Infinity

"Oh, what does it matter? It is like infinity + 1" , I said involuntarily.
"What do you mean- infinity + 1?" 
"Well, infinity +1 would still be infinity. It's an incremental change. Doesn't change a thing in the world", I went on.
And then my friend stumped me by quoting one of my own favorite lines- "But it made a difference to that one!"
"Inspiration story wise, I love that line. But mathematically speaking infinity+1 cannot be bigger than infinity. It just doesn't work that way."

Sparing you the rest of the conversation, let me get to my point. Infinity is really a fascinating idea. When somebody tells you- we are in an infinite cycle of birth and death (theologically speaking, or speaking of physics), I immediately think "But when was the first time you were born?" It's a chicken and egg problem- if I want to tell myself the universe is infinite I wonder how it all started. But if I try to reconcile that it is in fact, finite- then my mind goes "But what was there before it all started?" Well, it looks like I'd never get it. Maybe it is not just unknown but unknowable (ya, now I am an infinity agnostic :P)

Anyway, when I spoke of infinity+1, I spoke like it's any other number. Which, of course it isn't. When someone says God has infinite powers, they don't mean he has 9^(9^9) powers or something. They usually mean endless. There is just one infinity. And it's endless. All-encompassing. At least that's what I thought of infinity until yesterday... Yesterday, I happened to read a little about Modern Set Theory and cardinal numbers, and then I realized, infinity is not just a concept of endlessness- there are infinite infinities in this world. 

Wait, whaaa? 
(Click on Read more for more)

AFL? - Part 2

(Continued from part one)
And a long break later, I am back. For all those people who I disappointed in the first part, there are some clarifications I need to make on why I started this article and what evolution actually means. So I am making my Part 2 into a Part 3, and putting this up first. 
 
There are 3 reasons I started this article. One was because of the way that particular argument was presented in the particular book I read. It sounded quite convincing in that context. Also, if you have read enough of evolution, you would understand that many human behaviors do actually rise from simple behaviors designed to hunt or kill in animals. That does not mean what you do today is to hunt or kill- just that that’s where your behavior started. So it is very well possible that many of current human behavior be an evolutionary consequence of lust. The third reason is that- in a country like ours this kind of argument is very easily accepted in private and seldom in public. People secretly relish any theory that moralizes the very acts they find immoral. And that is precisely why someone needs to bring out such a theory in public and list exactly what the flaws are.

However, I need to clarify what I call flaws.
Many people told me this theory is obviously wrong, because we can’t all be motivated by a low carnal desire. Now, THAT is not a flaw! Just because something does not “sound” nice or consoling does not mean it is not true. If science proves humans are selfish (for eg.) by nature, so we are. There is no point in saying it is not valid because it does not fit in my optimistic view of life. But, note the IF.
 
Anyhow, EVERY theoretical argument deserves to be examined and argued about. The arguments for or against may be obvious, but there must be LOGICAL reasons to accept or reject a theory. Anyone who says “I refuse to argue about this” is simply giving in to blind faith. Of course, if the question were something like “Can cows fly?” there isn’t too much to argue about because the arguments against it are obvious: a) cows are not light enough to fly b) cows don’t have any faculty (like wings) to fly with c) cows are not an advanced enough species to devise a mechanism to fly, and so on. But note that there MUST be arguments. If someone told me without thinking cows can’t fly because that’s how they are or God willed them to be so, I might someday find a genetically engineered cow which can fly (long-shot, but still!). Point being, I cannot and will not reject ANY theory without sufficient arguments against it. This theory is also being looked at from the same angle- with an open mind to see its for’s and against’s and then decide.
Another thing people tell me is something of this sort-- “I don’t accept this theory. I am not playing counter strike out of lust” or “I am not doing charity work out of lust” and stuff like that. “Of course you aren’t”. The theory didn’t say YOU as an individual magically transformed all your lust into your other motivations to study, work etc. What it said was that most of human action arises from an essential desire to impress other human beings (especially the ones who have impressed you!). And the desire to impress itself is evolved from the desire to impress a partner. Please read the last 2 lines again. THIS is the heart of the AFL theory. Go back to a list of your long term goals and see if you did not have any desire to impress anyone other than yourself at all throughout. Some of us might be able to say that, but more than 90% of humans work with an overt or covert, conscious or subconscious intention to impress. All that the AFL theory says is- since impressing someone itself started out as a side-effect of the impressing-your-partner gene, most of your actions are a by-product of this primitive behavior.
 
