At the halfway mark

First off, my pal Sagar is losing it.

Oddly enough, this has caused my opinion of him to actually improve. Now if only he'd resume competing at TC...

My sister has begun studying probability. Those who know me realise that I'm mentally preparing myself for the terrible ordeal that will undoubtedly follow. Those who don't should know that my sister has no memory for any mathematical skill I(or anyone else) teach her. Give her six months and she'll forget anything mathematical. Unfortunately, as the mathematically competent older sibling, it devolves upon me to teach her. Some idea of the horror with which I view this task may be formed if one considers that I consider teaching her only a step above robbing graves and eating the contents. Raw.

She can't be that bad, you say? Read on...

A couple of hours back she came and asked me a series of weird questions, ultimately proving that she'd forgotten some really basic algebra, namely, how to solve an equation of the form ax = b. Furthermore, she seemed completely comfortable dealing with a probability value of 6/5, and refused to believe that fractions could be greater than 1 for a few minutes...

For the mathematical pedants among you, in the example, a, x and b are all real numbers.

We had Image Processing yesterday. Fantastic exam - I loved it. People seemed pretty happy about it too. Sagar says he messed it up, but as I said before, he's losing it.

Saw an episode of Coupling earlier this week. Nearly died of laughter. Definitely must watch more of it...

TC had an SRM yesterday, but I was feeling a bit tired for some reason, so I decided not to. My net connection also failed for a few mins before it started, but that had nothing to do with it, though it did impose an air of finality over the decision...

Anyway, it turned out to be the right decision, since the problem set was highly nonstandard, to say the least. I have nothing against hard problem sets, but memoization on a division 2 500 is a little too much! The problem statements weren't exactly models of perfect clarity either. Still, I kinda liked the div 1 250(also div 2 500) and the div 2 1000. They were fun problems, at least in the practice room.

Meanwhile, I seem to be getting some flak from various parties regarding something I said about vacuous bimbos in this post. Apparently I need to clarify something. Here goes:

A quick check at Dictionary.com shows that in fact, the term vacuous bimbo is oxymoronic. Bimbos are vacuous by definition. They also seem to be somewhat overly interested in their own sex appeal, which connects nicely with what I was talking about in the offending paragraph.

Thus, the problem reduces to this: most Engg gals are vacuous, but not vacuous bimbos. Furthermore:

1. While vacuity is always difficult to tolerate, vacuity coming from a so-called 'bimbo' is somewhat easier to handle, since enduring their empty-headed nonsense isn't as unpleasant. Very painful statement, but one that is sadly true. Has to do with evolutionary mechanisms of ensuring that a person's genes make it to the next generation. Blame the dude who did the whole 'creating the Universe' thing.
2. See the title at the top of the page? That's right, it actually means something. Focus on the word 'subtlety'. In a supremely ironic gesture, I give you a link to the definition of the word 'subtle'. If you can't see the irony in that, move on to the next point. If you can see the irony in that, pat yourself on the back and move on to the next point.
3. The point concealed in the little paragraph that started all the trouble was one that's so old and cliched that it increments our little irony counter all by itself. It's the famous one that goes "The system sucks!". In this case, my beef with it is that it allows vacuity to persist beyond an individual's 15th year, and that it does not make proper use of the redeeming qualities that the vacuous do possess.
   

Frankly, I can't see how one could be pissed off about these commonplace observations about some pretty obvious trends. It's not like they're absolutes that always hold. Absolute generalizations are not something one bandies about casually. Indeed, those who mistake my comments for absolute generalizations are clearly guilty of the sin of vacuity and/or stupidity.

However, I am a generous and forgiving chap who loves taking the wind out of the sails of his adversaries. After all, why blame on malevolence that which could just be incompetence or ignorance?

Therefore, I magnanimously forgive my detractors(*gestures in an expansive flourish whose benevolence seems to encompass all of creation*) and ride triumphantly into the sunset.

*DRUM ROLLS ALONG WITH ASSORTED FANFARE*

Tally ho, chaps!