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.

By and by

The best way out is always through.
- Robert Frost, A Servant to Servants

Indian Summer

Last week with temperatures in the 70s it was an Indian Summer. Running on trails is fun, but you can't stop and stare an beautiful sight. But for once instead of lacing my trail running shoes, I took a camera and walked through the trails that I love. After a run on a beautiful day, I always swear to myself, that I will be back with a camera. But, I never make it back with a camera.

This was my last chance to capture the beauty of the fall in two of the two greatest trails in Ann Arbor. The brutal and beautiful Nichol's Arboretum and a trail less traveled - the Huron River Trail.

More pics from Fall.

How Many Neurons Must One Man Have?

Every year, my colleagues and I put up a joke/satirical/thought poster at Annual Society for Neuroscience Meeting under the teaching section. This poster is usually finished last minute. More last minute than our regular posters (There was more controversy this year which I shall get into some other day as it deserves a couple of posts.)

However, coming back to November 2006:
Borrowing a riff from Bob Dylan, our poster posed the question, "How Many Neurons Must One Man Have? (Before you call him a man)". We have about a 100 billion of them, but how do these neurons makes us what we are? How do we remember? Why and how do we forget? As is usually the case, the poster sort of evolves over the week with us, the pranksters/jokers/dunces, feeding off ideas and encouragement from the gallery and adding ideas. While, Tim and Greg were getting parts of the poster printed after the conference began, I started scribbling a back-of-the envelope equation which was pretty close to this -

At some point, it struck me that there is no better place to put a back-of-the-envelope equation than an envelope itself. Everybody simply loved it! Nothing gets scientists/engineers more amused than jargon puns.

After coming back from the meeting, Tim and I decided to do something beyond a few laughs. Which means in scientific currency - a publication. We worked on it in our free time. It was an interesting question and as we scoured the literature, we discovered that the research on the subject was rather thin. We read interesting papers from Bell Labs, papers on pigeon learning, autistic savants (Daniel Tammett), phenomenal mnemonists (A.K.Luria), artificial brains (Jeff Hawkins). At one point, we both realised that we were just enjoying this garage science project so much, that we weren't really making any progress with a publishable manuscript. Our research was all over the place and it took some work to curb our enthusiasm and coalesce collected ideas into one coherent manuscript.

Even then the road was not easy. One unrelenting reviewer took a while to 'get it' and made us go through what seemed like endless and silly revisions. Yet, to his credit, the manuscript was a little less folksy-sounding and perhaps more rigorous than we were planning. Also, since we decided to go for hand-drawn illustrations harking back to a simpler and purer time in magazine publishing, it was somewhat of a chore to redraw the illustrations.

So, finally almost after exactly two years since that scribbling in an Atlanta Holiday Inn, the ideas have been honored to be oozed with ink in IEEE Potentials Magazine. Tim's friend Thad, a commercial artist, gifted a wonderful drawing to use as the opening cover. However, the editor disagreed with us last minute and decided to go ahead with an computer image over the wonderful black-ink sketch. We were a little upset with some of odd-looking coloring.

This is the actual IEEE Potential Article as it appeared.

This how the article would have appeared, had we got our way:
Our Aesthetically Pleasing Article. We leave you, the reader, to decide if you agree with us.
As they say: Ars longa, vita brevis

---------
Previous post on the 2007 Poster:
Published in the Annals of Improbable Research: The Cingulate Cortex does Everything!

Networks going green

I feel bad for the network folks. After enjoying high-ratings for the past year and a half, people are mostly back to watching sports. It was pathetic to watch Larry King last night showing "The Best of Obama". Yeah, you heard that right! Larry King suffering some withdrawal symptoms of his own and had to overcome his nostalgia for Ghost of Election Just-Past by re-running Obama's speeches and interviews. While the rest of the staff takes a much needed holiday, the networks have gone green. Recycle yesterday's election news for today. Make do with less. Change has come to America!

Where have all the vowels gone?

See post on the lit blog.

