Some firsts

As neone amongst you who keep(s) track of this blog might have noticed, I have been making many dx-dx changes to my blog over past few days. I have included a site traffic monitor from tracemyip.org and also one from Clustrmaps. I liked the TraceMyIP widget more obviously because it provides greater detail about the visitors including their IP, exact location, browser, OS, time of visit, pages visited and whether they are online or not. And also u can block ur own IP from being counted. But it is free only for a period of one year I was wishing to do it for a while now, but could figure out today only how to go about it.

The web log from the first day surprises me in addition to the info that the WordPress Blog Stat widget has been givin over last month or so, Today, I had visitors from as far as Copenhagen, Saint George and LA. That simply amazes me. And on the top of it all, somebody amongst them had searched for my name itself. Now, this is something too flattering OK … enuf of gloating. But on a side note, people please do tell me who you are when you have searched for my name and do leave some comments

Also, I have included links to some blogs that I myself read and admire too!

In addition, I am posting today my first photograph, actually a computer generated painting that seems beautiful to me atleast. This is another of the firsts. The painting is a result of some computation carried out in connection with something in asteroseismology. I feel that this is why nature seems to be so beautiful. Such beautiful do these strokes of lines arising from some equations of physics seem. The image was generated from the numerical datae using GNUPLOT version 4.2 and then subsequently edited using GIMP 2.4.5

Signing off

Chaos in Philosophy

@HBCSE, Mumbai

Arrived on 27th from Bhilai … attended a lec on chaos theory by Prof. G. Rangarajan of the Dept. of Mathematics at IISc, Bangalore. Cud make sense of most of the things tht he spoke, at the end of the lec, he discussed on the phenomenon of mass extinction of species. It says that the rate of growth of a species population in one geographical region is coupled to that in another geographical region … and if the individuals belonging to same species compete wd each other, than a slight perturbance in d equation (in form of some calamity) leads to a synchronicity between the growth rates of the species in different regions and thereafter mass extinction takes place.

On the other hand, if the individuals of the same species cooperate wd each other, synchronicity isn’t achieved and rescue effect comes into play and the species does surrive in certain pockets of the planet, and then it can again prosper. For more of the mathematics part of it, see this.

This led me to think on how even such higher and deep mathematics also say the same thing as what common sense says. If only, common sense wud have been so common

Logicism

Now, this might be the most radical topic to start blogging about. Earlier, the title was Scientism but I have changed it to Logicism for reasons described in a comment. The word scientism was perhaps first coined by Carl Sagan. It suited my need best to give a name to the collective set of ideas and opinions that I have developed over time. I am writing down some of its commandments which deems fit to me. Surely, I don’t intend to write down all of them at one stretch but will be building it brick by brick. I believe that I follow this religion. You are free to make your own opinions about my views, follow or not follow it, and even write to me your comments (or suggest some new commandments). The commandments go like this:

1) Every person’s first duty is towards this human race. Nations, religion, caste, creed, family and gender – all come after that. None of our actions should be towards retro-development of human race. It being said, this doesn’t imply that we humans have a right to exploit other species for our undue benefit. The subspecies Homo Sapiens sapiens, as a whole must act like an elder brother taking care of all its brethren species. However, when it comes to the very existence of human species itself, we should leave no stone upturned to safeguard that, even at the cost of some other creatures.