The Philadelphia Experiment

The U.S. Navy destroyer escort USS Eldridge (DE-173) underway at sea

When: October 28, 1943

Where: Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, Pennsylvania

Before laying down any factual data, let me state that this experiment was downright denied by the US Navy to have ever occurred.

USS Eldridge, a destroyer escort, was allegedly rendered invisible by cloaking in 1943, teleported to Norfolk, Virginia (320 km away) only to have reappeared in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

This story came to light in 1955 when Carl M. Allen sent letters mentioning the teleportation of the Eldridge to Morris K. Jessup who was known for writing about UFOs. It allegedly propounded the teleportation of USS Eldridge to another dimension where some of the sailors encountered death and others were fused to the ship’s hull. It claims that people witnessed greenish fog in place of the ship.

The letters stated the application of the unified field theory of Albert Einstein by Dr. Franklin Reno. The theory elucidates electromagnetic space-time warping i.e. uniting of interrelated fields (electromagnetic field and gravitational field) into a single one. 

In the summer of 1943, the theory was claimed to be executed by using massive electric generators to contort light around an object via refraction which makes the object invisible to the naked eye. This experiment was repeated without any calibration on October 28th of the same year, which allegedly teleported the Eldridge. 

On the other hand, there were facts stated by Dudgeon who was present on USS Engstrom which was harboured along with the Eldridge. He said that the Navy might have been experimenting with invisibility in 1943, not to make the ship completely disappear, but to render it invisible to the magnetic torpedoes by degaussing them.

Variety of versions of the tale are available claiming the serious side effects of the experiment and much of the key literature emphasizes dramatic embellishments in lieu of pertinent research. It is nothing but a concoction of facts and fiction.

As said by Robert A. Goerman,

If someone were to write a book telling the real story, its title might be ‘The Philadelphia Hoax: Project Gullibility’.

What if…

“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.” –Friedrich Nietzsche

The ideas of what-if
Perpetually hover
Over our minds
With ceaseless strings 
Of supposed possibilities
Manifesting us
To our vulnerabilities
That we didn’t know existed
Messed up and twisted
We yearn so badly
For that precise
Pristine moment
Secretly savouring the torment
Which it brings along
For we have tossed
And turned
The ideas of what-if
Whenever they returned
In our heads
Over and over
It now haunts us
In our dreams
Day in and day out
Making the difference
Between reality and imagination
As thin as a paper
As dark as a blackout

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Your mind is working at its best when you’re being paranoid.
You explore every avenue and possibility of your situation at high speed with total clarity.

Banksy

Calm in Chaos

“Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.”– Thich Nhat Hahn

In the light of the current pandemic, we all have come a lot closer to our families. This, for many of us, might have been an overwhelming experience given our typical busy schedule causing an obstacle in daily family meetings. I, for one, have started embracing this conclave of ours which has made me realise what I have been missing all these years. 

It also has been equally frustrating to be enclosed by four walls which has taken me back to my meditation sessions which are enormously calming. Watching spirituality shows on TV has now become a routine for my parents, which helps them look forward positively, keeping in mind that this too shall pass. 

I never would have visualised myself getting  acclimatized to this lifestyle of meditation and an altogether spiritual aura.

I would personally like to recommend a mediation session of at least 5 minutes to each and every one of my readers. As we know, ‘Good things take time’; the results will not be immediate but they will be definite. Patience is the ultimate key.

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You can get rid of all this insanity created by the past in you by being a simple witness of your thought processes.

It is simply sitting silently, witnessing the thoughts, passing before you.

Just witnessing, not interfering not even judging, because the moment you judge you have lost the pure witness.

Osho

Scars are tattoos

You are a beautiful tapestry of scars. Embrace yourself.

Scars are tattoos

Tattoos by accident

Remind us of that one incident

When we were brave

Brave enough to bear

Bear the pain etched

On our mind

And on our skin

With wounded chin

And scratched knee

We smiled with glee

For we knew it was fixable.

