Mytho-Puns

[Abhishek Upadhya]

• When Vali died, the monkey army Su-grieved for his loss...
  
• When the ancients wanted a babysitter, did they go to Shishupala? [ I don't know the etymology of this name, correct me if I'm wrong and while you're searching for it, check out this palindrome matrix Sanskrit verse ]

[Mahesh Mahadevan]

The verse is singularly amazing! Now maybe, we should name a class of
Hermitian matrices as mAgha or shaishupAlya :-D

[Abhishek Upadhya]

SAGE is a tool similar to matlab, i mean it was built to handle Hermit-ian matrices.

[Mohan K.V]

LOL, nice!

I checked up my dictionary, and the etymo is right. I'm sure there's a lovely little legend about how the chap got his name, but my dictionary goes off into the more well-known story of him being born disfigured and all that.

The verse was absolutely astounding! Brilliant find! One legend has it that Kalidasa and Maagha were contemporaries (and competitors), and that Kalidasa's Meghadutam and a few of Magha's works became very popular at around the same time.

[Begin context] Meghadutam was (is) brilliant because there was no protracted plot. In fact, there _is_ no plot. The only context we are given about the story is in the first verse, and after that the poet seems impatient to move on. The _entire_ poem reads simply as a hero trying to describe to a cloud the path it should take across the country to visit his lover, whom he is pining for. There have been many commentaries on the subtle brilliance in which some ideas are expressed: the hero making wry comments about himself and his hopelessly-in-love state; the excessive interpretation of little gestures that is so characteristic of romantic love, etc.

Maagha's works, as the wiki page points out, are known for their remarkable combination of wit and wordplay. They are supposed to have the brilliant similies of Kalidasa, the distinguished calmness of Bhaaravi and the wordplay of Dandi. [End context]

So a lot of their works became extremely popular, and everyone who could conjugate du.kr.ny* was writing reviews on them. Among them, this one-line review became more popular than even the original works, and has found its way into every single Sanskrit grammar book:

maaghe meghe gatam vayah

It's an example of shlesha alankaara (double meaning). The first interpretation is

maaghe == in the works of maagha; meghe == in the meghadutam; gatam == has passed; vayah == life, age.

"(Appreciating) the wroks of Maagha and the Meghadutam takes a whole lifetime."

The second is:

maaghe == in the maagha season, a particularly cloudy season; meghe == in the cloud; gatam == went; vayah == bird.

"In the Maagha season, a bird went by a cloud." (This is essentially the entire story of the Meghadutam. Birds are used many, many times as a metaphor for various things in the poem).

:-)

*For those unfamiliar with this disparaging taunt: du.kr.ny is one of the first verbs one learns in Sanskrit, meaning 'do'. I'm sure all of you have heard this expression in "Bhaja govindam; ...; nahi nahi rakshati du.kr.ny karaNe". "Sing the glories of the lord, you fools! `Du.kr.ny == karaNa ('do')' won't help you when your time has come!"

****

Speaking of absolutely brilliant Sanskrit poetry, I recently came across a few gems from Vedanta Deshika's Paadukaasahasram. That poem consists of 1008 verses, and Vedanta Deshika composed them all in one night. It sings the glory of the paaduka of the lord of Sriranga. Some very good ones, from here. Check out verses 933, 935, 936 and 939. And note, they all strictly confirm to the meter :-)

[Abhishek Upadhya]

Well, as for meghadutam, the story/plot wasn't so important in the first place. The romantic yet intricate description of nature as the cloud is made to pass over various regions of India, from I think, madhya pradesh to Kashmir , is the highlight of the work.....Of course since it was kalidasa, and since people got some great dramas from him in the past, these kind of 'allegations' tend to appear.

And the one line review was really good...

[Shreevatsa R]

On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 1:54 PM, Mohan K.V <kvm....@gmail.com> wrote:
> I checked up my dictionary, and the etymo is right. I'm sure there's a
> lovely little legend about how the chap got his name, but my dictionary goes
> off into the more well-known story of him being born disfigured and all
> that.

It's possible the same story is the etymology as well, in some
passive-voice kind of way: "The child who was babysat"

> *For those unfamiliar with this disparaging taunt: du.kr.ny is one of the
> first verbs one learns in Sanskrit, meaning 'do'. I'm sure all of you have

Is it?
*Demands my money back*

[The "कृञ् करणे" part makes sense, but have never figured out what the
"डु" is, and why it's coincidentally "do" as well :-)
Is "डु कृञ्" the verb? how...]

