Four tips to improve your communication in the age of face masks.

To be able to read people’s emotions, you generally need to be able to see their entire face. Are they laughing, frowning, bored, tired, or afraid? Their mouths will often give away their state of mind. However, in a time when nearly everyone is wearing some type of lower facial covering, you’re left with the need to determine how the people around you are feeling with very limited cues.

 

Perhaps you’re walking through the aisles at your local grocery store, rushing to grab some necessary supplies before they disappear from the shelves for the rest of the day. By mistake, you get within the 6-feet recommended sphere for social distancing as you pass another equally face masked and desperate individual. In ordinary circumstances, you might smile as you apologize, but with that mask on, all you can do is utter a muffled “I’m so sorry,” which of course, your fellow shopper can't hear. Equally frustrating, you can't tell whether your attempt at reconciliation even worked.

 

Everyone is operating under similarly strange scenarios as they venture outside their homes to complete their necessary tasks with their faces covered in various forms of protection. Front-line health care workers spend their entire time with patients and fellow staff members under similar constraints. At a time when people need to reassure themselves as much as possible by communicating and receiving empathy, the channel of communication provided by the face is now severely limited.

 

According to Yulia Roitblat and colleagues of the Belkind School for Special Education in Rishon-LeZion, Israel (2020), the “emotional gaze in a still-face setting” can still have power (p. 2). In the first of two studies by the same authors (2019), the majority (79%) of an international sample of participants (100 adolescents aged 14-18) viewers (10 judges ages 27 to 61 years) were able to  accurately recognize the emotions of happy, sad, and angry from photos of their eyes alone. Not everyone was equally good at judging emotions, though, as shown by the fact that 18% of judges made mistakes on every single emotion-judging trial.

 

Still, given that the majority of people and judgments were accurate in reading emotions from the still photos of the eyes, the findings of this first study suggested that, in the words of the authors, “the direct gaze, when we speak of emotions, is as informative as visible and well-detectable muscular facial expressions and eye movements such as gaze aversion” (pp. 5-6). However, how much better can emotion-reading become when the nose and mouth are added to the task?

 

In the second Roitblat et al. study (2020), the authors therefore contrasted the ability of judges to recognize emotions from the eyes, the middle region, and then the full photo of faces intended to communicate the three emotions of angry, happy, and sad. Two separate panels of 400 individuals each (ages 16-25) rated the emotions represented in the photos of full or partial facial expressions. In addition to the original three emotion ratings, the second panel was also asked to add surprised and frightened to the choices.

 

As it turned out, once again it seemed that “the eyes have it.” When given three choices (after correcting for chance), judges rated the three sets of photos with approximately equal accuracy; when the number of choices was expanded to five, the accuracy rate for eyes only was about 50%  compared to about two-thirds with middle and full facial regions.

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However, after correcting further for the fact that the same judges provided ratings within each panel of all facial stimuli, the differences among the three conditions leveled off, and the judging of emotions from eye gaze alone remained about as good as that from the entire face.

It seems, then, that although the eyes have the power to communicate emotions without any other facial cues present, some people are better at the task than others. Indeed, if you’re like one of those who failed utterly at the task of judging emotions from the eyes alone, the findings also suggest some hope for remediation in what the authors called “facial expression training." What's more, in real life, you've got additional cues that you can add to the ones presented by the eyes.

 

These four steps will help you take advantage of the power of the eyes and the other nonverbal channels you have at your disposal when your face, and that of those around you, are partially hidden:

1.  Use the automatic information contained in the eyes. Because the automatic features of someone’s gaze by definition can’t be controlled, they can be the most reliable of guides to use even if the person isn’t wearing a facial cover-up. For yourself, although you can’t control the width of your pupils or even the trickling down of a tear, the findings suggest that you dig into your inner feelings and allow your autonomic nervous system to take over control of the messages that your eyes signal.

 

2. Add eyebrows to the equation. Although Roitblat et al. didn’t discuss this, the photos they provided of eyes used in their studies changed not only in width of the eye opening (widest in angry and happy) but also the positioning of the eyebrows. When angry, your eyebrows form a “V” but when you’re happy, they bend upward toward the top of your head like an upside down “U.” Sad eyebrows form an upside down “V.” Your mouth, in other words, may be hidden by a face mask, but your eyebrows can still become responsive to your emotions and you can use this information in reading other people’s feelings.

 

3. Remember the power of body language. You’ve got more than your eyes available when you’re out and about interacting with others in the real world. Use yours to accentuate your emotions, all the way from your hands to your posture. Research on communication makes it clear that these “paralinguistic” elements of speech are important guides to gauging the feelings, sincerity, and intent of other people. Reading these cues in others will, similarly, help you figure out how they’re feeling.

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4. Give yourself a break if you get it wrong, and similarly, excuse others for their missteps. Everyone is trying to renegotiate their social world and it will take a while for all of this to settle down. As in ordinary face-to-face (without a mask) communication, it’s important to realize that you, or others, may flub an interaction. Getting angry will only make things worse.

 

To sum up, the world of emotional communication is certainly shifting as more and more people put their lower faces under wraps. If you put these simple steps into practice, even in those chance interactions with strangers, your emotional life can continue to thrive.

