With due acknowledgement to Prof. Gerard’t Hooft

I came across this hilarious article written by Prof. Gerard’t Hooft. I’m posting it here so that it reaches out to a wider audience (I wonder):

HOW to BECOME a BAD THEORETICAL PHYSICIST

by  Gerard ‘t Hooft

 

It is much easier to become a bad theoretical physicist than a good one. I know of many individual success stories.

Don’t worry: if I don’t quite agree with your theories or methods, that by itself does not imply you are a bad theorist. You might still make great discoveries, or even win a Nobel Prize if you’re lucky.

Good theorists as well as bad ones all make mistakes. Science advances in spite of people making mistakes. We produce theories, even ones which cannot be entirely correct, and test them in every odd way we can imagine. Eventually, we manage to remove the errors and obtain marvelous new insights. The difference between a good theorist and a bad one is that good theorists are usually the first to detect the shortcomings of their own theories. They are never afraid of discarding a theory if it appears to be beyond repair. While learning about physics as a student, we all have the ambition of making great discoveries, so we soon start constructing our own theories. They are usually wrong, but never mind, we learn from our mistakes.

Here is how to become a bad theorist:  Compare yourself with Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Paul Dirac, or other celebrities in theoretical physics, and reach a conclusion in favor of yourself. Note that good theoreticians do not consider these famous physicists as saints; none of them were infallible, but the few instances where they could be corrected are well-known by historians of science, and do not have any effect on modern physics.

You may consider the option of connecting your work with mystery topics such as telepathy and consciousness. Make outrageous claims of having solved long standing problems. Of course, you expect that you will become famous, but unfortunately, only a few really good theoretical physicists have equations and effects named after them. This is because colleagues recognize their importance and since they want to give names to equations and effects anyway, they bestow the discoverers with that honor.  The bad theoretical physicist, in anticipation, names his own equations and effects, and even his entire theories, after himself right away. The impudence to attach your own name to whatever you claim to have discovered is considered improper in science, and in practice it betrays amateurism and incompetence. If a good theoretician refers to an equation to which colleagues have attached his/her own name, he/she uses a different description if available.

On your way towards becoming a bad theoretician, take your own immature theory, stop checking it for mistakes, don’t listen to colleagues who do spot weaknesses, and start admiring your own infallible intelligence. Try to overshout all your critics, and have your work published anyway. If the well-established science media refuse to publish your work, start your own publishing company and edit your own books. If you are really clever you can find yourself a formerly professional physics journal where the chief editor is asleep. To recognize such a journal, look for one where, in the list of board members on the cover, more than 50 % has already deceased. Accuse all your critics of the short-sightedness that you actually suffer too much from yourself. It is easy and pleasant, it does not require the hard work of checking and re-checking your results, and if you are sufficiently eloquent, you might even gather some admirers.

Your next step should be to advertise your work. Your reputation may have caused the xxx ArXives and Wikipedia to refuse your submissions (congratulations, they are not really peer-reviewed), but in that case you can still start your own weblog, and buy pop-ups in Google. Do not mention the number of citations you received in the established literature (you probably did not receive any) but instead install a counter that identifies the number of times someone by mistake downloaded your papers. Some people just download anything so you are guaranteed to get many hits there, and you can proudly announce those numbers.

A method was devised by John Baez to give you an indication as to how high you have scored. You may also consult Warren Siegel.

Some people only come halfway.  Now here’s for the real perfectionist. Note that you still have a problem.You have convinced your friends at your local bar, your family, your pizza vendor, your dog, and even a local radio station of the superiority of your theory. How come that there are still some obnoxious physicists who seem to continue to work on obsolete theories as if you never did give a deadly blow to established science? Most professional physicists you wrote to never gave you any reply at all; well, that must be because they are too ashamed of all those mistakes they have made in the past, and they must now be busy studying your important work.

But then there are those few physicists such as one bloke called Gerardus ‘t Hooft, who shamelessly have pointed out to you that your theory is nonsense! Should you take them seriously? Of course not. Don’t even try to show them the details of your derivations, which you forgot anyway and you might not be able to reproduce on the spot. Here is what you do to establish your reputation forever: JUST GIVE THEM HELL. Compare those obnoxious puppets of the establishment with nazis and threaten them with law suits. That’ll teach them.