Second. I think I missed out a little on explaining what evolution actually means or implies. Most people look at evolution the same way they look at transformation. But there is an essential difference between the two. Evolution happens bit by bit. Piece by piece. Transformation happens drastically. Besides, evolution works in a scale of thousands of years on thousands of individuals. So a behavioral trait to impress could become a behavioral trait to lie to impress only in thousands of years. The reason this is so is because evolution is NOT metamorphosis. It is not as if early man was very truthful and 1000 years later one man started hiding the truth and another 1000 later some men started saying white lies and then they grew into grey lies. That is NOT evolution.
 
Evolution is like a sieve. Hundreds of humans would have lied and hundreds would have spoken the truth. Assuming lying helped some survive (or impress the partner better in order to survive and reproduce) and always speaking the truth didn’t, more and more humans who lied would survive and pass on their lying genes to their children while the truth-speakers would not survive and not pass on the genes. This would happen for thousands of years until no truthful gene was left out, or very few truth speakers remained or everyone evolved into a state midway between the two, which optimized the chances of survival. What this means is that for the lying gene to spread, millions of humans have tried to lie and succeeded and millions have spoken the truth and failed. All this hypothetically. (Please don’t comment saying there is no gene for lying :( )
In a similar way, when one says the desire to impress a female evolved into a desire to earn more- what it means is- more and more humans that earned more found it easier than those who didn't to impress others and especially a woman, and hence more and more of their genes survived and eventually, the male biological system optimally had genes that prompted men to earn more (so that they could impress a woman).* Once such a gene was created, there is actually no need for the man to really impress a woman. His biological setup (mental/physical/whatever) would still make him want to earn more, independent of his desire to impress a woman.

That being said, is there still a catch in the theory? If not, do I agree with the theory? Answer is- No. I don’t agree. But what’s the reason I refuse to agree with the theory? What was the real catch? Part 3 coming soon! :)

*Remember it is called "Survival of the fittest". It may be cruel, it may not sound nice, but so it is.

All for Lust?? - Part 1

“The world runs on lust”, Alex said. At this point I put down the book Resident Dormitus which I have been reading since yesterday (and which will be my next review candidate) and started thinking whether Alex’s theory is really true--  do people really do everything only for lust.. This post is a product of this particular mental aerobics session of mine. (This post became quite long, so putting up the first part here. Part 2 coming soon! And ya, I know I don't usually write adult stuff and this might not go well with some of my readers- you can still read on.. This post is very much in the style of "Love is in the air"... )

 Ok. So the theory here is that everything that men (or women) do is with the intent of finding a better partner to bed. Actions like trying to find a better job (better job = better salary= higher chance of finding a more desirable spouse), or having spikes in your hair (looking cool= being more desirable to opposite sex) quite obviously substantiate the theory. But what about actions like becoming the CEO of a company? In the book, the guy argues that wanting to become a CEO is a product of the desire to earn respect, which is itself born out of the desire to find a better partner. He goes on to argue that in every action a person does, he/she seeks to differentiate him/herself from the majority in order to increase his/her chances of finding a better partner.

Looking at it from an evolutionary standpoint, this theory looks like it makes sense. As all animals, humans started out as a species whose ultimate goals were to find food and to reproduce, while staying alive, where there was always competition in finding food and sex; evolution would naturally lead to a set of humans whose every action would optimally lead them to both. To some extent, the act of reproduction is more important to a species in evolution than finding food, once the animal has passed on its own genes to an offspring (selfish gene point of view*), and hence we could hypothesize that the incentive from food eventually wanes out and all actions are intrinsically motivated by lust.

You could think of it as a game and some actions you do increase your HP (Hotness points!), where HP is a measure of your desirability/eligibility in terms of finding a partner. If the goal of the game is to get maximum HP and keep yourselves alive, and if you had a time limit or an energy cost for doing any action, with time you would end up doing only those actions that increased your HP, such that you might reach a time where all your actions shall increase your HP in some small way or the other. (Rather, you would stop doing anything that doesn’t give any HP). So with a game theory-like argument, it is quite logical that humans might have ended up as a species whose every action is essentially motivated by the prospect of finding a partner.
 
