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The Mundanity of Excellence

I had a great time reading The Mundanity of Excellence by Daniel Chambliss. I came across this article in an interview given by a famous researcher, who tried to read a new research paper everyday for more than two years. She said that this was the most influential paper that she’d read, and that itContinue reading “The Mundanity of Excellence”

The work of Alice Chang

Sun-Yung Alice Chang is one of the pre-eminent scholars of modern geometry, and I wanted to understand the nature of her work. Although I’ve read papers by her before, this article written by her students Matthew Gursky and Yi Wang serves as a solid introduction to her work. Given below are my notes as IContinue reading “The work of Alice Chang”

How to actually make friends

–Don’t be yourself. The most common advice to make friends is “be yourself”. Don’t be artificial. Don’t pretend to be someone you’re not. But what if you are, very deep inside, an obnoxious troll? What if you’re insecure, always looking to status-battle, and very intrinsically unpleasant to be around? Is there any hope? Now thatContinue reading “How to actually make friends”

Afghanistan and the Turing Machine

How do societies modernize? One day they realize that their ways have gotten older, and they transform overnight into liberal democracies with equal rights for all. Not really. Afghanistan The US invaded Afghanistan to spread democracy, women’s rights and universal love (there was something about hegemony in the Middle East, but those are just rumors).Continue reading “Afghanistan and the Turing Machine”

Discovering ourselves

Descartes said we think, therefore we exist. But do we really know what we think? Note that whatever I am going to describe in this post is based completely on my own experience, and I am not aware of any research in this direction. Hence, make what you will of this experiment. Introduction I wasContinue reading “Discovering ourselves”

The gift of your complete, undivided attention

I’m almost 30. And I think I’m finally learning how to talk to people I lost my grandmother a couple of years back. I still vividly remember that I got to know this through a message that my sister sent me. My head began spinning, and I had to sit down for some time toContinue reading “The gift of your complete, undivided attention”

Status battles in The Brothers Karamazov

The Brothers Karamazov is one of the most famous books in the history of literature. It was also Einstein’s favorite book. However, my appreciation for the book proves that (much) lesser mortals also have much to gain from reading it. The book swings primarily between the author’s third person narration of events, and the psychoanalysisContinue reading “Status battles in The Brothers Karamazov”

Lessons from trying to go vegan

Not everybody hates Osama bin Laden. Even Hitler has some fans, and Thanos many more. But everybody hates vegans. I decided to go vegan a few years back….and I told everybody. I had expected some backlash. But it became a funny free for all in which the only thing people knew about me was thatContinue reading “Lessons from trying to go vegan”

IMO 1981, Question 3

I had a great time solving the following question a couple of nights back. More so because I’d failed to solve this question in the past. This question is completely unapproachable if you try to use algebra. However, generating simple examples helps. Let me try and write down some solutions to : they are DoContinue reading “IMO 1981, Question 3”