Saket Vora

All that remain are my final exams. This afternoon the Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science departments held a dedication ceremony for our new home, Engineering Building II on Centennial Campus. There was a very good turnout: Chancellor James Oblinger, Chairman of the Board of Trustees Wendell Murphy, and keynote speaker was Chairman of Progress Energy, Bob McGehee. I interned for Progress Energy last summer so it was neat to hear him speak. This morning the company announced a donation of $1.2 million dollars to endow three professorships, and they also funded the bridge that connects the two wings together in the building. Pretty cool.

I turned in my term project for Controls this morning — finally good to be done with all that. I gotta do well on the final, which will likely be my most difficult one. That is a week from today

I found out Thursday morning, at around 12:30am,  that Dr. Afroz Taj who teaches the Hindi class at NC State will be moving to UNC next year and so our Hindi class has been cancelled! Well, let me clarify — it has been moved to a different time slot and will be taught via videoconference. It is quite disappointing because (a) I really was looking forward to this to help with my Gujurati (b) three of my good friends were going to take it with me and (c) they announce this just two days before the end of the year! Now we have to scramble to find another course to take. It’s crazy.

Tonight Mike and Nader will be coming by to watch the Hurricanes-Canadiens game. We gotta win this one to tie up the series. Go ‘Canes!

This column appeared in the 28 April, 2006 edition of The Technician, the student newspaper of NC State University.

Last Thursday I attended a forum on the subject of intelligent design versus evolution and what should be taught in public schools. Sponsored solely by the American Civil Liberties Union, a scientist and philosopher duo represented each side of the issue. The event proceeded as one might expect – both parties absolutely firm in their beliefs speaking to an audience full of people similarly firm in their beliefs with little chance of anyone changing their mind. Dr. Gerard Van Dyke, distinguished professor of botany at NC State and representing the pro-intelligent design side, at one point expressed his exasperation at the seemingly pointless nature of the discussion. While I doubt anyone left with a changed mind, I came away thinking more about misunderstandings that fuel this heated controversy.

Science and religion are two philosophical outlooks on life. Both of them can be used to understand the world and one’s life. Science is built upon the fundamental proposition that things are known and understood through observation, deduction, empirical data, and the reproducibility and independent verification of experiments. Basically, science has defined for itself the realm it can assert positive claims about. The realm of religion, however, includes elements that are not empirically testable or independently verifiable – ideas like heaven and hell, salvation for the soul, divine being(s), and miracles. In essence, the realm of religion is not as limited as science because by its very nature it can draw upon things in explanations and making normative claims that science cannot. Tensions arise when claims are made that appear to infringe upon the other’s realm.  The belief that the sun and planets revolved around the Earth grew tenuous because this could be refuted with the scientific method. Astronomers such as Galileo and Copernicus found that the geocentric view of the Church was unsupportable by their observations, and for this issue science took jurisdiction. The claim held by ‘young Earth creationists’ that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old is another that falls into the jurisdiction of science. If one subscribes to the proposition upon which science is founded, such a view is quite dubious.

It is concerning these claims where I feel that supporters of creationism misunderstand what science is trying to say. Science does not take a position on whether God exists or not. If an experiment could be designed to test for the existence of God, science could take a stab at it, but no such experiment exists that is reproducible, independently verifiable, or empirical. A commonly asked question is what existed before the Big Bang, and on this science cannot say. This should not be taken as a failing of science; rather, as an example of how science can respect its limitations. Because no observations can be extracted from before the Big Bang, science simply has nothing to base a claim on it.  Regarding evolution, Darwin did not set out to discredit religion – in fact, he himself was a religious man. He was trying to find a better explanation for his observations of the natural world. That explanation, the idea that organisms change and evolve over time, is not disputed by the scientific community and natural selection, which is the mechanism of evolution, has become one of the most important foundations of the biological sciences due to its resounding success at explaining the natural world.

Proponents of creationism say that intelligent design ‘liberates’ science, allowing ideas such as ‘intelligence’ or divine influence to be valid sources of evidence for theories. If you allow this though, you no longer have true science. Legal issues aside, is a high school science classroom truly the place to be teaching students something that is not even accepted as science? Dr. Michael Behe, a leading proponent of intelligent design, admitted under cross-examination during the Dover trial that astrology would fall under his definition of a scientific theory. As for being independently verifiable, he stated, “I can’t point to an external community that would agree that [intelligent design] was well substantiated.”

I don’t have a problem with creationism being discussed in a high school philosophy class, but it simply is not justified in a high school science class. This controversy will continue to be debated all over the country, but as it does, I urge all parties involved to deeply examine the real source of their disagreements before resorting to pandering and heated rhetoric.

