Tuesday 8 June 2021

The Pursuit of God, A. W. Tozer

https://bible.org/series/pursuit-god

1. Following Hard after God

  • Do you want to pursue God and only God?
  • God has put the desire in us to pursue Him.
  • I, the seeker, is already in God's hands.
  • Seeker sought (Zacchaeus)
  • conscious, personal awareness
  • too much focus on "accepting" Christ (not seen in the Scripture; the Pentecostal faith, baptism, religious externals)
  • religious simplicity (personal experience, read a book, talk a walk in the woods) vs. religious complexity (programs, organizations, movements)
  • pursue only God (instead of God-and)

2. Blessedness of Possessing Nothing

  • What is the first barrier that keeps you away from God?
  • Abraham was rich and owned servants, cattle but possessed nothing
  • "tyranny of things"
  • poor in spirit (soul poverty, beatitude)
  • intangible assets (talents, gifts)

3. Breaking the Veil

  • What is the second barrier that keeps you away from God?
  • Two kinds of prison: remember Brooks in Shawshank Redemption; the physical prison and the mental prison
  • Let go of ego.
  • Self is the veil.
  • Mother Teresa, Father Damien, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi

"Self is the opaque veil that hides the face of God from us. It can be removed only in spiritual experience, never by mere instruction. We may as well try to instruct leprosy out of our system. There must be a work of God in destruction before we are free. We must invite the cross to do its deadly work within us."

4. Apprehending ("Understanding") God

  • God and the spiritual world are real.
  • It is possible for us to experience God with all the five senses (sight, hear, smell, taste, touch). I believe this nature of God manifests itself in Jesus, the second person in the Trinity.
  • intimate relationship ("bhakti tradition")
  • A Christian's beliefs are practical (healing, miracles of prophets, Jesus).
  • The object of a Christian's faith is unseen reality. Remember Hebrews 11: 1 ("Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and being certain of what we do not see."). It is not mere ideas or abstract, but tangible and concrete.

5. The Universal Presence

  • God is here.

6. The Speaking God

  • God is still speaking.
  • The Word of God -> The Voice of God ("the donkey that talks, the book that speaks")
  • The heavens *declare* the glory of God; the skies *proclaim* the works of His hands.
  • The Word of God is quick and powerful. In the beginning, He spoke to nothing and it became something.
  • The Voice of God is a friendly Voice.
  • Voice vs. Noise
  • The Deaf Maestro

7. The Gaze of the Soul

  • What is faith? Do I have faith?
  • Believing is Seeing (vs. Seeing is Believing).
  • Directing our attention to God is the physical manifestation of our faith.
  • remember The Serpent on the Pole
  • the act of seeing (simple act, can be done anywhere and anytime, no religious paraphernalia)
  • The Twin Sisters (and their Twin Husbands)

"അവങ്കലേക്ക് നോക്കിയവർ പ്രകാശിതരായി, അവരുടെ മുഖം ലജ്ജിച്ചു പോയതുമില്ല." (സങ്കി 34:5)

8. Restoring the Creator-Creature Relationship

  • Be Thou exalted!
  • over my possessions, friendships, comforts, reputation
  • consequences: Eli and two sons, Samson
  • OTOH, God does not mind our weaknesses: fishermen as disciples, Moses
  • The choices that we make reflect our faith (God vs. money, God vs. human love, God vs. personal ambition, God vs. self, God vs. men, ...)
  • Christian life ought to be simplistic, easy yoke, light burden, not complicated

9. Meekness and Rest

  • burden of pride
  • burden of pretence
  • become as little children (no pride or pretence)
  • no pride --> meek --> rest
  • meekness != punching bag; meekness boldness
  • not people-pleaser, but God-pleaser --> rest

"Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest"

10. The Sacrament of Living

  • sacred (praying, Bible reading, singing hymns, attending church) vs. secular (eating, working, playing) dichotomy
  • in everything, honour, glorify God

Tuesday 1 June 2021

Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans, Melanie Mitchell

Prologue; Part I:  BACKGROUND

The goal of AI is, supposedly, to solve intelligence and use it to solve everything else.

The main hypothesis behind the creation of AI is that any aspect of learning or intelligence can be simulated by a machine. Brain is composed of cells, neurons, and matter that obey laws of physics.

Two problems associated with the development of AI are: (1) people are rushing blindly and deliriously to create AI without giving a thought on its implications, and (2) the trivialization of humanity (emotions, society, music, art, games, movies, literature).

Technological singularity is the point at which machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence, which leads to an intelligence explosion. This happens because an intelligent being is capable of creating an even more-intelligent being. Ray Kurzweil is a proponent of technological singularity and forecasts that singularity is imminent in a few decades. Ray Kurzweil attributes his prediction to exponential growth, Moore's law, neuroscience, virtual reality. He also predicts that a computer will pass the Turing Test by 2029. The two main arguments of his sceptics are: (1) intelligence does not reside solely in the brain; that all the senses associated with the human body are necessary for intelligence to operate (social intelligence, emotional intelligence), and (2) software has not shown any exponential progress.

PART II: COMPUTER VISION

ImageNet (~WordNet) is a dataset of images built with the help of annotators recruited using Amazon Mechanical Turk. AlexNet solved the task of object identification in ImageNet using convolutional neural-networks (ConvNet) and GPUs.

