Being Digital

Being Digital

Author: Nicholas Negroponte

Publisher: Vintage Books

Pages: 240

Dedication: To Elaine, who has put up with my being digital for exactly 11111 years.

About the author: Negroponte, Professor of Media Technology at MIT is also founding director of the Media Lab.

Synopsis:

Today, fiber is cheaper than copper, including the cost of electronics at both ends. The only real advantage of copper is the ability to deliver power.

Simonides of Ceos (556-468 BC) was a poet of classical Greece who was noted for his prodigious memory. When the roof of a banquet hall collapsed just after he had been called from the room, he found that he could identify the mangled remains of guests based on where they had been sitting: he inferred that tying material to specific spots in a mental spatial image would aid recall. He used this technique to remember his long speeches. He would associate parts of his oration with objects and places in a temple. Then while delivering his speech, he would revisit the temple in his mind to call forth his ideas in an orderly and comprehensive manner. The early Jesuits in China called this same process the building of “palaces of mind”.

When the Media Lab premiered its LEGO/Logo work in 1989, kids, kindergarten through sixth grade from the Hennigan School, demonstrated their projects before a full force of LEGO executives, academics and the press.

In October 1981, Seymour Papert and the author attended an OPEC meeting in Vienna. It was the one at which Sheikh Yamani delivered his famous speech about giving a poor man a fishing rod, not fish – teach him how to make a living, not take a handout. In a private meeting with Yamani, he asked the author if they knew the difference between a primitive and an uneducated person. The answer was simply that primitive people were not uneducated at all, they simply used different means to convey their knowledge from generation to generation, within a supportive and tightly knit social fabric. By contrast, an uneducated person is the product of a modern society whose fabric has unraveled and whose system is not supportive.

The Physician

The Physician

Author: Noah Gordon

Pages: 712

The theme of the book is the extra ordinary journeys done by a 11^th century boy in search of knowledge. Robert Jeremy Cole was orphaned when he was 9 years old. He had an unusual sense of impending death by feeling the hands of sick people. He had the same experience with his parents and he was sure that they would soon die. Since his father was a carpenter, the guild took care of the children and distributed them among various people for upkeep. Young Rob was assigned to a barber surgeon. In those days, these barber surgeons traveled far and wide, displaying juggling and magic to draw the crowd, entertain them, sell medicine named Universal Specific, which is mostly liquor and provide consultation to patients, also including some of the surgical procedures. Rob was bothered by the lack of their knowledge and he craved for knowledge. The barber died some time later and Rob continued alone. One day, he met a Jew, and from him, learned of a place called Ispahan in Persia which is famous for its medical hospital, Maristan and the master physician there named Avicenna or Ibn Sina in Persian.

Rob earned enough and decided to undertake the travel. He crossed the Channel and entered France. With a local man he traveled up to Germany. The book is resplendent with the absence of rule of law at those times. He joined a caravan bound for Constantinople and traveled along with them. During the journey he came across a Scot family and came across Mary Cullen whose father was traveling to Anatolia to buy exotic sheep. They fell in love and by the time they were to separate at the end of the journey, Rob was in a dilemma whether to enter marriage with Mary and go to Scotland and become a land lord there or to go as planned before to Persia. His career ambitions prevailed and he forsake love for knowledge. In those days, caravans used to break journey during winter months and he had stayed with three Jews he had made friends of, during the journey. Jews were a despised lot in Europe at that time and were subject to the worst forms of reprisals. He learned the Jewish ways during the stay and decided to pretend to be a Jew in Persia, because Christians were forbidden to enter the academy at Ispahan. He reached Ispahan after a long and tiresome journey which lasted 18 months.

Ala al Daula was the ruler of Persia and he had saved Rob’s life from a tiger during the last stages of his travel. To Rob’s dismay, he found that the academy didn’t admit students simply to study medicine, but they had to study Philosophy, theology, jurisprudence and Quran. He had an altercation with the administrator and was sentenced to a day of torture. Released, he went straight to the Shah’s court and demanded asylum claiming that it was the Islamic duty of the king who saved his life. Ala gave him a calaat, which entitled him to a house, a horse and some money. He was enrolled as a student at the academy. He slowly rose to the rank of Hakim (Professor), but not before attending to a Plague epidemic and accompanying a campaign to India. He came to know of a European father and daughter stranded nearby and was glad to find that it was the Cullens. The father had died of ‘side sickness’ (Appendicitis) and he wed Mary Cullen. He became the favourite student of Ibn Sina. Opening up human body was proscribed by all three religions, but Rob did some, to study the side sickness.

Ala al Daula made a disastrous campaign against Mahmoud of Ghazni. The Afghan army occupied Ispahan and Rob fled with his wife and two sons. He reached London and decided to start practice as a physician. Barber surgeons were for common people and the rich always sought the service of physicians. London proved too hot for him and he had to send his family to Kilmarnock in Scotland which was the home of Mary. Rob was accused of witchcraft and fled London. He reached Kilmarnock and rejoined the family. His marriage was formally solemnized and he was pleased to find that his elder son inherited his sense of impending death. He lived a joyous life thereafter.

