Rajeev’s Almanack

Daniel Markey was Policy planning staff member, South and Central Asia portfolio, U.S. Department of State (2003-2007). He is now a senior fellow for South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. It is interesting to listen to the diissolution of Musharraf through the words of Dr. Markey:

Mar 3 2008

Musharraf is a diminished asset. He is exceedingly unpopular. No one disagrees with that. The time has come to really get on sort of the right side of history, essentially for the United States to jump into the future and work with more popular forces in Pakistan

Feb 23 2008

Musharraf is obviously a poison pill. He is fading out.

Read on »

Bill Foster, the former Fermilab physicist, won the special election to replace Speaker Dennis Hastert in the House of Representatives for the next eleven months. There will be a regular election with the rest of the country in November, for a full term of two years. The margin of victory, 53-47, would be respectable anywhere, but is a stunning upset in a heavily Republican district: Foster ran as a Democrat.

Foster was the first political candidate endorsed by the Almanack. Science is at the core of so many national issues. Yet, so few in Congress display a scientific frame of mind. We cringe when otherwise responsible politicians deny evolution, get overly excited over climate change theories, or diagnose a neurological condition just by watching someone on TV. Even basic arithmetic is suspect, when miracles are preferred over mere mathematics.

Foster’s victory is not going to put an end to any of this. It was probably caused by larger political factors rather than any new enthusiasm for science. After all, Chicago is the epicenter of the Obama phenomenon and Foster had his support.

Nevertheless, we take joy in Foster’s victory and wish him well in the tougher contest he will face in November.

The most important election this year could be the one just concluded in Pakistan. In spite of the rigging, and the low turnout from an electorate in mortal danger, it looks like a fairly credible result. Musharraf’s allies lost. A good first step on a long road to recovery for Pakistan. Read on »

North Indian migrant workers in Mumbai are being attacked by a militant organization (known by the acronym MNS) which exploits the resentment of the local population. The most odious of the political leaders egging the violent mob on is Raj Thackeray. A generation ago the same folks (Raj’s uncle Bal was the leader back then) were targeting South Indians. What changed? Read on »

A parable, possibly of Buddhist origin:

The baker dangled the freshly made bread under the Bodhisatva’s nose. He knew it was overpriced, but the smell still enticed Him. So He breathed in deep. The baker, knowing he had lost the sale, said

“Hey, if you are enjoying the smell of my bread, you have to pay for it”

He shook the coins in his pockets:

“You can hear the sound of my coins in return for the smell of your bread”. And He walked away.

Only pay for what you have bought.

I am at my daughter’s birthday party the other day, chatting with the father of one of the girls.

“So, what do you do?”

” I teach at the U. of R.”

“What do you teach?”

“Physics”, expecting his eyes to glaze over.

“Oh, You must be smart”, unexpected response.

“I suppose so.” Not sure how to respond to that.

” So…Do you believe there is someone up there?” pointing to the sky.

“You mean God?”

“No..No way. UFOs man. You think there is someone looking down at us?”

“I don’t know. May be. …I have never seen one”

Times, they are a-changing. It was not too long ago that Indian diplomats used to make speeches at the UN General Assembly condemning Israel. A new, more pragmatic, generation is in charge of India now. Fewer speeches at the UN. More interested in development and return on investment. Even from the space program. Due to various sanctions, India had to develop the capability to launch into space on its own: a slow and painstaking process. Now that it is able to launch reasonable size payloads, it would like to enter the commercial launch business. As of now, India offers the cheapest launch options- $14M for a 650 kg payload in low Earth orbit. There is some question about reliability though; this can nullify the cost advantage because of the insurance needed.

It is important therefore to show that you can deliver reliably. The latest launch of a `Remote Sensing Satellite’ with `Synthetic Aperture Radar’ in polar orbit (i.e., spy satellite) for Israel went off exactly as planned, although months past the original date. This ought to attract more business. Also, make a few people mad; but probably not make many new enemies.

So why did Israel choose the Indian Space Research Organization for this launch? It is doubtful it is for technical reasons. Israel most likely has the capability to launch such a payload on its own.Even otherwise, Israel has many other options. It could be for strategic reasons. India is already Israel’s largest customer for arms exports. Some trade in the other direction could be a good way to cement a deeper strategic relationship. It could be a good way of keeping tabs on what India is up to.

Or may be it was just a good arrangement for both sides. Sometimes a rocket is just a rocket.

Bill Foster: Businessman, Scientist, Democrat

Congress makes decisions that require scientific knowledge all the time. Yet very few Congressmen have a science background. So it is in all of our interests to have scientists run for Congress.

