Writing to decide on writing

Is it possible that something unfounded in reality be greater lived than that which is grounded in fact? Can the unreal live longer than the real? Paradoxically, this is true more than most.

Fiction has greater shelf-life than non-fiction most of the time. Classic novels are timeless, whereas an analysis of the current election, or the past one, wanes in interest quite rapidly. Books about economic crises, climatic catastrophe, trends in food and diet, the status of healthcare, are all written to satisfy very current thirsts for information. They are certainly not meant to be appetizing reading for generations. But, novels about the human condition, romance, crime, hate, sweeping histories, evolution, etc., live on forever. Interestingly, religious books last longer and remain rigid in their message, long after the underlying norms and extant practices bear no relation to those of our forefathers.

So, if you want to write a book, what should be your driving objective? Do you want to make a fast buck, capitalizing on the mass whim of the day? Or, do you want to write for generations to come, with no thought of egregious remuneration. Maybe both? Just having completed a manuscript for a text book, and feeling weary but ready to embark on another, these polarized thoughts have been populating my thinking, asking aggressively for resolution. So, the question is: Write another text, for which I have plenty of material, or leap into the unknown, and write a non-technical book for the lay person, about a phenomenon that is both timely, yet has been with us through the ages and will no doubt, always be?

Do not wait with bated breath for me to describe further my alternate paths, dear reader, for I intend not to do so. I apologize if I whet your appetite and then rudely yanked the serving dish away. But I am afraid that being too specific will lead me to the wrong choice. So bear with me, for I prefer to discuss the choice in the abstract for as long as is tolerable. I guess this debate with myself in the abstract may be more useful than one can imagine, since abstraction usually leads to generality, meaning that this little discussion we are having may apply to more than just the question facing me, but to many others that several readers may have too.

Should I write about what I know (a text), or get to know something new as I write (a new book for everyone)?

There are many advantages to the former. Its easier to write, for I have the material at hand already. I have done it before, and can bring experience to bear. There may be a bigger and ready-made market for a text, certainly one of baseline proportions that one can expect with some degree of certainty. There is context, and hence structuring the material will be easy. The content has already been road-tested in my classes, and the effort will pay off as I use the book to teach more classes. Finally, it will probably get done quicker, and will certainly be more career relevant, though who cares about that any more?! Its certainly the path well-trod, and one that I know well.

But what about the other path, that wander into the uncertain? Should not that be given play? Its certainly the less boring path to take. And it will probably outlive the shelf-life of the text, that is, if it survives its infancy. It also comes pre-packaged with freedom, since there is nothing to tie one down after such a book is written. No revisions, no return on investment, no guilt about not teaching it, just because one wrote it! I would place even odds on being satiated with the material upon completion of the text, so that just when it begins to pay off, one does not want to engage with it anymore. My Book for Everyone (BFE) would certainly not bring with it the Curse of Completion, instead, it would enjoin me to move on, and find something new and exciting. There is something exciting about such a literary one night stand!

The Book for Everyone would be mostly also, the Book for Me. No paradigms to adhere to, no structure to obey, or buck. So much to learn, and so much to contribute, timeless, unique and fresh in ideas and perspective. With the Text, I would be content to write what I know, but with the BFE, I’d need to talk to those more in the know, learn about new ideas and trace their history. It would be the most exciting journey and would derail the mid-life crisis I have been in denial from over the past few years. No one said it better than Robert Frost – “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I…I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

But, while it seems so clear, I am not yet ready to decide. These decisions are not about excitement alone. They depend also on personal taste, life’s exigencies, ego needs, writing history and ability, and of course, a sharp trade-off between the need for exposition and the need to satisfy one’s curiosity. So, wait and see, there’s a book somewhere in the future, near or far. Which one will it be? I don’t know and to help me decide, I go round and round writing about writing. I am in a “strange loop”, as coined by Douglas Hofstadter in his new book. There is this sort of meta phenomenon going on where to begin writing, I first need to write about writing. As I loop, the centrifugal force will drive me out of the loop, and launch me into one or the other project. And I am using this blog to manage my impatience!

