With you.

I fly, and become the Wind.
I write, and become the Verse.
I swim, and become the Water.

With You, I let go.


Mandar.

Turn

Come back, Love.

That Stranger smiles at you for an everlasting second
and the Cafe Owner chats on for a long minute.
The Piano feels you for that green hour.

The Sun ogles all day,
the Moon sees you all through the night,
and just that other week, Love,
the New City visited you for a whole eight days.

Fleeting Friendships fill a few endless months,
that Sleepy Town takes up years and some more
and the Faraway Land a dragged-on decade.

I wait and dream
of seeing all of you, with all of me, all our life.

Come back.



-Mandar.

Of Discoveries and Graciousness

The Origins initiative at ASU has brought many great talks on campus. A recent one was especially interesting to be at - “Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species” by Sean Carroll. Following last year's Darwinfest, this was a sure treat.

Sean Carroll laid before us the happenings of what he calls the first Golden Era of Evolutionary Biology through a beautifully unfolding story. His vivid descriptions of the discoverers, their voyages, their passions, their successes and failures had the audience glued to the seats.

Before, during and after Charles Darwin's time there have been numerous well-known and not-so-known naturalist explorers, who have collected information, data, specimens in remote landscapes throughout continents. Sean focused on two of those who probably came the closest to Darwin's discoveries in evolution. Three of them together ushered the first Golden Age of evolutionary biology: Charles Darwin, Alfred Russell Wallace and Henry Walter Bates. They had a lot in common: all three were contemporary young naturalists Englishmen when they set out on their long journeys of discoveries in the quest for solving the problem of origin and variations in species. They shared a close relationship as friends and fellow explorers.

Some 17 years after Darwin had set out on the Beagle, Wallace and Bates headed out to the Amazon basin. After a year of exploring the forests together, they split ways. Wallace stayed in the Amazon basin for four years collecting insects, birds, animals and other specimens, meticulously making sketches as he went along. In July 1852, he embarked for England on the brig Helen. After twenty-eight days at sea, balsam in the ship's cargo caught fire and the crew was forced to abandon ship. All of the specimens Wallace had on the ship, the vast majority of what he had collected during his entire trip, were lost. He could only save part of his diary and a few sketches. How must have he felt looking at the sinking Helen, taking all the reward for four years of tremendous effort literally to the bottom of the ocean! Saved and safely back home, his love for exploration did not let him sit back - he went straight for the Malay archipelago, and spent eight years collecting over 125,000 specimens. Now that is craziness.

Bates too roamed around near the Rio Negro for a total of eleven long years, sending back 14,000 species back home, 8000 of which were thitherto unknown to science.

The Wallace-Bates pair exemplifies herculean tasks single-handedly carried out by the naturalists of the past centuries. Without modern luxuries of air travel, communication and medicine, they braved the rough seas, hostile jungles and wild animals to find the answers to the troubling questions of their times. Their stories are truly remarkable, and sources of inspiration for budding scientists and explorers.

Wallace's contributions include the "Sarawak Law" (1855) and the discovery of the 'Wallace Line' - separating the occurrence of placental mammals of Asia and marsupials characteristic of the Australian continent. What Wallace wrote about variation of species in Feb 1858 was the same conclusion about the variation in species, in fact in very similar words, as Darwin had written (unbeknownst to Wallace) in March 1857.

Sean went on to tell us about what he thinks is the Second Golden Era of evolutionary biology - this very time of ours. Long back, Bates had written "I have seen the laboratory in which Nature manufactures her species".. now, clad in white coats and sitting in biohazard labs, scientists all over are taking the genetic approach, trying to reconstruct evolution with the help of the DNA.

