Kurt Vonnegut at his wry best.  Charts familiar storyline plots to their graphic details here.

The most popular story in our civilisation … We love to hear this story, every time it’s retold somebody makes another million dollars. He begins at the lowest point on the Y axis. “We’re going to start way down here. Worse than that. Who is so low? It’s a little girl. What’s happened? Her mother has died, her father has remarried, a vile-tempered ugly woman with two nasty daughters.” Laughter. “You’ve heard it?”

Thanks Guardian

…the Department of Biotechnology and the U.K.’s Wellcome Trust teamed up in 2008 to create a 5-year, $140 million fellowship program for up to 375 young investigators in India. “Now we’re able to create an environment and mechanisms for postdocs to stay here,” Ayyar says. “You might think this is a small step. But it’s about changing the way people think.”

That is a lot of money invested on new faculty.   Hope India reaps the benefits of this investment.

A general continuum theory for the distribution of hairs in a bundle is developed, treating individual fibers as elastic filaments with random intrinsic curvatures. Applying this formalism to the iconic problem of the ponytail, the combined effects of bending elasticity, gravity, and orientational disorder are recast as a differential equation for the envelope of the bundle, in which the compressibility enters through an “equation of state.” From this, we identify the balance of forces in various regions of the ponytail, extract a remarkably simple equation of state from laboratory measurements of human ponytails, and relate the pressure to the measured random curvatures of individual hairs.

CBC had an interview with Prof. Goldstein that you can listen here;

The study is not a mere academic curiosity.  One of the co-authors is from Unilever and for them this will go a great length in developing hair care products that will help keep that much desired shape in ponytails.

Apparently, China has been in this business of ‘loaning’ pandas for centuries.  The loan comes with a payment, a huge one at it.  Each panda loaned is a million dollars.  And, if during that loan period the girl panda forgot to take the birth control pill, the offspring will belong to China (yet, the medical bills will have to be paid by the loaning country).   International laws do not apply when you do business with china. Apple has finally heeded and initiated an inquiry on labour conditions in Foxconn factories.  But this illegal trade (loan can be classified as a trade, I guess) is by the chinese premier of an endangered species and there is no stopping of China here, I guess.

It is no secret that Harper hates Toronto.  He is promptly consigning those loaned pandas to the Toronto Zoo.  The claim is that this will be a greater attraction in the zoo and will increase awareness of china among the zoo visitors.  From what I heard from an anonymous worker of Toronto Zoo in a local talk radio, they are gearing themselves for a nightmare.  The zoo has to be re-zoned for pandas and the resources have to be reallocated. The problem is Toronto Zoo is already is under severe financial loss and this is most certainly going to break their back.  Mayor Rob Ford (who is ruthlessly against anything that carries ‘public’ in its name – workers, libraries, schools, parks, transit) is cutting the zoo budget in millions.

There are claims that the pandas will be a major attraction and will increase the zoo revenue.  The anonymous zoo employee differs in opinion.  There may be initial increase in visitors due to publicity, but soon it will fade.  Her estimate is that within the first two years the popularity will  decline and then the zoo will be left with these giant cash guzzlers that could potentially break the entire zoo.

Stephen Harper, by the way, is yet to pay for the bills for policing during G20.  He unilaterally thrust G20 upon Toronto which ended as a diaster and now again he is dumping what the Chinese have sold him on Toronto.

If he were really smart, he might have negotiated a reciprocal loan of killer whales from the pacific cost to Beijing aquarium.  That is the size appropriate for the kind heart of us, canadians.  And he should have sent these pandas to his home town of calgary which is flush with cash and Harper’s munificence.

Today, I accidentally stumbled on Gary Day-Ellison’s blog.  Gary was the designer of those cover sets.  He writes;

…I played around with some nice images. Chris Foss produced a classy SF illustration of a spaceship in the shape of a Rebok training shoe. Fate demanded a fish this time. A very small place in North London produced a towel with the legend “Don’t Panic!” woven in. And Douglas had made a self-portrait on his AppleMac. But felt none of them were strong enough to stand alone. Off to our author’s house in Islington. Unable to hear over the most sophisticated sound system I had ever seen we played games with paper. Marketing Gods would call it brain-storming. I chopped copies of the images into pieces. Then settled on cutting each image into four. So by reconfiguring them you see the whole of each image.

Now, here is something that many do not know;

Just out of devilment, the spines, when in chronological order spell out “42″. In Luscher Colour Test colours. Nobody got that.

We knew this.  Of course, Ramanan, Guru, Arulselvan and me spent hours playing with those books. The disappointment of not get this set was compensated later when Ramanan got me the 4-in-1 book – personally autographed for me by DNA. That is for another day.