> Speaking of absolutely brilliant Sanskrit poetry, I recently came across a
> few gems from Vedanta Deshika's Paadukaasahasram. That poem consists of 1008
> verses, and Vedanta Deshika composed them all in one night. It sings the
> glory of the paaduka of the lord of Sriranga. Some very good ones, from
> here. Check out verses 933, 935, 936 and 939. And note, they all strictly
> confirm to the meter :-)

Wow! Those are unbelievable. Wonder if it's possible to decrypt them
without the key, though. :-)
Can you actually understand those BTW? I can't even *read* them, let
alone note whether they conform to the metre :-)
[Whenever I see Sanskrit written in English/Roman, I have a reflexive
urge to convert it to Devanagari, like in the Wikipedia article that
started this thread...] 939 is the only one that can be read
unambiguously :-)

[Mahesh Mahadevan]

Information overload, KVM!
If I did get (some of) it properly, the paadukas have too many layers
of meaning. Although I wonder, how come marA marA did not make it! I
suppose that one still sits with Valmiki :-)

[Mohan K.V]

Is it?
*Demands my money back*

LOL!
 

[The "कृञ् करणे" part makes sense, but have never figured out what the
"डु" is, and why it's coincidentally "do" as well :-)
Is "डु कृञ्" the verb? how...]

The original dhatu is du.kr.ny, thought the 'du' drops out in _every_ case. It's common to refer to it as kri.ny, esp. when a prefix will be added, but the original is du.kr.ny. I don't know why this is so, will try to found out.

Quick one: If Nike wants to market it's shoes to extreme sanskrito-philes with a hobby of collecting vestigial parts of sanskrit verb forms, what would its slogan be? Just डु it :-)

Wow! Those are unbelievable. Wonder if it's possible to decrypt them
without the key, though. :-)
Can you actually understand those BTW? I can't even *read* them, let
alone note whether they conform to the metre :-)

Oh no no, I have to sit with them with a dictionary for hours to even be able to split words correctly. Monier-Williams online makes it a wee bit easier, but they chop out all the etymo and the legends and it's no fun. But I'm amazed that it is _possible_ that such stuff makes sense, even if it is not easy to understand!

Meanwhile, I was disappointed with Wikipedia's explanation of the Shishpalavadha stanza's meaning, and spent a little time decrpyting myself. Will add it to the wikipedia entry after I've confirmed this is right.

My word-split version of the stanza is:

sa-kaara-naana-araka-aasa-kaaya-saada-da-saayakaah
rasaahavaa vaahasaara-naada-vaada-da-vaadanaah

sa - upasarga meaning 'along with'
araka - wheel spoke
aasa - seat
kaaya - body
saada-da - giving a shriveled state, i.e., destroying
saayaka - arrow

ie. "Along with those who destroyed (enemies') chariots with (just) their arrows"
 
aahava - war
rasaahavaa = "they who rejoice in war"

vaaha - carrier
saara - 'essence', I'm taking this to mean water (a river is a 'sarit', also used sometimes for ocean)
vaahasaara == cloud, "that which carries the essence"
naada-vaada-da  == gave the sounds and words

vaadanaah = instruments

i.e "They who had instruments made the sounds of a cloud". (I think this is right because a cloud-sound, ie thunder, is usually associated with armies and aggression)

**
I played around a little bit with the structure and concoted this little problem. Will be of help if you have a linear algebra endterm sometime :-)

Let A = [ sa    kaa  ra    naa;
              kaa  ya    saa  da ;
              ra     saa  ha   vaa;
              naa  da    vaa  da ];

and let F be the 4x4 'flipper' matrix

F = [ 0 0 0 1;
        0 0 1 0;
        0 1 0 0;
        1 0 0 0];

Now the poem is simply,

P = [  A    AF;
        FA  FAF];

[Here's when I realized I have no more hope in life.]

If the eigenvalues of A are e1,e2,e3 and e4 (A is all real and symmetric), what are the eigenvalues of P? There's a nice and elegant way to find them out :-)
 

[Whenever I see Sanskrit written in English/Roman, I have a reflexive
urge to convert it to Devanagari, like in the Wikipedia article that
started this thread...] 939 is the only one that can be read
unambiguously :-)

Same here, I always write it down. But somehow I've never managed to find a nice transliteration site that gives unicode :-( 

[Sandeep Makam]

They will be the same eigenvalues, just in duplicate.. 

Here is what I thought: 

P = [A   AF;

       FA FAF];

=> P = inv(X)*A*X, 

where X = horzcat(I,F)    

[Shreevatsa R]

On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 5:23 PM, Mohan K.V <kvm....@gmail.com> wrote:
> Quick one: If Nike wants to market it's shoes to extreme sanskrito-philes
> with a hobby of collecting vestigial parts of sanskrit verb forms, what
> would its slogan be? Just डु it :-)

A कृञ्geworthy pun.