Bill Foster, a physicist with a distinguished career at Fermilab, is doing just that. (I know him only by reputation.) He is running for the seat vacated by the retirement of former Speaker Dennis Hastert. It turns out that Foster is a successful businessman as well! He and his brother started a company that is now one of the world’s largest manufacturers of lighting equipment for the theater. A rare combination of talents.

Sadly, the support of 22 Nobel Laureates probably won’t help much in the real world. But the Chicago Tribune endorsement ought to matter.

Contribute to his campaign. If you live in the 14th District of Illinois, ( in true Chicago Democrat tradition) Vote Early, Vote Often on primary election day, Feb 5th.

Actually, early voting began on Jan 9th. The `vote often’ bit is not entirely a joke either. You can vote twice for the same seat: once to pick the person who will fill out Hastert’s term and another for the full term in the next Congress.

Update Jan 26: The Daily Kos reports on the race.

Feb 6: It looks like Foster won the democratic primary narrowly. The district traditionally leans Republican by five points, but could be within reach this election year.

Feb14: The race is a dead heat. Remarkable, as this is a District previously represented by the Republican Speaker of the House. Foster has a real chance!

Feb 23: From the Robert Novak column:

McCain presided over a $1,000-a-ticket fund-raiser in Sugar Grove, Ill., for conservative dairy magnate Jim Oberweis. Although Hastert carried the district easily, Republican nominee Oberweis faces a serious battle against liberal Democratic physicist-businessman Bill Foster. Oberweis lost previous primary bids for governor and the U.S. Senate.

An analogy is often made between scientific research and exploration. In High Energy Physics, the accelerator physicists are the ship builders, the theoreticians the map makers, phenemenologists the navigators and the experimentalists are the sailors. The spokesman for the experimentalists is the captain of the ship, a dashing figure with power over life and death during the voyage. Ah, if only we were still in this romantic era..

Exploring in Canoes

The mega collaborations of thousands of physicists, that are being formed, are more like aircraft carriers. A good way of projecting power, but a bad instrument for exploration.

“But you can’t go exploring in a canoe”, I am told when I bring up this point.

Actually, you can. Canoes were exactly what the polynesians used to explore and settle the largest ocean on Earth, the Pacific. Read on »

Nano Nano
Nano has been a buzz word in physics for a while. Now it is also the name of a car, made by Tata Motors of India. It is cute, looking more like a toy car than a real one. It is small. I have seen potholes in Calcutta that are bigger. And most of all it is cheap. It costs less than the DVD player in the SUV that some of my neighbors drive. The Nano is unlikely to be another Yugo: India is not in danger of breaking up, destroying its supply chain. The dream is that will be the next Volkswagen Bug. More likely it will be the next Trabant. Not too bad.

Whether the Nano succeeds or not, it is part of a larger trend. This is what engineering for the masses will look like in the future. What the iPod did to the record industry and the arxiv did to costly journals is about to happen to many well-established businesses.

So what do the $2,500 car and the $200 laptop tell us? Driving and computing are not the only things that can be done much cheaper and smaller. Read on »

Drona was the greatest teacher of his time. He had no peer in his command of the martial arts and sciences. But, at the end of many years of studying and perfecting his skills, he found himself destitute, and with a wife and son to support. He decided to pay a visit to his best buddy from elementary school, who was now King of the minor country of Panchala. Perhaps his friend would arrange for a job. Read on »

Breaking News….

The crack investigation team set up by General Musharraf to investigate the death of Mrs. Benazir Bhutto has submitted its report. The conclusions might surprise some who made hasty deductions based on a grainy video.

Mrs. Bhutto died from a severe case of indigestion. Having lived abroad for so long, her stomach could no longer handle the spicy food of her homeland. A particularly spicy meal of Naan and Chicken Tikka at Army HQ in Rawalpindi did her in. Other than that, the dinner was a nice affair.

In the videos shown you can see her bending over suddenly with stomach pain. Purely by coincidence a young man in the crowd can be seen raising a revolver and aiming it at her head. The near simultaneity of these two events led most of the world to mistakenly conclude that Mrs. Bhutto was assassinated. The truth is mundane but inescapable.

Unscrupulous elements are trying to take advantage of the confusion. They will be put down mercilessly. The truth has always been on the side of the Glorious Pakistan Army.

Absurdistan Zindabad!

We return to our regularly scheduled program now.