If you are like me, you would stop here and ask- wait, isn’t there a catch? Yes! Yes! Of course! :)

Imagine a society of people who value celibacy. The most desired man in such a society is the one who can resist the most irresistible of temptations and who remains single throughout his life. This is purely hypothetical, of course, but there is nothing to stop such a society from existing in this world. Men in such a society might still go after power and money, and they might also style their hair into spikes, but their motivation might be to become the best looking celibate ;) From an evolutionary standpoint, one might argue that such a society will cease to exist since of course, no one is reproducing. Again, not quite true. Such a society could have a small subset of its population, say about 10-20% of people who are not “allowed” to be celibate, and who “must” reproduce. The children might be adopted by the rest of the population. If anyone wonders how this arrangement would work, one can imagine it as a type of caste system with the upper caste being celibate and prestigious, and the lower caste delegated to the menial task of sustenance! This kind of arrangement can survive for centuries, if backed by the proper belief systems and religious approvals. Again, all this hypothetically.

But I hope you do see there is a catch in the “All for lust” theory we talked about. So, forgetting the hypotheses, what’s the catch in reality? Which loophole in evolution allows humans to develop into a society that values celibacy?

(To be continued...
 Part 2 here. )

*Selfish gene point of view: Not going into the theory, here I mean that all organisms act in a way to ensure their genes' survival. Since after reproduction and sufficient growth of the offspring the gene does not require the organism to survive, the effect of food can be ignored.

Space, your time's up!

I know I haven't written in a long time. Been busy (yes, that's always my excuse! :( ) And I kept thinking I would do a review of "The Immortals of Meluhas" and a post on a Reading session I went to, then a post on the big questions in Life and then on "The Virtue of Patience". I hope I will do them some day. But today, I thought  that my "To-do" List is always growing and I might as well post what I am thinking about right here right now..

So I was reading this article about Space Travel (Shared by Deepak) which talks about the end of the space age and I thought I would write about it. I don't know how many of us noticed when the NASA closed down its space shuttle program. It was the day when I felt that it was going to be the end of the charms of seeing the stars and imagining the vast beautiful (empty or dark-matter filled) space and dreaming of space travel. Of looking into a telescope and imagining man would be there soon. But even if you didn't fantasize all this, if you just noticed the news, this article is worth reading. It is very logical (and as most logical things, negative in some sense), so I do hope its predictions do not come true. But then, even the best of wishing cannot change the logical course of action*. Or could it??

The first question the author  asks is, how far do you think man has traveled since 1980. It is a very good question to start with, simply because most people think that we have gone at least as far as the moon. Man did step on the moon once, didn't he? So we must be at least that far. But apparently, that isn't true. We have not gone anywhere beyond 0.1 times the Earth's radius post 1980!!

One might wonder why. Why not space travel? The answer lies in asking the reverse. Why was space travel funded in the 60s in the first place?? Nations thought then that they were going to colonize the moon. And there was a cold war going on. It made sense to invest in anything that helped you grow more powerful. Today it might just be too costly. Besides, today, there are no real superpowers. The developed nations worth anything at all are not leading the political game. (European countries, Australia, and so on). The only nation in a pseudo-superpower position is the US. And its economy is so hollow you never know when it shall collapse. There are a few potential powers- India, China mainly. But neither is developed fully today. There is no government today that would want to fund space science. Nobody can afford it. And if anyone could, there is no specific reason to. Besides, people are busy fighting terrorism and oil wars and the like- why would anyone burn their pocket to spend on something that wouldn't solve any problem for them?

The author also brings up some interesting points about the scientific challenges, assuming we get the funding. Rocket science is, well, ROCKET SCIENCE! It is not a fun filled cake-walk (or moonwalk, if you please). The challenges are many. The ROI is bleak. Fuel prices are ever-increasing. And NASA's action makes other countries think even harder about venturing into (this) space. Yes, we might not see a space race ever again.

We might, but chances are higher we might not. There was the day of assembly-line, the day of automobiles and then the day of rockets. Today is the day of iTechnology. It does not mean we don't use assembly line or automobiles anymore. Just that we may not innovate them a lot. Those paths may never again be broken, however well trodden. Already, not many students opt for astrophysics majors. And Star trek terms don't ring much of a bell to the Angry Birds Generation. It may be hard to accept, but the day of the large is over. It is the day of the nano. And continuing the philosophizing, I wonder, am I going to live to see the day silicon dies a death? Shall I be writing that the day of my favorite digital electronics and smart devices is gone? As always, only time can tell...

