Warrier's COLLAGE July 8, 2021 : Astrophysics
Welcome to
Warrier's COLLAGE
On
Thursday
July 8, 2021
Revenge & Virtuous Revenge
https://youtu.be/XK9fHG9uoZc
(Link Courtesy : Saravana Varma Mumbai)
Sukh ke Sab Sathi...
https://youtu.be/74yzqUdJ94c
(Link Suggestion : Shivaram Shetty Mumbai)
Good Morning
Congratulations and Best Wishes to Payal Wagh, daughter of Dr Chitra (Now in UK with her children Purnima and Payal). Payal topped in B Sc Astrophysics from the University of Lankashire, UK. We wish her good luck and success in all her endeavours.
H Collage Follow up :
Sanathanasudha (Malayalam)
Nice Day
M G Warrier
A
Response : V Babusenan
Rama and Krishna
I am always diffident to discuss about Ramayana for the lack of knowledge about it. Being a great epic, it is no wonder that it is discussed and interpreted in many countries. Attitudes and customs being different, it may normally be expected that many of the alterations and interpretations are likely to be unpalatable to us. We know that there are many foreigners who are well versed in Indian spirituality. One of them may take the following view:
In chapter 4 of the Gita, Lord Krishna, the World Teacher, talks about the time when incarnation takes place. (in the 7th and 8th slokas.) When Dharma gets weakened and Adharma asserts itself, God takes birth. It is also His aim to protect the good people and destroy the evil doers. Did He do this satisfactorily in his avatar as Rama? Of course, He partly did it in the first phase of the epic, but in the second phase, how many instances can one point out in proof of His having eliminated adharma and re- established dharma? Many worship him for his adherence to a single wife and his being an ideal and democratic ruler. Sita was admirably true to him, but he didn't seem to have reciprocated in a fitting manner. Besides, adherence to a single wife cannot be regarded as a sign of divinity as Krishna had two wives. It is true that an ideal ruler must respect the wishes of his subjects, but it was a decadent society that Rama ruled and, as an avatar, it was his responsibility to reform it. On the contrary, he allowed himself to be ruled by it. Abandoning pregnant wife in the deep jungle and the killing of a Sudra sannyasin with his own hands for performing tapas prohibited to Sudras are examples of this unfortunate situation.
These are questions which do not appear to have rationally convincing answers. Yet, these in no way touch the glory of Ramayana as an epic. There seems to be no harm in our Youth knowing about its various manifestations in other lands, however unpleasant they may be. This may hopefully convince them of the grandeur of their own understanding of the epic.
Current Affairs :
a) Open Banking
https://m.rbi.org.in/Scripts/BS_SpeechesView.aspx?Id=1107
Excerpts :
Open Banking Initiatives in India
7. Globally, open banking regulatory frameworks are structured to enable third party access to customer-permissioned data, requiring licencing or authorisation of third parties, and implementing data privacy and disclosure and consent requirements. Some frameworks may also contain provisions related to whether third parties can share and/or resell data onward to “fourth parties”, use the data for purposes beyond the customer's original consent and to whether banks or third parties could be remunerated for sharing data. Open banking frameworks may also contain expectations or requirements on data storage and security.
8. India has kickstarted its approach to Open Banking by enabling an intermediary which will be responsible for the customers' consent management. These intermediaries are licensed as Non-Banking Financial Companies. In September 2016, RBI announced creation of a new licensed entity called Account Aggregator (AA) and allowed them to consolidate financial information of a customer held with different financial entities, spread across financial sector regulators. In India, AA acts as an intermediary between Financial Information Provider (FIP) such as bank, banking company, non-banking financial company, asset management company, depository, depository participant, insurance company, insurance repository, pension fund etc., and Financial Information User (FIU) which are entities registered with and regulated by any financial sector regulator. The flow of information takes place through appropriate Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).
9. The transfer of such information is based on an explicit consent of the customer and with appropriate agreements/ authorisations between the AA, the customer, and the financial information providers. Data cannot be stored by the aggregator or used by it for any other purpose. Explicit and robust data security and customer grievance redressal mechanisms have been prescribed and the Account Aggregators are not permitted to undertake any other activity, primarily to protect the customers’ interest.
b) Dowry
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/readersblog/writersrealm/dowry-the-bane-of-gods-own-country-34654/?comments=show
c) Flash : Central Cabinet expansion
https://www.livemint.com/news/india/modi-cabinet-expansion-portfolios-for-new-ministers-announced-who-gets-what-full-list-here-11625667494781.html
B
Collage in Classroom
a) Astrophysics
https://kids.britannica.com/students/article/astrophysics/309970
"For centuries astronomers studied the movements and interactions of the sun, the moon, planets, stars, comets, and meteors. Advances in technology have made it possible for scientists to study their properties and structure. Astrophysicists collect particles from meteorites and use telescopes on land, in balloons, and in satellites to gather data. They apply chemical and physical laws to explore what celestial objects consist of and how they formed and evolved.
