A tribute to Julie Andrews

I came across this in some arbitrary blog I was going through, and thought it was worth sharing.

To commemorate her 69th birthday on October 1, actress/vocalist, Julie Andrews made a special appearance at Manhattan's Radio City Music Hall for the benefit of the AARP. One of the musical numbers she performed was "My Favorite Things" from the legendary movie "Sound Of Music". Here are the lyrics she used :

Maalox and nose drops and needles for knitting,
Walkers and handrails and new dental fittings,
Bundles of magazines tied up in string,
These are a few of my favorite things.
Cadillac's and cataracts and hearing aids and glasses,
Polident and Fixodent and false teeth in glasses,
Pacemakers, golf carts and porches with swings,
These are a few of my favorite things.

When the pipes leak, when the bones creak,
When the knees go bad, I simply remember my favorite things,
And then I don't feel so bad.

Hot tea and crumpets and corn pads for bunions,
No spicy hot food or food cooked with onions,
Bathrobes and heating pads and hot meals they bring,
These are a few of my favorite things.
Back pains, confused brains, and but keep on winnin'
Thin bones and fractures and hair that is thinnin',
And we won't mention our short shrunken frames,
When we remember our favorite things.

When the joints ache, when the hips break,
When the eyes grow dim,
Then I remember the great life I've had,
And then I don't feel so bad.

(Ms. Andrews received a standing ovation from the crowd that lasted over four minutes and repeated encores.)

And I agree with him . . .

Last year, the government decided to increase the number of reserved seats in central government-run elite educational institutes like the Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Management and AIIMS by 27 per cent for the Other Backward Classes, taking reservations up to 50 per cent. Students on campus were upset and agitated. Rediff.com quoted Aman Jagannathan, 18, second year MBBS student at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences as saying :

"I know I am not saying anything illegal but I just want to be careful. I don't want to be known on as being against OBCs because I am not. I am just against the idea of reservation. I don't want to be misunderstood.

I am not against social justice but I feel merit should be appreciated. Reserve seats for those who don't have the economic means. Reserve seats for the children of those in the armed forces. Nobody will protest if you reserve seats for those who earn less than a lakh every year. Why should caste be the overarching factor? It's not my fault I was born a Brahmin."

And I agree with him . . .

I have so far chosen to remain dispassionate about the whole issue of reservations. There have been many friends of mine who written pageloads of stuff on why reservations are unfair and reflect regressive thinking and will ruin India . . . I am not saying they are wrong , and I am not saying they are totally right either . . . but I am a cynic, and I think, what is the point of all this . . . I think of the futility of raving seriously on such things.

As a certain Suresh Kamath says, "Reservation based on caste is going to divide us further. Reservation should be based on economic criteria alone. We should learn to forget our past and start looking at the future. What have today's children got to do with what some people did in the past ?"

On a lighter note, check out what this blogger had to say about the Machiavellian Villain behind this regressive step. I found it really hilarious !

Number Theory, Cryptography and some Humour

I have my Number Theory exam tomorrow - and I had to start studying at some point of time - so I was going through some slides by a gentleman named William Stallings. There is a slideshow per chapter. At the beginning of each chapter, he quotes somebody. For the chapter on Euler's Thm and Fermat's Thm, he has quoted the following text, which I found so funny, that I had to put it up right here, right now.

The Devil said to Daniel Webster: "Set me a task I can't carry out, and I'll give you anything in the world you ask for."
Daniel Webster : "Fair enough. Prove that for n greater than 2, the equation a^n + b^n = c^n has no non-trivial solution in the integers."
They agreed on a three-day period for the labor, and the Devil disappeared.
At the end of three days, the Devil presented himself, haggard, jumpy, biting his lip.
Daniel Webster said to him, "Well, how did you do at my task ? Did you prove the theorem ?"
"Eh ? No . . . no, I haven't proved it."
"Then I can have whatever I ask for ? Money ? The Presidency ?"
"What ? Oh, that — of course. But listen ! If we could just prove the following two lemmas — "

- The Mathematical Magpie, Clifton Fadiman

- William Stallings, Cryptography and Network Security - 3/e

Visitation of a Verbose Verbiage

I do not know how many of you have seen 'V for Vendetta'. It is a 2006 film with screenplay by the same guys who created 'The Matrix' and it stars Natalie Portman and a masked character. They meet very early in the movie, and he introduces himself to her in these words :

Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose so let me simply add that it’s my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.

