Blog by Fariya | Digital Diary

            In the Kingdom of Fools, both the king and the minister were idiots. They didn't want to run things like other kings, so they decided to change night into day and day into night. They ordered that everyone should be awake at night, till their fields and run their businesses only after dark, and go to bed as soon as the sun came up. Anyone who disobeyed would be punished with death. The people did as they were told for fear of death. the king and the minister were delighted at the success of their project. One day a guru and his disciple arrived in the city. It was a beautiful city, it was broad daylight, but there was no one about. Everyone was asleep, not a mouse stirring. Even the cattle had been taught to sleep by day. The two strangers were amazed by what they saw around them and wandered around town till evening, when suddenly the whole town woke up and went about its nightly business.

            The two men we hungry. Now that the shops were open, they went to buy some groceries. To their astonishment, they found that everything cost the same, a single ?????- weather they bought a measure of rice or a bunch of bananas, it cost a ?????. The Guru and his disciple world delighted. They had never heard of anything like this. They could buy all the food they wanted for a rupee. 

            When they had cooked and eaten, the Guru realised that this was a kingdom of fools and it wouldn't be a good idea for them to stay there. "This is no place for us. Let's go," he said to his deciple. But the disciple didn't want to leave the place. Everything was cheap here. All he wanted was good, cheap food. The Guru said, "They are all fools. This won't last very long, and you can't tell what they'll do to you next."

           But the disciple wouldn't listen to the Guru's wisdom. He wanted to stay. The Guru finally gave up and said, "Do what you want. I'm going,"and left. The disciple stayed on, ate his fill every day - bananas and ghee and Rise and wheat, and grew fat like a street-side sacred bull. 

             One bright day, a Thief broke into a rich merchant's house. He had made a hole in the wall and sneaked in, and as he was carrying out his loot, the  wall of the old house collapsed on his head and killed him on the spot. His brother ran to the king and complained, "Your Highness, when my brother was pursuing his ancient trade, a wall fell on him and killed him. This merchant is to blame. He should have built a good, strong wall. You must punish The wrongdoer and compensate the family for this injustice."

           The king said, "Justice will be done. Don't worry, "and at once summoned the owner of the house. 

            When The merchant arrived, the king questioned him.

            " What's your name?"

             "Such and Such, Your Highness."

             "Were you at home when the dead man burgled your house?"

             "Yes, My Lord. He broke in and the world was weak. It fell on him."

            "The accused pleads guilty. Your wall killed this man's brother. You have murdered a man. We have to punish you."

            "Lord," said the helpless mmerchant, "I didn't put up the wall. It's really the fault of the man who built the wall. He didn't build it right. You should punish him."

            "Who is that?"

           "My Lord, this wall was built in my father's time. I know the man. He's an old man now. He lives nearby."

      ALBERT Einstein was born on 14 March, 1879 in the German city of Ulm, without any indication that he was destined for greatness. On the contrary, his mother thought Albert was a freak. To her, his head seemed much too large. 

         At the age of two-and-a-half, Einstein still wasn't talking. When he finally did learn to speak, he uttered everything twice. Einstein did not know what to do with other children, and his playmates called him "Brother Boring." So the youngster played by himself much of the time. He especially loved mechanical toys. Looking at his newborn sister, Maja, he is said to have said: "Fine, but where are her wheels? " 

         A headmaster once told his father that what Einstein choose as a profession wouldn't matter, because "he'll never make a success at anything." Einstein began learning to play the violin at the age of six, because his mother wanted him to; he later became a gifted amateur violinist, maintaining this skill throughout his life. 

          But Albert Einstein was not a bad pupil. He went to high school in Munich, where Einstein's family had moved when he was 15 months old, and scored good marks in almost evey subject. Einstein hated the school's regimantation, and often clashed with his teachers. At the age of 15, Einstein felt so stifled there that he left the school for good. 

          The previous year, Albert's parents had moved to Milan, and left their son with relatives. After prolonged discussion, Einstein got his wish to continue his education in German-speaking Switzerland, in a city which was more liberal than Munich. 

        Einstein was highly gifted in mathematics and interested in physics, and after finishing school,  he decided  to study at a university in Zurich. But science wasn't the only thing that appealed to the dashing young man with the walrus moustache. 

         He also felt a special interest in a fellow student, Mileva Maric, whom he found to be a "clever creature." This young Serb had to Switzerland because the University in Zurich was one of the few in Europe where women could get degrees. Einstein saw in her an ally against the "Philistines"-those people in his family and at the university with whom he was constantly at odds. The couple fell in love. Letters survive in which they put their affection into words, mixing science with tenderness. Wrote Einstein: " How happy and proud l shall be when we both have brought our work on relativity to a victorious concluaion."

           In 1900, at the age of 21, Albert Einstein was a university graduate and unemployed. He worked as a teaching assistant, gave private lessons and finally secured a job in 1902 as a technical expert in the patent office in Bern. While he was supposed to be assessing other people's inventions, Einstein was actually developing his oen ideas in secret. He is said to have jokingly called his desk drawer at work the "Bureau of Theoretical Physics."

           one of the famous papers of 1905 was Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, according to which time and distance are not absolute. Indeed,two prfectly accurate clocks will not continue to show the same time, if they come together again after a journey if one of them has been moving very fast relative to the other. From this followed the world's most famous formula which describes the relationship between mass and energy: 

                                    E = mc

            While Einstein was solving the most difficult problems in physics, his private life was unrevelling. Albert had wanted to marry Mileva right after finishing his studies, but his mother was against it. She thought Mileva, who was 3 years older than her son, was too old for him. She was also bothered by Mileva's intelligence. "She is a book like you," his mother said. Einstein put the wedding off. 

             The pair finally married in January 1903, and had two sons. But a few years later the marriage faltered. Mileva, meanwhile, was losing her intellectual ambition and becoming an unhappy housewife. After years of constant fighting, the couple finally divorced in 1919. Einstein married his cousin Elsa the same year. 

           Einstein's new personal chapter coincided with his rise to world fame. In 1915, he had published his General Theory of Relativity, which provided a new interpretation of gravity. An eclipse of the sun in 1919 brought proof that it was accurate. Einstein had correctly calculated in advance the extent to which the light from fixed stars would be deflected the sun gravitational field. The newspapers proclaimed his work as "A Scientific Revolution."

            Einstein received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921.  He was showered with honours and invitations from all over the world, and lauded by the press. 

            When they Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Einstein emigrated to the United States. 5 years later, the discovery of nuclear fission in Berlin had American physicists in an uproar. Many of them had fled from Fascism, just as Einstein had, and now they were afraid the Nazis could build and use an atomic bomb. 

             At the urging of a colleague, Einstein wrote a letter to the American President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, on 2 August 1939, in which he warned: "A single bomb of this type. . . . exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory." His words did not fail to have an effect. The Americans developed the atomic bomb in a secret project of their own, and dropped it on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

           Einstein was deeply shaken by the extent of the destruction. This time he wrote a public missive to the United Nations. In it he proposed the formation of a world government. Unlike the letter to Roosevelt, this one made no impact. But over next decade, Einstein got ever more involved in politics-agitating for an end to the to the arms build-up and using his popularity to compaign for peace and democracy. 

           When Einstein died in 1955 at the age of 76, he was celebrated as a visionary and world citizen as much as a Scientific Genius.