“I was wondering if I would figure in the post about the conference,” my colleague and friend Shankar wrote, when I still hadn’t posted anything after my return home. “You will FIGURE!” I informed him. After all, it was a lot of his unrelenting hard work that made the event happen in the first place. Here’s Shankar’s video image, while he is introducing one of the dignitaries.
Shankar, on the big screen, introducing one of the keynote speakers
The 6th Asian Heat Treat and Surface Engineering Conference and Expo was held in Chennai, India, the first week of March 2020. We all watched with dismay as the coronavirus spread, and fear and government restrictions started impacting many events world-wide. Several of the speakers who were scheduled to participate from overseas were not able to attend. There was still a lot of great content presented to an enthusiastic audience. For people who are not engineers, heat treating is a technology and an art form that makes modern technology possible! There’s some evidence that early humans were intentionally heat treating stones to improve their characteristics and usefulness as long ago as 45,000 years (or more!)
As you can see in the above photo, conferences in India are MUCH more COLORFUL than those in the USA. Of course, life in general is much more colorful in India than in the USA and Canada and Europe. That is certainly one of the things that I enjoy about traveling in India. Lots of colors and spices are what I enjoy. For those who have not traveled in India, two other senses can be challenging to deal with. Sounds, especially anywhere that they are intentionally amplified, tend to be LOUD. (I had to wear earplugs at one point during the weeklong religious ceremony that I attended in Rishakesh in 2019!). And the smells are wonderful when it’s spices and incense, but when it’s air pollution, it’s not so pleasant. As for tactile, the main difference that I experienced during this trip was that it was hot outside, and one of the Hindu temples I visited was extremely crowded inside (I literally had to be pulled toward and then back away from the shrine where I offered a prayer.) But the conference itself was in a well air conditioned hall, so it was comfortable!
This conference was supposed to be the first I attended in India, but I got a little warm up at the Royal Society of Chemistry Smart Materials Conference at Periyar University in Salem the day before this event started. Indian protocol requires a detailed introduction of dignitaries. We were honored by the Minister of Industry of the State of Tamil Nadu, Mr. M. C. Sampath, who attended wearing the traditional Indian men’s white clothing. Scottish men are not the only ones who wear skirts! The photo at this link is from a website selling clothes, and is not the Minister we heard from, but it gives an idea of this traditional garment.
Soon it was time for my presentation on the Yoga of Failure Analysis. Usually I not nervous when I give a technical talk, but here I was going to be telling Indian people about yoga! The talk was definitely different from the rest of the presentations. I mentioned how the great Patanjali, the compiler and editor of the Yoga Sutras, was teaching that direct perception of the world was a legitimate way to obtain right knowledge way back (scholars say no later than) 1600 years ago. This was at the time when Western philosophers were still completely enamored with Plato’s Ideal Forms, and distrusted any data coming through the senses.
Glittering elephant sculpture at the entrance to the Chennai Conference Center.
The audience was happy to hear that, and broke into applause. One of my major goals had been to remind my colleagues from the sub-continent that their ancient culture has more value today than many of them realize. Well, the grass is always greener….on the other side of the fence!
However, since my return home, I found out that I was apparently WAY OFF, and that Indian philosophers were actually discussing sensory input as a source of right knowledge as long as 2500 years ago. Someone I recently met at a semi-atheist church had called my attention to Matter and Mind: The Vaiśeṣika Sūtra of Kaṇāda, recently translated by Subhash Kak. Indian philosophy is just AMAZING. It has always been pretty much “self-evident truth” (at least to me, once I started thinking about it!) that there is NO source of knowledge that does not originate in the sensory organs of SOMEONE. There’s no other way to get raw data so that one’s intuition can effectively function. But Western science was held back for a very long time due to the way that Plato was practically diefied!
So, any of my Indian friends who are reading this, maybe you will invite me back in a few years to share my latest findings about how to cultivate clear thought! Subhash Kak is an engineering professor at Oklahoma State University with lots of side interests!
