Indian Scientists Debate: Is Flying Spaghetti Monster for real?

Inane surveys ought to be banned. They are generally a cause of great deal of futile debates and purposeless controversies. Another pointless survey featuring Indian scientists has indicated that over half of them believe in the existence of Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) and has very predictably raised howls of protests from several quarters who believe that there is some inherent contradiction in scientists believing in invisible, scientifically unverified flying noodle monsters.

The survey conducted jointly by The Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture of Trinity College, Connecticut and India's Centre for Inquiry, Hyderabad has thrown up results that confirm that India is the headquarters for invisible monsters. Only 12 percent of the 1100 respondents were categorical that they didn't believe in monsters; 13 percent weren't sure since they have been haunted by monsters they didn't believe in. As many as 26 percent had no doubts that flying monsters do exist while 30 percent did not believe in flying noodle monster but in a higher power that is capable of creating invisible flying monsters.

"So far nobody has shown me any monster, leave alone a spaghetti monster . The only monsters I believe in are monsters-in-law" is the blunt response of Nitin Nightsure, leading mathematician ith the Institute of Mathematical Sciences attached to the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai.

Narisetti Innauah, chairman of the Centre for Inquiry, an outfit that believes in following the rational spirit (whatever it means) is a worried man. He is worried about the insufficient level of "scientific temper" among the researchers. "Scientific temper is something that comes from having unquestioning faith in supernatural stuff revealed by leading super-scientists of the world - stuff like how a big blast created our universe or how invisible strings that are at the core of all matter determine how universe works. Scientists having faith in supernatural stuff revealed by priests or charlatans is a clear contradiction that is unacceptable and will hamper the country's effort to become a scientific superpower."

(Interestingly, the present day superpower of the globe, United States of America became a superpower only after developing and testing the "atomic bomb".  Robert Oppenheimer, the American  physicist who directed the project at Los Alamos that developed the first atomic bomb believed in supernatural Indian gods like Krishna and quoted him "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds" while enjoying the beautiful mushroom cloud generated by the first ever nuclear test.)

Not all scientists agree with Narisetti. "I know several scientists who believe in the flying noodle monster, yet produce excellent science papers" says Physicist Suresh Chandvanker of the Department of Condensed Matter Physics and Material Sciences, TIFR. "Flying Spaghetti Monster being the creator of life is just an unproved theory. There is no contradiction simply because scientists are also very much human beings and also believe in unproved theories like time travel, black holes or parallel universes. If its acceptable for a scientist to believe that its possible to travel into past or future without provable ability to travel in time, why should a believer in FSM be ridiculed for his beliefs?"

Chandvankar himself believes in flying spaghetti monster, but not in the form of an idol or a stone statue of his noodly appendage. "My concept of FLM is complex. It could be drawn from nature and the hundreds of tentacles of the monster may be symbolic of the hands of nature affecting every field of life.

Cell biologist Satyajit Mayor, Dean of the National Centre for Biological studies in Bangalore, puts it differently. "You don't need to believe in FSM if you can understand a little bit more about the natural world around us. If I hold faith that Flying Spaghetti Monster is responsible for the way the world works, why would I want to understand the natural world at all? he asks, "My search is over if I accept that the cell is created by FSM"

Chandvankar counters his argument by saying, "If I believe that a cell is created by chance and not by FSM, it would mean that chance is more intelligent than me, since I don't yet know how to create a cell. I would rather believe that some flying monster created life than believe that I'm more stupid than chance."

But another top scientist theoretical physicist Asoka Sen, professor at Harish-chandra Research Institute at Allahabad doesn't mince words expressing his scorn for the noodly monster. "I work on the string theory that involves looking for invisible strings that only string theorists like us can conceive, see, understand, believe and accept. Since all matter in all of the universe is made up of these invisible strings there is no room for invisible spaghetti in this," says Sen unequivocally.

Quite interestingly, the oxford dictionary definition of 'spaghetti' is pasta in the form of long strings. Do scientists and religionists believe in the same noodly higher power, the only difference being that while the former believe that the universe is made up of edible noodles while the latter believe that edible noodles made our universe?

