iFAQ is real
Infrequently Asked QuestionsBy Donald Ervin Knuth (Ka-NOOTH)
Why does my country have the right to be occupying Iraq?
Why should my country not support an international court of justice?
Is my country not strong enough to achieve its aims fairly?
When the leaders of a country cause it to do terrible things, what is the best way to restore the honor of that country?
Is it possible for potential new leaders to raise questions about their country’s possible guilt, without committing political suicide?
Do I deserve retribution from aggrieved people whose lives have been ruined by actions that my leaders have taken without my consent?
How can I best help set in motion a process by which reparations are made to people who have been harmed by unjust deeds of my country?
If day after day goes by with nobody discussing uncomfortable questions like these, won’t the good people of my country be guilty of making things worse?
Donald E. Knuth is the Professor Emeritus of The Art of Computer Programming at Stanford University. He is the man who is writing this book for the last 46 years, started at 1962. American Scientist has included this work among the best twelve physical-science monographs of the twentieth century. The other 11 are Dirac on quantum mechanics, Einstein on relativity, Mandelbrot on fractals, Pauling on the chemical bond, Russell and Whitehead on foundations of mathematics, von Neumann and Morgenstern on game theory, Wiener on cybernetics, Woodward and Hoffmann on orbital symmetry, Feynman on quantum electrodynamics, Smith on the search for structure, and Einstein’s collected papers.1
All this is still within expected. What is beyond expectation is the iFAQ! Why does a man like Donald Knuth need to put in black and white these uncomfortable and totally un-mathematical questions in his official website? My best shot is this saying from Arthur C. Clarke:
As our own species is in the process of proving, one cannot have superior science and inferior morals. The combination is unstable and self-destroying.
Knuth says, “Perhaps the best clues to the outlines of successful answers can be found in a wonderful speech that Richard von Weizsäcker gave in 1985.
My favourite things
|
Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens Brown paper packages tied up with strings These are a few of my favourite things Cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudels Door bells and sleigh bells And schnitzel with noodles Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings These are a few of my favourite things Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes Silver white winters that melt into Springs These are a few of my favourite things When the dog bites When the bee stings When I’m feeling sad I simply remember my favourite things And then I don’t feel so bad.The Sound of Music |
||
Few of my favourite things also include: prime numbers, happy prime numbers, the phrase “six of one and half-a-dozen of the other”, the colour black and Bleu, the sounds pristine and the words deep, the infrequent questions, the unusual love songs, et all.
From YouTube
May I have the origin please?
con.trived | k
n-tr
vd
circa 13251, from O.Fr. controver2 "to find out, contrive, imagine"
from V.Lat. contropare "to compare"3 (via a figure of speech)
from Lat. tropus "trope, figure of speech, figurative use of word"
from Gk. tropos "figuratively, deportment or character"
Sense evolution (in Fr.) was from "invent with ingenuity" to "invent falsely."
my·o·pi·a | m-
p
-
circa 1727, medical Latin.
from Late Gk. myopia "near-sightedness"
from myops "near-sighted"
from myein "to shut" + ops ( gen. opos) "eye"
de·fense | d
-f
ns
circa 1297, from O.Fr. defens
from Lat. defensum "thing protected or forbidden"
from neut. pp. of defendere "ward off, protect"
It is really quite uncanny that when I heard this word "contrived", I was also hearing a lot of things French. It has happened to me many times now. This correlation kind of thing. I should get used to this by now, more so since I represent the contrived kind. This kind has lost the right to be surprised, because hey how can you be surprised when it was you who prepared the dialogue and delivered it deferred live!?
There is however a contradiction in being myopic and contrived at the same time. By definition, myopic is short sightedness. And to be contrived one cannot afford not to be long sighted! Point to ponder.
But then if you are contrived then you can certainly be defensive at times!
welt·schmerz | vltshmrts
circa 1875, from Ger . Welt "world" + Schmerz "pain"
from MHG . smërze, from Old High German smerzo
Weltschmerz is a term coined by the German author Jean Paul and denotes the kind of feeling experienced by someone who understands that physical reality can never satisfy the demands of the mind. The psychological pain caused by sadness that can occur when realizing that someone's own weaknesses are caused by the inappropriateness and cruelty of the world and (physical and social) circumstances4.
