Una verdad simulada

This week, Andrew Sullivan posted this beautiful view of the Golden Gate bridge from a home in San Francisco in his series “The View From Your Window.” I spent my last six months prior to returning to India in the Bay Area. One of the things we wanted to do was to rent a place in downtown SF, close to the bridge. But it was far too expensive and we settled on a drive-40-miles-each-weekend routine. The drive from the south Bay on I-280 itself was wonderful.

I sometimes miss that part of our stay in US.

Tags: General by Niket
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Over the last couple of years, in discussions with folks ten years younger than me, I found three names crop up as their role models, people who inspire them: Narayana Murthy, Abdul Kalam and Rahul Gandhi.

I have respect for all of them: Murthy for carving out a niche for himself when all others were just coasting along, Kalam for his sheer hard work and dedication, RG for his willingness to learn rather than be the crown prince (for the record, I am not kidding).

I can respect these individuals and still be extremely critical of them. And, they are not my role models. Abi gets it right when he says that what we get from Murthy is just more boilerplate talk. What worries (if this is indeed the right word) me is comments like this one:

Shame on you Abi.
Atleast Narayana Murty is inspiring the people, what are you doing??? […]
Even though facts were wrong, but many of us did find the article to be inspiring.

(emphasis mine)

What I found inspiring about Murthy was that he led the way two decades back; that he build the so-called (by the inspired folks) “first Indian multinational”; that he built a company which was years ahead at that time.

But that was then. The world has moved; in some ways, Murthy hasn’t.

He talks about need for research and science, but is not willing to put efforts where his mouth is. Contrast him to another visionary who was instrumental in setting up, among other things, a place still known to Bangalorites as the Tata Institute.

What I find disconcerting is not that Mr. Murthy is an inspiration; he has earned that Role Model status. Instead, its lack of realization that (i) this kind of criticism does not take anything away from his accomplishments; (ii) that we find boilerplate arguments inspiring; (iii) that call-to-arms, when you really get down to the details, contains nothing that the protégé is required to do, only an assertion that this is our opportunity / our time; (iv) and most of all, in words of the next commenter: “when facts are wrong and it still inspires you, it is called Religion”.

Tags: General by Niket
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via Kottke, this excellent piece by Amy Wallace in Wired Magazine on the anti-vaccination movement.

In May, The New England Journal of Medicine laid the blame for clusters of disease outbreaks throughout the US squarely at the feet of declining vaccination rates, while nonprofit health care provider Kaiser Permanente reported that unvaccinated children were 23 times more likely to get pertussis [whooping cough]. […]

“I used to say that the tide would turn when children started to die. Well, children have started to die,” Offit says, frowning as he ticks off recent fatal cases of meningitis in unvaccinated children in Pennsylvania and Minnesota. “So now I’ve changed it to ‘when enough children start to die.’ Because obviously, we’re not there yet.”

The article also has a short but apt paragraph on why pseudo-science gains traction:

In 1905, French mathematician and scientist Henri Poincaré said that the willingness to embrace pseudo-science flourished because people “know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether illusion is not more consoling.” Decades later, the astronomer Carl Sagan reached a similar conclusion: Science loses ground to pseudo-science because the latter seems to offer more comfort.

Tags: General by Niket
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Yesterday, I was chatting with a couple of colleagues. I mentioned to them something that my teacher told me as I was finishing my PhD and writing my teaching statement to apply for faculty positions. Prof. Koros told me that one of the important things with respect to student expectations is consistency. It is OK to be too strict or too lenient or to find your own middle ground; so long as people know what to expect, they will not find it difficult to adapt to your requirements (an assumption here is that these requirements are reasonable).

I remember my student days, when we initially disliked a faculty, Prof. Mahajani, who would close the class doors at exactly the right time (e.g., 9:30 am; never at 9:29, never at 9:31). No student will be allowed in the class after that. Attendance requirement was enforced. After our initial inconvenience, it is we who adjusted to his strict requirements. Our class nominated him for the best teacher award.

Tags: General, Personal by Niket
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See these untouched photographs of dead albatross chicks.

These photographs of albatross chicks were made just a few weeks ago on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.

To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world’s most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent. (original source)

Plastic is a problem on our campus as well. Deer feed on the food waste. Often, we find deer standing near garbage dump, chewing on plastic bags which contained food. I have heard that a couple of kilograms of plastic were found inside some of the deer found dead in the recent past.

Tags: General by Niket
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… the Nobel peace prize committee for awarding the 2009 peace prize to the US President Barack Obama. The citation says that the award is given to Obama “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”.

Updates:

• Atanu Dey said the same thing yesterday. Great minds think alike
• Great Bong says that Eric Morley, founder of the Miss World pageant also deserves a Nobel Prize, since ‘noone in the world who has done as much as him in providing a platform for attractive people to spew warm air about “world peace”‘.
• I got an email today from Avaaz.org (where I had, in a moment of weakness, signed some online petition) stating: “let’s flood Obama with worldwide congratulations, urging him to go further and turn hope into change”. Really?
• I think after the Rabin/Perez/Arafat and the Kissinger/Tho awards, this one is the most jaw-dropping in my view. Apparently, Obama was a mere two weeks into his office before the Feb. 1st deadline for peace prize nominations.
• One does hope that Obama’s presidency lives up to the expectations. But as Rahul says, “giving a prize for future achievements requires extraordinary clairvoyance.”

Tags: General by Niket
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A summary of suggestions from Kurt Vonnegut on how to write with style:

1. Find a subject you care about

2. Do not ramble, though

3. Keep it simple

4. Have guts to cut

5. Sound like yourself

6. Say what you mean

7. Pity the readers

Tags: General by Niket
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