Spectroscopy and photography, adopted for astronomical research in the 19th century, let investigators measure the quantity and quality of light emitted by stars and nebulas (clouds of interstellar gas and dust). That allowed them to study the brightness, temperature, and chemical composition of such objects in space. Investigators soon recognized that the properties of all celestial bodies, including the planets of the solar system, could only be understood in terms of what goes on inside and around them. The trend toward using physics and chemistry to interpret celestial observations gained momentum in the early 1920s, and many astronomers began referring to themselves as astrophysicists. Since the 1960s the field has developed more rapidly."
b) Are we living in Black Hole?
https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/baby-universes-black-holes-dark-matter
"
What's also fascinating, some of the bigger baby universes might not have gone so quietly. Above a certain critical size, the theory of gravity developed by Albert Einstein permits that such a universe may be perceived differently by observers. If you were inside it, you'd see an expanding universe, while if you were outside, this baby universe would look like a black hole. A conjecture that leads to wondering – are we potentially on the inside or outside of such a universe ourselves?
If you follow this multiverse logic, it also may be possible that while primordial black holes would appear to us as black holes, their true structural natures could be concealed by their "event horizons" – the boundaries surrounding black holes from which not even light can escape.
It should be noted, while strange or counter-intuitive, this is not the first go-around for these types of ideas. A study earlier in 2020 found that so-called "charged" black holes may include within them endlessly-repeating fractal universes of various sizes, including miniature, that can be stretched and deformed in all directions."
C
Book Review :
1) Enlightenment Now
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/14/enlightenment-now-steven-pinker-review
"Steven Pinker’s answer to this problem is to double down on progress: the policies of the past 300 years are still the best available. Enlightenment Now is a bold, wonderfully expansive and occasionally irate defence of scientific rationality and liberal humanism, of the sort that took root in Europe between the mid-17th and late 18th century. With Donald Trump in the Oval Office, populists on the march across Europe and US campuses at the centre of yet another culture skirmish, the timing of the book requires little explanation.
Pinker is up for a fight, and his main weapon is quantitative data. Two thirds of the book, which is a kind of sequel to his bestselling The Better Angels of Our Nature, consists of chapter after chapter of evidence that life has been getting progressively better for most people. “How can we soundly appraise the state of the world?” he asks. “The answer is to count.” The litany of facts is awesome, covering health, wealth, inequality, the environment, peace, democracy and on and on, though one wonders if there is any possible tipping point within this deluge where a doubter might suddenly be convinced".
2) Restoring TRUST in Governance : Business Manager H R Magazine
https://www.businessmanager.in/restoring-trust-in-governance.php
"Restoring TRUST in Governance: India's 2020's challenge" is M G Warrier's third book with focus on banking and finance. As economic reforms and structural changes in the Institutional System serving the financial sector in India are gaining momentum, this book and Warrier's 2018 book "India's Decade of Reforms" have some policy relevance.
The impact of the recent developments on Indian Economy has been covered at the appropriate places in some chapters in this book. In the preface the author mentions that "as of now, it is the fire-fighting stage and it will take longer to quantify losses and put in place what one may call a comprehensive "Post-Pandemic Rehabilitation Plan." Present debates are all speculative in nature."
Restoring TRUST in Governance discusses recent GOI and RBI initiatives to take forward Financial Sector and Economic Reforms and suggests possible policy refinements to infuse professionalism in governance and resources management.
The book is organized in three sections. Section I on Development Issues cover agenda for Modi 2.0 (2019-24), some aspects of universal basic minimum income and the relevance of NYAY, pros and cons of privatizing public sector and India's approach towards gold management.
D
Readers' Contribution
Mentoring : R Jayakumar
I have seen three kinds of people in life.
Some are gifted with high quality of brain and find it easy to acquire knowledge and shine themselves in life on their own.
And those who have very little brain, may be because of heredity, and find it difficult to learn from books in classes and also don't remember what they learn and consequently fail and never find it easy to shine in life. They form major part of the society.
The third type are the people with brains that help them to pass all exams they write, but find it difficult to compete with others to secure a better position in life.
All three seem to be natural in human development and nothing can be done about it and that is why only a few people shine while the majority is content with whatever they are able to achieve in life.
However, the third category who pass but don't succeed can be made to be different if they are mentored by someone a little towards success.
When I passed SSLC with first class marks and came to Bombay I was only like a frog in the well, a good swimmer only in still water.
I did not know anything about general knowledge, and how to converse well with others.
