New review on lit blog: James Wood's How Fiction Works
My lovefest with books continues this week with a review of
James Wood's: How Fiction Works.
I am off to read some more...
Top ten books on Gutenberg
#1 The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) by J. Arthur Thomson (21431)
#2 Manners, Customs, and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period by P. L. Jacob (16654)
#3 Illustrated History of Furniture by Frederick Litchfield (11252)
#4 The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana by Vatsyayana (10522)
#5 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (9269)
#6 Searchlights on Health by B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols (9007)
#7 History of the United States by Charles A. Beard and Mary Ritter Beard (8348)
#8 Our Day by William Ambrose Spicer (8004)
#9 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (7354)
#10 The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English by Ray Vaughn Pierce (6712)
I stumbled across this while searching for some other texts. Only #4, #5 and #9 are the well-known ones. It seems rather bizarre that people are downloading the History of Furniture, the Dress from the Middle Ages more often than the Kamasutra or Pride and Prejudice (No need for a gender-based query, we all know!). Good to know that Science is trumping them all, or is the web full of only dweebs?
I am really perplexed. Any ideas?
How close can a shave be?
The safety razor was a great improvement over the cutthroat razor. But, after that it invention for the sake of marketing. To maintain customer curiosity, Gillette and friends come up with 'new' razors everytime I go to get a replacement.
There was Mach, then MACH III and MACH with a vibrating blade. I mean these are razors... not motor cars that can be endlessly customized, enhanced, improved. But, these guys will find something. I think the Onion really put a lid on the ridiculous improvements.
F*** everything, we are doing five blades.
When I do see five blades in the pharmacy aisle, I am gonna roll on the floor laughing.
Will the real Guitar Hero please stand up?
This house on Main Street usually had a sign advertising guitar and music lessons. While running by the store a few days ago, I saw that the sign had been altered to read - "Guitar Hero and Rock Band lessons also offered".
Guitar Hero and Rock Band are video games that have become hugely popular. When I first saw the 'guitar', I was shocked at how toy-like it was. Of course, the Guitar Hero guitar IS a toy and not really a guitar. It's nothing but a glorified joystick that is shaped like a guitar. One of my other labmates who does play a real guitar was humbled at his attempts to display his axe-skills on Guitar hero. Guitar skills don't translate to the video game.
Perhaps, no one cares about real instruments anymore, and music teachers would rather teach anybody anything than go hungry. Learning an instrument is hard. Even to play decently it takes a few years. My own struggles with it have only reinforced the view that it requires a lot of patience, determination and discipline. Of course, once you are past the first stage, the fact that you can play can itself be a motivating thing.
While the initial motivation to learn an instrument may be to get the chicks, impress your buddies, or some TV-fueled teenage fantasy, which all seems rather silly in retrospect. The initial impetus is always public adoration, but eventually playing an instrument is mostly a solitary pleasure where you are your own audience. This solitary audience is an aspect that makes making music so liberating and relaxing. An escape into the abstract.
It seems a shame that few want to take the pains to learn how to play a real instrument. Instead of picking up a real instrument, people seem to want to pick up the guitar hero box. I hoped that perhaps this would encourage people to try the real thing. I know a guy in my lab who spent 2-3 hours in the summer getting better at guitar hero. If he had spent that time learning a real instrument, it would have paid much richer dividends.
Help classify galaxies
Participate in Public science and help classify galaxies: Galaxy Zoo 2. An excellent idea to use human intelligence in classification to make sense of astronomical amounts of data.
End of Days
It's 6pm and everybody has gone home. I am sipping my last coffee as a graduate student. I had always looked forward to the day when I would finally be able to say 'I'm done with this crap'. Sometimes, it looked like that day would never come. It always seemed a goal that was too impossible, too far, somewhere in the distance, a year or two away. Now it's finally here, it's not what I had expected to feel.
Today everyone, including my advisor, told me to go home early and get some sleep. Actually, for the first time in my life I genuinely want to stay here. Not because there is work to be done, but I just want to enjoy the last evening here at my desk - alone. I see piles of old papers that are all marked up and with coffee stains, old lab notebooks with failed experiments and incorrect analyses. They make feel that was time well-spent. My finished papers, in comparison, look too clean.
Tomorrow, in about 45 minutes I am supposed to wrap six years of work. They want the cream. I shall present three of my greatest hits, and if that's a hit with the committee, they are going award me a PhD.
