# Recovering-ed/Recovered-ing

The general impression among philosophers of science and physicists alike is that maths is simple.

According to this viewpoint, maths may be—nay, even  must be—beautiful. But for all its complexity, speaking in the cultured tones, it is condemned to stay simple. The subtle shades of the evanescent feelings and emotions, say as captured by a piece of poetry or a work of fine art, they say, is not accessible to the hard, cold, “objective,” world of even of science in general, let alone the “world” of mathematics.

And, yes, as a matter of a plain truth, blogs must still be written, for the most part, using plain languages, for instance, in English! Not in mathematics.

Now, as far as I am concerned, I do seem to have sometime in the past much appreciated what folks such as these mean by those words.

But a subtle change took a root in my mind over the course of the last, ummmm…, 6–7 days, whose final culmination is what this post is all going to be about.

I mean to say, over the course of the past week or so, I seemed to be steadily recovering from my RSI (duly reported earlier on this very blog; see my last post).

Yesterday, the situation was that I seemed to have “fully” recovered from it.

And yet, as I was at it—I mean: at my poor keyboard—once again, I developed, you know, … a feeling. A feeling, now, near the base of my right-hand thumb. A feeling of a bit of a pain.

Now, given the really, really smart person that I am, I exactly knew what to do next: I stopped doing work, and ordered for me, through official channels [if you must be ever so curious], a new, more ergonomic, and < Rs. 500 keyboard. And then, I rested upon my newfound hint of an oncoming pain. [“Prevention is better than cure.”]

Then, sometime this late afternoon, as I was toying with the idea of slipping myself out of this sense of a highly diluted but nevertheless all-pervading boredom, I noticed that I cannot express myself at all. I mean to say: in plain English.

The “real truth” of the matter is this:

I think I have recovered—at least with all of today’s (and past few days’) boredom.

The thing also is: I think I have not recovered—not at least with that slight-ish pain, now appearing at the basal region of my right thumb.

Now, see, this is a situation that is so well-captured by maths in the following manner [but before going over that, may I remind you, for the $n$th time, that the proper spelling of the proper short-form of “mathematics” does naturally carry an ‘s’ at its end]:

Let $w$ be defined as the wellness index. Then, states of well-/ill-ness can be easily expressed according to the following scheme:

• Illness $\Leftrightarrow -1.0 \leq w \leq 0.0$
• Recovered $\Leftrightarrow w = 1.0$
• Recovering $\Leftrightarrow$ $0.0 < w < 1.0$

Simple enough a scheme, right?

So, now, the only question is: what English phrase do you use for the case which is captured by the expression: $0.999\dots \leq w < 1.0$? especially if it also includes a time-evolution? a progress with the passage of time?

If you try to put it in English, referring to the above-mentioned points, there is no word in the English language (or any other “natural” language) to express this thought, this aspect of the actual reality (i.e. the condition of my typing hands). After all, “Recovered” does mean $1.0$ but this number is not acceptable because of the use of the strong “$<$” sign.

As to “Recovering,” the $0.0 < w < 1.0$ range, in this case, turns out to be of a rather Very Large Scale. In fact, as compared to the expression: “$0.999\dots \leq w < 1.0$“, it actually refers to an infinitely large Scale.

So, how do you express yourself in English, as far as that quoted expression, viz., “$0.999\dots \leq w < 1.0$,” goes?

After taking into account the time-evolution part of it, you would very naturally say something like: “recovering-ed” or “recovered-ing”. … You choose between the two.

Precisely both precisely are kind of usages that the Wren and Martin of my childhood times wouldn’t permit me, or any other child. (It’s not that I took the pair very seriously even back then, but the point is: I’ve come to know what painful book to quote when.)

And yet, the title usage is amply justified. As so well illustrated by the already established correspondence of maths and English.

And so, as I once again get back to typing [a lot]—but not on this (or any other) blog—what do you do in the meanwhile?

You listen to this song which I like…

A Song I Like:

(Marathi) “naval vartale ge maaye, ujaLalaa prakaashu…”
Lyrics: G. D. Madgulkar [Yes, that’s right, the words didn’t come to you from “sant dnyaaneshwara.”  [Yes, you further are wrong, “dnyaaneshwara” is never pronounced as “dnyaaneshwaraa,” let alone a “dnyaaneshwaraaaaaa.”]]
Singer: Asha Bhosale
Music: C. Ramchandra

[PS: May be I will streamline this post just a bit later tomorrow or the day after or so… .]

# R.S.I.

I got that, again, for the 4th time in my life, so far. Taking rest. Giving rest to my RHS wrist. Have to. No “A Song I Like” section.

# An INALFO in my backyard

This being a Diwali day, I got up a bit earlier than usual this morning, and as I lazily shuffled out of my bed, as a routine first thing I do, I stumbled my way out to the smallish balcony/porch of our ground-floor flat [i.e. apartment].