Thanks https://www.psychologytoday.com,Susan Krauss Whitbourne Ph.D.

 

References

Roitblat, Y., Cohensedgh, S., Frig-Levinson, E., Suman, E., & Shterenshis, M. (2019). Emotional expressions with minimal facial muscle actions Report 1: Cues and targets. Current Psychology: A Journal for Diverse Perspectives on Diverse Psychological Issues. http: 10.1007/s12144-019-0151-5

Roitblat, Y., Cohensedgh, S., Frig-Levinson, E., Cohen, M., Dadbin, K., Shohed, C., Shvartsman, D., & Shterenshis, M. (2020). Emotional expressions with minimal facial muscle actions Report 2: Recognition of emotions. Current Psychology: A Journal for Diverse Perspectives on Diverse Psychological Issues. doi: 10.1007/s12144-020-00691-7

Similarities Between Tamil and Korean

Syntactic Similarities between Tamil and Korean

                               By   N.Murugaiyan

                                      Professor of English (Retd.)

Introduction

There are three parts in this paper, namely,  Part I , Part II and Part III. In the first part is considered the question ‘where did the Koreans come from?’ with reference to the four principal directions and the languages that wielded some sort of influence on Korean. In the second part the syntactic similarities between Korean and Tamil are illustrated with suitable data relating to them. And in the third part  it will be pointed out that  language typology gives  no guarantee for genetic relationship among languages of the world in general Korean and Tamil in particular.

                                                      Part I

The answer to the question ‘Where did the Koreans come from?’ is not just one but it is fourfold.   As their origin is fixed to the four different directions, namely, the East, West, South and the North, we get four different answers. They are remembered as the  Eastern theory, Western Theory, Southern theory and Northern theory.

The Koreans came from the East

According to Kim Chin-u Koreans originated from Japan and this view is in consonance with the statement that the Koreans came from the East. Lee Kim Moon, Professor at the Department of Korean Linguistics in Seoul National University, speaks about ‘ lexical correspondences between Koguryo (an extinct language spoken in Manchuria and Northern Korea) language and Old Japanese’. Owing to this lexical correspondence and some archaeological findings, he observes, “It is safe to say that old Korean was not the Peninsular dialect of Old Japanese. If anything, Old Japanese was the insular dialect of Korean (1983, p.36)”. The statement made above means that Japanese came as a dialect of old Korean and not that Korean as a dialect of Japanese.

 The Koreans came from the West

The Western theory fixes the lineage  of Korean  to Dravidian, the chief language of the group being Tamil that has a continuity that goes to the beginning of the first millennium or even earlier.  Around the third millennium BC people living near the Altaic mountains in central Asia began to migrate eastward confirming the view that the Koreans came from the West. Homer B. Hulbert supports the west theory. His idea was popular when the field of linguistics was in its inception or beginning. The syntactic features that Hulbert saw between Korean and Dravidian Languages are called typological features in the present day linguistics.  According to the most popularly held view in the realm of modern linguistics typological similarities are not adequate enough to establish ‘the  genetic - relationship’ among languages. Analyzing this problem Kim Chin-U says,

It is an accepted view that two are more unrelated languages may nevertheless share typological similarities. Three quarters of a century ago linguistics was still in its infancy, and one can imagine how striking and suggestive the typological similarities between Korean and Dravidian must have been looked to Hulbert, especially when Indo-European  languages, about the well-established language family then, all shared a different typology (1983, p. 16)”

The Koreans came from the South

According to Southern theory Korean belongs to the Austronesian family, i.e., Korean is related to Austronesian languages such as languages of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Sumatra, Java, Philippines, Papau New Guinea etc. Linguistic support for this argument includes open syllables, the honorific system, numerals and several body parts. On the other hand anthropological evidence includes rice cultivation, tattooing, and the myth of an egg as the birth place of royalty.        

The Koreans came from the North

According to the northern theory Korean is a member of the Altaic language family. It is in fact the descendent of the Eastern Altaic along with languages such as Tunguz (the Tungusic  language of the Evenki  in eastern Siberia), Japanese, Ainu( A language spoken on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido), Kamchatkan (relating to Kamchatka, a peninsula in E Russia).  The Western Altaic consisting of languages such as Mongolian and Turkik (Turkish, Khazak, Uzbek, Tadjik etc.,). The parts of  the  Extinct Altaic,  namely , Sumerian ( a language of ancient Sumer, a language isolate which was spoken in Northern Mesopotamia (Modern Iraq)., Elamite, the primary language in the present day Iran from 2800 – 550  BC).,  Cretan, a language relating to one of the Islands of ancient Greece, Crete., Cyprian, a language associated with Cyprus.,  Etruscan, ( a language isolate spoken by close neighbors of the ancient Romans).,   Scythian  (old Iranian) etc.,  have a close link with Tamil in general , particularly the first two, Sumerian and Elamite.

