An Ode to my Love

(A disclaimer to avoid confusions & misunderstanding: This is a symbolic ode representing the relationship between me and my religious faith, which has seen its ups, downs and plateaus. GBU :-) ) 


I am a lover, a lover who has lost his dear love; my dear love who seems to be eons away from me.
Hey, do not blame her, for it's not she who moved away, but me who is hiding myself away from her. Constantly calling out for me, waiting for my return, there she is; alas, I can't...


Yes, there she is; calling out to me with her outstretched arms, "Oh my dear,come back to me. Missing you harder than ever before". Yes dear, to be back with you is what I yearn, but the invisible rift between us! Crying and yearning to be back with you, but some force,unseen and unheard, is pulling me back again.


Each day, I wake up assuring myself, "Yes,today I will patch up our differences. I will be back with her again". But as helpless as I am, I am not able to. I know I owe a lot to you; I am what I am today because of you. You made me who I am today. To run away from you is something I can't eve fathom about; but this is what I am doing now! Oh no, I don't want to be away from you. Every single minute without you is like ages to me; together, every hour flies by.


Oh dear, these eyes of mine have seen a lot, a lot to reckon indeed. But, in the absence of your light, everything else becomes just shadows. Seen has these eyes a lot, too much to bear with.
The sight of them tearing you apart, O' my dear, I stood there watching helpless and weak.
Pounce upon u from darkness they did, digging their claws deep into your heart.
Snatch you away, from me they did, whilst killing you moment by moment. Used they neither daggers nor claws, but their talons and feathers hidden under their pristine hoods. 
Faces they concealed, hide they did their countenance.


Once their hoods gave away and revealed their faces; oh aghast, it could not be so!!!
Neither enemy nor any foe, but our very owns who destroyed you dear!
Sight of this could not I bear, no more could I help you dear.
Broken and shattered; my heart does ache,my limbs do tremble,speechless I am before thee now!


But, as dear as I am to you, I will be back here for you
No more a pacifist, here I am to rescue you
Yes dear, here I am to rescue you
Here I am to rescue you.

Bringing out the Hidden emotions

Internet has ushered in a new age of communication, shrinking the whole world into the legendary Global Village. Email and instant messaging have changed the way people communicate with one another and that too in every sense; now an email can communicate within seconds which the erstwhile snail mail used to take 1-2 weeks, that too in a much more economical way. Even though the technical evangelists would love to uphold these as a triumph of their networks and protocols, social anthropologists are noting a grave shift in the way people now approach the interpersonal relations. Even though the internet has enabled us to be more connected, the same tool is causing people to be more isolated, cuddled within their comfort zones, so that there is less of a person to person interaction.

Along with the exit of face to face communication is the extinction of one of the most important gifts of human communications, the emotions. As any Star Trek fan would recollect, Vulcans void of emotions, charting out everything through pure logic were not an easy race to deal with. Their ambassador, Spock, half-Human half-Vulcan, still displayed the lack of emotion in many of his interactions, much to the annoyance of his crew members (even though his logic was much revered and which made him one of the iconic characters of all time). Given the bland communication, through emails and chats, are we headed for a Vulcan kind of society? Something to be pondered on!

Now coming to the real intent of the article, well, it is not much about the danger of humans going into an unemotional mode, but more about how we can incorporate or deduce emotions from this new means. Whereas the author lacks any formal training in linguistics and other communication means, the inspiration has been derived from my personal experience in the modern wired means of communication. The thrust of the article would be on the methods to deduce the emotional level of the author while authoring an email, SMS or chat.

The written forms of instant communication such as Email, SMS or chat are by virtue devoid of emotions and it would be very difficult to assess the emotional state during penning down of the same. For example, a heartbroken lover, when conversing through telephone may exhibit the effects of the break up through the variations in his/her voice, pitch, tone etc., all of them which are absent in an EMail, say written to a different audience group. It is in such situations where the Mail Analysis can come into play, in an effective deducing mode. This follows from the fact that each person has a writing style, i.e. in usage of words, structuring of sentences, breakup of paragraphs or even usage of smileys. Even though this remains more or less the same, there does occur certain microdeviations from this usual manner. It is by observing these microdeviations that the emotional state can be deduced by reading a simple mail.

Microdeviations in the written communication are very much analogous to the microexpressions in the non-verbal personal communication. Micro expressions (made popular by the popular TV series, Lie to Me) are brief, involuntary facial expression, which may last for about 1/25^th of a second. It usually occurs when one tries to conceal a true emotion, like when lying, out of courtesy, trying to be diplomatic etc. Similarly, micro deviation is a slight change in the usage of words, sentence structuring, usage of punctuation, smileys etc. It could vary from usage of a common synonym for a word to the most common deviation, i.e. excess usage of punctuation, usually the period. It has been commonly observed that people tend to use multiple periods when they are in a happy/energetic mood, with a wide array of synonyms and paragraphs often are shorter, where as in a sad or gloomy mood, a single word will suffice throughout the mail, with conservative punctuation and longer paragraphs.

