Brilliance

To call someone brilliant, in my opinion, is a compliment of the highest order. But the person receiving this compliment must be worthy of it. People never are born brilliant, let me tell you. It does require effort.
Being smart or intelligent is not the only criterion for brilliancy. It definitely is one, but not the only one. A guy who is great at academics and consistently scores well in exams cannot be called brilliant just because of that. Brilliancy is a concept which encompasses all fields of life. It has a very broad meaning and is not something you should throw around.
The best example of a truly brilliant person was Leonardo Da Vinci. He was good at EVERYTHING. He was a great athlete, a great spokesperson, artist, visionary, scientist - that can be considered everything. We all know that he was a great artist. The Mona Lisa, his eternal work of art, is considered to be a great piece of art as well as mystery. Definitely, she was a beautiful lady who was worthy enough to be portrayed on canvas, but Leo has left some subtle hints of not just plain art in that portrait. Her smile has literally killed people. Luc Maspero, a French artist committed suicide because he could not understand the mystery of her enigmatic smile. It was later suggested that Da Vinci had used a special technique of art to paint that smile called sfumato (which he had developed himself) to make the image a little blurry and ambiguous. It is actually quite unnerving that people actually killed themselves because they could not understand that smile... But surely, Leonardo da Vinci has performed a great feat of art by that painting.
He gave the world the first idea of the design of a toilet for men and women, designs for buildings and skyscrapers and was the first person to propose the idea of making flying objects (which we call aeroplanes and helicopters now). So you see now why I call him brilliant? He was good at everything, wasn't he?

Just having great thoughts is not enough. You must be able to voice them efficiently. Express them on paper efficiently, too. Having great thoughts but not being vocal to express them is a crime in itself. You are wasting your potential. If you are not good in addressing huge crowds and masses, you at least must be a confident contributor in regular conversations with family and friends.
Being physically and mentally fit is also an important aspect of brilliancy. You must be in good physical condition to take on simple labour. You must not be weak is the main criteria. Weaklings are laughed upon and disregarded by society. That is the cold, hard truth. If you are weak, or even overweight for that matter, nobody takes you seriously. However great your mind and thoughts may be, you will always be judged on your physique and demeanour first. So it does matter, actually. But you shouldn't really work on your body because others want you to, you must do it because you yourself feel the needs to. Real inspiration is impossible to fake (obviously). It must come from you; so even your attitude matters.
To be mentally fit is to not be affected by negativity. You should be strong enough to stave it off and learn from it. Going into depression or becoming excessively introvert is a sign of weakness and it should  never be that way. Those who do, they must simply learn to pick themselves up. Others will help you only upto a certain extent but it is you who has to decide. Every man on his own, is the law of the jungle. How much ever we deny that we live above the mentality of the jungle, we are just lying to ourselves. It is all a slugfest, and you must fight to survive. Survival of the fittest, too, is the law of the jungle, and don't you think that this is applicable to our current, corporate lives as well? He who is good at his job stays, he who is not, is kicked out. He now has to pay for his inefficiency. However cruel it is, that is what is required. Natural selection is at work everywhere, we choose not to believe in it is our folly.
Whatever you decide to do, you must do it well. If not, why do it in the first place? You are simply wasting your time then. If it was your decision to take up the activity, why not follow it up with the required efforts? This is very important. I too believe in the "happy go lucky" philosophy, but to a certain extent only. Your talent for it will take you through the initial stages well, but only upto the initial stages. After that, hard work is required, no substitute for it, really... Ordinary people simply shrug the importance of such stuff. Well, that is why they are ordinary, aren't they?
Brilliant people are invigorated to do challenging stuff. They don't mind being uncomfortable, it is just a phase, it shall pass. They repeat this process this process for whatever activity they take up. If they are bad at it and have zero talent at it, they will at least try to be average at that activity. So, if you want to be brilliant you shouldn't try to be a jack of all trades, master of one. You must try to be a jack of all trades, master of a few and god of one.     