Actually, you may discover that there are quite a few more people like you, who agree with you, saying that Einstein and many others got it completely wrong, and that established science is one great conspiracy. Don’t try to study the details of their arguments (you won’t be able to make any sense of them anyway), but join them in their web logs. Confirm your mutual admiration. Together you will form a mighty block, and your common opponents such as ‘t Hooft will soon back off.

If you expect that this is the way to achieve the ultimate recognition for your theories, you are the true champion of this web page.

For understandable reasons, I decided to refrain from listing names of people who succeeded to gain the title of “bad theoretical physicist”, or to make too overt allusions, as was done in earlier versions of this page. In spite of this, I still receive angry reactions from people who apparently recognize themselves here. There’s little I can do about that. This page was inspired by the activities of real existing people, but none of these descriptions refer to one single existing person.

One exception I fail to resist. Recently a new University was founded: the Myron Evans University. Here, those with a fine taste for perfection can specialize and obtain PhD degrees. I won’t provide the link, but I am sure it will appear right up front if you google it up.

being ‘fair’ in life…

Rummaging through the matrmonial columns of an esteemed daily- it is ubiquitous to find grooms preferring “fair-complexioned” bride as a potential life partner. The innumerous face packs offered in the beauty parlour seem to have one goal- improving the skin complexion.Have you ever seen any top commercial actress being dark? (Bipasha Basu is wheatish, not black please). How about having a pitch-black boyfriend for a change? Funny, isn’t it- that all of us yearn for keeping our hair black and our skin white. My friends don’t think its funny, it’s the way it should be…(apparently).

Why is it that the north indians condescend the south-indians? Why is it that the good looking are always addressed as fair in literature? Why is it that ‘being fair’ considered as a trustable parameter for deciding the relation? I am bemused.

Is ‘fair’ a fair criteria?

Microsoft’s Antivirus

Finally, there’s something to rejoice? Microsoft’s offering free anti-virus as a part of its security package for the windows. In the past, microsoft had to face severe criticism and several reverberations from the user community for not providing an in-built complimentary security software for the windows, making it a compulsion for its customers to go astray for it. However, it seems to have given this issue a thought and has released trial versions in thwe US, Brazil, China and Israel.Known as Microsoft Security Essentials, this package promises to provide basic level protection against viruses, trojans, rootkits and spyware.Microsoft is hoping that MSE, available as a free download from its site, will prove more popular. It has said it will automatically update it for users. The software will b rolled out in other countries as the year progresses…

However, rival security vendors have questioned whether Microsoft can compete with more established anti-virus players.

5 Awesome iPhone Apps created by college students

Stanford University Juniors Kayvon Beykpour and Aaron Wasserman have developed an application for the iPhone that allows fellow students to better utilize campus resources. Students who download this app are able to view a campus map, find contact information for faculty members, pay their tuition, add and drop courses, and stay on top of school sports.  Because of the success of this application, Stanford University has added a course in iPhone application development. Though not every college student goes to Stanford, the developers have plans to expand the software to include other universities.  Following the success of this app, Time Magazine writer Josh Quittner posed this question in an article, “Can iStanford take on Facebook Mobile?”   Time will soon tell.

Radio

Jen Pei Li, Raed Shomali, & Chaitanya Ramavajjala are graduate engineering students at USC that came up with the simple idea to allow iPhone users access to over 6300 radio stations worldwide for only 99 cents. This application allows the user to search and listen to radio stations through directory and genre search from anywhere in the world.  In the first month of Radio’s launch it was downloaded over 48,000 times which made the developers over $35,000.   Even though the download of this application has slowed since its release in 2008, but it continues to be ranked in the top 100 on iTunes.

Movies.app

Carnegie Melon sophomore Jeffery Grossman developed Movies.app to connect iPhone users to local theatre information. After his application was downloaded over 250,000 times, he sold the rights to Flixter for a reportedly generous undisclosed amount.  Furthermore, this is the first iPhone application to be developed independently and acquired by a larger company.  As apart of the deal between Flixter and Grossman, he has signed on with Flixter as a consultant while continuing to finish school.

