Does anyone else remember Dasara V. Nagamani?

Question

About 10 year ago, and for years before that, someone calling himself Dasara V. Nagamani would post classified ads in the back of Physics Today. They would be things like:

"Produce vedic thinking model; it has to contain the physics producing as well as the physics understood. The jotting gathering is grammaticality; moo-transfer structures are produced."

(There are no typos in that excerpt.) Generally the text would end with a phrase like "We like you."

It seems like the sort "urban legend" thing that someone would have figured out and there would be something on the internet about who Dasara Nagamani was and why he was submitting these ads. But there is nothing on the web or on usenet (and I've looked quite a bit off and on). Does anyone know who he is/was and the backstory?

Answer 1

Yep!  I was in college & grad school in physics back when he was doing this, and this was a source of entertainment for a few years.  I've just gone back through old copies of Physics Today and noted that he seemed to be active from ~1985-1996, although I only became aware of him starting about 1991 or so.  The style changed a bit over the years.  The earlier ones from the '80s are shorter and occasionally offer himself as a consultant.  Around the middle of this time, he had an AIP e-mail address!  So he clearly was judged sane enough to work there.  (Wonder if he was involved in publishing Physics Today?)  And by the '90s, he's often got three ads per issue, with "Continued..." at the end of each.  

For some years, I thought somebody had come up with software that was *simulating* written text, like a Markov chain generator.  And maybe it would have used Hindu texts and physics papers as its models, which would explain the weird mixing of the two in Nagamani's ads.  But looking back at these old ones, I see him pulling for job opportunities and citing his WVU (West Virginia University?) Ph.D. as background.  It did all seem like a big practical joke, though.

—Tim Hamilton
Assoc. Prof. of Physics,
Shawnee State University