The book is really a page turner, keeping the readers in pleasant anticipation as the turn of events slowly unwinds in this 712 page narrative. Except for the lewd description bordering on obscenity, of some of the sexual encounters which abound in this novel, this book is eminently readable. Moreover this book clearly enunciates the spirit of the times, namely the utter ignorance in which the common masses were steeped in, the hatred towards Jews and the atrocities against them, the lawlessness of public roads, especially continental Europe, the opulence, lasciviousness, fanaticism and respect for learning as enshrined in ancient Persia.

Tamerlane

Tamerlane

Author – Justin Marozzi

Publisher – Harper Perennial

Pages – 424

Dedication – “This book is dedicated to my mother and to the memory of my father”

Tamerlane – Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World by Justin Marozzi is a biography of Tamerlane (1336-1405), the Mongol turned Islamic conqueror of Central Asia. Marozzi details the gruelling marches through the Asian vastness, grim tales of death, destruction, pillage and lust. Being a travelling historian, he visited Uzbekistan and Afghanistan to find the prominent places in the tale at first hand. Samarkhand and Bukhara still survives, the former being the capital of Temur. The post Soviet era Uzbekistan has identified Temur with the national identity and he is celebrated as a hero. Temur’s dynasty fell into fratricidal and patricidal warfares soon after his death and was out of the scene in less than a century.

Some quotations from the book showing the fanatically religious nature of Temur

In March 1398, Temur made clear his unswerving intention.

‘Although the true faith is observed in many places in India, the greater part of the Kingdom is inhabited by idolaters. The Sultans of Delhi have been slack in their defence of the Faith. The Muslim rulers are content with the collection of tribute from these infidels. The Koran says that the highest dignity a man can achieve is to make war on the enemies of our Religion. Mohammed the Prophet counselled like wise. A Muslim warrior thus killed acquires a merit which translates him at once into Paradise. Now that the empires of Iran and Turan and most of Asia are under our domination, and the world trembles at the least movement we make, Destiny has presented us with the most favourable opportunities. The troops will ride south, not east. India through her disorders has opened her doors to us. (p 239)

The first skirmish came when Temur’s reconnaissance party of seven hundred cavalry was attacked by the forces of Mallu Khan, who was then ruling Delhi through Sultan Mahmud Khan. The Tatars held off the Indians, and returned safely to camp, but there were important consequences. First, Temur had managed to tempt Mallu Khan into battle, albeit little more than a scuffle. This augured well. After the interminable siege of Multan, Temur was minded to take Delhi as quickly as possible. He did not want to be forced to sit and wait for the city to surrender from starvation. Far better to lure Mallu into a pitched battle and settle the issue without delay. Second, the rush of troops against the Tatars had been met with roars of approval from the hundred thousand Hindus taken prisoner en route to Delhi. Such was the fervour of their reaction, born out of hopes of liberation, that Temur, fearing a rebellion in his rearguard, gave orders for each and every one to be killed on the spot. The command was to be obeyed on pain of death. Even the holy men travelling with Temur’s army were required to act as executioners, and many were their tears as they sent innocent men and women to their deaths in cold blood. ‘The history of mankind cannot furnish another example of so horrid an act of deliberate cruelty’, wrote the 19^th century historian Sir Malcolm Price, ‘yet the being who perpetrated it has been exalted by historians and poets into a demi-god; and severalm not contented with ascribing to him that valour, policy and martial skill, which he undoubtedly possessed, have extolled him for this numberless virtues; and above all, for this justice and clemency’. (p 264-65)

Casting scorn on the Indians’ feeble resistance, Ferishta portrays the terrors of a city given over to fire and the sword.

“The Hindus, according to custom, seeing their females disgraced, and their wealth seized by the soldiery, shut the gates, set fire to their houses, murdered their wives and children, and rushed out on their enemies. This led to a general massacre so terrible that some streets were blocked by the heaps of the dead; and the gates being forced, the whole Mongol army stormed inside, and a scene of horror ensued easier to be imagined than described. The desperate courage of the Delhians was at length cooled in their own blood, and throwing down their weapons, they at last submitted like sheep to the slaughter…. In the city the Hindus were atleast ten to one superior in number to the enemy, and had they possessed souls, it would have been impossible for the Mongols, who were scattered about in every street, house and corner, laden with plunder, to have resisted.” (p 270-71)

Laden with booty, the army made laborious progress on its north-ward journey, some times as little as 4 miles in a day. One of Temur’s first stops was the celebrated marble mosque built by Sultan Firuz Shah on the banks of the Jumna, where the emperor gave thanks to Allah for his recent success, and which may have inspired Temur’s monumental Cathedral Mosque in Samarkand.

