Life is full of contradictions.
I am attending a research retreat on mindfulness and contemplative practices at the beautiful Garrison Institute. I am learning a lot of interesting things, and meeting a lot of like-minded and excellent people – the kind of people with whom I could have deep conversation about the unreal nature of reality, unlike most people from other walks of life would politely and tactfully excuse themselves when I get a bit unreal.
I just finished my first term as a professor at Singapore Management University. I taught an undergraduate course called Computer as an Analysis Tool, which is on business modelling and data-driven decision support. I had about 130 students, in three sections of three classroom hours each per week. I have to say the whole thing was a very enriching experience. Of course, the reasons behind this statement will be expounded on, theorized and hypothesized – this is Unreal Blog, after all.
At some point in our life, we come to accept the fact we are closer to death than life. What lies ahead is definitely less significant than what is left behind. These are the twilight years, and I have come to accept them. With darkness descending over the horizons, and the long shadows of misspent years and evaded human conditions slithering all around me, I peer into the void, into an eternity of silence and dreamlessness. It is almost time.
Teaching is a noble and rewarding vocation. As my sunset career, I have accepted a faculty position at Singapore Management University, teaching data analytics and business modelling at the School of Information Systems. These topics sit well with my entrepreneurial ventures from earlier this year on data analytics and process automation, which were all a part of my coming out of retirement.
Trump’s victory was many things. I think of it as a failure of big data analytics on many fronts. My personal theory is that there is more to it than meets the eye, but whatever does meet the eye seems to indicate a massive failure.
I am a conspiracy theory nut. So let me propose a conspiracy theory to explain the shocking Trump victory. It is vote rigging, but not the way you were thinking. Before proceeding, let me say that this is merely for fun. Don’t take it too seriously.
Since the post series on Particles and Interactions became a bit longer than I wanted, I thought I would break it up. Let’s start with a recap of modern physics that will you will need to understand the structure of matter.
Unreal Blog recently got another award as one of the top 100 philosophy blogs.
The previous such award came a few years ago. Glad to feel appreciated for my efforts and to see that people are taking notice.
When we looked at Quantum Mechanics, we talked about its various interpretations. The reason we have such interpretations, I said, is that QM deals with a reality that we have no access to, through our sensory and perceptual apparatuses. On the other hand, Special Relativity is about macro objects in motion, and we have no problem imagining such things. So why would we need to have an interpretation? The answer is a subtle one.
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The speed of light being a constant sounds like a simple statement. But there is more to it, quite a bit more. Let’s look at what this constancy really means. At first glance, it says that if you are standing somewhere, and there is a ray of light going from your right to left, it has a speed c. And another ray of light going from left to right also has a speed c. So far, so good. Now let’s say you are in a rocket ship, as shown in the figure below, moving from right to left.