Do it Yourself

The primary motivation to learn how to frame stuff was that framing is super expensive. The local arts-and-crafts store Michael's was quoting about $100-$120 to frame a Madhubani painting that we had got from India. Like most people who decide to have something framed for the first time you realise that the artwork being framed is the cheapest component of all the costs. Going to get framing done is like getting car-insurance. There are so many different options and picking one over the other can result in drastically different costs. There is a choice of mats - standard, acid-free, rag-paper. Then the choice of the frames - thin or thick wooden, metal, or fancy wooden. Choosing the correct kind of glass is not transparent business at all - there is plain glass, plexi-glass, non-reflective glass, UV-ray protected glass and other varieties. Soon you realise that $120 quoted was simply the base price. I walked away thinking it's not a coincidence that they call it framing.

Even if the initial driver to do-it-myself was cost (being a starving student and all that), DIY is not an option for cheapskates or the impatient. It's probably going to cost more and take much longer than you think.

First, is the research: I spent the next two months reading up on the subject (with books from the library, of course!) and another month buying the equipment and tools. If you thought the frameshop had too many options, wait till you decide to buy framing tools. There are mat cutters that are $25 and then there are mat cutters that are a few hundred dollars. It is ironic, that as a newbie you often better off getting the more expensive equipment, as it is the easiest to use. That never happens does it? So, you have to deal with the frustration of a fumbling beginner with less than ideal tools.

Second, is practice: Work on projects that don't matter. It's not a bright idea to start framing your masterwork while you are still learning to control the cutter. This process takes time and patience and perhaps a few bloodstains. After being off by an eight of an inch on one side and seeing the resulting disaster you really understand one the maxims of life: "Measure twice, cut once". It is rather humbling that after two decades spent in school, no one taught me this.

Slowly, but surely the pilgrim makes his progress. A few months and a couple hundred dollars later, I had the Madhubani painting framed. Factoring in the bamboo frame and non-reflective glass, the cost of getting it done and doing it myself were about the same. But, at the end of it that's not your first thought. The first and last thought is pride, despite the slight imperfections. And they call pride one of the seven Deadly Sins.

My friend, Tim has been trying to restore a vintage El Camino for the past couple of years. I have begun to believe that he never really intends on calling it quits on working on the car. It's always a work-in-progress. If he quit then there would be nothing more to learn, it will be just be like any other car. I have sat in another one of his rusty-but-not-trusty cars, an 1981 Toyota Tercel, thinking that a wheel might fall off any moment. But, unlike with some other people I haven't been the least bit scared since I know that Tim will be able to fix that car even if it may be a temporary fix with duct-tape. The powerful uses of duct-tape, that's another thing they don't teach you at school.

Undecided?

If you are one of the undecided voters, here's what David Sedaris has to say.

I look at these people and can’t quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention?

To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

I mean, really, what’s to be confused about?

******
I have generally stayed away from the insanity of the election. What turns me off is stories like Sarah Palin spending $150,000 on her new wardrobe being given so much attention. The Democrats scream, "She calls herself a hockey-mom and then goes shopping at Neiman Marcus with a big fat check from the RNC." Yeah! So? Is this even really relevant?
One would expect that the someone who is running to be #2 to the most powerful job in the world, should at least be well-dressed, hockey-mom or not. As far as the ethics of the RNC paying for it goes, everybody is spending so much money on the boob-tube that this expense is peanuts compared to that. It's advertising by other means, no?

A few weeks ago, was Obama's association with a 'terrorist'. Then there are nonsensical totems such as 'Joe the Plumber' standing for Middle America. The strategists really know how to work words. Sadly, the media gladly laps up this stuff. Instead of stating that this is bogus distraction, they dwell on it more because it is a bogus distraction. They love angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-needle kind of stories.
Everyone claims to be taking the high road, and the chief among them are the media.

The coverage on CNN, a relatively less-biased channel, has not been about policy as much, as talking about winning and losing in the manner of discussing a sports team. Where is the talk of policy? the real investigations into the implication of Obama's or McCain's policies?

