Apolitical Intelectual

One Day
the apolitical intellectuals
of my country
will be interrogated
by the simplest of our people.
They will be asked what they did
when their nation died out
slowly, like a sweet fire,
small and alone.
No one will ask them
about their dress,
their long lunch breaks,
no one will want to know
about their sterile combats
with "the idea of the nothing"
no one will care about
their higher financial learning.
They won't be questioned
on Greek mythology,
or regarding their self-disgust
when someone within them
begins to die
the coward's death.
They'll be asked nothing
about their absurd justifications,
born in the shadow
of the total lie.
On that day
the simple men will come.
Those who had no place
in the books and poems
of the apolitical intellectuals,
but daily delivered
their bread and milk,
those who mended their clothes,
those who drove their cars,
who cared for their dogs and gardens
and worked for them, and they'll ask:
"What did you do when the poor
suffered, when tenderness
and life burned out in them?"
Apolitical intellectuals of my sweet country,
you will not be able to answer.
A vulture of silence
will eat your gut.
Your own misery will pick at your soul.
And you will be mute in your shame.

-Castillo

I came like water, and like wind I go

With them the seed of Wisdom I did sow,
And with mine own hand wrought to make it grow;
And this was all the Harvest that I reap'd -
"I came like Water, and like Wind I go."

Omar Khayyam (Fitzgerald Translation)

Just yesterday, a friend of ours received the sad news that his Father had unexpectedly passed away. His 70 year old Father died thousands of miles away in Iran. We went to see our friend today. More than anything else, he was perhaps grieving for not being able to be with his father in his last days.

Islamic regime has turned millions of Iranians into immigrants. Many Iranian families I know are scattered around the globe. The normally close-knit families are now separated, living in different countries and continents. Aging parents could only be with their children and grandchildren once every few year and some don’t even get that chance at all. I have been one of the lucky ones that at least my immediate family is living near me. My parents have a chance to be with their two grandchildren and watch them grow. We also get to see my wife’s parents who live away for at least a few weeks almost every year. My friend’s loss made me realize once again how precious these moments of being together are, and I am grateful for that.

Jury Duty

A few months ago, after many years of dodging jury duty, I finally got drafted into the jury for a civil case. An employee had sued his employer for retaliatory termination of his employment because he claimed that he had protested the firing of his coworker earlier. He had already found another job and wasn’t asking for much, just a few months of lost pay. So, I was relieved that I was not making a life or death decision. It just meant that I would lose 3 weeks of work stuck in the court. I had to make up for that later by staying longer hours at work, but I was not too upset about it and was looking forward to getting a hands-on experience with the American justice system at a safe distance.

Most of the trial was spent on going over a bunch of Email messages among several thousand pages of email correspondence. So, it lacked the courtroom drama you see on the TV shows, no Perry Mason surprises, no theatrical performances at the closing arguments, etc. Both sides did present their case well, although the employer’s defense team were more organized and appeared more confident and aggressive.

For me, the most interesting part was the few hours that we spent in the jury room to decide the case. As you know, jurors are not supposed to talk about the case before the end of the closing arguments before they are sent to a room to decide the case, not with each other and not with anyone else. This gag rule, by the way, annoyed my wife a lot. I told her if I discussed it with you, I might be influenced by anything you might say. Of course, we were free to talk about it after the case was over. The Judge also made a long speech about keeping an open mind and not forming an opinion before completing deliberations. So, after the case was handed to us, we went to a room to talk about the case for the first time.

The first thing that struck me was that despite judges long speech about the importance of deliberations, almost everyone was eager to get it over with by a quick vote especially since in a civil suit we were not required to reach a unanimous decision. If it wasn’t for me and another juror, we had made the decision in five minutes. We insisted that at least we should present our reasons behind our opinions. The next surprise for me was that except for a couple of them, not many could come up with a logical argument for their opinion. It seemed to me that one or two strongly opinionated and somewhat charismatic jurors sort of led the discussion and argued for the rest. Of course, I with my foreign accent and middle-eastern face and soft voice was not one of them. I enjoyed my role as sort of a devil advocate that forced them to stay in the Jury room longer than they wanted to. A few jurors did thank me at the end though, because they said I made them think through their decision. I wonder if this dynamic happens in other juries as well, and weather I would have been more persistent if the case was of a more serious nature.