Some technical challenges to AI are (1) the long tail, (2) easy to fool (adversarial examples), (3) bias, (4) supervised learning is not how humans learn; unsupervised learning is the dark matter of AI, (5) data-hungry systems "big data", need a lot of labelled data, (6) inability to interpret the results "show your work", (7) spurious correlation "clever Hans", (8) rely on human understanding of the task in model design, hyperparameter tuning.

We already use AI systems in our day-to-day lives: recommender systems (Amazon, YouTube), web search engines (Google Search, Microsoft Bing), translators (Google Translate, DeepL), personal digital assistants (Alexa, Cortana, Siri). However there are some issues of dispute and concern. How to enforce ethics in AI? How to regulate development and deployment of AI especially in domains such as mass surveillance, face recognition, and arms race? Do we need to teach morality to machines "moral machines"?

Part III: LEARNING TO PLAY

Reinforcement Learning (RL)

Reinforcement learning is a type of machine learning in which the agent learns by itself through reinforcement (rewards) from the environment. Humans learn to ride the bicycle through a similar process. 

The primary approach in RL is to learn the Q-table through multiple episodes (one episode corresponds to a complete game of Breakthrough) and multiple iterations (one iteration corresponds to a single action such as one move). An evaluation function evaluates the current states and predicts the next move by exploiting and exploring the set of values for each possible action. These value of an action indicates the agent's estimate of the reward at the end of the episode if that action is chosen at a given state.

For domains with simple state description, computing the Q-table is easier.  The objective then is to compute values of each action at every possible state. However for complex domains such as self-driving cars which can have inputs from thousands of sensors, neural networks can be used to process the input and generate the state description. These neural networks can then group similar states together through its state representation.

Game Engines

Traditionally, game engines such as IBM Deep Blue (vs. Garry Kasparov, 1997) relied on game trees and pruning algorithms such as minimax. However generating the game tree in real-time for games such as Go proved to be difficult even with sophisticated computing power.

With the advent of deep learning, it has been shown that it is possible to learn the Q-table through the use of neural networks. These Deep Q-Networks (DQN) employed a technique called temporal difference learning, which is based on the hypothesis that the evaluation function becomes more accurate as the games proceeds. 

DeepMind developed AI game engines that relied on deep Q-learning on Atari games and Go (AlphaGo vs Lee Sedol, 2016) Specifically, AlphaGo employed a combination of techniques: convolutional neural networks, deep Q-learning, Monte Carlo tree search and powerful hardware.

Simulation to Reality

However it is difficult to transfer the knowledge gained by the agent to other domains (due to lack of understanding or capabilities of abstraction or transfer learning) or into the real-world (due to ambiguity, noise, unpredictability). These models are also vulnerable to adversarial examples.

While board games or Atari games are easy to solve by current AI systems, these domains are not so challenging. The simple game of dumb charades will be much more harder because the game requires visual, linguistic and social understanding.

Moreover, though it is claimed that the RL agents are capable of learning by themselves without any specialized domain knowledge, the agent receive some amount of guidance through the choice of model architecture and hyperparameters.

PART IV: NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING (NLP)

AI has been very successful in speech recognition.

The use of language is a major hallmark of human intelligence. Reading and writing are specific to humans. Humans all over the world talk. The main component of the Turing Test is language.

The recent advances in NLP can be attributed to  word embeddings (which are based on distributional semantics), recurrent neural networks and pre-trained language model (GPT-2, BERT).

Machine translation is an active research area. Though machines perform well, the evaluation method (BLUE score) is flawed. They make mistakes. They are vulnerable to adversarial examples or in the presence of noise (e.g. grammatical errors, SMS text). They do not work well on low-resource languages (e.g. Indian languages).

Question answering is another active research area. IBM Watson beat the world champion in the quiz show Jeopardy! Though digital personal assistants such as Siri, Cortana, Alexa perform question-answering, typically they perform mere answer retrieval. 

PART V: MEANING AND UNDERSTANDING 

The primary traits of human intelligence are the following: 

  • intuitive physics (e.g. world is composed of objects, objects have weight), intuitive biology (e.g. that there are animate and inanimate objects), intuitive psychology (social intelligence), 
  • knowledge of abstract and concrete concepts (metaphor), abstraction (ability to generalize between concepts) and analogy making (identify common essence between two concepts), 
  • cause and effect (e.g. if we push an object, the objects moves unless it is heavy or pulled by somebody else), predict possible futures,  simulate counterfactual events (e.g. tsunami in Heidelberg), ability to reason (use knowledge), 
  • self-awareness (consciousness)

Bongard problems are designed to test the abstraction and analogy-making skills of AI. Copycat was an approach that tested these skills in a microworld --- the letter-string domain.

Cyc is an ongoing project to teach machines common-sense.

Humans have the power of metacognition, in addition of cognition. We can think about, and reason on, what we think and what others think.

Q1: How soon are self-driving cars going to a reality? Ans: We're still far, far away from developing fully  autonomous vehicles.

Q2: Will AI replace all jobs? Ans: AI will likely create a new set of jobs. AI will replace low--pay, boring, degrading, dangerous jobs.

Q3: Should we be scared of AI? Ans: Humans need not be scared of super-intelligence; at least for the next couple of decades. However we should be worried about the reckless rush to deploy AI in all spheres of life without understanding intelligence, and capabilities and vulnerabilities of AI.

Q4: Can machines be creative? Ans: Most AI systems need a human in the loop. Seemingly creative systems such as AI relied on Cope's knowledge about music, algorithm design, and selection of music. More importantly, EMI was not capable enough to judge or appreciate its own music. EMI did not "understand" music, time signatures, rhythm, tune and many other concepts related to music and composition.

