BeneMal Classification Of Games

I think our subconscious identification with the inherent symbolism in a game is an important factor in how much we enjoy watching it. Like George Orwell said, "Sport is war, minus the shooting". Somebody else dies, so you watch?

Today I was watching a game of carroms in the recreational area during the lunch-break, and I was reminded of what a snooker commentator had said on TV a few months ago, when the player had pocketed a ball, "The ball has been released into gravity!"

The free fall of the ball symbolizes a release from suffering, liberation. The ball proceeds into a different plane and we feel happy for it. This is also true when we watch a 100m sprint for example. While the sprint is on, the runners have to keep running (suffering)... up until they cross the finish line and they are released from the forced suffering.

In games, as in life, there are rules and there are constraints. However, there is also an end to a game and we survive to reap the harvest, unlike in life. Sport is life, plus a view into the aftermath. This is what enchants us.

If you look at a game from the perspective of a ball/piece, then games can be classified as:

1) Benevolent Games

In games like snooker and carroms, we try to release the balls from the forces of friction and collisions and boundaries of space. The balls are confined to the table/board and are subjected to forceful collisions (ouch!) and ultimately, whoever liberates the board from the pain of the rolling balls is the winner.

2) Malevolent Games

In games like tennis and badminton, we try to keep the ball within the boundaries of the court for as long as possible. And while the ball is still in the court, we keep walloping it. It's almost as if we hate the ball, as soon it comes near us we hit it to the other side. Otherwise, if we allow the ball to continue in its trajectory and it is still in the boundary, we are penalized. Pure evil!

A redeeming fact though, is that if we hit the ball such that the opponent can't return it, thereby becoming agents of liberation for the ball, we are rewarded with points!

3) BeneMal Games

These are games which symbolize the fight between Good And Evil.

In a game like cricket, the batting side tries to put the ball outside the boundary while the fielding side aims to keep it in. Batting good, fielding evil? Well, Good and Evil are both subjective and relative. If you look at the game from a different perspective, the fielding side can be viewed as trying to put the batting side out of their suffering, caused by their desire to liberate the ball! :)

Football too, both teams aim to liberate the ball from the confines of the field in their own way and believes the other team's way is evil. In the midst of this conflict though, the ball keeps getting kicked around! :)

- Thomas Jay Cubb

Super Chef In Shantisagar

I generally have my breakfast from the ShantiSagar near my office; on most days I have rice-bath. (For non-Bangaloreans, ShantiSagar is a chain of vegetarian joints and rice-bath is a generic term for any savoury boiled rice preparation mixed with a variety of vegetables/seasoning that can be had as breakfast; Bangaloreans, excuse my poor ignorant definitions :)

Where I come from, we don't normally eat rice for breakfast. But what made me transcend my gastronomic upbringing was the tastiness and sheer variety that seemed to be on offer. Each day, there were two different types of rice-bath on offer - coconut-rice, tomato-rice, ghee-rice, vegetable-rice, aubergine-rice, pongal, biriyani, pulao, cabbage-rice, capsicum-rice...

Some of these varieties like, for example, capsicum- and cabbage-rice I had not seen in other breakfast-joint elsewhere and hence I believed this to be innovation at work. Plus, whoever was making it was enjoying his work too; the preparation was sure to be tasty without being generic, satisfaction guaranteed!

There seemed to be a virtuoso chef at work right in my neighbourhood ShantiSagar! And it seemed here, you could have your cake and eat it as well, it was cheap as well! Whether he really was a chef extraordinaire is moot, but for me the proof was in the pudding. :)

I thought a little more about this SuperChef and the life he was leading. Somebody so talented and obviously good at what he did, working at a generic food joint chain! His innovation and creativity would mostly be stifled here. Hey, this is really good mate! Exquisite! But this is not rice-bath man, could you please make some rice-bath now please?

The supervisor's perspective was logical as well: what was the point anyway? People came to ShantiSagar expecting rice-bath and not ratatouille or paella. A good ratatouille is a bad bisibelebath, and a paella is probably taboo for most of the customers. So SuperChef, his ultimate duty being to feed the clientele, would willingly submit and decide to be satisfied making innovative rice-baths.

