moving

One thought that someone can get when she is packing to leave is

"I seem to have come far from where I started. How do I know it is far enough?"

PS: I will be travelling for sometime and then moving to a new place. So, it may be sometime before regular blogging resumes! Read the rest of this entry >>

ideas from the presentation

what if W(C) is irrational.

Talk about the if part first, so that the intuition is conveyed. Otherwise, it may give an idea of where the theorem is going. This is partly true because, we begin with the conditions for computability of S and give a condition of computability of S'

recession cone: give Ax<=b and Ax<=0 in the pictures, by moving the constraints through the origin. construct the recession cone from the generators also????

blackbox on the final slide should say:

yes if S is computable.
maybe otherwise.

suppose we give a definition of FATNESS. does that mean that the blackbox can give NO answer?

Make it clear if the statements are for computability or incomputability.
Are there better terms than if and only-if conditions? How about necessary and sufficient conditions? Is the following idea true: "The if part is weaker than necessary condition." If the if-part is added to FAT SURE's, then do we have a necessary condition?

Define a URE after the definining SURE. Read the rest of this entry >>

hayagriva and agasthya

Sri Maata Sri MahaRaagni Srimad Simhasaneshwari
Chidagni Kunda Sambhuta Deva Kaarya Samudyata ...

begins Lalitha Sahasranamam, possibly the most beautiful set of verses ever written. I always feel a sense of Bhakti when I recite Vishnu Sahasranamam. Of course, as Sankara says, there is no Advaita without Bhakti. With LS, I feel Bhakti too. I also feel a strange Advaitic feeling, that is unique to LS.

Lalitha Sahasranamam is said to be taught by Hayagriva (who is said to be very tall: maybe means a Sthula-Roopa) to Sri Agasthya (who is sais to be very short: probably means a Sukshma-roopa). Maybe we can interpret the physical structures as metaphorical allegories to ParaBrahma and Atma respectively.

The goddess who is being prayed can be considered to be the YogaMaaya herself. In an Advaitic way, the teaching seems to convey that "if you understand the illusion, you will be Brahma. There is no other way for the Atma to be Brahma than throught understanding the nature of Maya/illusion, that drives the world."

This entirely concurs with chapter 7 verse 14 of Srimad Bhagavad Gita, when Sri Krishna says:

Dive Hyesha Guna Mayi Mama Maaya Duratyata
Maame va prapadyante Maayametam Tarantate


[It is impossible to cross the maaya of this world. Only by my grace can you cross it.]

So, we are praying to the Goddess Tripurambika, Lalita devi to help us cross the illusion that is the world. Read the rest of this entry >>

some links on reservations

Atanu Dey: Imagine no reservations and reservations about reservations.

Nitin Pai of the Acorn: on Manmohan Singh, more on reservations. He is an awesome blogger with a big impact.

Francois Gautier on Brahmins in India today. A very sad state of affairs indeed!

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New links in the side bar: Nitin Pai at the Acorn and Jaffna and Cynical Nerd. Jaffna used to blog at secular-right. That blog has been dissolved (why?).

Postscript: Nitin Pai calls it the Tiananmen of India and gives a link to a poem. I understand the spirit. I think one more characterization would be to call it the Babri Masjid of Congress. In both the situations, the main party (congress/BJP) was led by special interest groups (congress-sycophant/VHP) Also, calling associating congress with the name of Babar gives a evil-satisfaction, as I have scant respect of both.

In disavowing the congress party, I am a follower of the Mahatma, who rejected the membership sometime in 30s and went further in asking the congress to be dismantled after independence. Read the rest of this entry >>

Dreams and Self Realization

In a post on self-realization, subbu gives a good anecdote of guru appearing in Dreams:

Rarely, a person may have a dream in which he receives initiation from God or the Guru into a mantra. In the Mahàbhàrata [in chapters 80 and 81 of the DroNa-Parvan], there is an account of a dream in which Arjuna received instructions from Shiva. Having vowed to slay Jayadratha by sunset the next day, Arjuna was worried about how he could achieve success. When he fell asleep, he had a dream in which Krishna came to him and led him on an aerial journey to the summit of the kailàsa mountain. There, they beheld Shiva and eulogised Him. In response to Arjuna's prayer, the Lord directed them to fetch His bow, pinàka, and His pAshupata-astra from a celestial lake. When they did so, a brahmacàrin emerged from Shiva's side and taught Arjuna how to discharge the pAshupata arrow. The Lord also taught Arjuna the mantra-s for invoking the weapon. Arjuna's memory of the instructions about the use of the pAshupata that he had received much earlier from Shiva was thereby restored. On waking up, he was in a position to invoke with mantra-s and employ the irresistible pAshupata, if needed.