                                                           Part  II

Syntax plays a vital or crucial or central part in the study of a language as it has interlinks on the one hand with phonology relating to speech or graphology connected with writing and on the other with lexis or vocabulary relating to the field of semantics or word meaning. Certain syntactic similarities between Tamil and Korean are presented with suitable illustrative sentences in the respective language script, namely, Tamil  Bhrami script  for Tamil and Hangul script for Korean along with transliteration using the Roman letters of the alphabet or Latin script. Following are some Korean words with their pronunciation indicated within square brackets, their lexical meaning in English and the sound values of the Hangul alphabet used in them are also presented for enabling the readers of this paper to have a clear idea about particular Hangul alphabet and some of the sound values associated with it :

존 [son]   Hand  (ㅈ = s, ㅗ = o, ㄴ= n)

힘  [him]  Effort or  strength (ㅎ= h, l = i, ㅁ= m)

돈[ton]  money (ㄷ = t, ㅗ= o, ㄴ= n)

내  돈 [ne ton]  my money  (ㄴ= n, ㅐ=e)

예름   [ ]This two-syllable Korean word means ‘summer’.

옐몌 [  ] This two syllabled Korean word means ‘fruit’.

Verb or  Predicate Final  Languages 

Korean sentences are predicate final – sharing the grammatical properties of other predicate final languages such as Japanese, Altaic, and Dravidian – and are very different from sentences of , for example, English, French, Chinese and Austronesian. Tamil, one of the most prominent among Dravidian languages shares this property, sometimes described as OV languages . In Korean  all modifiers such as adjectives , adverbs, numerals, relative clauses, subordinate or co-ordinate clauses, determiners or genitive constructions must precede the element they modify. The illustrative exampes given below and the explanations offered will make clear the predicate or verb final nature of both the languages namely Korean and Tamil . In these languages the relative and other clauses as well as the modifiers such as adjectives and adverbs appear before the verb i.e., they are found on the left of the verb. In the examples given below serve as illustration for the statement made above:

먀ㅏ매녀ㅣㅑㅔㄷㄴㄴㅅㅁ

ai ka  os ul  ip-ess-ta  (Transitive verb)

Child NM clothes AC  wear- (PST)—DC

The child put on the clothes.

குழந்தை  ஆடைகளை அணிந்து கொள்கிறது.

kuḻantai  āṭaikaḷai aṇintu koḷkiṟatu

Child  clothes  puts on

The child puts on the clothes.

Korean

지니 거  ㅐㅕㅈ  ㅈㅈ

Cini-ka  wus-  ss

Jinee –NOM  smile –PAST- INDIC

Jinee smiled.

The examples given below will illustrate the fact that Korean and Tamil are OV languages.

Peter H, Lee  (2003:  32) says,

Korean

메드류가  짐어ㅣ 저 짐을 며어요               

Andrew   home at  lunch    eats

Andrew eats lunch at home.

Tamil

ஆண்ட்ரு வீட்டில் மதிய உணவு சாப்பிடுகிறான்.

āṇṭru vīṭṭil matiya uṇavu cāppiṭukiṟāṉ

Andrew home at lunch eats

Andrew eats lunch at home.

Korean

조연이  점징을  먹어요

Joan         lunch   eats

Joan eats the lunch.

Tamil

ஜோன்  மதியவுணவை  சாப்பிடுகிறாள்.

jōṉ  matiyavuṇavai  cāppiṭukiṟāḷ.

Joan  the lunch eats

Joan eats the lunch.

The Korean sentence given below  will  further be an example for supporting the view that Korean is a verb final or  OV language.

ki sonyo nin wiyu- lil   masi –ass-ta

ki      sonyon-    nin    wiyu-     lil           masi -    ass-   ta

the  boy           subject  milk     object        drink        past    assertion 

                        marker              marker

The  boy drank milk

Agglutination                              

Tamil and Korean are agglutinating languages. What Fromkin / Rodman (1973:230) say about agglutinating languages is true of Korean, an isolate and Tamil, the most ancient representative of the Dravidian languages.  They describe agglutinating languages as follows:

In agglutinating languages, various morphemes are combined to form a single word, each element maintains a distinct and fixed meaning. In such languages, prefixes, suffixes and even infixes are used over and over again to build new words. They usually keep their same phonological shape, except for phonetic changes resulting from the regular phonological rules of the language.    

 Peter H. Lee ( 2003: 31) describes Korean as a typical agglutinative  language in that one or more affixes with constant form and meaning may be attached to various stems. In po-si-ot-kes-sum-ni-da  ( [a respectable person] may have been seen), for instance the passive verb stem  po-i: the subject honorific –si, the past tense – ot, the modal –kes (may), the addressee honorific – sum, the indicative –ni, and the declarative ending –da . He also observes, ‘Many Korean suffixes either do not have counterparts or correspond to independent words in non-agglutinative languages such as English and Chinese.’

The examples given below will serve as further illustrations:

Korean

Pusan kajji   aju   ppalli  talli-nun  kicha

Pusan  to    very    fast  run            train

The train which runs very fast to Pusan

Tamil

மதுரைக்கு அதி வேகமாக ஓடுகிற இரயில்

maturaikku ati vēkamāka ōṭukiṟa irayil

Madurai  to  very  fast    runs  train

The train that runs very fast to Madurai

aju  (Korean) and ati (Tamil) are adjectives that modify ppalli and vekamaka respectively.  As the adjectives in both the languages precede their modifiers, aju  comes before ppalli and ati comes before vekamaka. And also we can say that aju ppalli that precedes  talli modifies it and the Ati Vekamaka modifies the verbal form ōṭukiṟa.   In both the sentences the head word is found at the end of the clause while it is found at the beginning of the relative clause.