What makes us proud is not only the ability to produce music, but also the ability to appreciate it, the ability to comprehend what it communicates.

Thursday 20 May 2021

Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker

These are the key points I found in the book "Why We Sleep" by Dr. Matthew Walker.

PART 1: WHAT IS SLEEP

7-9 hours of sleep per day
sleep vs. evolution (unintuitive)

circadian rhythm (>24 hours), biological clock, suprachiasmatic nucleus, melatonin
adenosine (sleep drug)

jet lag: eastward (harder) vs. westward travel (easier); falling asleep ahead of usual time is harder
caffeine, vs. adenosine, processed by liver, half life of 7-8 hours
morning larks vs. night owls

How to identify sleep? (1) lack of external awareness; (2) easy to reverse (vs. anaesthesia, coma, hibernation, death); (3) posture; (4) time; (5) relaxed muscles; and () time distortion.

Sleep stages:
 - 90 minutes cycles
 - REM (dream sleep, paradoxical sleep) and NREM stages
 - AM (low frequency, coordinated pulses, deep sleep, during NREM) vs. FM (high frequency, REM)
 - REM atonia: muscle paralysis during REM sleep; to avoid acting out the dreams
 - wakefulness (reception), NREM sleep (reflection), REM sleep (integration)

Differences in sleep across species: (1) duration (4--22 hours); (2) pattern (monophasic, biphasic); (3) composition of NREM/REM stages); and (4) extreme situation (e.g. migratory birds undergo sleep fast, one half or both halves of the brain inactive).

Sleep rebound (catchup lost sleep)

Human sleep: (1) includes higher proportion of REM stages; (2) exclusive terrestrial sleepers.

PART 2: WHY SHOULD YOU SLEEP

Memory (NREM stage):  (1) free-up temporary storage (hippocampus); (2) consolidate memory to permanent storage (cortex); and (3) muscle memory, motor skills.

Creativity (REM stage): dream sleep

power nap: not a substitute for full-night sleep
microsleep - e.g falling asleep at the wheel
sleep inertia
sleepless elite

Consequences of sleep deprivation: (1) lack of concentration; (2) emotional irrationality; (3) psychiatric, mental illnesses (e.g. schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder); (4) higher risk of heart attack, diabetes, weight gain

PART 3: DREAM

 - psychotic: hallucination, delusional, disoriented , labile (mood swing), amnesia
 - not a replay of daytime events
 - strong activation in visual, motor, emotional and memory (hippocampus) regions of the brain, yet a relative deactivation of rational thought (prefrontal cortex)
 - repair emotional wounds, social skills, PTSD
 - creativity, problem-solving skills (e.g. Mendeleev), "sleep on it"

PART 4: FROM SLEEPING PILLS TO SOCIETY TRANSFORMED

Sleep disorders (Chapter 12): (1) somnambulism (sleep walking; trouble with REM sleep); (2) insomnia (inability to sleep; emotional distress); (3) narcolepsy (excessive sleeping; trouble with release of orexin); (4) fatal familial insomnia (hereditary); and (5) sleep apnoea.

Sleep indicators (for the brain): (1) reduction of heart rate; (2) reduction of blood pressure; (3) reduction of metabolism (no late night dinner); and (4)
 lowering of core body temperature.

sleep opportunity
beauty sleep
short sleep
sleep deprivation = food deprivation

Improve sleep quality (Chapter 13):
 - melatonin release increases with sunset (drop in sunlight, temperature)
 - humans are predominantly visual creatures
 - lighting (yellow incandescent vs. blue LED; lowered, dim light in the evening)
temperature (wash face, feet and hands with cold water; hot bath;)
 - 18.3 degree Celsius is the optimum temperature for sleep.
 - alcohol (sedation and not sleep)
 - avoid alarm clock, avoid snooze button

"Modern society has taken nature's perfect solution (sleep) and divided it into two problems: (1) lack of sleep at night, (2) inability to remain fully awake during the day."

Sleeping pills (Chapter 14): (1) do not induce natural sleep; (2) not the perfect cure for insomnia; (3) belong to the class of drugs called sedatives; (4) rebound insomnia; and (5) withdrawal symptoms.

CBT-I (cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia)

Health Trinity: balanced diet, proper exercise, sound sleep

do not go to bed too hungry or too full
avoid excess carbs, sugar
get workout a few hours before bedtime

Sleep and Society (Chapter 15): (1) sleep loss declared as global health epidemic (WHO); (2) sleep deprivation vs. ADHD; (3) relaxed approach to work schedules; (4) sleep deprivation among employees, students, doctors; and (5) 22 hours without sleep = legally drunk.

 Useful Links: 

  1. Blog post 
  2. www.sleepfoundation.org

Friday 14 May 2021

Chapter 2: Chernobyl Prayer, Svetlana Alexievich

Please find below a few of the mind-numbing, heart-wrenching statements I found in Chapter 2 of  "Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster" by Svetlana Alexievich.

Mother:
"She's disabled from Chernobyl."
 
Lecturer:
"In the days straight after the accident, all the books on radiation - on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even on X-rays - vanished from the library."
 
"There was even a joke that, if Chernobyl had exploded on Papua New Guinea, everyone but Papuans would be shaking with fear."
 
Hunter:
"They were excited to see us, came running to a human voice. They welcomed us."
 
