I must admit I am a skeptic and even if I can get past the “the MIT guys have found a neat way to fund a big party”, there are so many Physics issues that will make this a near impossibility - any possible future will irrevocably change the future, a time machine can only be a closed timelike path, which means you gotta have a time machine BEFORE you can hold a timetravel party, the timeline would split making the future universe parallel to the present one, the undeniable grandfather paradox yada yada yada. In fact, what would be more interesting are some *good* arguments *for* the convention.

But as always, innocent until proven guilty, all concepts are pondered over till proven utterly idiotic - lets be open minded - and here I am adding two cents to the publicity!

If I hadn’t already made plans for the weekend, I sure would have taken my aids cure and poverty eraser to this ancient convention - i hear the ancients still don’t have those basic necessities - oiewuht! (that’s ‘dammit’, from the future - for all you prehistoric readers)!

I was clearing up some old files on my computer today and came across an old compilation of origin stories I had. We all have wondered, at some point or the other in our lives, how the hell did all this begin? While Science is still searching for definitive answers, we have very many colorful mythologies that attempt to explain our origins. Beliefs about the origin of human beings fall into three main types: (1) they have always existed on earth, (2) they did not always exist but were created in some way, and (3) they previously existed, but in another world, and had somehow to be brought to this one. If you examine the several origin myths in the world, there are many underlying similarities and common threads. But I won’t kill the joy further by summarising or analysing, as there is beauty to be found in details.

I have ditched some myths which din’t catch my fancy anymore, but the more interesting ones from my old list are here..

Greek:
In the beginning there was a period of Chaos, when air, water, and matter were combined in a formless mixture. On this floated a Cosmic Egg, from which arose Gaea (Earth) and Uranus (Sky). These deities created the earth and its creatures and the Sun, Moon, and Stars.

Navajo:
In the beginning there were Holy People, supernatural and sacred, who lived below ground in 12 lower worlds. A great flood underground forced the Holy People to crawl to the surface of the earth through a hollow reed, where they created the world. Changing Woman gave birth to the Hero Twins, called “Monster Slayer” and “Child of the Waters” who had many adventures. Earth Surface People, mortals, were created, and First Man and First Woman were formed from ears of white and yellow corn.

Babylonian (or the flood myth):
Certain myths are all but universal, and their extensive distribution attests to their great antiquity. The best example of this is the famous Flood myth. The Flood story recorded in the Bible was by no means original with the ancient Hebrews, but was derived by them from the earlier Gilgamesh Epic of the Babylonians. But the Babylonian version in turn drew on a pre-existing Flood myth that no doubt went back thousands of years earlier. So old is the Flood myth, in fact, that it has had a chance to diffuse far and wide. Indeed, it is known to practically every human society from aboriginal Australia to Tierra del Fuego.

Chinese:
The first living thing was P’an Ku. He evolved inside a gigantic cosmic egg, which contained all the elements of the universe totally intermixed together. P’an Ku grew by about 10 feet each day. As he grew he separated the earth and the Sky within the egg. At the same time he gradually separated the many opposites in nature male and female, wet and dry, light and dark, wet and dry, Yin and Yang. These were all originally totally commingled in the egg. While he grew he also created the first humans. After 18,000 years the egg hatched and P’an Ku died from the effort of creation. From his eyes the sun and moon appeared, from his sweat, rain and dew, from his voice, thunder, and from his body all the natural features of the earth arose.

Japanese:
In Japanese Shinto-mythology, the primordial sky, the god of all that is light and heavenly. Izanagi (”the male who invites”) and his wife and sister Izanami (”the female who invites”) were given the task of creating the world. Standing on Ama-no-ukihashi (the floating bridge of the heavens), they plunged a jewel crested spear into the ocean. When they pulled it free, the water that dripped from the spear coagulated and formed the first island of the Japanese archipelago. Here the first gods and humans were born. When his wife died giving birth, Izanagi went to the underworld to retrieve her, but she refused to come back with him and they parted forever. When Iganami returned from the underworld, he started the first cleaning rites. He washed his left eye and thus created the sun goddess Amaterasu. When he washed his right eye, the moon goddess Tsuki-Yumi came forth. From his nose he created Susanowo, the god of the seas and the storms.

Egyptian:
The Egyptian creation myth as related in the Pyramid Texts is one example of creation from nothing. Atum is the first god who creates his brother and sister Shu and Tefnut. Together with her consort Shu (Air) she was produced by Re from his own body by masturbation. By Shu she became the mother of Seb (Earth) and Nut (Sky).

Polynesian:
Some Polynesian peoples, for example, believe that the sea was primeval, and that the land was created by a god, Tane, who drove to the bottom and came up with mud from which to fashion it. The Norse gods Odin, Vill, and Ve made the world from the body of the giant Ymir, using his blood for oceans, his bones for mountains, his hair for trees, and so on. It is not unusual for several gods or culture heroes to be involved in the creation, each contributing his or her portion to the final structure.