Kajji  and  kku are post-positions  in both the languages, Korean and Tamil. Korean and
Tamil make use of postpositions in the form of particles in Korean and as case markers in Tamil.

                                       Part III

 

The main argument in this section would be the presence of typological or structural features such as predicate final or verb final sentences, agglutination, presence of common items of vocabulary, the use of post-positions instead of  prepositions etc., do not guarantee that these two or more languages have genetic relationship. 

John Guy, Curator of South and South East Asian Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art , says,

India with its insatiable appetite for gold seems to have taken the lead in the search for the yellow metal. You just have to look at the ancient Sanskrit name for South East Asia – Suvarmabhoomi – which shows up in a whole variety of sources.

The principal reason for Indians migrating to south east Asia is made clear in the above extract. That lexical borrowing from people who come into contact with them is not uncommon even at earlier times is indicated in the passage quoted from Robert Blust.

Robert Blust (2013: 19) presenting facts about lexical borrowing from India says,

To show the extent of lexical borrowing from early Indian sources, about half of the more than 25000 base entries in the old Javanese dictionary of Zoetmulder (1982) are of Sanskrit origin. While this is an impressive record of contact, it must be kept in mind that the language of the old Javanese texts was that of courts, and hence reflects the linguistic world of the educated elite, not the peasantry. Moreover, despite a wealth of Sanskrit loan words relating to religion, government, trade and such material objects as pearls, silk, gemstones, glass and beads, the basic vocabulary of Javanese having only two known Sanskrit loans: geni (Skt. Agni) ‘fire’ and megha   (Skt. megha) cloud. 

The   syntactic features that Hulbert  deals with in his work  A Comparative Grammar of the Korean Language and the Dravidian Languages of India , 1905 were very well received when linguistics was at its infancy.  But the present–day – linguists would call them typological similarities and they are of the view that typological similarities are not enough to establish the genetic relationship among languages. The reason assigned by them for the similarities between languages like Korean and Tamil is not just  a genetic relationship that is to say that these two languages have the same origin  but cultural contacts, migration in search of wealth etc. 

                     

Bibliography

William Croft , Typology and Universals, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990 Second Edition 2003

Maggie Tallerman, Understanding Syntax, Understanding Language Series Editors: Bernard Comrie and Greville  Corbett, Hodder Education, London, First South Asian Edition 2011

Fromkin/ Rodman, An Introduction to Language, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., Newyork, 1974

Ki- Moon Lee, S. Robert Ramsey, A  History of Korean Language, Cambridge University Press, 2011  

Kim Chin U et al,  The Korean Language , Pace International Research, (Arch cape, OR), 1983

Peter H. Lee, Editor, A History of Korean Literature, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003

Robert Blust, The Austronesian Languages , Australian National University, Canberra, Acton, 2013   

*The writer of this paper can be contacted either by e-mail  <musanage @gmail.com>  or by Phone 9444277116  

The Grand Budapest Hotel Film

This is not surprising news, but The Grand Budapest Hotel director Wes Anderson’s highest-grossing film as well as the first to get him an Academy Award nomination. It combines many different aspects of his different films and brings them together into one incredible movie. The film is all about a hotel lobby boy, played by Tony Revolori, who starts a job at the Grand Budapest Hotel. Throughout the duration of the film, you are taken on an unpredictable roller coaster through Wes Anderson’s brain.

Ralph Fiennes is a phenomenon as M. Gustave. his interactions with every cast member and especially newcomer Tony Revolori are fantastic. The later holds his own weight beyond belief and the entire film is an amazing adventure with James Bond-style chases, a large murder mystery, the best-placed cussing and of course the sensational cinematography. The sets, models, angles and even the most nondescript characters come to life each on their own and together as a symphony of beauty. It's freaking brilliant; The Grand Budapest Hotel.

World's tallest Shivalinga carved using single stone

This photo won the Pulitzer A priest giving the last blessing

A priest giving the last blessing, to a Cuban peasant owner of his land, who refused to work for the Castrista Regime..
He was shot without the right to defend himself by order of "Che Guevara".
But this picture you'll never see on a t-shirt.

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind Movie

Film director Michel Gondry came together with screenwriter Charlie Kaufman in 2004 and created the masterpiece that we know to be Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The main characters in the film are Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, which should say everything you need to know about how great the film really is. Joel Barish and Clementine, Carrey and Winslet’s characters, are involved in a romantic relationship that starts to go South, so they each get a procedure to erase each other from their minds. As expected, this isn’t as simple as they thought.