If his creativity was to be bottled, why was he hired then? Because the supervisor only checked for the minimum qualification - "does he make good rice-bath?" - and took any added skills as a bonus freebie thrown in for him. Maybe he will invent a new kind of rice-bath and that will give us a competitive advantage! Who knows!

Surely, SuperChef was not getting paid much either. (A plate of rice-bath is priced at Rs.16 at the restaurant.) Factor in (the mandatory and natural) capitalistic measures and other hierarchical/operational constraints. Probably peanuts, kind of like minimum wage.

Why was my virtual hero doing it then? Why was he not running his own fine-dining restaurant or at least working at a five-star hotel? Probably he enjoyed what he was doing - making good food and people happy. Perhaps that's all he cared about. Or, maybe it could have been that he didn't know too much about other opportunities that existed elsewhere and was not convinced about his suitability/skills.

If you decide to check out the rice-bath in the ShantiSagar near my office after reading this and find that it's not up to scratch, maybe it's because the SuperChef got bored with the "routine innovation" or he got peer-pressured in to normalcy. But I hope it's because he saw the light and quit!

- Thomas Jay Cubb

Capture To Free

When I was in school, every day during the morning assembly, there used to be a section called "Thought For The Day" where somebody would read out a famous saying/proverb/thought. The attempt was to stimulate thinking on those lines (though nobody ever did!) among the students, at least for that day.

If you subscribe to one of the many Quote For The Day or Word Of The Day mailers and then archive them for later reference (I'll read them later) you know what I am talking about. As we chug along down the tracks of life that have been laid down ahead of us, it would be good if we don't have just thoughts for the day, we should also try to have thoughts of the day.

Thoughts are fleeting; they come and go, and thoughts occur to everybody. Often you will be doing something else when they come and you will put them off till later. I'm doing this now, I can't act on that, not now. Later. And then you forget. The thought is lost to you, and you will be left searching for it!

If you are lucky, the thought will come back to you, and then what? Same story.

It is important to that thoughts don't always need to be acted on fully. Like a ghost haunts you till it is avenged, the thought floats around till you express it. Thoughts find an end in expression. Write it down or at least share it with a few friends. It does not matter even if it is not really significant or momentous; treat it like a child of your brain. An unexpressed thought is like an aborted foetus - you never know what it could grow into.

Give it a chance.

Capture the thought and set it free.

Tyranny Of Time

Today my watch died on me; I am choosing not to replace the batteries. As a token rebellion.

The watch was my sign of bondage, a badge of my slavery - the time on my watch controlled me, decided what I did. My watch was my Little Lamb - I used to wear it everywhere and all the time...yeah, when I slept, even when I took a bath! Yeah, you could say that it possessed me more than I possessed it.

Only a few hours into my rebellion now, I am realizing that time as shown by my watch was not, and need not have been, my religion. What you read off your watch is just a token of time; WatchTime is just a convention.

Time is the ultimate luxury. Some months ago, I had read about the world's most expensive watch. Made by Swiss watchmaker Romain Jerome, this watch actually doesn't tell you the time of day; it only tells you whether it is day or not! Fashion-statement or not, it is definitely one helluva statement to make!

Before I sign off, small cryptic confession to make: I'm on Mobile-Time now. :) Well, that is, I peek at my cellphone to get my dose of the reality low.

- Thomas Jay Cubb

ThoughtJots: Time and money are the dimensions of the social universe. You spend time, you spend money (Time-Money equivalence). Some time ago, some time back (Dimension). Money gives you power, power gives you the ability to control other people's time.

Plan Hazy, Plan General

I have a plan. A plan for everything, no matter what. And, it's worthless.

There are just too many things that are out of control, too many unknowns. Shit will happen yes, but you cannot possibly know of what consistency!

So, realize that your plan is just a plan and not more important than what's actually happening around you. Realize that your Plan was just a figment of your imagination at an earlier point of time when you didn't know what was gonna happen. Plans are based on inaccurate estimates of an unknown future.