Golan:
Golan says about two initial mythological characters: The Goddess of Sky and her husband - The Lord of Underworld. The latter one had two images: undeground - in the form of a snake or a beast, and heavenly - in the form of an eagle (when he flew up to his wife). Golan also thinks that The God of Earth (personified by bull) existed separately from The Lord of Underworld. Besides God of Earth there was the Cultural Hero (in form of ram or stag). He was venerated as an ancestor and protector of people. This hypothesis was confirmed by Golan in terms of numerous examples. But he proves the existence of some general religion in the Neolithic Age.

Sometimes I wonder - If I had no myths at all, if I were born into this world and no one told me anything about the origin of the world, and if I were the one to create the first myth of origins, what would it be? Alas, my mind has already been stretched and will not regain its original ‘innocence’. But I will add this one to the list of impossible experiments I would like to do - do a ‘Charmed‘-like spell to erase memory of any origins myths from all humans in the world, make them write out what they intuitively think is the real origin story. If I find one common underlying theme, I would be very intrigued.

Who said men cant get their gifts right?

Thanks to the number of people who get dooced, this post will be intentionally vague. And I will reflect on a slightly off tangent, yet related topic - the joy I find in numbers. There are various reasons why humans have an inclination towards numbers. The more well known one is their inherent beauty, which is the realm of theoretical mathematicians. While I get to deal with such magnificence only in my free time, my choice of career has exposed me to a whole new, lesser known genre of mathematical beauty - the one due to the stories they can tell.

Many people I know have told me that they would find an excel sheet full of font 8 numbers as appealing as a dip in a cold pool in the middle of winter. I guess it is an acquired taste and true appreciation comes only with time. Once you have passed the threshold into kingdom numerale, stories start jumping out at you every time you look at data. Patterns, trends, unexpected stories and ultimately decisions are what you see in a page full of numbers from 1 to 9. It is amazing that major business decisions are based on just the arrangement of the 9 digits, which appear almost random to an untrained eye. When I used to visit my father in his Histopathology lab, one of the posters that left a lasting impression in my mind said “The eyes do not see what the mind does not know”. I guess it has taken me over two decades to grasp its true meaning.

The sadistic pleasure of seeing someone else struggle to draw the same conclusions as you did from the same old data sheet is just one of the unforgivable sins that an analyst allows herself from time to time. I have been told before that I am nuts to think data is ‘beautiful’, so I don’t expect everyone to get it - but I believe anyone who has relished the joy of realisation - the joy of understanding - the joy of grasping an elegant solution - be it in any field, will be able to identify with my feelings. Its not that I think my job is anything special - like any other, it has its ups and downs, with a few mundane moments of routine intricately and inseparably interwoven into the exhilarating moments of intellectual satisfaction. Just that today was one of those them days when I was reminded of why I do what I do.

There are limitations to what human beings can do, but there are no limitations to what we can achieve through the strength of our minds. What makes us different from the rest of the living forms is our intellectual prowess. The answers to the deepest questions of humanity will not be found in laboratories or in high speed particle accelerators. It is hidden in the depths of our own consciousness. Sure, we might need fancy gadgets to prove to our peers that we have found the answers. Because, without going through the same thought process themselves, the only way they will ‘get you’ is if you can ‘prove’ it. But they are not necessities in the pursuit of truth, they are only necessary to prove that you have won the pursuit of truth. Just like you don’t need the white string at the end of the race to win the race, but only to prove that you won the race. In our quest for answers, we should reflect more and act less.

After several years in engineering and computer science schools and in a career as a Risk Analyst, I was beginning to wonder if my brain had decided to go for a sex change. I had tried to alleviate my fears by taking whatever free brain identity tests I could lay my hands on the Internet. While test after test told me that I had a right brain inclination, a more masculine characteristic, deep inside I knew that couldn’t be right. So finally I came across a test that I believe. Turns out I am an extreme left brainer!!

This Sex I.D test offered on the bbc site is good, not because it gave me the results I expected, but because it is detailed enough to have a good chance at possibly accurate results. They use techniques used by professionals, albeit slightly modified to fit the online mode of testing. Another good point of the test is that it is explains each aspect of the test, and not just give you a single score and result at the end, with a “Go Figure” attitude. And, apparently your statistics go into contributing to some serious research (since its on the bbc site, I will buy that). Well, the test is a bit long and you may need a confused brain identity to actually be motivated enough to go through the whole thing. But then you have the option of doing it in bits and pieces (and some of the tests are fun), saving the results and coming back later. And the test could be shortened quite a bit, if you decide to not give information about yourself and thus not contribute to valuable scientific research.

Enough said! I enjoyed the test. Hope you will too.

(1)My own future:
One of the main criticisms about the Global Conciousness Project and the use of the Black box to predict a world event is that there are so many events happening in the world at any given time - so it must be easy to relate a set of data points to some event. Now this is a very valid argument. Moreover, the definition of a ‘world event’ or an ‘event’, for that matter, is very subjective. What maybe eventful to me may not be eventful to someone living in Africa. I may not even come to know about a major political turmoil that happened, say in South America. So who is to decide what is an event? However, if the researchers at Princeton want to argue that the human subconcious can predict the future of the world, they should also be able to reproduce it at an individual level. Along the same lines of logic they have used, can I train my subconcious to predict my own future? In this case, there is no ambiguity in the definition of an event. I ‘influence’ the egg. I decide what an event is. And if the egg can read my thoughts (about the future) and show it to me now, the egg works! Feels kinda sad that I need an egg to read my own mind! Hmm.. we have a new strain of shrinks? I am not a sceptic, but just couldn’t resist the dig.

