About this blog

I used to use Twitter as my scratch pad and post the developed thoughts here, but not anymore. My posts are grouped into four things : uncategorized, opinions, analyses and observations.

Uncategorized has just mundane things that may or may not be of interest, to anyone. Opinions has my views on issues, be it current affairs (current when written) or general ideas. The sub category is : India (for now). Analyses has contents that are basically my attempt at theorizing, deducing and other such “intellectual” endeavors. Observations has stuff that are not quite opinions and analyses but just what I’ve observed. They could grow into analyses someday.

End of an era

I used to use twitter as a scratchpad for my ideas that I would develop at a later time and post some of the on this blog. As much as I enjoyed my stay there, in July 2016 l ran out of motivation to continue to use that platform and deleted my account. Twitter seems a place filled with anonymous cowards who troll. I didn’t have such experience but most people I followed retweeted such exchanges, often supporting one or the other. Initially it all seemed intriguing, gauging into psyche of people etc, but I couldn’t take it anymore. The trolling wasn’t even intelligent. It was never.  So I got out of it. I could have followed different set of people, but, honestly, there isn’t anyone worthy of following  – everyone is the same. However, I recreated the account a month later, in August but I don’t use it. I just wanted to ‘protect the brand’ – I didn’t want some one to use that handle after I was gone and people mistake that person to be me.

Proof that God does not exist

Although I myself don’t believe in existence of God, or other supernatural entities, I find what I call The Game of Proof very amusing. Its a game where both  parties, religious and atheists, demand proofs from each other, or provide proofs for fellow members in order to tackle the enemy.

A typical scenario is this. A religious person, extremist or not, talks about existence of God and an atheist, extremist or not, demands proof. After some trying and constantly being shot down, the religious person resorts to saying “Alright, can YOU prove God doesn’t exist?”. To this the atheist says, rather condescendingly, “You don’t understand the concept of burden of proof. I am not obliged to prove his non existence, rather you are”. The condescension increases as his amateur knowledge of science increases. Such people I call Dawkinians.

Dawkinians are interesting species. They do the exact same thing that they mock the religious people for. They follow Dawkins mindlessly and repeat what he has said over and over again. To most things they refer to Dawkins, who is their prophet. A lesser prophet to them is the rather snobbish Hitch.

The atheist is right in this regard with respect to burden of proof. The accepted intellectual convention is that those who make extraordinary claims are obliged to provide proofs for their claims. However, what is not right is the idea held by the atheists that they have successfully proven non existence of God because the religious people couldn’t prove the existence of God.

A cursory survey of such encounters reveals that almost all proofs shown by atheists are a sort of initial condition problem, and like any initial condition problem, starting from a different point will yield vastly different result. Typically, the religious party makes the claim and thus hold the burden of proof, which they cannot handle optimally. A nice variation would be instead of the religious claiming existence of God, they simply pose it as a question to the atheists. When the atheists emphatically say “no, such a thing cannot possibly exist”, the religious come out on top. Now the burden of proof is with the atheists.

Many Dawkinians are quick to argue that proving a negative is against the principles and conventions of philosophy, thus making it absurd. Typical. However, the better informed among the atheists recognize that it is not really absurd to do that and they set out to prove the non existence. They use a familiar technique of proof by contradiction that used in mathematics – assume something is true, show that it leads to absurdity, and conclude that it cannot therefore be true. A canonical example of this in mathematics is to prove that square root of two is irrational.

The  Dawkinians treat the claims made by religious people and their scriptures as true and show that there is an abundance of things that happen contrary to the ‘facts’ espoused by the religions, or that plenty of things happen despite the claims in the religions. For the first kind, the preferred topic is evolution, and for the second kind, the preferred topic is prevalence of crime and suffering. Therefore, the Dawkinians say, victoriously, there does not and cannot exist anything like God.

However, if you look closely at the proof, you will see that the Dawkinians have only managed to prove that a particular religious doctrine is false. They haven’t proven anything about God. It is akin to disproving a theory that tried to explain an experimental result. Just because rules of logic concluded the theory to be absurd doesn’t make the result an illusion. A cursory look at history of science shows how many theories came and went trying to explain things like light and atoms. Did the disproving of the theories have any bearing on the ‘reality’ of light or atoms? Did it disprove existence of light or atoms? Religion is also a theory to explain the universe and everything humans perceive, such as thunder, earthquakes, dreams and death. But this theory is based on perception and emotion instead of experiments and analyses using modern scientific rules and ideas.