Plan Hazy, Plan General. Things will be ready when the time is ripe, and not sooner. Especially in creative endeavors, omni-plans more often than not will kill the goose.

A plan gives you a sense of importance and provides you an illusion of control. "No matter what happens, I know what to do"

Plans also give you something to put the blame on. "I failed because things didn't go according to plan." Re-read... "I failed" - that was probably the key and more true part of that statement. Things rarely, if ever, go according to plan. And if they do, then it is because you over-estimated and over-allocate something somewhere.

Time-bound plans based on sequential completion of minute tasks are the worst of all. There are people who plan like I will drink water at 10, pee at 12, drink again at 1230, pee again at 230 and so on... because they "know" that it takes 2 hours for that process. This is no way to live! You drink when you are thirsty and when you can, and pee when you wanna go and you can. Such micro-planning piles on the pressure unnecessarily and causes errors and unnecessary disappointment.

But still, people overplan - plan to a granularity that borders on the ridiculous. First A happens, then B happens, then C, then D... What exacerbates the situation is when you associate deadlines with each of them. (hmm.. interesting word...dead..line..) Isn't it enough that A,B,C,D.. happen? Why worry about the order in which they happen?

Take things as they come. Take stock and do what's possible. You can run but you can't hide from reality. You can track everything but you can't plan. Beware the OmniPlan! Beware even more the OmniMicroPlan!

- Thomas Jay Cubb
(Thanks to Grasshopper Madhu for raising the question: What should I do now? Nothing's going according to plan)

Insignificance

Here is a bitter pill to swallow:
"If not you, it's just another you."

Special Creatures
We are born and grow up thinking we are special. However, the blunt truth is that you were born out of an accidental collocation of random elements. Momma's blue-eyed boys keep hearing things like "you are so cute!", "that was superb" even when things were anything but! Hear something repeatedly enough and you start to believe, even the impossible.

The programming of self-belief is actually a survival tactic that is wired in to our genes; the world needs us to survive for otherwise there will be no world! :) If you were to confront the truth of your utter insignificance too early in life, you definitely would not survive for too long; the world needs its assholes. Of course, there is this possibility (very improbable, since most of us have to be average) that you, in fact, are very special and you need that self-belief to deliver your goods; the world needs your output (not you, I have to remind). It just increases the odds.

My Way Or...
We refuse to accept the randomness and illogicality of it all; we need to feel special. Realize that there might be no higher purpose, there might be no meaning, and there is nothing you can do about it, nobody even cares. So, we invent benevolent (someone who cares), anthropomorphic (someone like our special selves) gods and say that Ours is the One True Way. What we are really doing is worshiping ourselves (Our Selfs) to feel happiness and comfort.

..The HighWay
Hinduism, insofar as I know such things, is the only faith and embraces the concept and truth of insignificance. It accepts multiple faiths, even atheism :) There are many gods and you are free to worship the gods of your choice, and in the way that you choose to. Even the gods pray to other gods...

My interpretation of this - polytheistic tolerance is possible only if you accept the fact that what you believe in doesn't really change anything. Do what you need to, to feel happy and good about yourself, while you're here. You are insignificant in the universal scheme of things. The universe goes on with or without you.

Cubbism
Accept the truth and the reality of your insignificance. The sooner you do this, the sooner you will find happiness. Happiness is the absence of conflict.

End Pillow
So, your account was hacked, eh? At least, somebody thought you were important enough and that you had important secrets! The more plausible explanation is less comforting: that you were just one among the people the hacker chose in order to establish his significance! Hey, but he chose you, didn't he?

Plastics Or Trees: Hobson's Choice

It's a disposable world and convenience is everything.

With the ban on plastic bags coming into effect in many places, the usage of paper bags would likely increase. Paper bags match the convenience, accessibility, ease-of-storage etc of plastic bags more than bags made of other materials.

Plastic is notoriously difficult to dispose of, as it is non-biodegradable. But should the lives of an extra million innocent trees be sacrificed just because of our inability to exorcise the plastic demon?

Paper comes from trees - so, wouldn't it mean that more trees will have to be cut, to meet the growing demand for paper? Paper bags would also have a tendency to tear and would be spoiled if they get wet.

