Monday, March 23, 2009

An incident of the DG

For the unenlightened, I would tell that DG stands for director general in a certain college. This person is highly infamous for, among other factors, his nasty habit of snatching cellphones from the students whenever he sees a phone in the hand of a student.

As it so happened in September 2008, a first year student was covering his ground in the college while talking on his cellphone.

Hither came DG, the crack, wrinkle faced, sullen eyed, attitude in head, a thug, a liar,a fiend, an authoritarian, with no respect even for the God. Then, this was what transpired:

DG: Do you know who I am?
Student: NO!

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Impossible is nothing: RAJNI KANTH style!!

For those not keyed in, I will let you know that Rajni Kanth is a superstar in South Indian cinema. He is well known for his incredulously superhero-like antics. His talent as a superstar can best be compared to that of Longshot of the X-men, whose speciality is blind,wild luck. I  am quoting a story of Rajni Kanth and will follow it up with my comments:

Recently the father of physics(Sir Isaac Newton) made a visit to earth to watch a movie. He watched a few Tamil movies  - including his latest release Sivaji -  and had his head spinning. He was convinced that all his logics and laws in physics were just a huge pile of junk and apologised for everything he had done. In Rajanikanth's movies  Newton was confused to such an extent that he went paranoid. Here are a few scenes:

1) Rajanikanth has a Brain Tumor which, according to the doctors can't be cured and his death is imminent. In one of the fights, our great Rajanikanth is shot in the head. To everybody's surprise, the bullet passes through his ears taking away the tumor along with it and he is cured. Long Live Rajanikanth!

2) In one of the movies,  Rajanikanth is confronted with  4 gangsters.Rajani has a gun but unfortunately only one bullet. Guess, what he does....... He holds a knife in his hand and throws at  one  gangster..& shoots the bullet towards the knife. The knife cuts the bullet into 2 pieces and kills two gangsters. Then the bullet also splits into two and kills the other two gangsters!!

 3) Rajanikanth is chased by a gangster.  Rajani has a revolver but he got no bullets in it. Guess, what he does. Nah not even in your remotest imaginations. He waits for the gangster to shoot. As soon as the gangster shoots, Rajani opens the bullet compartment of his revolver and catches the bullet. Then, he closes the bullet compartment and fires his gun. Bang... And the gangster dies.... This was too much for our Newton to take and he was completely shaken and he decided to go back. But he happened to see a movie for one last time and thought that at least one movie will follow his theories of physics. The whole movies goes fine and Newton is happy that all in the world hasn't changed. Oops not so fast. The Climax finally arrives. Rajani gets to know that the villain is on the other side of a very high wall. So high that Rajanikanth can't jump even if he tries like one of those superman techniques that our heroes normally use. Rajani has to desperately kill the villain because its the climax.Newton dada is smiling since it is virtually impossible...........  

Rajanikanth suddenly pulls two guns from his pocket (probably a backup). He throws one gun in the air and when the gun reached the height of the wall, he shoots at the trigger of the first gun in air, with his second gun. Now the first gun fires off and the villain is dead.

Newton commits suicide!!

The story quoted above may be a joke, but through this and various other means as well, I want to accentuate this point again and again: The human body is limited only by the human mind. 

Monday, March 9, 2009

Some Excerpts from answer sheets of students

As a teacher, I have to check a lot of papers on a regular basis. When I started, I had some 420 students studying from me whose answer sheets I had to check. Apart from them, there were some students who had got back in their subject, and I had to check their paper as well. Now, any task is as interesting or as boring as we perceive or take it to be. Now, someone can easily say that paper checking is a very repetitive , monotonous and boring task and can even be done away with. But on the other hand, someone like me or especially some new teacher would say that the the best paper is done when you know nothing of the subject, and have to use up all your creativity. Sometimes, some answer may turn out to be very idiotic, even funny. Henceforth is a compilation of some interesting answers:


"The definition of perception is actually very hard to comprehend"
---organizational behaviour

(The deduction is that the student doesn't know the definition)




"Some wise gentleman has stated : cogito, ergo sum"
---organizational behaviour

(was that gentleman your relative?)




"A causal system is one in which the output comes after we give the input"
---digital signal processing

(no,no, what is the need to give input in case of a super intelligent student like you?)




"A causal system is one in which the output depends on the input"
---digital signal processing
(no comments)


"scanf() is used to scan whether the program is correct or not"
---introduction to programming



"getchar() is used to stop the output screen, and we can get back only after we press a key"
---introduction to programming

"break; statement is used to break the line or paragraph"

---introduction to programming


Full form of XP in Windows XP:

1)Extra premium

2)Extreme programming

3)Extreme performance

And so on...

Fact: This was from the introduction to computers paper(first year), and the destructively creative terms such as extra premium were given by third year students who the freshers asked for help since they themselves didn't know the answers. The correct answer is experience.


Sunday, March 1, 2009

Can we DECIDE our... Destiny???

Now we come to the third and final dimension of information: The Future. This one is a real doozy: It requires meticulous work, we may have to work out unto more ends than just one; and at the same time we need precision: sort of like walking on a razor edge. This is difficult to explain as well.

Information gathering, related to the past and the present, is just the preliminary step unto this end. Now, I am breaking down the process into a series of steps:

1)Find out what will happen with certainty up to a certain point in the future, by logically extending our present and past data. Remember that we are finding out the future of only one aspect of our life, and that the point up to which the future is certain is important. That point may be an hour away or an year away.

2)Now comes the reason why deciding or even knowing the future is a real doozy:- ALTERNATE TIME LINES!! After the point of certainty, we reach the region of uncertainty. But even 'uncertainty' can be broken down into a finite number of 'certainties'.

3)Try to associate probabilities with the different events or certainties, subject to the condition that the sum of probabilities has to be one. Approximations would suffice as we are not doing some mathematical problem or studying QTBD (quantitative techniques for business decisions).

4)The probabilities will tell us how much we need to focus on each alternative. We may need to rule out certain possibilities, but that would require some doing. For we cannot say "this will happen" or "this will not happen". Our actions should cause the happening or not happening of a certain event. So basically we have to cause out the occurence of a low probability event or an unfavourable event. We have to be careful and thorough in our work and not leave anything to chance, so that things go according to plan.

5)Only one possibility should remain now as we have ruled out the lesser possibilities. We just have to work out so that our plans do not go to waste.

It is important to note that all our efforts should be well directed, and not just slogging out. Undirected efforts are most likely to be fruitless and that add to the frustration, and that can mean that we run out of steam at just the critical moment. Also, the efforts have to be tempered with belief, for the possibilities are only limited by our own mind.

The biggest advantage of this approach lies in the fact that while considering lesser or unfavourable possibilities to rule out, we are only considering the "bad" mishappenings. Since we are ruling out the bad luck, only the "positive" mishappenings or the good luck remains unaccounted for. And that is why, things will fall into place.

Justify Full
Making our own destiny may be a doozy, but yes, it is possible. The only undecided factor or unknowns that remains is the good luck.