This was to be no leisurely return, however. More battles awaited the Tatars, for the Jihad had not ended. There were still many more infidels to be killed or converted. First the army swung round to the north-east, sacking the stronghold of Meerut before reaching the Ganges and slaughtering 48 boat loads of Hindus in addition to an undisclosed number of Zoroastrians. Into the foot hills of Kashmir and the Himalayas Temur’s forces continued, fighting 20 or so pitched battles and plundering profitably wherever and whenever the occasion presented itself. The Muslim shah of Kashmir submitted with promises of a vast tribute. The Hindu Raja of Jammu was captured in an ambush and hastily converted to the True Faith. An expedition was sent against Lahore to punish a prince who had already submitted to Temur but had conspicuously failed to reappear as instructed. Lahore was seized and the careless prince executed. (p 273)

Faced with another Tatar invasion,the Georgians retreated to higher ground, secreting themselves in impenetrable mountain caves. The difficult terrain and the unexpected tactics of his adversary demanded a new approach. First, Temur had baskets worn that were big enough to hold a man. Archers stepped inside them and were lowered over the cliffs until they reached the mouths of the caves. Once there, they fired flaming arrows soaked in oil into the farthest recesses, smoking the enemy out and sending them to agonizing deaths. The capital, Tiflis, first seized by Temur in 1386, was stormed again. Within a short space of time, mosques, minarets and muaddin occupied the ground on which the Christian churches and their priests had stood. At the point of a sword, pragmatic Georgians recited the sacred words which defined themselves as Muslims: “La ilahah Illallah, Mohammedan razul’Allah”. Death was the penalty for those who clung on to Christianity. (p 283-84)

The Tatar, who had long aspired to recognition within the Islamic world as the greatest defender of the faith, took pains to inflict miserable deaths on the city’s Christian community. While the sipahis were buried alive, others had their heads tied between their thighs before being thrown into the moat to drown. According to Johann Schiltberger, the Bavarian squire captured by Temur in 1402, 9000 virgins were carried off into captivity. Those who were fortunate enough to escape the slaughter fled from Sivas in horror. As for the city itself, it was, reported Arabshah, ‘utterly destroyed and laid to waste’. (p 288)

State of Fear

State of Fear

Author: Michael Crichton

Publisher: Harper Collins

Pages: 580

Crichton presents environmental facts in a new light in this thriller. He argues that Global Warming, which every one of us take for granted as true, is at the most an unproved scientific theory, if not a fraudulent one. The theme of the novel is that an environmental organization, using criminals and sophisticated equipment to influence world opinion by precipitating catastrophic events like calving of a giant piece of ice from the Antarctic ice shelf, materializing flash floods from an ordinary thunder storm in Arizona and the creation of a tsunami wave from New Guinea, calculated to hit the shores of California. But by the timely intervention of the lead characters, John Kenner, Sanjong Thapa, Peter Ivans and Sarah, these efforts are frustrated. The presentation is typical Crichton style – stunning facts, actions, a little bit of science and generalization of ideas.

Crichton claims that the graphs, charts and references given in plenty of footnotes are real. He argues that Global Warming is only a theory which is not borne out by observational data. He gives data for a number of cities which shows a clear downward trend in temperature data. Temperatures are showing a rising trend from 1850 onwards, he says, and not just from 1970. This period was preceded by 400 years of cooling. He also states that politicians, lawyers and media are intent on generating a fear psychosis (The State of Fear) in ordinary citizens to make the work easy for them. Media started giving undue emphasis on environmental disasters from 1989 onwards, he says. This was precisely after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and Communist states. The people, who were terrorized by the communist menace were then no longer subservient to that threat, and so, they devised environmental problems and global warming as the substitutes. His argument is convincing.

The City of Joy

The City of Joy

Author: Dominique Lapierre

Publisher: Arrow Books

Pages: 511

Dedication: To Tatou, Gaston, Pierre, Francois, James and to ‘the lights of the world’ of the City of Joy

Lapierre’s book describes life in a Calcutta slum named Anand Nagar (The City of Joy). He narrates in gaudy detail the story of life as it unfolds in Calcutta and many other parts of India. Hasari Pal and his family had to flee to Calcutta to escape the drought of his native village. He finds work as rickshaw puller and contracts TB. He dies after several years, on the day of his daughter’s marriage. Stephan Kovalski, a Polish evangelist who adopts Anand Nagar as his home in the service of the poor, Max Loeb, a Jewish American doctor who spent some years in the slum are the other main characters in this fiction (as claimed by Lapierre). He had established a foundation for the upliftment of Indian poor from the proceedings of the sale of this book. It lists almost all of the vices in India and ends with a mocking commentary of the celebration in the slums on the nuclear explosion conducted by India.

One cannot help wonder at the utter contempt and mocking disregard for every Indian ritual or custom. He conveniently addresses Indians by their religions and not by their names. The tea shop owner invariably becomes Surya, the Hindu, like wise. The only thing an impassionate reader of the book learns is that Indians are incompetent, inefficient, leaderless and still require white masters to show them their way around. All the positive aspects of Indian culture and tradition are eclipsed and minor aberrations conveniently amplified to show the world that India still lives in medieval times and not able to comprehend modern technology. Lapierre considers it blasphemy, the testing of the atomic bomb. It seems that the motivation behind writing this book is the seething rage the French mind cultivates against nuclear India. Remember Shakti 1998! France was the most vociferous opponent in denouncing India globally, while they were notorious for their under sea nuclear explosions conducted in the South Pacific, far away from their pompous home land. Of course, one should not judge the native country of an author from his work, but these are some of the thoughts naturally coming to one’s mind.