சூரியனை நேர்ந்து கொண்டிருப்பவள்

நான் எப்பொழுதும் காதலானவள்

இப்படித்தான் உணர்கிறேன்
வளர் இளம் பருவத்தில்
எத்தனை அன்பின் இடுகைகள்
அறிந்தும் அறியாமலும் வளர்ந்தேன்

வகுப்பறையில்
நண்பன் ஒருவன் மூங்கில் கழியினால்
அடிவாங்கிக்கொண்டிருக்கையில்
அதே செயலுக்காக
தப்பித்துக் கொண்டிருந்தேன்

தவறு செய்திருந்த போதும்
தண்டனைகளிருந்து
என்னைக் காக்க
ஓராயிரம் கண்களும்
ஓராயிரம் உதடுகளும் இருந்தன

சற்று வளர்ந்தேன்
இளமை
எனக்குப் பாதுகாப்பு வளையமாகவே
மாறியிருந்தது

இன்னும் வளர்ந்தேன்
வயது சுடர்கையில்
என்னைக் கைக்கொள்ள நினைத்தவர்
எத்தனை பேரென்று
நான் அறிந்திருக்கவில்லை

மென்காற்று வீசுகையில் மதர்த்தெழும்
என் அழகில் மயங்கிக் கிடந்த நான்
வானத்தையளக்கும் பறவையை
முற்றுமறிந்த கணத்தில்
பெண் என்பவள்
கையப்படுத்தப்படும் நிலம் அல்லவென
உணர்ந்து
நிமிர்ந்தேன்

நிலவு என் கைகளில்

என்னை வந்தடைந்த
நிலவை அணைத்தபடி
சூரியனை நோக்கி
நகர்ந்து கொண்டிருக்கிறேன் .

Sakthi Jothi

" சொல் எனும் தானியம்" தொகுப்பிலிருந்து. 

வெள்ளைக்கார கிறிஸ்தவன் ஆட்சியை பொற்காலம் என்று சொன்னவர்களுக்கு

இர்ஃபான் கானின் கடைசிக் கடிதம் (Irrfan's last letter to the world )

வாழ்க்கைக்கும் மரணத்துக்கும் இடையே ஒரேஒரு சாலைதான்.

எனக்கு 'நியூரோ எண்டோக்ரைன்' புற்றுநோய் ஏற்பட்டிருப்பதை நான் அறிந்து வெகு சில நாட்களே ஆகின்றன. எனது சொல்வளத்தில் 'நியூரோ எண்டோக்ரைன்' புதிய வார்த்தை. இது அரிய வகை புற்றுநோய் என்றார்கள். அப்படித்தான் போல.

ஏனெனில், நான் அது குறித்து தேடியபோது மிக சொற்பமான தகவல்களே கிடைத்தன. அந்த வகை புற்றுநோய் பற்றிய ஆய்வுகளும் குறைவு என்பதால் தரவுகளும் குறைவாகவே இருந்தன. அதனாலேயே அதற்கு என்ன மாதிரியான சிகிச்சை அளிக்கப்படும் என்பதை கணிக்க இயலா நிலை என்னை சூழ்ந்திருந்தது. கிட்டத்தட்ட நான் முயல்வும் பிழைத்தலுமான சோதனை விளையாட்டில் இருந்தேன் என்றே சொல்ல வேண்டும்.

அந்த நோய் என்னுள் வரும் வரை நான் முற்றிலுமாக மாறுபட்ட விளையாட்டு ஒன்றில் இருந்திருக்கிறேன். ஒரு விரைவு ரயில் பயணத்தில் நானிருந்தேன். எனக்கு கனவுகள் இருந்தன. எதிர்கால திட்டங்களும், இலக்குகளும், ஆசைகளும் இருந்தன. நான் அவற்றால் ஆக்கிரமிக்கப்பட்டிருந்தேன்.

அப்போது திடீரென என் தோளை யாரோ தட்டினார்கள். திரும்பிப் பார்த்தால் டிக்கெட் பரிசோதகர். அவர் என்னிடம் "நீ இறங்க வேண்டிய இலக்கு வந்துவிட்டது. கீழே இறங்கு" என்றார். நான் குழம்பிப் போனேன். இது நான் இறங்குமிடம் இல்லை என மறுதலித்தேன். ஆனால், அவர் ஊர்ஜிதமாகச் சொன்னார் "இது தான் இலக்கென்று". வாழ்க்கையில் இப்படித்தான் சில நிகழ்வுகள் நடக்கின்றன.

நான் சற்றும் எதிர்பார்த்திராத அந்த திருப்பம் எனக்கொரு விஷயத்தை உணர்த்தியது. சமுத்திரத்தின் நீரோட்டத்தை நம்மால் கணிக்க முடியாது. அத்தகைய நீரோட்டத்தில் மிதக்கும் ஒரு தக்கை தான் நாம். ஆனால், நாம் வெறும் தக்கை என்பதை உணராமலேயே சமுத்திர நீரோட்டத்தை மீறியும் தக்கையை (நம்மை) கரை சேர்க்க முற்படுகிறோம் என்பதை உணர்த்தியது.