In addition to giving the Keynote and a second, more technical talk, at the conference, I had the opportunity to teach a short seminar on How to Negotiate Failure Analysis Work. There were about 60 people, so not everyone posed in the photo.
The woman to my right (with purple shawl) is my friend who I met in 2017 at the last ASMI Chennai Failure Analysis seminar that I presented. She traveled from Bengaluru, where she now lives and works, to attend. I was surprised and happy!
Teaching the Failure Analysis Seminar at the 6th Asian Heat Treat and Surface Engineering Conference
A Royal Enfield employee attending the conference! My neighbor Wayne loves their motorcycles, so I asked this friendly looking engineer to pose with me. See their product below! Royal Enfield Motorcycle! A popular way to get around Asia!
The vague longing drifted past in random waves. Reach out. Pull in. Reach out. Pull in. Reach out. Pull in. Ad infinitum. A protist was drawn toward the barnacle’s feathery legs, and was pulled in to be digested. This one was a paramecium. The last one had been an amoeba. So had the six prior to it. But finally, the content of the current had varied.
Not that it mattered. Barnacles experience taste and texture differently from any species able to write about them. Besides, who would listen to a barnacle’s complaint that the amoebas were not crunchy enough? No, Barney would not be taken seriously even had she been able to.
What did she have to complain about, anyway? Even as stuck to this rock as she was, she had the ability to act as a female or a male, in the latter case sending her second chakra organ out for fun, to a distance as much as eight times the diameter of (now his!) body. But for now, she was configured as a female.
Suddenly, the consciousness within realized that the sperm was drifting away from a passing structure. Freedom, at least of a sort.
Next time, she’d choose some clams as her parents!
Being somewhat of a grouch, even though recently I had several dreams about my teeth falling out, which I finally decided were not a warning to go to the dentist, but rather a message from my subconscious that I was losing my bite, and maybe some of my perceived bark, gratitude is something that I have to cultivate. I am truly filled with gratitude for being able to live a very comfortable life compared to most of the people in the world. We middle class Americans, as much as we disappear, still have it pretty good. I am really grateful that I have managed to work for my own company for 25 years. I really am grateful for not having to be in at 8 or even 7 am, as most working people do. It’s not that I am a shirker. I rarely leave before 7 pm when the work-load is normal. But I like the flexibility to pamper my night-personhood.
But grateful as I am for the privilege of living in the good old USA, it is truly depressing to watch so many people apparently veering off into a mindset so divorced from reality. What do Americans still agree on?
Well, traveling years ago in Europe, getting to know pit toilets for the first time at a fairly tender age, and then getting to study in Switzerland for a year in college, I had the opportunity to know what Europeans thought of Americans…
Americans are the people who have nice plumbing.
Wasteful and comfortable. I am grateful for my toilet.
So here we go. Whether Democrat, Libertarian, Republican, or Alt Right of some type, we all (well almost all) wake up in the morning, pee in a nice porcelain toilet, on which we can sit comfortably if desired. We can then take a nice hot shower, brush our teeth with water that is mostly not contaminated with deadly bacteria (even if it is increasingly contaminated with harmful industrial and agricultural chemicals, and heavy metals), dry ourselves off with a nice fluffy towel, and get dressed.
Let’s be grateful, this Thanksgiving, for the basic things. Not just the food we all commonly say we are thankful for, but a place to put it when we’re done digesting it. And the fact that we don’t have to watch anyone else getting rid of theirs. And that it rarely ends back up in our drinking water.
A voice from the grave. That’s the origin of all religion, according to Sir Edward Burnett Tylor, the man credited with starting the modern science of anthropology. Specifically, Tylor speculated that religion, as distinct from totems and their associated specific dietary taboos, arose when peoples ran into major difficulties or obstacles, and became open to listening to advice from respected lost elders currently residing in spiritual domains. The disembodied voices of dead ancestors were the original gods.
Of course in Asia, many still worship their ancestors. That’s part of why the Ten Commandments conveyed to a small group in the Sinai Peninsula should still, today, be considered revolutionary. The Ten Commandments instructed “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.”