The factual errors in the book is amazing. According to him, all Indian marriages take place at mid night, millions of people die from snake bites every year etc are only a few. The hilarious part is that he establishes these blunders with authority. He is often in error, but never in doubt! Lapierre’s condescending attitude is irritating and verges on the unbearable at times. This attitude is what he cultivates because ample evidence can be cited from the ‘Freedom at Midnight’ also. The docile way in which Nehru and Patel submits to the diktats of Lord Mountbatten whom they made the Governor General is a clear pointer.

Lapierre might be a friend of India, because of the foundation and the charitable work they do. But from what he writes, this is not the impression he conveys.

Churchill’s Bodyguard

Churchill’s Bodyguard

Author: Tom Hickman

Publisher: Headline Book Publishing, UK

Pages: 304

Dedication: Nil

Rating:

Presentation: 2, Language: 4, Relevance: 2, Depth: 1, Reputation: 2

The book is a biography of Walter Henry Thompson, the personal bodyguard of Winston Churchill from 1921 to 1945. Hickman refers liberally to Thompson’s memoirs and historical events. Right from an MP in 1921 to Prime Minister in 1945, he was the shadow of Churchill and records many events with first hand experience.

The book lacks life of its own. The narratives are most often drab, and lacks conviction in many instances. The narratives might as well have been quoted from news papers with the same effect. Too much importance is given to Thompson’s life story which does not seem to have any significance to the average user. His scramble for publishing his memoirs after he quit service does not paint him in good light. In fact, his relationship with virtually breaks down on this point.

However, there are some quotes in this book which is noteworthy in the historical context.

Fast unto death by prisoners in jail was common practice in England

Suffragettes deliberately got themselves arrested to cause embarrassment to the government. When they began to go on hunger strike in prison, they were force-fed. This caused public outrage – the practice had previously been used only with lunatics. In 1913, the Prisoner’s Temporary Discharge for Ill-health Act was passed, its purpose being to allow very weak hunger strikers to be released but then re-arrested on the most trivial of pretexts (often for not registering the address where they recuperated) days later when they were stronger. The measure was dubbed the Cat and Mouse Act.

George Bernard Shaw was a Churchill critic. In a letter, he invited Winston to attend the first night of his play. “I am enclosing two tickets,” Shaw wrote, “one for you and one for a friend, if you have one”. Winston replied, regretting that he would be unable to go on the first night – “But I shall certainly attend on the second night, if you have one”. (p 48)

The strike by coal workers in 1925 was defeated by Churchill. He took control of a news paper, “British Gazette”. When criticized by the opposition for being propagandist and inflammatory, Churchill said, “I decline utterly to be impartial as between the fire brigade and the fire!” (p 51)

‘It appeared’, Walter wrote, ‘so an English speaking Italian told me during our visit to Rome, that the King of Italy dropped his handkerchief as he was strolling through the grounds of the palace one day. Signor Mussolini, with whom he was walking, gallantly stooped to retrieve it, but King Victor waved him aside and picked it up himself. “Majesty”, expostulated the Duce, “am I not always at your service? Could you not have let me do it for you?” A trifle grimly, Italy’s diminutive monarch gazed back at his august ‘servitor’. “I prefer to pick up my own handkerchief,” he replied. “It is the only thing left of mine Your Excellency has not poked his nose into”. (p 280)

India, he told parliament was a ‘geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the Equator’ (p 60)

On Gandhiji going for tea with the King,

Churchill described him ‘as a seditious lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half naked up the steps of the vice-regal palace… to parley on equal terms with the representatives of the King-Emperor. (p 64)

Churchill’s first broadcast as Prime Minister in 1940,

We have differed and quarreled in the past, but now one bond unites us all: to wage war until victory is won and never to surrender ourselves to servitude and shame, whatever the cost and the agony may be … the long night of barbarism will descend… unless we conquer, as conquer we must, as conquer we shall… (p 91)

Tribute to the RAF after they have won the Battle of Britain,

Never in the field of human conflict, was so much owed by so many to so few. (p 92)

The ‘finest hour’ speech

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British empire and its commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will say: ‘this was their finest hour’ (p 99)

Churchill loathed whistling and he prohibited his staff from whistling in his presence.

One day he was walking slightly ahead of me along King Charles Street, Westminster, on the day to Downing Street. Approaching him from the other direction was a boy of about 13 years of age, hands in pocket, newspapers under his arms, whistling loudly and cheerfully. When the boy drew near, Winston hunched his shoulder, walked towards the boy and said in a stern voice: “Stop that whistling”. The boy looked at the Prime Minister with complete unconcern and answered: “why should I?”. “Because I don’t like it and it is a horrible noise”, growled Winston. The boy moved onwards a few steps, then turned round and called out: “Well, you can shut your ears, can’t you?”, with that he walked on. Winston was completely taken aback and for a moment he looked furious. Then, as he crossed the road, he began to smile and quietly repeated to himself the words, “you can shut your ears, can’t you?” and followed it up with a hearty chuckle. (p 116)

Overall rating: 2/5

The Wind from the Sun

The Wind from the Sun

Author: Arthur C Clarke

Pages: 304

Rating:

Presentation: 4, Language: 3, Relevance: 3, Depth: 3, Reputation: 5

Arthur C Clarke, in his characteristic free and lucid style has conveyed some futuristic short stories in this book. The Wind from the Sun is particularly interesting in that it conveys a brand new idea of locomotion around the solar system, by exploiting the tiny but steady pressure exerted by the sun’s rays. Overall, the book provides several hours of fine reading.

Overall rating: 4/5

A Briefer History of Time

A Briefer History of Time

Author: Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow

Publisher: Bantam Books

Pages: 155

Dedication: Nil

Rating:

Presentation: 5, Language: 4, Relevance: 4, Depth: 3, Reputation: 5

Hawking’s best seller, ‘A Brief History of Time’ has been a landmark volume in scientific writing. Though undoubtedly enhanced by a sympathetic public to his physical disability, the sales figures of this book was astronomical. This new book, written along with Leonard Mlodinow, is to make its content more accessible to readers, as well as to update it with latest findings. An impressive book with slightly pompous ideas about God and the idea of creation, particularly since Physics has not reached that level of certainty regarding the origin of the universe. (Not that the creation theory is any more valid than the flat earth theory)

Overall rating: 5/5

Aspirin – The Story of a Wonder Drug

Aspirin – The Story of a Wonder Drug

Author: Diarmuid Jeffreys

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, UK

Pages: 277

Dedication: “For my parents”

Rating:

Presentation: 4, Language: 4, Relevance: 4, Depth: 3, Reputation: 3

This book focuses on the historical development of Aspirin, the commercial battles which raged for it in the 20^th century and the effects and side effects of this wonder drug. Though superseded by more effective and less problematic medicines like Paracetamol and Ibuprofen, Aspirin continues to be of immense use to millions of persons all over the world.

The bitter juice extracted from the bark of the willow tree had been used as medicine for fever and pain as early as the Sumerian civilization and its use became widespread in the Egyptian civilization. The knowledge of this traditional remedy was lost in the dark ages until it was reinvented by Rev Edward Stone in England in the 18^th century. Use of this liquid which contains salicylic acid was anti-pyretic (fever reducing), analgesic (pain killer) and anti-inflammatory. However, salicylic acid caused other intestinal problems like burning of the stomach etc. William Perkin, who invented the colour mauve prepared acetyl salicylic acid which is Aspirin. However, Perkin didn’t pursue the matter further and this was kept forgotten until 1899 when three chemists from Bayer, Felix Hofmann, Arthur Eichengrun and Heinrich Dreser re-invented the drug and patented it. The patent was brought down by a British court in 1905 indirectly prompted by the increased hold of the German chemical industry on the English public.

During the first world war, the assets of Bayer in the US was confiscated and sold out to Sterling Products, an American company including the Bayer trademark. Bayer and other German pharmaceutical majors merged in the 20s and formed the cartel IG Farben which was notorious for running concentration camps and unethical medical testing on hapless Jews in these camps during the Hitler era. Germany was crushed and IG Farben was dissolved to make three pharma majors, Bayer, Hoechst and BASF.

Aspirin was later found to be causing bleeding in the intestines by affecting blood’s capacity to clot. Also, it had a small but quantifiable chance of causing the Reyes’ Syndrome in children and it is not prescribed for children below 16 years of age. The drugs ability to reduce blood’s tendency to clot made it an essential medicine for heart patients due to the reduced chances of blocks being formed in the arteries. Due to these deficiencies, Paracetamol (N-acetyl-para-aminophenol) and Ibuprofen (2-(4-isobutylphenyl) propionic acid) made headways in the field and continues to rule the roost.

Jeffreys explains the way in which Aspirin works in the human body. Aspirin blocks the body’s production of cyclooxygenase (COX), the enzyme that generates prostaglandins from arachidonic acid. Two distinct kinds of COX was identified of which COX 2 causes pain. Hence the analgesic effect.

An overall good book, interesting to laymen too.

Overall rating: 4/5

Richard Feynman – A Life in Science

Richard Feynman – A Life in Science

Author: John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin

Pages: 284

Rating:

Presentation: 3, Language: 3, Relevance: 4, Depth: 3, Reputation: 5

Dedication: “To Jacqueline Shaw, Richard Feynman’s sister-in-law who put the idea into our minds”

John Gribbin, the very famous physicist and science writer, starts the book with a quote from Feynman’s philosophy essay at MIT.

“I wonder why. I wonder why

I wonder why I wonder

I wonder why I wonder why

I wonder why I wonder”

Richard Feynman (1918-1988), probably the greatest physicist and teacher combined in one, in the latter half of the 20^th century rose from modest beginnings. An insightful father guided his childhood. Being very affectionate to his siblings, he promised his younger sister Joan that he would spare the phenomenon of aurora for her to study and kept that promise till death. He did his graduation at MIT and PhD from Princeton. After serving as a member of the Manhattan Project which made US its first nuclear bomb, he joined Cornell University as Professor and later adopted Caltech as his permanent place of work. Besides being an ardent drummer, code breaker and womanizer, he dabbled in biology and art as well.

He was awarded the Nobel prize in 1965 for formulating QED (Quantum Electrodynamics). QED is a theory that describes all interactions involving light (photons) and charged particles and in particular, all interactions involving photons and electrons. It underpins all of Chemistry. Feynman introduced space-time diagrams into its study which grew enormously in popularity and were came to be known as Feynman diagrams.

