Soma Purana

One reads so many books in their lifetime. Most books are so ordinary, you will forget them easily. Some are very good but still you may not be able to recall the title or the author or the general story line. I remember the following books. These books have captivated my mind. Of course, I have to admit, the books I like, you may not like. The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk: I have read this twice and would like to read it again. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger: This is supposed to be for teenagers, but I like it still. The hot zone by Richard Preston: This is a true story and truly is stranger than fiction. I am reading this now again.

I distinctly remember as a 4-year old until I was about seven or so, there used to be a bigger kid in the village who would tease me everyday. He belonged to a "scheduled" caste. I am not an expert on the caste system in India, but let me relate what I know. In my village about 30% of the people belonged to the scheduled castes. There were two scheduled castes - holeru, madigaru - in our village. I have no idea what the difference is between these castes and the higher castes. Both were considered the lowest castes (they were not even allowed to touch the people of higher caste). If a higher caste person gets accidentally touched by a holeru/madigaru person, they would rush off to get a bath and clean themselves. Holeru and madigaru lived in a separate part of the village and could not mix with higher caste. They basically worked as laborers in the farms owned by higher caste folk. I hadn't seen a single well-off or educated lower caste person in my village. It seemed as

When I was small and going to elementary school, I was not spending much time in studying like my brothers and sisters did. My father was particularly concerned about my future. He didn't think I would get a college degree and settle down with a job like my oldest brother Chowdappa did [he was the role model for all of us. He was the first person in the history of the village to complete high school, the first one to get a college degree, and the first one to get a masters degree). I vividly remember my father seriously discussing his plan for me with my mother. His plan was to fund in opening a small cafe in Chinthamani so I could run it and establish my life as a normal person. He abandoned his plan once I completed high school and started my education in engineering.

When I was a child my father ran a cafe. It had some strange characteristics. It was open only for 2 hours, every day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year from 6 AM to 8 AM. It offered only two items, idly and coffee. There were always four workers; my mother who prepared the idly hittu on the previous day (it took a couple of hours), my father who sat at the stove and prepared idly and coffee, one cleaner whose job was to clean the dishes, and one server whose job was to serve the customers. The cleaner and servers jobs were rotational. The very first server was my older brother Radhakrishna and I was the cleaner. We kept these jobs for many years, may be 10 until we left the village to go for higher studies (I went to Bangalore and Radhakrishna went to Chinthamani). After both of us left at the same time, my younger brother Gopala became the server (he was never the cleaner which was considered a lower level job) and Ramamurthy who was younger to Gopala became the cleaner. When Gopala le

I am reading Leonard Susskind's "The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics." A fascinating book. Susskind is a physics professor at Stanford. I started watching some of his video lectures on classical mechanics, relativity, entanglements, etc. He has an extremely captivating style. He has had a long standing battle with Hawking on what happens to information when objects fall into a blackhole. Hawking stated that it is lost, lost forever. Susskind and others including Nobel physicist Hooft did not agree since the basic principle of physics says information is preserved. They came up with this theory of holographic world which explains that the information is preserved in the surface of the horizon of the blackhole. If it is on horizon's surface it should be within the blackhole too since what is in the blackhole is projection of what is on the surface. This whole debate is highly theoretical and hard to understand

I have taught multivariable calculus for three semesters now at MCCC. I love teaching this subject. I had had many Math courses during my engineering days, but I never understood math at conceptual level. I am sure it has to do with the way it is taught in India. Perhaps, now it is changing, hopefully. Technology has its underpinnings in calculus. Real world can be better understood once we master calculus, in particular, vector calculus. I don't remember learning back in my college days the Green's theorem, Stokes' theorem, and divergence theorem. They are so powerful and form the basis for most fundamental laws of physics including Maxwell's equations. A little book called "div, grad, curl and all that" by h.m.schey is so wonderful in getting a real understanding of multivariable calculus. It is such fun to read this great little book. Schey expounds vector calculus by applying it to electrostatics. With technology these days, anyone, anywhere in the world c

Among a few things I love to do is bike (not motor) riding. I have always loved to ride a bike since I learned to ride a bike in my teens. Riding a bike uses only human energy, yet seems effortless even when riding for hours continuously and travel almost 100 km! The difference distance you could cover with the same level of work between biking and walking is about an order of magnitude. What makes bike riding so much more efficient? I don't know fully know the answer, but it seems that walking involves so much muscle movement that really does not carry you forward. Furthermore, cycling allows you to take micro-breaks while not stopping so your body can briefly rest, rejuvenate, and continue the effort. Bike ride involves much smoother leg motion, it is kind on the human body. It seems as if human body is designed for bike ride! I have a weekly quota of 200 km, and often I exceed that. One reason I try to better the quota I fixed for myself is that I anticipate bad days and weeks w