There are plenty of things that science can’t explain. The standard response to that by Dawkinians is ‘we don’t know yet but we will find out eventually with science’. A religious person can never say something on those lines because religions are set in stone. This makes the atheists believe that they win, albeit in some future date. What the atheists don’t know is that the religious have a trump card of their own – “only god knows best’. Every god based religion can use this trump card and there is nothing Dawkinians can do about it, and it infuriates them to the maximum. They know they can’t counter this trump card because it is exactly same as what they say, except they rely on  a future scientist instead of an all knowing and eternal God. Some desperate Dawkinians claim that such statements by the religious  party is an informal conceding of defeat because we can’t possibly know what God knows, and God might know nothing. Of course, they don’t see the absurdity of their arguments. It is absurd because that counter must first acknowledge existence of God. It isn’t surprising then that frustrated Dawkinians mock, insult and bitch about religion and religious people  at every available half chance, often unprovoked.

This game is indeed very amusing.

About definitions, and the perceptions they generate

This post is merely a verbose version of the often made observation about how perceptions of things are affected by the definitions given to them. A smartphone is used as an example.

NOTE: While correct, the inner workings of technology are oversimplified, and the historical chronology used is casual, and not pedantic. They are used only as a means to an end, and, thus, not to be considered authentic.

The most recent, also the most pervasive and the most awe, and probably envy, generating, electronic gadget is the smartphone. A smartphone is defined as a mobile telephone that can do more than a regular phone; it is almost like a computer. The last bit of the definition is what causes awe among people. I claim this to be nothing more than a marketing gimmick, and pure sophistry, on the part of the smartphone manufacturers. A smartphone is a blend of two machines: a computer and a telephone. Let us see how it came to be.

A computer is a complex electronic (or electrical) machine that works on voltage levels to store, process and transmit information. What started out as a purely engineering assistance tool has evolved into something completely removed from the original area of application. Most users use this machine for purely leisurely tasks, be it social networking or gaming, or anything on those lines. That doesn’t preclude its use from the original area of motivation, which is still extremely valid, and growing. A computer was originally only hardware, in that a machine was purpose built to solve a problem, and only that problem. Software was a much later invention, but it proved to be a better technology simply because one hardware could be used to solve different problems with it. The software was an ingenious invention indeed. Now, the computer could do anything and solve any problem, as long as it had the right software installed. Nothing was impossible, to the extent that given the right electromechanical appendages, like a mechanical arm, software could do “real world” functions as well. Thus, our idea of a computer -an all powerful electronic machine running software -came to be.

The telephone on the other hand was a very simple and straight forward electrical device. It transmitted electricity, generated by a sound at one end, over long distances using copper wire, which at the other end was transformed into a sound. An electrical machine dealing with sound couldn’t get any simpler. The improvements that followed dealt mostly with better modulation and demodulation to give clearer sound, until radio waves were used. Radio waves were used to carry information, and thus voice. Telephones could now be used without wires. When the general populaton had access to this kind of telephone, it must have been seen as a very powerful machine compared to its land line cousins, for it gave people a sense of freedom -not being tied to a corner of a room, or not waiting in long lines, or not knowing whereabouts of their near and dear etc.

Then came the big idea: smartphone. A smartphone, which is a mobile telephone, is often held in contrast to the “dumb mobile telephones” and shown to be superior due to its versatility. There is an operating system running, like a computer has, which can run different applications, again like on a computer. These applications are often a version written for the phones, and much similar to their computer cousins. Thus it is shown that a smartphone is very powerful mobile phone.

Actually, long before smartphones, the dumbphones that were there were no different. They had an operating system too that was running applications. All functionalities offered by dumbphones were in reality applications running on the operating system. The only difference was users could not install and uinstall their applications. In effect, this was a purpose built computer.

Going back to versatility of a computer, historically, connection to internet was through telephone lines, via dial up modems. Modems themselves are purpose built computers: they translate electronic signals between the telephone lines and a computer. With a modem connected, and the right software installed, a computer can make telephone calls. Imagine this: You are working at your desk on your computer pre mobile phone era and you want to order a take out. Instead of leaving your desk and going all the way to the phone, or possibly to your neighbors, you could just switch on the modem, run the software, and make the call. How magical is that? Not much, because all you did was run a software; besides this is an all powerful computer in the first place.