Primal Wonders

Maths... it is just a wonderful subject. Highly addictive and informative, maths is. Mathematics defines the universe as we know it in a more sensible way than words. Words generally resort to abstract notions and fancies while describing the universe, but maths... Maths is more concrete. It has structure, it has substance, it makes perfect sense. In the universe, maths signifies order and foundation. The numbers, they never lie. It has no grey zone, it is either this or that. It does not leave you guessing too much. That is why numbers have completely different feel than words.
I was compelled to write about maths because of a joke my friend told me. It goes as follows: Which is the odd man out among the given terms: a mathematician, an electrical engineer, a plumber and a 12-inch pizza?
Answer: The mathematician, because he is the only one who can't feed a family of four...
This joke, this stupid joke is so bad... that I found it funny only later, after I had ranted sufficiently about the greatness and beauty of maths.
I am good at maths, no doubt, but I would really like to know more about numbers and the research people are doing just to beautify the way we see numbers and the number system. That is, I would love to learn Pure Mathematics, not just the applied stuff. I have been studying a lot of Number Theory lately and I have come to know of operations and functions which have very little or no use in physics or chemistry, but are powerful tools in solving sums based on pure mathematical research. The simple stuff we learn in school like prime numbers, at that time we find them to be just a bunch of numbers which have no natural divisor other than 1 and itself, but if you go deeper into that concept of prime numbers and start finding bigger and bigger prime numbers, it all seems wondrous! There is no pattern for the occurrence of prime numbers nor is there a formula or algorithm to find prime numbers, but that is what makes it all the more interesting! There is no pattern, there is utter chaos! And that is why finding order is of more use and of more fun! There are an infinite number of prime numbers (yes, that has been proven), so people are in constant hunt for newer and larger prime numbers. The largest prime number has some 1,74,25,170 (I use the Indian system of commas) digits! This number was found using the Mersenne method of finding primes, that is, in simple terms, a number expressed in the form of: 2ⁿ-1. If it ends up as prime, great! If not, try another number - is the idea in layman's terms.
I have taken a great interest in finding out new ways to factorize numbers and I have found a way to factorize large numbers with large prime factors quite efficiently. Only later did I realize, that this was one of Fermat's many algorithms... but anyway, I found it on my own, although not new to the world, but to me, so I am proud of myself! I state this as (this is some technical stuff, you can skip this if you want, for you could say I am just showing-off here):

Let x be the number you have to factorize. If x is even, then obviously, 2 is a factor and that simplifies your task a bit. But if x is odd (you might face the same problem once you have divided x by 2 and received a weird odd number), and is composite mind you, it will have two odd numbers as it's factors. Let those odd numbers be p and q. Those two numbers will have a natural Arithmetic Mean. Let that be denoted by a. Now the arithmetic mean will differ from p and q equally i.e. p = a + b, q = a - b. (Property of arithmetic mean). So let b be that constant difference. Therefore, x = pq ⇒ x = (a+b)(a-b) ⇒ x= a²-b² ⇒ a²-x=b² 

So any composite number can be denoted as a different between two squares and can be factorized. But to find the number from whose square the number has to be subtracted requires a little trial and error. You take the square root of the x and take the smallest natural number greater than the square root and subtract x from it and check whether the obtained number is a perfect square using a simple calculator. This method does not take long if you use a calculator and you don't have to try too many values, the answer comes in approximately 6 tries. 

Yes, such tedious methods too time-consuming and a number can be factorized just by using an app on a smartphone or on the net. But I just want to ask, what is the fun in that!? If you are given a problem and the other guy knows the solution and is ready to tell it to you, would you just listen to the solution without even trying!? If you would, you are an idiot, seriously. That is no way treat a problem or your mind. If you don't stress your head, it will degenerate into a dead weight. Don't let that happen.

Coming back to maths, such stuff about factorizing numbers is really fascinating and fun thing to do. You start seeing new connections between numbers and you will find working with them easier. For a maths-loving guy like me, I do this a lot of times. Sitting in the back of the car, having nothing to do, I just look at the number plates of other cars and start factorizing the number! I have proved lots of tests of divisibility by doing this! 

Another beautiful concept of maths is of infinity. The end of the number line. The place where parallel lines meet... So basically the point where the world is damned and where regular rules of algebra do not apply. How beautiful is that! What I really find interesting are these infinite series... Simply magnificent, they are! Here is the thing with infinite series', they are infinite and so cannot be perfectly rationalized. You can't seem to use the answer of "infinity" for it is too weird. So what we humans have done is, instead of using infinity itself, we have decided to manipulate it. Play with it a little bit, use its paradoxes against itself and come up with logical answers for infinite series. For example, the sum of all natural numbers from 1 to the natural infinity is not infinity. It is in fact -1/12! What the fuck! I know, right! Ahh... it is brilliant. It defies logic, really. But the methods are logical... So what do we do now? I really don't know, yet... 

Maths has some really amazing concepts, like Pi for example. Pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Simple enough, but the ratio is not rational. Fucked up, right? We define rational numbers as numbers which can be expressed as a ratio of two numbers i.e. m/n where n is a non-zero number. But pi, that bitch, is an irrational ratio. How wonderful! It has no definite value, per se. But for use in practical life, we can use approximation, they do work. 

But from a mathematical point of view, approximations don't work. It needs to be concrete and precise. You can give me a value of pi up to a gazillion digits, but it is not going to work because there will be some stuff after the gazillionth digit, too. It goes on and on and on...