Which is the lesser evil? There ain't no such thing as a free lunch; to gain something, you must sacrifice something!

Counters:
1. Use cloth bags instead. <==> But maintaining the bag, keeping it safe etc are just too bugging, right? And in any case, how many should we carry around?
2. Paper is recyclable. <==> So is plastic. The question is whether we really bother.
3. Paper can be made without cutting trees too...

Vegetarian Abortionists

Can a person who is vegetarian (lacto-vegetarian/vegan, the kind who avoids even eggs) by choice, because of moral reasons ("Respect life! Should not kill to eat, doesn't matter how indirectly we may be responsible!"), ever support the cause of abortion?

Is a 'vegetarian abortionist' a perfect oxymoron? If a person does both, should it not be construed/interpreted as hypocrisy? An egg is also like a fetus: if eating an egg kills the bird, the abortion kills the baby. Or is the life of a human not worth the life of a chicken?

Both the issues in question are very much what you may call matters of life and death, and are very similar.

Once we do an "I-choose-to-do-so" and enter a moral high-ground, we have to stay there, and do so consistently on similar things.* Or one has to be prepared to be branded a hypocrite!

* The same lines of reasoning would also hold for those members of the PETA (People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals), if any, who do not help suffering people.

DISCLAIMERS/NOTES OF EXPLANATION
----------------------------------------------------
1. Just a logical musing, not a diatribe. I have nothing against vegetarians or anti-abortionists: or even for pro-abortionists or non-vegetarians for that matter! :-) Also, nothing at all if the choice you exercise in what you eat (or do not) is as a victim of circumstance (religion / availability/ income).

2. Not to be interpreted as a case for cannibalism of any kind! :-)

3. I shall not be forced to eat gross things during the course of any argument resulting out of or inspired by this post. At the most, if forced, I will eat...my words! ;-)

- Thomas Jay Cubb

Inspired by and dedicated to my dear friend Anup Kesavan.

You Are What You Say - More!

A few more things that I missed out in the previous post.

A. Coffee-drinking - the next social stigma
I was asked at the dentist's whether I drank a lot of coffee because of some stains on my teeth. The dentist asked this in an apologetic manner. A couple of years ago (or maybe a little more before) it would have been: do you smoke a lot?

Coffee has a lot of stuff going against it - it is intoxicating, odorous, may be harmful, and what's more, popular too! Two decades down the line, the kid next door will say: hey mister, would you please mind not drinking that?

Anything that could possibly give on pleasure must be stigmatized; at least don't do it in public! After coffee, it would be chocolates...

B. Making Fun Not = Having Fun
Constant criticism, even if done by way of casual jokes, does not advance a relationship. We need to accept people as they are; faults are acceptable, let people be. Do not always try to correct.

C. Egalitarian Vegetarianism
Shouldn't vegetarian mean only vegetables/plant-products? After all the term is not non-dead-animal products nor is it non-killed stuff. Some people would choose to define it that way, because otherwise it would mean no milk, no chocolates! Some vegetarians take the "will-not-kill-anything-even-if-to-live" line of reasoning. Well, we have to accept it like you have to have money to make money, only life can sustain life.

D. Religious Intolerance & Smoking
This one is outright biased, opinionated, founded on coincidence, even propagandistic - I have not even checked the facts! :-)

There is growing unrest and intolerance, rising religious tensions, in the world today. Also less tobacco usage. Could the two be linked? The Holy Wars (Crusades) ended after the arrival of tobacco. Being intolerant and rude to smokers is socially acceptable nowadays. If you agree with that, then you must also agree that religious intolerance ought to be acceptable - if you worship your god, it would harm my god!

Oh my god, that was a straw-man argument if ever there was one! What an unashamed attempt at blatant self-justification? "Well, I am right and you are wrong, so you should not do whatever it is you are doing, even if it does you good, because I have a right to protect myself and I believe it is wrong and could harm me. So please stop. STOP IT!"

E. Anachronistic phrases
On a related note (to E. above). Stuff like dialing a number (remember when the phones had rotary dials?), hang up and so on. There were more examples, I can't recall now...maybe in a later post...(I wish!)