We, the descendants, culturally if not from the specific haplo group, were told to HONOR, not to worship. It was intended to be a liberating commandment.
And, the reasoning was provided. Now, we may ask how honoring our PARENTS equates with long life for the ones doing the honoring, as opposed to the ones being honored. To answer this conundrum, we need only realize that as we live, we set an example. If we honor our parents, our offspring, or other people’s offspring, will see us doing so. If the entire community honors their parents, that will be the way life proceeds in that community. Then, the children will learn to honor their parents. They won’t even need the commandment.
Many people think that the reasoning is stating a different reality. A carrot and stick type approach. That God is sitting up in the sky counting the times we honor our parents, and adding days to our life in proportion. No. That’s not how it works.
The Fifth Commandment is a simple commandment followed by a statement of the consequences of the natural laws of human behavior. We learn by example.
That is the major reason why social change takes so long. That’s part of why the Pound Me Too movement is evoking a backlash, as innocent and thoughtless people alike are surprised that someone is trying to overturn the oldest rule of all, and not even in a single generation. In a single week, it seems, we’re seeing many question the millennia long truth that power and wealth are the ticket to doing whatever one likes. Within a week, it seems, the Pound Me Tooers claimed that every human has been cleared of all their subconscious conflicts that broadcast yes or maybe when the voice says no.
This is being followed in the national conversation by teenage girls claiming the right to go to school mostly naked, and claim it’s for their comfort, and that those who find their uncoverings sexually inviting need to ignore their bodily promptings. I really don’t see how this is going to end well. Unless the new generation has truly evolved to something other than Homo Sapiens.
My sister made a pdf of all the posts, in order, with most of the photos, but not the videos. So you can read it and save it this way to share if you like!
We’re all bigger than we realize. We usually think of our size in relation to the clothes that we require to cover ourselves. But the reverend minister at the church I attend is always reminding us that our spiritual auras extend far beyond our bodies.
I’m bigger than an elephant.
This can be understood in many ways, at different levels. Even the most mundane aspects of our activities in the world involve interactions with others. If we displace a certain volume of air, and occupy a certain position on the face of the earth, nobody else can simultaneously occupy the same position and displace the same volume of air.
That, in any given situation, may or may not have obvious and immediate consequences.
Was our purchase of an orange from the Ionia Meijer what made the difference in the produce manager not getting fired? You never know. You just never know.
What size are we now? As big as the Meijer store?
Was the fact that we were trapped in position 12 in the traffic jam, which was what made the obstruction visible over the top of the hill, what gave the distracted father enough time to hit his brakes? You never know. You just never can know.
What size are we now? As big as the intersection that didn’t have an accident? As big as the area that contains all the lives of the people who helped to not allow the accident? As big as the lives of all the people who were able to carry on their activities because there was no accident at the intersection?
What size are we, NOW?
We sit at the coffee shop, writing away about Giants in our midst. We are the giants. We are the giants in our midst. Well, there is only one our, and just one giant. Just like the light that we see coming from Proxima Centauri, that took 4.244 years to get here, our size extends in both space and time, our actions, both intentional and unintentional by-products of our intentional actions, extend far beyond our specific knowledge.
What size are we now, that someone on the other side of the world has read our blog entry? Now, that we have seen the light of not only Proxima Centauri, but many other stars from far away galaxies.
What is it that I want, today, now? More specifically, what is it that I want that could be delivered in a box? Well one thing I really want is a box from all the people who deliver my boxes, with a message inside saying that they are not going to leave my packages on my steps outside to get rained on anymore. They have all been notified to leave all packages inside the door, but again and again my packages are left outside to notify the passers-by that nobody is home.
Five years ago, I came home to find my door much more easily opened than usual. Then I found stuff on the floor that I didn’t leave. Then I noticed my jewelry box was gone. They left my outdated laptop. Then I noticed that the wine-colored Egyptian cotton American sewn Israeli owned company sheets I had ordered from JC Penny were sitting outside, on my steps. Invitation to break and enter.
