What recession?

Rather than writing too much in this post, I am just going to post a picture taken in Lafayette, IN.

The moment

With my PhD, I have also declared myself as an MS Office (Master of Science in Microsoft Office). This omnipresent software is the bane of many a report due to the fact that it has a mind of its own. I decided to confer the degree on myself for the relative ease with which I compiled my whole dissertation. However, the moment of truth arrived when I realized that some of my tables had some extra space when compared to all the rest. A million different techniques (changing the paragraph settings and 999,999 other trials) later I found it neatly tucked in the table layout tab under the section for cell size after pressing the radio button labelled positioning where there were two ways to format the space. The moment I found it, the realization struck me - I was ready to graduate.

PS: It still beats me why Microsoft need to place 4 different ways to format the space before a table and then auto format extra space in some tables using the least used of the 4 tools.

Kung Fu PhD

Overall Conclusions:
As I conclude my "The PhD dissertation I never wrote series" also known as my "PhD hypotheses series", I would like to put forth the true meaning of a PhD as explained very well by the movie Kung Fu Panda.

Just as in the movie, we all fall into gradschool from the sky and are picked by a seemingly random process (like the tortoise Master Oogway pointing at the giant panda (you) who fell right where he was pointing just by chance). We enter grad school with dreams of being a dragon warrior (or at the very least getting a Nobel prize out of it). In grad school, we feel like a nobody and feel that those around us like the Tigress, Viper, Mantis, Monkey and Crane are much smarter and more accomplished than us.

As we progress through the tough travails of grad school, we keep feeling that we are not learning anything and our research is going nowhere. We then progress to the later stages of our PhD and as we get close to graduation, we realize that the secret to limitless power/knowledge that we thought a PhD held (the dragon scroll), is actually a blank scroll. We then confront the supposedly demonic Tai Lung (our committee) prior to graduation.

However, this does not mean that a PhD is worthless and does not teach you anything. What a PhD teaches you is intangible, it is the ability to be able to self learn, to understand life and solve its tough problems, like figuring out the wuxi fingerhold by yourself which the master's students (Tigress et al.) are unable to do.

Cleaning up your desk is beneficial (Corrolary - When you lose something, clean up)

Editor's note: This is a series entitled "Shriram Paranjpe's Ph.D. hypotheses series". The experiments documented through this series have reportedly been referred to as "lacking scientific merit". However, in a bold move, this blog has decided to print them. We believe ourselves to be visionaries who will be feted by future generations. Unfortunately, we will not get the pleasure of being acknowledged by our own. Your comments on this specific article or the whole series will be greatly appreciated.

Introduction:
Previous studies have indicated that junk accumulates (Paranjpe 2009 - have to self reference at least once right). This research was therefore carried out to identify the reasons for the differences between this great research paper and suggestions made otherwise in popular sitcoms (Geller 1994-2003) that junk does not accumulate (that is 2 degrees of separation between me and a character in FRIENDS). A thorough literature review indicated that the root cause of this difference is that junk is not allowed to accumulate in most places. The motivation behind this cleanup has not been studied (in other words, I want my theory to be correct and therefore, I am not referencing the others). Therefore, we dreamed up this study. The objective of this research was to understand the motivation behind cleaning up.

Materials and methods:
The piled up junk was cleaned up at the three places where it was reportedly allowed to pile up (Paranjpe 2009) and the benefits of the actions were studied.

Results and Discussion:
The cleanup at the office resulted in retrieval of a long lost 2 GB flash drive as well as a movie rewards card that will give me two free cokes and a popcorn with the purchase of just 2 more movie tickets. This is a great result which indicates the true motivation behind cleaning up. However, the clean up in the other two locations resulted in nothing of value being found. The results of the study are therefore not totally clear.

Conclusions:
A part of the study indicated that there is some motivation behind cleaning up. However, the result was not statistically significant and needs further research.

Future work:
It is possible that motivation might not be the actual driving force behind this tendency to clean up. Some researchers have suggested that the root cause of the clean up motion is psychological with childhood trauma (being forced by parents/being punished) and sociological limitations (How can you live here?) possibly playing a part in the clean up process. Since psychological analysis was not a part of our grant, this angle was not studied further.

