Everyday fractals

I am sure you have heard of fractals. It is a structure in which a part looks like the whole. It relies on creating structures with repeating patterns. Did you know that we rely on fractals for one major application everyday in our lives? Which application uses fractals?



I found out after watching Nova tonight that cellphone antennas are called fractal antennas because they use this property of self-similarity. (The image above is an example of a fractal antenna) So if you were wondering how the cellphone makers managed to make antennas so small that they fit inside your pocket, fractals are the answer. In order to achieve a high surface area in a small space, they decided to use this property of self-similarity to achieve it.

Beautiful and useful! Do watch NOVA for the many other examples.

Talking Shop : For fellow silicon minions

I don't usually talk shop in this space. But today I landed upon two excellent blogs about related to ASIC Design and I wanted to share them here.

Adventures in ASIC Digital Design - Great site. I loved the challenges set by Nir Dahan, tackling puzzles one usually sees on ASIC Design interviews. One-hot detectors and divide-by-3 counters and so on. Nir definitely knows his stuff and is more than willing to share his solutions, while keeping an open mind to better solutions. Highly recommended.

Low-Power Blog : Godwin who works for Synopsys on low-power related EDA tools writes this blog. EDA vendors are the people to talk to about general trends, because they probably talk to the most number of digital designers across various companies.

My only solace

If all that financial bad news is getting you down, or if that election smearing and lying by the Republican party is causing you heart-burn. Worry not! I have one source of pure pleasure during my time on the computer. Comics... Funny how one starts out reading only the comics as a kid, and now as a grown-up I end up reading only comics. The reasons for not reading the rest of the newspaper are different though. As a child you don't understand it good or bad.. As a grown-up you understand it but wish you didn't. :)

So partake in some comics here and here, and relax! As they say, "When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping!"

To the moon!

India launched its first unmanned probe to the moon successfully today. I feel proud (almost some of that jaajwalya variety from my beloved Pune). There have been questions about whether we can afford to send a probe to the moon. I feel we cannot afford not sending one. I could give numerous reasons for saying so. Clearly it has been a publicity success, with all the major news organizations of the world taking note. There were emails in the desi e-group at the office literally counting down to the event and sharing various sources for a live webcast. So it not only lifts the spirits of Indians around the globe but it was also a large commercial for the satellite launch services provided by ISRO. ISRO has now become the sixth organization to send a mission to the moon, following the US, Russia, European Space Agency, Japan and China.

Science popularization is another worthy aim achieved by this project, inspiring a new generation of scientists and engineers in India. Remember October Sky and how the Sputnik caused so many children in the United States to take up Aeronautical Engineering as a career? This also reminds me of the reasons for the birth of Silicon Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area. The story goes that when William Shockley wanted to set up Fairchild Semiconductors (I think), he chose the Bay Area because of the huge supply of engineers at NASA Ames in Mountain View. Could the engineers trained on Chandrayaan create their own technology ventures in the future? I hope so. India is also proud of its rocket scientists. We indirectly elected Abdul Kalam our president not too long ago. The former head of ISRO Dr K Kasturirangan is now a member of the Rajya Sabha. We could use plenty of smart people in our government.

Congratulations to the ISRO team for doing India proud!

The Joe the Plumber Subterfuge

I have been an involved bystander on the US presidential campaign. It is hard to ignore it living in America... if you aren't being bombarded with negative commercials while watching TV already, the debates, the PBS documentaries and the various comedy programs poking fun at the candidates will definitely get you into the action. One problem makes me realize how ordinary people seem to fall for the subterfuge dished out by the Republicans.

I was trying to find out some information on income distributions in the United States. The census.gov does have some tables with that information, but they stop short of giving you a graph with distribution, showing you where you stack up against the rest of the country. (Conspiracy theory? I think so. Isn't that the most obvious way to present and parse income data?) There are other blogs that tell you how incomes are distributed and it doesn't look like a pretty picture. The authors of this site called www.lcurve.org says it is an L curve. There is a huge spike of super-rich Americans.

The top one percent are now estimated to own between forty and fifty percent of the nation's wealth, more than the combined wealth of the bottom 95%.

Concentration of wealth produces concentration of power that is fundamentally incompatible with democracy. Why does our government give tax cuts to those on the vertical spike that result in cuts in services for the rest of us? The horizontal spike has the votes, but the vertical spike has the influence! They own the media. Your TV set is their pipeline into your brain! They set the agenda and the terms of debate. Furthermore, by the time you enter the voting booth all the
“serious” candidates have been filtered and pre-selected by their ability to raise funds from those on the vertical spike. Those who can’t attract big money are marginalized.

