Moon water and "Red Mars"

The discovery of water on the moon now confirmed by several different moon missions, and most recently by a NASA probe deployed via the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan I moon orbiter, is astounding news. That news has been followed with the discovery of large quantities of water on Mars much closer to the equator than was previously thought (earlier the notion was that water in the form of ice was concentrated closer to the polar areas of Mars).

All this really means is that both the moon and Mars are now colonizable, perhaps more easily than earlier thought possible because of the ready availability of water. Coincidentally, this past year I have been reading the wonderful science fiction trilogy on Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson; namely the award winning "Red Mars", "Green Mars" and "Blue Mars", which deals with exactly that - the colonization and "terraforming" of Mars.

The first book in the series, "Red Mars" (full book link on google books?), which I highly recommend, deals with the eventual arrival of permanent human presence on Mars in the form of an early group of astronaut settlers sent to setup bases which include power generation, and mining units as well as green houses, and research labs. The scope of Red Mars is not just scientific and engineering centric - the first settlers, while being the best scientists and engineers, are also highly opinionated and have brought with them their beliefs and philosophies. All of this makes for a fascinating read.

The remaining two books continue on that theme. "Green Mars" explores the continuing efforts to settle Mars by building some sort of an atmosphere on it for human beings to breathe freely in, and the resistance to both the greening effort as well as the control exerted by and from Earth. Finally, "Blue Mars" (which I am halfway through and which is not as easy a read as "Red Mars" was but is nonetheless very illuminating) talks about the eventual reconciliation between Mars and Earth in the backdrop of catastrophic events and displacements on Earth and the need for sending large numbers of affected Earth people to a new life on Mars, and of course the continuing struggles of the Mars inhabitants.

Overall, if there's a minor niggle I have had, its the fact that the author does have a Western bias of sorts in the array of characters introduced and developed. But the bias is far less than several others I have read - names, places and beliefs from Eastern lands have been liberally referenced, very appropriately too I might add which reflects the authors knowledge of history and literature. But I find it strange that given the large numbers of Chinese and Indian scientists in particular active in several engineering and scientific domains, there are hardly any characters of those origins playing principal roles in the Mars trilogy.

Of course, since I am Indian in origin, I am for more Asian representation as prinicipal book characters. Which basically means countering the bias against, with a bias for - a convenient zero sum game, I agree.

Regardless, the authors deep knowledge of the sciences and literature, and very sound storytelling skills brought together by a sweeping, detailed vision of life on Mars is what stays with you. I wouldn't be surprised if future events though reflect in some fashion the ideas and vision displayed in "Red Mars". Fans of good fiction will enjoy this book immensely.

(Red Mars cover image courtesy Amazon.com)

The world is a flat circle

... going round and round.

NY Times, which a couple of years ago had made its Op-Ed section a paid access site, has finally realized the error of their ways and are now back to allowing free access to all. In case you can't make the connection - they have come full circle. That's good news - right?! Perhaps. Trouble is, most of their columnists have really lost credibility, at least in my opinion, since their blind support for the war on Iraq and the no-questions-asked clean chit to the bullcrap fed to them by the Bush administration with respect to Iraq.

One of the chief defaulters on the credibility front is Tom Friedman, columnist and author who wrote, among others, the famous "The World Is Flat" which touts outsourcing as a great positive movement. Recently he wrote this column in the NYTimes.

While the article may not signify a full circle traversal by him - it clearly implies a backtracking from his earlier position of being gung-ho on the war on Iraq. In fact, he's backtracked so much so that, off late, he has been rather apologetic about that error in judgment. Well - good for him, I say.

But it's difficult though to figure out what his true intentions are with all this - to borrow a Republican term used very effectively against John Kerry - flip-flopping. Tough to figure out if he's just trying to win back credibility and through that, readership for his next edition on outsourcing or Iraq - or that he really thinks deep-down inside that he somehow screwed up and now he's trying to make amends for it. He may be back to being on Bush's case now - but when it really mattered in the buildup to the most useless and counter-productive war in recent times, he failed f***ing miserably in exhibiting good sense.

But then again, he wasn't alone in that.

Peter Straub

The last few posts ( 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5) have been largely book related. That tells you the amount of free time I have these days. But talking about works of fiction that I thoroughly enjoyed, I do feel it would be criminal to not mention Peter Straub and his works. Yes - I know most of y'all (except for BrijWhiz) probably haven't heard of him.

Straub is usually classified as a horror writer - much like the more famous Stephen King, probably because he's collaborated with King. But it's tough to call Straub a horror writer. Usually his stories are built around a premise that you'd find in psychological thriller type novels. But his novels go much deeper than that. His characters hold up a mirror for you, compelling you to introspect, while his writing compels you to turn pages. And in that sense, he has very little in common with King, much less with most other authors I've read.

