22 May 2020

Relaxing on a Friday evening with a Rabindrasangeet

“Bhalobesey sakhi nibhritey jotoney
Aamar naam-ti likho, tomar monero mondir-e
Amaro poran-e je gaan baajhichhe
Tahar taal-ti sikho, tomar chorono monjeer-e”

“Out of old affection, gently and quietly
Do inscribe my name in the temple of your soul
Of that song that invariably sways my heart
Do teach your anklets how to dance to the rhythm”

18 May 2020

This week’s puzzle

This week is another area problem. Take a rectangle ABCD (as shown here). Draw two lines from the adjacent vertices A and D to two random points E and F on the opposite side such that they intersect within the rectangle. See picture below. Nothing is drawn to scale. The area of the two triangles are 4 and 16. One of the quadrilaterals has an area of 10. What is the area of the other quadrilateral?

Again, this is geometry from elementary school with a twist to it.

Note that the original version of the problem that I had posted had the quadrilateral area as 1 instead of 10. Harmindar Matharu successfully proved that such a diagram is not possible. I should have been more careful while picking some values for those areas…

17 May 2020

Memorable 150 mile ride

Woke up after the party last night a little tired. In fact, I was wondering whether to go out for a ride at all. I am glad I decided to soldier it on. “PoshGoonda” Rakesh Rao had planned a great route to a great destination. We landed up having lunch sitting by the river watching folks canoe and raft by on the Big Creek in a very small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains called Aska.

Avi was the steady sweep behind all the time to make sure nobody was left behind. Which in this case, means really me – since it was three of us who hit the mountain trails today.

I am most glad that I was able to do all those left and right turns in the mountains without making a single mistake.

All that said, the butts are really really sore 🙁

17 May 2020

Couple of interesting poems from Tao Te Ching

Now reading Taoism in that book Religions of Man. I had very little understanding of Taoism before this. One of the key learnings I had was Taoism’s focus on “creative quietude” (wu wei). In chapter 78 in the book Tao Te Ching (by founder Lao Tzu), is a great poem comparing the virtues of water – infinitely supple yet incomparably strong – to wu wei. (in the context of water eroding away rocks)

“What is more fluid, more yielding than water?
Yet back it comes again, wearing down the tough strength
Which cannot move to withstand it.
So it is that the strong yield to the weak,
The haughty, to the humble.
This we know.
But never learn.”

There is another poem in Chapter 17, that I had read before but never realized that the source is the original book of Taoism.

“A leader is best
When people barely know that he exists
… Of a good leader, who talks little
When is work is done, his aim fulfilled,
They will all say, ‘We did this ourselves’ ”