Complaining for Control

I have an incredible set of students this term – not one has complained about anything, its remarkable. Especially given the fact that the course is untried, untested, and certainly not smooth sailing. Most faculty can safely say that this is a rare event. By standards of academe, this is an even rarer event – we academics complain more than most!

This leads one to think about why people complain at all. This class has certainly not done so, and I do not see them any worse for it. But maybe we need to stop and define “complaint”: A complaint is an explicit expression of dissatisfaction, justified or not, with or without the hope of some benefit. Granted, many times complaints are justified, but I wonder if they are always the best means to an end. My students chose to participate in improving the course and counteracted deficiencies by means of constructive suggestions, rather than complaints.

It looks like in all situations, when things need improvement, we stand at this fork in the road: to complain or not to complain, to seek constructive thought or not, these are the choices. People opt for complaint when they feel they have no control over the situation, and of course, the act of complaining offers a vestige of control, or the illusion of it. People who are in control or comfortable with their situation, no matter how hopeless, feel no need to complain, and try to find some channel for improvement. Actively seeking control only serves to relinquish it; letting go in fact leaves one more in control. Just the zen of it I guess.

It is precisely for this reason that organizations provide complaint boxes, or in our case, teacher feedback forms. By providing the illusion of control, organizations in fact retain it. A grieved person feels in control when stuffing an inert box (vigorously no doubt), or blackening circles on a scantron form. What if these outlets did not exist? Feedback would have to be more personal, direct, and I believe, more constructive. We need fewer outlet valves, and more channels of straightforward communication.

People complain when out of control because it psychologically places the blame for missing equanimity elsewhere (this is not to say that the fault is theirs). It is a perfectly natural defense mechanism, but certainly not a source of solutions (which constructive criticism potentially is). In hard courses, students complain about teachers. Faculty complain about Deans. Faculty complain about students. Faculty complain about information technology, about editors and referees. Its just awful – faculty complain a lot – we have too much time for this. Instead we just need to do our best, enjoy what we do, and stop complaining about what others do and don’t do.

Okay, so maybe you don’t complain much yourself, but are surrounded by people who do. What is the solution? Complain about them? No. Ignore them? No. Then what? I don’t think I know a good answer, but here are some ideas to stem the complaint scourge.

First, try not to complain yourself. Try to remember that for every complaint, there is a constructive idea out there as well. If there is one thing I learnt from my recent class, this lesson is it. Just because others complain does not mean you have to.

Second, try to remember that complaints feed on themselves. Never respond to a complaint with another one. Escalating complaining is a groupthink recipe for a total loss of control. So, ignoring complaints may be good after all, but then it may lead to a repeat complaint, more vigorous and more out of control. Responding constructively ignores the complaint in a positive manner. Redirection of the complainant’s energy into a solution trumps simply absorbing or deflecting it. Even in cases of blatant complaining, it is not that hard to see the little constructive element in it. Treat every complaint as a useful suggestion.

Third, pre-empt complaints by conscribing the environment to minimize their occurrence. This does not mean creating the perfect environment in which there is no cause for complaint, that is simply a pipe dream. But suggesting that complaints are not welcome is a good starting point. Make it clear that valuable criticism (constructive) is okay, but destructive criticism (complaint) is not. Do away with complaint boxes. Complaining is really a supply side problem!

Fourth, if complaints arise from an illusion of control, then removing the need for control cuts off complaints at the spigot. If we all individually realize that we are not the center of the universe, then complaints would diminish drastically. Ego and complaint are happy bedfellows. Do your bit by exercising personal humility, irrespective of others.

Finally, get a sense of humor, and supersize that to get a life. Funny people don’t complain too much, at least the ones I know! They are too busy having fun, and relinquishing control, they have no need for complaints. If you can laugh at yourself, trust me, you will have no need to complain about others.

People who complain spend a lot of time telling others what to do, and end up not learning from them. Lucky me, I got a class that taught me this lesson about life. I hope I really did learn something, well, I am sure I did – I had good teachers. Here’s to having this much fun again.