I picked up The Throat written by Straub for a train journey from New Delhi to good ol' Mumbai in '98. I thought I'd picked up a cheap, slasher novel. Instead, behind that cheap sounding title was a self-indulgent, but utlimately superb psychological thriller. The Throat, the third and final book of what's known as the "blue rose" trilogy, deals with the return of a serial killer to a small American town, who scrawls "blue rose" besides his victims. And here everyone had thought that the killer had been caught after the first spate of murders died out (no pun intended). By the time the book was over, I was looking for others from Peter Straub.

I did pick up the remaining books from the "blue rose" trilogy including Koko and Mystery, thereby ending up reading the whole "blue rose" trilogy backwards. No harm done though. I found the experience extremely rich. The Throat and Koko, especially are two of my favourite psychological thrillers. And I highly recommend both these avant garde psychological thrillers by Peter Straub to start with. The links should lead you to Amazon pages for the books along with summaries/ editorial reviews.

Special props to Brijwhiz for helping me keep my interest in Straub before.

A Good Story Comes To An End

Not all is bad in the world of paperback fiction though. However the death of Sidney Sheldon whom I curiously mentioned a few days ago, will leave a void in many ways. A work of fiction generally involves telling a story. The story need not be true in any way. And while there are several people who can perhaps describe scenes or events really well, the fact is - a work of fiction cannot wholly succeed without a good underlying story that connects all the peices (well described or not) really well. Sidney Sheldon, in that regard, was a master at telling a good story.

When I first picked up his books in my adolescent years, it was mainly to get to the lurid sex scenes several of his books seemed to be filled with. I know I wasn't alone in doing that. But like others, I also realized little by little that the stories he told were very captivating. It was the essence (believe it or not!) of the characters that came through those aforementioned scenes that made me track back to pages before these scenes and continue reading far after they were over. His classics like If Tomorrow Comes, The Other Side of Midnight, and The Doomsday Conspiracy are superb examples of stories with great appeal and solid content.

Youngsters these days may have internet pron to educate themselves. But I seriously doubt if it's ever going to lead them to great stories like those Sheldon once wrote. Whatever. It'll be their loss. Sidney's probably living it up wherever he is right now.

Bad Science and Imaginary Weapons

One of the books I read recently was Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld" by Sharon Weinberger. The book is a study on how the military establishment in the US, in its quest for new, deadlier weapons to stay ahead of all competition, funds fringe research ridiculed and dismissed by mainstream science. Pseudo-science backed with little and in several cases dubious rigor can capture the imagination of top military funding agencies. The prime example used in the book is the quest for devising a super weapon using a halfnium isomer that could theoretically be put inside a container the size of a hand grenade but could have more power than a conventional nuke. Moreover, it could theoretically penetrate concrete and steel making it impossible to guard against.

Musings:
The trouble with such a quest is that mainstream phyicists of repute who have researched this idea have already found it to be highly infeasible (i.e. un-doable) for several reasons - the least of which being that for such an endeavor to actually succeed would require seriously violating known laws of physics. But that somehow did not or does not deter fringe scientists from taking up this cause repeatedly, and, even more scarily, for the military establishment of the most powerful nation on the planet to continue to fund such dubious science by millions of dollars.

And just why do these scientists eagerly propose such research time and time again? Maybe, because in absence of any proper scientific funding (probably denied to them because of the dubious nature of their proposals in the first place) their only option is the generous military. Or maybe because they somehow believe strongly in the feasibility of these fringe topics, no matter how contrary known evidence is.

As a scientist myself(Hee! Hee! Still get a kick out of saying that!), all this is a good reality check that there are a lot of scientists out there who either lack scientific rigor or who somehow believe that they're better and know more than the system that produced them. Who needs equations and proofs to back one's gut feelings, right?!

But more importantly a scientist who actually craves for recognition which he or she knows that mainstream science is never going to grant them, but they're going to make a run for it one way or the other is a very dangerous one. Such people are eventually going to not only self-destruct at some point, but will also end up taking a lot of people (innocent or otherwise) with them.

Book Review:
The book itself did tend to get a little tedious (like this post), not because of all the scientific details inside but because the writer explains events, people and her interviews with them in far too much detail. A lot of the material could have been condensed and published in a major newspaper as an exposure piece.

Also, while the title says Imaginary Weapons, i.e. implying the plural, the author only really talks about the halfnium weapon in some detail. While, in the beginning of the book, the writer does allude to military funding for an acoustic weapon, i.e. one that uses sound waves to neutralize the enemy, or funding for harnessing gravity waves in some destructive fashion, she makes very little or no further mention about these other topics later on in the book. That's kind of a let-down really, because I did want to hear about other dubious projects funded by the military. However, her sarcastic, almost satirical writing style makes it easier to plod through the more weightier (read boring) topics. On the whole, informative but a slightly dissatisfying experience.

