Weird fluid dynamics effect, did you say?

Doug at Nanoscale views has a pointer:

arxiv:0805.0490 - Amjadi et al., A liquid film motor
Hat tip to arxivblog for pointing this out to me. These folks at Sharif University in Iran have found that DC electric fields can make soap films flow in very interesting and controllable ways. They suggest a few possible mechanisms for this kind of electrohydrodynamic motion, but conclude that none of them are entirely satisfactory. The paper has a minor rendering problem with Fig. 4, but you should definitely watch the movies on their webpage. Very dramatic! Soft CM physics can be inspiring - here’s a visually impressive phenomenon that might actually be useful in fluidic applications, and the whole experiment is simple, elegant, and inexpensive. No exotic apparatus required.

Well, there is more to soap films than you ever dreamt of!

What is truth debt?

A sprinter in a race almost immediately enters a state called “oxygen debt.” His body switches to an emergency source of energy that’s faster than regular aerobic respiration. But this process builds up waste products that ultimately require extra oxygen to break down, so at the end of the race he has to stop and pant for a while to recover.

We arrive at adulthood with a kind of truth debt. We were told a lot of lies to get us (and our parents) through our childhood. Some may have been necessary. Some probably weren’t. But we all arrive at adulthood with heads full of lies.

There’s never a point where the adults sit you down and explain all the lies they told you. They’ve forgotten most of them. So if you’re going to clear these lies out of your head, you’re going to have to do it yourself.

Few do. Most people go through life with bits of packing material adhering to their minds and never know it. You probably never can completely undo the effects of lies you were told as a kid, but it’s worth trying. I’ve found that whenever I’ve been able to undo a lie I was told, a lot of other things fell into place.

Fortunately, once you arrive at adulthood you get a valuable new resource you can use to figure out what lies you were told. You’re now one of the liars. You get to watch behind the scenes as adults spin the world for the next generation of kids.

The first step in clearing your head is to realize how far you are from a neutral observer. When I left high school I was, I thought, a complete skeptic. I’d realized high school was crap. I thought I was ready to question everything I knew. But among the many other things I was ignorant of was how much debris there already was in my head. It’s not enough to consider your mind a blank slate. You have to consciously erase it.

That is Paul Graham in his most recent piece about lying to kids. Take a look!

A brief history of Kalakshetra

Vidya Dinakaran at the Bharata Natyam blog:

The name Kalakshetra was suggested by Pandit S. Subramania Sastri, a Sanskrit scholar and member of the academy. His granddaughter S. Sarada was one of the first students. She, along with Radha, Rukmini Devi’s niece, Leelavati, A. Sarada, and Anandi, granddaughter of Kalki Krishnamurti, were among the first to join Kalakshetra, then located in the Theosophical Society’s grounds. D. Pashupati, Raman and Lakshmanan began studying music, and soon more students followed.

Many renowned nattuvanars and dancers of that period taught at the institute. Among them were Meenakshisundaram Pillai, Rukmini Devi’s first teacher, Muthukumara Pillai, and Chokkalingam Pillai. Karaikkal Saradambal Ammal, known for her nritta, polished the technique of the early students. Dandayudapani Pillai later joined the staff, as did Mylapore Gowri Ammal. These early teachers bequeathed many compositions and stylistic inputs to the institute which remain embedded in the Kalakshetra style today. Ambu Pannikar, the great Kathakali ashaan who spent the last six years of his life at Kalakshetra, taught Rukmini Devi several Kathakali movements and set pieces that were used to great effect in her dance dramas. After his death, another doyen - Chandu Pannikar came to the college, bringing along with him young boys, Dhananjayan, Balagopalan, and later, his own son Janardhanan. These three, along with the older Kunhiraman, Ambu Pannikar’s son, became the early male dancers of the institute, participating in the new dramas that Rukmini Devi choreographed. They became known for their heroic roles in Kalakshetra’s dance dramas.

There is more in the piece; take a look.

While I have seen many music blogs, this probably is the first one about dance and from a dancer to boot; I am looking forward to more interesting and informative posts; link via Shencottah.