Whew... ! Needless to say, I was tempted to commit it to memory !

Risk-management

Today, we had our "Principles of Management" paper. There were a couple of problems based on the 'Pay-off' matrix and the 'Opportunity-Loss' matrix. I just wanted to find out whether both will give the same answer, given the probabilistic distribution of each event. While going through some pdfs, I came across this :

In decision-making under pure uncertainty, the decision maker has absolutely no knowledge, not even about the likelihood of occurrence for any state of nature. In such situations, the decision-maker's behavior is purely based on his/her attitude toward the unknown. Some of these behaviors are optimistic, pessimistic, and least regret, among others.

Optimist: The glass is half-full.
Pessimist: The glass is half-empty.
Manager: The glass is twice as large as it needs to be.

Optimists are right; so are the pessimists. It is up to you to choose which you will be. The optimist sees opportunity in every problem; the pessimist sees problem in very opportunity. Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute.

Nice, eh ? Especially the last line.

A favourite poem of mine

While in school, we had two textbooks for English. One was the Radiant Reader (RR) and the other was the Bal Bharti (BB). These textbooks used to comprise of an assortment of short stories and poems. Among all the poems, the ones I liked the most were Daffodils and Colonel Fazackerley Butterworth-Toast. There was also that poem "Home they brought the warrior dead" which was quite nice.

Surprisingly, the poem on Colonel Fazackerley is not very well known. I think it is a wonderful and wonderfully funny poem. I googled for it, and here it is. From what I remember, the 2nd para begins like this
"On the very first evening, while waiting to dine,
The Colonel was feeling rested and fine,"
and, I don't think the fourth para was included in the textbook.

COLONEL FAZACKERLEY BUTTERWORTH-TOAST
by Charles Causley

Colonel Fazackerley Butterworth-Toast
Bought an old castle complete with a ghost,
But someone or other forgot to declare
To Colonel Fazack that the spectre was there.

On the very first evening, while waiting to dine,
The Colonel was taking a fine sherry wine,
When the ghost, with a furious flash and a flare,
Shot out of the chimney and shivered, 'Beware!'

Colonel Fazackerley put down his glass
And said, 'My dear fellow, that's really first class!
I just can't conceive how you do it at all.
I imagine you're going to a Fancy Dress Ball?'

At this, the dread ghost made a withering cry.
Said the Colonel (his monocle firm in his eye),
'Now just how you do it, I wish I could think.
Do sit down and tell me, and please have a drink.'

The ghost in his phosphorous cloak gave a roar
And floated about between ceiling and floor.
He walked through a wall and returned through a pane
And backed up the chimney and came down again.

Said the Colonel, 'With laughter I'm feeling quite weak!'
(As trickles of merriment ran down his cheek).
'My house-warming party I hope you won't spurn.
You MUST say you'll come and you'll give us a turn!'

At this, the poor spectre - quite out of his wits -
Proceeded to shake himself almost to bits.
He rattled his chains and he clattered his bones
And he filled the whole castle with mumbles and moans.

But Colonel Fazackerley, just as before,
Was simply delighted and called out, 'Encore!'
At which the ghost vanished, his efforts in vain,
And never was seen at the castle again.

'Oh dear, what a pity!' said Colonel Fazack.
'I don't know his name, so I can't call him back.'
And then with a smile that was hard to define,
Colonel Fazackerley went in to dine.