> Meanwhile, I was disappointed with Wikipedia's explanation of the
> Shishpalavadha stanza's meaning, and spent a little time decrpyting myself.
> Will add it to the wikipedia entry after I've confirmed this is right.

Oh please do. The current explanation is straight from Martin
Gardner's book, a reader letter by some George L. Hart III.

>
> My word-split version of the stanza is:
>
> sa-kaara-naana-araka-aasa-kaaya-saada-da-saayakaah
> rasaahavaa vaahasaara-naada-vaada-da-vaadanaah
>
> sa - upasarga meaning 'along with'
> araka - wheel spoke
> aasa - seat
> kaaya - body
> saada-da - giving a shriveled state, i.e., destroying
> saayaka - arrow
>
> ie. "Along with those who destroyed (enemies') chariots with (just) their
> arrows"
>
> aahava - war
> rasaahavaa = "they who rejoice in war"
>
> vaaha - carrier
> saara - 'essence', I'm taking this to mean water (a river is a 'sarit', also
> used sometimes for ocean)
> vaahasaara == cloud, "that which carries the essence"
> naada-vaada-da == gave the sounds and words
>
> vaadanaah = instruments
>
> i.e "They who had instruments made the sounds of a cloud". (I think this is
> right because a cloud-sound, ie thunder, is usually associated with armies
> and aggression)

Thanks, makes quite a bit more sense now :)

> I played around a little bit with the structure and concoted this little
> problem. Will be of help if you have a linear algebra endterm sometime :-)
>
> Let A = [ sa kaa ra naa;
> kaa ya saa da ;
> ra saa ha vaa;
> naa da vaa da ];

Right, the poem just traverses each row forwards and back, or, as it
is symmetric, each column downwards and back up :-)

> and let F be the 4x4 'flipper' matrix
>
> F = [ 0 0 0 1;
> 0 0 1 0;
> 0 1 0 0;
> 1 0 0 0];
>
> Now the poem is simply,
>
> P = [ A AF;
> FA FAF];
>
> [Here's when I realized I have no more hope in life.]
>
> If the eigenvalues of A are e1,e2,e3 and e4 (A is all real and symmetric),
> what are the eigenvalues of P? There's a nice and elegant way to find them
> out :-)

The poem is just [A AF] :-)

And Pv = kv with v' = [x' y'] means y = Fx because the second "row" is
F[first row]; and FF=I (flip flip) so Ax+AFy=kx means 2Ax=kx, so the
eigenvalues are twice those of A, each with multiplicity 2? There is
probably a nicer way...
And I don't think you need A's being real and symmetric :-)

> Same here, I always write it down. But somehow I've never managed to find a
> nice transliteration site that gives unicode :-(

Ah: http://www.iit.edu/~laksvij/language/sanskrit.html
[or, although it's not in a finished state:
http://web.mit.edu/vatsa/www/sanskrit/transliterate.html ]

[Mohan K.V]

A कृञ्geworthy pun.

ROFL!

The poem is just [A AF] :-)

You're right, sorry. [A AF; FA FAF] just makes it easier to see the up-down reading.
 

And Pv = kv with v' = [x' y'] means y = Fx because the second "row" is
F[first row]; and FF=I (flip flip) so Ax+AFy=kx means 2Ax=kx, so the
eigenvalues are twice those of A, each with multiplicity 2? There is
probably a nicer way...

Very neat! One thing though, the multiplicities are wrong. You see right away that P has 4 repeated rows, and so it must have 4 zero eigenvalues. There other 4 eigenvalues are twice previous one.

I don't know if this is a valid proof: the trace is twice the original, the determinant is 0. We know there are 4 zeros. [begin fuzziness] By symmetry [end fuzziness], each eigenvalue is twice the previous one.

And I don't think you need A's being real and symmetric :-)

 
I'm terrified of complex numbers :-) Reminds me of this line: "I'm scared of numbers that can't be written as a fraction. It's an irrational fear." :-)

http://web.mit.edu/vatsa/www/sanskrit/transliterate.html ]

Very strong! You wrote it yourself ?! ^:-)^

[Mahesh Mahadevan]

This groups pot of brilliance overfloweth!

Time for another - what do you call a messy transliteration scheme?
Trans-litter-ation.

[Abhishek Upadhya]

Its a pot of something a'right... Joblessness closely competing with
brilliance..
Mara mara was valmickey's creation, dint want to put that here...
Although something to do with the anagrams 'rama - amar ' ... '
vanara - ravana ' should be tried out...
And, one more thing, was 'krishna' a racist term back
then,and would they replace it with 'african - american, or native
dravidian ' instead...?
The etymology, if i remember right, applies to Krishnā , a.k.a
draupadi as well...

