Saturday 20 April 2013

Sikdar's rule & gravity assists.

Ever wondered why the highest mountain peak in the world is called Everest? Wikipedia gives the bare bones of the story but has rejected my edit which would clarify the matter once and for all.

Briefly, Everest was a Nineteenth Century British dude who prevented a Bengali mathematician- named Radhanat Sikdar- from rising in the world to become a 'Dipty' (i.e. a Deputy District Collector of Revenues who might, ex officio, also act as Sub-Judge)  by enunciating the doctrine that subordinates can't switch jobs between different branches of the Raj Salariat without the express permission of their Department Head. Clearly, this was so salient and outstanding a dogma that its originator retains to this day the highest claim to being commemorated by, with such signal injustice, having had his unhappy subordinate's discovery named after himself.
Of course, as Radhanath well knew, Everest wasn't the most salient point on the Earth's surface in the sense of being furthest from its centre. In that sense, Kilimanjaro is higher as are Mountains in Equador- coz the Earth, like a Babu of the best type, has a bit of middle aged spread round its Equator.

Still, Sikdar's rule can mean one of two incompossible but, admitting Universal Ontological dysphoria, acutally necessarily complementary things
1) the concrete deontic right of a Dept. Head to fuck over his subordinate and take credit for the latter's work
2) the alethic, that is virtual or merely mathematical, geodetics which, absent an Everest to enforce Newtonian substantivism, turns into Poincare ergodicity- i.e. something French and totally immoral coz like Clairaut could mebbe start getting it on with Madame du Chatelet and Voltaire would be left just holding his dick like a loser and consoling himself with some bogus Upanishad or Purana forged by the Jesuits.

Siddhanta- In the sublime works of Sri Aurobindo & Mamta Di, we find a resolution of the philosophical aporias represented by Sikdar's rule.  Just as Mamta retained the Police Chief who once bit her and Aurobindo soared towards the Superman by dint of the drag put upon him by Police spies, so too is every Everest a but gravity assist slingshoting every Right Wing, Libertarian, Hindutva nut-job, like yours truly, out of the Blogosphere and into a more supernal type of Oblivion.

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