(2) One global conciousness is not a new concept:
The central theme of the global conciousness is not a new concept. This was exactly what was propounded centuries ago in the Bhagavad Gita, which is a very revered book that many Hindus, including me, still hold on to. The Gita is quite clear on what it wants to say (my simplified interpretation): At the beginning of the world, all beings are created from one central source. At the end of it, they go back to that one source. If you die and you had understood the true meaning during your lifetime, you attain nirvana and become one with the one global conciousness. If you dont, you are reborn again and again, till you eventually ‘get it, duh’. But the point is, you share one conciousness with everyone else around you. You are just one small figment of the great collectivity ( as I write this I, am beginning to wonder if the Gita had anything to do with the rise of communism).

(3) Data can lie, often very convincingly:
I am not a sceptic to this theory. As much as I am a logical person, I intuitively believe that it is possible to predict the future. I have had a few, very clear ( god forbid, I never want to experience them ever again) deja vu’s. Several astrologers (like a good Indian, I have visited a fair share of astrologers, admittedly more because of intellectual curiosity about the paranormal) have predicted events in my life with amazing accuracy. And more importantly, they have generally been accurate in predicting my state of mind, which has never failed to surprise me. And from a physics perspective, if time is the fourth dimension, shouldn’t you be able to travel back and forth like we can in the other three dimensions. It seems more difficult to believe that the fourth dimension is different from the other three, than to believe that it is similar. So, I dont have problems believing the results per se. But I am a sceptic when it comes to the methodology. A random number generator with 1s and 0s over years - that is a lot of data points over a very small range. It seems to me like data that is difficult to read - and data that can be easily manipulated. Mind you, I am not accusing anyone of anything. I have full faith in the integrity of all involved. But I used to work as an analyst and one of the first things that I learned was that you can always make the data say what you want it to. If you dont believe me, read the book ‘How to Lie with Statistics’ by Darrell Huff. And sometimes it is not a matter of intentional effort. When you want to see a particular result, it is possible that your mind subconciously picks on that trend and only that trend. This is nobody’s fault - it is just an extension of the saying ‘The eyes can only see what the mind wants it to’. I would be hard-pressed to believe that the people who want to make us believe about the powers of human subconcious to predict the future cannot believe that the same subconcious is powerful enough to cloud an individual’s and possibly several individuals’ judgement. And another issue is just how random is this random number generator? Isnt it mathematically impossible to achieve perfect randomness, in which case doesnt this methodology rely on pseudo random numbers? So, this is one set of data I would be very careful in analysing and interpreting and drawing conslusions from.

(4) The future of the future teller:
I think the future of the future teller depends on how open the human race can be to new ideas. To a person who lived thousands of years ago, travelling to the moon must have sounded as impossible, if not more improbable, than predicting the future. But we humans have achieved that land mark. So, why are our scientists still afraid of being ridiculed? ‘To make matters even more intriguing, Prof Bierman says that other mainstream labs have now produced similar results but are yet to go public. ‘They don’t want to be ridiculed so they won’t release their findings,’ he says.’ Now that I think is sad. I like to believe that we have moved past the age of Coppernicus. Or havent we? Human beings are sceptics by nature. But lets forget that for the moment. May be the ideas are wrong. But lets not brand it that, till we have proven so. So, lets be optimistic. Open minded. Ready to listen. And slow to ridicule. And who knows, we may just be able to read the future enough to know whether we will be able to read the future in the future.

Whatever be the reason, I am glad. I have always loved Physics - it is a very beautiful and elegant branch of Science. I think I will celebrate this Physics year in my own way by catching up on all those Physics books I have always wanted to read and never found the time to. And I will blog more about Physics too!

While a World Year of Physics may mean different things to different people, London Rapper DJ Vader’s interpretation of the relativity theory sure is the icing on the cake. Check out the lyrics (an excerpt) of his song inspired by Einstein:

Einstein (Not Enough Time)

Intro
This is a Vader Crew Killer, Bass Invaderz Production, seen.
Biggin’ up Mr Size XL on this one.
This tune is dedicated to my girl, seen.

Chorus x3
All I wanna do is spend bare time with my girl before I go from this world
And all I wanna do is chat my rhyme
But I can’t do that because there’s not enough time.

Verse 1
Like Einstein; he had lyrics a hundred years ago to make you realise in your mind that there’s not enough time
To all the peeps out there try to learn to be kind
Allow the beef and appreciate the space of time
Listen to the Vader, Size, passing through like Warp Factor 9
Delivering the message out there from the legend Einstein.

Lets all join in this recognition of Physics and its contributions to make our world a better place..and celebrate in our very own way!