[Abhishek Upadhya]

again,  "if i remember right" sometimes translates to " I knew it before, but just checked it on wikipedia to confirm"...

[priya venkateshan]

NOW i regret not learning sanskrit.

as for transliteration, roman to devanagari is quite okay on quillpad.com. it works rather well for hindi... don't know how it works on sanskrit.

indians never do well in short bicycle races... that's coz they speak sans crit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criterium

[Mohan K.V]

You find the most *amazing* words ever. Eszett, apple-pie-order, Feghoot, <a ton others> and now Criterium!

2008/12/6 priya venkateshan <priy...@gmail.com>

[priya venkateshan]

>>vali died
i'm sure he fought vali-antly before that.

[Abhishek Upadhya]

Ya, they even made a movie about him....  It was called Wall-E...

[priya venkateshan]

actually ... there were a couple of movies called Vaali - there was one in tamil starring ajith, remade in kannada with sudeep.
it was about twin brothers who like the same girl and one of them killing the other in the end.

[Abhishek Upadhya]

Watched the kannada one.....   Btw, did the vanaras play Beach Vaali-Ball   at Kishkindha Water parks?

[priya venkateshan]

ramayana is a film produced by the vaanar brothers.

[priya venkateshan]

actually... it would be better to say "vaali was produced by and starred the vaanar brothers".

[priya venkateshan]

pity Wall-E was not done by Warner Bros.

[SAI GANESH]

I think there is scope for more beautification, as this matrix does not fully exploit the verse' structure. There is diagonal symm in the matrix, which stems from the verse being readable columnwise. Any Ideas there? something like an LU decompse :)

and let F be the 4x4 'flipper' matrix

F = [ 0 0 0 1;
        0 0 1 0;
        0 1 0 0;
        1 0 0 0];

Now the poem is simply,

P = [  A    AF;
        FA  FAF];

[Here's when I realized I have no more hope in life.]

If the eigenvalues of A are e1,e2,e3 and e4 (A is all real and symmetric), what are the eigenvalues of P? There's a nice and elegant way to find them out :-)
 

[Shreevatsa R]

On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 6:45 PM, Mohan K.V <kvm....@gmail.com> wrote:
>> And Pv = kv with v' = [x' y'] means y = Fx because the second "row" is
>> F[first row]; and FF=I (flip flip) so Ax+AFy=kx means 2Ax=kx, so the
>> eigenvalues are twice those of A, each with multiplicity 2? There is
>> probably a nicer way...
>
> Very neat! One thing though, the multiplicities are wrong. You see right

Ah right. k(Fx)=ky implies y=Fx only when k≠0. :-)
So the only *nonzero* eigenvalues of P are twice the nonzero
eigenvalues of A (and each occurring only once, with even the "same"
eigenspace, "same" meaning x <-> [x, Fx]), and the rank of P is at
most the rank of A (because no new rows in the bottom part of A) so if
A has rank n-m (and assuming A is normal, e.g. Hermitian, e.g. real
and symmetric :)), P has the same n-m nonzero eigenvalues and 0 n+m
times.

>> And I don't think you need A's being real and symmetric :-)
>
>
> I'm terrified of complex numbers :-) Reminds me of this line: "I'm scared of
> numbers that can't be written as a fraction. It's an irrational fear." :-)

The trick is to not care, and simply think of a matrix as a linear
operator on a vector space, until a moment of truth arrives where
real/complex actually matters... and in many cases it never arrives.
Like the one about the mathematician who, when asked by the engineer
how he could possibly visualize the physics lecture about
12-dimensional spaces, says "Easy, think of an n-dimensional space and
set n=12" :-)

> And, one more thing, was 'krishna' a racist term back
> then,and would they replace it with 'african - american, or native
> dravidian ' instead...?

Oh God, I HATE "African American"...
http://maddox.xmission.com/c.cgi?u=your_stupid_ideas
"[Dave Matthews Band] is the whitest band ever, which is saying
something considering 3 of the members are black, and Dave Matthews is
literally an African American (born in South Africa)."

[And Quillpad and http://www.google.com/transliterate/indic are very
cool, because they use a dictionary to guess what you mean, but that
also means it's rather hard to use them when you mostly want words
that are not in their dictionary...]

Back to topic...

If the bicycle race were held at night under lights, it seems it would
go on without a clear sense of direction or purpose... so would it be
called "lit crit"?

On Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 2:57 AM, Abhishek Upadhya
<abhishe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ya, they even made a movie about him.... It was called Wall-E...
>

Indeed. It was even about the stars. Wall-E and Tara.

Why does Vali never have anxiety attacks before going for battle?
Does he take Valium?

[Abhishek Upadhya]

Maddox nailed that one, as he did to a number of pseudo stuff....

