Dear friends, In the crucible of life sometimes we undergo intense pressures and temperatures. It can either produce diamonds or make us escape to less difficult environments. When the former happens it creates clarity and brilliance, clearing out impurities and bringing out dazzling light. Let us hope that the current difficulties bring out the light within all of us. In my own life I feel that whenever I go through a difficult time I learn from it and the world both inner and outer becomes a little bit clearer. Such clarity brings peace and great joy that in turn provides the strength and energy to face even greater challenges and do the best I can for myself and others. I hope you are also enjoying much clarity and may the light within you shine ever brighter. I am deeply grateful for your friendship and hope to hear from you when you have time. Sankar Random Thoughts (74) 2-24-2009 1. Some say bipartisanship is already dead. But what they are forgetting is that we are at least talking about it. Before, no one cared to even make an effort. Obama has changed the conversation now. In fact, he is writing a whole new chapter in world history. People will have higher expectations and their standards will be higher from now on. 2. I was thrilled to read this story about all the new alternative energy solutions coming out from India. In particular I hope the Reva electric car takes off. It sounds ideal for Indian road and traffic conditions as well as needs of the average Indian middle class consumer. Here is the article by Tom Friedman in the NY Times:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/opinion/15friedman.html?em Here is the link to the reva car company: http://www.revaindia.com 3. (Mon, 2/16) I was traveling from the White flint metro station back to DC after dropping off my nephews at my sister’s place. As I entered the station it said train arrives in 1 minute. I took the elevator (because I had a bike) and as the elevator started going down the train arrived. It was only one floor down so I thought I’d make it. But the train left very quickly perhaps because there weren’t too many passengers late on Monday (President’s day) night. So in spite of my rushing from the elevator the train left as I was running towards it. I wish I had arrived just five seconds earlier. Had to wait 13 minutes for the next train in the cold. I cursed the driver for not stopping and myself for not taking the escalator. After about 10 minutes I started to calm down. In the IMAX movie that I saw with my nephews earlier in the day paleontologist Rodolfo Coria ends the movie with the observation “As I get older I realize that my work (with fossils, in the Patagonia desert) has shaped my whole way of thinking. But I am not that old.” He was talking about his age in geological terms. So in the larger scheme of things, 13 minutes is not a large amount, I guess :-) The vastness of the Patagonian desert and the immensity of geological time puts everything in perspective. Besides, waiting for the train taught me mindfulness and reminded me that my mind was racing in all directions before I missed the train. 4. I found a computer game that provides a nice diversion now and then. It is a lot of fun and like all computer games, addictive. I play it whenever I feel like I need a break and make sure I don’t play for more than two minutes at a time. You too can enjoy it at http://ziptripper.zipcar.com 5. (Thu, 2/19) Last night I was about to go to sleep when I came across a program about Goebbels on PBS. Even though my brain was threatening to switch off any moment the program was so riveting that I willed myself to watch it to the end. In it someone read from Goebbels’ diary while war footage and speeches from Hitler and Goebbels were played. It was like watching the war from the perspective of the Nazis, especially Goebbels and Hitler. Two things really struck me, leaving indelible impressions on the mind. One was the extent to which passion and demagoguery played a role. Basically they whipped the population into a frenzy, creating mass hysteria, pretty much trying to convert an entire country into a robotic and maniacal military machine. The sad part is they almost succeeded. Such grand delusions and megalomania cannot be sustained by a calm, humane, realistic person. It can only thrive in a mind that is living an altered version of reality, out of touch with its humanness. In fact reason and thought is not enough to break these delusions, because guiding the reason and thought is the passion to pursue these fantasies. The second image was that of the dead bodies of Goebbels and his family discovered when the Russians entered the Nazi headquarters. Goebbels kept goading his countrymen to pursue total war till the end, and even in his final radio broadcast on the day before his death told them to defend Berlin to the last man. When he realized that the end was near he and his wife poisoned their six children with cyanide and then killed themselves. They left orders that both of their bodies must be burnt. So when the Russians came they only found the two grotesquely burnt bodies near the bodies of their children. It felt unreal to watch it, even on TV, even on black and white. I still cannot believe that a monstrosity such as World War II really took place. While it is repulsive to even think of, may it be a reminder to all of us never to lose touch with our human nature, with our compassion for other human beings, and never to use our strength and determination in pursuit of anything other than helping our fellow living beings. It reminds us to take it easy with life, and not take anything too seriously, especially ourselves. 6. My job is to take hip, well-rounded and cool young people and convert them into nerds :-) I am happy to report that I fail at it all the time. 7. It has been only a month and already the right-wind propaganda machine is in full swing, attacking the democratic policies. They are like hyenas waiting for any weakness to show, and they seem to have found it in the stimulus bill. Right now they are refraining from attacking Obama directly, preferring to aim their fire at the Congressional democrats instead. But their ruthless efficiency is admirable. They are attacking wherever they can find the slightest opening. One wonders what they really want. Is it merely the loss of power that aggravates them? Surely if their anger is entirely based on their concern for the country, then perhaps they should wait a little bit more until the picture becomes a little clearer as to what is going to happen? Any hopes for a grace period where everyone might try to come together and let the administration get its wings and try to get a grip on the problems facing us have been dashed. These are the same people who called anyone who questioned Bush’s proposal for invading Iraq as unpatriotic. 8. (Fri, 2/20) Tonight I stopped by in Kramerbooks and ended up reading an article in “Wired” magazine about “the mathematical formula that destroyed the financial world.” It lays out in a very clear way the origins of this financial crisis. Unfortunately it turns out to be a mathematical formula. Before you go around and start shooting mathematicians let me tell you that the article also explains clearly that the mathematician who came up with this formula had also warned about the misuse and abuse of it. Just like Einstein warned about the dangers of misusing E = mc^2. The formula I am talking about is David Li’s Gaussian correlation copula function (what a salacious name :-) ). (BTW, this is really a statistical equation, but that’s a different matter). It calculates the probability of two credits (loans, etc) defaulting at the same time. The calculation is based on NOT the historical data about such loans but rather the values of the financial devices called collateralized debt obligations (CDO’s) which are based on those loans. The problem was that these CDO’s have been in existence for only the past 10 years or so during which the real estate market has been climbing relentlessly. Unfortunately all the finance people started basing their pricing of credit based securities such as credit default swaps (CDS) on Li’s copula function, and most of them never really understood exactly how the function worked, all they knew was that they could punch some numbers in their computers and out came the prices. While the quantitative people were aware of the small chance that the housing market will start heading south and large numbers of people would start defaulting at the same time, the traders were oblivious to the risks or they simply overlooked them because there was too much money to be made. The sad part was that during the Clinton years there was a mini-crash that was also due to complex financial devices called derivatives that no one understood well (once again they were based on the Black- Scholes model, another mathematical model for which Merton and Scholes won the Nobel economics prize in 1997). But the success of Clinton’s people in controlling that crash might have made people too complacent. In any case now there are TRILLIONS (yes! At least 62 Trillion!) in credit default swaps sitting in the banks’ ledgers, and the bankers are afraid to open their books and try to value these bad assets. The Wall Street guys are sitting there nervous and worried that the banks, and with it the whole financial system, will go under. Obama and his men have the unenviable task of defusing this ticking nuclear bomb. 9. (Sunday, 2/22/09) Tonight I was at a performance by the Mendelssohn piano trio at the national gallery. I was fortunate to listen to the playing of music by Beethoven and Mendelssohn. The strings and piano notes ascending in sublime harmony reminded me that nothing can bring us physically as close to our divine inner spirit as music. 10. People walk faster in winter.