Numerical calculations near spatial infinity

After describing in short some problems and methods regarding the smoothness of null infinity for isolated systems, I present numerical calculations in which both spatial and null infinity can be studied. The reduced conformal field equations based on the conformal Gauss gauge allow us in spherical symmetry to calculate numerically the entire Schwarzschild-Kruskal spacetime in a smooth way including spacelike, null and timelike infinity and the domain close to the singularity.Comment: 10 pages, 2 postscript figures, uses psfrag; to appear in the Proceedings of the Spanish Relativity Meeting (ERE 2006), Palma de Mallorca, Spain, 4-8 September 200

Responding to Retrieval: A Proposal to Use Retrieval Information for Better Presentation of Website Content

Retrieval and content management are assumed to be mutually exclusive. In this paper we suggest that they need not be so. In the usual information retrieval scenario, some information about queries leading to a website (due to `hits' or `visits') is available to the server administrator of the concerned website. This information can used to better present the content on the website. Further, we suggest that some more information can be shared by the retrieval system with the content provider. This will enable the content provider (any website) to have a more dynamic presentation of the content that is in tune with the query trends, without violating the privacy of the querying user. The result will be a better synchronization between retrieval systems and content providers, with the purpose of improving the user's web search experience. This will also give the content provider a say in this process, given that the content provider is the one who knows much more about the content than the retrieval system. It also means that the content presentation may change in response to a query. In the end, the user will be able to find the relevant content more easily and quickly

Iqbal and Goethe : a note

The recourse to Goethe plays an important role in the work of Mohammad Iqbal (1873-1938), one of the few important writers from the Indian subcontinent who knew German literature. Iqbal situates his own writing in the context of western colonial expansion and the corresponding world-historical loss of power of Islam in the East. The recourse to Goethe becomes an import reference point in his work. It enables him to stylise himself as a Messenger of the East in reply to Goethe as a representative of the West. By establishing a comparative cultural constellation with his German predecessor Iqbal affirms a cultural position consisting of a mode of historical complaint and cultural revival

Willy Haas (1891-1973) : "homme de lettre"

There are many aspects of Haas' life and experiences in India which deserve greater attention. I would like to refer briefly only to his attempts as a litterateur to come to terms with 'India' as presented in his autobiographical recollection and to some comparative cultural reflections in his essays. Like all reconstructions his autobiographical recollection of India is also a construct in which the site of India as a place of exile is justified by an achieved awareness between conscious individual choice and inevitability. An individual acts out a personal history, the prefiguration of which he only becomes aware of in the form of a subsequent epiphanic realization. Given Haas' literary background, it is not surprising that this is articulated through a literary association

Punk Quiz 6

Another misdefinition pun quiz

Perception, Evidence, and our Expressive Knowledge of Others' Minds.

‘How, then, she had asked herself, did one know one thing or another thing about people, sealed as they were?’ So asks Lily Briscoe in To the Lighthouse. It is this question, rather than any concern about pretence or deception, which forms the basis for the philosophical problem of other minds. Responses to this problem have tended to cluster around two solutions: either we know others’ minds through perception; or we know others’ minds through a form of inference. In the first part of this paper I argue that this debate is best understood as concerning the question of whether our knowledge of others’ minds is based on perception or based on evidence. In the second part of the paper I suggest that our ordinary ways of thinking take our knowledge of others’ minds to be both non- evidential and non-perceptual. A satisfactory resolution to the philosophical problem of other minds thus requires us to take seriously the idea that we have a way of knowing about others’ minds which is both non-evidential and non-perceptual. I suggest that our knowledge of others’ minds which is based on their expressions – our expressive knowledge - may fit this bill

Stress Among Health Care Professionals - The Need for Resiliency

Healthcare professionals are subjected to considerable levels of stress such as work overload, excessive working hours, sleep deprivation, repeated exposure to emotionally charged situations, dealing with difficult patients and conflicts with other staffs. Management of such stress should be given due importance, right from the days of training in medical sciences

Kant, the Philosophy of Mind, and Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy

In the first part of this chapter, I summarise some of the issues in the philosophy of mind which are addressed in Kant’s Critical writings. In the second part, I chart some of the ways in which that discussion influenced twentieth-century analytic philosophy of mind and identify some of the themes which characterise Kantian approaches in the philosophy of mind

Palindrome Palindromes

Palindroming is such an unnatural occupation that it is extremely hard to make an intelligible pal of length, or even a short one involving diphthongs, especially if H is involved. (No, no, the letter, not the drug. But I imagine heroin would make it totally impossible, if not uninteresting.) Hence most pals require and ideally requite explanation, as few make easy reading, unlike anagrams which are much easier. With that excuse, I present some more or less identical palls that include and define the word palindrome itself in a new way, so far as I know

Hail Mary, Full of Constraints

Cheer on poor Mary and her lamb as they suffer yet more pastiches in various constrained forms