Junk accumulates

Editor's note: This is a series entitled "Shriram Paranjpe's Ph.D. hypotheses series". The experiments documented through this series have reportedly been referred to as "lacking scientific merit". However, in a bold move, this blog has decided to print them. We believe ourselves to be visionaries who will be feted by future generations. Unfortunately, we will not get the pleasure of being acknowledged by our own. Your comments on this specific article or the whole series will be greatly appreciated.

Introduction:
This experiment was carried out to verify earlier rumors that, well, junk accumulates.

Materials and methods:
This experiment was carried out in triplicates in the office, lab and room of the then non Dr. Shriram Paranjpe. Stuff was left undisturbed for four years and the results are shown below.

Results and Discussion:
Figures 1 and 2 below shows the amount of junk that was recovered when the office and lab were cleaned. Data from the room could not be published due to copyright issues. However, figure 3 shows a shot of the kitchen being reorganized

Figure 1: Office cleanup



Figure 2: Stuff recovered from lab



Figure 3: Kitchen reorganization

Conclusion:
Junk accumulates

Exciting Indiana - A tourist promotion

I picked up my father in law from Chicago airport yesterday. After a long journey, he was making a valiant attempt to stay awake since he was sitting next to the driver (me). Every time he woke up, I enthusiastically acted as the tour guide and told him that there were corn fields on the left and soy farms on the right (or something to that effect). He would promptly fall asleep again.

Exciting Indiana!!!!!!!!!!

Books borrowed from the library remain stationary unless you graduate

Editor's note: This is a series entitled "Shriram Paranjpe's Ph.D. hypotheses series". The experiments documented through this series have reportedly been referred to as "lacking scientific merit". However, in a bold move, this blog has decided to print them. We believe ourselves to be visionaries who will be feted by future generations. Unfortunately, we will not get the pleasure of being acknowledged by our own. Your comments on this specific article or the whole series will be greatly appreciated.

Introduction:
Previous research has suggested that books borrowed from the library have a habbit of disappearing. However, most of these studies have been carried out with limited subjects and have been short term studies. This work was aimed at studying the topic in depth over a long time.

Materials and Methods:
Books were borrowed from Purdue Libraries over 4 years. Some books were returned during the course of the 4 years but a majority of the books (41) were returned at the end of the trial period. The positioning, motion and presence of the books was studied when they were procured and when they had to be returned without any check on the time in between. The procurement of the books was randomized (ie different types of books were borrowed from different libraries on campus). Books were stored at three different locations (home, office, lab) to ensure repeatability of the trials.

Results and Discussion:
All 41 books that had been kept for the entire study were found to be in their original places. This finding debunked the earlier reported theory (Murphy et. al. 1982) that stuff disappears and is not found when you need to return in prior to graduation. It also agrees with previous results on stationary bodies (Newton 1693) which find that they remain at rest unless acted upon by an external force (in this case, graduation)

Conclusion:
Books borrowed from the library remain stationary unless you graduate

Acknowledgements:
The authors would like to thank the Purdue University Libraries for their help in loaning out the books over long periods of time and allowing one touch online renewal.

Thank you all

Before, I begin my PhD hypotheses series, I would like to thank all of you for your support during my PhD either personally or by reading and commenting on this blog. I would like to begin the series as any dissertation begins - With my Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

Four years of madness

Four years of studies

Could it be done without you?

Heck no! Puhleez!