Pripyat resident:
"But the words rang in my ears: `My dear, for some people procreation would be a sin.'"
 
Photographer:
"It wasn't obvious what to film. Nothing was blowing up anywhere." [silent killer; in stealth-mode]
 
Teachers:
"There is nothing that can surprise them, and nothing that can cheer them up."
 
Journalist:
"For the third month they are telling us on the radio, `The situation is stablilizing...The situation is stabilizing...The situation is stabilizing...'"
 
Academic:
"Because they will always go together in history: the downfall of Socialism and the Chernobyl disaster."
 
"From the viewpoint of our culture, thinking about yourself was selfish. It showed a lack of spirit. There was always something more important than you and your life."
 
Agricultural Scientist:
"Everybody is shouting that it's not possible to live on that land, but I say it is. We need to learn how to live on it."
 
The Folk Choir:
"If I had known what was going to happen, I would have shut the door, stood blocking the front entrance and locked them all ten times over..."

Sunday 9 May 2021

വാക്യങ്ങൾ

സംസ്‌കൃതം

  1. ലോകാഃ സമസ്താഃ സുഖിനോ ഭവന്തു
  2. തത്വമസി; അഹം ബ്രഹ്മാസ്മി
  3. ... വസുധൈവ കുടുംബഗം
  4. യദാ യദാ ഹി ധര്‍മസ്യഗ്ലാനിര്‍ ഭവതി ഭാരത || അഭ്യുത്ഥാനമധര്‍മസ്യ തദാത്മാനം സൃജാമ്യഹം || പരിത്രാണായ സാധൂനാം വിനാശായ ച ദുഷ്കൃതാം || ധര്‍മസംസ്ഥാപനാര്‍ഥായ സംഭവാമി യുഗേ യുഗേ (ഗീത)  
  5. ഉടുരാജമുഖി മൃഗരാജകടി
    ഗജരാജവിരാജിത മന്ദഗതി
    ... 

മലയാളം

  1. വെളിച്ചം ദുഃഖമാണുണ്ണി, തമസ്സല്ലോ സുഖപ്രദം
  2. പ്രേമമാണഖിലസാരവുമൂഴിയിൽ …
  3. ജാതിഭേദം മതദ്വേഷം || ഏതുമില്ലാതെ സർവരും || സോദരത്വേന വാഴുന്ന || മാതൃക സ്ഥാനമാണിത്
    (ശ്രീ നാരായണ ഗുരു)
  4. നരനായിങ്ങനെ ജനിച്ചു ഭൂമിയിൽ || നരകവാരിധിനടുവിൽ ഞാൻ || ഈ നരകത്തീന്നെന്നെ കരകേറ്റീടേണം || തിരുവൈക്കം വാഴും ശിവ ശംഭോ
  5. കണ്ടു കണ്ടു കണ്ടങ്ങിരിക്കും ജനങ്ങളെ || കണ്ടില്ലെന്നു വരുത്തുന്നതും ഭവാൻ || രണ്ടുനാലു ദിനം കൊണ്ടൊരുത്തനെ || തണ്ടിലേറ്റി നടത്തുന്നതും ഭവാൻ || മാളിക മുകളിലേറിയ മന്നന്റെ തോളിൽ
    മാറാപ്പു കേറ്റുന്നതും ഭവാൻ (ജ്ഞാനപ്പാന, പൂന്താനം)
  6.  

Thursday 1 April 2021

Chapter 1: Chernobyl Prayer, Svetlana Alexievich

Please find below a few of the mind-numbing, heart-wrenching statements I found in Chapter 1 of  "Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster" by Svetlana Alexievich.
 
The scientist:
"I thought the worst was behind me, the war years, and that now I was safe."
 
The father:
"I want to testify: my daughter died from Chernobyl. But they want us to keep quiet."
 
The returnees:
"My good husband liked to say man pulls the trigger, but God carries the bullet."
 
"You just need to live. That's all."
 
"Two Chernobyl women are chatting. One says, `Have you heard, everyone's got the white blood cancer now?' The other says, `Rubbish! Yesterday I cut my finger and the blood was red.'"
 
"Laugh and the world laughs with you. There's a Ukrainian woman selling big red apples at the market. She was touting her wares: `Come and get them! Apples from Chernobyl!' Someone told her, `Don't advertise the fact that they're from Chernobyl, love. No one will buy them.' `Don't you believe it! They're selling well! People buy them for their mother-in-law or their boss!"
 
"As they say, the place where you were born is where you belong."
 
"...this is an act of betrayal."
 
"Your children only bring you joy while they are little."
 
"Why did that Chernobyl blow up? Some say it's the scientists to blame. Trying to catch God by the beard, and He has the last laugh. And it's us that suffer!"
 
"It has been two years since we stopped drifting about those strange places and came back home."
 
"Find Anna Sushko for us...She's got a hump, been mute since childhood...The whole village cared about her."
 
The refugees:
"And the bandits asked us: `Is it Kulobi or Pamiri?'"
 
"Who would I give birth to, with my soul dead?"
 
"One life is over, and I don't have the strength for another one."
 
"The Ukranian word for `wormwood' is Chernobyl."
 
"Man is crafty only in evil, but he's so simple and open in his plain words of love."
 
The Soldier's Choir:
"We got home. I took everything off, all the stuff I'd been wearing...I gave the cap to my little son, as a present. He kept asking for it. He wore it non-stop. Two years later, he was diagnosed with a brain tumour." [the ignorance among the liquidators on the danger of radiation]
 
"When I got back from Afghanistan, I knew I'd live. After Chernobyl, the opposite was true."
 