That's an argument that is hard to fight. Clearly the less smart Americans clearly don't see their own benefit. Admittedly Barack Obama probably misguides voters in some areas as well, but the Joe the Plumber episode just shows the lack of intelligence on the part of vast stretches of the country and the levels to which Republican leaders are willing to fool their countrymen. That might be one of the reasons why you pay high-school teachers peanuts, and make Math uncool. No one will be smart enough to understand that they are being fleeced.

Barack Obama claims that people earning less than 250,000 dollars a year will see a decrease in taxes under him. But Joe the Plumber claims he earns 250,000 dollars a year, and so John Mccain claims that Barack Obama will increase your taxes. And so people making 50,000 dollars cheer for Joe the Plumber at McCain rallies. Wow that is a new low in misguiding people. How the average Americans fall for this is beyond me... Part of it might be to sugar-coat whatever you say with plaudits for "small-town values", calling yourself "Joe Sixpack and Hockey Mom", with conjuring connections between your opponent and Al Qaeda and spreading false rumors about his religion and political views. While you are at it call yourself a "maverick" a few dozen times.

Again Barack Obama doesn't say he will stop outsourcing of jobs to foreign countries. He says he will stop providing tax breaks to companies shipping jobs overseas. That doesn't mean that outsourcing will grind to a halt. But it does seem like he is trying to reduce taxes for the middle and lower classes and prevent bankruptcies from health problems.

During the last election I saw the same style of attack ads against John Kerry by George W. In fact that episode introduced a new verb into the English language, swift-boating. If the past is any predictor of future behavior, America shouldn't elect McCain. Someone who makes commercials like George W Bush, is likely to rule like him as well. Someone who makes commercials like Bush, may also be more likely to rule, unless the country smartened up in the last 4 years, and sees through this subterfuge.

On being a drop in the brain drain ocean

I just read this excellent article on Sepia Mutiny about brain drain that got me thinking. I am a member of the brain drain generation. The vast majority of the people I studied with in engineering college (or high-school) are now working in America. I used to joke not too long ago that, I have a higher probability of bumping into a classmate from Pune in Silicon Valley than in Pune itself. I am not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing, and I invite your perspective on the same. Another foregone conclusion among my contemporaries from Pune is that almost everyone ended up studying engineering (there are very few exceptions). With the plethora of engineering colleges in Pune, it is no surprise. I hate to be a walking talking cliche` in that regard.

The vast majority of my classmates who have continued to work in India, are working either directly or indirectly for large American multi-national firms. ( Intel, Texas Instruments, Motorola, IBM are some of the names for directly working for an American firm, and Infosys, Wipro, TCS for indirectly working for a multi-national firm.) I also work for a large multi-national company based in California. So the biggest difference between my classmates in India and me is that I pay my taxes to America, while they all pay a third of their salaries to India. That is a substantial contribution monetarily and I cannot compete with that sitting in America. Some of my taxes end up in Iraq and some of theirs end up in the Swiss bank accounts of some corrupt politicians. My friends in India are also influencing India in many other ways, with their taste in music, food, art, books and movies. Being in India also implies that you support all the local businesses and employ servants at home. So financially it is a significant loss for India, if you disregard the dollars sent back home by NRIs.

If you are reading this blog sitting in India, you are probably doing this using a CPU designed by Intel, using an OS developed by Microsoft, using a browser developed by Mozilla. (and maybe using an RSS reader developed by Google). There were definitely a few Indians who worked on all of these components. The point I am trying to make is that technology these days is created by people from all over the world, and it benefits people all over the world, but in most cases by companies head-quartered in America, with a vast majority of their employees in America, but from all parts of the globe. Are nationality and patriotism outdated concepts in our flat integrated world?

My ex-roommate J used to say that there are positives to staying in India or America for any individual. In the Bay Area you can get home quickly but then you spend many hours doing laundry, cooking, cleaning. In India, you spend a lot of time on the commute, but then you have servants to take care of most of the house-work. These days most things in India are identical to America, at home, at workplaces, at the malls, the movie theaters and banks. So the only difference is the traffic on the roads and other services the government provides.

There are probably a lot of Indians in America who carry "I owe you"s for India, and that might be one of the reasons for the success for charitable organizations like Asha and Vibha. I have been thinking about some of these points while writing this article, and I think the issue is too complicated to come to any conclusion. After 6 years in America, it has started to feel like home, but I do feel out of place from time to time. I don't look or talk like the natives and I sense a slight resentment from time to time, because my people have inundated parts of the country. And despite my best attempts at watching Jeopardy for the last 6 years, I am always stumped by a lot of categories, most Americans would have no trouble with. I feel like a misfit in India too at times, but on the whole I am more comfortable with being a first class citizen in India. I would like my children to share my values, and I feel like India is the place to raise kids. I hope someday I manage to move back and make my own small contribution to India, instead of carrying an "I owe you" to my grave. If you guys have misgivings about working for an American firm, please form a start-up and give me a job! ;-)