This is to my guru, he who guided me

Gave me the freedom and asked questions when need be

For all of this and the wisdom that you bestowed on me

Dear Dr. Morgan, I thank ye

For questioning, guiding, encouraging

And hopefully passing me

I would like to thank you

Drs. Narsimhan, Corvalan and Ferruzzi

Forever helpful, always resourceful

Thank you for your help Benjamin Paxson

I thank Steve Smith for the pilot plant he runs

I have borrowed from it often, thanks for not coming behind me with a gun

For devoting your time and expertise to me

I wish to thank thee

Amy, Ben, Mandar, Deepak, Cynthia, Nirupama

Kingsley, Vaishnavi, Dhananjay and Madhuvanti

In the past four years

In FS I would roam

Its faculty staff, students, I thank you

For making me feel at home

All work and no play

Would have made Shriram a dull boy

My roommates and friends at Purdue and beyond

I thank you for providing the joy

The love of my life, my darling wife

A supportive friend, my guiding light

Thanks for always showing me Tejaswini

That the end of the tunnel was in sight

My parents, my sisters

As the youngest of the three

I thank you from the bottom of my heart

For always being there for me

The blog returns

Hey guys,

Dr. Shriram Paranjpe’s blog is back here. We apologize for the break in between but we spent it well. The blog has been updated from Shriram Paranjpe's blog to Dr. Shriram Paranjpe's blog. The past couple of months were spent on giving the finishing touches to the upgrade (dissertaton writing, defending etc).

Version Dr.0 of this blog will begin with some parts of my work that could not be included in my dissertation, supposedly due to "lack of scientific merit" to them. However, in the interest of furthering science, the next few blogs will carry what I call "My PhD hypotheses series" after which Yashwantrao Gele Americela will return.

Website created!

Hey guys,

I have created the website for my mother. It is a very basic website. Check it out at www.akalpitaparanjpe.com. Do pass on the word about her candidature to all you know. We need the change and passing on the word is the minimum we can do.

Yashwantrao gele Americela will be back soon

Rukawat ke liye khed hai

Sorry for the delay in posting blogs of late friends. I am currently (rather unsuccessfully) working on a website for my mother who is contesting the elections from Mumbai South Central Constituency. This is taking up a lot of my free time and therefore, no blogs. Sorry.

On a more serious note, I would like to post more information about my mother's candidature. My mother has always had a passion to serve people. For 25 years, she held free consultations thrice a week to guide people on homeopathic and ayurvedic medicine. I always saw her as a visionary with dreams of serving the country and got the feeling that us three kids were holding her back. Once we were all out of college, she began to focus on her true passion, nation building. In 2007, she quit her job and dedicated herself full time to her passion. I truly believe her to be a great candidate, a brilliant scientist with the vision and passion to lead a samartha samruddha Bharat desh.

She is contesting as a candidate for Bharat Uday Mission, a party with only one mission, the rise of a great nation. This party was initiated by IITians 3-4 years ago to promote professionalism in politics and remove corruption. My mother is its current president. For more information on the party, you can visit their website at www.bharatudaymission.in.

Please pass on the word about her candidature. If you are interested in knowing more about it, mail me at shriniram@gmail.com or leave a comment and I will get back to you with her vision, her goals and her biography.

YGA becomes a bestseller

In a strong testimony to the popularity of this blog, Yashwantrao gele Americela (Hindi title - Yashwantrao gaye Amrika) has found a place in the Book Channel's "One billion things to read before you die" guide. According to their website, the list was created after asking everyone on the planet for their vote. Yash's book was nominated by him, his parents and two of his room-mates. The researchers involved were surprised by the high number of blogs that found a place on the list, 99% of this one nominated by one person or less. In a shocking turn of events, one of the most popular literary figures of all time, William Shakespeare found none of his books on the list.

In an unrelated story, Wikipedia reports that none of the Bard's relatives are alive today.

The birthday that changed it all

We continue today with another excerpt from Yashwantrao gele Americela. The topic is the birthday of Narendra Sharma aka my room-mate urf Jaipur ke kunwar-raj alias nirvanainme also known as Bebe.

"It was Spring of 2009 when the birthday of nirvanainhim Narendra Sharma changed all laws of birthdays. Here are some myths that were shattered (or proven if exceptions prove the rule:

1) A birthday party makes the house dirty: Our house was actually cleaner after the party since we had to clean up the table to place the cake, chips etc and those got finished so the house was cleaner.

2) Cake is bad for the carpet: Commonly cakes have a problem of falling to the ground after being applied on the face. However, due to optimization by all the Industrial Engineers and IITians present, proper cake texturization with guidance from the food scientist (my roommate Shriram) and 99.99% absolute pure luck, the cake had enough adhesion to stick to Narendra's face and was not a slave of gravity.
This also helped in the house being cleaner after the party.

