Hemachandra numbers everywhere

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Supplesomething forwarded me an interesting NPR piece on Manjul Bhargava, 28, a professor of number theory at Princeton who discusses how the Fibonacci series pops up not just in mathematics but also in the arts.

The Fibonacci series is the set of numbers beginning with 1, 1 where every number is the sum of the previous two numbers. The series begins with 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, and so on. They were known in India before Fibonacci as the Hemachandra numbers. And the ratio of any two successive Fibonacci numbers approximates a ratio, ~1.618, called the golden section or golden mean.

It’s long been known that the Fibonacci series turns up frequently in nature. The numbers of petals on a daisy and the dimensions of a section of a spiral nautilus shell are usually Fibonacci numbers. For plants, this is because the fractional part of the golden mean, a constant called phi (0.618), is the rotation fraction (222.5 degrees) which yields the most efficient and scalable packing of circular objects such as seeds, petals and leaves.

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Phonebanking for Kerry

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My college roommate Tushar, asked me if I would start an LA phonebank operation for John Kerry. Basically I would get a bunch of fellow Dems together and we would use our unlimited weekend cell phone minutes to call likely South Asian voters in Florida. We would plead Kerry’s case and get them to turn out to vote. A very smart strategy I think. Usually with me the ends justify the means. Bush must be defeated at all costs. Yet in this case, its hard for me to commit time to a candidate that I am not crazy about. I haven’t yet taken him up on his request, but I may still. From India West as reported by New California Media:

Last weekend, from both the east coast and west coast, phone calls went into the homes of registered South Asian voters in Florida with a simple message from callers: Vote for John Kerry.

With pollsters predicting a razor-thin election still too close to call, and Florida once again a toss-up state, the calls may well have a decisive impact. The Kerry supporters hope to reach 20,000 registered South Asian voters in Florida before they are done.

In what could be a first for the community, young South Asian supporters of the Massachusetts senator are getting involved in the nitty gritty of grass-roots campaigning in a U.S. presidential campaign.

“We think for the first time in the history of American politics, it was a phone bank targeted specifically to South Asian American voters, and phone calls made by South Asian Americans,” Tushar Sheth, a 28-year-old New York-based attorney, told India-West.

If anyone does want to be involved in a phonebank operation you can get information at SAKI2004.

A Kashmiri Solution Around the Corner?

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Strategy Page reports – military news about India-Pakistan –

October 18, 2004: Pakistan has offered to divide up Indian Kashmir according to the wishes of the Kashmiris. The would likely mean that the most valuable part of the province, the mostly Moslem Kashmir valley, would go to Pakistan, while the Hindu and Buddhist areas would opt for India. But maybe not. The Kashmiri Moslems are aware that India has a real democracy and a growing economy, versus dictatorship and economic chaos in Pakistan. There is much less corruption in India. Over a decade of Islamic terrorism, even if technically on their behalf, has left many Kashmiri Moslems fearful, if not outright hostile towards Islamic radicalism. Putting it all to a vote would be unpopular with nationalists in both countries, but is one solution that would end the fighting, or at least reduce it. However, India has a point in that Pakistan’s tolerance for Islamic terrorist groups in Pakistani Kashmir is the main source of the violence in Kashmir. That said, half a century of fighting over this province is wearing out a lot of Indians and Pakistanis, especially since both have nuclear weapons. This means a battlefield solution is no longer possible.

Seeing Econ Opportunity create the motive for peace warms my little libertarian heart 😉

Quantity and Quality

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The UK is trying to encourage more Sikhs to join the British army. Why?

… at the time of First World War, Sikhs formed 20 per cent of the British army. That meant 100,000 Sikhs. “In the 100 years to 1945, there were some 14 Victoria Crosses awarded to Sikhs. On a per capita basis, given the size of Sikh regiments, that must be a record for the entire British armed forces,”

Background: Right now there are only around 100 Sikhs in the British armed forces, which is more than the US or Canadian militaries, but still not much in light of past levels of recruitment.

Only 1,354 Victoria Crosses have been awarded since the first in 1856. The Congressional Medal of Honor is the US counterpart to the VC; it’s the highest award given out by the British.

p.s. No, I don’t buy into notions of “martial races.”

Prince2Priest

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prince2priest.jpg

This is something deep from my dusty archives. At Ohio University, where I studied visual communications for a year, we were asked to illustrate a concept. I took the legend behind the Buddha and his transformation from stately prince to the high priest of a new ideology – perhaps even a religion – as my concept. Given that Buddhist art is already so beautifully, how do you go about illustrating that?

I found an Indian ornament lying around in my apartment; a puppet of a man wearing a sparkling turban riding on a legless horse. I used his face alone and intentionally lit him in the background to appear overbearing, ominous and perhaps even violent. Notice the direction of the light. It’s from below. Ever see this technique in a horror flick?

Several years back, my mother sent me a handpainted scroll from Bhutan depicting the Buddha. If you can believe it, the six Buddhas in the bottom are all from that same image. Ideally there should be eight of them to symbolize the eight-fold path in Buddhist theology, but I couldn’t get them all to fit (this time).

The images were shot on film, scanned at a high resolution and then brought into Photoshop where there was quite a bit of manipulating (something I wouldn’t ever do to an editorial image). Each of the Buddhas were sent through a bunch of Photoshop filters. Each filter tweaks the image to a specification that I was happy to see on my screen. I really wasn’t sure what they would look like before I got started and I was pleasantly surprised by what the results looked like in the end.