- Thomas Jay Cubb

From the cradle to the grave
Go the cowardly and the brave
The good die young, some unsung
While the evil live and thrive
The skull and bones, touch wood,
Might do you good!

Only when a man dies.
Do we realize
There are no why's
All just a roll of the dice.

(untitled, unedited poem... please excuse!)

You Are What You Say?

You are what you say! If what you would say if you were there was known, is your presence really required? Do words make the man? In the sci-fi novel Wyrms, Orson Scott Card took this what-you-say-is-who-you-are principle to its logical extreme: heads of people were preserved such that they could talk, even years after the bodies perished! Talk about just being all talk! ;-)

Well, here are some things that I would have talked to you about if you had me over the last few months. These are also blog-points, hopefully I will expand on these points, but who knows! Some random thoughts in here - some trivial and obvious, some profound. Some original, some inspired. Some fun, some boring. Some are lessons, some are observations/insights yeah and some are shit. C'est la vie.

1. GREEDY DOESN'T WORK...ALWAYS
Doing the best possible thing at every point will not yield you the best results. You might even be called spineless! Greedy algorithms don't always work.

2. ON THE TEACHING OF SCIENCE
Science should not be taught in historical order. Why force everybody to learn the mistakes and then unlearn? One of the reasons why quantum physics, relativity etc still have an aura of mystique and incomprehensibility.

3. LIVE FOR A BETTER TOMORROW
Hope is what keeps us ticking. Only if there is hope is there a will.

4. DEMOCRACY?
Everybody is Chinese when they are born, slowly we become others.

5. LAWS OF FRIENDSHIP
a) Only equals can be friends.
b) And there are limits to friendship no matter what you might claim. There's stuff you will and stuff you won't for a friend/relative. Remember King Lear.

6. PARTICLE METAPHYSICS
Modern physics is in many ways approaching the realm of religion. "There has to be a particle like this, so let's search for it... we didn't find it... let's think up a new particle or a new dimension!"

7. KEEP IT SHORT STUPID
Futility of writing long-winded reviews. If you like the thing or its maker and I say it's bad, you will check it out any way - how bad can it be?.

8. MOVIE CRITICISM FOR DUMMIES
Quick-and-dirty movie critique tips applicable to all movies regardless.
a) Do the characters explain some part of the story or a quirk of some other character in dialogue? If they state the really obvious, it's a very weak script.
b) Artificiality Litmus - Did the director achieve what he aimed for?
c) There were a few more... cannot recollect now

9. COMMON SYMBOLIC INSTRUMENTS IN MOVIES
a) Elements Technique - Rain/Thunder/Lightning to indicate helplessness of the characters
b) Call Of Reality technique. Phone ringing to interrupt a dream-like, unreal sequence.

X. SYSTEMATIC<=>REGULAR
Regular and systematic is best. Regularly systematic will also benefit you. Be systematic

Y. THE WILL-DO PRINCIPLE
Doesn't always have to be 100% before you try to do something, enter the fray, put yourself to the test etc. 80% should do. 80-20 rule. Can be applied in most scenarios. 20% is all you need 80% of the time. And 80% would suffice 80% of the time (wait a minute, that would be the 80-80 rule!)

Z. OH PEDANTIC ME!
The difference between continual and continuous.

A. PSEUDO-LINGUISTICS
Musings on the similarities between Kannada and Malayalam.
a) Malayalam being a somewhat recent language takes elements from both Kannada and Tamil, although the similarity with Tamil is what gets highlighted.
b) 50 is Ainpathu in North Kerala, Anpathu in South Kerala. Thantha (=father) derogatory in south.
c) The modifier for "do not" in Kannada is "baruthu", Malayalam ("aruthu").
d) Ho-Po, Va-Ba Sound Interchangeability principle
Maybe some of these "similarities" stem from my ignorance rather than knowledge of the languages in question. Take them as hypotheses!

B. THOUGHT-LOSS-ON-WRITE
Capture the thought when you can! It's the capturing that's important, improve it later. But the Heisenberg principle applies, you alter the thought when you catch it. But catch it anyway.