Man as Machine

A recent issue of Time magazine analyzed the multi-tasking behavior of modern children. The upshot of the cover story was that our interpretation of multi-tasking was flawed for the simple reason that children do not explicitly do more than one thing at the same time, as they would were they simultaneously walking and talking. Instead, they concurrently engage in many things, like talking on the phone, typing instant messages, doing their email, watching TV, and working on homework. Such behavior is clearly distinct from true multi-tasking; it is more the continuous cycling between tasks. Taken purely as a matter of logic, it should make no difference were the child to take up one task, finish it, and then proceed to the next one. This sequential completion should not take more or less time than when the tasks are all worked on a little bit at a time, but never simultaneously.

However, it is still useful to distinguish pure sequential processing of tasks from the incessant cycling between tasks, which may be better denoted as time-sharing. As with a vacation time share between three people, it does not really make a time difference were the time per person to be used in one block of four months, or four separate blocks of one month each separated by a periodic hiatus.

Of course, there is one small fallacy here – in that time-sharing may be more efficient than sequential processing when the former allows downtime periods in sequential processing to be filled with another task. For example, we may be working on proving a theorem, having resolved not to undertake any other task unless the one at hand is completed. However, if one were to get stuck in the endeavor of proof, then it may be efficient to step away from the task and use the time getting some email out of the way. Time-sharing can be more efficient than sequential processing since it is the same as the latter without the constraint that any one given task be allocated to a single block of time. Time-sharing may be less efficient when there are switching costs that are incurred when moving from one task to the next, as we cycle through them all.

Whichever mode is efficient, there is one strikingly interesting parallel with modern computers. microprocessors are designed to time share, switching between processes on the computer at the speed of its internal clock. This has made multi-tasking on the computer very efficient. It is indeed ironic that so much of science fiction has been devoted to creating machines that behave like humans, when in fact, if anything, today we are closer to microprocessors in the way we handle tasks. Hence, a better view is to see that humans behave much more like microprocessors than vice versa. Given the complexity of human behavior, and the simplicity of the operation of the microprocessor, this is hardly surprising. Man to machine convergence is probably happening faster than we think.

Information Angst

There is altogether too much information in our lives today. In the past, people broadly chose one of two levels of broad information, by deciding to read or ignore the newspaper. Or listen to the radio or not. Information was never “pushed” at you – except for the rare occassions when newspaper boys ran around screaming “Extra, Extra!”. How much times have changed.

The big difference is that information flow is now continuous. World events are continuous by definition, but reporting used to be very discrete. You got the newspaper but once a day, or heard the news a couple of times on the radio. Now, with everything in “streaming” mode, reporting major events as they unfold makes for an incessant barrage of information, mostly unavoidable if our lives have a semblance of engagement with the world. So it has become harder to “get away from it all”.

Continuous information creates an insidious need to compare ourselves with everyone and everything, simply because we can. We want to know if we are richer, happier, healthier or just plain better-looking than some benchmark. Most often, in an effort to compare and feel better, we usually end up feeling worse. Maybe we would be better off avoiding making comparisons at all. But that is not our nature. We are competitive to a fault, and information overload translates swiftly into competitive angst.

Its automatic. We dont start out a session with our computers with the goal of doing anything else but channeling our curiosity. Sooner or later the engagement turns into one where bits of information that are self comparative start becoming salient, and drive the emotional course of this human computer interaction. Its inevitable, its hardwired. Its a bias we cannot rationalize away. I find that I am somewhat calmer and happier on the days when I eschew or minimize the interaction with the computer. Is it the same for you?

We have been brainwashed into believing that more information is better than less. It all sounds pretty rational – take a large superset of data or information, simply distill out the relevant parts to get a concentrate of pure valuable knowledge. We believe that this approach is more optimal relative to one in which we receive a smaller subset of possibly less relevant information. But, there are many ifs: (a) How good are we at distilling knowledge from large sets of data? (b) Do we get better or worse doing this when data sets increase relative to knowledge sets? (c) What about the cost of all this information processing? (d) And finally, if as a byproduct, the interaction results in heavy competitive angst, is it all really worth it?