If by ‘dead’, we mean full of frantic life. Ah the annual misnomer about American college life. ‘Dead’ week at NC State refers to the week before the final exams, a week intended to be devoted to studying and preparing for the exams. It is anything but. Dead week is the week where all semester projects, papers, reports, and presentations are due. Thus, it is full of mad dashes to get work done before their deadlines.

I made it through last week alright. I did not get my analog electronics project turned in for extra credit, but it is ok because it’s better to turn it in on -time and get it all correct than early and mess up parts. So excluding my final exams, I have a term project due Friday, a formal report due next Thursday, and a research paper due next Friday.

The NHL Playoffs and the Quest for the Stanley Cup is finally here! My good friend Frieder wrote to me from Darmstadt, Germany about his excitement for the playoffs and his predictions as to who will win. We enjoyed many many hours of playing NHL ‘06 on his laptop with Marion while in Lund. The Carolina Hurricanes, ranked 2nd in the Eastern Conference, played their second game against the Montreal Canadiens (ranked 7th) and lost in double OT. It was a high scoring game, but now the Hurricanes have to go to Montreal having lost both games at home. We really need to make it out of the 1st round or it will be very embarrassing. I have to also say that the new rules for the NHL are a resounding success. Playoff hockey has always been exciting, but now its just phenomenal!

I have a column due for the Technician newspaper this week that should run on Friday. Last Monday, I had lunch with my good friends Nate and Nader and we had a very nice discussion on the conflict between science and religion. I was intrigued by this topic, especially after attending an ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) sponsored debate on whether or not Intelligent Design should be taught in public high schools. More on that later.

My sister Sachi took her MCAT exams on Saturday and is very happy to be finally done with them. She has been devoting hours and hours every day and weekend to studying for this exam. She feels good about it. Sapana, who is studying abroad at King’s College in London, is frantically trying to finish her big term papers and looks to be coming home early so she can work at GlaxoSmithKline. Sachi also got an internship there, so the triplets are keeping busy this summer.

The family is pondering whether or not to purchase another car, especially with everyone busy this summer. Regarding the fourth and fifth car, as my dad puts it, is not question of if but when. It looks like my Mazda 3 will stay with me. The sisters will be staying on campus next year but they could use a car there, and two will be at home. However, the year after, when we split up for graduate school, we’d need another one. The two Camry’s we have now will likely go to my sisters eventually, so the new one we might get would be for dad and mom. They have expressed interest in something bigger than a camera (not an SUV or truck, just a bigger car). Although, I must say the 2007 Camry’s look great. We haven’t been looking around or anything, but it is something that might happen in the near future.

So, about my course load for the fall 2006 semester; well, let’s just say it will be my busiest semester of my four years in college.

ECE 511 - Analog Electronics - graduate level electrical engineering course
ECE 481 - Senior Design Project - the senior design or capstone project required for graduation. We’re doing this as part of the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program, so it will be more business and ‘new product development’ oriented.
FLN 101 - Introduction to Hindi! I’m excited about this, not just cause I’ll learn Hindi (which will hopefully improve my Gujurati), but because three of my good friends are taking it too.
HI 322 - The Rise of Modern Science - I want to get into this course, and it covers something I’m very interested in.
PE 101 - Basic physical fitness elective. Alternate days running and weightlifting.

In addition to the projects for Senior Design and Analog Electronics, I will be applying to graduate schools and applying/interviewing for national fellowships and scholarships, and taking the GRE (shouldn’t be too bad). It’s going to insane, but I’m looking forward to it. My last semester at State will be nice and relaxed then.

When are people going to be in town this summer? Leave a comment.

A good friend of mine, Keith Dowd, recently launched his website (http://www.einhander.net) and I noticed he had a page dedicated to the papers he has written. While I can’t claim to have written such meaningful papers, I thought I would borrow a page from him and create my own writings section.

The new Writings section on this site features some of the papers, reports, and miscellaneous things I have written. Browse, read, and contemplate at your pleasure. Of course I welcome any and all feedback. Thanks.

It’s very late at night or very early in the morning, depending on your perspective. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking these past few days, mostly on how best to tackle the final three weeks of the semester. It’s been a pretty tough semester actually, more than I thought. I got back three poor grades on exams I should have done better on save for inexplicible and silly mistakes. It was simply a matter of not performing when it counted.

The title of this post is a lyric from Radiohead’s “There There”, one of my favorite songs by them. I’ve been listening to quite a bit of Radiohead lately, particularly enjoying Christopher O’Riley’s brilliant piano covers. This lyric stands out to me because it is a constant reminder of the difficulty for the next two weeks.

I have never felt this much pressure moving into the ‘end game’ of this semester. Multiple projects, homework assignments, and formal reports all colliding in a perfect storm in a perfect week.

Failing to meet this work head-on is not an option, so there is just one path to take: right through into the heart of the storm.