Yantrakaal

  Bust of goddess Kali visualised as a young, beautiful Bengali woman, with her tongue stuck out in a mischievous manner. Her face is a clean geometric pattern of colours framed by her long, black, wavy hair. She has a seductive smile, with large sweeping eyes whose eyeballs are blazing gems of colour. In the background we see the skyline of Kolkata including the Howrah bridge. impressionist style, minimalist. Bust of goddess Kali visualised as a young, beautiful Bengali woman, with her tongue stuck out in a mischievous manner. Her face is a clean geometric pattern of colours framed by her long, black, wavy hair. She has a dark complexion, a seductive smile, with large sweeping eyes whose eyeballs are blazing gems of colour. In the background we see the skyline of Kolkata including the Howrah bridge and tall skyscrapers. Pop art style, minimalist. Bust of goddess Kali visualised as a young, beautiful Bengali woman, with her tongue stuck out in a mischievous manner. Her face is a cl...

  Face of goddess Kali, visualised as the face of a young bengali woman with her tongue stuck out in a mischievous manner. Her face is a pattern of multiple colours framed by her long, dark, wavy hair. She has a seductive smile, with large sweeping eyes whose eyeballs are blazing gems of colour. On her neck is a necklace that shows the Kolkata skyline with Howrah bridge. art deco style, minimalist. Face of goddess Kali, visualised as the face of a young bengali woman with her tongue stuck out in a mischievous manner. Her face is a riot of colours framed by her long, dark, wavy hair. She has a smiling visage, with large sweeping eyes whose eyeballs appears a jigsaw puzzle. On her neck is a necklace that shows the Kolkata skyline with howrah bridge. Impressionist style minimalist. Face of goddess Kali visualised as a young, beautiful Bengali woman with her tongue stuck out in a mischievous manner. Her face is a pattern of multiple colours framed by her long, black, wavy hair. She has...

 This is how much the sun moves North in one week 25th April 2024 19th April 2024

 Rabindra Sarobar, also known as Dhakuria Lake, or simply The Lake, is one of the most pleasant of all public spaces in Kolkata. But today, The Lakes are in a terrible shape because the water-level has been falling precipitously because (a) The construction of the Metro Rail had blocked a channel through which water from the Adi Ganga used to enter The Lakes (b) Rainfall has been low for the past couple of years and (c) Falling water table because of extensive withdrawal of ground water. One way to fix this problem is to build a pipeline and a pumphouse to carry Adi Ganga water and this is not very difficult at at all. The map below shows the shortest path -- approximately 900 m --  along which the pipeline can be laid, without trespassing on any private property, but only following the Eastern Railway lines. This idea along with this map has been repeatedly shared with KMDA, the public body responsible for the maintenance of The Lake but has elicited no response. Looks like w...

 Neosapience -- which is my word for artificial intelligence (AI) -- is obviously all over the news. From self driving cars to ChatGPT ( technically, large language models) this new 'technology' has not only taken the world by storm but threatens certain core financial and social constructs that define human society . There is however a counter-view that claims that neo sapiens (AI programs or silicon intelligence) can never supersede the original homo sapiens (carbon based humans and animals) because they are being 'programmed' or built by humans. Continuing on this theme, it is argued because neo sapiens are being built by homo sapiens, they are at best an imitation of the original creators and so cannot be anything new, different or superior to what the originals are. Hence, humanity is safe from a takeover by neosapience. In this article, we argue why this is not true. But to begin with what is intelligence? A simple, straightforward definition is unlikely to satisf...

  Why is 42  a special number? The number 42 is, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, the "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything", calculated by an enormous supercomputer named Deep Thought over a period of 7.5 million years. This slide deck  (with 42 slides) demonstrates a wide variety of SQL statements that should meet almost every common requirement faced by data scientists. The accompanying Google Colab Notebook will allow the user to install Postgres in a free VM and explore variations of these commands. Here is the full course outline for my brand new RDBMS course, complete with all slide decks and notebooks.    Happy New Year 2024