Scars are tattoos

On our body, on our mind

Latter are invisible

Each conveying a chronicle.

Humorous Burn

We are born with all relationships except friendships; we choose one.

When i was a school kid,
I had a dear friend
Who sat beside me,
Our gossips would never end.

One day teacher saw us,
Called my friend, not me
Asked about what we were chattering,
I sat there sighing,
Hoped my friend was lying.

As I saw my friend return to sit,
I shot a questioning glance
And a wide smile assuring,
“I am always there for you”
But my friend misinterpreted and said,
“Teacher should have scolded you”

I saw my gossips end,
With my dear friend
Once again I sat there sighing,
Hoped my friend was lying.

In the memory of…

A memorial stands on the limits of two worlds.

Memorials are objects which pay tribute and serve as a commemoration in the memory of a deceased person or an influential person or a historical or tragic event.

Sometimes due to unforeseen reasons, we come across times where the victims are none other than our own loved ones. It becomes difficult to even mourn in such furious and sad situations. To give a perfect, sympathetic, warm closure to those who have lost their lives in such hostile events, we build memorials.

The world-famous, one of the seven wonders of the world, the Taj Mahal was commissioned by Shah Jahan in the loving ‘memory’ of his wife Mumtaz Mahal. This is nothing but a memorial.

As Tyron Edwards rightly said,

Quiet and sincere sympathy is often the most welcome and efficient consolation to the afflicted.

Memorials act as those sincere sympathies for whom we love and respect and want to remember forever.

Memorials have existed for thousands of years, from The Great Pyramids in Egypt to the recently built National War Memorial in India. It is only due to such memorials that we are able to remember those who were an important part of our lives, and show our respects to them.

War memorials such as All India War Memorial or the India Gate, The Tawang War Memorial, Kargil War Memorial, Victoria At Sea Memorial are some of the many such memorials which pay tributes to our martyrs.

These are some ‘famous’ examples of memorials, but we, as common people, also build memorials in the form of tombstones for our deceased loved ones. They help us remember them throughout our lives and give us a hope that there is an everlasting light in the world of darkness which one man has created for another man.

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This post is written on account of Kargil Vijay Diwas (26th July) in the memory of the martyrs.

Online Business in Quarantine

Traffic to online shopping sites has surged significantly in the past few months.

More ethical and better ways are available to do your business in the midst of this chaos rather than hoarding essentials and reselling them at a higher price.

Many offline businesses have gone online. Moreover, many business ideas have initiated and taken roots online. Online business ideas have gained immense popularity due to its feasibility of accessibility.

Already full-fledged businesses which are facing issues during lockdown have decided to take it online by using few of the many ideas such as Social Media Marketing and Shipping Products online via e-commerce sites. IT companies have an edge while handling businesses as their employees have opted for Work-from-home option.

On the other hand, when it comes to starting a new venture online, there is a pool of ideas from which we are free to choose. Be it being a blogger or a vlogger, being a SEO consultant or Virtual assistant, Affiliate marketing or Drop shipping, Web Designing or App Development, starting a YouTube channel or Tutoring online, we can go for the desirable option by researching about it initially so that it reaches the target customers and thrives.

It is not mandatory for one to have immense business knowledge or a degree in that field to start your own undertaking online. All it takes is a good amount of research and patience and not to mention internet connection.

Leveraging Dark Data for Insights and Performance Improvement

According to a recent IBM study, over 80% of all data is dark and unstructured.

Every one of us has witnessed the hesitation of trashing or keeping an item when we come across our old stuff, and ultimately we end up storing it somewhere if we might need it in the future ‘just in case’.

Similarly, dark data is that old, unwanted, unused data acquired through computer network operations which keeps piling high. It is similar to the dark matter in physics where it makes up most of the mass of the universe but is way too complex for analysis.

Consulting and Market Research company, Gartener Inc., states that Dark Data is the information assets collected by the organizations and stored after processing during business activities. But generally the organizations fail to use it for other purposes such as analytics, business relations and direct monetizing.

