Life, Dreams and Reality -- Sohel's Blog

When I logged back into this old blog after so many years away, I expected dust, silence, and maybe a few broken links. Instead, I found something unexpected: people are still reading a piece I wrote nineteen years ago, an article about optical cloaking, back when the idea felt like a fragile spark from the edge of science fiction. Curiosity got the better of me. What happened to that technology I once wrote about with such excitement? Back then, cloaking was mostly theoretical, an elegant mathematical possibility built on metamaterials and transformation optics. The physics was promising, but the real world had not yet caught up. So I went searching. To my surprise, the field has not only survived, it has matured. Researchers have pushed optical cloaking far beyond the early conceptual stage. Over the last two decades, it has grown into a serious scientific discipline, with real prototypes and expanding applications. A 2021 review describes how invisibility research has “blossomed...

I haven’t written anything on this blog for several years. That doesn’t mean I stopped writing, far from it. I’ve always loved writing. I simply shifted my words to Facebook for a while. But this space… this is the blog I started many years ago. I was one of the early bloggers, writing almost from the moment the internet found its way into everyday life. Back then, I published in various online magazines and newspapers during those pioneering days of the web. The world has changed so much in the years since. The internet and its surrounding technologies have seeped into nearly every corner of human life. Many of these changes have been wonderfully positive. Learning has become easier than ever. Watching a good movie or TV show takes only a few taps, and the choices feel endless. Gaming has evolved into entirely new dimensions. I can carry an entire library with me, on a dedicated e‑reader or simply on my phone, with every device syncing effortlessly. Even when I’m driving through moun...

 I haven't written any blog post a long time. This is unusual for me. Writing is my passion from my childhood. I don't know how I stopped writing altogether. Hoping I can return to this love of my life.  Life has become very busy for me in recent years. Being a father of a son, working full time, family and all the daily humdrums that come with living a life, perhaps played a role in my long time absence from writing.  I am not sure how large the readership of my blog posts. Hoping whoever you are, where ever you are, you all are safe and having a good life.  Will write more soon.

1. War is always painful. It brings destructions, devastations and deaths. Peoples' lives and livelihoods are uprooted. Schools, hospitals, shopping malls, nursing homes, apartments, community centers are bombed. Bullet ridden bodies of men, women and children lie on the roads and the side ditches have congealed blood filled rocky ice like compassionless stones.  Human history is full of wars, invasions, occupations of foreign lands and genocides. From the time of antiquity, the invaders and the aggressors try to justify their bloody actions. They cite past injustice fallen on a segment of a population as the precursor. They cite security risk posed by the invaded nation as the root cause of their occupation.  Russian invasion of Ukraine falls into the same pattern.  Was there injustice in breakaway eastern Ukraine from 2014 or before? Most possibly there was.  Did the injustice in eastern Ukraine got world's enough attention? Most probably not.  But does it giv...

This is the second book of Bill Bryson I have read, and like the first one, A Short History of Nearly Everything that I had read  more than a decade ago, The Body: A Guide to Occupants is a well researched and thoughtful book that has good information of human body presented in humor mixed and eloquent format that I found to be highly readable like his other book I had read.  Some of these concepts that the writer presented was not new to me, as I had studied some of these concepts in various biological science courses I had taken in high school, colleges and universities, but unlike the heavy tomes text books that I had to plough through in my student life, as I read Bill Bryson's book I found it more amusing and some of the tidbits about various scientists, accidental discoveries, and treacheries of some scientists not giving due credit of the original discoverers or inventors of their hard work shed light on the dynamics of world of science that mimic the larger outside wor...

Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko is memorable and full of heart and life’s struggles, ups and downs, challenges, survivals and kindness portrayed in lives of many characters of this unforgettable novel. The author shined a light over Korean people who lived in Japan for many generations, their longing for their unreachable motherland and being forever “outsiders” in Japan. From the start to finish the author told a long but compulsively readable story, and described the harsh life of poor Koreans living in Japan. It also showed how hard work to provide for their family pushed them to work harder, and some of them were successful climbing out of the deep pit of poverty, and many were not so lucky. Pachinko is a well researched novel and is a pleasure to read.

1.   How does bigotry enter into mind?  I thought about this question for sometime now. A child is born with pure heart, no shred of bigoted ideas or thoughts can be present in his or her pristine mind. When I cradled my son for the first time, he was so tiny. The nurse wrapped him up in a small blanket and first she took him to my wife, the mother who gave birth after an agonizing delivery process that lasted more than 16 hours. Then I hold him in that wrapped up blanket. He could not open his eyes fully then, slept the entire time I hold him for about an hour before we left the delivery room and went to the recovery room.  Children learns from the parents. It took my son about an year to say a coherent word though he had started blabbering some words way early than that, maybe in his 3rd or 4th month he started saying meaningless words as part of his learning.  If angels are real then children are angelic. They come to this world with open mind. They look at t...