I think we need to carefully evaluate how much information our lives should have. Information is necessary for sustenance of our modern lives, just as food is necessary for our bodies. But, just as we know that we need to be careful about eating in a balanced way, we want to be measured in our intake of information. Mental and emotional well-being is as critically related to our information diet, as balanced meals are to our physiques.

The hard problem is that we do know what a balanced diet is when speaking of food. We also know better to avoid some foods in excess. But with information, it is often hard to know its bad for you till after you have consumed it! So maybe we should just limit information intake more generally. That said, maybe you should not have read this?

Return to Paris

Paris is an interesting study in contrasts. It is hectic and bustling, yet forces serenity on you. I have been here less than twelve hours and already had the best father’s day in my life. Just returned from dinner at almost midnight after starting the meal at 9 pm. A good meal, eaten at a most leisurely pace, and a wonderful time with my wife and son.

I arrived here with my son at noon, then took a taxi to the apartment, smack in the middle of the Marais, which is wonderful. In fact, from the living room of our apartment I can sit and watch the revelry all day (and night). Just wonderful. We have been coming every year, and this time, we figured we would just live in the middle of it all. (Last year, my wife decided to live in the middle of the red light district, an opportunity I passed on, though because of prior exigencies).

Its a Sunday, Father’s day, what a good one it has been. But its already been a mix of good and bad. Bad: the person from whom we rented the apartment came an hour and a half late, while we waited on the stairs in the sweltering heat. And the shopkeeper would not sell me a single bottle of milk because he refused to make change for a twenty. But I ate the best dinner ever, and for lunch, the best tomato salad ever. I guess that puts me net on the plus side.

But it is one of the places in the world where humanity is clearly distinct from the machinery of life. Where aesthetics dominates economics. Where the service is superb even though no one tips. Where economic motive, though behind much, recedes into the background, so that human beings can relate to each other in non-transactional ways. Religion presupposes to explain what the meaning of life is, and man’s role in it. Paris, by deed itself, bypasses the need to explain, implementing meaning directly. Everyone finds their own meaning; to me that is really religion – the freedom to be who you really are.

The Marais reminds me of Greenwich village, where I spent many years in grad school. It reminds me also of Berkeley, where I have spent many years of my recent life. I feel lucky to have tasted these environments. And to be sitting writing these words, looking down from the second floor window into the happening street well past midnight, the mood can never be described, only experienced.

Its always nice to reflect back on the day and ask – what did I get out of my day? Sometimes the answer is a gratifying “nothing, but I still had a great day”. Today the answer is: I really lived it, including the four hour afternoon nap. I have these days when I look back and can clearly recall each minute, and I know, those are to die for. Today was exactly that. I remember every detail. And I also learnt one thing, that life is too short to spend it on things where you do not enjoy absolutely each and every minute of what you do.

Well, its now the end of the week, and we leave for Madrid tomorrow. But its been a very strange week, unlike any other I have spent here. There were several events this week that made it unique. First, it was beastly hot, and Parisians told me it was twenty degrees higher than normal. This heat coupled with the fact that there was never a quiet moment in the streets outside the apartment meant that I was usually only able to sleep at 5 or 6 am. So unlike the rest of the family, I had little sleep at night, a lot in the mornings and a pretty serious siesta in the afternoons. Only way to beat the heat and the noise of revelry that went on through the night.

Second, it was the week in which we had the “Fete de la Musique”, which happens every year on June 21, the longest day. Its an occasion when every street in Paris has a band playing and people walk around listening to music all night. We did too, it was wonderful, except that around 2-3 am, it degenerated into mostly the drunken smashing of bottles and the streets in the Marais were strewn with glass and other trash. The little restaurant in the ground floor of the building we live in, called the “Politburo”, decided to install the loudest music system they could find, and blared techno music till about 5am. At sunrise, the cleaning crews came out and the city was clean by early morning. Quite remarkable! It would be too much for the city’s pride to leave the mess lying around longer than that. I think there is a deeper reason too – it makes the wild night a great experience with no bad after taste.