Tailpiece:
With that troubling thought of bad science and scientists in my mind, it's time to hit the textbooks again then for me - just to make sure I have all the facts right. Heh! Heh! More book reviews, observations coming up later. Textbooks won't be included, fortunately.

Bad Writing

I picked up some more books recently (continuing on with my book reading spree). My last foray into reading paperback fiction (of the Dan Brown sort described here) made me realize two things:

1. It had been a while since I had read a novel of the airport quickie variety and somehow this time around, I found this kind more difficult to digest. Reading Dan Brown and Digital Fortress was really the last straw for me. I know it sounds pompous but I think I have sort of graduated from books of this sort. Why do I feel this way? I dunno! Probably because I don't want to read badly written books anymore! The last good work of fiction that I had read - sometime last year - was The Five people You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom which was immensely readable when compared to the Brown kind of tripe.

2. I don't really understand how mediocre writers get recognition or acclaim while the real good ones don't ever get anywhere. It brings up the question: Just who are those reviewers quoted on the back of these bad books who extoll non-existent virtues of these books, and just how much do they know about writing?

I do know that reading a book (or reading anything), watching movies, listening to music, or appreciating a work of art for that matter - has all to do with how much appeal it holds for you. And what appeals to who has not necessarily been captured in a bottle and/or is sold off the shelves of drug stores. However, some bad writers seem to have gotten a whiff of that essence somehow.

Of course Reason no. 2 is an oversimplification of complex social, cultural and psychological issues that determine what works and what doesn't. And no one really knows everything about it all. That doesn't mean I can't be a snob and diss stuff I don't like.

Crichton and Programming

My good friend Brij discussed earlier a fantastic piece of fiction - Dune by Frank Herbert here. My cousin Sanjay first lent me the book - although I had heard much about it before. Idle reading these days (being unemployed and all) involved finishing Prey by Michael Crichton. The connection between Prey and Dune being that they're both categorized usually as science fiction (i.e. sci-fi). And you're right - that connection I made was the result of some serious analytical skills. I do understand though that sci-fi is generally classified into hard and soft. With that in mind, Dune's probably on the soft side, while Prey's probably on the hard side.

I know I wasn't all that excited about wanting to read Prey. Crichton's last book that I read i.e. Timeline was a good thriller incorporating quantum science in interesting ways, but pretty much typical run-of-the-mill in terms of writing quality. I decided to give Prey a read anyways however, since I am prone to rushes of magnanimity and Crichton's been begging me for a while. I won't go into the book summary and all that - you'll find a much more detailed account here. But the story deals with the confluence of nanotechnology, genetics and computer science, and the implications of it all to the future of mankind. Food for thought indeed!

While some of the notions and ideas in the book are far fetched given that Crichton's works are usually based on current ongoing or proposed scientific research, there were a few that I did find relevant. Especially those about computer programming. In the book, programmers of the Silicon Valley regularly indulge in designing and developing virtual, autonomous agents to work in distributed computing scenarios. Also, most programmers know how to power these agents with evolutionary or genetic algorithms that allow them to combine with other agents and come up with efficient solutions for a broad range of complex problems. Just like people getting together with other people to solve problems. (Or stone other people - probably the same as solving problems actually!)

It is my understanding, based on what is normally taught in programming that such programming is still far from the norm in the Silicon Valley or any valley. Most programmers are still rooted to using algorithms for which upper bounds and lower bounds, both in terms of memory use and time are known or can be evaluated. Such algorithms are essential for commercial software development right from analyzing the cost-benefit of program code at the lowest level, up to the setting of milestones, deadlines, etc. up at the higher, project management levels.

But, while such programming is still pretty essential, the truth is - the theory and practical applications of genetic algorithms may soon become important for all programmers to study. Besides off-the-shelf resusable code or code libraries are used extensively for known problems. Why keep re-inventing the wheel? More importantly, complex problems are solved better using a combination of traditional as well as heuristic techniques just as humans tend to problem solve.

Off-late, several computer science as well as bio-informatics graduate programs across the world do offer courses on genetic algorithms and such. And while programmers armed with this knowledge may not quite be the norm in Silicon Valley, not quite as Crichton potrays, they will probably become necessary in the not-to-distant future.

A mildly compelling page turner at best, Prey however is nowhere close to Crichton's best. I do think that this phase of reading paperback quickies may not last too long.