3) Chappals and shoes do not hurt once you have attained moksha: Narendra was given his last set of birthday bumps (or so the grad students claimed as they let off all their frustrations) since he would be married by his next birthday. Although Narendra has seemingly attained nirvana (freedom from suffering), the smile disappeared on each shot.

Here are some pictures from the party. To find out more myths that were shattered at that party, read "Yashwantrao gele Americela" out in hardcover and paperback only from Deshmukh Publications, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Maharashtra, India. Available online at www.yashwantraogeleamericela.com. Price only Rs.999 ($34.99 in the US)

Yashwantrao gele Americela to continue

I have decided to restart the book excerpts. I have to say the book excerpts did bring their own publicity despite the lack of a suit against me. The blogs on the book excerpts attracted a grand total of 2 (non self) comments. What's more, they attracted a comment on the immediate next blog post, more of a UNESCO report to the Gossip girl status of the book excerpts. All of this led to 3 consecutive posts getting their own comments, a flurry of activity unseen in the history of this blog. Therefore, the book excerpts are back on public demand!!!

However, since all of the above information can be detrimental to the pride of the blog owner, the official story is that we were paid to cover the book. The author of the book begged for the additional publicity this blog was generating on his facebook page. It is rumored that since this blog went live with his book excerpts, his profile has been bombarded with a flurry of no activity at all.

Somebody else's problem field

I have been reading my creativity bible daily for the past couple of weeks (that being the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - the trilogy in 5 parts by the late Douglas Adams). I am constantly amazed by the amazing lateral thinking of the guy and how he makes amazing 'scientific' theories from human behavior.

One of these theories is the basis for his invisibility cloak. The concept behind the cloak is "Somebody Else's problem field". As you may have guessed, the 'scientific theory' is that people ignore stuff that they believe is somebody else's problem thus making it invisible in their minds. This is a not just great material for (comic) science fiction but also a deep philosophical thought.

If we just look around, we are all affected by this. As I think of it, I often rush to our lab manager when my computer is not working or when the internet has problems. He then suggests solutions which make me think "Why did I not try that." Often it is a solution that I have tried at home when my laptop or the wireless network at home is not working. However, I do not think about it at work because out there, it is someone else's problem. Now, if I get a problem, I try to see it as my problem and solve it before going to him (I always used to try and solve it before but I guess the SEP realization changed the thought pattern).

There are many such occasions in all our lives and we need to identify and change them. Although I gave an example from work, the bigger problems are with the poor, the sick, the oppressed and we need to treat their problems as ours and make sure that the less fortunate are not 'invisible' to us.

The end of the book excerpts

This blog was planning to continue the exclusive book excerpts from the book by Yash but he nor his agents have sued me yet and therefore, I am unable to extract additional publicity from this posting. Therefore, I am discontinuing the exclusive excerpts.

The book excerpt continues

We continue with our promised and much awaited exclusive book excerpt from Yashwantrao gele Americela (Yashwantrao went to America)

"One sign of progress is clean drinking water. If this is a marker of progress, however, West Lafayette is certainly in the stone age. The reason I chose the stone age is because the water seems to be purified with stones (or maybe, the water is spring water - from Stony Brooks). Look at the color of tap water shown in the picture below (the one on top, the other one being Walmart drinking water). Would you want to drink that water or have a shower in it? Well, we can avoid drinking it but with regards to showering we have no alternatives.




What the picture does not show is the quality of the water minus the stony complexion. On the days, the water is colorless, it still tastes like stones (hard water). Maybe they remove the color after the stone purification. Whatever it is, if this is the quality of water in the 6th most educated small township in America, give me my Pune anyday"

Retraction

I should retract the statements I made about Earth day a few blog-posts ago. I still believe that we are becoming a generation which is hell bent on raising awareness without doing anything but maybe there is a valid reason for it.

I was at a symposium on sustainability yesterday and had dinner with one of the speakers later. The speaker was from a major food company and mentioned that their company began pushing for it after its CEO attended a conference on global warming and became aware of the impact it had on the environment. Maybe, that is the best way to proceed with hot topics in today's world. Every additional person that is aware of a particular problem is on a sub-conscious level going to work on it. If through this chain, we reach an important person in a position of power, that is going to affect millionsand make a big impact towards solving the problem.