Third, it is also the week of the “soldes” – the big clearance sale of the summer season, when everything in every store goes half price off. The sales runs Friday through Sunday, but nothing really remains after the first few hours on Friday. We saw lines to get in on early Friday morning. In a stroke of luck, my son, needed a suit for a wedding in Spain, so I took him to Galleries Lafayette on Thursday, so he could try out stuff that might fit him, and they were in the process of marking things down and agreed to sell us at sale prices a day earlier. That meant we missed a “pleasant” two hour wait in line to get a refund of the value added tax. It took but 10 minutes since we were there a day before soldes.

It is now 2am, and I am unable to sleep, hence writing is a release from the now deepening depression I am facing with “insomnia from external causes” (wilding and overstimulation). Of course, tonight there will be no respite, as it is the gay parade, which began around 8am this morning, and shows no sign of ending though it is now well past midnight! We ate dinner again tonight at one of our favorite places in the Marais, a Corsican restaurant below our apartment. For two hours, we ate and watched the tributaries of the parade stream by. It was wonderful. And it is nice to be sitting here on the carpet in the one spot in the apartment where there is a whiff of a cross wind giving some respite from the heat, writing this blog.

Its been strange in many ways this time. For one, I no longer feel like a tourist, only a visitor. I came away from a very hectic past two months, teaching a whole lot, getting lots of work done on our home, so the respite has been good for me. Its now been 8 days since I last looked at email or the internet, and if its another 8 weeks it would still be too soon. I am enjoying sleep tremendously, strange for someone who is quite happy getting by on just 5 hours a night. I have eaten a great meal every night, and taken 2-3 hours to do so. Its been like going to Chez Panisse for a week of groundhog days.

Anti-American feelings still seem to run quite deep. Being American but looking Indian (which I am originally) led me into strange situations where people would treat me differently because they thought I was not American, and then wierdly, when I told them I was an American who lived in the Bay area, forgave me for being who I was because of where I lived. Left me feeling like this is going the way of the old French-British stand-off, which also came up every now and then. It surely seemed like there were fewer Americans here this year. I do hope all this disagreement dissipates, as it seems pretty unnecessary. But it left me feeling strangely worried, because the feelings on both sides now seem to be deep rooted at the individual level, with an inability to separate the politics from the personal stuff. I grew up in India, being told constantly that Pakistan was bad, but somehow, individual people in both countries seemed to know deep down that it was all politics, and Indians and Pakistanis get along really well individually despite their political, and more important, sporting rivalries.

My son though, who has grown up in the Bay area, offered a counterpoint to the French attitude. He remained staunchly American, refusing to adapt to anything with an inflexibility butressed by what he thought was point of principle. Nothing here was right, it just was not done the way he would like it done as it is back home. So, thats just it, the current stand-off is nothing but a culture clash that will always exist, sharpened a bit in the recent past by some political to and fro. I think we all need to loosen up all round. It would really help.

So its been a week of complete hedonic experiences. If there is one difference between America and France, it is this. Much more in France seems to be done for no fathomable economic motive whatsoever. Now, where would that happen in America? Not easily. I like this, living life for purely hedonic reasons. In America today, with all the political correctness bordering on religious fundamentalism, the life in France would be interpreted as bordering dangerously close to social sacrilige. It would be wrong and we would do guilt. If there is any guilt here in France, it is well hidden, probably under several feet of attitude.

It is now 3am and the street outside is noisier still. There are more gay couples of both sexes outside on one street than I have possibly seen in my lifetime. Gay folks here are not agitating for marriage rights as they are in the Bay area. Maybe it is because they are so much a part of the fabric of society that it really does not matter. Back home, they are not and hence it may be necessary to fight for the status that gays in France get for free. I am not sure though that it is the right way, legal change is only a half way measure, in the end cultural change must come. And assuming that legal change will be naturally followed by cultural change may be a purely probabilistic, or worse, an erroneous premise.

But of course, cultures are different and that is what makes life so interesting. It can be disconcerting at times, like in France, dealing with attitude is something I find hard, though some Parisians told me that the only way was to return more attitude. Sounds like a death spiral to me! I also found the mysterious absence of the police when bottles were being smashed somewhat odd, but maybe it is known to work – leave the mob to staunch its own enthusiasm eventually. Premature interference may actually lead to more trouble.

I am writing some of this now that I am back in Berkeley, and no matter how interesting other places may be, there is no place like home.