While still being in that state of being half-hazy and half awake, in the dim light of the early morning, I spotted an Unidentified Object lying on the ground just 3–4 feet away from me, in the (very smallish) backyard of our house.

It was some 2–3 feet in size; the color was a pink.

Initially, I thought that it could be some piece of a baby clothing that got dropped from one of the flats above ours. Then I thought that it could be a smallish mosquito-net they use for infants. But then, soon enough, I realized that no one lives in the flat directly above ours, and with all the flower-trees and shrubs they have planted around in this backyard, the probability of a piece of clothing—a fairly heavy object—merely getting drifted away in the wind and landing precisely into that very smallish patch of the ground which lies in front of our flat, was very low. After all, there are a couple of 5–7 feet tall trees here, in our patch of the backyard. And, so, the question of how that piece of clothing got landed here was not a very easy one to figure out. … I yawned, decided to think about it later, and turned around to go inside, pick up my tooth-brush.

Some one or one-and-a-half hour later or so, I was in the balcony once again, and checked it out once again. … Whatever it was, I had to go out, pick it up, and may be alert my neighbours later in the day, I thought. The Sun had already been up, and the sky had got brightened up quite well by now.

More important, I had by now become fully awake.

In fact, a few minutes earlier, while sipping up my cup of coffee, while sitting in that same balcony, even “looking at” the same object, I had already thought of some small thing about QM, and so, I had by now picked up this book on QM by Eisberg and Resnick. I was trying to locate the thing I wanted to check out, its presentation in this book.

Yet, at the same time, the Unidentified Object lying out there wouldn’t let me go through the book right. That’s how, I had now decided to check that thing out there, first.

I had to get up from my chair and check it out. So, I leaned out of the balcony a bit, and had a good look at it. Under the brightened sky, and with me not just looking at it but also with my mental focus on it, I could now immediately recognize it for it was.

It was a very specific kind of a Flying Object.

Thus, the object had undergone a direct transformation from being (i) an Unidentified Object, to (i) a specific kind of a Flying Object. [Too bad, there never was an intermediate state of its formally being an Unidentified Flying Object.]

I anyway decided to take a snap of this INALFO (Identified, Not Any Longer Flying, Object). Here it is:

It sure was a Diwali-time balloon (with the hot air generated by a burning candle) of the kind they send it up in the sky at night.

OK. The UFO part of this post is now over.

I then slipped on my chappals and stepped out of our flat. As I picked this balloon up, I realized that something had been printed on the other side of it.

It turned out to be a message of love: there was a screen-printed outline of a rose flower, and also the words appearing in the capital letters: “I LOVE.” … The screen-printer had done a poor job of printing, and so, the “YOU” part had got only partially printed; it was almost completely unreadable.

It was funny, I thought. Right on the morning of the most important day of Diwali, I had happened to have received, literally, a message of love from the heavens. … There was this bit of that “family” / “Greeting Cards” / “Gift from the Heavens” / “TV serials” / “Hindi TV News Channels” / “Indians” sort of a drama built into it—the kind of a drama that everyone seems to so much love or at least appreciate, and, simultaneously, none has any actual use for.

Then, to let you gauge the size of the balloon, I placed my copy of the QM book over it (which I happened to be still carrying in my hand, absentmindedly, even in the act of stepping out). I then took another snap, which is here:

OK. Now… Taking a second look at this photograph…. I mean… if you take just this one photograph, and try to decipher the message contained in this photograph by reading it very straight-forwardly…

… Well, yes, I do LOVE QUANTUM PHYSICS, don’t I? Hadn’t the message arrived from the heavens only so I come to “learn” and “realize” and “appreciate” this part about myself? What do you think?

OK. The Mars-Man [^] [^] part of this post, too, is over.

But, have a Happy Diwali anyway!

And, as to me, well, let me now get back to the business of the accreditation-related work (which I’ve had to take home this Diwali season). Bye for now.

# Incidentals—Part 1

Yes, I have been working hard, very hard, and have been managing a responsibility, a very difficult and demanding and emotionally very draining a responsibility in a singular capacity, and yes, I have been having problems with people—their irrationalities. And, the irrational scripts they follow. [Mind you, the reference is to scripts and not to scriptures.]

But, just check this out this one, for instance (and, the people I have in mind in the above section wouldn’t do that, I am sure; they never do pursue links from such posts of mine, especially if they are just Indians—they are just self-confident, that’s all): [^].

But, leaving them aside—and I find it very, very easy do that at least in a moment like this—here is a suggestion: For tomorrow and the day after, and may be for a week or so, watch out the physics (esp. astronomy-related) Twitter-feeds, news-feeds, even blogs [complete with words like “kicking” people and all [Indians with ability to speak in English regard it as “unparliamentary,” together with words like “bloody”].

For obvious reasons, no “A Song I Like” section for this posts The news I am reporting about is exciting enough, all by itself.

Best,

–Ajit

Update on 21:35 IST the same day:

A couple of related posts are these: [^][^]

A Song I Like: