Newton's Gift

The proverbial apple falling on his head and eventually inspiring the discovery of the theory of gravity and the three laws of motion is what most of us in non academic circles would recollect when we hear “Newton”. David Berlinski’s book, “Newton’s Gift” reveals a lot more about the life & times of Newton that we otherwise do not know.

Strangely for a physicist, it is his work on infinite series & the method of fluxions (what later Leibniz would formalize as Calculus) - which Newton laid out in a period of just one & half years that he spent at his ancestral home in Woolsthrope during the plague - is what made Newton visible among intellectual circles in Cambridge and he was offered the chair of Lucasian professor of Mathematics at Cambridge which was also his alma mater.

Berlinski’s book chronicles little know aspects of Newton’s life such as his obsession with alchemy and his study of biblical studies and the fact that adopted Arianism as a system of belief.

Berlinski’s description of Newton working endlessly in his quarters in Cambridge venturing out for nothing but a quiet walk to get food, gives us a glimpse of the near maniacal & single minded pursuit of work that Newton embarked on.

The legendary feuds between Newton & Robert Hooke first and Leibniz later are interesting and reveal a lot about professional hatred and dislikes of those times.

Newton’s dislike for Hooke began with Newton presenting before the Royal Society in London his microscope which was a much more improved version of what Hooke had proposed. Hooke claimed Newton had merely borrowed what he had already proposed. His hatred for Hooke even prompted Newton to remove Hooke’s picture from the Royal Society offices soon after Newton became the chair person of the society much after Hooke had passed away.

Leibniz & Newton warred over who would stake claim to the discovery of calculus. Newton had applied calculus to explain natural philosophy in his first magnum opus, the Principia, while Leibniz had given it an elegant form and method in mathematics.

A little known fact is Newton serving as the master of the mint in London and his crack down on counterfeiters.

Berlinski’s book is interesting in what it reveals about the lesser known aspects of Newton life. I suppose it is hard to write a book on such a legendary personality when there is not much background material to research. Berlinski however pulls it off and the story telling is fairly good. His language is however overly metaphorical many times when he discusses the details of Newton’s theories and that sometimes makes it hard to read.

I picked up this book on a good discount at a sale in December 2007 and finally read it in May 2009. There may be other books about Newton that I don’t know of but this book certainly succeeded is making me more curious about Newton’s life and has prompted me to look around for more books on the genius.

Biffes 2009 - Movies to remember

A very late post however i just wanted to to make sure it is published. Back in Jan P & i made it a point not to miss the Bangalore International Film Festival (BIFFES 2009). We had been to the second edition in 2008 and had loved it and so we were there for this third edition in 2009 as well. The venue at Vision Cinemas had not changed from 2008 however the crowds were certainly larger this time around. I did not get to watch as many movies as i did in 2008. The movies that i got to watch this year were

Yellow House (Algerian)
The story of a man trying to bring back to normal, his wife who is mourning the loss of their son who is serving in the army. A very touching story told very well. What struck me how after the initial shocl & sorrow the man quickly recovers from that to single mindedly pursue the objective of making his wife happy once again. Will never forget the dialogue between the man and a doctore he goes to. The man tells the doctor that his wife is grief striken and does not talk or move about and asks the doctor for a cure. The doctor replies that there is no medication for this and maybe he should consider moving to the country side for some time to which the masn says, "I live in the country side". Thereafter he tries do to everything he things can make his wife happy once again. I will not spoil the movie for you by saying how he manages it finally, watch the movie, you will love it.

Bellissima(Polish)
A rather grim movie i thought. The story revolves around a mother & daughter, the mother (a hair stylist) desperately trying to get her daughter pushed into the high flying and well paying world of fashion & modeling. Found the movie to be rather slow as well.

The Choir (English)
One of those movies that make you cry. It is the story of a teacher who joins a school for delinquents and introduces them to music. He ultimately forms a choir out of the ruffien boys in the class and identifies a key talent in one of the boys who later goes on to become a big musician.

Tied Hands (Israeli)
I loved this movie. This heartwarming story of a mother going in search for some marijuana for her son, a homosexual who is dying of AIDS. As she goes about all night she learns more about her son and his life. Director Dan Wolman was there in person to answer questions about the movie. Someone in the audience asked him a question that went something like, "Is the disability (refering to the character's sexual orientation) of the character responsible for his taking to drugs?". An astonished Dan Wolman corrected how sexual orientation was not considered a "disability" at least in his country.

By the way the 2009 film festival has not dislodged the film that still occupies the top slot on my favorite foreign language film list, Huckle which i got to watch during Biffes 2008.

BTW (Browsing This Week) - March 29 2009

Some of the cool stuff i came across while browsing this weekend

Context sensitive info anywhere, anytime
Let's say you are at a book store looking to buy a book on (say) global warming. You find three books on the subject however you are unsure which one is the best. Wouldn't it be great if you had access to book reviews of each of these books from (say) Amazon? That would certainly help me make my decision on which book to purchase much faster and save P that annoyance of having to hang around at Landmark (for instance) for over one hour while i agonize over taking a decision. Well the demo of "sixth sense" a concept prototype by MIT media labs lets us to exactly that and much more. Very cool and innovative use of technology for oft encountered use cases. Watch the streaming video at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html

A code editor in your browser
Bespin is a code editor in your mozilla browser. Still in development in the mozilla labs the rev 1 features are cool. I particularly liked the coediting mode part of the demo that simultaneously performs all operations being performed on a file within all open browser instances that are viewing that file. Bespin uses a lot of the canvas functionality that is part of HTML5. Found it interesting how this project is leveraging the ubiquity model for commands, good example of collaboration among different project groups. Watch a vimeo post at http://vimeo.com/3195079

Balloon theorems of organizational behavior

Today i propose the balloon theorems of organizational behavior.

All organizations constantly grapple with the problem of it's different functions such as for instance HR, Finance, Supply Chain Management, Engineering, Sales & Marketing being out of sync with each other. Depending on which function an employee comes from you'd hear things like Engineering does not tell us in advance what their manpower requirement is for us to plan recruitment, Engineering complains that sales & marketing is making customer commitments for delivery without consulting, Finance complains that supply chain is not doing the right thing in vendor selection for cost optimization. It is not unusual to hear these rants in any organization.

It is not a perfect world but then what's the fun if everything was perfect, inefficiencies challenge our creativity as we try to resolve them and so I present the balloon theorems of organizational behavior.

Balloon Theorems of Organizational Behavior

Theorem 1 - An organization is like a Balloon

Theorem 2 - The air pressure in the balloon is directly proportional to alignment that exits between the different functions of the organization. High air pressure means all systems are aligned and lower air pressure means systems are misaligned.

Theorem 3 - Just as the air pressure within a fully inflated balloon reduces over time an organizational functions that are completely efficient today will slowly start becoming inefficient over time.

Theorem 4 - You never know what's the maximum air you can blow into the balloon to inflate it to its maximum, you can keep trying but the balloon would ultimately burst because you never know how much is enough. That's a high price to pay! So, given Theorem 1 & 2, it follows that it is very unlikely you will find organizations whose systems are completely aligned and are operating at maximum efficiency.

Theorem 5 - Realigning organizational systems is done by applying pressure (by choosing a random spot on the balloon and squeezing it) on any one function of your organization to work better. See the picture above for an illustration of the process.

This causes air (inefficient individuals from inefficient functions) to move over into a low pressure half (the bottom part of the balloon in the pic). You now tie a chord at the spot that separates the two halves and release the air from the low pressure half. You now have a smaller organization (a smaller balloon) that is more efficient (higher air pressure in the balloon).

Theorem 6 - You cannot infinitely shrink the balloon to increase efficiency and so you need to infuse some fresh air once in a while which in turn creates some inefficiencies in due course. Then you just remember Theorems 1-5 again!

Wanted - Not what i wanted (to see)

'What was the director thinking yaar", "What the hell is this?", "So childish", is what we heard around us as we exited the theatre after watching the movie "Wanted" starring Angelina Jolie & Morgan Freeman.

The movie is based on a comic book series by the same name. Apparently the director wanted to make this movie different from other super hero movies (like Batman & Spiderman) inspired by comic books. Well, it is different and what is different is that it is badly made.

The trailers of the movie promised some very stunning & sleek action sequences. That the movie delivers, but then there is too much of crap that connect these sequences. All through the first hour of the movie the protagonist gets beaten up, apparently to toughen him. He then learns the art of curving a bullet the must have skill of assassins in his fraternity. Who wouldn't learn if you get beaten up so much!

There is such a big deal made about skill to curve a bullet that i was thinking the movie should have been called Bend it like Beckham (ok, Bend Bullets like Beckham if you dont want to offend Gurinder Chaddha).

Knife wielding hulks that can deflects bullets with their knives, shooters who can shoot each others bullets down(remember the archery duels from Ramanand Sagar's Mahabharatha?), people that can leap across several hundred feet from one high rise building to the other, it's all there in "Wanted". Seriously, haven't we seen all these in our own Indian movies of all languages and laughed at how ridiculous it is.

Treat yourself to some snacks and coffee (if the movie is running in a non multiplex theatre) or dinner (if the movie is running in a multiplex theatre) instead of spending it on tickets for "Wanted".

Into Thin Air - Jon Krakauer

I took this book along on our trip to Coonoor during the independence day weekend. We had three days there and we did not want to do the typical whirlwind tour of touristy places so i hoped to have a quite vacation with mein, meri pathni & yeh book.

P was sure i would not even get half way through it. I hadn't read a book since DaVinci code, which i read over 3 weeks (!!!!) so i had the track record to prove her right. Both she and i were in for a surprise. I practically did not put the book down through the trip and in fact finished it in 2 days (a personal best)!

The book is a very detailed account of Jon Krakauer's expedition to Mount Everest in 1996 which killed 8 people on May 11. Jon a veteran mountaineer is contracted by the Outside online magazine to go on an Everest expedition to write an account of the commercialization of Mount Everest, however Jon convinces the bosses at the magazine to have him climb to the summit.

Jon about his experiences and the deaths during the expedition for the Outside online magazine and that evokes a major backlash from fellow climbers of the expedition and surviving family members. Jon then writes this book after more extensive research and conversation with fellow climbers to clear the facts.

It is a fascinating book that is chilling, revealing and full of lessons that you can learn from the experiences and psyche of climbers that embark on Everest expeditions.

The book contains many revealing facts about Everest expeditions.

For instance, did you know that climbing Everest from the Nepali (South Eastern) side is considered easier than climbing from the Chinese (North Eastern) side though (at least until a while back) it cost a lot less (about 50% lesser) to climb from the Chinese side (that's right, Chinese is cheaper even for the Everest).

It was revealing to learn also that Everest is no exception to littering as a result of a very large number of commercial expeditions (read tourist expeditions). But at least they are doing something about the littering on Everest and every expedition is expected to bring back a certain quantity of garbage back when they return. Also they are attempting to limit the number of ascents in a year. Would be nice (though far fetched i guess) if we started doing something like this at the popular tourist destinations in India.

Few thoughts that stuck with me from the book were how it is sometimes not such a big deal (at least among the mountaineering community) to scale the summit (especially with modern tools & bottled Oxygen), what is more important is to make it back alive to tell the story.

I may never even come close to climbing even to Everest base camp, at approx 17000 feet (will conveniently blame it on my fear of heights) however the importance of sticking to the planned time of descent whether everyone in the team made it to the summit or not is something that i will never forget. A failure to do this fact probably led to some of the deaths on Rab Hall's team. Made me think about the importance of establishing threshold limits in every plan and ruthlessly & unemotionally taking a decision on hitting these thresholds.

It was stunning to read how tremendous personal drive (almost to the extent of selfishness) propels these climbers as they push themselves closer to the Summit and they don't have time to pause for fellow climbers that may be in trouble on the way up.

The images and experiences of Rob Hall, Scott Fischer, Beck Weathers, Andy Harris, Yasuko Namba, Doug Hansen, Ang Dorje, Lopsang Sherpa, Jon Krakauer & their fellow climbers will always stay with me.

The book is a must read if you are interested in adventure expeditions and what you can learn from them.

Now, I am looking for a movie version of the book that i could buy. If you do come across this please let me know.

Rediscovering Indrajal

The other day P and i took a visiting uncle and aunt of mine over to the Blossoms book store on Church street. I went about hunting for any copies of the old Indrajal comics that i could lay my hands on. I was thrilled to find well preserved copies of Phantom, Mandrake, Bahadur, Flash Gordan and Buz Sawyer, each about Rs.30 but i think worth the bargain. It was so nostalgic to flip through them. I was so thrilled to have found them and i sketched them, the first sketches of these heroes after i re-discovered them in my adult life.