Brown's Fortress and the Brown Code to writing

On to Dan Brown then, the famous author of the Da Vinci Code. I did read the Code earlier. And I also happened to read one of his earlier works (if you could call it that) called Digital Fortress much more recently (I still wonder why!). The story is basically run-of-the-mill Brown I guess: cryptologists searching for secret codes in the backdrop of a standard text-book race-against-time thriller format of paperback fiction. One really sad part about the book is just the sheer number of inaccuracies and misrepresentations of computational theories. The story itself is badly written with the cheapest, totally unoriginal and completely predictable gimmicks you've seen before and you just can't believe people still use them. All the while I also felt the ghost of another book I'd read many years ago while reading parts of the more interesting story arc of Fortress. The entire part about a man tracking down all those people between who an all important ring changed hands (No. No. Not Frodo's ring.) reminded me vaguely of The Doomsday Conspiracy by Sidney Sheldon.

Dan Brown should probably be excused for writing a sorry book such as The Digital Fortress, since it was early into his fiction writing days; much before he became famous for the Da Vinci Code. We all know however that the Code itself was haunted by complaints of plagiarism. Suffice to say that the only thing Dan Brown can do is incorporate symbols and codes and ciphers into his stories. I don't even know if he does a good job at that either. And that's his calling card. Just like Grisham generally incorporates courtroom dramas and the finer points of the law into his stories. But unlike Grisham, a lawyer himself and Crichton, a scientist himself, there's little that Brown brings to his books (so far from the two that I have read) that makes someone meaningfully smarter about the complex world around us.

And as a final note on Brown and ...Code, here's Dave Barry's absolutely hilarious analysis of the Da Vinci Code techique. The original article was published in the Miami Herald, but it requires registration. Barry's piece is in the first post of the forum I linked to above. I read it a couple of years back. And it's still funny as hell. Enjoy!

I need Kavya!

Well, at least to bump up visits to my blog. Not that it was my intention to do so - but I was pleasantly surprised when I looked at my WebStats counter data that I do about once a week, that since I wrote about Kavya on "Internalizing", my blog got a whole buncha hits.

Take a look at this graph that I got from my counter page.


Notice the large hits in the center - they were during the Kavya days. Now that the hype has sorta died down, and we're all not that interested in how badly she screwed up anymore, in short her 15 minutes of infamy are up, well - my site hits are sadly back to what they were earlier. I guess my advice to bloggers out there is, if you want more people to visit your site - write avidly about current topics and watch the hits rise. Oh wait! We're all doing that already. Shoot!

So, the truth is, I need Kavya as much as Kavya needs inspiration. Pretty badly!


Visit my whorehouse soon folks. Until then...

"Internalizing"

Kaavya Viswanathan is a teenager of ethnic Indian origin. She's also a student at Harvard. And she's currently in the news for various reasons. After receiving a half a million for her book titled How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life, she was in line for confirming a movie deal for her book; when came the news that Kaavya seemed to have plagiarized passages from another writer (Megan McCafferty) and her literary works (if you could really call chick lit literary works of any sort). She later released a statement to the press explaining that:

"I wasn't aware of how much I may have internalized Ms. McCafferty's words. I am a huge fan of her work and can honestly say that any phrasing similarities between her works and mine were completely unintentional and unconscious."

A few columnists since then have pointed out the irony of her finally coming up with something original, even if it was just an apology, by use of the word internalize.

That irony apart, I haven't read her book, nor do I wish to comment on it's substance. I'd probably never read it, or any of McCafferty's work either. But I guess it's a sobering turn in the story of a young girl of ethnic (read non-white ) background. Whether it's her fault or her publishers' or her book packager's, she screwed up! You're really depraved if you're ripping off someone else's work from a bad genre anyway to write your book. Kinda like copying/plagiarizing answers from the last placed student's solutions to the class final final exam.



I saw this piece on ABC news late nite that alterted me to this new phenom , a variation to conventional Yoga - broadly termed as Christian Yoga. The motivation for this seems to be that some people are not comfortable with the Hindu chanting that accompanies Yoga sessions, and want to make it Christian. Notice the absence of any guilt at the bastardisation of the form of worship of another religion.

Great - so now the Christians are out there internalizing aspects of Hinduism and Hindu worship (not for the first time too!). Whatever. These ignorant idiots are deliberately ignoring the implications of this plagiarizing of another religion's form of worship. And this is hardly the first or the last instance of all things Asian that have been bastardized by the West.

But what about the influence of music and movies from the west (or other parts of the world) in Indian pop culture? There are so many instances of obvious direct rip-offs in songs, scenes and complete movies in Bollywood (commercial Hindi cinema). Obviously plagiarization of all sorts is absolutely rampant in today's society. You could call it inspiration, imitation, internalization. Or whatever else you can come up with. Everybody's doing it.

The bottomline is that to get to success & fame fast, it's easy to rip off someone else's work to cash in on their success or what worked right for them. There's almost guaranteed success in that direction. Only thing of consequence, when you haven't bothered to acknowledge your original source for the inspiration and pay due respects to them, is the 11th commandment (internalized from Jeffrey Archer who internalized it from the 10 commandments) - Thou shalt not get caught!