And oh, there was this line in the linked article- "Some future poet or composer, perhaps, will someday gather it all up in the language of verse or music, and offer a fitting elegy to the age of space." I hope I do. Watch this space.

* Aside, there was a similar line in The Selfish Gene - which made me simply love Dawkins oh, I need to write that review as well. And it really is too good a book to miss!

Perspective

Statutory Warning: This post is actually the result of one small MOSFET in TH-1 fluttering its gate- followed by a lot of chaos theory. It is weird, incomplete and random. Author not responsible for any brain damage. Or any other damage, like your company falling down 100 points on the market, because all of you are lost in deep thought after reading!

Warning (2)- If you clicked on the link for gate, and found the wrong one: I told ya, this post is random. Chaotic. Now don't start.

Perspective. It is one of my favorite words in English. (Most of you might have heard me say my standard "depends on your point of view" or "depends on what you want from it".)

I think sometimes that almost everything is a matter of perspective. No reality. Only shifting points of view and manifestations.

I remember the times in college when I realized there were a lot of things I had never even thought about while I was still at home, and suddenly they seemed weird from an outsider's point of view. And I keep claiming that my perspective has widened. Yet, when I say the "Indian junta is like this only", all I know of it are the few people I have met- maybe a 1000 odd. And we writers think we can talk about "mankind in general". Funny, huh?

Each time I think of the Big Bang and Big Crunch and Evolution (Ya. Selfish Gene remains on the list of posts "coming soon") and Bose-Einstein Condensates and Bhagavata Purana and F plasmids and DX 11 and 22nm , I am awestruck. 

Maybe because "the sound perception of an ant does not include thunder"

Maybe in reality, each universe is just a giant petri-plate we are on and someone is just testing us all in a big lab. And after thinking of that, all of religion, politics, movies, small fights, pj forwards, technology look minuscule. Insignificant.

And yet again, when I look at my weekly status reports and deadlines and quarterly plans,  nothing seems as important as hitting those targets. And I just can't help getting excited about the 3-d transistor. Until I remember the petri-plate, that is.

And I continue to wonder, what is the point of it all........

P.S: Actually, I changed my mind. Perspective, I mean. I can't help getting excited about the 3-d transistor. Even after the petri-plate! Maybe, that excitement IS the point of it all.....
P.S 2: I didn't know that I would write about the 3-d transistor thing when I started the article. The TH-1 and the 3-d tsr are unrelated. :P

Love is in the air...

It is the season of roses and heart shaped candies and chocolates and teddy bears ... And MRIs. The last? Maybe not yet, but MRI might just be your most sought after Valentine thing in the future. (For those of you who know me really well, I hope you saw something like this coming :P Magnetic Resonance Imaging instead of mushy dialogues :P)
 
Actually I read “this” article sometime in December, and had been thinking of blogging about it for long. But you know how I get stuck with one thing or the other never get around to writing. However, with Feb 14 around the corner, I thought what better time to write about love.. 
 
So basically, this article is about a guy who just participated in a neuroimaging experiment related to how exactly he loves his wife. And how do you find that out? They take images of his brain while he is thinking about his wife (he is shown pics of her to create that scenario) and they see which parts of the brain are more active when he does so. For a comparative study he is also shown the photo of Angelina Jolie (he gets to choose who) and in between both there is a neutral face (which bores him) to cleanse the brain activity.

Robot

Ok. This is not really an Enthiran review, though I do have a few things to say about Enthiran. I saw it a while ago, and it was ok. But what made me write today is, as usual, reading something. As can be expected, this time it is Asimov. For a real Asimov reader, I had been scoring low, because I hadn't read any of his novels till today. Of course, I have read MOST of his short stories (primarily thanks to Padmini, whose collections lured me out of studying before cycle tests in 1^st year!! :) ) Anyway, today's reading brought me back to this whole debate (which explains the length of this post :D). And I am keeping the Enthiran review at the end- so you can read it only if you really want to know my take on it :)

Anyway, one thing good about Enthiran is that it brought some really important debates to the masses (and gave me something to start with)- what would happen if we had a robot that could act as an independent entity? Can we be sure it won't turn against us? Can we make it understand human emotions? Will the robot become the same emotional, sentimental failure that men sometimes become? Or will it show some yet unknown characteristic or emotion?! Will it end up having psychological disorders? Will the randomness that is so part of life on Earth, play a role in robotic development as well?