Air Guitar

Air Guitar provides the user the ability to rock on guitar without talent or commitment to play real guitar. The application was developed by Stanford University students James Anthony and Edward Marks. This was one of the first applications to be officially published from students who completed the iPhone development course.  This application is currently available for download for $1.99, and the most recent version of Air Guitar has received great user reviews.

Speed

A first year Dublin City University Student by the name of Stephen Troughton-Smith developed an application that utilizes the iPhone’s GPS capabilities to determine the speed at which the user is traveling. In the first six days this .99 cent app was released it was downloaded over 36,000 times.  Troughton-Smith continues to develop iPhone apps and has completed 5 and is working on a sixth.  His completed applications are Speed, Lights Off, Nuker, Doom, and Same Game.  His app soon to be released is Chalk, which is a Twitter application that boasts a sleek, easy to use professional layout.

Jaadu VNC

Carnegie Mellon graduate student Jahanzeb Sherwani, has created an application which allows the user to screen share and gives full control of one’s PC or Mac from virtually anywhere in the world. Though the price for this application is $24.99 it confirms the progress of the mobile integration of the personal computer. Sherwani is the first Pakistani born developer to independently develop and release an application for the iPhone.  He is in the process of completing his PHD, and according to an article on Jaadu, he looks forward to further working towards the mobile integration of the personal computer.

iSteam

iSteam has become one of the fastest downloaded applications on the iPhone. Having been released in December of 2008, it has been downloaded over two million times. Kostas Eleftheriou, a college aged Greek entrepreneur developed this application. In the first month of charging for this app, Eleftheriou made well over $100,000. In the months following the release iSteam continue to generate substantial revenue. Since hitting it big with iSteam, Eleftheriou has decided to postpone his graduate studies and start an iPhone software development company called GreatApps.

iDiscover

iDiscover was also developed in the iPhone Stanford course. Software students Paul Wilson and Nafis Jamal developed this application to find articles, videos, and other iPhone applications based on the users interests. This application is free, and it continues to have download growth since its release last December.  Though the download numbers have not been substantial for this free application, both developers have been happy with its growth progress.  Currently both developers are working towards releasing more applications.

Studio App

Released in March 2009, it took only two weeks for this application to top the charts on the iTunes App Store.  Studio App is a mobile studio application that allows the user to program music and record vocals through a multi-track platform.  University juniors from Atlanta, Hayden Kramer and Wesley Miller, developed this software for people who love music and for those who aspire to be music producers.  Studio App has become a top seller in the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan and Australia.  Its top ranking peaked at No. 6 on the “Top Music Application” list and was featured in the “New and Noteworthy” section of iTunes.  Studio App is currently ranked No. 17 on iTunes for the top paid music applications.

iProcrastinate

This handy little task manager was developed by Michigan Tech full time student Craig Otis. Marketed directly to students as homework management software, this free app has proven very popular with high school and college students.  This application’s features allow the user to color categorize each task by subject and class.  In addition to iProcrastinate being available for the iPhone it is also available to download to your desktop as an application for your personal computer.

Chores, Wordy, Gratuity, & Fright

“Even though I’m still in college. I want writing software for the iPhone and Mac OS X to be my day job,” recalled University of Mississippi computer science major Deepak Mantena.  Mantena has successfully developed four relatively popular applications since the App Store launched in 2007.  Mantena’s software includes “Chores,” a to-do list application that easily syncs with your PC; “Wordy,” a program that helps expand a person’s vocabulary while on the go; “Gratuity,” a program that tabulates tips easily; and “Fright,” which offers scary scenes and sounds to entertain the user. Chores costs $4.99 and the others are available for .99 cents each.  In addition to releasing these four applications, Mantena has started his own software company called TapeShow.  In doing so, he hopes to continue to produce high quality applications that are aesthetically pleasing and easy to use.

Spacewalk 3D

Robb McMahan, a software engineering major at Texas State Technical College has developed an outer space game for the iPhone and iPod Touch.  The game is unique because it is one of the first to be released that is played through the first person vantage point. McMahan is also in the process of creating another first person game that details the adventures of an underwater scuba diver.  This first person game retails for $1.99 in the App Store.  While this game has not made McMahan an overnight millionaire, he continues to develop iPhone applications at night while attending school during the day.

