Potpourri

This semester, Prof. Arvind is offering a lecture series on the issues related to randomness and hardness, extractors, expanders and error correcting codes. Last 5 lectures he has been talking about randomness and hardness. For the first time I have had such a great introduction to the topic. I shall now write a small summary of few issues discussed during these lectures. But only techinical issues are infact from the lecture. All the other junk is self cooked, so please excuse Arvind if any errors below. First of all why should one try to relate randomness and hardness? Lets eavesdrop on the following conversation. A: You are always doing something unexpected B: Why what happened...? A: I mean, "knowing you so long" I felt you would have said 'yes' to join for picnic...but you are "truly random" B: truly random?? A: yes, very very "hard" for me to predict.. As is evident, 'random' and 'hard to predict' are almost synonymous phrases...

Wachowski brothers never say anything for the heck of it. They say something only when they have some concrete thoughts. Its amazing how they can bring in entertainment and philosophy together. In this god forsaken city-Chennai- the movie never showed in the theatre. But I got my hand on it, and that was it. I loved the movie. The movie gives us another way to look at terror, and the government. Few days back there was terrifying incident of blasts in Mumbai. Two days back, there was news about explosives found in the air planes at london. The war in Isarael is being covered by the media. What you and I hear are the reports from the media. The 'truth' they say is covered. However, we all know what we hear is not simply the truth but the interpretation of truths. If today's government wants us to know that blasts happened and certain community was involved in it, we will definitely get to hear that from the media. Where as, if government didn't wish to tell us, media wil...