in 2 days, as opposed to 4 times in 7 days). It was just bad management on my part. But the routine I mentioned was very good.

The above is all about my routine from Aug-Nov 2012. During Jan-March 2013 I used a similar routine, plus one addition, to add 15kg to my bench press. I benched 4-6 days a week. I alternated heavy sessions (80kg for singles or 70kg for 3 reps, multiple sets) with dynamic sessions (40kg or 45kg for 10 sets of 3 reps). I hit 95kg for 2 reps and 99kg for a single during the routine itself. The difference between this routine and the one I used for squats was the dynamic work- sets of 3 fast-reps at 50%.
I didn't build up to a max as I'd usually do for a competition or as I did for my squat. The basic idea for this routine is based on what Louie Simmons uses at Westside Barbell (google it up), and the one I explained earlier (of squatting everyday).

I didn't try anything new. I took principles of periodization, high frequency training and westside barbell's conjugate training and mixed them all up. I was training with a team and hence couldn't try any particular training routine exclusively. I had to adapt, and I experimented with this routine. Fortunately, it was a great success for me.

A beginner's journey through research

2013-03-22T05:44:00.002-07:00

With 2 more months left before I have to finish my Dual Degree Project (DDP), I am now in a restless position. I have always been interested in my work, but I procrastinate a lot. My work is computational. I have written codes for two techniques, both part of my DDP, by January. Since then I have just been debugging my codes and modifying my approach. I now have proper codes and accurate results, but the results are not what I have expected. I'm now left with only one option- to tweak my approach in whatever ways I can till I can make some sense out of my results. If this were a textbook problem, I would have had some feel for the answer and tried to work towards that. But with my DDP, not even my guide knows what the answer would be, and so goes on my search for sense.

I have taken up a decent number of projects in my insti life- a few experiments and models for course work, some simulations, hazaar codes, and three big ones -
1) An SOE (Spirit of engineering) project (sems 2 - 5)
2) Internship at GE (Summer 2011)
3) DDP ( July 2012 - present)
And all of my course projects, I did myself.
As I'm now clueless about how to proceed, and pretty frustrated for being in such a situation, I was reflecting on the way I've approached my project so far and realized that there is a common trend among my approaches to projects. In this post, I'll outline that approach. It may help other beginners who are about to start taking on new projects, and hopefully I may realize something I've been missing as I put it in words.

Phase 1: Groundwork, reading
The most boring part. I'm very enthued to do something but I know very little about it. Sometimes, as in the case of my internship, I'm not even aware of the problem. I do know that reading some stuff will help me later. Reading things when needed has always been more appealing to me. I'd just glance through the textbooks, just to know what it is all about, without trying to remember anything. Later, when I am faced with the real problem, I come back to the textbook and read the relevant part thoroughly.

Phase 2: Let's do this s**t
The problem is introduced. I think I understand what the issue. I lay down a strategy to attack it and get to work. I would be quite sure about the outcome when I start working. This phase ends as quickly as it begins

Phase 3: Problems, problems
I get stuck. Sometimes I can't get results - code doesn't work, code gives infinity or NaN, experimental setup does nothing, Simulation won't start, software won't install, software won't run, and so on and on... Sometimes I get results that are garbage. The strategy I was so confident about cups badly.

Phasae 4: Loss of enthu, infinite procrastination
After the initial enthu and the spectacular cupping, with no obvious route to take, I start losing enthu. I'm so pained with the cupping that I don't try to look for ways to make it work and desperately, but with huge time delays, keep trying the same thing over and over.

Phase 5: More reading, problem definition
After a lot of procrastination, I would lazily explore other options. When searching for new ways to attack the problem, I usually end up questioning my understanding of the problem itself. I would then set down to clearly define the problem itself and what I expect from it. This will be accompanied by a round of reading existing literature to see if I can relate my problem to something that already has been studied. At the end of this phase, I'd gain a better understanding of the problem and a better appreciation of the challenges it offers.
A lot of times, phase 5 is accelerated by talking to others- mentors, guides, colleagues, etc.. Most of the time, what I would realize in phase 5 is that I did not pay enough attention to detail- to the assumptions usually. Like in 11th or 12th I might have sometimes applied conservation of mechanical energy when there is friction in the system. In the context of my DDP, I usually work assuming that the system is close to a linear system without trying to verify that assumption. Or when I get results that don't seem to make sense, I do not analyze them properly.
Bad results tell a lot more about the system than results that seem meaningful. They usually tell us why the system is not ideal, or to which parameter it is most sensitive. Analyzing them is a very important part of research, but I rarely do that out of laziness.