Now imagine this: You are talking to your friend on your smartphone, commuting, debating on how wise it is investing in the stock market at the moment and you can’t recall the information you read in the papers earlier. Instead of trying to borrow papers from already grumpy co commuters, you connect to internet, on your smartphone, open your favorite web browser, on your smart-phone, search and voila! you get what you want. Information is right in your pocket. How magical is that? Extremely.

At this point we can’t help but ask these questions.

1. Why was making telephone calls on computer not nearly as awesome as using internet on mobile phone?
2. Why is the latter case not of a computer being used as a telephone, rather a case of a telephone being used as a computer?

The first question is about as much sophism as the idea of a smartphone. The answer depends on who is asked. A person born in the 60s or earlier would have found it incredible awesome but to a person born in the 90s or later this was commonplace and nothing remarkable. If we can stretch our imagination, the first telephones might indeed have been called “telegraph that talks”!

The second question is important, and the central point of this writing.

Although computers started out as bulky machines, needing rooms full of space, and were maintenance chores, what has remained in people’s imagination as a computer is the desktop, or PC. The mainframes are usually just a thing people have heard of and not seen. Between the desktop and the smart-phone have come a number of mobile, computer-eque devices: PDAs, laptops, netbooks and tablets.

Early business laptops used to have build in modems, and of course, speakers and microphones. If one made telephone calls from one such laptop, why would it not be a smartphone? If a telephone call is made using netbooks, which are lighter laptops„ would they be considered smartphones? How about making telephone calls with a tablet?

Turing the questions on their collective heads, if the SIM card (or other telephony related hardware depending on the device) is removed from a smart-phone, will it be a “smartphone without connectivity” or a “palm fitting computer”?

Some things that come out of the observations so far are

• versatility implies power
• complexity implies power

These can be extended and generalized as

• power implies importance
• possessing important things gives importance
• people crave importance

Thus, when all the devices are nothing but computers, purpose built or not, the definitions given to them have profound effect on how they are perceived, be about their importance or their power.

Grouping Indians

Indians have very strong opinions on various issues, and I have found that these opinions are often in conflict when topic changes. On the surface the topics seem unrelated, and indeed most people won’t see the relation, but at closer examination we can easily see the common nature of the topic. There is a definite underlying pattern that unifies various topics when the details are abstracted away.

I have devised a small list of questions that might help understanding the fluctuation and contradiction of opinions. Although this is by no means exhaustive, it is quite effective because it is about ‘hot’ topics, the ones that generates a lot of heat and noise.

I have created a table for each theme. People can be grouped based on the cells they occupy in some tables due to their answers. A person can occupy only one cell per row per table. The insight gained will be enormous, especially if the tables are filled anonymously.

Sense of justice

	inhuman	inhuman but	unfamiliar with the details	hyped	hyped because
Palestine issue
Kashmir Pandits issue

	inhuman	inhuman but	unfamiliar with the details	hyped	hyped because
2002 Godhra
1984 Delhi

Sense of correctness

	yes	yes but	unfamiliar with the details	no	no but
Independence to Kashmir
Independence to NorthEast
Independence to Tamil Eelam
Independence to Kurdistan

	Stop at once. Look at the horrific things done	Comen on, don’t mix one thing with another
Relation with Pakistan
Watching Salman Khan movies

About hero worship

	Pervert and sicko. Look at all his horrible deeds	Epitome of humanity	No man is infalliable, so why not consider only the good deeds	Can’t care less
Muhammad
Mohandas ‘mahatma’ Gandhi

Thank god for Pakistan

Most Indians’ sentiment is captured in the title when they see the violence that emanates from Pakistan, and not just terrorism. People say had Pakistan not been created, such sickos [sic] would have been part of India, so we must be really thankful.

Really? Lets analyze.

In 1947 British  divided India into two countries – India and Pakistan. Many people migrated from one side to the other, from both sides. That means the sickos could have come over to India as well (although their deeds aren’t as well publicized). Then how do Indians consider themselves lucky?