 The meaning of hoodwink I learnt not many years ago. I don't even remember from where I first heard of this word. Its dictionary meaning is: "deceive or trick someone".  Growing up in Bangladesh I am very much familiar how the corrupted politicians hoodwink as many people as they can. Democracy was not easy to achieve in Bangladesh. After its bloodshed filled independence war when millions died and millions more injured and after only a few years of the governance of the first elected government, more bloodshed came, and multiple governments came and gone by several coup-d'états.  In my childhood we had only one television station and one main radio station in Dhaka. Government ran both of these. So, whoever was the government in particular time utilized these mediums as effectively as they could to propagate their political agendas, to hold onto power.  Even, the newspapers and cinemas had to go through strict censorship.  Still, each military based government...

 I love to read often the following poetry snippet of Langston Hughes':  "Hold fast to dreams  For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow."  Only 8 lines and 33 words, and the poet wrote the necessary words many years ago that are needed in this time of growing sadness from a wild fire like spreading pandemic and political and economic instability. "Hold fast to dreams", he says again, "Hold fast to dreams", that is the key to hopefulness and living in this beautiful world for however brief our existence may be. Hold fast to dreams.  

Matt Richtel is a terrific writer. His book on immune system is titled: An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives.  In my childhood, my parents taught me the very basics of our immune system, like I have a large number of tiny soldiers inside my body that fight with many viruses, bacteria and other pathogens to protect me. They told me that when I get injured, like a small cut on finger, it is these tiny soldiers come and repair the wounded area. I passed the similar knowledge to my son when he was younger.  That's about it. That's what I knew as I played soccer in the mushy mud, cricket under the scorching sun, kabadi in monsoon rain, while hopping from tree to rooftop back to another tree with hand made slingshot, jumping on reddish brick or slippery grass.  In subsequent years, schooling taught me a bit more, like the B and T Cells, antigens, antibody, how vaccine works, etc. Also, I learnt how having good eating habit...

The protests in America are live streamed for more than a week now. Images and videos are vivid. Mostly peaceful protesters are marching on the streets with placards, shouting slogans together: "No Justice, No Peace", "Justice for George Floyd".  I have seen people of all colors, races, ethnic origins are walking, Blacks, Caucasians, Latinos, Asians, Africans, Native Americans, everyone out on the streets, singing, reciting inspiring poetry, distributing water, where many are holding up signs saying "Black Lives Matter".  Police presence is everywhere, as it should be. The primary task of police force anywhere in the world is to keep peace, preventing the break down of rules that any civil society is based on.  One good news arrived. At last, after more than an agonizing week of protests, peaceful and violent, in America along with the unified solidarity shown around the world, all 4 fired police officers are now charged in George Floyd's murder case. ...

I'm not a virologist. So, take my personal opinion below as worth of two cents at most.  In recent days I have been plodding through a historical and scientific facts based book written By John M. Barry titled "The Great Influenza", and learning a bit of detail about viruses and their attack processes and the ingenuity of humanity to counter it. If there are any specialists exist in my friend list, please clarify on this: Can one virus attack everything in human body, from head to toe that this Washington Post article seems to be reporting on? Or is this just a plain case of fear mongering from some news media that many are claiming? During the 1918 Influenza crisis, some groups in many nations were talking along the similar line that the Influenza crisis was just hyped up for political expediency in the middle of the raging First World War. Subsequent painful history,  seems to me, disproved this claim. Here are a few snippets from this terrifying article:  "Today, ...

This seems to be a good step. In a democracy why would anyone need assault-style firearms? However, this arms banning step does not answer the question on illegal guns that criminals can get apparently easily. In Nova Scotia shooting, the gunman obtained his guns illegally, not through any legal means. I am aware of a huge debate between for and against gun ownership and the historical reasons behind it. In an uncertain time, like any other time really, the law abiding citizens want to get assurances from their elected governments that they are protected and criminals of all kinds don't go rampant with violence. And also one other argument that the pro guns people have that I have seen stems from the sheer mistrusts toward government. These are legitimate concerns for many nations where democracy is not stable. Canada has a functioning democratically elected federal government, popular opposition parties who has more than 50% of people's support along with provincial gover...

We have access to abundance of news. As COVID-19 passes 3 million marks, death toll surpasses 200K around the globe in increasingly faster rate, so does the various claims and theories on the origins, transmissible capability, severeness, treatment and other aspects of this virus have grabbed the world's attention. Many nations have taken stringent action by necessary public health measures including ordering their citizens to stay at home unless they are the essential workers. These are good steps. Historically, if we look back to Influenza crisis of 1918, the unpredictable nature of any virus makes it very difficult to make a vaccine or therapeutic available in short period of time, so the best approach at this point is to minimize social interactions to contain the virus.  However, this is causing huge impact on the economic front. Many people's lives are impacted beyond imagination. In developing nations, a majority of people work daily for their livelihood without any s...

