Telescope

My friend PB left us a semi-working telescope when he left town. This is a Meade 285, which is basically a non-fancy telescope dating from the 90s. It has an objective with a 900mm focal length and with an f/15 aperture. You can vary the eye-piece. After taking apart the telescope to make sure the optics were all ok, we fixed a bunch of mechanical issues. I learned that Teflon tape can work wonders with broken screw threads and should be added to duct tape as a useful thing to have in your toolbox (Thanks to AJ for that knowledge). On the left is a picture of the telescope, newly resurrected. We couldn't see the moon yet (because it was just recently a new moon and caused an eclipse), but we did see one of the phases of Venus. It was a crescent, and Venus is heading towards its "new moon" as well because it will soon transit the Sun, for the last time in about a 100 years. Unfortunately, we didn't take a picture of the Venus phase, so a wikipedia picture will do for now. We basically saw a phase similar to the last crescent image in the second row.

Churchill

I have been watching some BBC fictional programs on Netflix. After really enjoying Luther (a violent, police drama), I moved on to a political drama called The State Within. Set in a Bush-era-like Washington DC, the show is a 24-esque, simplistic and cut intensive miniseries about the adventures of the Brit ambassador to the US. The Ambassador is shown to be a human rights champion in a world dominated by beltway types who are depicted as enjoying playing games with the lives of millions around the world.

Strikingly, I found that many of the hero's speeches and monologues were given on the phone in the UK embassy, with a backdrop that was clearly a portrait of Winston Churchill.

I doubt the show's creators intended any irony. Instead its likely that, due to his victory over the Axis powers, Churchill has a place in many a westerner's heart as a hero of freedom. This is true in a limited sense; Churchill's leadership did save Britain during WW2.

However, Churchill was an imperialist to his core. Perhaps one could argue that he was a product of his times, and a modern Churchill would reflect our world's updated values on freedom. I won't speculate on that, but I do find the real Churchill an important man for Indians to study.

This is because Churchill was a man of ideas and, India, in the end, is an idea. Therefore, above all the militants and separatists, tin-can Generals, warlords, difficult multinationals and aggressive neighbors, Churchill, through his surviving writings, is probably India's greatest adversarial critic.

Churchill's position can be summarized by his comment that he thought India as a united nation was as ridiculous a concept as the idea of the Equator as a separate country. He understood that without British India there would not be an Empire and he lobbied and fought against Indian independence. A summary of his quotations on the subject can be found here, and they may shock you.

But looking beyond these statements, and avoiding the temptation to go for Churchill-bashing, I found that some of his ideas for Britain in the post WW2 era suggest optimistic directions for India, today. He foresaw a future where the UK would be a densely populated, relatively small country with limited resources. He realized that a path to a prosperous future could be forged by a such a country, even though most of the world might think that this nation's best days were long gone.

The Churchill quote that best summarizes this vision for me is: "The empires of the future are the empires of the mind". I find it an illuminating light to shine on the dark discourse of pessimism around me by armchair economists who get depressed about the slow progress of Indian manufacturing or give 18th century reasons such as "overpopulation" for why India isn't moving in some desired economic direction.

Perhaps the best advice for India in this century might come from one of its toughest opponents from the last.

 

Then and now

Translating Madhushala

I'm working on translating Madhushala, by Harivansh Rai Bachchan, to English (from Hindi). I'm not just trying to port it to English, but I'd like to interpret it and spin the words with my own whirl (meaning I won't literally translate, so no comments about "you got that word wrong").

Here is a sample from one of my favorite paragraphs, and I'll try to post the full translation if I ever get the whole thing done (its kinda long):

मदिरालय जाने को घर से चलता है पीनेवाला
' किस पथ से जाऊँ? ' असमंजस में है वह भोलाभाला
अलग- अलग पथ बतलाते सब, पर मैं यह बतलाता हूँ -
' राह पकड़ तू एक चला चल, पा जाएगा मधुशाला॥४॥

Alco-holidays, on their mind, while heading out, to the bar,

people waxing innocence, ask, for directions. Answers heard,

routes proffered, lots of styles. But, myself, instead, I reveal
a single rule:

“Pick a path and walk, my friend, every way’s a madhushala”

As far as I am concerned, my dad sort of invented the word alcoholiday, as a jest. Also, I'm having trouble translating madhushala. Most people write it as tavern, but wine dominates the poem as the drink of choice and I feel a tavern is more of a beer place. I've been trying to make up words, like winetrap, my current favorite. If you have a new, invented english world that you think means madhushala, and you want to get it immortalized in my soon-to-be-famous translation, let me know.

Hacking the Lack

We found that a lot of people were customizing the IKEA Lack table, which is a square side-table that is quite cheap (a white one is $7.99). Here are some examples of what people have done.

We decided to hack a Lack too and showcase a 500 piece circular puzzle that we had made. The Lack table-top is a 55cmx55cm square, and the diameter of our puzzle was almost a perfect fit. The puzzle was set and "frozen" together with Modgepodge (which you can get at any art store) and pasted to a cardboard piece. We then glued the cardboard back of the puzzle to the top of the table.

Next, we wanted a flat table top that is transparent. We bought a sheet of acrylic from Home Depot, and cut it to size. Now ideally you should use some tools to do this (the best one is a laser cutter). But we did it manually, and it took forever (about 20 minutes of scraping for every cut you make, followed by a careful snapping along the cut). The acrylic was kept level with four carpet savers.

Finally, we added some decoration with paint. Since the puzzle was a set of scenes from Romeo and Juliet, we added a quote from Shakespeare along the table edge ("What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."). We also drew some red roses to go with the theme. Just think of it as our way of sticking it to the crazies who believe in Anonymous:

Cricket: right through the stumps but not out

When I was a kid, I watched a Pak-SA match live, where the ball went right through the stumps without dislodging the bails. Its really hard to get people to believe that this happened, but it did. Finally, someone posted the video on youtube, so I have proof.

Flying blue pig: An alternative transit solution

In contrast to my previous and serious aerospace post, we make a more light-hearted investigation into flight. We do this by making a silly flying blue pig. It can sort out all the public transit problems in your city. Just install a ginormous fan in the center of the city. Passive flying pigs will take up the wind and travel along circular rails.

Have a look at our prototype (with sound and voiceover):