I did all college exams well and got jobs wherever I tried by just touching the line of minimum expected requirements.
Until I joined the Reserve Bank I never knew what is or who is a friend, philosopher and guide, though I was good in making friends.
There was one colleague who felt I was wanting many thing in knowledge and insisted that I know something more about the world and come out of the well.
He made me realise that science is different from religion, that I should talk and dress in a way to impress others. He gave me to read books meant for commoners to know about space and evolution, psychology and sociology.
He made me join British Library, become member of hiker's club, took me to restaurants where people ate with fork and knife, to watch a live discotheque, and play bridge and chess.
This all happened before marriage.
Though I didn't excell in Bank's career I always felt that he was like a mentor who made a difference in my life.
Success and the Bathtub.....
It is said that many successful people chanced upon their successful moment while lying in the bathtub.
But we Indian's have no habit of using bathtub for our daily bath. To be exact even now the best builders who make high rise buildings in Mumbai do not provide a bathtub in the bathroom.
We love to take our daily shower either in cold water or if a geyser is provided in hot water.
So it was no wonder when one of the leading music directors of yesteryears once said that he got the idea for the tune of one of his top hit songs while taking a shower in the morning.
I remember the name of the music director as Laxmikant and the famous song 'Sawan ka Mahina' from the film Milan.
I had occassions to go abroad and in whichever hotels we stayed or even the apartments where we stayed in America had big bathtubs for taking daily bath.
But I always preferred to stand in the middle of the bathtub and take the shower rather than filling the tub with water..
May be that is a reason I could never invent a thing in my life....
R Jayakumar
E
The Party is not over!
https://openthemagazine.com/special/one-hundred-years-of-the-party/
"At its hundredth year, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) defies the inevitable fossilisation of ideologies.
The original immortal was a poet for whom violence, physical as well as ideological, was a historical necessity in the pursuit of power. He built his China on a blank sheet of paper, and he knew, like Gandhi but without the Indian’s stoic sense of passivity, that the real territory of a liberation movement was the countryside. No revolutionary mobilised the masses with such brutal precision as Mao did, and he succeeded because he was a relentless inventor of the enemy. Revolution never slept as long as there was an enemy lurking in the shadows. The originality of Mao was in his ability to create an enemy for every occasion. Each occasion was captured in the epigrams of struggle and dream, be it the Long March or the Cultural Revolution. Mao pumped up his own power as the first revolutionary with a grassroots grasp over the mass mind by constantly stoking the rage against authority: bombard the headquarters. The Cultural Revolution was a pure leap of dark imagination; it put brother against brother, father against son, friend against friend, student against teacher…It created a utopia of suspects in which everyone was on a show trial. The survivors were those who had the cold determination to freeze their own conscience as the unforgiving arbiter loomed large. Mao’s revolution was not a palace coup. It was a ruthless participatory programme on ideological conversion and biological termination, spread across the largest canvas any revolutionary could ever dream of."
F
Leisure
SMILE
Two souls meet in heaven and are discussing how they came there.
They are surprised to find they were from the same town.
First one says—
“”I had a severe headache in the office and came home an hour earlier.
On reaching home, I could hear peals of laughter and mirth inside.
I was very angry that my wife was cheating on me.
I pressed the bell and it took some time for my wife to open the door.
I asked her who was in the house. She began to sob and told me there was no one.
I didn’t believe her and searched all the rooms, kitchen, and bathrooms but couldn’t find any one.
The thought that I had doubted her fidelity caused me a heart attack which I did not survive.
How about you?””
The other fellow glares at him for a long time and says “If only you had looked inside the fridge, both of us would be still alive “
Ramadurai
(Thank God, we never had a large enough fridge. Not that I am not aware that Hell has better living environment these days. For the information of those who are new to Collage : Hell and Heaven are now interconnected by monorail service - Warrier)
G
Quotes about expanding Universe
https://www.azquotes.com/quotes/topics/expanding-universe.html
Like :
"What a dull universe it would be if everything in it conformed to our expectations, if it held nothing to surprise or baffle us or confound our common sense. A century ago no one foresaw the existence of black holes, an expanding universe, oceans on Jupiter's moons, or DNA. What could be more enriching than to know that we share a common origin with all living things, that we are kin to chimpanzees, redwoods and mollusks? And isn't it a source of wonder to realize that the iron in our blood and the calcium in our bones were created in the bellies of supernovas?"
Steven Pinker
(Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and popular science author. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.)
H
Collage Follow up :
https://sanathanaschool.com/prepublication/
Collage had covered the release of the book "Sanathanasudha" a collection of 51 discourses on Vedas and Upanishads by P V Viswanathan Nambudiri.
Please access this link to know more about the activities of Sanathana School.
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