C. SLOW-AND-STEADY
The principle of differential change like differentiation/integration. It is suddenly that you realize that it has changed completely!

D. IMPORTANCE OF MINUTIAE
Near-complete knowledge of any activity/sphere of life/domain is beneficial. Could be anything but it is very difficult to get there. Are you there? Here's an easy way to check: have you bluffed about It, when asked about something specific about It?

Yeah that's what I would have talked about. That was TJ BrainDump 2007.

So that's all? Nothing missed? Parts make the whole, but there is always more to the whole. Or so we hope.

- Thomas Jay Cubb

Changelog
20071124 Added the cheesy titles, moved the background update to separate post

A Scheme For Numbering Bus Routes

A SCHEME TO EMBED ROUTE-INFORMATION
IN BUS-ROUTE NUMBERS

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,
"it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."
- Lewis Carroll, Through The Looking Glass

"But what about,” I asked him, “bus-route numbers?”.
- TJC

Abstract

The need for a more meaningful scheme for numbering bus-routes in cities is explained and a scheme suitable for this purpose is detailed in this paper. The proposed scheme entails the assignment of numbers to the station and the utilization of the multiplicative properties of the numbers to embed route-information in the route numbers in an efficient manner.

1 - INTRODUCTION
-----------------------------------

A numbering scheme for public buses is essential if a city has a lot of people of different origin, who speak different languages natively. The numbering of buses according to the routes that they service helps a great deal when you don't know how to read the favoured local language.

Democracy, the preferred ideology of this age, is about suiting the majority. If the majority of the local population can read the language, writing the names of the places enroute in that language will be very useful indeed. But the minority of the non-readers should not be neglected either; the route number should still be present, the number being their only cue. Democracy is also about the right of the minority to equality. The situation should be win-win-for-all, where possible.

1.1 Limitations of present schemes

The route numbers for buses, however, seem to be chosen arbitrarily or through an arcane and abstruse scheme. It is biased to suit the operators' convenience more than the passengers'. Ease of administration and maintenance seems to be the driving (excuse the pun) force behind the numbering of the routes.

For example, all that may be common to Buses 361, 362 and 363 may be that they start from the same location. This would not be very helpful for a person standing at that location, clueless as to how to choose from one of the buses at the station!

Very little conclusively useful information can be obtained from a route number. Numbers are used almost like names, meaningless. Such a scheme may be termed a number-as-name scheme.

1.2 Socio-economic impact

Any numbering scheme can be easily implemented by the bus-service operators or company. That being the case, the numbering scheme chosen must be as advantageous to the passenger as possible. A bus-service is, after all, intended as a service to the passengers.

Now, even if the chosen scheme is complex, the operators will eventually adapt to its complexity. A bus-service is, after all, a business too. And in a business, the customer is king. But this scenario will not arise: a scheme easily understood by the passengers will, necessarily, be easy for the operators as well.

A simple, intuitive numbering scheme would be helpful not only for the local-language-ignorant passengers but also for other linguistically challenged people like dyslexics and illiterates (they might be good with numbers). It would also encourage the use of the public transport mechanism; many a time, it is for want of a bus number that we take a cab. We can also eliminate the need for the names of the enroute stations to be written on the bus, as the scheme would be easily usable for the natives also.

2 - PRIME-MULTIPLICATIVE ROUTE NUMBERING
----------------------------------------------------------------------

2.1 Requirement:
A passenger, may not be familiar with the local language, has to be able to correctly decide whether a bus goes where he wants to go.

2.2 Assumption:
A passenger has basic knowledge of mathematics and numbers .

2.3 Base Scheme:
1. Assign each station a prime number. 2, 3 , 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37...
2. Enumerate the stations on the bus-route.
3. The product of the prime numbers denoting the stations enroute, is used as the route number.

2.4 Sufficiency:
Since each station is assigned a prime number, a route number will be unique. The passenger who knows the number of his destination can determine whether a given bus will go to his destination by checking whether the bus-number is divisible by the number of his destination.