Please, nok

RUF2T?
C this Gr8 NYker piece
u shud read it.... it's :-) i was ROFLAO
BTW I luv the Germans 4 coming up wit nok its Gr8
B4now tc
CU tom pls.. nok ;)

The Inner Eye

If one photographs people it is the inner look that must be reflected. One must reveal what goes on inside them, as well as their relation to the other world.
As I photograph with my little Leica, I have the feeling that there i something so right about it: with one eye that is close one looks within. With the other eye that is open one look without: one see the shapes, the living quality of what moves one to photograph. W passion, without working with the emotion of the heart and the enjoyment of the eye, nothing vital can be put down.

- Henri Cartier-Bresson

Concert Music

I have returned to Alex Ross's excellent book - "Rest in Noise". I'll let him explain the title and the idea behind the book:

The title I chose for the project, The Rest Is Noise, played off Hamlet's last words ("The rest is silence") and, more widely, the perception that classical composition devolved into noise as the twentieth century went on ...

... The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century is a voyage into the labyrinth of modern music, which remains an obscure world for most people. While paintings of Picasso and Jackson Pollock sell for a hundred million dollars or more, and lines from T. S. Eliot are quoted on the yearbook pages of alienated teenagers across the land, twentieth-century classical music still sends ripples of unease through audiences. At the same time, its influence can be felt everywhere. Atonal chords crop up in jazz. Avant-garde sounds populate the soundtracks of Hollywood thrillers. Minimalism has had a huge effect on rock, pop, and dance music from the Velvet Underground onward.

The book was nominated for whole bunch of awards and won quite a few of them. What makes this book especially interesting is the listening list. More importantly, Alex Ross has made a lot of the audio available on his website, including additional pictures and material.

Rest is Noise Audio Archive
In a perverse way, it made me abandon the reading of the book as I got sidetracking in the listening. I craved for more; and went and got myself some Debussy and Mahler. Then I got stuck there. Most people are used the Germanic traditions of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, but not the French. So, Debussy is rather refreshing, a sort of aural version of Impressionism.

Then there are practical difficulties. I needed good headphones to capture the dynamic range and subtleties. The ones that come with the iPod are mostly junk. So, I invested (read:indulged) in the Mercedes(not a Ferrari) of headphones and the difference was striking. People listen to rock music while jogging, Mahler isn't recommended. Listening to that stuff takes time and concentration. Eating McDonald's fries doesn't take any concentration, but trying to eat salmon with a delicate sauce from a French restaurant takes some engagement in the meal.

There whole serious ambiance of the classical music wasn't always the case. In this case, the much-maligned middle class IS to blame (New Yorker article on concert history ).

So, I have returned to reading the book. This time, the new notion is to chase down the live concerts at the music school. Perhaps another diversion in the works? Given my limited time left at this wonderful university, I should be getting some sort of education, right?

Hilary Hahn's list of things to watch at a concert

Where literature comes in

Sometimes as a scientist, you wonder if literature has anything really important to say that science won't be able to answer given adequate time, resources and techniques. Can everything be reduced to some laws, even they are quantum or probabilistic ones? Experiments in giant fMRI machines are showing which areas of the brain are responsible for what affective qualities in decision making. While we still try to understand these phenomena literature fills that void. That void is literature's essential subject matter.

More from Menand's piece on Lionel Trilling:

In Trilling’s view, the faith that liberals share, whether they are Soviet apologists, Hayekian free marketers, or subscribers to Partisan Review, is that human betterment is possible, that there is a straight road to health and happiness. A liberal is a person who believes that the right economic system, the right political reforms, the right undergraduate curriculum, and the right psychotherapy will do away with unfairness, snobbery, resentment, prejudice, neurosis, and tragedy. The argument of “The Liberal Imagination” is that literature teaches that life is not so simple — for unfairness, snobbery, resentment, prejudice, neurosis, and tragedy happen to be literature’s particular subject matter. In Trilling’s celebrated statement: “To the carrying out of the job of criticizing the liberal imagination, literature has a unique relevance . . . because literature is the human activity that takes the fullest and most precise account of variousness, possibility, complexity, and difficulty.” This is why literary criticism has something to say about politics.