Approximations don't work for maths. Patterns work for maths, yes. If you manage to find a pattern in the digits of pi, then too, it will be a great leap in mathematics. We will never have a definite value of pi, but lets go closer and closer to it just to enhance the beauty of the subject. That is the main aim of Pure Mathematics... Money does matter, but... the universe is richer than money itself... For maths, just seeing stuff is not enough. You have to go deeper. Relatively simple concepts like prime numbers have such great depth and importance to it! We just have scratched the surface. To know more about the universe, just a glimpse or glance is not enough. Everyone sees, but only a few observe...   

Words and Language

The other day, I read the autobiography of Malala Yousufzai, titled "My Name is Malala". It is a good book, worth a read no doubt. But I am not commenting on or giving my review of the book, instead I am going to tell you what in the book impressed me the most.

Just a very brief description: Malala Yousufzai is a citizen of Pakistan, which is hugely dominated and influenced by the Talibani terrorist base. Under the rule of the Taliban, the social status of women in Pakistan deteriorates from bad to worse. They do not enjoy political freedom and are not given a chance to voice their opinions. Such was the condition of women in Pakistan. During the Taliban attacks, Malala was asked to describe the conditions of the people and especially that of girls during such troubled times. She began a blog to broadcast her experiences. She got a worldwide audience and because of her words, the world came to know of the plight of Pakistani people. 

The same applied for the people of Germany after World War I. Germany was in dire straits and was reeling under economic burden. The people of German people needed hope. They needed someone to assure them that everything would be okay. And in came Hitler, with his booming voice and encouraging words. He assured the German masses that he would secure a bright future for Germany. His words moved people into action. 

Words are powerful weapons which we all wield so ably. They have immense power in them, capable of inflicting injury and remedying it. The concept of words can be considered as the mark of evolution which humans bear and animals don't. We can express our ideas and opinions through words. We can make the world aware of what we think just by typing in a few words. 

Alright, so people started making words to make their conversations more meaningful and easier. This process continued and different languages cropped up in the world. Language is a very important part of our lives and I believe, all of us must strive to perfect it. Yes, that means you MUST have impeccable grammar and good enough vocabulary to understand obscure words and phrases and use them as well, (to show-off, too, I might add).
Perfect language requires perfect pronunciation and perfect grammar. I was fortunate enough to have a great English teacher who emphasized on this issue and I took such stuff up with gusto. Yes, I became a Grammar Nazi. Correcting people when they used wrong prepositions or when their subject-verb agreement was off - that was my job. Yes, it infuriated people to no end, and I was branded a show-off and know-it-all (which I am, by the way), but I always failed to understand, why won't these idiots just speak the proper way!? Humans make mistakes, but only dumbfucks repeat them! Why is it so hard for people to just correct their mistakes when they are told that they are wrong, and when they are even given the right answer!? These thick-headed people, damn...
Also, a lot of people harbour this unreasonable adamancy of sticking to whatever they "like" to say even though they know it is wrong. Some might call it pride or ego, I prefer sticking to the simpler word of stupidity. Generally, this does NOT apply to grammar rules, but to pronunciation. People consider pronunciation to be trivial and a more ignorable concept of a language, but can I tell you, these people are wrong. Perfect pronunciation is a must to understand the... tone of the language, to get a feel for it. My English teacher was a stickler for perfect pronunciation. If you misspoke a word, you had to repeat it five times out loud, clearly and in the perfect way. Many people used to get irritated by her compulsion and obsessiveness for perfection, but I never understood the reason for this annoyance. To attain perfection is impossible (I doubt it, but that is what society likes to hear, anyway), but to strive for it, to work hard for it is surely possible, isn't it? Then why shouldn't you?
Many politicians, leaders and all those people who are forced into oratorship to attract crowds for their publicity deliver speeches with tons of grammatical errors and bumbling and fumbling. The language of speech doesn't matter, what matters is how you deliver your speech and how much sense your speech makes. You don't need big words to attract crowds, you need good, simple language and good matter for that. People tend to ignore grammar rules while delivering speeches and that is great shame. What is worse, is that they are never made aware of it...
Being impeccable and immaculate in your speech is considered to be lesser in comparison with the actual matter of your speech. I don't disagree with this, but correctness of language is a must. It is an insult to the language if you do not follow proper grammar. It is because of the language that your ideas are being broadcasted to the people so why not respect the language and follow its rules?
Your thoughts define you, yes, but you need words, you need language to express yourself. When you are able to charge those words with your energy, your spirit, they become all the more powerful. Remember, there will always be grammar Nazis around, so always watch out while saying stuff out in the open. One mistake in your speech and boom. There it goes on the internet and your reputation takes a hit. This is not only on higher levels of business, industry, politics, etc. but also in school. So always keep in mind, do not ignore grammar, because there will ALWAYS be one of us lurking around. Just lying in wait for the right opportunity... We are the grammar Nazis, and if you speak wrong grammar, we will find you and we will ridicule you!