A while ago, I'd made a post on Noether's theorem - It didn't get many responses because it was too mathematical. I feel it sucks that more folks haven't heard of it, because it is really one of the most surprising ideas in physics (right up there with mass-energy equivalence i.e., e = mc2 etc ( Read more... )

I was shocked to hear the passing of Joseph Ollapally today. He was my senior @ school & we also partnered in quiz competitions.

SchoolI first interacted with him back in the 9th grade, when I became a member of the school's `Literature Club'. I remember being thrilled because it was difficult to become a member of that club as it was the default ( Read more... )

Hello, all ( Read more... )

Last weekend, a friend & I caught a performance of Samuel Beckett's play, Waiting for Godot. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy it very much.

Despite it's existentialist underpinnings, with a length of over 2 hours, I found it tedious. Nonetheless, it is quite remarkable - After all, how many plays do you know which explicitly deal with the boring ( Read more... )

I have noticed that anytime my pup has a health issue, I can hardly concentrate on anything at all! I had to take her to the vet as she hurt her leg today. It is heartbreaking to see her limp when she comes up to greet me ( Read more... )

The late Sidney Morgenbesser was a Philosophy professor at Columbia, and something of a prankster.

I was looking him up yesterday, when I chanced upon this little gem:

During a lecture the Oxford linguistic philosopher J. L. Austin made the claim that although a double negative in English implies a positive meaning, there is no language in which ( Read more... )

Weekends are reserved for marathon sessions of ``The Wire,’’ with my friends - we have been fanatics of this TV Drama for years now ( Read more... )

After yesterday, I re-defined my interest in the law.

OK, it is filled with meaningless rules and most of the time justice does not get served. But if you put your misgivings aside, you will notice that there is beauty and elegance in the methods that some folks use while exploiting the rules.

As an example, look at the way lawyers advise C.E.Os ( Read more... )

Introduction

We look at yet another re-formulation of Physics - called Poisson Brackets. Using them, we see that a symmetry is an operation that preserves the Hamiltonian. We also derive a surprising relationship between Hamiltonians and conserved quantities.

( 0. Getting Started )

Introduction

Using elementary maths, we derive Hamilton’s equations and show, via Liouville's Theorem, how all physical processes in nature are of the type that preserve information. In more sensationalist prose, this means that you can run the Universe forwards/backwards to an arbitrary save-point, because all processes in nature are reversible.
( 0. Getting Started )