Also, the previous generation did have doers but the major problem that created was a lot of strikes, movements etc which often created animosity without ending the problem. This generation has realized that we are, at the end of the day, not important enough as individuals to make big differences. Our actions may not have a big impact on society. However, if awareness is raised in society, the big corporations and leaders observe this and make the necessary changes.

After all, we are in a world where big corporations are keeping an eye on what we are doing not directly by asking us but through stealth. There was a documentary recently on CNBC which showed how corporations can, if they want, track every photo we take, every CD we burn and every move we make. There is also a website, pipl.com, which keeps track of every reference of your name on the internet and sorta has a 'file' on you. This website needs to make money and corporations need data to understand you better. So, the more people that are aware of problems and the more we let corporations and politicians know that we care about them (through seemingly stupid ways such as writing in tweets or by tying a band), the more they are likely to change. Hail Earth day! Peace dudes and dames.

Though it is interesting how the world works. The previous generation had to shout themselves hoarse and noone listened. Today, we know that they turn a blind eye to us because they are eavesdropping on us so if we whisper our concerns, they are more likely to get it.

PS: Sorry for going all over the place in this post. I wanted to bring in a lot of points and did not really give any thought to an order.

The book excerpt begins

Starting today, I begin with the excerpts from Yash's book. Copyright for this blog is still mine since the book has not yet been written and the words are not Yash's (the fact that the book may never get written does not take the exclusivity that this blog enjoys away, does it?)

"The reason I initiated work on this book leads back to that dull, cloudy day in March of 2009, when after a drab day at work, I arrived home to a ticket of $124 for toll violations that I did not know I had committed in Illinois and a bill of ${read the book} from a healthcare provider which had gotten the number wrong for the 6th time.

"Now maybe the toll violation was in line, after all they did have a picture of my car on the ticket. But what I do not get is how a country that can take pictures of people missing tolls, find them and send them tickets cannot send a (formerly) sick person a bill for the right amount. This, after calling them after every wrong bill. I have bills for 6 different amounts, none of them anywhere close to the amount I am supposed to be paying. I guess this is one of the reasons I prefer India, you still get a bill for the wrong amount but atleast you can safely violate a few traffic rules (as can be seend here) and get over your frustration."

Earth day rant

Yesterday, as most of you know, was Earth day when cities across the world switched off their lights from 8:30 to 9:30 pm. Now, I find this a great way to raise awareness on the topic of global warming, a very genuine cause. However, I think that it is time to take action rather than raise awareness.

Let us not kid ourselves here. The problem on hand is huge. We need to put all our collective efforts and thoughts on trying to solve it that raising awareness. Now, do not try to tell me that we did something by switching off the lights for an hour. Switching off the lights for an hour reduced the energy you used but it did not reduce the energy produced by the electric company which was wasted anyways since the electricity cannot be stored. Therefore, the amount of carbon that was released was not any less than what would have been released otherwise. What we need to do is reduce our overall energy expenditure (the part that is wasteful) so that companies reduce the electricity they burn. We need to work towards renewable energy sources. And we need to do it now.

I do realize that there is nothing new in what I am saying, but I do seriously believe that we need to get beyond the farce that is awareness and spend more time in coming up with an innovative solution. Maybe, if we do want to raise awareness, we need to decide that people switch off lights for one hour on the day corresponding to their first name (A=1, B=2.....) in every month. This way, we will reduce the cumulative energy used and maybe call on electric companies to reduce the energy they produce.

Ofcourse, this is not necessarily in the best interest of the economy because less electricity means less jobs. ;)

PS: The reason I am frustrated with awareness is that in our generation, we have been spending more time raising awareness on topics than solving them................look around you there are people walking to raise cancer awareness, switching off lights to raise awareness on global warming and wearing bands to raise AIDS awareness. The previous generation would build a hospital to treat cancer patients because a relative died.............did that help? Maybe not.................but atleast they did something.

Exclusive book excerpts

My room-mate has gotten more and more frustrated with America over the past few days and we are prompting him to write a book based on his experiences and frustrations. To promote this yet unwritten book, I will be carrying exclusive excerpts (or atleast my interpretation of what some paras would be) from the book in this blog over the next few days.

Keep watching!