Some travel stories!

I do not know if you ever tried packing and re-packing your bags at the airport. During my journey a couple of days ago from Chicago to India, I had to; however, the experience was made pleasanter by the very helpful and courteous Lufthansa employee Jamilah Bahrami (I hope I got the spelling right). We did have a small mishap with the flight though; during the Chicago-Frankfurt flight, our stroller got broken; so, we had to navigate Frankfurt without the help of a stroller — it was not very comfortable — but it wasn’t unmanageable given we had nearly four hours of time for transit. But, guess what — our broken stroller, which I did not pick up at Frankfurt showed up in Chennai, anyway — and, if you have a baby in stroller, the emigration is pretty fast and comfortable too. By the way, the bassinets that Lufthansa gives for babies is great — it really helps in taking the baby of your lap once in a while.

The couple of hours that we had to spend at Frankfurt waiting to board the Madras flight was made interesting by the discussions that were happening all around. Of all the things I overheard, I liked the observation of a business man (a textile merchant from Tiruppur?), who was amazed at the fact that you can run a real big company involved in producing the goods XXX in Switzerland without having even heard of the name of the minister of XXX; thus, according to him, the level of political corruption in a country can be measured in how big a company or industry you can run without having to meet the political administration and the concerned ministry. Makes sense!

After the deep quench and maintenance at low termperatures for so long in Chiacgo, 30 degree celsius temperature that we were exposed to (at midnight in Madras), in metallurgy speak, is like solutionising-close-to-solvus kind of heat treatment; but we are holding up, and my daughter, admirably.

A quick observation about a trip in the streets of Madras that I took yesterday: the India’s national newspaper since 1878 (?) is reduced to identifying itself with Madras and the trust that Madrasis place on it for its marketing!

So, more Madras-India stories soon here — as and when I get time. So long!

Good-bye Windy City!

We are returning to India after nearly two years; so I had been a bit busy with many different administrative and personal things. As much as we are looking forward to our visit to India, we are sure that we will miss several things about Chicago/Evanston. We will also miss the several nice people that we got to know here, during our short  stay. I will keep you posted about our trip, and my future plans. In the meanwhile, posting might be a bit sporadic here.

Olympics as a prelude to multi-party democracy

Ramachandra Guha in the Hindu on some curious connection between one-party States that hosted Olympics and their turning into multi-party democracies soon after:

The history of the modern Olympics shows that one-party States that host the games seek to project an image of power and pride. But that history also shows that these one-party States are replaced, sooner or later, by democratic, multi-party regimes. Nazi Germany hosted the Olympics in 1936; 13 years later West Germany had the first of very many free elections. The 1980 Olympics were held in Moscow — nine years later the Soviet Union collapsed. The process was quickest in South Korea — which hosted the Olympics in 1988, and had its first free election in 1992. It was slowest in Mexico, where it was only in 2000 that the PRI was finally booted out of power.

So, nationalism and jingoism notwithstanding, the evidence of history prompts this less than pessimistic prediction — that multi-party democracy will come to China sometime within the next four to 32 years.

Interesting thought!

On the state of English Press in India

Ram Guha has some pointers and some thoughts of his own to offer:

There remain some honest editors and many good reporters. But I think it fair to say that within the English press in India there is much room for improvement. Let me offer an illustration of the kind of story we should but do not often see. For the last year and more, Sharad Pawar has simultaneously served both as the Union minister of agriculture and the president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India. That is to say, Pawar is in charge of the destiny of India’s most numerous social class as well of India’s greatest popular passion. He has held these posts at a time of a serious agrarian crisis on the one hand, and a massive reshaping of the cricket world on the other. How does he do these two jobs at the same time? What is his daily or weekly or monthly schedule of meetings and journeys? My own suspicion is that one sector under his watch must surely be suffering, and I think I can guess which one. But this (possibly widely-shared) suspicion awaits testing against the hard evidence of reportage. However, the sectors are each so important that a man who presumes to take charge of both surely needs to be subjected to far greater scrutiny that he has thus far been.

