Book Review: My Brief History

My Brief History
-- Stephen Hawking

As I could understand some parts of The Theory of Everything (Attributed to Stephen Hawking, though he denounced it as unauthorized publication), I picked this one up. Unlike other popular books by him (Brief History of Time and Briefer History of Time), this one is not much about science, but about Hawking, as the title suggests.

He talks about his childhood, his introduction to Mathematics and Physics, the disease that paralyzed most of his body in his twenties etc., Readers would be able to appreciate the way he chose theoretical physics over experimental, as he wouldn't have survived in fields that needed more than his brain, due to his disease; the way he lived constantly with uncertainty about his survival, yet contributed so much to physics, and regarded today as the most brilliant theoretical physicist since Einstein; the way he handled personal crises such as his wife living with another guy in his own house, assuming that he wouldn't be around too long etc.,

Besides such memorial stuff, he discusses briefly his original ideas about big bang, black holes and time travel. But, readers interested in these should be better off reading his The Theory of Everything or Briefer History of Time.

Unless one is a die-hard fan of Stephen Hawking, one can give it a pass.

Love humbles monsters!

I was having a conversation with a friend, who is a self-confessed atheist and rationalist, the other day.

The central point of the conversation was, when love humbles an atheist/rationalist and makes one feel powerless and helpless, would he/she act any different from the people who believe in super-natural powers? Of late, he has been going through it personally, it seems. Here goes the summary...

Of course, yes. "The practice or principle of basing opinions and actions on reason and knowledge rather than on religious belief or emotional response" - That's what 'Google define' has to say about rationalism. 

Now, my friend is in a fix. He thinks a bit too much about her, and gets emotional, involuntarily. The relation is nowhere close to a stage where he can talk to her much, let alone sharing his feelings with her. Being rational, he can't do anything foolish, despite his dreams every night. He rationalizes himself about dreams that they are just manifestation of his feelings and thoughts, and there are no more strings attached. Whereas, his believer friends in that situation take it as a positive vibe and refer to Freud's Interpretation of Dreams and celebrate.

When he comes across something like, 'if one truly loves, ones love will never fail' - he, apparently, becomes sadder as he doesn't believe in anything super-natural. As per his school of thought, love being 'true' can have no effect whatsoever 'on its own', unless it leads to some action. Whereas, believers find such things very powerful and helpful in keeping their spirits up.

Few more areas where my friend looses against believers are blessings of elders, wishes of his close friends, taking oaths and praying for divine intervention etc., None of them can console him, as all those fall under super-natural category.

Then, suddenly, we jumped out of the context and tried to replace Love with Mangalyaan (India's Mars Orbiter Mission). If we, as rationalists, are convinced that believers have all those above advantages, won't believer scientists of ISRO have the similar advantages, when ISRO chairman seeks divine help (and goes to Tiruapati with a model of satellite), as a rule, before every launch?

But, we felt, though they both look innocuously similar, they actually are not. More on those, a little later.

Book Review: Guns, Germs and Steel

Guns, Germs and Steel
-- Jared Diamond

Jared Diamond was a professor of physiology and developed interest in ornithology and ecology. While working in the latter areas, he had developed interest in geography and then became a professor of geography in the same university where he taught physiology earlier.

When a person of such caliber was confronted with a very elementary, yet, a very profound and tough question like "Why does it look like some races dominated other races, through out the human history", it led to the natural outcome. A thorough research to unearth the events happened over thousands of years and connect the disparate to understand and present the big picture. That's what is Guns, Germs and Steel. He could do that only 25 years after being confronted with that question, though.

The title is due to the part that Guns, Germs and Steel played in the human history. Author sites several decisive events in history where, how whoever had access to these first dominated others.

There were several interesting discussions around animal and plant domestication, spread of lethal germs from wild animals to humans, evolution of writing and languages, evolution and adaption of technology, food producers vs hunter gatherers, egalitarianism vs kleptocracy etc.,

I started reading the book looking for precise answers. But, they are not to be found, for obvious reasons. Most part of the book talks about certain events happened anywhere in between the last hundred years to a few thousand years BC, and authors attempt to connect them with rational arguments and explanations.

So, a fun read for the patient and inquisitive. Not recommended for the people who call even a second example a rhetoric.

My Overseas Marathon Odyssey - Part-9 - Mt.Fuji, Japan

San Francisco-2010 (US) -> Athens-2010 (Greece) -> Berlin-2011 (Germany) -> Niagara Falls-2011 (US/Canada) -> Singapore-2011 -> Kuala Lumpur-2012 (Malaysia) -> Venice-2012 (Italy) -> Phuket-2013 (Thailand) -> Mt.Fuji-2013 (Japan)

The odyssey that I planned to kickoff at Athens, coinciding with the 2500 years of marathon legend, reached Japan this year. I landed in Tokyo on a Friday, late evening. Narita airport (the main international airport that serves Tokyo) is quite far from the city. I planned to spend the night close to the airport and go directly to Mt.Fuji area, where the Marathon is going to be held on Sunday. Within no time, I could experience all that I heard and read about Japan and Japanese. A nation obsessed with hygiene, ultra courteous people that are routinely punctual and procedural.

After a couple of hops, I reached the Marathon expo on Saturday to collect the runners kit. They had arranged the kit right in front of a railway station (Lake Kawaguchiko), for the convenience of overseas runners (300 out of 16000 runners), and that was quite unceremonious. I went all the way to spend time and run in a different environment and culture. So, this special treatment was a bit unwanted. I collected the kit and went to the actual Marathon expo, meant for the locals. And, I could realize the rationale behind that special treatment. There were a lot of activities and festivities going on, but, everything was in Japanese and no one understands or speaks a word other than Japanese.

Marathon was scheduled to start at 9 AM. I reached the venue quite early at 7:30, as I read that it was chaotic at the start, the previous year, due to huge crowd. But, apparently, they learnt. It was quite meticulous this year. Temperature was around 6 °C. And, all I could do till 9 AM was, just freeze wearing shorts and porous shoe in open air. Thanks to my runner friends pestering, I at least carried a thermal top, which kept half of my body warm, through out the run. I found out during the run that I was one among 20-30 runners out of 16000, who were wearing shorts. Rest were running with full body thermals. It was tough to run in that weather, particularly because, there was no time to acclimatize. But, I generally don't worry much about finish times and just enjoy the run and the surroundings. That way, it turned out to be one of the most scenic runs, as the course circumambulates two beautiful lakes overlooking majestic Mt. Fuji.

Spent the next couple of days walking length and breadth of Tokyo and visiting interesting places that I came across. Oedo Onsen was one such. Onsen, a public bath at hot springs, seems to be a part of Japanese culture. This particular Onsen was quite fashionable with several modern facilities. Got rid of Marathon fatigue here instantly, and walked another 10 KM from central Tokyo, all the way to the hostel that I stayed, checking out several things en route.

I made it a point not to eat anything other than Japanese food during those 5 days. Ventured into the places full with locals and only locals. It's interesting. Typically, noodles or rice with seafood, chicken or pork. Pork and chicken cutlets with rice seemed to be very popular, besides noodles, of course. I could as well have spoken in Telugu or Hindi at all those places, as it wouldn't have mattered to them anyway, as long as it's not Japanese. I could still manage to order something, and insist on replacing chopsticks with spoon and fork :-)

Overall, a very pleasant experience. Felt, it's an interesting, safe and friendly place to visit. And, yes, a lot of yummy food to try.