Crazy little planet called Earth

Previously the only souce of Info we had when a cyclone was approaching was the Mauritius Meteorological services but now things have changed, we don’t need to have our ears glued to the radio; and we have the Internet.

Trajectories

Here’s a list of sites providing info, tracking and trajectory simulation:

• Joint Typhoon Warning Center Products – https://metocph.nmci.navy.mil/jtwc.php
• Tropical Storm Risk – http://www.tropicalstormrisk.com
• Mtotec – http://www.mtotec.com/
• Mauritius Meteorological Services – http://metservice.intnet.mu/wcystm.htm
  • Specifically: http://metservice.intnet.mu/wcyfst.htm
• Tropical storms worldwide – http://www.solar.ifa.hawaii.edu/Tropical/
  • Specifically Indian Ocean: http://www.solar.ifa.hawaii.edu/Tropical/Gif/sin.latest.gif
• Meteo France – http://www.meteo.fr/temps/domtom/La_Reunion/
  • Specifically this cyclonic season: http://www.meteo.fr/temps/domtom/La_Reunion/TGPR/saison/saison_trajGP.html

Also here follows some general information about cyclone and the cyclone warning system in Mauritius taken from the Mauritius Meteorological Website – http://metservice.intnet.mu/wcygen.htm and modified just a bit.

Cyclone Classification:

• Zone of disturbed weather (or tropical disturbance):
  • an area of low pressure relative to the surrounding region; the associated cloud masses are usually not well-organized.
• Tropical depression:
  • A non-frontal synoptic scale low-pressure system originating over tropical waters with enhanced convection and/or some indications of cyclonic wind circulation. Winds circulate clockwise around low-pressure and cyclone systems in the southern hemisphere. Gusts associated with tropical depression are generally less than 89 kilometres (km) per hour.
• Moderate tropical storm
  • A non-frontal synoptic scale low-pressure system originating over tropical waters with organized convection and definite cyclonic wind circulation. Estimated gusts associated with moderate tropical storms range from 89 to 124 km per hour.
• Severe tropical storm:
  • A tropical storm in which the estimated wind gusts range from 125 to 165 km per hour.
• Tropical cyclone:
  • A tropical storm in which the estimated wind gusts range from 166 to 233 km per hour.
• Intense tropical cyclone:
  • A tropical storm in which the estimated wind gusts range from 234 to 299 km per hour.
• Very intense tropical cyclone:
  • A tropical storm in which estimated gusts exceed 300 km per hour.

The Warning system for Mauritius and Rodrigues

• Class I
  • Issued 36 to 48 hours before the advent of cyclonic conditions.
• Class II
  • Issued so as to allow, as far as practicable, 12 hours of daylight before the occurrence of gusts of 120 kilometers (km) per hour - No school
• Class III
  • Issued so as to allow, as far as practicable, 6 hours of daylight before the occurrence of gusts of 120 kilometers(km) per hour - Work ceases and people should get indoors as soon as possible (Motor Insurance stops covering cars)
• Class IV
  • Issued when gusts of 120 km per hour have been recorded and are expected to continue to occur.
• Termination: Issued when there is no longer any appreciable danger of gusts exceeding 120 km per hour.

The system of naming tropical cyclones was introduced in 1960, which will be remembered as the year during which Mauritius was struck by cyclone “Alix” and by cyclone “Carol”, the most devastating cyclone on record.

Most Computer Science students at some point meet up with the Fibonacci Sequence – an interesting application of recursion. Yet there’s more to fibonacci than just 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, …

In 1170 AD, in Italy, was born Leonardo of Pisa, son of Bonaccio. Leonardo grew to be a fine mathematician and is widely regarded as “the best mathematician of the middle ages”. Though he is well known for the Fibonacci ( he got this nickname from filius Bonacci – son of Bonacci) sequence, I think that his most important contribution is the advocacy for the use of the Hindu-Arabic numeral system instead of the Roman Numerals. That might well have been one of the things that helped Europe out of the dark ages.