எதிர்பாராத திருப்பமாக நோய் எனக்குக் கொடுத்த அதிர்ச்சியில், அச்சத்தில், பதற்றத்தில் மருத்துவமனைக்கு சென்றிருந்தேன். அப்போது அருகிலிருந்த என் மகனிடம் ஏதோ உளறியதாக நினைவு. "நான் என்னிடம் இப்போதைக்கு எதிர்பார்ப்பது இந்த நோயை இதே மனநிலையில் எதிர்கொள்ளக் கூடாது. நான் என் நம்பிக்கையை இழந்துவிடக் கூடாது. அச்சமும், பதற்றமும் என்னை வென்றுவிடக் கூடாது. அது என்னை துயரத்தில் ஆழ்த்திவிடும்" என்று அவனிடம் கூறியிருக்கிறேன்.

ஆம், நோய் தரும் நம்பிக்கையின்மையை வெல்வதே எனது இலக்காக இருந்தது. ஆனால், அந்த வேளையில் தான் என்னை வலி கவ்வியது. அதுவரை நான் அனுபவித்த வலிகள் எல்லாம் அந்த பெரும் வலிக்கு அதன் தன்மைக்கு வீரியத்திற்கான முன்னோட்டம் என்பது போல் இருந்தன என்பதை உணர்ந்தேன்.

என்னை எதுவுமே சமாதானப்படுத்தவில்லை. எதுவும் ஆறுதலாக இல்லை. எதுவும் ஊக்கமளிப்பதாகவும் இல்லை. என் மனதில், நிலையற்றை தன்மை மட்டுமே நிலையானதாக இருந்தது.

நான் லண்டன் மருத்துவமனையில் பிரவேசிக்கும் போது முற்றிலுமாக சோர்ந்து போயிருந்தேன். சலிப்பு மிகுந்திருந்தது. என் சிறுவயதில் எனக்கு மெக்காவாகத் தோன்றிய லார்ட்ஸ் கிரிக்கெட் மைதானத்துக்கு எதிர்புறத்தில் தான் அந்த மருத்துவமனை இருந்தது. ஆனால், அதையெல்லாம் கருத்தில் கொள்ளும் நிலையில் நானிருக்கவில்லை.

என் வலிகளுக்கு மத்தியில் விவியன் ரிச்சர்ட்ஸின் சுவரொட்டி ஒன்றைப் பார்த்தேன். உண்மையில் எனக்கு ஏதாவது நடந்திருக்க வேண்டும். ஆனால், என்னுள் எதுவுமே நடக்கவில்லை. இந்த உலகத்திற்கும் எனக்கும் எந்த ஒரு தொடர்பும் இல்லை என்ற உணர்வு மட்டுமே இருந்தது.

நான் சிகிச்சை பெற்ற அந்த மருத்துவமனையில் நானிருந்த தளத்திற்கு நேர் மேல் தளத்தில் சுயநினைவை இழந்தோருக்கான (கோமா) வார்டு இருந்தது. ஒரு நாள் எனது அறையின் பால்கனியில் நான் நின்றிருந்தபோது, ஒரு திடீர் சிந்தனை என்னை உலுக்கியது.

வாழ்க்கை எனும் விளையாட்டுக்கும் மரணமென்ற விளையாட்டுக்கும் இடையே ஒரே ஒரு சாலைதான் உள்ளது என்பதை உணர்ந்த தருணம் அது.

எப்படி நான் சாலையின் ஒருபுறமிருக்கும் மருத்துவமனையில் நோயாளியாக நிற்க மறுபுறம் விளையாட்டு மைதானம் இருந்ததோ, எப்படி அந்த இரண்டையுமே யாரும் தனக்கு நிலையானதாக உரிமை கொண்டாட முடியாதோ அப்படித்தான் மனிதன் வாழ்க்கைக்கும் மரணத்திற்கும் இடையே நின்றுகொண்டிருக்கிறான் என்பதைப் புரிந்து கொண்டேன்.

பேரண்டவெளியின் மதிநுட்பத்தை, மிகப் பிரம்மாண்டமான சக்தியை அதன் தாக்கத்தை உணர்ந்தேன். நான் சிகிச்சை பெற்ற மருத்துவமனை அமைந்திருந்த இடம் எனக்கு அதை இடித்துரைத்தது. ஆம், நிலையின்மை மட்டும்தான் நிலையானது.

அந்த மெய் உணர் தருணம் என்னை யதார்த்த்தின் முன் சரணையடச் செய்தது. நான் பெற்றுக் கொண்டிருக்கும் சிகிச்சை 4 மாதங்களுக்குப் பின் அல்லது 8 மாதங்களுக்குப் பின் இல்லை இரண்டு வருடங்களுக்குப் பின்னர் என்னை எங்கு கொண்டு சேர்க்கும், விளைவு என்னவாக இருக்கும் என்ற எதிர்பார்ப்புகளை எல்லாம் கடந்து நடப்பவற்றிற்கு என்னை உட்படுத்திக் கொள்ளத் தூண்டியது.

அப்போது கவலைகள் பின்னடைவைக் கண்டன. அப்படியே சில நாட்களில் மங்கிப் போயின. அடுத்த சில நாட்களில் என் எண்ண வெளியிலிருந்தே கவலைகள் விலகியிருந்தன.

முதன் முறையாக நான் சுதந்திரத்தை உணர்ந்தேன். முதன்முறையாக சாதனை படைத்ததாக நினைத்தேன். அப்படி ஒரு வெற்றியை முதன்முறையாக சுவைத்தது போல் இருந்தது. அது வெற்றியின் மாயாஜாலம் என்பேன்.