To end, Wallace's admiration for Darwin is clear as he writes to his friend Bates, in what has to be one of the most gracious letters in the history of science. The magnanimous Wallace goes: "I know not how or to whom to express fully my admiration of Darwin's book. To him it would seem flattery to others self praise;- but I do honestly believe that with however much patience I had worked up & experimented on the subject I could never have approached the completeness of his book,- its overwhelming argument, & its admirable tone & spirit. I really feel thankful that it has not been left to me to give the theory to the public. Mr. Darwin has created a new science & a new Philosophy, & I believe that never has such a complete illustration of a new branch of human knowledge, been due to the labours & researches of a single man." [Find here the original letter and the transcript].

"..single man"! how graciously Wallace gives Darwin huge credit, even when he had developed the theory of variation in species independently, and published joint papers with Darwin. It is on the shoulders of such giants - who care about nothing but finding things out - that we stand, and shall remain forever grateful to.

Jumping around in Conclusionistan

An interesting learning lesson came my way when I was carrying out an experiment in our laboratory the other day. I work with highly porous materials, with as much as 90% porosity. The instrument injects nitrogen gas into the sample, and by looking at how much gas is adsorbed at increasing pressures, it determines the average pore size. The instrument starts plotting the volume of adsorbed gas against the corresponding pressure and keeps adding points to it as the pressure rises. The size of the graph window stays the same and the scale of the graph changes as data points are added. That day, I had a sample with a particularly low porosity. I started the test as usual, and was surprised to see the successive points plunging south instead of going up. I aborted the test, and started it again. The same thing. How can we have less gas adsorbed at a higher pressure?

Confused, I called up the company and they told me to let the test run its course. I did, and looked at the complete isotherm plotted out, with some 60-odd points. Only then it dawned on me – I was looking at too few data points, and hastily aborting the test. Since the material had a low porosity, the initial readings were comparable to the error margin for the system, and hence they were all over the place. Once the readings got significantly larger than the error, it all made sense.

In retrospect, the lesson was not new. I remembered someone I know who holds that she can sense or predict details of a stranger’s personality merely by a couple of encounters. She would not necessarily need to meet the person face-to-face, not for too long in any case. A few minutes spent online on the instant messenger would also suffice. She would then summarize that person in a line or two. She is not the only person I have met who quickly jumps to conclusions.

It is quite contrasting to what I have always thought. I am not a big fan of summarizing people, places, incidents or the whole world even in a thousand words, let alone a line. That is not how I sense how much I have learnt about them. On the deathbed, even if I am not able to summarize and generalize no part of life, experiences, I would feel alright. I am not here to label people, things and happenings and put them in various boxes.

The imagery I have in my mind is of fitting a curve to the data points gathered. Our interactions with a person give us multiple data points. Knowingly or unknowingly, we do start fitting a curve to it. What I have been able to do quite a few times is to resist the temptation of fitting a curve to the first few points. I would just let them stay as they were - scattered or otherwise - without ignoring or forgetting them per se. Through this I would be able to keep myself from drawing hasty conclusions judging the person and from having my mind cluttered with prejudices. I have had to set aside some things which I strongly disliked at that particular point, and could thus learn to give the person some leeway – a benefit of doubt, if you will. This also had the advantage of carrying minimal baggage about people and incidents with me and keeping me away from always expecting a certain kind of behavior from people or certain kinds of outcomes from situations. How many points should I have before I start drawing a curve through them – is very subjective, and will evolve with me. I call it ‘generalizing with care’.

Over short durations, we observe merely the variance, or at best a combination of the variance and the measurement or the reading. As Nassim Taleb elaborated in Fooled by Randomness, our brains continuously look for patterns (faces in the clouds, the rabbit on the moon) and our emotions cannot understand the difference between the readings and the errors. We suffer pangs of pain when we see the (local) variations from the ‘expected trend’. People who look too closely at the data get burned out by the randomness. “For an idea, age is beauty”: there is probably a golden mean for when one should start looking at the data and draw conclusions.

SighLab

.. and this cold winter morning
I finally realize you've gone.

The gas sensors still detect love in the air,
But the IR doesn't show that bond, and,
I don't see l'amourium peaks on the NMR.
The kissing magnets now laugh at me.