To the clever, Weltschmerz is a pretext for escapism. I can well imagine various leaders over various time lines, pronouncing Weltschmerz with a distaste and mockery. And dismissing it as an expression of romantic pessimism. Anomie and alienation are dangerous words and Émile Durkheim's book Suicide can never be allowed to be read on prime time TV.
My defense for being contrived, myopic, and defensive is my fear of Weltschmerz and my fear of the allure to end it all.
post scriptum, 29th May 2009
Do you remember arindam yesterday when we were having a conversation amongst the so many that we converse, we talked about ' ishod-ushno ' a.k.a Lukewarm and ...my questions... 3, 4,5 ?
And... around that same time frame someplace else in Washington a middle schooler of Indian origin won the US National Spelling Bee championship for 2009...
Kavya Shivshankar of Olethe, Kansas, effortlessly spelt the word Laodicean - which means indifferent or Lukewarm especially in matters of religion and politics - to claim the title after her only remaining American opponent Tim Ruiter flubbed Maecenas, which means a generous benefactor.
Scripps National Spelling Bee is what I saw on 2006 instead of the 2006 FIFA World Cup final. That's how I know the origin.
Dark Side of The Flashback
Dear None :-)
It was 2000. It could also have been 1999 or 2001, but I am sticking to the circa 2000 because of the effect. I called your office. It was some month and I was not that ‘in’ at that point; contrary, I was ‘out’1 literally; the glamour been stripped out of the phrase ‘far out’. I was out and down of IIT in Calcutta. And feeling shaky2 and apologetic to quite a number of people. I called your office, most probably it was PwC. I was told that None has gone to Germany. The wall fell on November 9, 1989 and the reunification was achieved on October 3, 19903. Therefore I had no question to ask about the east or west (and if the twain will ever meet4 ) and that was it.
I really have no business to spoil the purple haze5 and you will always remain my best friend. I have earned the right to disappear for some time now :-) Let’s put it this way. This is a time out to find the meaning of being and nothingness.6
Cheers!
—Ari
post scriptum, 5th January 2009
I did think that life’s too short for the “revenge” thing and three and a half days
were revenge enough. This is not about who did what at whom and when. This
is about not being a smart Alec and this is about the unexpected counter intuitive
shock! :-) I agree, you do need to seriously think about the “grip”! And of course
this is about the present.
Feeling good
Was good enough for me. The way Janis Joplin sings this! It’s not for nothing that I say, “let the words be theirs, I am done with mine” Cassidy
So this takes me back to 1991. IIT KGP. The potent combination of the intellect with glamour, heightened by the external catalyst of nature and green grass. And so feeling good was naturally good enough for me. Me and my other self mes.
Then comes the track High Hopes from Division Bell, with a somewhat dramatic vocal by Dave Gilmour, but the risk of naivety was never ever a hint. The thread of Rick Wright and the drum-bonding provided by Nick Mason made sure of that. Naivety was million miles away and the effect is profound. Maybe we should pause and give it an ear now (the track High Hopes)
So I set forth in search of my Bobby McGee and I send a message to the clouds and I get an assurance of receipt. The receipt is the last thing I wanted to see.
It is paradoxical that to write about the times bad, the writing time (i.e. this instant), the moment that the bytes are translated to ASCII, must be feeling good. Never ever I wrote anything when I was feeling abject, tired abject or otherwise. I have a nudging suspicion that this is the case with all creation. But again I have erred so many times that it is embarrassing even to the self :-) Ok, so I was writing about feeling good and the recent feel good factor is due to the fact that amazon.com has been incredible! The book “Taken by Storm” got lost the last time, it came safe and healthy this time around! Wow! And also another contributor was the phone call from Starmarks (the book store) saying that “Death of a salesman” has arrived and it’s mine for the taking. So I went from one end of the city to the other, in an old ambassador hired car, with dust all over my face, to procure “Death of a salesman” :-)
This time around the smiley icon is indeed one of embarrassment.