His other major contributions were the works on the superfluidity of Helium at 2.2 K, the weak nuclear interaction and the lectures he did at Caltech for undergraduates and graduates. He was also a member of the Congressional enquiry committee which went into the faults of the ill fated launch of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986. He died in 1988 of Cancer and the associated damage to kidneys.

His books are ‘Surely You are Joking, Mr Feynman’, ‘What do you care what other people think’, ‘Feynman lectures on Computation and others.

Overall rating: 4/5

The Presidents

The Presidents

Author: Stephen Graubard

Pages: 890

Rating:

Presentation: 3, Language: 4, Relevance: 3, Depth: 3, Reputation: 3

Dedication: “For Margaret”

This book details the transformation of the American presidency from Theodore Roosevelt to George W Bush. It describes the political and international careers of the 20^th century Presidents. Though the author expects prior basic knowledge of the relevant issues faced by each President, he nevertheless explains some of the details. The excessive use of foot notes (or end notes, rather) is annoying at times, considering that the foot notes constitute an imposing 180 pages (20% of the total book). The relevance of foot notes is debatable, at times.

The Presidents in the 20^th century are

1. Theodore Roosevelt
2. William Taft
3. Woodrow Wilson
4. Warren Harding
5. Calvin Coolidge
6. Herbert Hoover
7. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
8. Harry S Truman
9. Dwight D Eisenhower
10. John F Kennedy
11. Lyndon B Johnson
12. Richard Nixon
13. Gerald Ford
14. Jimmy Carter
15. Ronald Reagan
16. George Bush
17. Bill Clinton
18. George W Bush

I personally like Truman most. His major achievements were the establishment of the Department of Defence, CIA and National Security Council. Unfortunately, he ordered the nuclear bombing of Japan, Berlin airlift, Korean War and the testing of the H-Bomb.

Overall rating: 3/5

The Fabric of the Cosmos

The Fabric of the Cosmos

Author: Brian Greene

Publisher: Vintage Books, USA

Pages: 541

Dedication: To Tracy

Rating:

Presentation: 5, Language: 3, Relevance: 4, Depth: 4, Reputation: 4

Brian Green’s excellent book on cosmology and the new trends in cutting edge science is a must read for those who want to stay in touch with what is happening around them. The examples, illustrations, diagrams and presentation are truly relevant to the topics and cleverly chosen so as to produce the greatest convincing effect. He discusses the origin of the universe, fundamental forces of nature and the quest to find a unified theory which can describe all the forces, string/M theory, relativity, concepts of time travel etc.

Some of the quotations from the book are

Difference between classical and quantum physics

A core feature of classical physics is that if you know the positions and velocities of all objects at a particular moment, Newton’s equations , together with their Maxwellian updating, can tell you their positions and velocities at any other moment, past or future. Without equivocation, classical physics declares that the past and future are etched into the present. This feature is also shared by both special and general relativity. Although the relativistic concepts of past and future are subtler than their familiar classical counterparts, the equations of relativity, together with a complete assessment of the present, determine them just as completely

By the 1930’s, however, physicists were forced to introduce a whole new conceptual schema called quantum mechanics. Quite unexpectedly, they found that only quantum laws were capable of resolving a host of puzzles and explaining a variety of data newly acquired from the atomic and subatomic realm. But, according to the quantum laws, even if you make the most perfect measurements possible of how things are today, the best you can ever hope to do is predict the probability that things will be one way or another at some chosen time in the past. The universe, according to quantum mechanics, is not etched into the present; the universe, according to quantum mechanics, participates in a game of chance.

A curious thing about special relativity

Special relativity declares that the combined speed of any object’s motion through space and its motion through time is always precisely equal to the speed of light. At first, you may instinctively recoil from this statements since we are all used to the idea that nothing but light can travel at light speed. But that familiar idea refers solely to motion through space. We are now talking about something related, yet richer: an object’s combined motion through space and time. They key fact, Einstein discovered, is that these two kinds of motion are always complementary. When the parked car you are looking at speeds away, what really happens is that some of its light-speed motion is diverted from motion through time into motion through space, keeping their combined total unchanged. Such diversion unassailably means that the car’s motion through time slows down.

Tachyons

Special relativity forbids anything that has ever traveled slower than light speed from crossing the speed-of-light barrier. But if something have always been traveling faster than light, it is not strictly ruled out by special relativity. Hypothetical particles of this sort are called tachyons. Most physicists believe tachyons don’t exist, but others enjoy tinkering with the possibility that they do. So far, though, largely because of the strange features that such a faster-than-light particle would have according to the equations of special relativity, no one has found any particular use for them- even hypothetically speaking. In modern studies, a theory that gives rise to tachyons is generally viewed as suffering from an instability.

A curious thing about entropy

Etched into a tombstone in the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna, near the graves of Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, and Strauss, is a single equation, S=k log W, which expresses the mathematical formulation of a powerful concept known as entropy. The tombstone bears the name of Ludwig Boltzmann, one of the most insightful physicists working at the turn of the last century. In 1906, in failing health and suffering from depression, Boltzmann committed suicide while vacationing with his wife and daughter in Italy. Ironically, just a few months later, experiments began to confirm that ideas Boltzmann had spent his life passionately defending were correct.