Trace

Trace is a platform game for the iPhone that puts the user in total control of the gaming environment. In this game, the user needs to travel from the starting point all the way to the goal by drawing a path to travel along. This application was independently developed by brothers Kevin and Taylor Calderone.  When asked in an interview why the brothers released this for application for free, Kevin responded, “I didn’t see this as a get rich quick scheme, I saw it as a good place to start my career. We are both college students, so a career in this is the ultimate goal.”  Trace has boasted over 60,000 ratings on the App Store since its release in October of 2008, and has garnered an average rating of 3 ½ stars.

Awesome Ball

According to its developers, Awesome Ball is not a game, but rather a fun time-killing application.  Regardless, it is currently ranked number one as the top downloaded free app on iTunes (as of April 14, 2009).  College students Jonathan Johnson and Brian Pratt came up with the concept for this application to utilize the iPhone’s real physics capabilities. Having just been released in March of 2009, both developers  agree they want to continue developing software for the iPhone.  The real physics concept for a time-killing app has proven popular, but it remains to be seen how long this app will stay on top.

Tris

Noah Witherspoon, a college sophomore from Atlanta, created the game Tris as a free homage to his favorite game Tetris. Though it was one of the most popular free applications when it was available with over 500,000 downloads, The Tetris Company made Witherspoon take Tris down due to copyright infringement.  Witherspoon believed he did nothing wrong, but as a poor college student with limited resources he was unable to fight the Tetris Company.  Though he did not make any money from his venture, he said he enjoyed the process of developing a popular game and looks forward to creating more in the future.

The five people I might meet in heaven

I just finished reading the novel by Mitch Albom.It begins with the end of a maintainance worker at an amusement park. He is Eddie, the protagonist, who enters heaven and meets five people who help him comprehend his life, which he strongly believed was worthless.Life after death is the interesting angle explored in this book.

Bland language, with a few interesting quotes here and there, this book may serve like a snack during work.

But then, what really stopped me for a while was the thought that who would be the five people I would meet in heaven. A fictitious work, may it be, but then there’s nothing wrong in checking out, ain’t it?

Five people who influenced my life-  the way I am.It’s difficult to point out. There may have been predecessors whose sacrifice was my life, there may have been people whom I sacrificed for, there may have been lot more intricacies about the relationships I’ve had,it way too complex. But one person, I really yearn to meet and I am sure to meet is my father. I know he’s waiting up there to ask me one thing he never forgot to ask- “Did you do your best out there?”. I am confident that when I go up there-he would be there  with sparkling eyes, trying to hide that serene smile to his arm on my shoulder and asking me- “how did it go?” It was just as if yesterday that we left home on our scooter to school- when my father would walk me till the main gate, put the bag on my back, hand over the water bottle and say bye. It was just as if a few hours ago, that we walked into my college clutching my green certificates’ file and the little grey cash bag. His voice still lingers in my memory when he said -” no matter where you go, even abroad, I’m going to come and drop you”. There is a quote in the book which reads- “Fairness doesn’t govern life and death. For if it did, no good man would ever die young.” How very true.

Another person I can think of, who would be desirous of meeting me in heaven, assuming that he’d die before me- would be a person called MR. He was my teacher in 11th and 12th.I’m sure he would have something to say. He belonged to that fragile transitional phase of my life which is still afresh in my mind. A phase that surely has a long lasting impact on my life.It’s neither admiration nor abhorrence I have but a mere acknowledgment  of the fact that he was influential.

Not many love me. Nor do I. I’ve always held the view that most of the love one experiences is obligatory. Very few get to see the core of your character- let alone like it and love you for it.So, apart from these two I don’t think anyone would be there to meet me in heaven, not if  they’re still alive back here.But there’s one person whom I’d wait for in heaven to tell him how much I’ve always admired him and would continue to do so, no matter where I am. He is my godfather.

Way to go, Japan!

Whether you like it or not, Japanese are the best. No, these aren’t words of an Otaku-in-the-making. These are facts which may make one feel intimidated and shrug away. I am not a Japanese, if that’s what you’re guessing. I’m a typical Indian who is on the constant lookout for cheap but multi-featured technology in my hands. Have you wondered why the iPOD which was a huge success in the west, went down the gutter in Japan?Or for that matter most of the East? Simple, because these are guys are self sufficient, far more advanced and of course, are very sensible. While most of the west and developing countries are cloud computing, these guys are mobile computing.Personally speaking, I would have given iPOD a reject because of its limited features, that’s not worth the cash it would suck out of my wallet. Life’s pretty good with Japanese stuff actually.

