Indian Epics Blog

This week, I had the opportunity to continue work at my consultancy position. This position has been very interesting for me because I have had the chance to delve deep into thermodynamics and advanced linear transforms while at work. I also get to learn more about algorithm analysis and programming as we are trying to develop a new algorithm to determine thermodynamic data. In addition, the career fair for many of the engineering majors was this Thursday, and a lot of my friends are currently stressing out about internships and interviews. This is leading to a decrease in their sleep which would be contra to my opinions on a healthy sleep schedule. Overall, I hope they do well and get an internship. Me personally, I will return to ExxonMobil in Spring, Texas this summer. Looking forward, we have a lot of tests coming up this next week, and I imagine that stress will increase a lot in my friends. I am hoping to do well on the tests and continue my streak of not being disappointed b...

This week, I continue a Wikipedia trail that interestingly starts out with Ravana, and ends up at the Zero-Sum Game theory from economics. Ravana  is one of the main characters of the Ramayana, stealing Sita away from Rama, and opposing Rama in great battles. He is depicted as the Rakshasa king within the poem, and the king of Lanka. He is depicted with ten heads, and he is considered to be one of the greatest devotees of Shiva. One Ravana's page, there is a link to... Political Science.  This is the field that studies governance, policy implementation, fields of law, etc. Essentially the study of the interaction between people and politics of any kind. It's focuses are on the roles, decision-making, and allocation of power within each different area of government. While it can be similar across cultures, it is often thought to be a different field of study when compared to two different governments, such as China and the United States. On the page of Political Science, th...

This week, I continue to learn more about sleep. In line with the health aspect of this adventure, I have learned more about the negative effects of sleep deprivation in this article. One thing that this article confirmed for me was how harmful a lack of sleep can be. It goes into hallucinations, diabetes, bipolar disorder, etc, but the main idea is that we often think that sleeping less will help us be more productive, but it ends up harming us down the road. I used to stay up till around 2AM and wake up at 8 regularly, so not as big of a sleep deficit as many people, but the world is a completely different place when I get 7-9 hours of sleep using a consistent bed time schedule. An interesting topic to follow up on is whether or not sleeping too much also has an adverse effect, and whether or not one can truly catch up on sleep. The interesting thing in this article is that it makes it clear that we do not know exactly why people sleep. There are theories, but no concrete conclu...

This week, I read an article that covered how the growth mindset has strayed from its path, titled, "The Stanford professor who pioneered praising kids for effort says we’ve totally missed the point" by Jenny Anderson. One thing that this article confirmed for me was that intelligence is a malleable object. Our brain is a muscle and it can be worked out and improved over time. It's interesting though, because the article discusses how when we focus on growth mindset, we get lazy and try to just reward effort as opposed to the opportunities to grow. It seems to me that the growth mindset is about the opportunity to grow, rather than trying with no results. Dweck notes that this is often the case where adults tell children that they have done a good job, but there is no thought on the future. One thing that I would like to know more about is to what degree the brain can be stretched as a muscle, and if there are any limits that people naturally have. For example, I lik...

This week, I completed a Story Lab, in which I watched two separate TED Talks, the links can be found here . The first talk seems to epitomize the first impressions we develop from stories, while the second one delves into the relationships we make with characters. In the first talk, the idea of a first impression is further discussed, where the speaker notes how she had opinions of a country that had been built up solely from a few stories she had been told, and how when she encountered other people, they already had predispositions based on stories they had been told. This can be broadened to a wider audience to suggest that we often see short amounts of information, and then we make the conclusions ourselves. For example, people often just read the headlines of news articles and believe they know everything about that topic afterwards, as opposed to ever reading the article. The second talk digs into the connections we make with fictional characters, and why we spend so much tim...

This week, I finished up the Ramayana. The stories in D are told slightly differently form the stories in A-C, with the main thing that stood out to me being the irrationality of the characters. There is a large number of battles that occur within the final part of the Ramayana, often with Rama and others dying. However, for some odd reason, this is perfectly permissible because there's a root in a far off kingdom that Hanuman can get to really quickly and find, then he can race back and revive people. The root itself causes a lot of logical issues, but in addition, why not just pick the root and grow it somewhere else? Additionally, why do they keep going to battle after a loss? If Indrajit where to do his job optimally, he would kill Rama and capture the body instead of waiting for him to be revived. While the Ramayana often does not have logical consistencies, there is no clear reason that the battles occur this way. Next, there is the proving of Sita's purity. The trial...

For this week's reading, I finish up the Ramayana, Public Domain Edition. Part C ranges from stories number 41-60. The most interesting part of this story was the focus on Hanuman as a semi-main character. It depicts him on his journeys to find Sita, and in the beginning where he does not help Rama. Perhaps more interesting is the beginning story of how Rama gains Hanuman's trust in the first place. It is never actually explicitly mentioned within these stories of Rama directly helping Hanuman as he had previously, but rather, Sugriva. This in turn leads to Sugriva being indebted to Rama. The thankfulness and admiration that everyone has for Rama is evident when Hanuman realizes that he might have burned down the entire down and Sita, where he would rather die than return a failure to Rama. Also of interest is the seemingly odd restrictions placed on Ravana. There is substantial hinting that in his past, he was also treacherous, as in the first half of the Ramayana, it is m...