Summer is here but where are the Mangoes?

The Advent of Summer

Summer is back. And with a bang. It has been very difficult attending the afternoon classes of late. With temperatures soaring to 40 degrees and the point of maxima not in sight, the question that is crossing everybody’s mind is: where are the mangoes?

When will the Mess catch up?

The Mess is late to catch up (as usual. What is new in that?). (Tomato/whatever) soup that was being dished out in the winter was replaced with oranges last week! Imagine, oranges in summer! Yuk, it sucked big time. Mess food won’t change. You do what you want – change the administration, mess committee members or hike the funds, but mess food will always be vegetables floating in a pool of oil. I guess expecting mangoes in mess is expecting a little too much.

Apart from being a delicious fruit (what is an orange when compared to a mango. After all, it is the king of fruits!), it has a high nutritional value as well. Mangoes are an excellent source of vitamin C and vitamin A, both important antioxidant nutrients. That gives us one more reason to have mangoes at Mess. (Mess committee members – make a note of that.)

Go Green Go Mango

As a young boy, I have fond memories of eating mangoes (lots and lots of them) so that I could plant mango trees as part of my summer vacation project work (That’s tree plantation for you.) I loved mango juice more than any other form of juice and mango flavoured ice-cream has been my all time favourite.

My Favourites

Gud-Aam chutney (mango in jaggery), a speciality of Bengal I believe can be an amazing dish to finish off one’s lunch with. Not to mention the dozen other pickles and jams that are mango flavoured. Add mango to a dish and you have a sumptuous dish from an otherwise bland dish. This tropical fruit can do wonders.

With the hope that I’ll have lots of delicious mangoes this summer, I sign off this post. Do check out my new Mango Django Jazzonomics template. And yeah, if you haven’t subscribed to Jazzonomics already, you can subscribe by clicking here and continue receiving regular updates this summer.

Subjectivity vs Objectivity

This is a question that has been haranguing me for a long time. Should one put subjectivity over objectivity or objectivity over subjectivity.

The Board Exams

When I was in Xth, I was taught that I had to present my matter well in the Board exams because the examiner got paid very poorly for the answer-scripts. So, I should try and make things easier for him. And that I did, with wonderful results.

However, it has led me to think about the candidates who were as good if not better than me but ended up with lower marks just because they could not present the matter well.

Step Marking

But then came along IIT. Either you get a zero or full marks. Nothing in between. Nothing for knowing how to go about it. They said it was a question of lives. If you designed a faulty bridge that collapsed, you had failed. You couldn’t go around saying that you had designed the method by the right method. It was the classic case of operation successful but patient dead.

They had a point. But what could they expect out of candidates in 3 hours of tense exam? Shouldn’t they be awarding step marks?

Why I like sports

The best thing about sports is the objectivity. You are either first or you aren’t. Either you ran the race in 10 seconds or you didn’t. You either lifted 100 kgs or you didn’t. Nobody can counter you on that point. Either it is or it isn’t. No middle ground.

And why I hate politics

Politics in the generic sense which pervades our daily lives. For me, it would possibly be the Hall, Kgp elections, interviews and so and so forth. I have felt it is all subjective. What may be good for me may not be good for you. What I like you don’t. What is a perfect answer for me in an interview is possibly the worst answer you could possibly think of.

So, is the verdict in favour of Objectivity? Not really. I wouldn’t want to flunk an exam just because it wasn’t my day. I knew the things but it was just that – it wasn’t my day. Shouldn’t you be awarding me for the hard work that I put in through the year? And oh! nobody would be reading my blog if it was either good or bad. Nothing in between.

What is your opinion? Subjectivity or Objectivity?

The Physics of Weightlifting

After months of practise, hard work (typical ain’t it?) has yielded results. The medal at open IIT Powerlifting reaffirmed some of my beliefs of the alchemical process

1. Mentors play a very significant if not pivotal role.
2. One has to be inebriated by hope and leave the rest to chance. (I am not much of a believer of a greater Force, but I do believe in the chance mechanism)
3. Independent thought is necessary in any endeavour.

Although some of my readers may argue that all you need to do for weightlifting is eat eggs and lift weights, I am afraid that your view of weightlifting is at best naive. For the IITian, it is always doing with understanding.

A Question of Torque

Any layman could tell you that you have to balance the weights if you can hope to lift any significant weight. If the weights aren’t balanced you are going to have a tough time. If we assume the rod to have homogenous density, then the length of the rod should be equal on both sides.

Minimizing the work done

Why is a bench press done with an arched back? To minimize the distance travelled and hence the work done (W = Fs). As elementary as that.

Components of Force

A deadlift is always done with the shoulders and the arms in the vertical plane. What does it ensure? You get the entire force of your arms to be working against the gravity. The moment there is an angle, the horizontal component of force comes in and energy is wasted.

Yin and Yang

The grip for a deadlift is always complementary. If one hand  grips the bar with an open palm, the other with a closed palm. As you can see in the diagram below, this way the horizontal component of the force gets cancelled and the bar remains in firm grip.

Ok, so that is how an IITian would lift weights. I hope I have changed the viewpoint of many who believed that weightlifting was all brawn and no brains.