The Good Lei

So, once again India covered itself in disgrace with police beating up Tibetan demonstrators. The first disgrace was in 1950 when Nehru turned a blind eye to the invasion. Interesting question - where are our lefties now? The eloquent Ms. Roy and co.? Cat got their tongue...? Its OK for the big communist brother to do these things apparently.

On this note it's worth mentioning that the home of the brave and free, the US that is, had little to say.

Vive, le hypocrisie...

So, I ended up watching "lost in translation" once again, rather by chance. Was pleasantly surprised to see different depths to the movie that I didn't notice the first time. Though a bit unkind to the Japanese, the film ends up saying a lot of things about life through expressions and silences rather than words.

It seems that a bit of cultural disconnect, wrapped up in a sushi roll, or travelling with you as a silent companion on the metro, means something in a space by itself. Its about going outside your comfort zone and discovering something about yourself and the world that you never could have imagined before.

5/10. O.K. so what's up with this place? Granted, the darkness and dinginess could be a legitimate part of "atmosphere", but did they really have to have the non-chandelier with 20 bulbs hanging from the ceiling connected by black wires to a central location? It looks faintly threatening - like a gigantic spider waiting to pounce on the customers.

The spider does go well with the pseudo-gangster like visages of the waiting staff. One might feel part of an Asian B-movie here. There also seems to be lot of activity inside the kitchen with hardy men carrying massive sacks of jasmine rice (?) back and forth. Being observant, I noticed they were taking the sacks out of the kitchen rather than into the kitchen. The food took an eternity to arrive. I was left wondering if the cook was caught embezzling gang monies and Boss Yamamoto was suggesting he be carved up. Those sacks...

Waiter-in-chief didnt like me at all. He consistently looked suspiciously in my direction and my notebook. Was I going to join the cook on the chopping block?? Thankfully part of the food arrived after forty minutes - shrimp fritters. They were OK, not spectacular but not bad either. The massaman curry did not arrive until an hour had passed, all told. That did make me wonder - shouldn't they have gobs of this stuff ready for serving at any given time? Its about the most standard dish you can order at a South East Asian restaurant, rather like a burger at MacD.

The good thing was that the massaman curry was very good. I asked for spicy and I got spicy. Not burn-a-hole-in-your-stomach spicy but allow-me-to-lightly-spank-you spicy. So that is the silver lining in the spice cloud.

There are two types of energies in the world that impact us: the natural i.e. physics, and the human energies. It is interesting how there are two contrasting ideas prevailing on this - that the two energies have nothing to do with each other, or, are in fact interchangeable. The truth however is that natural energy is the source of human energy, like a river from which we merely draw a small tributary. However, when its fluid passes through us, something happens. It becomes good or bad energy, acquiring a quality it did not have before. Nature is, after all, amoral.

Yesterday, when I left hawaii I had the privilege of experiencing good and bad human energies in equal amounts. Quite fitting as it was the day of the autumnal equinox. Until now the idea that some people carry "ill energy" was one that I just played around with in my mind. Now I realize the importance of trusting my instincts on this and avoiding such individuals. I suppose if I was enlightened, like the Buddha, I could cure such energy or neutralize it. However, at this point my system finally rebelled against it uncontrollably, a lot like throwing up in public. I'm glad I did throw up though, with the consequent feeling of relief in the stomach and the onset of a low fever that should hopefully lead to a cure.

Well, bully for me. Moving on, it is nice to be in LA as the old smells, images and memories come flooding back. Yesterday, on the way to G's house, the supershuttle drove through Caltech and for the first time I realized that Caltech had a unique smell. Not a bad smell - one of old books, wood and mist rolled into one. It reminded me of times when there was a small group of techers that secretly dreamt of being young Feynmans and yet felt inadequate because blondes didnt seem to care much for young quantum physicists. It was saddening because, after all, Feynman used to get girls didn't he? It said so in his book. But he also won the Nobel Prize and invented Quantum Electrodynamics.

We were no Feynmans. Between reality and its perceived version too can lie a deep gulf. Like night and day...

Well, the Equinox is over and nights are getting longer than days by the minute. We will see what happens next.

I was writing about my China trip. But this came to my attention first: "US officials rethink hopes for Iraqi democracy".

Working hard as usual, I could not help following a long conversation on the contradictions of religion that took place in a neighboring office.