Merv Adrian, Gartner analyst, further explains that data darkness is a state where “you know the transaction happened but you don’t know what went around it“. This latter part needs to be illuminated for exploring the potential business goldmine. More companies need to audit their archives of data for the said purpose.

However, this is better said than done because organizations retain dark data for regulatory compliance as storing and securing data typically incurs more expense as well as greater risk than value. The complexity of analysis compels the organizations to leave the dark data as it is for practical reasons.

Although, this has not stopped data scientists and analysts from venturing into the benefits of leveraging the dark data which includes server log files which might provide evidence to website visitor behaviour, consumer call detail records to incorporate unstructured customer sentiment data, mobile geolocation data for revealing traffic patterns and help in planning business. In short, dark data has immense potential to generate new revenue sources, eradicate waste and reduce costs.

Organizations storing dark data for compliance purpose are now using Hadoop clusters and NoSQL databases to process large volumes of data to identify dark bits and map them for possible business uses. This ability of Hadoop and other tools to process enormous amount of data makes it feasible to incorporate long-neglected information which was previously left untouched by IT systems into big data analytics application which in turn can unlock its business value allowing organizations to worry less about incurred expenses.

By the implementation of these tools, the archive data lying around before can prove to be a potential treasure trove for organizations opting for the processing of dark data.

David and Michelangelo

Sketch of the David sculpture (by Michelangelo) for which I used the stippling technique. Below is a related short poem. Enjoy!

Some days you’re David,
Courageous and brave
To your Goliath issues,
You don’t cave

Some days you’re carving,
Your way out of the door
Losing yourself,
More and more

Lose hope not,
’cause it has a latch
Michelangelo too carved,
David from scratch

Be your own Michelangelo,
Be David of your own
One day you’ll realize,
How much you’ve grown

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I acquired the inspiration to pen down this short poem from the quote below.

You are the Michelangelo of your own life. The David you’re sculpting is you.

Dr. Joe Vitale

Live Online Sessions versus Recorded Online Sessions – Learning in Quarantine

Online learning has become the need of the hour during the current worldwide pandemic

Digitization has made its way in all spheres of our lives gradually throughout this past decade. The field of learning is no exception.

In the light of recent pandemic, learning online now is not only restricted to one’s comfort zone but has also become a necessity. Many companies and institutions are giving their employees work-from-home option which is gladly chosen by everyone including the teachers. Be it for learning a new skill or for continuing their study lessons, everyone including the students are opting for online learning.

The live online sessions are preferred to the pre-recorded ones mostly, because it is feasible to learn with one-to-one interaction with the teacher. The quality of teaching contributes to one of the many factors that people opt for this option. This live interaction provides the ambience of traditional learning method with the ease of being anywhere they wish to learn from. It gives the learners an opportunity to be inquisitive and interrogate the teachers which is not possible in pre-recorded leassons. The teachers can also provide with additional information related to latest updates on the particular topic apart from the actual lesson taught. On the other hand, pre-recorded sessions come with content restricted upto certain time leaving us unaware of the latest happenings regarding that topic.

Even though live sessions have their own pros, they have their cons too. They aren’t as cheaply available as the pre-recorded ones, and sometimes the latter is available at free of cost too, which is why they are preferred frequently over the former. Pre-recorded sessions give you the liberty of watching and learning at your own pace giving options like rewind, pause, fast-forward, download and watch later which is obviously not the case with live sessions. You need to attend live sessions at that particular time or you miss the actual interaction; while pre-recorded can be watched whenever you wish and take notes at your own pace.

Given the fact of liberty as a plus point for pre-recorded sessions, it doesn’t suit for many who might not have a fixed particular style of learning. It varies from people to people. Live sessions come to the rescue at these times where you can ask the teacher to explain certain things the way you want them. This method of learning is primarily opted over the didactic one which the pre-recorded sessions offer.

Be it pre-recorded or live, the fact that everyone is contributing for the betterment of this world by teaching or learning even in this grave situation that we are caught into, gives us a bright ray of hope.