That is a tough question to answer without being politically incorrect. You see, Pakistan was created on the basis of religion. It was supposed to be a safe home for the allegedly and potentially persecuted Muslims of colonial India. Therefore, many Muslims moved into Pakistan, and due to ensuing religious riots, most non Muslims from the newly formed Pakistan who were already living there  for generations – mainly Hindus and Sikhs – moved out of Pakistan into to India. So, the implicit idea in the statement is that Indians are thankful that such Muslims are not in India anymore, and the finer point is due to the nature of the migrations India was saved.

Lets ignore the sociopolitical aspects of this. The point of interest for us is that the sickos are in Pakistan now.

However, that is assuming all the emigrants (or their ancestors) were bad apples. That’s a bit unfair. The sickos, or their ancestors,  could have always been on the side that is Pakistan, meaning they didn’t migrate.

Thus, there was a 50-50 or one in two chance of sickos being either in India or in Pakistan. That means India got lucky.

But there’s more.

Although Pakistan was a single country, it was originally two geographically separate regions – east and west. Bangladesh was the erstwhile East Pakistan. It separated from Pakistan in 1971 and since then West Pakistan is called Pakistan.

So, similar to India, probably with lesser migration, Bangladesh too had the same 50-50 chance as India’s and got lucky like India. That shows both India and Bangladesh are equally lucky and must be equally thankful.

But  I claim that it is wrong calculation and Bangladesh is luckier than India, and must be more thankful. Here’s how.

You see, although British India was divided into two countries, the division resulted in three geographic regions – West Pakistan, India and East Pakistan. So each had one in three chance of having the sickos within its boundaries.

That means India had 1/3 chance where as Pakistan had 2/3 chance.

Because the sickos are now in Pakistan, and Bangladesh originally had 2/3 chance of hosting the sickos, it is Bangladesh, not India, that must be really thankful.

India can be thankful, but their chance always remained the same since 1947. Had British divided India into three countries as they stand now, each would have had equal chance of hosting the sickos and both India and Bangladesh would be equally lucky and thankful for the partition.

About Akbaruddin Owaisi’s speech

Let me start off by reviewing it. The plot was missing, the screenplay was all over the place, the dialogs were cliched and made you cringe, the camera work was shoddy and the acting was non existent. The supporting actors were confused about their cue and the lead actor was more juvenile than anything. He needs to speak proper Urdu if he needs a wider audience. Every time he used a khaaf in place of a qaaf I died a little.  He needs to improve his overall approach if he wishes to contend for a spot among the great hate mongers. However I must say there was this weird entertaining factor that you find with a badly made C movie. Would I watch it again? Sure, why not. To sum it up, it was like Zakir Naik meets Tahir ul Qadri meets Arnab Goswami

Although the previous paragraph was mostly in jest, the last line wasn’t. This man and his speech must be given same treatment as one would to people mentioned: chuckling and ignoring. However, the majority of the citizens, including the liberal intellectuals, are dead against such speeches and there is a huge uproar about arresting him and imprisoning him. The offense is exacerbated as he is an MLA.

While conventional wisdom says he must be prosecuted as the speech was hateful, indecent and against spirit of co existence, and there are indeed laws to that effect, I have two things to say.

First and foremost, this hate speech is harmless. You might be shocked (and probably wondering if I am a  Muslim myself  – you naughty naughty ) but don’t be. This is another instance of the rule I talk about here . Apply that to this and you shall see what I mean.

Secondly, wouldn’t an MLA always look to say and do what his future voters would like, whether or not he endorses them at a personal level? Isn’t an MLA supposed to appease his constituency and reassure them? Looking at it that way, he was just being an your typical Indian politician elected to represent a constituency.

On Society and Moral Policing

For better or for worse, women have always generated a lot of angst and debate in society. Wars have been fought. Cities have been burnt. Philosophies have emerged. Policies have been abolished . Policies have been framed.

Recently, the news has been ridden with stuff like:

MLA blames women for eve-teasing
Women should dress carefully…
Women should dress ‘carefully’: NCW chief
Misogyny in popular culture: Indian cinema is equally culpable
Rajasthan: MLA calls for ban on skirts, gets one

Of course, where there are ‘regressives and conservatives’ there are bound to be ‘progressives and liberals’. I will paraphrase some of the clichés and platitudes most favored by liberals.

