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Showing posts from July, 2011

Visual Interpolation and Partially Occluded Nude

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The human brain evolves to perform visual interpolation, visual extrapolation, and visual completion. The image on the right depicts an Assam tiger occluded in the Kaziranga National Park, India. When confronted with such a situation in the wild, the human brain must be able compute with the electrical signals transmitted by the photosensors in the eyes, distinguish between different shades of yellow and brown colors, interpolate between the color shades, isolate unimportant information (i.e. grass), and generate a group of electrical signals to represent the predator. When these signals are relayed to the amygdala, the emotional CPU of the brain, a "run" signal will be generated and get cascaded to motor control CPU of the brain. A human brain which failed to perform the above visual interpolation is bound to become the lunch of another species. So, our brain has the natural tendency to do interpolation and enjoy doing so. Now, let's turn our attention to the imag

Puranic Cosmology of the Ancient Indians

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The Judeo-Christian time scale as computed by James Ussher in 1650, that the universe was created single-handedly by Yahweh in October 23, 4004 BC (proleptic Julian calendar), is rather simple if you were to put it side by side with the Puranic model conceived by the ancient Indians. The Puranic model of time assumes that the world goes through a manvantara cycle of four yugas or ages, namely, the Krta yuga, the Tretā yuga, the Dvāpara yuga, and the Kali yuga. The durations of the four yugas is carefully chosen by the ancient Indians so that (a) they form an arithmetic progression; (b) they sum to a multiple of ten; (c) their arithmetic sum is 4.32 million years. Furthermore, the model also assumes the following conversion factors for dealing with longer time span, 1. 1,000 manvantara cycles is equivalent to one Brahmā day (approx. 4.32 billion years); 2. The next 1,000 manvantara cycles is equivalent to one Brahma night; 3. One Brahma day and one Brahma night is equivalen