The weighing balance still fluctuates,
Like it would when you walked by.
The lonely stain-studded labcoat still hangs in there,
The safety glasses still give me that soulful look.

The sonicator hums your name,
But the litmus turns blue all the time.
The esters have all but lost the fragrance,
And forming gas doesn't bubble through happily anymore.

The furnace doesn't warm up to me anymore,
And the only void the porosimetry shows
Is the one you left behind.
Only the pycnometer knows how heavy I feel.

.. and the amaltash outside sheds golden yellow tears.

The long and short of it

For me, 2008 was the year that started with a trip to India, and ended with another one. In the eleven months that passed in between, I was busy reading, traveling and chatting away. I could spend a lot of time following the elections in the US, reading news columns and articles, watching speeches and interviews. I could read a few good books too. Apart from the two trips to India, I made some 6 outings in the US - familiar LA in March, scenic Northern Arizona and flashy Las Vegas in May, idyllic Ohio in July, scenic Colorado in August and chilly Baltimore for Thanksgiving.

When I wasn't doing that, I managed to get a little work done. On that front, this year was really like a big STOP sign. I had to wait for months for three of my instruments to come in. Now all the wait is over and it's time to get some real work done.


Though I am not a big fan of one-liners put forth with an ambition to sum up the whole world, there are times when I fall for them. They may come from the experts, or otherwise. One such occasion was when I was talking to a friend about short-term and long-term economic policies and decisions. And then I said, "For me, there is no long-term. You cannot keep doing different things in the short-term and expect different results in the long-term."
This is obviously nothing different from the age-old wisdom about how 'you'll keep getting what you have been getting if you keep doing what you have been doing'; or the famous quote by J M Keynes - "In the long run, we are all dead". Original or not, sometimes you just like the way it is put.


Currently reading - "Fooled by Randomness" by Nassim Taleb.
Find a good talk by him here - 'The future has always been crazier than we thought'.

The Separation(?)

The Separation of the Church and the State - one of the lessons we got as school-kids - is conspicuous by the lack of it. This is nothing new, here are just a few more recent revealing incidents:

On the official website of the Governor of Maharashtra Shri S C Jamir, the page detailing his profile opens with a long introduction to his religious beliefs and activities - quite unnecessary, I think. :-|

In the US, Rick Warren interviewed the two Presidential candidates back-to-back, and he did it as a pastor. Had he done it simply to hold a conversation with the two candidates, it would have been understandable. But no, he did it as an evangelical pastor, in a church. He says he is interested in the candidates' understanding of the role of the Constitution. So is this the Church quizzing the State ?! WTH !

The Democratic Party Convention in Denver has kicked off. In a political convention, they are holding out-of-the-place things like 'Faith Caucuses'. The party, as the Wall Street Journal puts it, is "trying to make political peace with God and wants voters to be comfortable not just with the policies of their president, but his spiritual compass, as well." huh?

(Be)longing

For many of us, the legal status both in India and the US is that of a non-resident. We're Non-resident Indians back home, and Non-resident Aliens in the US.

Guess I'll have to wait a bit to become a Resident Indian again.

We the Children

When We are born, We are
Neither theists nor atheists,
We are without any biases
Neither racists, nor sexists.

We aren't born as bigots
Nor crazy about any 'ism's,
With no preconceived notions
All unaware of the schisms.

We weren't given a choice
Coming into this world
We were tagged and labeled
With whatever you loved.

Truly free, peaceful world
Is all We're really asking
Where We sing our own song
And make our own painting.

A world where We are shown
Diversity, not Differences
Connections, not Boundaries
Blissful Peace, not Silences.

Mandar.

What's in a name?

SLOW - it's far from what it appears to be. It stands for Stanford Learning Organization Web. Doesn't sound sluggish now, eh?

NSF - academia can never get enough funds from these guys. No wonder they stand for Not Sufficient Funds!