Phases 2 to 5 repeat a few times, with each round giving me better insight into the problem (irrespective of whether I'm actually getting closer to solving the problem or not). Phase 5 usually ends prematurely. Once I realize that my previous approach was wrong and that there is another route I can take, I go back to phase 2 without completely considering the results of the previous round. That is usually a very big problem, but its very hard to fight the drive to try a new, promising, approach.
I do not know what comes after phase 5. I have just realized that in the last 5 years, I have never gotten past phase 5. I have never had problems with classroom problems or the simple tutorial questions. But I'm yet to solve a real problem. I had given up on my SOE project, left my internship before I could see the project through completition, and am still working on my DDP. There were several course assignments that were quite challenging. In my 9th sem, 2 courses required some computational assignments to be completed and another course required me to make an experimental measurement. Aerospace Engineering Department at IITM has some very good professors who give interesting assignments. My course projects gave results that were sufficiently satisfactory to earn a good grade. Throughout my coursework and with my 3 big projects, I have always ended up appreciating the problem far better than when I started working on it. But completely exploring the problem- that is something I haven't done yet.
With my DDP, I am now hopeful that I will see it to completion. I have already been through phases 2 to 5 atleast 5 times (I am using a technique called 'Dynamic Mode Decomposition'. Right now the code I'm running is called "dmd_mixlayer_ver7" - the 7th version since January). I believe I have a fair understanding of the problem. Hopefully I'll have explored it fully before I pass out.

Yoga and Meditation

2013-03-04T03:15:00.000-08:00

A yoga workshop was conducted in insti on 3rd March. It was announced in smail and I registered for it (it was free). I went to the place and there were about 30 people there. The instructor asked each of us why we were there. People had different, but related, reasons - to learn yoga, to get toned, to lose weight, to get healthy, for a change in their usual physical exercise, etc.. I wasn't there for any of those reasons. I was just curious. Yoga has been around for a millenium may be. It has spread to the west too and quite a lot of people practice it. I wanted to know why so many people believe in it, and maybe pick up something interesting from it. There had to be something in it if so many people approved it for so long (but then people blindly follow religion too, so I was skeptical). When I was in 6th grade, I practiced yoga for a couple of weeks in my school, before karate appealed more to me and I switched to it. Unfortunately, the karate classes in that school were packed after some 6 months after I joined.

In the yoga workshop, after the usual "we all have problems, yoga will help you to fix them, it will help you with this, it will help you in that, etc..", the instructor started us up on some warm up exercises - stretching and rotating wrists, elbows, shoulders, knees, etc... Then came the famous Suryanamaskara. With all the tightness accumulated from weight training and the loss in conditioning due my laziness in the last 2 years, I found the asanas a little uncomfortable, but I went through them. After 2 hours, I felt I understood what this was all about. I know its not fair to judge an art based on just a 2 hour intro session, but I believe the rest is all an extension of whatever was taught in those 2 hours.

Apparently, yoga is a series of exercises involving static stretching and bodyweight isometrics performed with synchronized breathing. In addition to that, the practitioner's mind becomes peaceful due to the slow pace and focused stretching and breathing. And there are a lot of asanas and mastering them all is quite challenging. There seems to be a spiritual side to it too, but I'm not really interested in that. Ofcourse, as with any such art, a lot of discipline and rules for lifestyle are involved.

So, after the 2 hours, I decided that if anyone ever asks me about yoga, I'd definitely recommend it. It involves a fair bit of exercise, good breathing and gives a peace of mind. A pretty decent package. For a guy who's just lying in his room for most of the time, it must work wonders. But I didn't find anything that may be useful to me. At some point or the other in the last 4 years, I had already done all of the stretching that was taught. There are a lot of exotic asanas that involve a lot of flexibility and strength at uncomfortable positions, but I do not expect them to carry over to any of the things I'm interested in. So, for a committed sportsman who knows a fair bit about stretching, muscle mechanisms and injuries, yoga won't be very appealing. It is okay to try it for a change of pace, but I do not expect any significant returns. Ofcourse, there is the improvement in breathing and the peace of mind. But then, I get these from a set of heavy squats or an all-out sprint too, and they make may stronger and faster.

Then we had a break for lunch. After the lunch, we had some breathing exercises (go for a long run, or put a sprint. Nothing beats that). A lecture on healthy diet (I don't care much for that, I'm okay with eating whatever I can find, unless I'm on a strict diet aimed at something). How asanas can affect your behavior and thinking (I felt the claims to be greatly exaggerated). Then some general discussion which I didn't find interesting. Finally, we came to meditation. The meditation, according to the instructor, is not a part of yoga per say, but she wanted to teach us.

