From the Editor’s Desk
THE TEAM
Dipto;
knowledge for a while - validated by the medical facilities survey we
IG, Angad, Manickam,
conducted in September – none of us in our wildest dreams could have
Mohit, Pranita, Spriha,
Nassim Nicholas Taleb introduced the black swan theory in his 2001 book
predicted the events of October 15, 2013. It came out of nowhere, a
Siddhant, Tanya,
Fooled By Randomness. Black swans are random occurrences, unexplainable and
sucker punch, knocking the stuffing out of our collective existence. And
Vishala, Shuja;
unpredictable. Only by looking at history in hindsight, with a Platonic desire
yet, in hindsight, it feels like it was coming all this while.
Ajay Ramya, Debolina,
for narratives and explanations do historians make events look like they folKruti, Neel, Nithya, Passey,
The medical facilities are a mess, yes. We have an ambulance that cost
low patterns with underlying causes.
Prateek, Ritvik, Sahil D,
20 lakh rupees, but isn’t functional at short notice. The pool infrastrucWikipedia says that a black swan event Sahil K, Shalaka,
ture has already been discussed at length in most informal circles –
Shashank,Shruti,
muddy waters, cemented walls, questionable security. All these matters
(a) is a surprise to the observer.
Steffie, Viraj;
need to, and I can say with a degree of reasonable certainty, will be ad(b) has a major effect.
Ananth, Anish, Archit,
dressed. And still, none of it can affect what happened. That is how
(c) is rationalized by hindsight, as if it could have been expected.
unpredictably cruel life is, however much you arrange events in explana- Madhusudan, Pratik, Rahul,
I remember being introduced to the concept after Nadal’s defeat to Lukas
Rusheen, Soumya, Srishti,
tory patterns.
Rosol at Wimbledon 2012. 9/11 was a black swan event. So was the fall of
Tanay, Tanmayee, Vjay;
the Soviet Union. And the sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2008. Even the Brit- Answering the question, ‘why?’ isn’t as easy as you might believe.
Danish, Deeksha,
ish Raj can be classified as one, I’m told.
Gayatri, Lasya, Sanket,
Do you know what a black swan event is?
Even though the state of our medical infrastructure has been common
Shubham.
BITSians revel in Joy of Giving
A Smile, a Pat and a Million Hopes.
A
short walk on any Indian road reveals to us the plight of the majority of our
population. It is a reminder of how kind Lady Luck has been to us, and all the
faults in our stars seem trivial when compared to the astronomical problems
faced by the people around us. On a more optimistic note, the smallest of kind gestures
to the not as “privileged”, gives both us and them a lot of happiness. Even the small task
of telling the mess worker that the food tastes good causes him to break into a toothless
grin.
could be fulfilled by the BITSian population based on what resources are available to
them.
The day of joy basically gave an underprivileged child the opportunity to live a day in the
life of a BITSian (apart from the lectures, of course!).
BITSians were also made aware of organ donation and could sign up to do the same. A
La Pizzeria scheme was also introduced with 5% off on the 14th and 15th of October
wherein a part of the bill was donated for the welfare of children living in Pilani.
Consider a large fraction of the population of the world involved in the act of giving for
a whole week and imagine the, albeit short-lived, joy we could collectively give to the The hour of joy was a very interesting concept allowing the BITSian populace to volunteer for an hour and engage in the act of giving by performing different activities. They
people around us. This is exactly the aim of “The Joy of Giving Week.”
could teach the kids, interact with them, and play with them. Workshops on dancing,
The JoG Week is the world's "festival of giving". Launched in 2009, the festival is obdandiya, craft, origami and even chess were organized. A basic model of the popular teleserved every year in the first week of October starting with Gandhi Jaya