The Hindu-Arabic numeral system advocates the use of different symbols for the digits 0-9. In contrast, Roman numerals use I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX and X to represent 1 to 10 which is very impractical: since there’s no 0, it’s quite awkward to do maths and it’s hard to do basic arithmetic with

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Back to that interesting sequence

Leonardo used this series to calculate the growth of a rabbit population that started with a pair of rabbits – assumption: a pair takes 1 month to reach maturity and also each time a pair is delivered.

• First month: 1 pair :: A
• Second month: 2 pairs since the rabbits give birth to a pair :: A -> B
• Third month: 3 pairs – the parents deliver again :: A -> C & B
• Fouth month: 5 pairs – the first pair gives birth for the third time and the second pair gives birth for the first time :: A -> D, B -> E, C

Thereby the sequence: Fn = Fn-1 + Fn+1

But here again we can trace the origins of the sequence to much older times:

“The Fibonacci numbers first appeared, under the name mātrāmeru (mountain of cadence), in the work of the Sanskrit grammarian Pingala (Chandah-shāstra, the Art of Prosody, 450 or 200 BC). Prosody was important in ancient Indian ritual because of an emphasis on the purity of utterance. The Indian mathematician Virahanka (6th century AD) showed how the Fibonacci sequence arose in the analysis of metres with long and short syllables. Subsequently, the Jain philosopher Hemachandra (c.1150) composed a well-known text on these. A commentary on Virahanka’s work by Gopāla in the 12th century also revisits the problem in some detail.” – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_number

and we are still pretty much fascinated by it. An example is the journal: The Fibonacci Quarterly which “is meant to serve as a focal point for interest in Fibonacci numbers and related questions, especially with respect to new results, research proposals, challenging problems, and innovative proofs of old ideas” – http://www.engineering.sdstate.edu/~fib/.

To conclude, an example of a simple finonacci recursive program written in python:

def fib(n):
   if (n == 0):
      return 1
   elif (n == 1):
      return 1
   else:
      return (fib(n-1) + fib(n-2))

print fib(30)

Beings from the spirit world are everpresent in Anime (and Manga). Miyazaki’s movies masterpieces (I haven’t seen a bad one to date) like Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away strongly feature spirits.

In Princess Mononoke, it’s basically all about spirits: the movie begins with an attack on a village let by the boar God Nago. Ashitaka is eventually cursed by Nago and as he journeys to find a cure for his curse, he mets San and all the spirits of the forest.

Spirited Away tells the story of Chihiro (renamed Sen by Yubaba) as she has to work in a bathhouse for … spirits. There she meets up with Haku (the spirit of river Kohaku) whom she frees him from Yubaba’s grasp and ‘No face’.

The same can be said of the popular series that are being (or have been) broadcasted. Bleach, for example, is all about spirit – Ichigo (the main character) is permanently in the spiritual world and even becomes a “part-time” shinigami (Death God) – his job as a shinigami is to send souls to the Soul Society. Yet, all anime do not feature spirits the same way. The shinagamis of Death Note are quite peculiar: they look more like a bunch of punks keen on gambling have as job to decide when and how someone should die. Though spirits (or characters) from different anime tend to look alike, they are quite different – a Gillian type Menos in Bleach is certainly no ‘No face’.

All this (to me) seems like the Kami that we have in the Shinto religion – except for the shinigami stuff which I’ve heard has been imported from Europe. Am I right? Well I’m not “into” Japan that much to answer but the Japanese Culture and its influence on anime does fascinate me.

Mauritian creole is on the way of becoming a full fledge language. For us Mauritians, it’s our mother tongue but until recently it lacked a proper dictionary – now we have quite a few but they seem to disagree among themselves on how to write the same word.