By the way, is the following reference to The Hindu and P Sainath?

To be sure, there are dissenters. But these often write in a sanctimonious and self-righteous tone, setting themselves up as the lonely voice of conscience amidst a horde of unthinking cheerleaders for globalization and liberalization. They are also noticeably partisan, focusing on poverty and suffering in states (or nations) ruled by parties other than the communists.

Though Guha does not name names here, it sounds very much like Sainath to me.

The tales that names tell

Remember the Reith Lectures of V S Ramachandran, in which, 98% of his audience thought that a jagged figure that Ramachandran showed to be the Martian alphabet for kiki and a more rounded one bubba? Jo Walton seems to recommend a similar strategy here (link via Brad DeLong):

Also, if you want to have two fantasy countries that are different from each other, make all the different choices for the other language. (Excluded vowel becomes favoured vowel, etc.) That way their names and words sound different from each other, even if the reader can’t tell exactly how, but the patterns will be consistent for each one.

The Gonovians and the Camavese really will seem like different people.

A very interesting piece indeed!

Publishing books under open access

Kim Christen at Long Road brings some good news about the more nuanced author agreements that some lucky authors get to sign for some real smart publishers:

Last year I signed a contract with the School of Advanced Research Press to publish my book Aboriginal Business: Alliances in a Remote Australian Town (forthcoming winter 2009-yeah). It was a very standard contract and I was happy with it because one of the deciding factors for me going with SAR was their willingness to seek an Australian press to publish the book in Australia in tandem with the US publication. I wanted the book to be more easily available in Australia (and thus less expensive for those purchasing the book there). SAR has worked hard at this, but still we are unclear what our options are. So as this has been unfolding (the back and forth with Australian presses and distributors) I floated an idea to the publisher about a month ago: let me publish a pdf of the final book on my blog for people to download. I argued (as others have) that this would be good for the press, good for me, and good for the circulation of the book (which is what we both want). To their credit, SAR decided to allow this alternative, companion publishing. The letter I received states my author rights clearly:

This letter confirms that you have SAR Press’s permission to post the complete, final pdf of your book, Aboriginal Business: Alliances in a Remote Australian Town, on your blog, after the book has been published and made available for sale. To protect SAR Press’s investment in the print version, we ask you to include the following on your blog, in close proximity to the link for the pdf version:

1. A copyright notice reading “© 2008 School for Advanced Research Press”;
2. A link to your book’s page on our website, with text stating that viewers can purchase the book from SAR Press by clicking on the link.

SAR still maintains copyright, but my goal of allowing more distribution is met by facilitating electronic circulation of the final book. By linking to SAR we can track the direct traffic and I can keep track of downloads as well. I believe that most people will still buy the book. In fact, for University courses this is a plus, Professors can check out the book without having to order a desk copy and then decide on the book. Most students will still buy the book–it would still be pretty expensive to print off a 300 page book. It’s a win-win, especially for younger scholars such as myself who have little reputation to go on.

Link via Open Access Anthropology.

Magnetoreception in animals

Arunn at nOnoscience has a very interesting post about magnetoreception in animals. He begins his post with a cat story:

You step out of the house on an important errand, and a cat crosses your path; you (are made to) promptly stop, turn around and get back into home. You wait for sufficient time inside your home, drinking a cup of water before some one elderly checks the road and prompts when everything is auspicious again for you to get back on the road.

The “reasons” for considering cat crossing your path as a bad omen are many, with new ones given on the spur everyday. Let me give here the “scientific” one given to me some years back. It goes like this: Cats sense magnetic fields and since they do, they should be magnetic or at least capable of influencing magnetic fields. So, when they cross in front of you, cats influence the local geomagnetic field, which in turn manifest as a bad omen for you.

Then goes on to describe some interesting sensory biology research. And, ends with the good news, namely, unless the cat is moving real fast, you are in good shape

Assuming that cats possess such electroreceptive organs (which is yet to be established) like sharks with similar electric thresholds (highly unlikely) and their 2 miles/hour travel speed, cats crossing my path should do so at about a meter per second.

An interesting piece; take a look!