What is a false equivalence? Politicians and many journalists uses it. It is basically comparing apples and oranges. Both are fruits but not the same. In more formal definition, the false equivalence is “a logical fallacy in which an equivalence is drawn between two subjects based on flawed or false reasoning” (Ref: Wikipedia) The daily press conference done by President Trump on March 23, 2020 had examples of false equivalence. He tried to downplay the very realistic possibility of devastating impact of COVID 19 with the road accidents to prove his political point. But the problem in this false equivalence example is that COVID 19 is killing people faster everyday and on a near vertical trajectory pointing to many order of magnitude of mortality than car crashes cause each year. This is comparIng apples and oranges. If the near vertical rise of the curve is not hammered down, and the virus gets more opportunities to spread freely, the direct death toll will be enormous, causing...

We are going through strange and dangerous time. The very real threat of COVID-19, the alarming speed of its spread and the steeply rising number of deaths, have forced many developed and developing nations taking  urgent and emergency measures. In front of a seemingly unstoppable virus,  invisible but deadly, the very raw fear in every human beings have come up to the surface. To defeat the highly transmissible virus like COVID-19 stringent measures like the strict social distancing is necessary. Governments of the world need to be flexible to deploy all available and innovative measures to win this war against the mighty virus.  Among people, from Canada to US to Mexico to Brazil to Italy to Germany to France to Spain to UK to Egypt to South Africa to Bangladesh to Indonesia to Australia, people of every nations are terrified of the grim possibility of an uncontrolled virus stamping out our precious livelihood, our very existence. The colourful graphs showing the n...

When January comes every new year, many of us make new year's resolution that includes exercising more and eating healthier food along with many other noble goals. By the end of January, many of these goals dissipate into increasingly fading memory. Many events in life happens, we get busy at work, family, sickness, rushing to appointments, studies, and many modern distractions play in synchronous mode to get us disarrayed from our goals set at the onset of a new year. To ge t back on the noble set goals to be healthier, one of the first things we can do is to measure our current level of fitness status. Attached are two images that show tables where one can measure his or her fitness level, that can sometime proves to be inspiring to return to a healthy living. These two tables are available in  https://www.topendsports.com/ How to do push ups correctly? Check this link:  https://www.wikihow.com/Do-a-Push-Up How to do squats correctly? Check this link:  http...

Stoicism talks about not to worry about the external events that one has no control of. Epictetus said, "Some things are in our control, while others are not. We control our opinion, choice, desire, aversion and in a word, everything of our own doing. We don't control our body, property, reputation, position, and in a word everything not of our own doing. Even more, the things in our control are by nature free, unhindered, and unobstructed, while those not in our control are weak, slavish, can be hindered, and are not our own." As the world entered into the human invented calendar year 2020, the drumbeats of war are reverberating, from one crazy theocratic and dictatorship based nation to another that unfortunately has a commander in chief who shows brazen instability in his words and actions. Stoicism says not to worry about the external events as an ordinary man or woman does not have any control over it, however, it brings more stress. Stoicism has good point. Do...

I thought I knew about distress, bottomless poverty and boundless miseries that many human beings under a totalitarian regime go through. I thought I understood how dehumanized many feel in every second of their brutally suppressed life. Masaji Ishikawa shattered my trifling understanding, by his slender book describing his and his family's endless sufferings in North Korea.  This is not an easy book to read. Not easy in the sense that I was in repeated shock reading the detail description, how desperate the condition in North Korea actual is, "the land of paradise" in propaganda jargon, but in reality just the opposite for most in that mysterious nation secluded from most of the world.  This is indeed a good book to read, in the sense that the English translation that I've read was done very well, detailing Masaji Ishikawa's misery filled life in depth.  Masaji Ishikawa and his family, his Korean father, Japanese mother and siblings were duped in 19...

Bangladesh Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu termed the U.S Embassy's rightful statement regarding the beating of students in the peaceful protests as "poking its nose in Bangladesh's internal politics in an indecent way" - that does not sound coming from a minister of a democratically elected government, representing a nation which is also signatory of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  Here is what US Embassy in Dhaka had stated in its Facebook post: " Nothing can justify the brutal attacks and violence over the weekend against the thousands of young people who have been peacefully exercising their democratic rights in supporting a safer Bangladesh" US Embassy as everyone one else has the right to speak against any brutal attacks and violence on unarmed middle school, high school and university students that did happen mostly from Saturday.  There was no need of this reprehensible crackdown. Students were protesting peacefully, t...