To Russia with love
Being older than Generation X or Generation Y, I may be one of the few to remember the number of times Doordarshan showed Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Stalker”. The film was about a magical “zone” which had the power to grant one’s deepest desires as a result of a meteor or spacecraft crash from a super-civilization. It was adapted from “Roadside Picnic” written by the brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. At that time, DD showed movies from Russia, Cuba or North Korea. Maybe Iran.
Recently, during an interminable flight, I read the Strugatsky brothers’ “Definitely Maybe”. Another meditation on super-civilizations, more nuanced, as a group of scientists in an apartment complex recognize the Godelian impossibility of a super-civilization.
From a childhood filled with tales of Baba Yaga the witch, small green mathematics monographs that sold for a rupee from where I learnt Lobachevskian geometry, physics problems from Irodov, science fiction by Stanislaw Lem and the brothers Strugatsky, Dovzhenko’s “Earth” and Paradzhanov’s “Color of pomegranates”, I moved to the west, read Veblen, but still became an enthusiastic supporter of capitalism.
As the financial world crumbles, it is to the brothers Strugatsky that I turn to figure out why super-civilizations are impossible. And console myself with the thought that the most intelligent man in the world is Russian.
Tags: Dovzhenko, Godel, Irodov, Lem, Paradzhanov, Perelman, Strugatsky, Tarkovsky, Veblen
September 28th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Commie!
September 29th, 2008 at 2:02 am
avataram oru boomer’a??? shiva shiva…enna koduma idhu…
September 29th, 2008 at 4:08 am
You did not read Resnick & Halliday?
September 29th, 2008 at 4:12 am
Misha?
September 29th, 2008 at 4:21 am
Dei Alan, Resnick la even numbered problems were not worth solving. So, I guess our pult type avataram started the movement which made Irodov a bible for bastards.
I still remember being unable to solve odd or even numbered problems from NCERT text books. Let alone Irodov.
Confession: I prayed for Balu’s death. God did exist.
September 29th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
it’s Parajanov, you village fuker!
September 29th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
1. Your take on capitalism and the financial world reminds me more and more of Ayn Rand and her hatred of socialism. Soon enough, you will become just as insufferable.
2. Irodov was over-rated. I tried Krotov once, couldn’t do much but figured where the real genius lay.
September 30th, 2008 at 1:46 am
Being compared to Ayn Rand is definitely a new insult. Allow me to congratulate you and to remind you that she was also russian.
I thought Krotov did multiple choice questions? I realize exam formats and standards have become easier, but…..
September 30th, 2008 at 6:05 am
No no, the exam standards have become lax only recently. I am not THAT young. The JEE still had long numerical type problems when I took it. Krotov had two books I think. This College street vendor in Calcutta offered me the tougher-than-Irodov one. I thought he was a freak.
September 30th, 2008 at 6:45 am
Calcutta? Now you are talking. My movies were at Nandan, books were from College Street, drinks were at Olypub. How did you turn capitalist then? Are you a…. maydor bachcha?
September 30th, 2008 at 8:56 am
Avataram, idhu ungalukku konjam chinna pullathanama theriyala? Discussing about JEE?
September 30th, 2008 at 11:11 am
You learnt Riemannian geometry during childhood???
Or there is an approach to this Lobachevskian geometry thing without the formal framework of a Riemannian manifold, connection etc.?
September 30th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Hmm….sorry to disappoint you but I am not from Cal, never stayed there and have no clue what maydor bachcha means. I was just visiting some relatives when the college street incident happened. Have been living in Gujarat for the last 20 years now, so you can attribute my capitalism to the west.
I think Lobachevskian and Riemannian are different non-Euclidean geometries. Though I wonder if that makes the former any easier than the latter to grasp.
October 1st, 2008 at 3:51 am
From the wikipedia article it seems to me that Lobachevskian geometry studies Riemannian manifolds “with constant, negative curvature”. Riemannian geometry includes Euclidean ( which is “zero curvature” ) while Lobachevskian is necessarily non-Euclidean.