An article about articles

When I posted an article on LinkedIn about correlations between marks and attendance in classes, a few days ago, I saw that the bottom of the article showed a flag, which said ’49 articles’. So, I reckon that this must be the 50th article. And so, for anyone who gets around to reading this, I would like to say a few words about what these articles are about, and also about why I write them.

Basically, here is what happened. A good friend told me in 2016 to start a blog, and also to put some videos on the internet, saying that I have some interesting things to say (mostly about science, and society, I would imagine; I didn't actually ask him) which could resonate with some people.

Now, I take what he says seriously. And so, I thought that I would get around to doing some blogging once some responsibilities were off my shoulders. Between early 2012 and early 2019, I was juggling not just teaching and research in the workplace, but also a whole bunch of administrative responsibilities. At home, I was simultaneously going through one of the busiest phases of family life, involving three generations. In the spring of 2020, when several of these responsibilities had abated and no longer required daily attention, Covid descended upon the world. We all went though a lock-down. And I thought that maybe it was time to start writing.

Now, I have been on LinkedIn since 2007, but mostly accepting connection requests, and doing nothing else; sometimes even forgetting to check-in for years (and, on one occasion, for an entire decade), to see whether people had replied to congratulatory notes I had sent out. In 2020, when I paid attention to LinkedIn again, I noticed that people were posting articles about this, or that. Someone told me that there is a mass move away from other platforms, and that LinkedIn was the platform where people mostly remained. LinkedIn happens to also be the only social media platform that I have ever really had an active account on (apart from twitter, for which I opened an account this year, to flag papers appearing from our lab). So, during the lock-down, I decided that I would begin blogging on LinkedIn, sending out posts, commenting upon this, or that, and also writing whole articles, in keeping with the wishes of the good friend who told me to do so.

But what was I to blog about? Did I have something of substance to say to the world? Honestly, the answer I found within was a clear ‘no’. What then? Did I think that I might have something to say that could be of some interest to a few who happen to stumble across these articles and relate to them? Oh, most definitely!

Just as it is often said that ‘there’s someone for everyone’ (usually in a romantic sense, of course), apparently there’s also someone for everyone in the sense of people who resonate with our thoughts about something, and constitute mutual audiences. In other words, there’s always a small number of people who have arrived, or nearly arrived, at several points of view that are quite similar to our own. It's just that we don't know them, or haven't ever met them. For want of a better expression to summarize either how, or why, such a thing does happen, one could say that people appear to pick up the same threads of thinking from the air, to arrive at similar points of view, when the time has come for them to think such thoughts.

I have seen this happening quite frequently in science. When one has an interesting idea, or insight, and one searches the internet databases to check out whether anyone else has also had similar thoughts, or done similar experiments, one usually finds that there are several others who are either tantalizingly close to arriving at the same (or similar) conclusions, or have already done so. ?

Therefore, given the diversity that is inherent to humanity, I am confident that there are some people who will stumble across a few of these articles, and read a few of them, when the time is right for them to do so; either by chance, or as an unintended consequence of searching/surfing for something else.

So, I am just writing these articles whenever I feel like writing them, and uploading them on LinkedIn, and leaving them there. By no means do I anticipate that my LinkedIn contacts will be interested, or have the time. So, please don't feel pressurized to read or react to any of them. I am just using LinkedIn as a depository/depositary (apparently the two spellings mean slightly different things). Maybe, I think, some contacts of direct contacts (i.e., 2nd or 3rd level contacts) will chance upon them. I have already seen evidence of this happening.

A teacher just discusses what he/she has to discuss whenever he/she feels like doing so. Sometimes, the subject interests one other person, and sometimes twenty, thirty or a hundred or more people. And that’s all that there is to that really. Now, if you got this far, you probably resonate a little bit with the style in which I happen to write these articles, or know me already, or are acquainted with me and somewhat interested in what I have to say (as there are people who are interested in every other human being upon this planet).