Incidentally, kamsa sent a Maddox-Asura to kill krishna once.... (Arishtasura..)

Sahadeva was called Arishta_nemi during Ajnathavasa... Is that a regular cattle term then?

And a funny find,

Nakula's son was called Satanika....  (What pray, be the meaning of this?. I can think of only one really cool thing...)

[Source ]

[Tuhina A Vijay]

I though, it would be the daughter, not the son, satanika...

[Abhishek Upadhya]

Nopes..none were daughters... all had sons, who were duly mistaken and killed in the army camps... 

These were chota kids who should have been with their nanny, and with Shishupala dead by then,... well....

[priya venkateshan]

yeah, especially the way abhimanyu went down - that kid, all of sixteen, and in battle with the bigwigs... who cheated with the chuck-er-view. just not cricket. it would have done him more good to play football - he's abhi-Man-U, isn't he?

[Mahesh Mahadevan]

The Chakravyuha was much of a wheel of fortune for the Kauravas, and
for Abhimanyu, it turned out to be a vicious circle. Speaking of the
wheel of fortune, even the Pandavas had one with Karna, didn't they?

[Abhishek Upadhya]

Nice @ Man-U...

 

The problem wth ravana was that he didn't consider the Ram-ifications of war.. Just went and ram-med againsts his enemies...

[priya venkateshan]

with karna? which one this be?

[priya venkateshan]

the wheel stuck in the mud?
that was when karna lost all his vim, and seemed to have no power left.
the tide of the kurukshetra war turned then.

[Abhishek Upadhya]

Karna surely had an ear for music... And that's why they call it Karnatic....

[ Blasphemy, me knows . Karnat states- arcot... ]...

On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 11:44 PM, priya venkateshan <priy...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Abhishek Upadhya]

Ch'i Ch'i....

[Mahesh Mahadevan]

Methinks Karnatic (blaspheming again) music originated with Karna
suffering Tourette's. Speaking of which, if a French band has trouble
going to nearby towns for performances, are they having Tourette
syndrome?

[priya venkateshan]

if they have trouble coz they are 'high', maybe they have the turret syndrome.

[Abhishek Upadhya]

all the three hits. Bull's kannu...u even took care of tic, and ette.. too much..

[priya venkateshan]

NOW i get it :)

[Mohan K.V]

The trick is to not care, and simply think of a matrix as a linear

operator on a vector space, until a moment of truth arrives where
real/complex actually matters... and in many cases it never arrives.

Are you Schur? Re. many cases, while the statement is not singular, it is rather ill-conditioned :-)
While on topic, here's one my linal prof put: "You can't diagonalize every matrix, but you can Schur-ly decompose it!" Alas, if only this had struck in yesterday's exam instead of now :-(
 
And yes, I should learn to face my fears. They aren't even real! Reminds me of Ignobel prize declarations, all of which are a treat. Here are some of the best:

2002 Economics - Presented to the executives, corporate directors, and auditors of Enron and a few other companies, for adapting the mathematical concept of imaginary numbers for use in the business world.

1994 Literature - Presented to L. Ron Hubbard, ardent author of science fiction and founding father of Scientology, for his crackling Good Book, Dianetics, which is highly profitable to mankind, or to a portion thereof.

[Some context for the next one: A bond is essentially a loan that you give to a company. The more trusted the company is, less the effort the company needs to put in to get loans (i.e. lesser interest rates). If a company is going through hard times, the price of the bond (which is a market-defined fn. of the value of the loan, the probability of you getting back the loan, and the value of the interest paid) drops rapidly. Pure awesomeness is when bonds are issued for leveraged buyouts.

Michael Milken was the first guy to notice that the market almost always is too pessimistic about failing companies' bonds, i.e. the price will be lower than the real value. He became a billionaire trading these so-called 'junk' bonds]

1991 Economics - Michael Milken, titan of Wall Street and father of the junk bond, to whom the world is indebted.

If the bicycle race were held at night under lights, it seems it would
go on without a clear sense of direction or purpose... so would it be
called "lit crit"?

What TV serial did the tam postmodern studies grad student audition for when she found out that her entire field was pwned by the Science Wars? My Sokal-ed Life

[priya venkateshan]

Talking of Tam grad students, how would you call out to a Tam girl studying in an Ivy-League school in Philadelphia?



UPenn!

(credits: Tuna)

[priya venkateshan]

I came up with an entire series now..
How would you call out to....
... a heavy student at Amherst?
UMass
.... A gallant man at Belgium?
UGent (Ghent University)
....A reserved category student who's made it to a college at LA?
USC

And how would Farhan Akhtar (with his trademark lishp) call out to an unmarried girl student at Ann Arbor?
UMich.
(credits: Ego)

[Gautham]

On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 11:43 PM, priya venkateshan <priy...@gmail.com> wrote:

I came up with an entire series now..