2. As dean, do you plan to maintain an active research agenda?

YES , Incorrect. You know you have to work summers, right? Besides, we need you to keep the trains running, not write about the epistemology of postcolonial fruit flies or whatever.

NO , Incorrect. Have you no intellectual curiosity? How can you possibly oversee research faculty? They’ll never respect you.

3. Do you believe that students are always right?

YES , Incorrect. Really? Grief over the death of a great-aunt’s best friend’s brother’s cat provides sufficient cause to blow off finals week altogether? A bad hangover is a documented disability? Really?

NO , Incorrect. Ah, you’re one of those people who loved John Houseman in The Paper Chase. You prefer a totalitarian regime with just one authority: you. You obviously fail to value diverse perspectives. You view student-centricity as a sign of weakness. Frankly, you make us sick.

Even if you aren’t aspiring to be a Dean, the questionnaire is still worth your time.  Try it. 

…Though a basket of silverware is provided at each table, when the grilled pork chop or market salad arrives, servers advise customers that they’ll be missing out if they pick up a fork. “Then there are a lot of questions like ‘Am I really supposed to?’ and ‘Is there something else I need?’ ” Mr. Choi said. “But the moment we answer ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ people usually just go for it.”

I have seen this happening a lot.  When I take my friends to Indian or middle eastern restaurants, tell them we traditionally eat with hands and lead them, I have seen almost everyone following.  In every parties that I host at home for my colleagues and friends, everyone is encouraged to eat with hands and invariably everyone does.

One of my uncles once quipped, “Why should I tear that delicious bread with a knife, immobilizing it and shove it down my throat with a ghastly looking weapon called fork”.  For him, to use knife and fork was disrespecting the host who has masterfully crafted the great food.  (Granted, you need spoon for a soup and knives cut the pork).  I am pleasantly surprised Sarah DiGregorio’s article uses that exact term weapon.

“Eating with the hands evokes great emotion,” she said. “It kindles something very warm and gentle and caressing. Using a fork is unthinkable in traditional Indian eating. It is almost like a weapon.”

This brings to an interesting conversation I once had with a close friend when we lived in Glasgow.  During one of her visits to our home, very early in our friendship, we offered her Dosa and suggested that she ate with her fingers.  Reluctantly obliging to our suggestion, she later remarked, “Don’t you think we british are very hygiene conscious?  I am. Almost to the point of being a paranoid.  When I go out to eat, I always wipe the forks and spoons with a paper towel.”  I had to retort, “Well, we seldom leave our hygiene in someone else’s hands.  I always carry with me, what I eat with. I always use soap and water to clean my hands before I eat and use my right hand.”  She later remarked that was a big  lesson in etiquettes and cultural outlooks for her.  I am glad to say that almost after ten years when she visited us in Toronto, she never touched a fork laid on her table,  during her entire weeklong stay.

As DiGregorio points “ ‘Great’ does not have to mean one narrative, the European narrative.”

Personally, I will hate to see a glamour man like Madhavan playing Ramanujan.  Besides he is too old for that. But let the shooting first start.  I have heard the news on Ramanujan’s biopic too many times to believe.

3M display is a 40-inches table with 1080p resolution.  It supports 20 concurrent touches (theoretically up to 60 concurrent touches) and runs on Windows 7. The Verge reports that at CES 2012, the 3M display was running off a Mac Mini.

Microsoft has been touting its Surface technology for a long time.   It looks like the concept of multi-touch interactive table display is finally garnering momentum. Samsung announced its SUR40, a few weeks ago. As the model name suggests it is a 40 inches display at 1920 x 1080 resolution. Samsung’s product is already available in the market.

MultiTaction’s Cell MT550W7 was unveiled at CES 2012 today.  It is a giant 55 inches display.  It uses its own patented optical imaging technology Computer Vision Through Screen method. Though it runs on Windows 7 (upgradable to Windows 8, when available), it is a direct competitor to Microsoft Surface technology.

Sometime at the end of 2010, Pioneer Corporation announced a touch table concept.  I was watching for the commercial product of that.  Pioneer is now marketing it as a classroom board, with a very japanese name Cyberboard.  But it is available only in Japan.

We have an aspiring multi-touch wannabe in Touch Unicom within our department’s entrepreneurship program.  Their focus is not on the hardware, but collaborative workspace software and security.

Perhaps a mention should also be made of Perspective Pixel, that pioneered the concept, with CNN adopting it for its 2008 presidential election telecast, Magic Wall.

It is heartening to see that several events are being organized worldwide on Ramanujan’s 125th anniversary.  I will try to follow and possibly link them here.