Penn

Nice first impressions. Penn's good. I am enjoying it; especially the courses part. May be it's the Matak in me speaking :) Incidentally, one of my profs happens to be a Feynman's student (his masters thesis co-mentor was Feynman), and the other one, V.Balki's (Indian Feynman?) first PhD student !

Will keep updated about the rest soon!

Law Making

I was traveling on a bus from Kalpakkam to Chennai. As soon as the bus entered Thiruvanmiyur, there was a huge traffic jam. And what I observed was, large cars moving on the road with not more than 1,2 people inside them. Sitting in the bus, I day-dreamt of making a law which allows cars on main roads only if they have atleast 3 people in them during rush hours. Next few seconds I was proud of identifying a solution to one of the serious problems that India is facing.

Then came the question of what if there is substantial amount of luggage and no place for the second person to fit in. Then I added a clause to my older statement- cars will be allowed only if they carry an equivalent of 3 people or more on the main road during rush hours. Equivalence of cargo to people can be established based on some standards and statistics.

But then a very apparent loop hole in this proposition is what if people just carry some dead load on the name of luggage whenever they want to go single? The situation will be back to square 1.

I thought of it for a day or so, and from then onwards started respecting the law-makers !