My personal experience makes me compare doing a PhD to running a marathon. You have to be slightly mad to think of doing one, and a little more so to finish one. Just as the marathon is not a test of speed, but of stamina, a PhD is not a test of quick intelligence, but of rigor and intellectual determination. For the most part, you hang in there and keep going, and not be afraid of falling down or going down blind alleys.
I recall Chicago. After many miles, I finally rounded the bend on Columbus Drive and saw the finish, less than 400 meters away. Suddenly, all the weariness of those miles disappeared seeing that green banner with large, friendly letters reading, 'FINISH'. It was nice to get that medal around my chest once I crossed. That will always remain. And looking back, what I really enjoyed was running all those miles in the different neighbourhoods. Today, it's that same sort of feeling of seeing the finish line, one that you dreamed about for a few years. Yes, I look forward to crossing the line tomorrow, but tonight I want to sit here and look back.
From the land of navel gazing
Since, I now have more time on my hands, I felt that this is an appropriate time to try out Twitter. So, I have sold out (temporarily) and shall be twittering:
http://twitter.com/omphaloskeptik, where the good citizens of the world can find the answer to the burning question of the day -- What is Hirak Parikh doing gazing at his navel?
My most private activity is now public. I am now officially a part of the chattering masses.
Working on your talk?
Sad, to see ppl mucking around in Powerpoint when they should be spending more time preparing the talk! Guys! it's a T_A_L_K, not a slideshow. Presenting bullet points instead of making a point.
Lincoln and Darwin
Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day, February 12, 1809, two hundred years ago. As the Birthday Paradox illustrates, you need only 23 people in a room to get better than 1/2 chance of any two people sharing a birthday. The coincidence is welcome however, as I admire them both. What I find more interesting is how separate these people live in the consciousness of people and the media. In all my calendars/dairies I find the day marked as 'Lincoln's birthday', but Darwin goes unmentioned. The newspapers are going to devote more space to Lincoln, while Darwin's going to get a footnote somewhere in the Science page. Perhaps, the man of the moment, Barack Obama shares more with the former Illinois Representative than a would-be-curate-turned-naturalist.
In another parallel universe, Darwin's day has not gone unnoticed as Science magazine is running series on Darwin. The National Geographic had a Darwin cover story. Some folks in the city of Ann Arbor have decided to celebrate Darwin's Day. Now that I shall have more time this week, I intend to re-read the Origin of Species and Lincoln's speeches.
I am curious to see if Google's logo tomorrow is going to pay homage to Darwin or Lincoln. Regardless of the final choice, both were truly great men who contributed in immensely in two completely separate spheres. It also occurred to me that people are rarely shot for their scientific beliefs, merely excoriated or excommunicated. Political belief seems to be a more dangerous responsibility.
Impossible Indian chick!
If you guys have a minute to spare while your women are getting ready. Check this out!
From Reuters: Indian Chick does the impossible!
For the first time, there is evidence that a woman can get her hair, makeup and clothes done in under one minute! What makes this even more of an achievement is the fact that it is an Indian woman! In my most sanguine moments, I thought that half hour would be a reasonable demand for someone to get ready, but this is an Olympian achievement.
It would indeed be a shame if this feat only managed to get in the Guinness Book of World Records. That book is meant for people eating nails, twenty hamburgers in 2 minutes, cycling backwards while playing a violin, or for pogo-sticking to Mt. Fuji. All impressive, but ultimately useless human achievements. This, my dear Gayathri, is worth at least a couple of Nobel prizes.
Here are some of the reasons:
Physics: Doing your hair in a French roll in the time it takes me to tie my shoelaces! And getting in a 9-yard sari in less than thirty seconds! The prize should be awarded for proving that the laws of physics as discovered by scientists no less than Newton, Planck, Einstein and Feymann do not need to be violated for a woman to get ready in less than a minute.
Peace: Surely, guys all over the world would appreciate her sharing this technique with their gals. I mean Al Gore got one for a Powerpoint presentation!
Chemistry: One definite woman has been synthesized by biological means that can ready in less than a minute.
Medicine/Biology: Nothing in the XX chromosome is responsible for any delay in getting ready.
Economics: Let's not even start. Gas, time, lights, etc. saved.
Literature: This might be the only tough sell, but heck! fact is stranger than fiction. This should count for something.
Federer v Nadal
It's odd that in the end there are only two men left standing - the Manacor Minotaur and the Sublime Swiss.