How would you call out to....

... a heavy student at Amherst?
UMass
.... A gallant man at Belgium?
UGent (Ghent University)
....A reserved category student who's made it to a college at LA?
USC

And how would Farhan Akhtar (with his trademark lishp) call out to an unmarried girl student at Ann Arbor?
UMich.
(credits: Ego)

More, inspired out of a chat with wanderlust:

....Which university is recommended for students with exceptional powers of discernment?
UIUC (You eye, you see)

... What would you call a bright student at a university in the big apple ?
SUNY

On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 11:32 PM, priya venkateshan <priy...@gmail.com> wrote:

Talking of Tam grad students, how would you call out to a Tam girl studying in an Ivy-League school in Philadelphia?



UPenn!

(credits: Tuna)

On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 9:39 PM, Mohan K.V <kvm....@gmail.com> wrote:

The trick is to not care, and simply think of a matrix as a linear

operator on a vector space, until a moment of truth arrives where
real/complex actually matters... and in many cases it never arrives.

Are you Schur? Re. many cases, while the statement is not singular, it is rather ill-conditioned :-)
While on topic, here's one my linal prof put: "You can't diagonalize every matrix, but you can Schur-ly decompose it!" Alas, if only this had struck in yesterday's exam instead of now :-(
 
And yes, I should learn to face my fears. They aren't even real! Reminds me of Ignobel prize declarations, all of which are a treat. Here are some of the best:

2002 Economics - Presented to the executives, corporate directors, and auditors of Enron and a few other companies, for adapting the mathematical concept of imaginary numbers for use in the business world.

1994 Literature - Presented to L. Ron Hubbard, ardent author of science fiction and founding father of Scientology, for his crackling Good Book, Dianetics, which is highly profitable to mankind, or to a portion thereof.

[Some context for the next one: A bond is essentially a loan that you give to a company. The more trusted the company is, less the effort the company needs to put in to get loans (i.e. lesser interest rates). If a company is going through hard times, the price of the bond (which is a market-defined fn. of the value of the loan, the probability of you getting back the loan, and the value of the interest paid) drops rapidly. Pure awesomeness is when bonds are issued for leveraged buyouts.

Michael Milken was the first guy to notice that the market almost always is too pessimistic about failing companies' bonds, i.e. the price will be lower than the real value. He became a billionaire trading these so-called 'junk' bonds]

1991 Economics - Michael Milken, titan of Wall Street and father of the junk bond, to whom the world is indebted.

If the bicycle race were held at night under lights, it seems it would
go on without a clear sense of direction or purpose... so would it be
called "lit crit"?

What TV serial did the tam postmodern studies grad student audition for when she found out that her entire field was pwned by the Science Wars? My Sokal-ed Life

--
"Opposites when separated compete, when united complete!!"

[priya venkateshan]

How do you call out to a teaching assistant at Austin?
UTA.

[Abhishek Upadhya]

You are the appers of my eyes                 [ Slightly engrish humour ]

On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 11:54 PM, Gautham <gautham...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Mohan K.V]

Heh, strong!

[kuntryness] One ponders about the fate of a particularly irritating student at a prestigious university in southern Sweden. [/kuntryness]

[Mahesh Mahadevan]

Continuing on the grad student thread:
... a student who works part time at the laundry?
UWash
... a student who almost made it to 1st class?
UCLA
... a student who is the Jamaican first son?
Princeton

[Mahesh Mahadevan]

[morekuntryness]BSTU - Brest State Technical University, in Belarus -
the webpage is www.bstu.by, if only it were Educational and Technical
University, then it would have an expiry date :-P , if it were
University of Science and Technology, it would've made more sense to
its homophone[/morekuntryness]

[priya venkateshan]

brilliant.. how did i miss UWash?
think it'd be better to use that to refer to someone so smelly you can only call out to them.

[Sandeep Makam]

... a student who keeps gushing?

UFlo

[priya venkateshan]

where are folks who obsessively compulsively pathologically make jokes (or alternatively, victims of hyena bites) in Massachusetts admitted?

Ha-ward.

[priya venkateshan]

where do brown cars in california learn to drive themselves?

Tan Ford University.

Not really kidding. Check this out: http://www.cs.stanford.edu/people/ang//rl-videos/rc-car/

[Mahesh Mahadevan]

Stanford is particularly good for Asian student associations:

Imagine, the Hindu students association at Stanford will simply be
called Hindu-stan.
The rest of course would be nationalities - Pakistan, Afghanistan,
Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan - but
I do wonder how many from each of these are actually there out there.

[priya venkateshan]

maybe i'm hitting the pits-burgh of PJs with this one, but where in pennsylvania do they grow hothouse plants high in water content?