Some of these articles that I have written, am writing, or might write, extend well beyond my own expertise in a few fields of science. So, please do excuse me if I happen to write something that you find to be either wrong, or disagreeable, and well beyond my ken. Do enjoy the ones that you happen to read though, if any of them take your fancy.

Here's a compiled list of 46 (out of the 50) articles that are likely to be of general interest, providing areas and titles. Links show up at the bottom, as 'other articles by Purnananda Guptasarma'.

Society: attitudes, education, science (13 articles)

1. It’s time to dismantle the patriarchy
2. Thoughts about democracies (1): Foundation and perpetuation of a federal democratic republic
3. Thoughts about democracies (2): The necessary balance between freedom and restraint
4. Thoughts about democracies (3): A democracy is like a garden
5. Thoughts about democracies (4): Elections and referendums are the only ways to resolve differences of opinion in a mature democracy
6. Thoughts about democracies (5): No individual engagement between citizens of democracies can speak fully of the spirit and vibrancy of their nations
7. A profusion of ‘Antoinettes’
8. Structure determines behavior more through proximal fears than through distant fears
9. A talk containing some advice for young people doing science in India
10. Differences in the impacts of AI and ML upon science and engineering
11. Comparing modern society’s reduced prioritization of babies to its reduced prioritization of science, and the effects thereof
12. Co-existence & Reconciliation: What religions can learn from the systems of science and education
13. Are classrooms and attendance still relevant in this age of ennui and online materials? A case-study

Spirituality, esotericism or religion (9 articles)

1. 2020 has not changed the questions
2. The effects of galamantine: What dreams may come
3. The Fourier Transform as a simile for self-realization in spirituality: A journey from the time/space-domain into the frequency-domain
4. The vexing issue of free will (1): The ghost in the mustard seed
5. Co-existence & Reconciliation: What religions can learn from the systems of science and education
6. Light as a metaphor (for love and understanding)
7. Understanding Hinduism through a comparison with the DEI: An education-based analogy
8. The evolution of the human ego through stages: From 'my' way to the 'high' way
9. Reconciliation through emulsification: Building stable groupings of humans

Covid-19 (9 articles)

1. Diet-based chronic gut inflammation could predispose to severe Covid-19
2. Covid-19 Discussion 1: The Indian conundrum
3. Covid-19 Discussion 2: Vaccines, new variants and re-infections
4. Covid-19 Discussion 3: Everyone (including those vaccinated) must hedge their bets by continuing masks, distancing, sanitizers, and dietary changes
5. Covid-19 Discussion 4: While we wait…..
6. Covid-19 Discussion 5: The analogy of the seed
7. What causes some to have severe Covid-19 while others have mild Covid-19?
8. The coronavirus coronates our own gastronomic acts of hara-kiri
9. Natural or lab origin? We will probably never know

Science and Life-forms (5 articles)

1. The zygote (0): Resetting the gene orchestra to time zero and letting it play again, with minor variations
2. The zygote (1): The original von Neumann machine
3. The zygote (2): A self-replicating machine with a twist
4. The zygote (3): A conference of chromosomes
5. The zygote (4): The journey from totipotence to pluripotence to multipotence to oligopotence to unipotence to nilpotence, in the memory of omnipotence

Health (2 articles)

1. Is it necessary to treat traditional medicine with derision?
2. The importance of exposure to maladies early in life

Start-ups (2 articles)

1. Accidental student entrepreneurs
2. Death of a start-up

Book reviews (3 articles)

1. A new book about scientists’ attitudes
2. Itsy-Bitsy tales: A book that captures the magic of BITS Pilani in the eighties
3. Love in the age of ego: A book review

Articles about lectures that explain some scientific methods (4 articles)

1. A series of lectures on biomolecular mass spectrometry
2. A series of lectures on biomolecular (electronic and vibrational) spectroscopy
3. A series of lectures on biomolecular separations (revising concepts in electrophoresis and chromatography)
4. A short series of lectures introducing conventional, confocal and super-resolution microscopy of fluorescent biomolecules