Looking at the Japan’s ambitious digital ventures, I gape at the extent these guys love to ameliorate technology. Is Everest their summit? Definitely not, its not defined and it won’t be established as they’re constantly at task overwriting their own records. The current plan is to realise an ubiquitous e-Japan making teleworking and mobile computing a very plain affair for even a seven year old kun there.Recent address by Taro Aso supporting a digital- based economy is just what this nation needs to ramify its kingdom.It would be relevant to remind ourselves  that Japan had signed for a very costly national fibre optic netwrok a few years ago and now boasts of the world’s fastest broadband in use.This is the structural advantage Japan has.

Gokounn o inorimasu, Japan!

Girlfriend 6.0 Vs Wife 1.0

Last year a friend of mine upgraded from GirlFriend 6.0 to Wife 1.0 and found that it’s a memory hog leaving very little system resources available for other applications. He is now noticing that Wife 1.0 is also spawning Child Processes which are further consuming valuable resources. No mention of this particular phenomena was included in the product brochure or the documentation, though other users have informed him that this is to be expected due to the nature of the application.

Not only that, Wife 1.0 installs itself such that it is always launched at system initialization, where it can monitor all other system activity. He’s finding that some applications such as PokerNight 10.3, BeerBash 2.5, and PubNight 7.0 are no longer able to run in the system at all, crashing the system when selected (even though they always worked fine before). During installation, Wife 1.0 provides no option as to the installation of undesired Plug-Ins such as MotherInLaw 55.8 and BrotherInLaw Beta release. Also, system performance seems to diminish with each passing day.

Some features he’d like to see in the upcoming wife 2.0.

1. a “Don’t remind me again” button
2. a Minimize button
3. An install shield feature that allows Wife 2.0 be installed with the option to uninstall at any time without the loss of cache and other system resources
4. An option to run the network driver in promiscuous mode which would allow the system’s hardware probe feature to be much more useful.

So another friend of mine , decided to avoid the headaches associated with Wife 1.0 by sticking with Girlfriend 7.0. Even here, however, there were many problems. Apparently you cannot install Girlfriend 7.0 on top of Girlfriend 6.0. You must uninstall Girlfriend 6.0 first. Other users say this is a long standing bug that I should have known about. Apparently the versions of Girlfriend have conflicts over shared use of the I/O port. You think they would have fixed such a stupid bug by now. To make matters worse, The uninstall program for Girlfriend 6.0 doesn’t work very well leaving undesirable traces of the application in the system. Another thing — all versions of Girlfriend continually popup little annoying messages about the advantages of upgrading to Wife 1.0.

Belated Happy Birthday, Nirveda

Damn the time, its already been nearly a fortnight past Nirveda’s first birthday in the virtual world - June 2nd. Anyway, cheers for the first candle on the cake:). Surprisingly, its Gemini.

The voyager..

When I awake from my dreams,

Gearing myself to unravel another day,

A voice inside my head naively asks,

To whom it may concern, who you are?

 

As I struggle to reach the summit,

As I plunge into the depth of time,

As I survive the heat of space,

A voice inside my head suavely asks,

To whom it may concern, what I am?

 

If my purse became penniless,

If my life became meaningless,

If the soul became lifeless,

A voice points out harshly,

To whom it may concern, how I am ?

 

I turn to my sole companion,

Seeking words to answer the known .

Loneliness, jeering at me in its sardonic tone,

 Asks, Do you really care?

I smile reassuringly to acknowledge,

The truth which only both of us have known.

Imagineering..

If there’s any one place, I wish to be right now, it would be the NYC.With an assortment of event s lined up at the World Science Festival, its just too hard to gather myself into one and work here.How much I wish I was at the Kimmel Center ,NYU or at the Baruch Performing Arts center debating on science , faith and religion or listening to what nobel laurates had to say about their not-so-cool journey to reach the covetted prize.Science, esoteric yet enjoyable, a true man’s passion I can say.