Of course, Nadal needs to attend to the minor paperwork of writing off his fellow Spaniard - Verdasco. So, unless Nadal slips on the bathroom floor and breaks both (yes! both) his legs, or Verdasco grows an extra heart to keep up with the running he needs to do to face the ball-machine, we are up for another epic final.
Verdasco played brilliantly to knock Murray and Tsonga, and Roddick did well to force Djokovic out and make it to the semis. But, the finals have been reserved for the Big 2.
Nadal seems to be getting better and better each time I see him play. His serve and backhand have improved tremendously, and he is capable of not only returning but pounding even the best return. This is obvious. But, what seems to be most impressive is that he makes such few errors.
Federer once remarked that early in his career he did poorly because he could not make up his mind on what shot to make, as he had so many options. Now late in his career, he seems to have trouble deciding, should I play like a human, or a God? A very human Federer played against Berdych, and then the next two matches it has been 'The Federer'.
It seems that everything till the final is just practice for these two guys. A lengthy two-week prelude with the guys playing 'good' cop and 'bad' cop. Good cop - R. Nadal gets to work immediately and bulldozes opponents as quickly as possible; in contrast, Bad Cop R. Federer has been more of the tease, a trapeze artist, whetting everyone's appetite for the final showdown.
My generation has been honored to witness these two duke it out on the courts, year after year, slam after slam. So who will win? Does it even matter? To quote a Danish prince, the play's the thing.
Grab a seat and watch the drama unfold.
Commentators at the Aus Open
Last night while Nadal was clinically demolishing Fernando Gonzalez, on the other court Murray was playing Verdasco. The first set was rather routine with Verdasco losing 6-2 which prompted the commentators to talk about Murray's further progress, as if his win was a given. Verdasco came back to win the second, and finally upset Murray by winning the match in five sets. In the featured match, Gonzalez was given somewhat of a chance against Nadal. But, Nadal prevailed in straight sets, not looking troubled at all. Nadal is a monster and shows no signs of any weakness. He is simply a ball-fetching machine on defense, and devastating on the offense. Earlier, Victoria Azarenka wasn't given much of a chance against Serena, but she won the first set and then retired in tears because she felt dizzy due to a virus.
I really wonder if anyone really analyzes the commentators pronouncements and predictions. I think they are just as clueless as the average viewer regarding who will win. The only advantage they have over an average viewer is that they know how to watch a player, and they have deeper knowledge of the history and stats. However, I don't think they are any better at predicting a winner, and even when the score looks lopsided.
There isn't much separating a player in the single digits from someone tens of places below. All it takes is a couple of erratic shots, or a double fault or two, and the player could be a break down and lose the set, and then the match. This is highly unpredictable, so I doubt that even immediate performance in the previous game is any indicator if the player is going to over-hit the ball, or double fault.
I am curious to see if people would be able to identify the better player in a blind study (i.e. the faces of the players were obscured) just by watching a couple of games. I am sure that commentators would be better at identifying, but at predicting who will win - I am not so sure.
On Shoulders of Giants
When I should have been doing something else, I spent last evening reading Keith Devlin's book and the exchange of letter between Blaise Pascal and Pierre De Fermat.
In a series of letters Pascal and Fermat developed the theory of probability, or more accurately a priori or objective probability.
The problem that concerns the letter is the Problem of Points which Fermat solved rather easily using his more elegant and shorter 'method of combinations', and which Pascal solved correctly, but without the intuition, using his more complicated recursive formula.
Two things were striking - people had been gambling for centuries before anyone took the challenge in the early 17th century to find a mathematical method to predict the odds.
Also, what took the greatest minds in Europe a better part of a century to solve, took me only about few minutes to solve the 'Problem of Points'. Upon reading Pascal's source of confusion, I realized how simple it is to apply a method, but how very subtle it is the really understand the problem. We truly stand on the shoulders of giants.
The Unfinished Game: Pascal, Fermat, and the Seventeenth-Century Letter that Made the World Modern
Yesterday
This is a heartbreaking poem by W.S. Merwin which I came across a couple of years ago. Then I thought it was beautiful. Over the years, it has become more and more personal and private. Today on the occasion of my father's birthday, I thought I should celebrate it with you.
Poems need to be read, and read aloud. None more than this one, because it's about things unsaid and undone.
Great poetry is like that. First you read it, then it reads you.
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