success stories.

I keep complaining about my students and their shortcomings. Here is the other side.
Two days ago, an alumnus came to give a talk to our current students about his work. He is post-docing at a medical center of a good University in the US. Another classmate of his is doing the same. A third one is close to completing his PhD. One other has a research position at the NIH. From a previous batch, one is postdocing at Berkeley, another was at Harvard. So these are some of our success stories in science.
There are a few in the services...Army/Navy/Airforce- a few of them women officers. One in the IPS. Then there was this batch in which quite a few have started their own businesses. A few of them very successful.
So, inspite of not knowing if the electron is in the d orbital or the d orbital is in the electron, some of them succeed. Which just goes to show d orbitals are not all that important even if I have to spend 20 lectures on them.

retirement

In a year's time I will be retiring from my job.
For me and many women like me, our workplace provides the only social contact other than relatives. After work and household chores, there is no time or energy for having a social life outside these two spheres. So retirement is quite scary.
Secondly, the daily contact with young people is definitely uplifting. They provide some purpose, some laughter, some energy in my life. After retirement, I may just have senior citizens for company-- those who I look upon as 'old people' forgetting my age.
For all my rants about them, I will miss my students the most.

some existential questions

I may have written about this before since this bothers me from time to time. This time it's triggered by Abi's post. So, here goes...
Many years ago, my children were small, and I found myself very intolerant of their minor transgressions. It worried me. For some other physical problem I went to a doctor. There, I discovered I was hypertensive and the doctor prescribed some medication. I took the pill and lo behold! after just a couple of days, I was much calmer, much more tolerant of my childrens' transgressions....a much better person!
So, I am a better person on the basis of a few milligrams of a chemical compound. Which is the real me? the very irritable person before the medication, or the much less irritable person after taking the medication? What kind of person I am, is defined by some chemical. Then, if my irritabilty had not been just a case of yelling at my children (bad enough) but had gone to a higher level, like shooting at a stranger who bumped into me on the road, or some such thing, is my crime not really mine? Also, since there is a medicine that has made me calmer, there must be some other chemical taht makes me angrier. If I was given that, and then committed a crime in anger, am I not culpable?
Our brain works on neurotransmitters...chemicals control whether I am sad, happy, angry, even my thoughts, to some extent...everything that I think define me.
So if everyone is given exactly same cocktail of such chemicals, can we all become people with one type of personality?
Like frontal lobotomy was used years ago to treat violent psychotics, will this dehumanise us?
It seems like that.
But why should it? In any case, it's the chemicals that determine what kind of person I am.

Advertisements on Television

I was just thinking about the new printer ad, when I read a remark on it in my friend's blog. The ad says you must buy this printer for your child to do well in school-- all that printing for projects etc. Why did it catch my 'eye' ? Is it any worse than the energy/milk drink ads that say that unless you give your son this drink, he cannot do well in his exams or in the gym competition or whatever?
I don't really know. Maybe because it is more specific...or maybe because the so called improved version of education is also so trivial.
There is this breakfast cereal ad that many women were annoyed by...where a husband needs his wife to climb upstairs to hand him his socks from the drawer next to him.
However, I always find our ads entertaining sometimes more so than the program.

Opposing bt brinjal is antinational?

While there maybe some NGOs, or even many, that follow hidden subversive agenda, opposition to BT brinjal and large nuclear power plants does not make one antinational.
I am sure those who designed reactors at Fukushima assured everyone that their design was hundred percent safe.
(can you imagine some engineer designing a reactor and saying "well, it's quite safe, but I can't say what will happen if an earthquake of magnitude > 8 and tsunami hit it together" )
While we all understand there is a crisis...Tamil nadu more than others perhaps since, as I experienced briefly last fortnight, they are having powercuts every alternate hour in Coimbatore.
In fact, many of those who oppose large nuclear power plants are as patriotic as the prime minister...they probably favour many small plants instead of one large one. As with mini hydels, one need not be an expert to see the risk is lower and the disaster, in case of an accident, much less.
How does anyone guarantee that something will NEVER fail?
Maybe because we drive cars without seatbelts and motorbikes without helmets, and believe in living "Ram bharose" we can have potential hazards in our backyards and don't deserve to ask for it to go away.

WiS

A link thanks to Arundhathi
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/id.14801,y.2012,no.2,content.true,page.1,css.print/issue.aspx

mediocrity

A remark I read in a blog is about something that has been on my mind for sometime now. "Today, in the country, mediocrity has become a much bigger virtue than excellence, since mediocrity is misunderstood as equality,"
It is not anything as lofty as desire for equality that makes people encourage mediocrity. We are afraid of excellence.
An excellent student is a nuisance in that he asks questions in class which one doesn't know the answer to. An excellent young man/woman in ones team or department is a nuisance since he shows us up. I can understand this. One doesn't like to be upset. One likes to go on as one is till the age of superannuation.
However, it trickles down so insidiously that before we knew it, mediocrity is everywhere. I have not seen anyone below 60, who is really good at his/her work, in the academic circles I am familiar with. I have not seen one really great student in the last few years.
And that's exactly what's been on my mind.......how easy and comfortable it is to be mediocre!