It was interesting to find out soma towns/villages called Soma. Soma in Gambia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma,_the_Gambia Soma in Japan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C5%8Dma,_Fukushima The Swahili word “Soma” means “to learn”

This is not about Facebook or Twitter but about social networks at a higher level which always have existed. The following lecture is quite interesting. http://techtv.mit.edu/collections/math/videos/12821-social-networks-that-balance-themselves-by-steven-strogatz

NY Times article http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/16/science/space/16planet.html Watch some videos http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=111428821 http://www.nowpublic.com/tech-biz/kepler-16b-new-planet-2-suns-nasa-video-2838028.html

Strogatz is an eminent mathematician and professor at Cornell. Watch his beautiful talk at http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_strogatz_on_sync.html Read on his outstanding blogs at http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/steven-strogatz/

I forgot to mention I was the lone juror referred to the article.

Since I remembered my jury date around 9/11/2001, I though I would share an article that appeared in Trentonian (Trenton daily newspaper) on 9/17/2001 under the title "Standing Alone." I am posting the full article below. " Like a scene straight out of the movie, Twelve Angry Men one juror stood alone in his verdict during the trial of accused Ewing wife-stabber Gregory DeLozier. But unlike the film, the man failed to sway the other 11 jurors to agree with him and instead frustrated them to the point where they would reconsider sitting on another panel. Advertisement "He was completely deadlocked from the start. We tried for three and a half days to show him our argument, but there was no helping it. I don't even know if he knew what his position was in the end," said one juror, still annoyed days later. The jury of seven women and five men deliberated for almost 20 hours over three days before Superior Court Judge Ir

What I was involved in on 9/11/2001 is clearly etched in my mind. I was a jury in a month-long trial in an attempted murder case. We had concluded the trial and closing statements were scheduled on the morning of 9/11/2001. All the 12 jurors including me were waiting in the jury room having no clue that the two planes had struck the WTC. The judge Ira Kreizman invited us to the court room around 10am and told us a very unfortunate incident had happened and gave us some details that he knew. He told us if we are too perturbed we could go home and continue on the following day. We jurors went back to jury room and discussed what we should do. We decided that we could not fall victim to the terrorists plan to halt America and went back to the court room and told the judge we intend to continue and serve our duty. The closing statements took up the rest of the morning and we started our deliberations after lunch. We continued deliberations on the following days....

I found a very good map of Munganahalli at http://wikimapia.org/#lat=13.5876984&lon=78.1765223&z=16&l=0&m=b . You can zoom to find both our (old) farm and our (old) house in Mungahalli.

Yesterday it looked like the world was ending. Today, it looks so peaceful, sunny with not a trace of clouds. However that was deceptive, I found out. Drove Neeraja to Trenton train station for her SEPTA Philly train. I had to make three U-turns because the 3 different routes that I am familiar with were all closed at some segments due to flooding. Finally, I reached the train station an hour later (usually 20 minute ride). But all that was for nothing. There were no trains (even though the website said they had started Trenton-Philly trains). The return trip took an hour also. Every low-lying area is simply flooded everywhere...

This week has been quite significant in two rayespects. On February 23, Tuesday, at around 2:00 PM I was working in my office at home. Suddenly, I saw my huge and heavy table shaking somewhat violently as if a giant is physically shaking it. My wife and daughter were home downstairs and I went down to ask them whether they felt anything. My daughter was asking my wife why she was shaking the sofa. That is when I realized it was an earthquake. Read about it on http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/08/earthquake-dc-explainer During the weekend, the great hurricane Irene a landfall in NJ on early morning of Aug. 28, 2011 Sunday. I was particularly concerned with what Irene would do to our solar installation. Fortunately, nothing too damaging happened at our house. One 30 foot tree fell; other than that there were small damages like broken tree branches. Read about the hurricane at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Irene_(2011)

I read the following biography of Sri Hiriannaiah at http://rajchat.info/vasudeva_kutumbukam/7_two_exemplary_officerst.html. Sri Hiriannaiah also belonged to Bobburkamme sect and most probably our family is related to his family, exactly how I don't know but may learn in the future. What was interesting is the propensity of descendants of Sri Kalappa to pursue law and serve in justice profession. The entire biography is copied from the above source. " Sakleshpur Hirianniah (S. Hirianniah for short) was born on 24th of June 1877 in Sakleshpura which is a taluq headquarters town in Hassan district. The taluq is situated in the high mountainous area of the Western Ghats, The mountains are covered by tropical forests where grow teakwood, rosewood, sandalwood and other tropical trees, and there is very heavy rain during the monsoon months. The ground under the trees are covered by all sorts of plants and creepers an