There are some nutcase scientists who believe that we are all noodly monsters pretending to be humans which would explain the paradox of noodles being the minutest form of all the matter of the universe and yet also being the generators, operators and destroyers of the universe. According to these screwballs, the tiny, undetectable “strings” that make up all matter, energy and forces in the entire universe are not strings vibrating and wiggling to ultimately determine what force or energy or bit of mass each string becomes,  but tiny, undetectable flying spaghetti monsters and the different forms of energy and matter are formed by how many and in what manner they wave their noodley appendages.

The maverick scientists believe they have a unified theory of everything in their appendeges..er..hands, a unified theory that not only unifies gravity, electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces, but also unifies the string theory of scientists with the flying spaghetti monster belief of the religionists.

But because these maverick scientists are regarded as fruitcakes by the rest of scientific establishment, they are never included in any survey of importance. They sit back and laugh at the infantile delusions of the two groups of scientists on either side of the debate - one bunch that has never seen any spaghetti monster yet believes in its existence, the other bunch that cannot even come to a definite conclusion whether chocolate is good or bad for health, but fancies that they have discovered how the universe was created 14 billions years back without the assistance of spaghetti monsters.

Litter-ate India: We dont need no "educational exercise"

Recent comments made by a local councillor blaming Indians for the litter crisis in the city of London has caused tremendous heart-burn amongst litter-ate Indians residing in the British Isles.

Miss Ivimy, 53, who sits on the Tory-run Hammersmith and Fulham Council in London, outlined her concerns in an email to Nick Johnson, chief executive of H&F Homes housing association. “I know that in India throwing rubbish out of a window and total disregard for the cleanliness of a public area is normal behaviour and I dare say a number would change behaviour if firmly told that in London this is not acceptable behaviour,” wrote Lucy Ivimy.

Though the Tory councillor later apologized for her comments after being accused of racism by Indians (who when in India treat all Africans as drug-peddlers), it has also brought into focus the habits of vast majority of Indians who firmly believe that every inch of open public space outside the door-steps of their homes is part of huge garbage dump built exclusively for the purpose of littering.

While Lucy may have erred in blaming couple of Indian families for the litter around the garden at Woodford Court, she certainly doesn't deserve to be called a racist. At the very most, she deserves only a mild rebuke for her ignorance of the glorious Indian culture, her lack of sensitivity in assuming that we need "an educational exercise" and her inability to understand the philosophical foundations of all our activities (and also inactivities).

Yes, Madam Ivimy, it is perfectly normal in India to have total disregard for the cleanliness of public areas and completely acceptable to throw garbage at every available place. But we don't disregard cleanliness out of sheer apathy or laziness as you perhaps believe. There is a reason behind everything we do and if you were aware of the complex set of factors that lay beneath our seeming acceptance of dirt, filth and garbage, you would have at least been very sympathetic, if not appreciative of the uniqueness of our culture.

We Indians being philosophical in nature have the unique ability of amalgamating philosophical propositions into our day-to-day existence. Long before the chaos theory became fashionable in western scientific circles, we had not only understood the principles behind this theory but also decided to apply them in our lives to appreciate the theory better. According to the chaos theory, chaos and disorder is the natural condition of our universe and all material things are in a state of constant decay and ruin. According to one prominent Indian philosopher-cum-televangelist Asaram Bapu, we should be like a leaf or a twig floating in a river going along graciously with the flow of the water rather than a rock who resists the current of the water but eventually breaks up into pieces under the relentless pressure of the strong currents.

 

While western societies struggle to maintain order and work hard to prevent natural decay of their institutions, towns and cities, we believe in taking the path of least resistance and letting the universe take its own course. We also don't mind helping the universe with whatever means available to us. Since garbage is the only thing that a poor nation like us can afford to throw away freely, we throw garbage all around and help the universe in its quest for chaos and disorder.