The Injured Minority

Six weeks ago I tore up ligaments in my knee in a failed attempt at learning snowboarding. It took only a moment to wreck the knee, and many weeks later, I am still limping around wondering if it will ever return to normal. There is a lesson in this somewhere that I am avoiding. Maybe it is as simple as the idea that we should stick to what we are good at, and not believe we are good at things we clearly are not cut out for. But it may just be a lesson too hard for someone like me to learn.

But I am wandering off my main point, which is that when you have an ailment, or an affliction, you are drawn to others with the same. Almost every fifth student has come up to me and related his/her own tale of woe on the ski slopes. The first two doctors that treated me in the emergency room both cheerfully informed me of their ski injuries and assured me that like them, I would be back on a snowboard in a couple of weeks. Six weeks later, I am quite sure that retirement from the slopes is the only sane option for me.

Now, when I walk the streets, dragging the bad foot behind the better one, I sometimes encounter another limping person coming from the opposite direction. Our eyes meet, and sometime we both smile, in the same instant commisserating with each other, and also feeling truly connected. We are for that moment, kindred spirits, sharing the yoke of injury, being comforted not to be the only ones in a bad predicament. Misery loves company, for sure.

Its like being in the minority, and when that happens, people tend to feel close to others in the minority. I am now part of the ski injury club, and wear my wounds and limping gait like a badge of honor, proclaiming to all, especially my fellow injured, my membership of pain.

Its actually quite nice, this belonging to the minority. Its a fake cloak, comforting nevertheless! Its the same with the sportsbikers in the Bay area. We have an unwritten code that we wave to each other when passing. When I first started riding I noticed very quickly that everyone waved, and I quickly got with the program too. Its just nice, I felt welcomed, even if it were anonymously. Of course, the Harley guys never wave, they seem to live by some other grim code of angst and pent up anger. The minority of sportbikers is wonderful.

Its hard to feel special, unless one is part of a small group. So what am I going to do when my knee heals and I am kicked out of the damaged-knee-ligament sect? Who knows? I will have to find another minority to latch onto.

Balance in Life

There is no free lunch in life, which is a good thing. If you overdo something, you have to let go of another. Some of us like living at the extremes, obsessed with a few things at the cost of everything else. It’s a life style choice. Others seem to do better with being in the middle of the road.

Like most things in life, there is an optimal amount of time one may spend on any activity. After this, the law of diminishing returns kicks in. Deviating from a path of balance seems only optimal when one might experience the law of increasing returns. Whether or when this switch-over occurs is more a philosophical matter than one of fact.

For example, if we wish to learn to play a musical instrument. Are we better off playing for a little time each day or crash-coursing it by playing several hours for the first stage of the learning process? There is something to be said for both approaches. In the former, we are likely to err on the side of stopping before the right amount of time, i.e. on the path of increasing returns to time spent, but short of the optimal. In the latter, we are likely to err on the side of reaching the region of diminishing returns. Where this optimal point lies varies from person to person.

Hence, when we talk about achieving “balance” in our lives, we are (a) referring to our self-awareness about this optimal stopping point, and (b) we are dealing with a notion of “relative” balance, and not an absolute one.

Nature has the notion of balance hard-wired into its system! Take going to the gym. At a low level of exertion, you do not reach an aerobic state and the activity is physically worthless. Once you cross a threshold where your heart rate begins to climb you are in a “low” aerobic state, wherein the body is not stressed, yet begins to burn fat to provide energy, since fat needs time to burn, and with low stress, this is possible. At a slightly higher exertion level, you remain in a “high” aerobic state, but now, the muscles need energy fast, and the body burns less fat and more carbohydrates, which release energy faster (we know this as the cardiovascular state). Any exertion beyond this point is too much for the physique to handle, and is bad, and is known as anaerobic. In this phase, lactic acid accumulates in the muscles, suffocating them, rather than answering their clammer for more oxygen. So our physical systems are great examples of “balance” – too much or too little physical activity is detrimental. Doing nothing is bad, and “thrashing” yourself in the gym is even worse. Buddhists know something when they speak of the “middle” path.