Anyway enough with introductions, let’s now tackle the core of this post. How many languages do you know that use numbers to represent words? Personally I know none and according to me this makes Mauritian Creole quite unique. So let’s have a look at some of these:

• Number :: Meaning
  • 4 :: dead
  • 6 :: gay
  • 11 :: two feet
  • 14 :: head (e.g. so 14 ine 28 – he’s gone mad)*
  • 17 :: a flirt – first stage of becoming a girlfriend
  • 29 :: have to go to the loo
  • 32 :: chinese people
  • 34 :: cheater
  • 35 :: girlfriend
  • 40 :: bottom

More words will be added with the help of contributers (Lindsay and Avinash for now) and as I remember some more.

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Anecdotes:

So 14 ine 28 – according to Avinash’s mum, the origin is that doctors see their patients every 14 days at the hospital but only every 28 days in an asylum.

Well my mum seems quite convinced that she is. From her past observations whenever Packrette (that the name my mum gave to her) has been actively digging a nice cozy hole in the earth (her kennel or the porch are arguable not cozy enough) there has been a thunderstorm in the coming days and yesterday she was at it again in the middle of the night!

It’s often assumed that animals have a kind of 6th sense and can sense “things” better than us humans but the question is: Does my dog have any meteorological flair? If there’s a thunderstorm in the coming days, even I will be forced to give her some credit though I could still argue that … .

United States

Mr Barack Obama, a black guy, could soon be making history in the US: he is the first black guy to have a reasonable chance of being elected as president of the United States.

In the US, blacks are about 15% of the population and whether he wins or not is immaterial for this post. However, no one is going to do a racist campaign in the shadows against him; none of his opponent will ever say: “don’t vote for him coz he’s black” coz the moment he/she does so, the press will destroy him/her and it will be the end!

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Mauritius

If ever a candidate in Mauritius from the ethnic minorities tries to aspire to become prime minister, he’s bound to have a tough time. His/her opponents will just quietly say to the electorate: “do you want this guy to be your leader” and by this we should understand: this guy who is not of your religion/ethnicity/group/… to lead you.

In Mauritius, this racist argument will work and the poor guy (from the ethnic minorities) will lose and the press won’t be able to destroy any candidate because he used racist arguments – the electorate will just say (quietly) he’s damn right!

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Despite what we might say, Mauritius is a paradise where all communities live in harmony, we’re still far far behind and as one of my friends put it, Mauritius is a multiracial multiracist country.

2008 is here and as usual the doom sayers astronomers are back ready to predict the end of the world with their wise predictions. Let’s have a look:

Le monde… vu par Neer Jyotish – 5 Plus Dimanche
- De nombreuses reformes sociales et politiques sont a prevoir. Elles ne seront pas toujours positives
- La haine religieuse et raciale s’accentura
- Les hommes auront une plus esperance de vie plus longue. Nous aurons beaucoup de centenaires en 2008
- Les terroristes menaceront la paix dans le monde

How interesting!!! Mr Neer Jyotish is sure to have have a 100% track record at the end of 2008 and the least that we can say is that he’s playing it very very safe. Analysing what he said:

1. What is “nombreuses”? Any number of changes would fit in that and they might be positive or negative. Well well that covers anything that could happen in the political arena
2. This follows the current trend – wars are not going to stop
3. Life expectance has been steadily risisng year after year – is it going to stop rising in 2008?
4. They have been doing so for the past couple of years, are they going to stop next year?

I could be an astronomer as well:

1. Prices are going to rise in 2008 and people won’t be happy about it
2. The world will have to face wars
3. The climate will be harsh
4. Computing power is going to increase in 2008 – yeah!!!! (I’m not forgetting our geek friends)

If you don’t mind me saying that, it’s a big load of crap! However, he has one precise prediction: “a plane crash in the Indian Ocean”. If that holds true, he’ll be a hero. But hold on, look back at 2007 – what major events did we have? How many did astronomers get right? A 10% accuracy would surprise me – a random number generator will do better than most of our astronomers.

My accurate predictions:

1. A war will break up in Africa
2. A big cyclone will hit Central America
3. A major political figure will step down in 2008
4. A train crash in India will leave many deads

So let’s see who gets it right