There was another thing that surprised me. The case was not directly related to sexual harassment and we did not have to make a determination on that in this case, but one of the things that happened in the Company that employed the plaintiff was that the general manager was engaged in a lot of inappropriate behavior at the office, from sending pornographic picture through email to others including the female staff to performing mock striptease in front of everyone. There was an environment in that office that would make a textbook example for a sexual harassment training manual. I was not surprised by what was going on in that office, what surprised me was the general attitude of some the jurors toward this issue. Sexual harassment has been a major issue in the past few decades in the US and is discussed in books, TV shows, seminars, etc. Every corporation in the US is required by law to have training on it and prevent it from happening, so one can assume that the level of awareness is high in the society. But I was surprised that many of the jurors including a few women did not see that situation as a sexual harassment. One female juror who was a teacher even commented on how attractive the General Manager was and she did not believe the testimony of a female employee who testified that she was offended by what was going on in that office. "She must have liked it". This made me realize how difficult it would be to convince juries in sexual harassment cases here even when evidence is so overwhelming.

Anyway, the attorneys for the defense (employer in the case) were so confident that the deliberations would not last past lunch time and the jury would rule in their favor, that they had even made reservations in a nearby restaurant and invited everyone in the jury to lunch! Of course, I didn’t go :)

Is there an end to madness

It seems like Bush's policies will be even more aggressively militaristic in his second term. His gloating about earning “political capital” that he intends to “spend” (in other words, I’ll do whatever I want), complete control of congress and senate by republicans, naming Condoleezza Rice the champion of pre-emptive strike as his secretary of State ( who by the way is the former Chevron board member and had an oil tanker named after her), with Cheney, the Halliburton guy, on his side, and with his simplistic, black-and-white, good-evil worldview, all point to more conflicts and military involvement around the world. The hope is that at least the Democrats get more radicalized and will not play dead any more and stand up to this guy for once, otherwise, he will start another mess probably in Iran pretty soon.

2=1

Sometimes seemingly logical arguments deceive you.

Consider the series

S = 1 – ½ + 1/3 – ¼ + 1/5 – 1/6 + … = ½ + 1/3 – ¼ + 1/5 – 1/6 + …

From left hand side, it can be shown that S<1, from the right hand side S>½ (how?).

Multiply the series by 2.

2S = 2 – 1 + 2/3 – ½ + 2/5 – 1/3 + …

Rearrange the terms:

2S = (2 – 1 ) – ½ + (2/3 – 1/3) – ¼ + (2/5 – 1/5) - …

= 1 – ½ + 1/3 – ¼ + 1/5 - … = S

Since S converges and is not zero, divide both side by S and arrive at 2=1.

Puzzle

The book “In code: A mathematical Journey” describes how Sarah Flannery got interested in mathematics from her early years. The book is about the learning process that finally led her to the discovery of a new and fast encryption algorithm in 1999, when she was only 17 years old. Although later the code was found to be breakable, her discovery at that age was a great achievement. In the book, she describes that one of the things that she enjoyed doing and made her interested in Math was solving puzzles. Puzzles are great for getting kids interested in logical thinking and math from the elementary school years to later in high school or even college. I am interested in learning effective ways to teach kids about math and science subjects. To teach them in a way which is interesting and which promotes deep and lasting understanding. One good resource for teachers and parents that I found are free online video workshops available at Annenberg/CPB . The “Looking at Learning” workshop series is excellent for a start.

Sarah Flannery’s book has many interesting puzzles including this one: Someone wanted to send his fiancé who lived in another city a ring. The post office was notorious for being corrupt and any package, which was not locked, would be opened and its content stolen. So he bought a padlock with a key and a box which had several latches. He called his fiancé and together they came up with a scheme to safely get the ring to her by mail. Considering the fact that even the key will be stolen if it is sent in an unsecured package, and assuming no one can open the padlock without a key and the box can not be broken, how were they able to do this?