Wearing revealing clothes isn’t a license to rape a woman
It is my body and I’ll wear whatever I like
The problem in the society is due to the misogyny in movies
Movies featuring rapes and item songs are ruining the society

The SlutWalk thing, which is invariably supported tacitly by liberals, had plenty of posters like Stop Staring: This Is Not an Invitation to Rape Me

The point is, the liberals say moral policing of women’s way of dressing is wrong, and even misogynist in this rabidly patriarchal society, while censoring entertainment media for the moral good is necessary and recommended. I find this stance inherently contradictory. The statements boil down to these two questions:

1. Does a woman who dresses in a certain way invite sexual harassment, or even assaults?
2. Does a form of entertainment featuring women in a perceived negative light instill and propagate such morals in the society that lead to the negative consequences embodied in the first question?

There are, in general, two categories of people: those who generalize their answer with a “yes”, and those with a “no”. I find both stance stupid. So now I have to show two things – why is the liberal stance contradictory and why is the generalization stupid. Let’s analyze.

The two questions are specific instances of the general structure – Looking at provocative things leads to bad action. Actually, the question can be reduced further, by leaving out such subjective and loaded words like “provocative” and “bad”, but this is the form that interests us (also, we would eventually arrive at this specific case from the general case, so let us start from here directly).

When we apply this structure as a rule to the above questions, how can one produce a TRUE and another FALSE? This is why I find the liberal stance contradictory. Does it mean there are different kinds of provocations, kind of weighted by their evil?  No. How provocative is a provocation depends on a particular person.  It is a conditional thing and cannot be generalized. Causality in society is conditional. I’ll show how. To answer “why?” one would have to go into a proper social psychology study. But instead, let us do a simple thought experiment.

Imagine an open roofed room separated by a wall making two rooms. Let’s call the left side the “wrong side” and the right side, well, the “right side”. Let the whole population be divided into three groups, not necessarily equally. The first one belongs to left and the second one to right. People are free to jump across the wall. The third group stands on the wall. Walking up to the wall and climbing it is a necessary step to stand on it. The actions moving up to the wall, climbing it and jumping across are caused by a provocative thing. Jumping shows committing to the action. Thus the left side has people who have finished the action as provoked completely.

Let there be a series of provocative things exposed to the right side population emanating from the left side. It shouldn’t difficult to see that not everyone not already on the other side would jump across. Neither do everyone who walks up to the wall climbs it, and nor do all wall standers. Some jump across and remain there. Some stand on the wall forever. Some wall standers almost jump. Some wall standers fall. Some never budge from their position, wherever they might be. Some keep jumping across. Some stand close to the wall. There are endless scenarios.

Let’s see how this room metaphor works with the provocations cited in the two questions. If the left side room is filled by rapists and the right side room is exposed to a woman wearing ‘sexually provocative’ clothing, what would happen? The truly pure might avert their eyes (I we stop and think, we can see that probably these are the most vulnerable and unsure of themselves, so have to resort to forceful aversion by closing their eyes). Many might ogle. Many of the oglers might fantasize. Some might molest. Some might attempt to rape. Some might succeed in raping. Similar thing will be observed in case of the left room being filled by murderers and rapists and the right room exposed to sleazy and violent movies. Because it is a conditional thing, generalization is stupid (In fact, all generalization is stupid :p). Not only stupid but lies, misleading and dangerous.

QED.

PS: I have said “jump across”, which implies people from “wrong side” could come over to “right side”. Does it mean people reform? Well, that’s another story for another time.

The end of the decade

Alright all you dimwit foolish arses (that includes you too Star World, Star Movies, HBO, History Channel, Discovery, NatGeo, NDTV, CNN-IBN, Times Now and all the other TV channels and publications in India) going around town how good or bad the last “decade” was, on net, in person, and basically everywhere, here’s the news – 2010 was the fucking first year of the second decade of the second millennium since the birth of a certain Jesus of Nazareth. The decade ended on  31st December 2009.

I am so fucking intrigued at the lack of basic intelligence in people.

Anyway, it isn’t yet any late to make amends and stop sounding like a bunch of fucking fools who have their heads up their arses.

Shawshank Redemption – the tunnel length

SPOILERS ALERT!

(Note: Despite my best efforts, the maths formulas tend to show up awkwardly every now and then. Please let me know if you see that happening; I’ll revert to regular text based formatting.)