"The doctor wouldn't touch a thing." [lack of transparency]
 
"You're a Chernobyl guy now. Who'd want to marry you?"
 
"As we said, battling the atom with spades! In the twentieth century."
 
"Then, of course, they got us to sign some form. A non-disclosure agreement."
 
"Out there, death was an everyday reality. It was no mystery." [Chernobyl vs. Afghanistan]
 
"After my nine operations and two hearts attacks, I don't judge anyone any more."
 
"A job for real men!" [heroic urge, sense of adventure]
 
"But it was clear their [robots'] insides has been fried by the high doses of radiation."

Monday 29 March 2021

The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis

These are the titles I came up with for each chapter in the book:


Chapter 1: The omnibus
Chapter 2: The dark, damp, dreary Hell
Chapter 3: The bright Heaven (Real World)
Chapter 4: The mean, unforgiving man - Who are we to judge others? Are we even worthy to do so?
Chapter 5: The intellectual man - Be careful of sins of the intellect such as ego, pride or prejudice.
Chapter 6: The materialist
Chapter 7: The cynical man (the conspiracy theorist) - Is it wise to distrust everything? That's too much negative energy.
Chapter 8: The embarrassed lady - Turn your shame into something that's nourishing.
Chapter 9: The Teacher
Chapter 10: The dominating wife
Chapter 11: The possessive mother, and the man with the lizard - How to deal with addiction?
Chapter 12: The ordinary woman (Sarah Smith) and her self-centred husband - Fame on earth vs. Fame on Heaven;
Chapter 13: The tiny, insignificant, useless Hell (unreal World)
Chapter 14: The dream

Favourite Quotes:
1) "No one had a right to come between me and my son. Not even God."
2) "Don't you know that you can't hurt anyone in this country."
3) "I cannot kill it against your will. It is impossible. Have I your permission?"
4) "All Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world."

References:
1) Exploring C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce

Wednesday 17 March 2021

Walsalam and Upadeshi

This article summarizes the book "Songs as Locus for a Lay Theology: Moshe Walsalam Sastriyar and Sadhu Kochukunju Upadeshi" written by Philip K Mathai.

Chapter 1: Sangam Age (Tamilakam, socialism, Buddhism, Jainism, Dravidian traditions); Aryan Influence (Hinduism, caste hierarchy, Sanskrit, Malayalam); St Thomas (1st century); Thomas of Cana (3rd century); Adi Sankara (8th century); Venad (12th century); Vasco da Gama (1498 CE); the Portuguese (~150 years); Synod of Diamper; Coonan Cross Oath (Catholic Church vs. Malankara Orthodox Church); the Dutch; Travancore (padmanabhadasan); the British; Revolt (Kerala Varma Pazhassi Raja, Velu Thambi Dalawa); Social Reformation (Chattambi Swamikal, Sri Narayana Guru, Ayyankali, Upper Cloth Revolt, Temple Entry Proclamation); Church Missionary Society (Kottayam, Benjamin Bailey); London Missionary Society (Nagercoil); Mar Thoma Church (~1880 CE); Church of South India (1948 CE);  

Chapter 2: Doxology (praise, worship, songs, music, actions) vs. Theology (doctrines, liturgy); how various Christian traditions (Roman Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox and Eastern) differ; history of Doxology in Latin, German (Luther) and English (Isaac Watts, John Wesley, Charles Wesley); the Bhakti tradition (worship, complete submission to a personal God through word, mind and body) in India and Hinduism; locus theologicus (source of theology); 

Chapter 3: Moshe Walsalam (surname, beloved) Sastriyar (honorific, scholar); 1847-1916; born into a nadar Christian family in Trivandrum; associated with the CSI Church and the London Mission Society; trained poet, musician and composer; translated English and Tamil songs into Malayalam; Kathakalakshepam; Trust (ninte hitam...), Liberation (sneha virunnanubhavippan...);  

Chapter 4: Sadhu (honorific, sage) Kochukunju Upadeshi (honorific, preacher); 1883-1945; belonged to the Mar Thoma Church; General Secretary of the Mar Thoma Voluntary Evangelists' Association; born in Edayaranmula; no formal training in music; the Valley of Baca; Worldly life (sojourner, ascetic way of life, transitory life); Love (sensual love); Trust (dukhathinte paanapathram...);

Conclusion: The songs written by Walsalam and Upadeshi are still in circulation in the churches of Kerala, and thus have stood the test of time. These songs are also ecumenical in nature. The songs represent the theology, faith and doctrinal stance of the laity (both Walsalam and Upadeshi were evangelists), as opposed to the theology taught by the clergy (remember Martin Luther). Finally,  the songs were products of amalgamation of the Western theology and the Indian religious culture (bhakti), resulting in a new form of doxology based on new vocabulary (e.g. devan, avataram, pey) and literary expression (e.g. love feast, end of casteism).

Monday 1 March 2021

Ejukkayshun

Education is a noble activity. The mere act of gaining knowledge inherently is free from evil. It is what we intend to do with the knowledge that leads to immorality. A member of the bomb disposal squad ought to understand the internal mechanism of a bomb. Only when he has acquired sufficient amount of required knowledge can he be excellent and faithful at his job.

Roger Schank Blog

Lectures are not effective for teaching and learning. Education begins with curiosity. We learn through conversations that are dialogues in nature not monologues. In other words, a good teacher talks with the students and not to the students.