Meditation has always intrigued me. I hear a lot of claims on it and always wonder how it can be so effective. So we all sit down and close our eyes. The instructor says things that usually hypnotists may say, like "you'll feel relaxed now, you are fully stress free, etc...". Before we started the meditation, the instructor told us that the mind has a frequency - 6 corresponding to our normal life, 8 to a stressed state, and 4 to a time when we're consciously not very aware, but are in sync with our subconscious. I understand that the mind may be divided into the conscious and the subconscious (the intuitive part as I understand it, nothing magical/spiritual). The instructor said that if we can tune down our mind to the frequency of 4, we can get into contact with the universe around us and reach wherever we want to. I didn't believe the theory, and as an engineer, was itching to ask for how this frequency is defined and also the units in which it's measured. But I decided not to argue, so I just listened.

Towards the end of the meditation, she (the instructor) asked us to tell ourselves, not out loud, that we will make whatever changes we wish to make in ourselves. She asked us to fix this deeply in our subconscious. She said that if we did this kind of meditation enough times, it would get strongly fixed in our mind. I didn't find it new at all. We tell ourselves the same thing enough times, we start to believe in it. And belief in ourselves can be very effective. An incident from the summer before last comes to my mind. I was in Bangalore, training in my office gym. My squat had hit a plateau at around 100 or 105kg. A friend of mine, who dropped out of insti, was telling me about a training routine he was following and in the conversation he said something like, "squatting is all in the mind. If you believe you can't squat more than your old max, you won't. But if you believe you can push your max, you definitely will". After 3-4 days I decided to squat heavy. I was a little scared but decided to to give an all out effort and not back down - I pushed my max to 115kg, an improvement that would usually take me about 3-4 months. So what we were asked to do as part of meditation is nothing new, it is a very old principle- if you want to do something, you must start believing in it. Half efforts rarely succeed.

This brings me to the very last part of the meditation. The instructor asked us to visualize white light all around us, and I did. Then she asked us to think of "a lot of positive energy coming into you from the universe, the universe is helping you to get strong". All my focus and peace of mind broke at that point. I tried hard to regain focus, but the best I could do was think about dragon ball Z, how the characters in that anime get very strong by taking in stuff from the universe. After a while, the meditation session ended. The instructor went on telling others how the universe cares about each of us and will help us if we can connect to it through meditation.

Some time last year, I was in full mood to watch documentaries and started downloading a lot of them on LAN. There was someting called - 'The secret'. Expecting some kind of medieval conspiracy, I downloaded it. It started with mentioning the names of a lot of thinkers, scientists and politicians and claimed they all knew the secret, and the documentary was going to give it to me. Then came a series of people claiming to be quantum physicists, psycologists, etc... who reiterated the power of the secret and how the life of the audience can change by the knowledge of it. I was curious. After watching it for 10 more minutes, when the secret was slowly being revealed, I closed the video, unable to watch any further. It was the same thing that was told to us at the end of the meditation - if I want to do something very badly, the whole universe conspires to give it to me. I only have to wish for it very hard. Though this was not mentioned in the meditation session, the documentary went on to say that our thoughts attract things towards us, so whatever we think about too often, it just happens- good or bad. So they say we must always think positively.

All the time, when watching that documentary and during the meditation, only 1 thing kept flashing in my mind- 'The universe is like 300 billion years old, many billion light years wide. Why does it give a damn about any of us?' I was very tempted to say this to the instructor, but decided against getting into an argument in her workshop. I did get into one though. She asked if any of us believed that we were not controlled by something outside ourself. I said I believe I have freewill, so I did not believe I was controlled. Then she went on to give examples of luck, failures despite best efforts, etc, trying to show that I don't have full control of myself, or atleast that's what it seemed like to me. I decided not to argue further. Actually, I wasn't even listening. That was the end of the workshop and I was trying to address the reason I attended the workshop. What is this all about? Why do so many people believe in it? After some thought, I reached a conclusion.

The exercise and breathing part, it obviously benefits all those people not involved in a lot of physical activity, or those that don't know how to stretch in case of spasms and injuries. The meditation, well it gives people some peace of mind. A little time to reflect on life, make resolutions and keep telling themselves what they want to do. The thing in the end, about the whole universe trying to help us, I didn't buy that. But then, people don't care for reason. People who meditate are usually those who are stressed out. Spiritual gurus and saints meditate too, but then I think they are just jobless people not contributing to society at all, and instead living off others' hard work. If someone tells a depressed or a stressed out guy that there is hope for him and that the entire universe wants him to succeed, that's a lot of good news. They'd probably become more confident and work better, believing that they have the whole universe helping them and hence their problems can be overcome.

So, bottomline, for a normal person who isn't skeptical and believes everything their instructors teach, yoga and meditation can do wonders. For a person who already knows his stuff, they don't make any difference and are just plain old principles given in an illusive package with lots of exotic names. If anyone asks for my opinion, I'd definitely recommend yoga and meditation to them.