Higgs Field

There are matter fields and force fields, but in addition to that, many physicists believe that there is yet a third kind of field, one that has never been experimentally detected but that over the last couple of decades has played a pivotal role both in modern cosmological thought and in elementary particle physics. It is called a Higgs field, after the Scottish physicist Peter Higgs.

Casimir force

Think about two plain, ordinary, uncharged metal plates in an empty region of space, facing one another. As their masses are tiny, the gravitational attraction between them is so small that it can be completely ignored. Since there is nothing else around, you naturally conclude that the plates will stay put. Casimir concluded that the plates would be gently guided by the ghostly grip of quantum vacuum fluctuations to move toward one another. When Casimir first announced these theoretical results, equipments sensitive enough to test his predictions didn’t exist. Yet, within about a decade, another Dutch physicist, Marcus Spaarnay, was able to initiate the first rudimentary tests of this Casimir force, and increasingly precise experiments have been carried out ever since.

Overall rating: 4/5

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Author: John Perkins

Pages: 229

Rating:

Presentation: 3, Language: 3, Relevance: 3, Depth: 2, Reputation: 2

Dedication: “To my mother and father, Ruth Moody and Jason Perkins, who taught me about love and living and instilled in me the courage that enabled me to write this book”

John Perkins claims in the front cover that it is the shocking inside story of how America really took over the world. He was associated with the NSA and took up job as the Econometrist in Main, one of the consultants in energy industry. He narrates the plot in which third world countries are forced to do the bidding of multinationals and of the USA. They will first advance loans to poor countries for infrastructure development and when they are no longer able to repay, they will be forced to grant concessions to US firms or to vote according to the diktats of US government. His job was that of an economic hit man. When these EHMs fail, the jackals will set in and physically eliminate the target. He had worked in Ecuador, Panama, Indonesia, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The clear foot prints of a leftist and environmentalist are visible throughout the book. His arguments are not convincing and the examples are not illustrative in the wider perspective.

Overall rating: 3/5

The Revenge of Gaia

The Revenge of Gaia

Author: James Lovelock

Pages: 211

Publisher: Penguin

Dedication: For beloved wife, Sandy

Rating:

Presentation: 4, Language: 4, Relevance: 4, Depth: 3, Reputation: 3

An enlightening book on Global Warming and the mitigating steps to be undertaken by mankind. James Lovelock is one of the propounders of Gaia theory. Gaia is the earth system which behaves as a single, self regulating system, comprised of physical, chemical, biological and human components. The interactions and feedbacks between the component parts are complex and exhibit multi-scale temporal and spatial variability. Gaia is a thin spherical shell of matter that surrounds the incandescent interior of the earth; it begins where the crystal rocks meet the magma of the earth’s hot interior, about 1000 miles outwards through the ocean and air to the thermosphere at the edge of space.

Lovelock wishes to stop all activities that harm Gaia. He suggests nuclear energy as an alternative until a stable and inexhaustive source of energy is harnessed, which he names to be nuclear fusion. His insistence on his contributions to the origin of the concept of Gaia is forceful in some parts.

The author enunciates some of the effects of global warming. When ocean surface is warmed from above by sunlight, the top layer absorbs most of the heat and forms a layer of depth 30 to 100 metres. It forms when the sunlight is strong enough to raise the surface temperature above about 10 deg C. This layer is stable and stays intact and the cooler water below do not mix with it. Primary food producers like algae (which also fix CO₂) flourishes and use up all nutrients. They eventually die and fall to the bottom and this is why warm and tropical waters are so clear and blue, they are the deserts of the ocean.

There is positive feedback to the temperature regulating mechanism and it continues to increase the level of CO₂. The only system which acts in negative feedback is called ‘Rock weathering’. This is the biochemical process by which CO₂ dissolved in rain water reacts with calcium silicate rocks.

Sun’s energy output is increasing as time passes and is now 1.35 kW/m². To regulate the increasing temperature, ice ages are required and we are now in an interglacial period. With the level of CO₂ in atmosphere reaching 360 ppm, the planet is warming up fast. After several million years, when the sun’s thermal output is further enhanced, nearly all life forms will vanish.

An important source of information about the cause of climate change is the long term geological record. The analysis of air trapped in Antarctic ice layers gives immense data about the history of the climate and the composition of earth’s atmosphere.

Lovelock’s arguments for nuclear power are clear and strong. Nuclear stations are safer than, say, hydroelectric ones. Even a blast in a nuclear station is bound to kill only those who are directly exposed to radiation and will cause only a small reduction in the lifespan of the thousands of others (say 1 or 2 weeks) while a blast in the hydro dam will cause immediate death of millions of people. He gives safety statistics of various types of power generation.