A mark of greatness is not just the ability to embrace philosophical axioms into our daily lives, but also to effortlessly merge contradictory ideologies into a holistic whole. Quite many westerners who visit India find it odd that while the general landscape of our country is dilapidated, yet most of the homes of people in the middle and upper class income bracket are clean, appropriately chic and well-maintained. The contradiction in the spruceness between the public and private spaces of the country can easily be explained if we take into account another ancient axiom that we believe strongly in - that our body is our temple and hence should be well-maintained. Since we treat our homes as extensions of our bodies (both being our private domains where we are kings and all that), we take great care to keep our interiors in good condition and leave the chaos theory to take care of the exteriors. Quite ingenious, right? Greatness comes naturally to us.

But every once in a while, universe throws to us people or situations that complicate matters for us. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was one such fellow who was dropped down from the heavens to make our lives difficult. This queer little fellow didn't understand the chaos theory and insisted that we should keep both our private and public space free of garbage. Not just content to sweep the streets (despite being a high caste hindu) to show people the way, he went ahead and proclaimed that 'Cleanliness is next to Godliness'.

Since we take our godliness very seriously and since destiny forced us to take this queer fellow seriously, we were forced to take the alien concept of cleanliness very seriously.  But being clever folks, we found a brilliant way out that allowed us to bestow equal respect both the theories - the chaos theory and 'cleanliness is next to godliness' theory. We decided to keep our towns and cities clean symbolically.

(An important part of being Indian is belief in value of symbolism. Symbolic tokens often serve as good substitutes for the real thing in our country. The symbolic value of, say a Nobel prize won by an Indian often exceeds our interest in knowing the reason why the prize was conferred and allows us to feel pride in the achievement of a fellow Indian without the hard work of having to understand the mind of the genius to whom the prize was bestowed.)

Realizing the importance of symbolism, our government found an easy solution - as a mark of respect to Gandhi's beliefs, our government started naming everything after his name. Statues of his bust were erected at every corner and every third road of the country was named MG Road. A splendid way of honoring Gandhi's cleanliness mantra without actually doing the dirty work of keeping our corners and streets clean.

In conclusion, it needs to be stated resolutely. We don't need an "educational exercise" to prevent us from throwing our stuff out of our windows. But arrogant western lawmakers and citizenry need an educational exercise to understand how admirably India manages to straddle conflicting worlds, philosophies, ideologies and beliefs without falling apart.

India to teach white people how to walk

AS the price of crude oil continues to jump upwards towards $150 a barrel, India has offered to teach Americans and Europeans how to walk on streets for distances longer than half a kilometer. Several enterprises offering training in walking have sprung up all over the country. With millions of western commuters in a state of panic, walking instructors from India are now preparing for a surge in demand for their services.

Ramdevi Sherpure, a walking consultant, born and brought up in Shevagram taluka, Latur, Maharashtra said: "I first learned to walk when my mother tugged me along with her to fetch water from the well 10 miles away from our jhopdi"

"Walking 20 miles a day carrying pots filled with water on my head has made me an expert in long-distance walking. I'm very keen to share my skills and teach underprivileged commuters from western countries how to use their legs for walking."

"Walking is relatively simple and much easier than driving. Also a lot less riskier. You start by first putting one foot in front of the other and then slowly increase the rate until you have reached a steady pace. You should then continue in this way until you arrive at your chosen destination. This is the key to successful walking." said Ramdevi, who has been hired by Chalte-Chalte Walking Solutions to train white people how to walk their way to work and back.

"If you feel tired, you may stop along the way for a cup of chai or vadapav, but remember: you will have to start walking again."

Mrs. Sherpure also has handy tips to offer to alleviate fatigue and boredom suffered while walking long distances. "Walking is quite similar to zen meditation and should be done with awareness, focus and concentration. When I used to walk for miles carrying water vessels on my head, I was so fearful of the water dropping that I would focus my complete attention on the vessel I was carrying and had no time to feel bored or tired."

Mr Ramarao Athavale, proprieter of Chalte Chalte Walking Solutions added: "In order to encourage and motivate whites to learn walking, we will be also teaching them about the multiple benefits of walking. Trainees would be taught how walking your way to work apart from being good for the environment and saving money on gas, can also help fight obesity, lead to better health and save more money which otherwise would be wasted on medical bills or gymnasium charges."

"We have produced a booklet with diagrams and an introduction to advanced walking. We will also release DVD's which will feature live demonstation of the art of walking by our expert walker Mrs. Ramdevi Sherpure."