 

Carnegie Mellon. .

[Prem]

On Dec 7, 8:26 pm, "Shreevatsa R" <shreeva...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 6:45 PM, Mohan K.V <kvm.1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> And Pv = kv with v' = [x' y'] means y = Fx because the second "row" is
> >> F[first row]; and FF=I (flip flip) so Ax+AFy=kx means 2Ax=kx, so the
> >> eigenvalues are twice those of A, each with multiplicity 2? There is
> >> probably a nicer way...
>
> > Very neat! One thing though, the multiplicities are wrong. You see right
>
> Ah right. k(Fx)=ky implies y=Fx only when k≠0. :-)
> So the only *nonzero* eigenvalues of P are twice the nonzero
> eigenvalues of A (and each occurring only once, with even the "same"
> eigenspace, "same" meaning x <-> [x, Fx]), and the rank of P is at
> most the rank of A (because no new rows in the bottom part of A) so if
> A has rank n-m (and assuming A is normal, e.g. Hermitian, e.g. real
> and symmetric :)), P has the same n-m nonzero eigenvalues and 0 n+m
> times.
>
> >> And I don't think you need A's being real and symmetric :-)
>
> > I'm terrified of complex numbers :-) Reminds me of this line: "I'm scared of
> > numbers that can't be written as a fraction. It's an irrational fear." :-)

>
> The trick is to not care, and simply think of a matrix as a linear
> operator on a vector space, until a moment of truth arrives where
> real/complex actually matters... and in many cases it never arrives.

> Like the one about the mathematician who, when asked by the engineer
> how he could possibly visualize the physics lecture about
> 12-dimensional spaces, says "Easy, think of an n-dimensional space and
> set n=12" :-)
>
> > And, one more thing, was 'krishna' a racist term back
> > then,and would they replace it with 'african - american, or native
> > dravidian ' instead...?
>
> Oh God, I HATE "African American"...http://maddox.xmission.com/c.cgi?u=your_stupid_ideas
> "[Dave Matthews Band] is the whitest band ever, which is saying
> something considering 3 of the members are black, and Dave Matthews is
> literally an African American (born in South Africa)."
>
> [And Quillpad andhttp://www.google.com/transliterate/indicare very
> cool, because they use a dictionary to guess what you mean, but that
> also means it's rather hard to use them when you mostly want words
> that are not in their dictionary...]
>
> Back to topic...

>
> If the bicycle race were held at night under lights, it seems it would
> go on without a clear sense of direction or purpose... so would it be
> called "lit crit"?
>

> On Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 2:57 AM, Abhishek Upadhya<abhishekupad...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Ya, they even made a movie about him.... It was called Wall-E...
>
> Indeed. It was even about the stars. Wall-E and Tara.
>
> Why does Vali never have anxiety attacks before going for battle?
> Does he take Valium?

Legend has it that Vali was a hot shot in battle. Valium-refreshed or
not, in a beleaguered stage of the battle, he simply waded through the
enemy resulting in a popular quote of those times" Where there is a
Vali there is a way". Due to faulty pronunciation, the more rowdy
elements amongst the Brits made it " Where there's a Willy There's a
Way". These days, in order to be more politically correct, we stay
with " Where there's a will, there's a way".

[Prem]

You are right. I heard too that the students at Stanford GSB have been
divided into 3 teams to wrestle with the Big 3 Auto Case: Stanford,
Stangm and Stanchrysler.

On Dec 13, 6:11 am, "Mahesh Mahadevan"

[Mahesh Mahadevan]

And it seems reasonable to believe they are all poor :-P

[priya venkateshan]

We might soon have to say Tata to these loss-making firms.

PS: why do we say 'tata' to mean g'bye? (genuine question) why not birla or godrej? or batliwala or broacha?

[Prem]

I am So Grieved to hear about it.

On Dec 6, 10:47 pm, "Abhishek Upadhya" <abhishekupad...@gmail.com>
wrote:
>    - When Vali died, the monkey army Su-grieved for his loss...
>    - When the ancients wanted a babysitter, did they go to Shishupala? [ I
>    don't know the etymology of this name, correct me if I'm wrong and while
>    you're searching for it, check out this palindrome matrix Sanskrit
> verse<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shishupala_Vadha>
>     ]

[Prem]

Coz Tata is shorter and easier to say than other options given.
Besides, it's much easier on the tongue than- for example,
Sodawaterbottleopenerwala.