These are the questions Asimov asked in his stories, and they are as relevant today as then. While we are building bigger and better computers and Japan is speeding with artificial intelligence- someone should ask the question- Do we really understand what we are doing? Do we know enough of the human brain and human emotions to understand what an object equipped with a similar (if not better) brain is capable of doing? I am not trying to be pessimistic here. I am a big fan of technology alright, but these questions are a little inevitable.

Humans believe in a lot of abstract things like spirituality, justice and ethics. Do these laws that seem to apply to us, apply to the objects that we create as well? (Aside, as a reverse question, I wonder if the laws that apply to us, apply to God- it is tricky because if they do- then it means the laws are supreme and not God himself. And if they don't, it means we have an unfair God in our hands! :D) Will the factors that motivate us motivate our robots? Or will they be motivated by things that we shall never understand?

Even further, we have observed that with knowledge competency and talent comes the desire to be independent (it comes even without, but at least some amount of submission is possible in an ignorant man)- will a computer with almost infinite knowledge be able to choose to be independent? Will it choose to prove to us that it is better? And the question that was lurking behind all along- will we become slaves of the robot? Or will we be simply destroyed eventually?

I know you are saying the day is far off when we will leave the computer with such a choice. I know we are not there yet today. But aren't many of us really living our lives for the sake of the computer- spending our lives designing it, testing it, feeding it, enhancing it- or maybe I should say breeding it?! If half the world can be addicted to facebook today, and a piece of code called Farmville can create an extraordinary experiment on living neurons- with just today's compute power- what might happen when we really have humanoids?

It probably sounds a little overstated. And anyway, I am digressing.The point is do we know the impact of our machines on us? Or whether thinking machines will obey us at all?

An even more interesting question is- do we really have a say in this? I know Steven Rose says each creature has its say in evolution- he is possibly right in the fact that we have a choice. But we have constraints limitations on our choices. And we don't have complete knowledge of the consequences of each choice. Maybe, maybe like Asimov postulates in his story, we shall never have a say and ultimately machines shall rule us. Or maybe they won't. Or maybe the question just needs a positronic brain to find the answer... And until then we just have the cliché- "Only time can tell"....

(Click read more for Enthiran review)

Team work- mankind’s prehistoric secret?

So continuing on that one about evolution....Well... There are all these theories about how man evolved. However, what is more interesting is not "how did man evolve", but "why". There are billions of creatures on planet Earth and some of them with really interesting features (like the ciliates, about which I started a post and never published!) and yet, none of them achieved what man did! (Or maybe they did, but that is a premise I don't want to talk about today).

WHY did man become the most powerful creature? What in him that wasn't there in other creatures made him invent computers and visualize robots, and make artificial cell cultures?

Knotty....

(Statutory warning: This page may contain material enuf to send anyone nuts.. fulla theory, so ppl who hate math, pls save urselves!!!)

(Disclaimer: The author is in no way responsible for any damage to anyone's brain as a result of reading this post!!!)

Its a vague memory now.. of one saturday morning wen "The Hindu Young World" taught me the English custom of making knots in handkerchiefs.... (Readin my posts shud ve told u by now tat im one ardent Hindu reader. Tho, personally, I find the Express a better paper, The Hindu is one I ve grown wid. N the Young World used to b a sorta addiction a long time ago) I don think anybody in Indian homes does that, but apparently it ws d commonest custom abroad, I mean that of keeping knot reminders...

Neway, it led me to ponder on how a person could remembr what they made the knot for.. ( Bein a very forgetful person myself, the fact that the kerchief knottin cant help me much, struck me badly, i guess!! ) Anyway, that was my first tryst with knotting. N after that, I completely forgot the significance or existence of knots, (except for occasional reminders by the Indian cinema of the "importance"(??!) of "the three knots", n ill refrain from commentin upon that!), til a few days ago wen i stumbled upon dis awesum theory of knots...

"THEORY of knots????", I went flabbergasted. Why shud anyone write a theory on knots???? I mean, on somethin as simple as knots?!!!