அண்டவெளியின் மதிநுட்பத்தின் மீதான எனது நம்பிக்கை தீர்க்கமானது. அது என் உடலின் ஒவ்வொரு செல்லிலும் புகுந்தது போல் உணர்ந்தேன். ஆனால், அது அங்கேயே நிலைத்திருக்குமா என்பதை காலம் தான் சொல்லும். இப்போதைக்கு இந்த உணர்வு நன்றாக உள்ளது.

நோயுடனான எனது போராட்டப் பயணத்தில் மக்கள் என்னை வாழ்த்திக் கொண்டிருக்கிறார்கள். உலகம் முழுவதும் பலர் எனக்காகப் பிரார்த்தனை செய்கிறார்கள். நான் அறிந்த நபர்கள் மட்டுமல்லாது, எனக்குப் பரிச்சியமே இல்லாதவர்களும் கூட என் நலன் விரும்புகின்றனர்.

அவர்கள் வெவ்வேறு இடங்களில் வெவ்வேறு நேர மண்டலங்களில் இருந்து எனக்காகப் பிரார்த்தனை செய்கின்றனர். அவர்கள் அனைவரின் பிரார்த்தனைகள் ஒன்றிணைகிறது. அது ஒரே சக்தியாக, ஒரே உயிரோட்டமாக உருமாறி எனக்குள் புகுந்தது. எனது முதுகெலும்பின் முடிவில் அதை நான் உணர்கிறேன். எனது புத்தியில் வளர்கிறது.

சில நேரம் மொட்டாக, சில நேரம் இலையாக, அப்புறம் தளிராக கிளையாக துளிர்க்கிறது. நான் அதை ரசிக்கிறேன். ஒவ்வொரு பூவும், ஒவ்வொரு கிளையும் கூட்டுப் பிரார்த்தனையால் விளைந்தவை. அவை என்னை ஆச்சர்யப்பட வைக்கிறது. எனக்குள் மகிழ்ச்சியையும், ஆர்வத்தையும் ஏற்படுத்துகிறது.

அதேவேளையில், ஒரு தக்கை சமுத்திரப் பேரலையின் நீரோட்டத்தை தனக்கானதாக தகவமைக்க வேண்டிய அவசியமில்லை என்ற மெய்யை உணரச் செய்கிறது. தக்கை அசைந்தாடுவது இயற்கை. இயற்கை தனது தொட்டிலில் உங்களை மென்மையாகத் தாலாட்டிக் கொண்டிருக்கிறது என்று வாழ்க்கையை ஏற்கவும்.

இர்ஃபான் கானின் கடைசிக் கடிதம்- ஒரு நினைவஞ்சலி

நன்றி: தமிழ் இந்து நாளிதழ்

History repeats itself. Came across this poem written in 1869, reprinted during 1919 Pandemic.

This is Timeless....

It was written in 1869 by Kathleen O’Meara:

And people stayed at home
And read books
And listened
And they rested
And did exercises
And made art and played
And learned new ways of being
And stopped and listened
More deeply
Someone meditated, someone prayed
Someone met their shadow
And people began to think differently
And people healed.
And in the absence of people who
Lived in ignorant ways
Dangerous, meaningless and heartless,
The earth also began to heal
And when the danger ended and
People found themselves
They grieved for the dead
And made new choices
And dreamed of new visions
And created new ways of living
And completely healed the earth
Just as they were healed.

Reprinted during Spanish flu
Pandemic, 1919
Photo taken during Spanish flu

Claude Shannon Father of Information Theory

Information Theory is one of the few scientific fields fortunate enough to have an identifiable beginning - Claude Shannon's 1948 paper.  The story of the evolution of how it progressed from a single theoretical paper to a broad field that has redefined our world is a fascinating one.  It provides the opportunity to study the social, political, and technological interactions that have helped guide its development and define its trajectory, and gives us insight into how a new field evolves.

We often hear Claude Shannon called the father of the Digital Age.  In the beginning of his paper Shannon acknowledges the work done before him, by such pioneers as Harry Nyquist and RVL. Hartley at Bell Labs in the 1920s. Though their influence was profound, the work of those early pioneers was limited and focussed on their own particular applications. It was Shannon’s unifying vision that revolutionized communication, and spawned a multitude of communication research that we now define as the field of Information Theory.
One of those key concepts was his definition of the limit for channel capacity.  Similar to Moore’s Law, the Shannon limit can be considered a self-fulfilling prophecy.  It is a benchmark that tells people what can be done, and what remains to be done – compelling them to achieve it.

"What made possible, what induced the development of coding as a theory, and the development of very complicated codes, was Shannon's Theorem: he told you that it could be done, so people tried to do it. [Interview with Fano, R. 2001]

Quantum information science is a young field, its underpinnings still being laid by a large number of researchers [see "Rules for a Complex Quantum World," by Michael A. Nielsen; Scientific American, November 2002]. Classical information science, by contrast, sprang forth about 50 years ago, from the work of one remarkable man: Claude E. Shannon. In a landmark paper written at Bell Labs in 1948, Shannon defined in mathematical terms what information is and how it can be transmitted in the face of noise. What had been viewed as quite distinct modes of communication--the telegraph, telephone, radio and television--were unified in a single framework.