The same works for the mind. Through much of my life, I have always worked steadily, never doing things at the last minute. It has served me well. I never studied in “exam week”, simply put in the time slowly over prior weeks. This is one of the prime reasons for my learning to drink coffee very late in my life – I assume most people develop a need-based fondness for coffee in those crazed days of cramming for tests. We are all only too keenly aware of the fact that we function so much better when we have had plenty of sleep. And when we oversleep, it also takes the mind time to recover from the stupor. Learning should never be undertaken too slowly or too fast. As with eating, there is a good middle digestive time.

I have begun to notice that my friends who multi-task well seem to be those with a good awareness of their optimal balance points. Multi-tasking, across the physical and intellectual domains seems to be highly correlated with balance. Again, low bandwidth or too high a bandwidth life style seems to work poorly; getting the balance always does.

As an academic one is always striving for that right balance between teaching and research. I worry about those that complain incessantly about teaching, stating that research is the real role of an academic. They a priori discard their free option of balance. We academics are indeed lucky to have such a clear cut scale to work with, and I do believe many of us find our optimal points.

Long time, and mundane

Its been a long time since the last post, and I feel like I need to get back to blogging more regularly. Just been busy doing nothing, which is another way of defining the holidays. Now that I am back teaching, I need to find distractions to keep from being mired in work. Blogging is perfect.

So I went to the MacWorld expo this week. Just terrific to see all the new products, quite uplifting. And the crowds are fun. Like everyone is so nice to everyone else. Beaming away at all the new cool products, just like we were all collectively responsible for them. Everyone from the same religion, children of the Mac, pleased as pink.

The Mac Mini is going to make a huge difference, there will be many new Mac users. As a regular addict, its pleasing to know the club will grow. But there is also the mild chagrin from knowing that the club will not be small, cozy and exclusive anymore. All these new members will be streaming in, with their bad habits brought from the world of windoze. But, with more and more users, people might write more software for the Mac now, and that would be cool.

This week my students (more than usual) have been asking for the deeper meaning of what they are learning. Curious – never ever got this sort of question before, and never more than once. “Yes, we get the math, but whats the point?” or “We get the idea, but the math is hard.” One or the other, so I am doing everything wrong or right. There is a deep human need to take all learning and squeeze into some perceived framework, which I wish everyone, including students will take great pains to avoid. Best to not reference the past when looking anew. Its like not looking in the direction one is going.

Resolve to never use a PC again, always Mac or Linux. That is the most productive thing I have done all day. Maybe need to think this out in the cold light of day tomorrow. So I give the decision a few days settle. Thats all for today. More soon.

Observational Equivalence

I repeatedly agonize over the manner in which terrosists send their young people to blow up other young people in the cause of freedom. And I am just as troubled to realize that the war on terrorism does very much the same. The actions are observationally equivalent, even though the goals are diametrically opposed. We should know better.

Connectivity

One cannot but be amazed at the pace at which communication technology
has evolved in the past few years. I am able to email anyone, crossing
borders in seconds where before I would have to mail documents,
enticing inspection. I can call anyone anywhere. But mostly I can call
everyone, by just writing this blog. Baring your mind, heart and soul
has never been easier.

My wife carries a cell phone on which I can reach her anywhere in the
world by calling her local number here in Berkeley. She has been away
now for almost two weeks, upsetting the rhythym of our lives. When you
have been married as long as I have, its nice to have that quiet time
to oneself as your spouse travels, but the absence of routine
eventually becomes harsh and oppressive. Thats when I call, hoping to
proxy my routine in a few minutes of conversation.

The human connection has transfer rates that far exceed that of any
technology we may ever devise. Even as physical telephonic contact is
made between us, my wife opens the emotive connection as well,
operating at a bandwidth far exceeding the physical voices that pass
over the lines. And she asks – “Are you ok?” – to which I reply “Of
course.”

I sense a sudden disappointment – does she not know I am feeling out
of sorts? What happened to my hypothesis about emotions and infinite
transfer rates? Was I wrong?

And then with relief, I realise that she is not asking me, she is
telling me she knows. Logic will never outstrip instinct.