The exercise was a grand departure from what I usually do – wedding photojournalism. It was really a time to experiment and have fun. I am not really sure I have conveyed the principal premise of the image clearly. Let’s just call this a work in progress, shall we?

Happy Curry Week!

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I’ve always hated korma; I’m not sure what that says about me, but the next time I order Aloo Vindaloo at Gaylord’s Ghirardelli, I’m going to smirk as I think of this survey from England:

One fifth of men questioned for Sky digital and Star Plus’ National Curry Week (October 17 – 24) survey said, they had eaten a vindaloo curry to impress a lady or their friends! When it comes to impressing friends or members of the opposite sex Lancashire has the toughest taste buds with over 20 per cent who have braved a vindaloo in the face of peer pressure. Whilst those in Newcastle seem to have the puniest palette and are least likely (7 per cent) to indulge in hot and spicy dishes to win over friends and lovers!
Women seem to be tongue-challenged when it comes to vindaloos. The findings show four in 10 men like their curries hot or extremely hot compared to only one in 10 women. Two-thirds (62 per cent) of women questioned admit they like mild curries, such as a korma.
Star Plus’ spokeswoman, Suruchi Sthalekar said: “The results are hilarious, I can just imagine the scenes in curry houses and homes across the UK. To think men measure their sexual prowess against the spiciness of their curry. And I would urge all woman to go out there and try vindaloo today to prove we can handle it.”

Handle it? I consummately require it. 😉

“After all, what is sexier than someone who exudes both passion and compassion?”

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As a life-long vegetarian, I’m thrilled to learn that for the third year in a row, Amitabh is India’s hottest herbivore, according to your favourite animal rights outfit:

The veggie voters have spoken, and it is official – the Big B is again the Big V, and breaking the Bollywood monopoly, Clueless star Alicia Silverstone has won PETA India’s Hottest Vegetarian Alive Contest for 2004. More than 50,000 Web surfers cast their votes this year.
This year, the contest was even hotter, with vegetarians like Shahid Kapoor, Pamela Anderson, Pierce Brosnan, Yana Gupta, Avril Lavigne, Mandira Bedi, Tobey Maguire, Shania Twain and Esha Deol as nominees.
Celebrities cite many reasons for forgoing flesh foods, from avoiding the cruelty to animals that is inherent in meat production to improving their health and energy levels to helping the environment by not contributing to hog- and chicken-farm pollution.

Amitabh is just one of many stars who probably taste better. Upon perusing the list of esteemed nominees, I was surprised to find that “Lord of the Rings” star and blazing-ball-of-awesome-hotness Orlando Bloom is also an herbivore. As if he wasn’t fantastic enough already. Stothrum!

Sadly, Mutineer Manish wasn’t nominated, or he would’ve surely killed Big B’s shot at a three-peat. 😉

Spinning heads spit sambar

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Exorcism: it’s not just for Bobby Jindal (see liberal blog DailyKos) any more. Faith healers in the UK are fleecing depressed Muslim women by vending talismans and djinn exorcisms:

A victim of exorcism, eighteen-year-old Sureha Begum, from Manchester, attended the conference. She suffered from chronic depression and was self-harming after an arranged marriage in Bangladesh. When she became ill her parents were told that she was possessed by jinns. They spent over £3,000 on faith healers and exorcisms…

Said Sureha: “Faith healers told my parents that I was possessed and the more my mental health deteriorated the more these faith healers convinced them it was the work of the jinn… These faith healers know your weaknesses as soon as you open your mouth and they use it to con people out of hundreds of pounds.”

If I were to be the property of a djinn, let that djinn be Barbara Eden.

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Desi Culture March – Worldwide

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lisa4.jpgYou guys probably know or can guess that I travel quite a bit for work. When you’re the lonely business traveller, you end up spending a fair number of your jetlagged hours channel surfing the local TV. In between dubbed reruns of TJ Hooker in various languages, one ofthe things that’s surprising me more and more is how much Desi culture I’m running into in random countries.

I was impressed, for ex., with the Desi quarter of Singapore (one of the cleanest cities in the world, and yet, Desi’s have managed to make an entire street smell like Garam Masala ;-). But I think most folks generally expect to see (and smell?) the Desi presence there.

The spate of more surprising examples began about a year ago when I was in Stockholm and flipped out when I saw the video for Mundian To Bach Ke on Swede MTV.

A little over a month ago, I was in Amsterdam and Russell Peters was on TV (with Dutch subtitles). He appeared to be delivering his usual desi-themed material to a UK audience and the show was rebroadcast on a local TV station.

And now, I’m in Sao Paolo, Brazil and just a few minutes ago, a total 3rd tier ABCD movie – Bollywood/Hollywood was on the boob-tube complete with Portugese subtitles. The movie still sucked but it was sorta interesting to see a Brazilian announcer say something about the flick afterwards with a headshot of Lisa Ray in the corner of the screen.

Revenge of the nerds

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NYT columnist Thomas Friedman says Americans need to emulate Asian and desi nerds:

The Chinese and the Indians are not racing us to the bottom. They are racing us to the top. Young Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs are not content just to build our designs. They aspire to design the next wave of innovations and dominate those markets. Good jobs are being outsourced to them not simply because they’ll work for less, but because they are better educated in the math and science skills required for 21st-century work.

When was the last time you met a 12-year-old who told you he or she wanted to grow up to be an engineer? When Bill Gates goes to China, students hang from the rafters and scalp tickets to hear him speak. In China, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America, Britney Spears is Britney Spears. We need a Bill Cosby-like president to tell all parents the truth: throw out your kid’s idiotic video game, shut off the TV and get Johnny and Suzy to work, because there is a storm coming their way.