“A devoted Star Trek fan, Pausch was invited by film director J. J. Abrams to film a role in Star Trek. Abrams heard of Pausch’s condition and sent a personal e-mail inviting Pausch to the set. Pausch accepted and traveled to Los Angeles, California to shoot his scene. In addition to appearing in the film, he also has a line of dialogue at the beginning of the film (“Captain, we have visual.”) and donated the $217.06 paycheck to charity.”
You may have seen this elsewhere: Cambridge University has started digitizing its collection of the scientific works of Sir Isaac Newton. CU has the largest collection of his original scientific works which until now was only available in its real-world, ‘offline’ library. But over the next few months most of those works will be made available in their online Digital Library. I decided to pay their online library a visit and take a look at these papers. Quite a few are already available and though it’s all Latin and Greek to us, literally, I spent a leisurely hour looking at them and turning the pages like a wide-eyed child looking at picture books. The sense of awe at gazing at the work of hand of one of the greatest minds that ever lived was immensely fulfilling in itself.
Oh the great possibilities of the Internet and how we ‘fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way’!
Google Trends is a service Google provides where you can see some interesting statistics on topics that have been searched on Google over time.
Spurred by a post I saw elsewhere on the web I tried out some ‘trend-spotting’ of my own. Interestingly, the country which searches for topics related to ‘sex‘ the most is Pakistan. India comes in at number three and Indonesia at number six. Out of the top ten, six are Muslim majority nations. And the number one city in the list is Bangalore. When it comes to searching about ‘god‘ Philippines comes out on top although the rest of the list is dominated by cities and countries of the developed Western world. The small city state of Singapore is at number five beating the populous nations of India (sixth) and Indonesia (seventh). But funnily enough Philippines also takes the top spot when it comes to searching for ‘atheism‘. The rest of the list is entirely dominated by Western nations with India being the only exception at number nine.
The fact that India features on almost all the trend lists I tried out may have something to do with its large and young population who make up for the world’s third largest in number of Internet users. (China, the largest, of course doesn’t feature in these lists for various reasons!)
If you notice I have refrained from drawing any inferences from these statistics and am merely presenting what I saw. You can draw your own conclusions and try out more keywords at the Google Trends site. And for a perspective on these trends please do also see this chart of the world’s top 20 countries in terms of number of Internet users.
Came across this today. Stanley Kubrick in an interview with Playboy in 1969. Felt like my own muddled thoughts put into words. Thank you Stanley Kubrick!
Playboy: If life is so purposeless, do you feel its worth living?
Kubrick: Yes, for those who manage somehow to cope with our mortality. The very meaninglessness of life forces a man to create his own meaning. Children, of course, begin life with an untarnished sense of wonder, a capacity to experience total joy at something as simple as the greenness of a leaf; but as they grow older, the awareness of death and decay begins to impinge on their consciousness and subtly erode their joie de vivre (a keen enjoyment of living), their idealism – and their assumption of immortality.
As a child matures, he sees death and pain everywhere about him, and begins to lose faith in the ultimate goodness of man. But if he’s reasonably strong – and lucky – he can emerge from this twilight of the soul into a rebirth of life’s élan (enthusiastic and assured vigour and liveliness).
Both because of and in spite of his awareness of the meaninglessness of life, he can forge a fresh sense of purpose and affirmation. He may not recapture the same pure sense of wonder he was born with, but he can shape something far more enduring and sustaining.
The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death – however mutable man may be able to make them – our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfilment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.
This post started with this video. A very, very brave bunch of guys making a satirical point on the current state of Pakistan. Needless to say, I loved the song.
There was a reference to a certain Abdus Salam in the video and how no one remembers him any more, which led me to Google and after 30 minutes or so of reading online I discovered a great man called Abdus Salam!
Abdus Salam was a physicist and Pakistan’s one and only Nobel Laureate. He was also the first Muslim Nobel Laureate in the sciences, although Pakistan doesn’t recognise him as a Muslim! Because he belongs to the Ahmadiyya sect of Muslims who do not believe that Muhammad was the last prophet, for which they are persecuted all over the world and especially in Pakistan.
His extra-ordinary journey from very humble beginnings in a small town in Pakistan to the Nobel Prize is awe-inspiring. So is his apparent ease in striding the two dissimilar worlds of science and religion. A devout Muslim, anecdotes abound about his encounters with Bertrand Russell and Einstein and the resulting discussions on reason and faith. Though he saw both religion and science as essential to explaining the world around and inside of us, he did make it clear that “the validity of a scientific truth can be adjudicated only according to criteria internal to science and not by appeal to religious, metaphysical, or aesthetic considerations”. But his greatest qualities were his humility, his incessant efforts at creating opportunities for research for scientists from developing nations and his undying devotion to his roots.
His efforts led to the founding of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy (now called the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in his honour), under the aegis of the IAEA and now UNESCO. In his own words,
The Centre provides the possibility for scientists to remain in their own country for the bulk of the time, but come to the Centre to carry out research for three months or so. They meet people working in the same subject, learn new ideas and can return to their own country charged with a mission to change the image of science and technology in their own country.
Despite the attention and adulation from many parts of the world, he remained deeply committed to his own country, Pakistan, even after experiencing multiple betrayals and rejections from his countrymen. He belonged to the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam which was declared a heretical sect and its followers non-Muslims, in 1974 by the Pakistani parliament. (Non-Muslims are second-class citizens in Pakistan, by law.) He resigned as the Chief Scientific Adviser to the President in protest and left Pakistan for good. But he never abandoned Pakistan in his heart and arrived in traditional ethnic garb to the Nobel ceremony in 1979 when he shared the Physics prize with Steven Weinberg and Sheldon Glashow. Much later, when Professor Salam wanted to run for the position of Director General of UNESCO, the Pakistan government refused to endorse his candidacy, which is a pre-requisite, despite support from several developing countries. Other countries, including Italy offered him a citizenship to run for the post but he refused – he never gave up his Pakistani citizenship. He also continued to support with money and resources scientific development and education in Pakistan, including donating his entire share of the Nobel prize money. But he has constantly been vilified and disparaged in Pakistan to the point of being accused of being an Indian spy and his contribution belittled and forgotten.
But his greatest legacy by far was his steadfast belief in the universal nature of Science. In a foreword to Professor Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy’s book Islam and Science: Religious Orthodoxy and Battle for Rationality, he wrote:
“There is only one universal science, its problems and modalities are international and there is no such thing as Islamic science just as there is no Hindu science, no Jewish science, no Confucian science, nor Christian science.”
Abdus Salam was a physicist and Pakistan’s one and only Nobel Laureate. He was also the first Muslim Nobel Laureate in the sciences, although Pakistan doesn’t recognise him as a Muslim! Because he belongs to the Ahmadiyya sect of Muslims who do not believe that Muhammad was the last prophet, for which