Shannon was born in 1916 in Petoskey, Michigan, the son of a judge and a teacher. Among other inventive endeavors, as a youth he built a telegraph from his house to a friend's out of fencing wire. He graduated from the University of Michigan with degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics in 1936 and went to M.I.T., where he worked under computer pioneer Vannevar Bush on an analog computer called the differential analyzer.

Shannon's M.I.T. master's thesis in electrical engineering has been called the most important of the 20th century: in it the 22-year-old Shannon showed how the logical algebra of 19th-century mathematician George Boole could be implemented using electronic circuits of relays and switches. This most fundamental feature of digital computers' design--the representation of "true" and "false" and "0" and "1" as open or closed switches, and the use of electronic logic gates to make decisions and to carry out arithmetic--can be traced back to the insights in Shannon's thesis.

In 1941, with a Ph.D. in mathematics under his belt, Shannon went to Bell Labs, where he worked on war-related matters, including cryptography. Unknown to those around him, he was also working on the theory behind information and communications. In 1948 this work emerged in a celebrated paper published in two parts in Bell Labs's research journal.

Quantifying Information

Shannon defined the quantity of information produced by a source--for example, the quantity in a message--by a formula similar to the equation that defines thermodynamic entropy in physics. In its most basic terms, Shannon's informational entropy is the number of binary digits required to encode a message. Today that sounds like a simple, even obvious way to define how much information is in a message. In 1948, at the very dawn of the information age, this digitizing of information of any sort was a revolutionary step. His paper may have been the first to use the word "bit," short for binary digit.

As well as defining information, Shannon analyzed the ability to send information through a communications channel. He found that a channel had a certain maximum transmission rate that could not be exceeded. Today we call that the bandwidth of the channel. Shannon demonstrated mathematically that even in a noisy channel with a low bandwidth, essentially perfect, error-free communication could be achieved by keeping the transmission rate within the channel's bandwidth and by using error-correcting schemes: the transmission of additional bits that would enable the data to be extracted from the noise-ridden signal.

Today everything from modems to music CDs rely on error-correction to function. A major accomplishment of quantum-information scientists has been the development of techniques to correct errors introduced in quantum information and to determine just how much can be done with a noisy quantum communications channel or with entangled quantum bits (qubits) whose entanglement has been partially degraded by noise.

The Unbreakable Code

A year after he founded and launched information theory, Shannon published a paper that proved that unbreakable cryptography was possible. (He did this work in 1945, but at that time it was classified.) The scheme is called the one-time pad or the Vernam cypher, after Gilbert Vernam, who had invented it near the end of World War I. The idea is to encode the message with a random series of digits--the key--so that the encoded message is itself completely random. The catch is that one needs a random key that is as long as the message to be encoded and one must never use any of the keys twice. Shannon's contribution was to prove rigorously that this code was unbreakable. To this day, no other encryption scheme is known to be unbreakable.

The problem with the one-time pad (so-called because an agent would carry around his copy of a key on a pad and destroy each page of digits after they were used) is that the two parties to the communication must each have a copy of the key, and the key must be kept secret from spies or eavesdroppers. Quantum cryptography solves that problem. More properly called quantum key distribution, the technique uses quantum mechanics and entanglement to generate a random key that is identical at each end of the quantum communications channel. The quantum physics ensures that no one can eavesdrop and learn anything about the key: any surreptitious measurements would disturb subtle correlations that can be checked, similar to error-correction checks of data transmitted on a noisy communications line.

Encryption based on the Vernam cypher and quantum key distribution is perfectly secure: quantum physics guarantees security of the key and Shannon's theorem proves that the encryption method is unbreakable. [For Scientific American articles on quantum cryptography and other developments of quantum information science during the past decades, please click here.]

A Unique, Unicycling Genius

Shannon fit the stereotype of the eccentric genius to a T. At Bell Labs (and later M.I.T., where he returned in 1958 until his retirement in 1978) he was known for riding in the halls on a unicycle, sometimes juggling as well [see "Profile: Claude E. Shannon," by John Horgan; Scientific American, January 1990]. At other times he hopped along the hallways on a pogo stick. He was always a lover of gadgets and among other things built a robotic mouse that solved mazes and a computer called the Throbac ("THrifty ROman-numeral BAckward-looking Computer") that computed in roman numerals. In 1950 he wrote an article for Scientific American on the principles of programming computers to play chess [see "A Chess-Playing Machine," by Claude E. Shannon; Scientific American, February 1950].

In the 1990s, in one of life's tragic ironies, Shannon came down with Alzheimer's disease, which could be described as the insidious loss of information in the brain. The communications channel to one's memories--one's past and one's very personality--is progressively degraded until every effort at error correction is overwhelmed and no meaningful signal can pass through. The bandwidth falls to zero. The extraordinary pattern of information processing that was Claude Shannon finally succumbed to the depredations of thermodynamic entropy in February 2001. But some of the signal generated by Shannon lives on, expressed in the information technology in which our own lives are now immersed.

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