Another blogger arrested in Iran

There is a report of another blogger arrested in Iran. Islamic government has intensified its crack down on the last medium of free expression in Iran, the internet. This arrest follows a series of recent arrests on internet related charges. See a related news item from Reporters without Borders. I urge you to sign this petition to protest these arrrests.

Abu Ammar

The life of a freedom fighter came to an end, but the struggle for a free and independent Palestine remains. Western media, especially US media, had painted Arafat as an obstacle to peace, a demagogue, corrupt, etc, but Arafat, with all his flaws, for those who believe in the Palestinian’s right to be free from Israel’s apartheid, remains a symbol of resistance, more than half a century of resistance against occupation and injustice.

In the US media, even in more liberal outlets, Arafat’s refusal to accept Israel’s offer in 2000, was shown as his failure as a leader. Israel’s offer was referred to as “generous” or “the best deal Palestinians could get”, and Arafat’s refusal was depicted as an irrational decision of an authoritarian leader oblivious to his nation’s aspirations. You never see any of the major media outlets in US really discuss the details of this plan and why it was not acceptable to Palestinians. If anyone cared to even take a look at the map of Palestine under the terms of this so-called generous offer, a bunch of isolated islands completely surrounded by settlements and access roads, it would become obvious why it would not be a basis for a viable Palestinian State.

Israel’s violence has radicalized Palestinians. The peace process is a dead-end. Unfortunately, many of them see violence as the only way out. Suicide bombing and violent acts against civilians will not lead Palestinians to a free Palestine, and only feed the Israel government's PR machine. We need not be reminded that those desperate acts are not the only acts of violence committed in that region. Palestinian civilians are subjected to violence and murder, torture, distruction of their homes and farms, grab of their vital resources like water, ever expanding settlements in Palestinian land, etc by the State of Israel. However, Israel's acts of violence are always characterized by US government and media as “retaliation”, “clashes”, “civilians caught in cross-fire”, etc.

In the past few years, Arafat, as a leader of Palestinians, did fail to unite them and channel their anger into positive non-violent struggle, the way Nelson Mandela was able to do under much similar apartheid state of South Africa. The allegations of financial corruption and personal bank accounts remain allegations at this stage, and it seems highly unlikely to be true. If it was true, why were these allegations not made so vigorously before his death when he had a chance to clear himself? I hope Palestinian leadership can get their act together, avoid divisive quarrels and unite the Palestinians under a common goal and strategy to realize their dream of a viable and independent State side by side and in peace with Israel.

US Elections

As I expected, Bush won the election. More war and destruction, more economic policies to help the rich, a few more conservative judges appointed to the US supreme court, etc. One interesting election statistics was that the top issue for US voters was “Moral Values” and a large majority of those who listed Moral Values as their top concern voted for Bush. Goerge Lakoff 's book “Moral Politics : How Liberals and Conservatives Think” is a good source for understanding how morality and family structure shape American's political views.

Scientific Attitude

Prof. Afshar's experiment reminded me of what George Polya wrote about scientific attitude in one of his books (Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning). He mentions “intellectual courage” which means we are ready to revise our long held beliefs, “intellectual honesty” which means we change our belief when we see compelling evidence to change it, and “wise restraint” which means we do not change our mind without serious examination. These values constitute what he calls basic moral values of a scientist, and I think everyone can benefit from carrying these values into their lives, scientist or not.

Prof. Afshar's Experiment

Prof. Shahriar Afshar is a physicist from Harvard University (a visiting professor at Rowan University) who has been able to come up with a simple experiment that has challenged a long accepted interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (the principle of complementarity).

Up until now, the accepted theroy was that one cannot detect both the particle and wave property of light in a single experiment. If one tries to detect a photon as a particle, one cannot observe its behaviour as waves and vice versa. Now, Dr Afshar's experiment has shown that it is possible to observe both properties of light in a single experiment.

This experiment is still controversial, but the interesting thing about it is the simplicity of the experiment. It does not require any elaborate experimental setup. Any physics student in the past 70 or 80 years could have done the experiment. However, no one thought of actually doing such an elegant experiment. Not only Dr Afshar's ingenuity, but also his intelectual courage to challenge such an overwhelmingly accepted concept is truly admirable.