Do Schools Kill Creativity is a popular TED talk. Children are born free-thinkers --- have lots of questions, want to know everything, and are not afraid of making mistakes. However the modern education system is a factory to produce corporate slaves and brain-dead people.

“So, my advice. Know what matters to you. Learn that. Temporarily memorize nonsense if you want to graduate but have a proper perspective on it. Nothing you learn in high school will matter in your future life.” --- Roger Schank

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”―Benjamin Franklin

“Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.” ―John Dewey

ADHD, autism, dyslexia, introverts

Pedagogy

  1. learning by teaching - learn by teaching fellow students in the class
  2. flipped classroom - (not an intuitive term) interactive learning; discussion; real-time problem solving; watch video lectures together; the lecturer or teacher is no longer primary focus in the classroom; project-based learning
  3. Jigsaw - students learn from each other; cooperative learning
  4. Education 3.0 - the marriage of technology and learning; personalised learning
  5. MOOC (massive open online course) - mass learning; e.g. Udemy, Coursera, MIT OCW
  6. homeschooling 

ഒരിക്കലും അവസാനിക്കാത്ത ഒരു പ്രക്രിയയാണ് വിദ്യാഭാസം. ജീവിതകാലം മുഴുവൻ ഒരുവൻ വിദ്യാർത്ഥി ആയിരിക്കും. ഒരു യഥാർഥ വിദ്യാർഥി എന്നും എളിമയുള്ളവനായിരിക്കും.

എന്താണ് വിദ്യാഭ്യാസത്തിന്റെ ഉദ്ദേശ്യം?  (1) അറിവ് - അറിവിലൂടെ ലോകത്തെപ്പറ്റിയും, സമൂഹത്തെപ്പറ്റിയും പ്രയോഗികജ്ഞാനം ലഭിക്കുന്നു; (2) നെറിവ് - ശരിയും  തെറ്റും തമ്മിൽ വേർതിരിച്ചറിയാൻ  ഉതകുന്നത് നെറിവു; (3) തിരിച്ചറിവ് - തെറ്റ് മനസ്സിലാക്കി  നന്മയുടെ പാതയിൽ നേർവഴി നടക്കാൻ തിരിച്ചറിവ് സഹായിക്കും. 

    അറിവ് (information), ജ്ഞാനം (knowledge), വിവേകം (wisdom)

    എന്താണ് അറിവ്? (1) വസ്തുതകൾ (facts), (2) വ്യാഖ്യാനം (interpretation), (3) വ്യവഹാരം (critique), (4) ലാവണ്യം (aesthetics, elegance)


    Tuesday 16 February 2021

    പഴഞ്ചൊല്ലുകൾ/പ്രയോഗങ്ങൾ

    • പഴഞ്ചൊല്ലിൽ പതിരില്ല.
    • കരിമീൻ കഴിക്കുമ്പോൾ കാലൻ കൂടെ.
    • ആന കൊടുത്താലും, ആശ കൊടുക്കരുത്.
    • അന്നമല്ലേ ഉന്നം (അന്നുമിന്നുമെന്നും). ഉദരനിമിത്തം വികൃതവേഷം.
    • അമിതമായാൽ അമൃതും വിഷം.
    • കഥയിൽ ചോദ്യമില്ല; മനോരാജ്യത്തു എന്ത് അർത്ഥരാജ്യം?
    • കാരണവർക്ക് അടുപ്പിലും ** 
    • ചട്ടീം കലോം ആകുമ്പോ തട്ടീന്നും മുട്ടീന്നും ഒക്കെ വരും.
    • ചുമരുണ്ടെങ്കിലേ ചിത്രമെഴുതാൻ കഴിയൂ.
    • പട്ടിയൊട്ടു പുല്ല് തിന്നുകയുമില്ല, പശുവിനെയൊട്ടു തീറ്റിക്കുകയും ഇല്ല.
    • പുത്തനച്ചി പെരപ്പുറം തൂക്കും.
    • പുരുഷൻ കര പോലെ, സ്ത്രീ കടൽ പോലെ.
    • മത്തൻ കുത്തിയാൽ കുമ്പളം മുളക്കുമോ?
    • വേണമെങ്കിൽ ചക്ക വേരിലും കായ്ക്കും.
    • ചിറ്റമ്മനയം;
    • കടയ്ക്കൽ കത്തിവെക്കുക
    • എരിതീയിൽ എണ്ണ  ഒഴിക്കുക
    • ബന്ധുക്കൾ ശത്രുക്കൾ;
    • ചോരേം നീരും; മജ്ജയും മേദസ്സും; തഴക്കവും പഴക്കവും
    • അസ്തപ്രജ്ഞ (ബോധമറ്റ അവസ്ഥ);
    • ആപാദചൂഡം; നഖശിഖാന്തം
    • ഒരു നേരം ഭക്ഷണം കഴിക്കുന്നവൻ യോഗി
      രണ്ടു നേരം ഭക്ഷണം കഴിക്കുന്നവൻ ത്യാഗി
      മൂന്നു നേരം ഭക്ഷണം കഴിക്കുന്നവൻ ഭോഗി
      നാല് നേരം ഭക്ഷണം കഴിക്കുന്നവൻ രോഗി
      അഞ്ചു നേരം ഭക്ഷണം കഴിക്കുന്നവൻ ദ്രോഹി 