But, then, a little browsing opened my eyes to the romance of the world of knots....

Wikipedia says, even simple activities such as running a load from the hardware store to home can result in disaster if a clumsy twist in a cord passes for a knot. (lolz....) They are also "crucial" accessories(?) for truckers, sailors, netting, fabric-makers etc.. (I ll leave that part for u to read in wiki.. since im not a gr8 believer of ctrl+c ctrl+v s...). Wel, jokes apart, apparently, knots re so useful tat they are used even in genetics. N wat follows is my interpretation n comments on the knot theories i leafed thru..

Mathematical knots are defined as embeddings of circles in 3- dimensional euclidean space... meaning that, it is as if different circles wer superposed in 3 dim... (a very fundoo way of explainin)... N there are difrnt types of mathematical knots.. the diferent knots are described by a parameter that they cal the knot invariant...

There are also knot equivalents (meanin different knots tat can be reduced to d same type of knots) n knot diagrams (to show knots projected onto a single dimension) n some sorta moves (t s actually some mathematician's name, bt too unpronouncabl, so i leave it to overinterested ppl to find out!) that can be usd to find if 2 knots are equivalent or not.... n d list goes on.. der are knot polynomials (as u mite ve guessed, polynomials to describe knots) , n knot sums(!!!) n wat knot!!!! ;)

The weird thing is that math ppl ve done so much research on knots, n.........

O, i forgot.. there is also the "UNKNOT", which is thread wid ends joined together at both ends, that doesn form a knot!!!!

Neway, the point is that our mathematicians ve actually done so much of work on knots, n propounded such interestin theories on em.... N wat started wid d gordion knot, has now come a looooooooong way...

Kudos to mathematicians!!! (as long as thes theories don enter our textbooks! ;) )

N ya, hope they find sumthin for us knotheads to keep reminders in, better than handkerchiefs!!! (now, don reply cellphones!!!)

Alas, Universe! Ur days are numbered!!!

There has been this recent finding about the age of the universe.... Well, before I start off, I must tell u tat d universe simply fascinates me. To think that we live in a tiny planet that we call the Earth and that there are a million other celestial bodies with their heads reeling (literally!) n that dey re so humungous n im jus one tiny mass of carbon compounds is so............................................................................................................. wel, is so "i-dunno-wat-it makes-me-feel-but-it-is-so-nice" that i plunge myself in a sea of astonishment for long dreamy hours fantasizing on the intricacies of the universe!!! N i spend longer hours trying to translate into human language all that crazy stuff Stephen Hawking happens to pen....

Anyway, gettn back to track, two scientists (I dint bother remembring their nationalities) have come up wid this theory that by observing the universe, we mite actually be decreasin its age!!!

Astoundin??

Wel, the theory goes dis way... The universe, as it is now, is in a state of precarious equilibrium. (Now, who isn't? :) ) After the "Big Bang", the forces of expansion and gravitation had to come to a correct balance, so that the universe doesn't explode (causing another big bang!) or collapse under its own gravity (like the intriguing black holes). Right now, they are very much at peace with each other, so we survive. However, as the universe continues to expand, we mite reach a date, wen one of the two forces may go outta control, (I mean, out of the other's control) and then chaos shall follow.... The thankful thing is that, there is a lotttttttttttttttttt of time left for that day to arrive, so in a manner of speaking, we mite say, "not in a million years", and stil safely expect to be true!!
We are stil at a point, where we don't really have to worry about the end(?) of the universe, or at least that is what astronomers across the globe kept telling us..... til a few days ago, wen a pair of scientists, (again, i don happen to remembr their names, but i ll put tat up mayb as a post script) have brewed this theory, based on the renowned quantum theory n its effect on relativity. These have already taught us, (or so they say), that whenever v observe a celestial object, v reset its time (or internal clock)!!! (Dis theory has apparently been around for quite some time now) The scientists now say, based on this theory, that, maybe, since v reset an object's clock by observin it, we shall probably reset the universe's clock too. A lot of laborious calculation goes on to show that, wen v observ the universe, we set its clock faster, n hence, it s closer to its deathday!!

Wel, doesn really send chills down one's spine, bt den.. a very curious fact it is.. tat by observin somethin v mite sorta kill it, and eventually ourselves too!!!

No wonder they said curiosity kills d cat....