I watched Shawshank Redemption  again a couple of nights ago, and every time I watch it I wonder about the length of the tunnel that Andy carved out. I couldn’t hold it any more and I attempted to unravel the mystery. I did all the maths in my head while lying in bed staring at the dark, so did a lot of generous rounding offs to get nice numbers, and have reproduced the same numbers here. This is what I came up with

Andy joins the prison in 1947 and manages to escape in 1965. Let us assume that he started carving the wall from 1950 onwards, everyday. That is 365 x 15 number of days or 5475 days in all. Let us round it off to 5500.

It is shown, when Red recounts, that Andy disposes the dust in the yard. The dust doesn’t seem to be much in quantity. Let us assume it was 200 grams per day. That makes it 200 x 5500, that is 1100000 grams in all. Or 1100 Kgs.

The tunnel appears to be cylindrical (I am still amazed at the pains he took to carve a near perfect circle. May be that is what took him that long to finish). And by the glimpse that we get of it from the inside when the warden punctures it, and also by the way Andy crouches while crawling through, it appears to be about 2 feet in diameter. In metric that is 0.6 m. Using a couple of simple formulas that we learnt in school geometry and physics, we can estimate the length of the tunnel.

Density is mass divided by volume.

Volume of a cylinder is

where d is the diameter and h is the height. But in our case since it is length that we are after, let us use ‘L’ in place of ‘h’. That gives us.

Using (1) and (2) we get

Taking pi to be 3.143 and using the other values that we have, putting them in (3) we get

or

that is

and after transposing L and p we get

If we can get the value of p for the material of the wall, finding the length is trivial. Remember, the got length will be in meters. Could the length be in hundreds of meters? Was the “wall” just an extra thick wall (since it appears that Andy was in a corner cell) or did it include a series of stacked walls? Was the exit right on the other side of Andy’s cell? Did the tunnel go in a straightish line or was it akin to mining? Did the tunnel continue into the ground?

We have no clue. At least I, who have only seen the movie and haven’t read the novel, don’t find a clue. However, some analysis of (4) is going to help us.

The density of the wall material is the most important variable. If the tunnel length is to be in hundreds or even tens of meters, the material of the wall must be not very dense. Check out this link that lists densities of over 300 materials. http://www.simetric.co.uk/si_materials.htm. We realize that any material that is fit to be made a prison wall out of has to have a density that ranges from 2000 kg/cu-m to 2500 kg/cu-m. Let us assume 2250 kg/cu-m.

With this density, from (4), we get 1.72 m, or 5.6 feet. An average man is 5 ft 10 inches tall. Andy seems a taller bloke than that and could be about 6 ft 2 inches tall. That would be 1.86 m. Huh, but we see Andy crawl out a fair distance, don’t we! Something seems amiss in our assumptions. If we look at the contributing variables, we find that in order for the length to be more, more wall material must be carved out for a longer period and/or the tunnel must be narrower. The latter is inconceivable albeit Andy’s narrow frame.

So let us update our assumption to 500 grams of dust being disposed everyday. With this we get

Plugging in the density, we end up at 4.32m or 14 feet. This implies that Andy, with his height of 1.86m, crawled 2.32 times his own length. Meaning, once he entered the tunnel and lied down such that his feet were placed flat on the imaginary door at the opening, he had to crawl one and a third more of his own length when his head would touch the imaginary door at the other end of the tunnel. (What this also implies is that with his arms outstretched, he had to crawl only just about his own body length but the crawling mechanics won’t agree with this. Just a thought anyway)

Somehow, 14 feet feels too small for our romantic idea, doesn’t it ? The only remaining factor that could fulfill our craving for a longer tunnel is time. Red tells us that Andy asked for Rita Hayworth’s poster in 1949 but we have no clue how far into ’49 did he ask. Let us assume he asked for it half way through and started his attempt immediately. With this updated time period, we have 180 days more to the already assumed 5500 days giving us 5680 days.

If we rework our equations with 500 gms of dust, carved out of the wall having density of 2250 kg/cu-m, disposed off for 5680 days, we arrive at 4.46 m for the length, or 14.6 feet, which is 2.4 times Andy’s tall frame.

You may feel this is still not good enough but there is nothing else we can do to improve this to fit our romantic idea of a long tunnel. Further, we have already been very generous in our assumptions and rounding offs, so we just have to accept it.

PS: From the in universe perspective, we have to give credit to Andy for carving out that 14.6 feet long a tunnel, tenaciously. Considering the conditions he was in, it would be as much a feat as carving a 50 feet tunnel.