Giiven that there is no difference between dream-state and waking-state, I think that instruction by Guru in dream-state is no different from instruction by Guru in waking-state. This indeed has happened to many great realized souls (Ramana?).

Also subbu gives the wonderful shloka 2-16 from BhagavadGita:

The unreal has no true existence and the Real can never go out of Existence.

The essence of which, was repeated by Shankara when Govindachaya asked him "What is Real?" and also when Shankara was framing the theory of reality. Read the rest of this entry >>

Tadhagata and Annamayya

A couple of days back, it was Vaisakha-Purnima, the Jayanthi of ShakyaMuni-Buddha and Annamayya. Read the wonderful article by Atanu on the enlightened one. Read the rest of this entry >>

aakaspatitam toyam saagaram prati gachati

Read the rest of this entry >>

Karp: The Mysteries of Algorithms

From People and ideas in Theoretical Computer Science edited by C.S.Calude:

My own work on formal methods centered around parallel computation. Ray Miller, Shmuel Winograd and I did work that foreshadowed the theory of systolic algorithms. Miller and I introduced the parallel program schema as a model of asynchrononous parallel computation; in the course of this work we introduced vector addition systems and initiated the study of related decision problems. The most notorious of these was the reachability problem, which after many false tries was proved to be decidable through the efforts of several researchers, culminating in a 1982 paper by Rao Kosaraju.

A related post: Ray Miller's memoirs. Read the rest of this entry >>

Siddhartha by Hesse: Final Chapter - Govinda (repost)

Those of my readers, who have not previously read Herman Hesse's Siddhartha, please do so. If you already have, please read the final chapter Govinda again. This chapter is rightly highlighed by Atanu at the right places. I have just one suggestion, please read it v-e-r-y v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y.

A repost of an inspired writing of mine. Read the rest of this entry >>

Linear Scheduling is close to optimal by Darte-Khachiyan-Robert

They handle a URE, not a SURE.
Give the ratio of the best free schedule to the best linear schedule.
Prove that it is small.

Have a definition of fatness.

See the open-problems post.


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Lattice Stuff:

From Polylib notes

A collection of material on LLL.

material on Reduced lattice bases

Deza's slides talk about the chapters from Schrijver's books.

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Diestel's Graph theory is available online. Check for some kind of "cycle space", or "reachable cycles"???

polylib notes on polyhedra and lattices.
A good site on convex stuff from upenn.
check Chernikova algorithm by Le Verge!!!! Read the rest of this entry >>

Sankara Desika Me Saranam

The lion of Vedanta appeared;
the universe of duality rejoiced.

Vaisakha Shukla Panchami is said to be the Jayanthi of Shri Adi Sankaracharya. Some material:

From the preface to Viveka Chudamani by John Grimes:

Unbelievably multi-faceted, he was a teacher, a thinker, a reformer, a commentator, an organizer, a philosopher, a poet, a theologian, a missionary, a mystic, a scholar, a saint, a siddha, a mukta, a divine incarnation, a living legend.

The famous Guru Shisya parampara of Vedanta:

Dakshinamurthi, the primordial Guru is universally understood and then:

Narayanam Padmabhuvam [PadmaBhuvam: one who is born from lotus. Brahma is said to be be born from the a lotus that was rooted in the navel of Shri Vishnu]

Vasistham [Deva Guru] Saktimca tatputra [Shakti: the son of Vasistha] Parasaranca [Vyasa's father] Vyasam Sukam [Vyasa, the compiler of the Vedas. Suka, the son of Vyasa and had recited Bhagavatham to Parikshit. Here ends the familial-guru-sishya-parampara.]

Gaudapadam mahantam Govinda Yogindra athasya sishyam Sri Sankaracharya athasya [Begin the parampara when the Guru's were renunciates. Gaudapada is the Guru of GovindaPada, who in turn in the Guru of Shankara.]

Padmapadamca Hastamalakancha sisyam tam Totakam varttika-kara [The shisya-parampara of Shri Shankara: Padmapada, Hastamalaka, Totaka and Sureshwara (varttika-kara?)] manyan asmad gurun santata-manatosmi [I bow to all of them.]

[Annotation by me.]

Greatness of Shankara's life and teachings (from advaitin mailing list): 1, 2, 3 and 4

Some of Shankara's works from Sanskrit Documents.

From Shankaracharya.org, the famous NisargaDatta Maharaj's I am That is available online.

A succint biography of Shankara, with references to a lot of works.

My other links on the same book: review and shloka on Shankara, transcript and thoughts on Shri AdiShankaracharya, the movie.

The title of the post is from Totakastakam.

...
Sarva Vedanta Siddhanta Gocharam Tam aGocharam
Govindam Paramanandam Sat-gurum-Pranatosymyaham.
...

Chidananda-roopa-Sivoham Sivoham! Read the rest of this entry >>