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Found the link on Jaya's blog.

The orginal presentation which Sergey Brin and Larry Page made on Google at Stanford:

http://dbpubs.stanford.edu:8091/diglib/pub/
slides/berkeleydlijan98/berkeleygoogle2/sld001.htm

El dorado

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What if I never reach El Dorado...
What if there be no gold at El Dorado...
What if there be no El Dorado at all...

The eternal search for that elusive El Dorado,
A reason for existence beyond the today,
Meaning to life, its upliftment, hope...

And somewhere the realisation that I'm making my own El Dorado,
Carving El Dorado with my own hands while looking for it,
My El Dorado...

Manjunath: Justice?

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On Saturday (19th Nov 2005) night, our alumnus (IIM-L, 2003 batch) Manjunath Shanmugham was shot dead in Lakhimpur Khiri district, U.P. He was working in IOCL and was shot dead after he blacklisted a petrol pump for stocking adulterated oil.

I did not know him personally, does that matter?
Justice?

From the Press Infomation Bureau, Govt. of India site:

“The Parliamentary Consultative Committee attached to the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas condemns the dastardly heinous murder of Shri S. Manjunath, a Sales Officer of Indian Oil Corporation posted at Lakhimpur Kheri. Shir Manjunath was a bright young officer who showed great promise and potential. Apparently he was put to death for doing his work sincerely in bringing to book some dealers indulging in malpractices. The Committee recommends to the Central and State Governments to give full support to the officers of IOC and other PSUs engaged in curbing malpractices in distribution of petroleum products to consumers and calls upon the officers of IOC and the PSUs to carry out their work with full sense of responsibility”.

All relevant information on this issue:

http://manjunathshanmugam.blogspot.com/

Changed myself

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I topped their exams,
Changed myself so that I would top their exams;

I was the peak performer at work,
Changed myself so that I would succeed in their measures;

I was everybody's best friend,
Changed myself so that everybody loved me;

I was the universal role-model,
Changed myself so that I would be emulate worthy;

Changed myself so that I won in every one of their 'games',
Failed in 'my' life.

Project Syndicate

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Check the Project Syndicate site, it has regular articles by the who's who of the world on diverse issues

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentaries

The Meaning of It All, Feynman

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The Meaning of It All
by Richard P. Feynman

An intellectually-honest, outstandingly-brilliant mind in science grapples with questions that have confounded generations.

This compendium contains a set of 3 public lectures Feynman had given in 1963 on
1. The Uncertainty of Values
2. The Uncertainty of Science
3. This Unscientific Age

A few years back, I had spent about Rs. 500 at the Chennai airport to get a copy of this slim book (it was priced in dollars).
And now some noble soul has put this book online for free download...bless him!

Check the link (and download it before some sane guy decides to remove it!)

http://opal.dnp.fmph.uniba.sk/~streicher/physics/the%20meaning%20of%20it%20all.pdf

A scientists' conception of beauty

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"Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars— mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is 'mere'. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination— stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern— of which I am a part... What is the pattern or the meaning or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent. "

Footnote in The Feynman Lectures on Physics
-Richard P. Feynman

Freedom of thought

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Written while suffering a suffocating class yesterday.
-

Freedom to think wild, think crazy,
Freedom to think in straitjacketed constraints,
Freedom to think the obvious, beyond the obvious,
Freedom to think the genius, the dolt;

Freedom to think that which will never be,
Freedom to think that which never can be,
Freedom to think nothing, nothing at all,
Freedom to think about thought, thought itself;

Freedom to think free...

Violation

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He would not violate his own self,
His weapons: created-lack-of-dependence and the threat to walk away,
And he had his multitudes of caring admirers,
None dare be their true-self with him, ah! fear those weapons coming into play,

Loved him so much that they talked what he wanted to hear,
His make-believe world of ideal expanding every passing day,
Noble causes professed, brilliant arguments of reason,
Reason for admirers; with him, mere stripped skeletons in sway.

In not violating himself, he violated all others,
Rarely spared a second thought, inviolable principles obey,
Peaks of unscalable success, fast scaled by him,
Unviolated martyr he was, soaring display.

I pitied his world, his "principled" success,
He was another mere god in human portray;

Cry with the suffering humans my friend, violate yourself for these fallible humans and they will offer their all for you...
Their unselfish true love, you've never undersood it's true worth...

Pity your inviolable heights, mere stacks of rising inflamable hay.