    Monday 4 January 2021

    സനാതനധർമം

    ഇന്ദ്രൻ, വായുദേവൻ, യമദേവൻ, ഗണേശൻ, കാളി, വിശ്വകർമ്മാവ്, നാരദൻ, ...
    സൂര്യഭഗവാൻ, ഗംഗ, കാമധേനു, ഐരാവതം, ...
    ത്രിമൂർത്തികൾ: ബ്രഹ്മാവ് (സരസ്വതി), വിഷ്ണു (ലക്ഷ്മി or മഹാമായ), ശിവൻ (പാർവതി)
    ത്രിലോകസുന്ദരിമാർ
    : ഉർവശി, രംഭ, തിലോത്തമ

    കൃഷ്ണൻ (രാധ), ബലരാമൻ, രാമൻ (സീത ), പരശുരാമൻപാലാഴി മഥനം, അമൃതേത്

    ഋഗ്വേദം, സാമവേദം, യജുർവേദം, അധർവവേദം
    ഉപനിഷത്
    മഹാഭാരതം (വേദവ്യാസൻ), രാമായണം (വാൽമീകി)
    ഭാഗവതം
     

    കുരുവംശം

    ശന്തനു (സത്യവതി) →
    ഭീഷ്മർ, വിചിത്രവീര്യൻ (അംബ, അംബിക, അംബാലിക) →
    ധൃതരാഷ്ട്രർ (ഗാന്ധാരി), പാണ്ഡു (കുന്തി, മാദ്രി), വിദൂരർ →
    കർണൻ, ദുര്യോധനൻ, ദുശ്ശാസ്സനൻ,
    യുധിഷ്ടിരൻ, ഭീമൻ (ഹിഡിംബി),
    അർജുനൻ (സുഭദ്ര, പാഞ്ചാലി), നകുലൻ , സഹദേവൻ →
    ഘടോത്കച്ചൻ, അഭിമന്യു

    ദ്രോണർ, അശ്വത്ഥാമാവ്, കൃപർ, ശകുനി
    ധ്രുപധൻ, ധൃഷ്ടദ്യുമ്നൻ, ശിഖണ്ഡി

    മഹാഭാരതം

    ഇതിലെല്ലാം ഉണ്ട്; ഇതിലില്ലാത്തതു എങ്ങുമില്ല;
    മനുഷ്യ ജീവിതത്തിന്റെ സകല മുഹൂർത്തങ്ങളും (സുഖം, ദുഃഖം, ചതി, കൗശലം, അസൂയ, പ്രയത്നം, വിജയം, പരാജയം, മരണം, യുദ്ധം, ) ഈ മഹാകാവ്യത്തിൽ അടങ്ങിയിട്ടുണ്ട്

    പാഞ്ചാലി വസ്ത്രാക്ഷേപം
    അരക്കില്ലം (ലക്ഷഗൃഹം)
    Palace of Illusions
    ഖാണ്ഡവദാഹം
    കുരുക്ഷേത്ര യുദ്ധം
    ധൃതരാഷ്ട്രരാലിംഗനം
    ഭീഷമപ്രതിജ്ഞ

    ഭീഷ്മർ, കർണൻ: ദുരന്തപൂർണമായ ജീവിതം നയിച്ച നായകന്മാർ
    ദ്രോണർ: ഏകലവ്യന്റെ ആദരവ് മുതലെടുത്തു
    ഏകലവ്യൻ: ഗുരുവിനോടുള്ള ആദരവ്
    കൃഷ്ണൻ: യുദ്ധം ഒഴിവാക്കാൻ ശ്രമിച്ചില്ല
    കുന്തി: പ്രസവിച്ച ഉടനെ മകനെ ഉപേക്ഷിച്ചു
    യുധിഷ്ടിരൻ: പന്തയം വെച്ചുള്ള കളിയിൽ ഭ്രമം
    ഭീമൻ: ഗദായുദ്ധത്തിൽ ദുര്യോധനനെ വഞ്ചിച്ചു
    ഭീമൻ, അർജുനൻ, നകുലൻ , സഹദേവൻ: അഹങ്കാരം
    പാഞ്ചാലി: അർജുനനോട് പക്ഷപാതം

    http://www.apamnapat.com/sitemap-class-Mahabharata.html

    Friday 4 December 2020

    How to be a Good Teacher: Lessons from Totto-chan

    Totto-chan (Tetsuko Kuroyanagi): charming, adorable, naughty in a cute way

    Headmaster Kobayashi: creative, liberal, pragmatic, trust-worthy, averse to publicity and marketing, love for children, passion for teaching

     - unconventional method of teaching; no specific time-table; just a list of problems and questions in the subjects to be studied on a day; classes only till noon and walks around the school and to the Temple in the afternoon

     - balanced nutritious meal; something from the ocean and something from the hills; rice, fish, meat; chew, chew, chew it well; Itadakimasu (I gratefully partake); eat slowly and take time over meal to enjoy pleasant conversation

     - swim naked; all bodies are beautiful; to avoid morbid curiosity or shame about their bodies; 

     - eurhythmics; music; rhythm of nature (pounding of rain drops on window panes); live in harmony with the nature

     - social gatherings; trip to Toi Spa; camping in the Assembly Hall; field kitchen; school walks;

     - ordinary clothes instead of uniform; no need to worry about clothes getting dirty; the children can play to their heart's content

     - public speaking during lunch hours; 

     - the students at Tomoe were trained to focus on their task and do not get distracted by what others were doing; 

     - the students knew that mean behaviour was something to be ashamed of; the students were raised with discipline; everyone got into the habit of understanding one another and trying to help

     - learning by doing; farmer teacher; farming was included in the curriculum

    "And these were the things that Totto-chan imagined: not too much study; lots of Sports days, field kitchens, camping and walks."