Fuel	Fatalities	Who	Deaths per TWY (terra watt year)
Coal	6400	Workers	342
Natural gas	1200	Workers and public	85
Hydro	4000	Public	883
Nuclear	31	Workers	8

Overall rating: 4 Star

The Demon Haunted World

The Demon Haunted World

Carl Sagan

Pages: 434, Category: Science

Sagan, the world renowned astronomer and scientific writer, brings up investigations about the superstitious beliefs and practices in the world including pseudo-science. Many fads including alien/UFO sighting, alien abductions, astrology, Christian science etc are discussed in great detail. Casting a wide net through history and culture, Sagan examines and authoritatively debunks such celebrated fallacies as witchcraft, faith healings, demons and UFOs. Some of the notable quotes are,

We wait for light, but behold darkness (Isaiah 59:9)

It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness (adage)

All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and child like – and yet it is the most precious thing we have (Albert Einstein)

As the children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things children in the dark hold in terror (Lucretius, On the nature of things, 60 BC)

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science (Charles Darwin, Introduction to The Descent of Man, 1871)

Every time a savage tracks his game he employs a minuteness of observation, and an accuracy of inductive and deductive reasoning which, applied to other matters, would assure some reputation as a man of science.. The intellectual labour of a “good hunter or warrior” considerably exceeds that of an ordinary Englishman. (Thomas H Huxley)

We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether delusion is not more consoling (Henri Poincare)

Ubi dubium ibi libertas,(Where there is doubt, there is freedom) (Latin proverb)

Overall rating: 4 Star

Blind Sight

Blind Sight

Robin Cook

Pages: 339, Category: Fiction

Robin Cook, himself a medical doctor, is the author of many medical thrillers, of which ‘Harmful Intent’ comes readily to mind. This one is also a medical thriller in which a mafia don in New York, Paul Cerino, who had lost sight of both eyes in a acid throw by an enemy group attempts to get both his corneas transplanted by killing those donors who had agreed to donate their eyes after death and those patients whose transplants were charted before his. Dr Laurie Montgomery, the heroine of the story who is a medical examiner detects a pattern in the deaths and with the help of Lou Soldano, a Police sergeant tracks down the culprit.

The plot is very thin with gruesome murders thrown in every now and then. It describes no less than 20 murders which comes to about one in every 17 pages. Too much, even for pulp fiction! However, the novel is notable for the prologue in which the effects of cocaine taken intravenously are neatly catalogued. It is as under…

The cocaine shot into Duncan Andrews’ antecubital vein in a concentrated bolus after having been propelled by the plunger of a syringe. Chemical alarms sounded immediately. A number of the blood cells and plasma enzymes recognized the cocaine molecules as being part of a family of compounds called alkaloids, which are manufactured by plants and includes such physiologically active substances as caffeine, morphine, strychnine and nicotine.

In a desperate but vain attempt to protect the body from this sudden invasion, plasma enzymes called cholesterases attacked the cocaine, splitting some of the foreign molecules into physiologically inert fragments. But the cocaine dose was overwhelming. Within seconds, the cocaine was streaking through the right side of the heart, spreading through the lungs, and then heading out into Duncan’s body.

The pharmacologic effects of the drug began almost instantly. Some of the cocaine molecules tumbled into the coronary arteries and began constricting them and reducing blood flow to the heart. At the same time, the cocaine began to diffuse out of the coronary vessels into the extracellular fluid, bathing the hardworking heart muscle fibers. There the foreign compound began to interrupt the movement of sodium ions through the heart cells’ membranes, a critical part of the heart muscle contractile function. The result was that cardiac activity and contractility began to fall.

Simultaneously, the cocaine molecules fanned out throughout the brain, having coursed up into the skull through the carotid arteries. Like knives through butter, the cocaine penetrated the blood brain barrier. Once inside the brain, the cocaine bathed the defenceless brain cells, pooling in spaces called synapses across which the nerve cells communicated.

Within the synapses, the cocaine began to exert its most perverse effects. It became an impersonator. By an ironic twist of chemical fate, an outer portion of the cocaine molecule was erroneously recognized by the nerve cells as a neurotransmitter, either epinephrine, norepinephrine, or dopamine. Like skeleton keys, the cocaine molecules insinuated themselves into the molecular pumps responsible for absorbing these neurotransmitters, locking them, and bringing the pumps to a sudden halt.

The result was predictable. Since the reabsorption of the neurotransmitters was blocked, the neurotransmitters’ stimulative effect was preserved. And the stimulation caused the release of more neurotransmitters in an upward spiral of self fulfilling excitation. Nerve cells that would have normally reverted to quiescence and serenity began to fire frantically.

The brain progressively brimmed with activity, particularly the pleasure centres deeply embedded below the cerebral cortex. Here, dopamine was the principal neurotransmitter. With a perverse predilection, the cocaine blocked the dopamine pumps and the dopamine concentration soared. Circuits of nerve cells divinely wired to ensure the survival of the species rang with excitement and filled afferent pathways running up to the cortex with ecstatic messages.

But the pleasure centres were not the only areas of Duncan’s brain to be affected, just some of the first. Soon the darker side of cocaine invasion began to exert its effect. Phylogenetically older, more caudal centres of the brain involving functions like muscle coordination and the regulation of breathing began to be affected. Even the thermoregulatory area began to be stimulated, as well as the part of the brain responsible for vomiting.

Thus all was not well. In the middle of the rush of pleasurable impulses, an ominous condition was in the making. A dark cloud was forming on the horizon, auguring a horrible neurological storm. The cocaine was about to reveal its true deceitful self: a minion of death disguised in an aura of beguiling pleasure.

How extensively modern medical science has studied and categorized the effects of different chemicals on metabolisms!!!

Overall rating: 3 Star