3 - CRITIQUE
------------------------

3.1 Learning Curve

A question regarding the ease of learnability of the destination-numbers can be raised. The number can be displayed at all bus-stops, the passenger can make a note of it when he gets down if he thinks he will need to go there frequently.

A passenger will find it easier to remember the set of numbers representing his possible destinations than the numbers of all the buses going there. The number of numbers that a passenger will need to remember in this scheme is less by a multiplicative factor than in number-as-name schemes.

3.2 Length Of Route Numbers

The readily observable and noticed space on a bus is limited; the number of characters required for route-representation is an important criterion. The route numbers must be displayed prominently and they should also be easily analyzable.

Some of the route numbers if we use a purely prime-multiplicative scheme will be very long and too complex for an average individual to quickly analyze with his destination-key.

3.2.1 An alternative:
Let us consider a linear scheme in which we could assign numbers (needn't be prime) to the stations and we string together the numbers for the stations as the route number. On the face of it, this seem to be simpler than the prime-multiplicative scheme. But there could be problems interpreting a linear route number. For example, 123 could be interpreted as 1-2-3 , 12-3 or 1-23. But, if we include the dashes in the route number for clarity, the route number will be unnecessarily bloated; the dashes adding to the length. This would result in route numbers like 1-2-3-4-15-16-21. In the prime-multiplicative scheme such a number would probably be smaller, in terms of the number of characters required to represent it.

3.2.2 Adapting the prime-multiplicative scheme:
Through judicious and intelligent choices, the length of the route number can be minimized. Some approaches are mentioned below -

a) Use of smaller numbers for stations that are on busier routes. In fact, if all of the buses pass a station, that needn't have a number at all!

b) In the case that all buses passing through a station A come from another station B, the square of B's code can be used for A and so on. This would mean just multiplication with B's code instead of with another prime number which would have been larger.

c) A hybrid combination of the linear and multiplicative schemes may be essential for very large cities. In case the resulting route number is too big, and only then, it can be decomposed into two smaller, more manageable numbers. The passenger can decide whether the bus goes to a destination if either is divisible by the destination-key.

In the opinion of this author, upto a pair of four digit numbers would be quickly analyzable. In most cases, it should be possible to manage with smaller pairs.

d) Colour-coding of the buses and division of cities into sub-areas are also possibilities. But this should be done only if absolutely necessary, as it destroys the uniformity and simplicity of the scheme and creates confusion.

4 - CONCLUSION
----------------------------

A bus-route numbering scheme based on prime-multiplicative encoding can be used, after suitable modifications and adaptation to location-specific peculiarities, for embedding route-information into bus-route numbers in an efficient manner.

A limitation of this scheme is that some of the route-numbers could be unmanageably long - some of the possible workarounds have been explained - but there should be no problem implementing the scheme for at least the most important locations of a city.

The implementation of this or a similar route-information-encoding scheme for bus-numbering would be beneficial.

-Thomas Jay Cubb

Dumbbells Under The Bed *

Ever heard the one about the guy who learnt body-building through a correspondence course? He didn't become much brawnier, but the postman is now the strongest man in town!

"This is what Zeno said, what about you?"*

It's not enough that you read and come to know of great men's thoughts; what's important is that you think about these, form an opinion of your own and know what they really mean. Think, what if. Think, what more. Only then can you assimilate greatness and become better for having read/heard it. Think, Why. Think, Why Not. Like the Eagles sang in their song Already Gone, you can see the stars and still not see the light.**

This is the path to discovery and, often, invention- small deviations may result in totally different though possibly equally great, if not greater, destinations. The pleasures are in the journey on the thought-train; even if the terminals are the same, the route makes a difference.

What say you?

- Thomas Jay Cubb

NOTES
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* This piece was inspired by a few lines mentioned in Tibor Fischer's The Thought Gang. The comparison in the title is from a passage in it. Ever since I read it, this particular thought has influenced me a lot. Other listings included -
Stupidity, that's me. - about the value of humility.
Live according to nature. - no greed path to happiness.

** In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you. -Mortimer J. Adler,
philosopher, educator and author (1902-2001)