Something odd is happening with environmentalism. It is being opposed vehemently by American Conservatives. What is strange about this is that usually the drive to preserve nature comes from conservatives. It is not a coincidence that the words `conservative’ and `conservation’ have the same root. Read on »

A missile is launched when an airplane is directly overhead, at a height . The missile moves at a constant speed always heading directly towards the aircraft, which is moving along a straight line at constant velocity . What is the shape of the missile’s trajectory? How far will the aircraft fly before it is hit by the missile? What if the plane takes evasive action by randomly changing its direction, but heading in the original direction on the average? What is the best strategy for the missile to maximize the probability of a hit?

Read on »

My friends abroad, I am writing this with joy in my heart. Our long national nightmare is over. Full Democracy has been achieved and Full Justice has triumphed. Extremism in all its forms has been defeated. The humiliation of public servants by the judiciary has been stopped. Our Mission has been Accomplished. Read on »

Perhaps the most spectacular early prediction of quantum mechanics was tunneling: that particles can do things that are forbidden in Newton’s mechanics, although with a small probability. Read on »

Thermodynamics is the study of heat. Originally developed to understand steam engines and such, it led to a revolution in physics. It showed that time has a preferred direction. Also, that physics is not fully deterministic: the best we can do for large systems is to predict averages of physical quantities and probabilities of events. But with the even greater revolutions of quantum mechanics and relativity that happened soon after , thermodynamics lost some of its original wonder. Nowadays it is thought of a staid old field, barely taught in physics departments anymore ( except as a preparation for a Stat Mech course). This is a pity, because thermodynamics is perhaps the most remarkable of all physical theories. We have none other than Albert Einstein vouching for this¹: Read on »

Earnest Rutherford used to say that all science is either physics or stamp collecting. This could have been a dig at the biologists of his time, who were still collecting samples and classifying species. He probably would have thought more highly of modern molecular biology, which is a lot like his physics in outlook: everything is determined by the DNA. It is said that Rutherford’s worst insult for a student who had done something stupid was–Chemist. The chemists had the last laugh though: Rutherford was awarded the Nobel Prize not in Physics but in Chemistry for having achieved the transmutation of elements.

Should we understand the world bottom up or top down? Which is the proper scientific view? Read on »

Read First: Longitude Zero

Indians call the bay between Africa and India the Arabian Sea. Throughout the medieval times it was controlled by Arab sailors. They established settlements down the East coast of Africa, as far down as Malindi in Kenya. Read on »

What is the date today? A simple question, but with a complex answer.

The story of calendars is the story of human civilization itself. The millenial ¹ article by Amartya Sen tries to disentangle fact from fantasy in the history of calendars. Never an easy task in history, especially hard in the keeping of time itself. Read on »

Read the latest in this series Environmentalism is a Conservative Cause

The debate on global warming caused by human consumption of hydrocarbons appears to be over. We are told that the polar ice cap will melt. Bangladesh will get inundated. Hurricanes will increase in intensity. Crops will fail. Riots will break out. Anecdotal evidence of the coming catastrophe mounds day by day. A glacier in the Antarctic is shrinking. The NorthWest passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific (that many generations of explorers looked for in vain) has almost opened up- only 60 miles of ice floes remain unmelted in the summer. The Sacred Phallus of Siva that forms every year from ice almost didn’t appear this year: the Himalayas must be getting too warm. Stranded polar bears have been spotted drowning as the ice floes they are standing on melt. Sea turtles are said to be dying off because the ocean is too warm for their eggs to hatch. Read on »

The Theology

His All-Holiness Bartholomew I is the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the city now called Istanbul. He is considered the equivalent of the Pope for the 300 million Orthodox Christians in the world. He is the `first among equals’ of the four Patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem who are successors to the Apostles. (Several Patriarchates have been added more recently to reflect the growth of the Church in Eastern Europe, such as those Serbia, Moscow and Bulgaria). Read on »

It is difficult to know when it is time to drop what you are doing and start something new. Jerry Seinfeld, the comedian was an exception. At the height of his fame he was willing to walk away from a deal worth a million dollars an episode, because he knew his show had lost its originality. But so few in the political world seem to know when it is time to quit. Some linger on, braving daily insults and votes of no confidence, in the mistaken belief that it shows strength of character.
Read on »

Terrence Tao has made some deep observations on why the regularity of three dimensional Navier-Stokes is such a hard problem. Although he has gone on to many other equally interesting topics, I remain fascinated by his main point there: that Navier-Stokes is supercritical. The nonlinearities become stronger at small distance scales, making it impossible to know (using present techniques) whether solutions remain smooth for all time. Thus, it is crucial to understand the scale dependence of non-linearities in fluid mechanics.
Read on »