Record brilliant lectures->Eliminate useless professors

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I'm not suggesting something revolutionary, that gem "Feynman Lectures in Physics" were a result of this (transcription of notes while "the Master" :-) lectured undergrads at Caltech). Yet it is not very common in good institutes in India [atleast not at IIM-L :-( ].

You have to realise when you have one-of-a-kind brilliant professor who gives one-of-a-kind brilliant lectures. Of course, ideally you must ensure a live performance every time for students to feast on. But this might not be practically possible due to various constraints. So what's the next best thing to do in this age of technology: Record the lectures and make it available to interested posterity.

Brilliant lectures which I listen to from time to time (and availbale on the net for free!) :

1. http://www.vega.org.uk/video/subseries/8
A series of 4 lectures Feynman gave in Auckland about QED, audio+video. If you've not seen a Feynman performance, you're missing something in life :-).

2. http://delta.ulib.org/html/ (Go to the "Multimedia & Lectures" under "Contents", can't give you the exact link coz the page doesn't open from the CC)
Some great lectures at this link including one audio lecture by Knuth (the father of genetic algorithms) and an audio+video by Wolfram which I don't like too much!

McKinsey Quarterly on India

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This time's McKinsey Quarterly is titled "Fulfilling India's promise". It's a speical edition on India.
Am reading it currently.
Interesting perspectives, read it if you have access to the journal!

100 questions in Science

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Snehit sent me the link to this article:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/309/5731/78b

The 100 major questions facing science...haven't read the list in detail but a cursory look and I did not find too many questions in finance/economics/social sciences.

The magazine Science is available at:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol309/issue5731/

Yahoo Mindset

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http://mindset.research.yahoo.com/ - A new gimmick??? ;-)

Links for Chaos (and other useful sites)

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Have been making a mess of this....
Have been trying to study chaos in financial data and this requires searching many, many documents both in the library and online. Problem is, since I don't have my own computer, I've ended up saving links/papers in many different CDs and have lost track where is what now [some company's created a CD-pack searcher device, right...wish I had one :-(...] .
From now on atleast the links, I'll update on this post.

1. http://www.orlingrabbe.com/chaos1.htm- Chaos in Financial Markets, J. Orlin Grabbe
2. http://swan.econ.ohio-state.edu/econ840/note1.pdf - Ohio University Notes on Time Series Analysis (a series of 8 Notes: Garch, Arima, Spectral Analysis etc.)
3. http://www.nbi.dk/ChaosBook/ -An 800 page online book on Classical and Quantum Chaos by Cvitanovic et al.
4. http://www.bseindia.com/histdata/hindices.asp - BSE returns 1991 onwards
5. http://www.duke.edu/~dah7/jf1991.pdf - Chaos and Nonlinear Dynamics:Application to Financial Markets-Hsieh

Metamorphosis

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A new spring in her sedate steps,
Blossoming smile on that austere lip,
Intense gaze in those hazy eyes,
Jolt of freshness wrecking that solemn ship!

Whether they thought it right, it did not matter,
He, or they, or the capricious herd,
She would go ahead, irrespective of them,
Freedom at last, ah! another soaring bird.

I felt so happy to see chains broken,
Chains so real, chains in the mind,
Chains we create throughout our life,
Chains if not there, we're grappling to find!

"Live"

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Well, Windows-Live and Office-Live "officially" announced by Gates, looks like the Web-based ecosystem is here to stay (thrive!).
And the Redmond giant has realised it (late!).
But as they say, "Microsoft has built its reputation on starting late, but winning in the end",
Let's see...interesting fireworks ahead :-).

All over again

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When promises become chains to flight,
Promises to yourself, promises to others...

When resolve transforms to obstinacy,
Clarity begins to retard creativity;
When perfection descends to nitpicking,
Blemishes hit you before the beauty,

When you start thinking before talking to friends,
And hesitate in giving concessions to follies of friendship...

It's time to start all over again.

Emotions in other animals

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There is a crow lying dead in one corner of the football field and there are droves of crows hovering around it's dead body and one crow perched beside it, wildly "kawing". (The field comes on way to the Mess from Hostel-12).

Do other animals feel the same range of emotions as we do, do they feel it at the same scale, what do they exactly feel?

Why other animals, I don't even understand properly what other humans feel and why they feel it...even those who I suppose I know well...
Saving grace: I think I'm a little clear about my own emotions and its whys, though not always :-)