In Memoriam

Writer Arthur C Clarke dies at 90
I'm dedicating this post to one of the greatest science fiction authors of all time and brilliant visionary. He not only wrote some great books he also conceptualized geostationary satellites and predicted space travel. His books bring the wonders of futuristic space travel, communications and other technology to the common man. It is incredible to think that we have now realized some of these things that he wrote about as science "fiction".
On a personal note there is some pride in that he chose to live in Sri Lanka my home country. Sadly I had never personally met him but I know many others including my father who have played table tennis with him. As for his books they were among the first books I graduated to after leaving behind the "enid blytons" and they were the ones who first inspired my love for science fiction and even science as subject. They shall always remain among my favourite.

As he said on his 90th birthday ""I want to be remembered most as a writer. I want to entertain readers and hopefully stretch their imaginations as well. "If I have given you delight in all that I have done, let me lie quiet in that night, which shall be yours anon." ; He has most definetely accomplished that.

A bit of my own medicine

Had a chance to TA for a class when my sup was out of town, and while most of the others do TA regularly this was a first for me. I had an insight (?) into being on the other side of that table in the tutorial room.

First off one of the tutorials was at 9am; from my own habits I knew this wasn't going to be a full class nevertheless I waited till 9.20 before starting and and still had some one waltz in at 9.50!? Same thing happened for the afternoon class. I should have know such a person didn't care much for the tutorial but yet I decided to ask them the answer to one of the questions - and surprise - they didn't do it.

All this didn't bother me until at one of the questions a student worked out the solution on the board and one of the steps was y = 1/x^n, dy/dx = -n/x^n+1. After it was completed some of the students looked a little confused and when asked what the problem was they asked me how the differential came about! Granted this wasn't a maths class but it was a class of engineers!! and its one of the more simpler differentials. Oh well I guess I shouldn't have been surprised later when some couldn't identify that 2 sets of equations with 2 unknowns could be solved simultaneously.
On a positive note there were some gems in the class too who enthusiastically (or at least it seemed compared to the rest) answered the questions and asked some good questions back.

I found myself wondering at the end of it all were me and my friends/classmates like this too? Thinking back in all honesty I'd have to say yes - we did skip classes or walk in late and asked some pretty obvious questions from our tutors. Now I need not imagine how frustrated they must have felt - but if you did this all the time semester after semester do you become slowly unsensitized I wonder.