On Dec 16, 8:41 pm, "priya venkateshan" <priya...@gmail.com> wrote:
> We might soon have to say Tata to these loss-making firms.
>
> PS: why do we say 'tata' to mean g'bye? (genuine question) why not birla or
> godrej? or batliwala or broacha?
>
> On Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 1:38 PM, Mahesh Mahadevan <
>

> maheshmahadevan.i...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > And it seems reasonable to believe they are all poor :-P
>

[Prem]

Come to think of it, the irony is that the world's biggest credit
rating firm is Standard & Poor. For the sake of their clients
worldwide, I am glad they are not-strategically perhaps-called Poor &
Standards. It's so easy to miss out on the & these days.

On Dec 16, 1:08 pm, "Mahesh Mahadevan"

<maheshmahadevan.i...@gmail.com> wrote:
> And it seems reasonable to believe they are all poor :-P
>

[Prem]

That's correct. Apart from growing them in pits or pots, as the case
may be.

On Dec 13, 8:29 am, "priya venkateshan" <priya...@gmail.com> wrote:
> maybe i'm hitting the pits-burgh of PJs with this one, but where in
> pennsylvania do they grow hothouse plants high in water content?
>
> Carnegie Mellon. .
>
> On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 6:41 AM, Mahesh Mahadevan <
>

[Prem]

Here the cause for being admitted is at least known. I am told that if
the cause is unknown, they are re-directed to How-ward.

On Dec 13, 1:30 am, "priya venkateshan" <priya...@gmail.com> wrote:
> where are folks who obsessively compulsively pathologically make jokes (or
> alternatively, victims of hyena bites) in Massachusetts admitted?
>
> Ha-ward.
>
> On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 1:33 AM, Sandeep Makam

> <sandeepmakam.i...@gmail.com>wrote:

>
> > ... a student who keeps gushing?UFlo
>

[Prem]

Excellent. If she didn't know the Tam tongue, you might just call out
UMiss and if she were more sophisticated in her dress and demeanor-
UChic.

On Dec 9, 11:02 pm, "priya venkateshan" <priya...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Talking of Tam grad students, how would you call out to a Tam girl studying
> in an Ivy-League school in Philadelphia?
>
> UPenn!
>
> (credits: Tuna)
>

> On Tue, Dec 9, 2008 at 9:39 PM, Mohan K.V <kvm.1...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > The trick is to not care, and simply think of a matrix as a linear
> >>  operator on a vector space, until a moment of truth arrives where
> >> real/complex actually matters... and in many cases it never arrives.
>

> > Are you Schur <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schur_decomposition>? Re. many

> > cases, while the statement is not singular, it is rather ill-conditioned :-)
> > While on topic, here's one my linal prof put: "You can't diagonalize every
> > matrix, but you can Schur-ly decompose it!" Alas, if only this had struck in
> > yesterday's exam instead of now :-(
>
> > And yes, I should learn to face my fears. They aren't even real! Reminds me

> > of Ignobel prize declarations<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners>,

> > Sokal <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_Affair>-ed Life<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_So-Called_Life>

[Abhishek Upadhya]

The thread started with a peculiar poem,

Here's another, this time in Latin, a smaller matrix though [ Muha ha ha ]

Sator Square 

[p. 88/81] "The market in Sator Square, the wide expanse of cobbles outside the black gates of the University, was in full cry." - Pratchett - Sourcery

The word 'Sator' refers to a famous magic square dating back to the times of the spread of Christianity in Europe. 'Sator' means sower or farmer. The complete square is:

S A T O R 
A R E P O 
T E N E T 
O P E R A 
R O T A S 

This square is palindromic in all directions. The sentence you get reads: Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas, which means, more or less: "The sower [i.e. God] in his field controls the workings of his tools [i.e. us]". 

[Mohan K.V]

So this Sanskritophile restauranteur is totally taken by the alphabet soup and sandwiches on his trip to Italy. He comes back home and adds a new item to the menu: A slab of Mozzarella cheese between slices of italian bread, and grilled in a stove that brands a randomly chosen Sanskrit grammatical aphorism (sutra) on the top slice. What does he call it? A Panini Panini!

[Shreevatsa R]

When it's made by Irish hands, is a panini called Pat-anjali?

[Shreevatsa R]

On Sat, Dec 6, 2008 at 1:47 PM, Abhishek Upadhya <abhishe...@gmail.com> wrote:

• When the ancients wanted a babysitter, did they go to Shishupala? [ I don't know the etymology of this name, correct me if I'm wrong and while you're searching for it, check out this palindrome matrix Sanskrit verse ]

Not a pun, but since that verse was discussed here before, pointing out that the Wikipedia article has a couple more (less spectacular) palindromes now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shishupala_Vadha#Linguistic_ingenuity

Meanwhile, remember that old joke about pi containing all strings? Well, in another reminder that almost anything you imagine exists in reality, there's allegedly a Kannada work that, well... read for yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siribhoovalaya

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