He left the sheets.
The idiot could have walked in the unlocked basement door. But no, he had to break my 100 year old lumber, which of course is not available in the same dimensions anymore. Yes, I am blaming the post office.
More introspection here. Should I blame the Post Office more than the cops, who have failed to apprehend the perp? There were multiple additional B&E’s in the neighborhood in that time frame. I don’t know to whom I attach more blame. More importantly, what do I do with this feeling of needing to blame?
I feel compelled to invest my limited energy in different directions, that feel more meaningful to me, but this is one that really stirs up my aggravation. So I guess I should be grateful to the US Post Office, UPS and FedEx for showing me this unenlightened part of my greedy, egotistical self. At least that’s what the Buddhists would say.
Now, abhi, now I am in India. Feet having touched the ground yesterday at 2 am, I slept well, once installing earplugs to kill the tic tic tic tic of the fan in the room next door. I only figured out that this was the likely source of the noise after turning my own fan on this morning. India always surprises me with the new strange sounds. The fan ticks are preferable to 2017’s herd of mules’ hooves clacking on the cobblestones at 4:30 every morning. Construction crews had to be pre-stocked daily with mortar mix, in anticipation of the workers’ arrival.
So, refreshed after as good sleep as possible in a country where the science of acoustics is unheard of, I have my breakfast of four slices of whole wheat toast, butter, jelly, and tea, and head out to the Pundir General Store.
Dharmendra tells me that it is expanded and renovated since last year. There is a plentiful supply of my primary prey – Neem-Clove Toothpaste. Lots of nice auyervedic soaps, incense, etc. My purchase adds up to 3085 INR, but when I tell the shopkeeper that this is the best toothpaste in the world, he takes the 3000 rupees, and returns the 100 rupee note, telling me “Yes, we know. That’s why it’s the only kind we sell. One tube free!”
View from Hotel Shiv Vilas 2nd Floor
Heading back to my hotel, I am aware of the order in the chaos of the street. People, in a steady stream, weave in and out between parked vehicles, passing trucks, docile cows, chunks, large and small, of broken concrete, and fruit and vegetable carts. I merge into the crowd, not just physically, but my consciousness merges with theirs. A couple passes, he wearing a Latin lettered Sochi tee-shirt, she a Cyrillic version.
Rishikesh, the holy city of yogis, has regained its status as a bustling adventure tourist destination, four years after devastating floods and mudslides.
I am aware of the order in the chaos, and accept my place in it, no longer fearful of crossing the street, or walking in it, a fact of life in the land of scarce sidewalks.
The bright yellow cover of Figuring, the newly published muse on truth, beauty, and the importance of the feminine contribution to its fuller expression in human affairs, by Maria Popova, shocked my visual cortex on its exit from its protective shipping carton.
The cover itself exemplifies no obvious aesthetic beauty to my eye. The contents however do exemplify the value of the old saying “Judge not the book by its cover.”
One of the most outstanding quotes from the founding author of Brainpickings.org leapt off of the page into my mind.
Popova quotes Elizabeth Barrett Browning in her preface to her translation of Prometheus Bound. A distillation of fruitful contemplation, I experience her words as a Bohrian mirror to channeled wisdom from my fictional Wise Woman, Merwegon.
Browning wrote :
All beauties, whether in nature or art, in physics or morals, in composition or abstract reasoning, are multiplied reflections, visible in different distances under different positions, of one archetypal beauty.
Here, I resonate with Browning’s use of the word “reflections” to show us the importance of symmetry in our human perception of beauty. While a little bit of randomness adds a touch of spice to life, not many of us enjoy having the foundations of our physical worlds reduced to a pile of asymmetric rubble. Strong asymmetry between the effort of building versus that of destruction assures perpetuation of our current preference.
That all said, beauty appears in different guises. The feature image above documents the appearance of a downed, rotting tree trunk at the entrance to my “back twenty.”
