Carthik Sharma

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India’s Moon Mission in another 2-3 years – The cost $83 million!! I will be proud if they do it for even 4 times as much.

Also on Slashdot

Go to the Ubuntu CD Distribution Database and request some. I am waiting for mine.

I cannot make up my mind whether I am having fun, or getting screwed, nor can I decide for once if I am lazy, or it’s the writer’s block.

In any case, there are a lot of thoughts floating in my head, with regard to the candidacy proposal I am working on. Today is the big day, when I hope to make sense of the bits ‘n pieces I have jotted, or typed down as notes, some strands floating in my mind, what I have written before, the few graphs I have of results of simulations and a few fresh ideas.

My advisor insists that I deliver a motivating example to convey the meaning behind some of the mathematical stuff I am doing. The Byzantine generals problem and the counterfeit coin problem probably come closest to what I will be trying to describe. Describing a mathematical framework, and then trying to derive relations between the mathematical entities is what I will attempt to do tonight. There are so many disparate things, that are all bound together – so many elements that need to go into that one document in an organized fashion, that I get lost, and lose the big picture, if I work in fits and starts, so a marathon session tonight should get everything in reasonable shape. Another significant problem is trying to relate my work to the work that has already been done, in different fields, and making myself look smart. Like, “see this guy was good, but he’s not smart enough to have seen this“, or something to that effect. It is amazing how innovative some technical authors and researchers get when it comes to digging up references and quoting previous work. I have a list of links I have to convert into a threaded conversation.

About the lazy Vs. Writer’s Block thing — it feels great to think of small problems, one at time, and to do nothing but that – just mull over specifics. When it comes to writing it down, half the ideas break down. The other half seem incomplete, and more often than not, I wonder what happened to all the things I thought I’d be writing about!

In any case, this is the most challenging and stimulating thing I have been engaged in, for a while. Solving problems from Irodov’s Problems in General Physics, which was in vogue among the IIT aspirants, and which one of the cool books that MIR published. MIR is now almost defunct, and a lot of the books, including Problems in General Physics are now out of print. I guess this is one of the undesirable side-effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

I look forward to the night. Time to go home, now.

WorldChanging.com brings tidings of One World Health, a non-profit pharmaceutical company in the United States, with the goal of getting drugs that are not “profitable” for pharmaceutical companies.

When I was with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) I learned about “orphan” diseases, defined as diseases that fewer than 200,000 people in the US suffer from. I thought it strange that outside the US, some of these diseases are enormous. For instance, there are about 1000 cases of malaria in the US, and 500 or 600 million cases worldwide. You need to take your American eyeglasses off and consider the whole world.

– Says Victoria Hale in an Interview.

So what the company does is “rescue” such drugs that can have enormous use in the Third World and develop, test, and trial these to the point of being able to make it available to fight diseases and help millions.

I cannot begin to imagine the sacrifice she would have made to start this project. She describes her visit to India, and says she was pushed to tears at the sight of suffering in the villages. Often I think about the inquities that are so evident in the world, and in India, and I have to pause for a moment to be thankful for being able to acheive whatever little I have, and to have some this far. I hope I will be able to do something useful with my life too.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | After Abu Ghraib
talks about the abuse of prisoners. If the story is true, the the US Army seems no different from other armies when it comes to being unjust, brutal, and uncivilized. Sad. Via Simon

This is certainly one of those weeks when I have so much on my hands that nothing gets done.
I don’t want to try making a to-do list of things. That is very tempting, as that would take some time, and so I can waste that amount of time, but I have things to get done over-night. This very post here is a delay tactic of sorts. Yesterday I counted at least 28 different tasks to complete, each taking upwards of an hour.

There is school related stuff, which is top priority, since I have to take and clear the Candidacy exam this semester. That alone involves a lot of tiring typing.

Then there are the things I would love to spend more time with, related to the Internet in general, and WordPress in particular.

That leaves us with things like updating my address at a million places, visiting the car dealer, mailing out stuff, opening old bills and filing them etc.

I am getting buried under, and the strangest part is, I am not catching up. I am in a interminable loop of doing senseless, worthless things. I have to chart a time-table and allocate time for different things judiciously. I should remember to repair my bicycle and start cycling a little, if not a lot.

Life scares me at times.

Much as I try to keep out of the political dialogue in this nation, I find a few trends alarming, and red lights go off in my brain.
They are here and they are out to get you is an example.

Some of the suggestions the author makes:
-> Anyone who registers as Muslim should be required to take a loyalty oath. The U.S. or Islam.
-> Anyone who chooses Islam is to be considered a threat to this country and put in confinement.

Well, what’s going on? I have heard such voices before, and it is disquieting to realize that such ideas, as well as other fascist ideas are gaining ground and popularity here. To be honest, I would be releived if someone told me that the article was a joke, or an attempt at weird humor.

via amanita.net

This is the most wicked blog I’ve ever seen.

I got there from pinksocks.

I have to explore this site more, at a leisurely pace. Whenever I read about people who had accents, in the books, I have wondered what that might sound like. This site is a repository of peoples’ accented speech, so should be fun to keep this as a handy reference.
Speech Accent Archive

Originally seen at Brian Meidell’s Blog

Update: Also see International Dialects of English Archive, which serves up accents as .mp3 files.

Joseph Brodsky was a high-school dropout. Now who would’ve guessed, especially since he was America’s Poet-Laureate, and a Nobel Prize winner?
I am anxiously waiting for a book of his poetry sent me by someone I helped.