    Sunday 15 November 2020

    കേരളചരിതം

    • മലയാള മാസങ്ങൾ (12) - ചിങ്ങം, കന്നി, തുലാം (തുലാമഴ), വൃശ്ചികം, ധനു, മകരം, കുംഭം, മീനം, മേടം, ഇടവം (ഇടവപ്പാതി), മിഥുനം, കർക്കിടകം
    • ജില്ലകൾ (14) - തിരുവനന്തപുരം, കൊല്ലം, ആലപ്പുഴ, പത്തനംതിട്ട, കോട്ടയം, ഇടുക്കി, എറണാകുളം, തൃശൂർ, പാലക്കാട്, മലപ്പുറം, കോഴിക്കോട്, വയനാട്, കണ്ണൂർ, കാസർഗോഡ്
    • അവാർഡുകൾ - എഴുത്തച്ഛൻ പുരസ്‌കാരം, വയലാർ അവാർഡ്, ഓടക്കുഴൽ അവാർഡ്, കേരള സാഹിത്യ അക്കാദമി അവാർഡ്
    • കായലുകൾ - വേമ്പനാട് കായൽ, അഷ്ടമുടി കായൽ, പുന്നമട കായൽ, കുമരകം കായൽ
    • നദികൾ - പെരിയാർ, നിള (ഭാരതപ്പുഴ), പമ്പ, കല്ലട, കബിനി, മീനച്ചിൽ, മണിമല, അച്ചൻകോവിൽ, നെയ്യാർ, ഇടമലയാർ, കല്ലായി, കടലുണ്ടിപുഴ, പറമ്പിക്കുളം
    • പുരാതന നാട്ടുരാജ്യങ്ങൾ
      • തിരുവിതാംകൂർ (മദ്ധ്യതിരുവിതാംകൂർ), തിരു-കൊച്ചി, മലബാർ
      • വേണാട്, വഞ്ചിനാട്, വേമ്പനാട്, വള്ളുവനാട് (കിഴക്കൻ മലബാർ)
    • ആഘോഷങ്ങൾ
      • വിഷു, ഓണം
      • ഈസ്റ്റർ, ക്രിസ്മസ്
      • ഈദ് (ഉൽ-ഫിത്ർ), ബക്രീദ്
      • ഹോളി, നവരാത്രി, ദസറ (വിജയദശമി), ദീപാവലി
    • നൃത്തകലകൾ
      • കഥകളി, മോഹിനിയാട്ടം
      • ചാക്യാർകൂത്ത്, ഓട്ടൻതുള്ളൽ
      • തിരുവാതിര, മാർഗംകളി, ഒപ്പന
      • കൂടിയാട്ടം, തെയ്യം
    • എഴുത്തുകാർ, കവികൾ
      • എഴുത്തച്ഛൻ (ആധ്യാത്മ രാമായണം), ചെറുശ്ശേരി (കൃഷ്ണഗാഥാ), കുഞ്ചൻ നമ്പ്യാർ
      • കുമാരനാശാൻ, വള്ളത്തോൾ നാരായണ മേനോൻ, ഉള്ളൂർ എസ് പരമേശ്വര അയ്യർ
      • വൈക്കം മുഹമ്മദ് ബഷീർ, തകഴി ശിവശങ്കരൻ പിള്ള, എസ് കെ പൊറ്റക്കാട്
      • സുകുമാർ അഴിക്കോട്, എം എൻ കാരശ്ശേരി, എം ടി വാസുദേവൻ നായർ, ഒ എൻ വി കുറുപ്
      • ബാലാമണിയമ്മ, കമല ദാസ്, അനിത നായർ, കെ ർ മീര
    • നവോദ്ധാന നേതൃത്വം
      • ശ്രീനാരായണഗുരു, ടി കെ മാധവൻ, കുമാരനാശാൻ (SNDP)
      • മന്നത്തുപദ്മനാഭൻ (NSS)
      • അയ്യങ്കാളി (പുലയ മഹാസഭ)
      • വി ടി ഭട്ടതിരിപ്പാട്‌
      • ഇ എം സ് നമ്പൂതിരിപ്പാട്, എ കെ ഗോപാലൻ (CPI, CPM)
      • ജബ്ബാർ മാഷ്, ജമീല ടീച്ചർ, ഷാരോൺ
      • Basel Mission (മലബാർ), CMS (മധ്യകേരളം), LMS (തെക്കൻകേരളം )
    • പ്രസിദ്ധ ക്ഷേത്രങ്ങൾ
      • ഗുരുവായൂർ ക്ഷേത്രം
      • കൂടൽമാണിക്യം ക്ഷേത്രം
      • ചോറ്റാനിക്കര ദേവി ക്ഷേത്രം, കൊടുങ്ങല്ലൂർ ഭഗവതി ക്ഷേത്രം
      • ശബരിമല ശ്രീ ധർമശാസ്താ ക്ഷേത്രം, ചെട്ടികുളങ്ങര ക്ഷേത്രം, മലയാലപ്പുഴ ദേവി ക്ഷേത്രം, ആറ്റുകാൽ ഭഗവതി ക്ഷേത്രം
      • പദ്‌മനാഭസ്വാമി ക്ഷേത്രം