All said and done, the effectiveness of this method depends on the relation and acquaintance with the sender and his/her writing style. How could this be made into a structured process, which can be scaled and replicated? In the system I suggest, a collection of mails authored while in a normal mood can be used as the control set and with these in hand, a basic structure of the author’s style can be structured in terms of

I. Usage, or rather repetition of punctuations at each punctuation node

II. No. of synonyms for each of the words used in each mail

III. Length of sentences, in terms of words

IV. Length of paragraphs, in terms of sentences

V. Usage of smileys

After this, the calibrating set can be formed by using the mails authored while in certain mood. By comparing with the control set, the deviations in each of the 5 parameters can be checked upon and the deviations be noted. By having calibrating sets for various emotions, such as happy/sad/gloomy/angry etc., the deviation set for each of the emotions can be formed. In this process, a special form of adaptive regression can be used to make the most accurate set of deviations. After this is formed, it’s only a matter of click of a button for the algorithm to analyse each of the 5 elements, find the deviation and deduce the emotional state of the author. So, Jeffie thinks bringing out the hidden emotions brought out through Word Analysis is possible!

Science makes Telekinesis possbile!

Telekinesis, made popular by Sylar (Heroes) and Jeane Grey ( X-Men), is the ability to move objects without physical contact, using power of mind. This ability has appeared in various fables in a wide time horizon, ranging from the ancient sagas to the modern Sci-Fi thrillers. In the ancient texts, the source of this power emanates from a stronger psychic power, developed through meditation, focus etc. , whereas the modern flicks take help of modern technology or DNA mutations! Fantasies aside, is telekinesis actually possible? Will we able to actually move objects without any physical contact?(Hey, using an air blower is NOT an answer!) Well, this may be possible in not so distant future, thanks to developments in particle physics.

The premise for this expectation is the way in which particles interact in the nature. Any science student would know that there 4 basic forces in nature i) Strong, ii)Weak, iii)Electromagentic and iv) Gravitational forces. For this discussion, let us focus on the Electromagnetic and Gravitational forces. Electromagentic(EM) forces, defined as the force between all particles having an electric charge, is theoretically a long range force(but diminishes after 1m or so) which is responsible for the things we take for granted, such as static, friction, magnetism etc. Similarly, gravitational force, a more popular one thanks to Newton & the apple incident, is a long range force which attracts two bodies together. Whereas EM force is stronger on atomic scale, gravitational force is negligible in the atomic range and becomes significant only when the bodies approach huge sizes.

But how exactly do these two forces, forming the core of physics, relate to the esoteric field of telekinesis? Well, from a scientific viewpoint, what telekinesis does is tweaking the attractive/repulsive forces, in order to set the target object in a state of motion in the desired direction. So, in order to do telekinesis, what one has to do is to employ the forces in proper direction and magnitude. Hmmm, now telekinesis does not seem to be much of esoteric stuff than a push-pull phenomenon! An 'attractive' feature of electromagnetic forces is that, whenever a body attains a specific charge, it 'forces' its adjoining body to acquire the opposite charge, and voilà, the opposites attract! Therefore, by careful manipulation of EM charges, one can easily (maybe not that easily) attract the other body(gosh, only if it were applicable in case of humans too; blame the 'ability to think'). Also, likes repel(maybe this is the particle science version of jealousy). So, inducing like charges on adjoining surfaces can also bring about the repulsion, or in layman terms, the throwing-away effect.

Ok, sounds good till here, but the given the fact that EM forces, unlike light, do not traverse a straight path, how do you intend to point-and-shoot a body to attract/repel it? Well, a sound argument indeed!Wait, wait, did you say sound? Sound also travels like the EM waves, not in a straight path. Oh yes, thankfully, acoustic science is very advanced and scientists have already found out means to channelise sound in a linear path, much like light! In the technique pioneered by some Chinese scientists (apologies for not remembering their names; had read about this way back in my 11th) and then taken forward by some defence contractors (once saw the demonstration in Discovery Channel), the sound waves have been tamed and tricked into following a straight path so that point-and-shout is actually possible. Hmmm, so could this be directly employed for EM forces? The issue is that sound, as we perceive, is in fact just some pressure variations in a fluid (hence no sound in vacuum), and EM forces is entirely a different ball game; but this work does give some leads into the direction to ponder.

So far so good; moving objects without contact maybe possible one day. But telekinesis meant moving objects using will power, and not using any dials or instruments. Science buffs may argue that this definition is by, to and for the ones with an esoteric bend. Nevertheless, Science, the wonderful babe she is, offers a solution for this too. Like the stereotypical Peruvians, here comes Neuroscience! Neurology, often, and unfortunately, semantically confused with nephrology, is the science which studies the brain cells(the neurons). The most sophisticated organ in your body, your brain functions using numerous chemicals and electrical impulses,latter being the faster means of communication; and it is this electrical impulse, which has helped us in various diagnostic methods, brain mapping, neuro marketing etc. With a fairly advanced capturing technology, it is possible to capture the brain waves (alpha, beta, zeta, gamma and maybe some new ones) and with some good old precise calibration, one day it may be possible to directly translate the thoughts into electrical signals. Far fetched it may seem, but the technology is already in function, albeit in a limited and a primordial level. So, marrying these two futuristic technologies, Telekinesis do not seem so far away! Well initially, the telekinetic contraption to lift a pen may be a giant MRI sort of machine, but everyone knows the story of ENIAC-to-Nanochips! So, Jeffie thinks Science makes telekinesis possible.

Genesis!

Unto GOD I offer this blog...To the Supreme being who gave us the power to think...Who made us what we are...Unto His abundant mercy, I offer my thanks... Hallelujah!