Basically all the contradictions of religion arise from the supposed relationship between human beings and God. God is thought to be omnipotent, omniscient, merciful and benevolent. However, inspite of His mercy and benevolence He does maintain a fiery Hell in which He occasionally throws a wayward soul to be poked by demons. The purpose of the Hell and the publicity surrounding its existence is to ensure that we "do the right thing".

That leads to the problem at hand here - since God wants to teach us to do the right thing, then that implies we have a choice.

What is a choice? There are two kinds of choices, the fake kind and the real thing. Imagine a couple, Alice and John, sitting around a table staring at a coin. They decide that he will buy her new shoes if she correctly calls the result of the coin toss. If she doesn't they will try something more creative tonight.

Now, from Alice and John's point of view, the outcome, heads or tails, is a random event. But if only they had exact information on the force Alice applies to the coin, the exact point of application of the force and the weight and other dimensions of the coin, they could in principle calculate the outcome precisely.

The point here is that the outcome of the coin toss is in principle predictable, though in fact neither John nor Alice have enough information, or maybe even the capability to do so. Therefore it is not really a random event, though it might appear to be so in the vast majority of situations.

There is something not quite right about couples deciding the nitty-gritty of their lives on the basis of coin tosses. However, I think they would be reasonable enough to agree that the coin toss is in fact predictable.

Religion is not so reasonable. Its proponents would like us to accept that we have free choice to decide between right and wrong and yet God is omniscient, that is, capable of predicting exactly what we would decide. It is as if we know exactly where the coin will land, but still insist on calling it random!

The religious coin is predictable and unpredictable at the same time.

Another issue. Platitudes circulate in the world about how there is "no conflict" between science and religion. It is said the two things can co-exist peacefully like ham and eggs because they "deal with different issues". Such ideas are generally advanced by scientists or liberals to calm down the mullahs.

Unfortunately this is so much bullshit and the mullah-brigade knows it.

Physics and the concept of God (as expounded by most religions) is directly in conflict. One body of thought is logical while the other contradictory. How can they co-exist? Only if we just sweep the contradictions under the rug.

This brings me to real choice, i.e. real probability. If the toss of a coin is not really random, then what is? Is there anything truly random in this universe? As it turns out, there is:

The outcomes of quantum experiments are truly random.

Let me describe a quantum experiment with electrons (which make up electricity) that strangely enough spend their entire existence spinning like tops. The spin is either clockwise or counter-clockwise, which we will call "up" and "down" respectively. In other words, whenever we observe the spin of an electron we will find it to be either "up" or "down". Now, as it turns out, quantum physics makes it possible to prepare an electron in a state that is both "up" and "down" before the direction of its spin is actually observed. Once observed, such an electron turns out to be "up" 50% of the time and "down" 50% of the time.

So far this seems just like a coin toss with heads or tails replaced by "up" or "down". But the difference is that there is no way even in principle to predict whether the electron will turn out to be "up" or "down"!

One might say that maybe we cannot predict this, but somebody much smarter than us could figure out a way. Somebody like God perhaps? That is where the stronger assertion comes in. It is possible to test whether any other way of predicting the outcomes could even exist. Such tests have been carried out and the answer is negative. There can be no way of predicting these outcomes, even a way that we are just too stupid to figure out! If there was a way, any way, the outcome of the tests would have been materially different.

How exactly these tests are devised is technical and comes under the topic of Bell's Inequalities. Brave readers may click on it and figure it out :-)

So where does that leave us with the omniscience of God? If He is truly omniscient, He must have a way to figure out whether the electron will turn out to be "up" or "down". But if there was a way, then the above tests could not have turned out the way they did.

Essentially quantum physics rules out the existence of an omniscient entity by proving that there exist truly random events in the universe. If that ain't a conflict with the concept of God, then what is?

Maybe this is why physicists drink a lot.

Well, I have been a flake and haven't posted on this blog for eons. But a conversation yesterday touched on something that brings me back over here. The issue is electricity, or more to the point, the lack of it back in the motherland. The issue also is, numbers.

At this moment in the 21st century, there are 600 million Indians who live without electric supply. Yeah, 600 million - the NYT had an article about it earlier. These people have no bulbs, fans, fridges, ACs, whatever. Edison, anyone??

Several thoughts come to mind:

(a) Who is to blame?
(b) What is needed to change the situation?
(c) How much will it cost and who will pay for it?
(d) How long will it take?

Question (a) is very interesting while the rest are merely depressing. The fun begins by blaming the British colonials because they are such nice, fat targets - rather like the dodos of Mauritius. And it ends with the gung-ho breeding habits of Indian couples.

Essentially Britain needed India's mineral and agricultural resources, it's sea ports and a captive market for British goods. To this end they established a very good Railway system, a strong central administrative service, courts and the Indian Army, all of which survive today as powerful entities. What they did not need was electric supply for the millions under their rule, medical care or an adequate food supply. (Hence the reprimands for White Western kids who are naughty enough to leave their vegetables on the table while "all those Indians are starving"). So India inherited a massive electricity, health care and food problem. All of these too, survive to this day.

Initially, Indian rulers started fairly well in the sense that they actually gave a shit about the country i.e. people like Nehru. Since food was the most pressing problem in the early independence years, that is where Nehru spent most of his energies, resulting in the green revolution and India's self-sufficiency in food production. By the late 70s, the famines were over.

Unfortunately, Nehru also had the silly notion that India should be socialist which resulted in the creation of the most fucked up bureaucracy possible. Over time this socialism, government controls over the economy and the bureaucracy would spell doom for those very people it was meant to help. As enterprise, business and investment came to a standstill, tax revenues came to a standstill too. There was soon no money for elementary education, health care or infrastructure such as roads and electricity. The only thing that prospered was the government bureaucracy which invented a new system of permits, licenses and quotas everyday. It grew fat on paperwork...the true successor to the British Raj. The only way business could function was by breaking the rules and so began the culture of corruption and bribery in politics - the second largest growth industry after the bureaucracy. It was all downhill from there on, India the lumbering Asian elephant, the "Hindu rate of growth", leave-the-country-if-you-can, brain-drain, no opportunity...

However, this did not stop us, as a country, from having a whole lot of sex. Corruption in the public polity was matched only by the ejaculatory enthusiasm of the masses, undiminished by condoms, birth control pills or any other barrier between the happy sperm and the eager egg. The Indian female's fertility rate climbed as the per capita income went down.

Well, now India has 600 million people living without electricity, fully 55% of its population. Let's sober up and look at some numbers.

600 million people imply about 120 million households using an average Indian family size of 5. Let us give each household about o.5 KW (kilowatt) of peak usage. Mind you, this is hardly an excessive number. It would not run a single AC - just enough for a few bulbs and ceiling fans. The average American household uses about four times more electricity at the peak with an average household size of only 3 !

So, we need 120 million x 0.5 KW = 60 million KW of electric generating capacity. We are not talking about what is needed to improve the power situation in cities like New Delhi where there are 5-10 powercuts everyday. We are not talking about all those industries that would be needed to employ these 600 million dirt-poor people and or the power needed to irrigate their farms. Just subsistence-level electricity for the masses without any at all at present.

Ahhh...money, money, money. So if India went...

* Nuclear, it would need about 60 mammoth sized nuclear plants to be built. At a cost of about $100 billion.
* Coal-based, it would need 30-60 large-sized coal plants. Cost: $60-100 billion.
* Wind-based, it would need 12,000 - 60,000 windmills. Cost: $120 billion or so,

What about hydroelectric? It depends if the project can even get off the ground. The Narmada Valley project is currently stalled because of agitation over some tribal lands being submerged. Even if it was completed, it would produce less than 3% of what is needed.

Would a project even as gigantic as China's Three Gorges solve the problem? Nope. Three Gorges is projected to produce about 20 million KW. One would need three Three Gorges to solve India's problem.

But this does help us understand something. The number of people displaced by these hydroelectric projects is far smaller than the number of people they help. Suppose the Three Gorges project was in India. Suppose also, that it displaces about 1 million people (same as in China). But it would produce enough electricity for 200 million people who don't have any!

Anyway, where will the money come from to solve this problem? The total expenditure of the Indian Government, based on tax revenues, is about $130 billion per year. A look at the figures tells us that at the very maximum, no more than $10 billion per year is available for electricity.

Given that power plants take 5-10 years to be built to the point of operation...well, it would be about 20 years in the best of circumstances before all these millions of people could turn on a bulb. This is not counting all the protesters who would gather at short notice whenever a new power project begins construction. The Narmada project has been delayed by ten years because of this.

Well. These big power projects have environmental issues. They displace people and it sucks if you happen to live in the wrong place. But they also provide benefits to many many more people than they displace. And we are not talking about luxury, just basic electricity needs.

If one doesn't like it, what is the alternative? Does a source of power exist that would disrupt no one's life and yet be affordable? Or do we just condemn the 600 million people to live in the dark...