Star Wars - Force snoozes

Not only was the new Star wars movie disappointing in its lack of ambition, re-watching Episode 1 now, I think George Lucas got a raw deal for the prequels. Sure Jar Jar Binks is ridiculous but he is no more annoying than C3PO.

Active learning

You're innocently walking down the street when aliens zap away the sensory neurons in your legs. What happens?
a) Your walking movements show no significant change.
b) You can no longer walk.
c) You can walk, but the pace changes.
d) You can walk, but clumsily.

A look at how active learning is transforming education, particularly in the sciences.

Incompatibility

One of my cousins wrote this on Facebook:

When any black kid is beaten the racist police in USA,
When a colored Argentinian was shot by UK police,
when a cranky preacher planted bombs in Tokyo subway,
When the Russian military ran over innocent women and kids in Hungary,
When the Chinese tanks crushed students.......
No one talked and linked such barbaric incidents with their science and technology efforts ...
I don't know how digital India gets clubbed with the inhuman act at UP. The buffoons who link it either have hidden agenda or have their brains stapled to their posterior.

Notwithstanding the danger of being considered a buffoon, my reply to his post:

I agree that some politicians are making hay but it is not right to dismiss this as an invalid argument. During the height of the Apollo missions, civil rights activists rightfully argued that there was a fundamental incompatibility between a society in the brink of putting a man on the moon and a society where some of its inhabitants were second class citizens. So it is not something altogether unheard of. Pointing out this mismatch is a narrative platform while not giving the entire picture presents an important link of the jigsaw puzzle. That a government that is proud of its progressive agenda, atleast when it comes to technology, still subscribes to an outdated and inhuman system is cause for concern. And commentary. It is the same unease one feels when immense poverty coexists in otherwise rich countries.

The link between technological accomplishments and societal malaise is the people. Why shouldn't someone who takes great pride on Sundar Pitchai becoming a CEO because he was born in your region not feel shame for some guy from your country doing a heinous act? Why is he the outlier, a lone nut, a bad apple? Where is the ownership? Sundar's success is a reminder of how awesome Indians are but this guy's lynching is just this guy lynching? Where is taking good with the bad? Indian society, particularly the Hindu right cannot insulate itself from criticism. Oh btw, to claim that other countries don't have enough self-awareness, while factually true, does nothing more than proffer a weak excuse. I am sorry, but the sign of a culture in decline is the reluctance for self-examination.

All for a peck in the cheek

The burning embers of your eyes, my love

sun and moon, become

The blackness of your eyes, my love

the dark night enlivened

Diamonds scattered in your silk robe

the star studded night sky

Oh! and your smile

radiant as a flower blossoming

Your heaving bosom

like crashing waves

The sweetness of your voice

Soul-stirring bird song

Thou art a forest goddess my darling

and love fills me to the brim.

Talk not of traditions to me, my love

My passion, it cares but little for laws

If elders blessings we must seek

rites we shall perform

But patience fails me, my love

Perhaps a quick peck on the cheek.

- My translation of Bharathi's Suttum vizhi chudar

Black lives matter -Explained

Over at the intertubes, one redditer had a wonderful way of explaining racial inequality and the need for a 'Black lives matter' movement. I quote the full text (with minor edits), so you don't have to visit Reddit and spend the better part of 6 hours jumping from one sub-reddit to another.

Imagine that you're sitting down to dinner with your family, and while everyone else gets a serving of the meal, you don't get any. So you say "I should get my fair share." And as a direct response to this, your dad corrects you, saying, "everyone should get their fair share." Now, that's a wonderful sentiment -- indeed, everyone should, and that was kinda your point in the first place: that you should be a part of everyone, and you should get your fair share also. However, dad's smart-ass comment just dismissed you and didn't solve the problem that you still haven't gotten any!The problem is that the statement "I should get my fair share" had an implicit "too" at the end: "I should get my fair share, too, just like everyone else." But your dad's response treated your statement as though you meant "only I should get my fair share", which clearly was not your intention. As a result, his statement that "everyone should get their fair share," while true, only served to ignore the problem you were trying to point out. That's the situation of the "black lives matter" movement. Culture, laws, the arts, religion, and everyone else repeatedly suggest that all lives should matter. Clearly, that message already abounds in our society. The problem is that, in practice, the world doesn't work the way... Societally, we don't pay as much attention to certain people's deaths as we do to others. So, currently, we don't treat all lives as though they matter equally.
Just like asking dad for your fair share, the phrase "black lives matter" also has an implicit "too" at the end: it's saying that black lives should also matter. But responding to this by saying "all lives matter" is willfully going back to ignoring the problem. It's a way of dismissing the statement by falsely suggesting that it means "only black lives matter," when that is obviously not the case.

In summary, saying "all lives matter" as a direct response to "black lives matter" is essentially saying that we should just go back to ignoring the problem.

Homeopathy

There was a report published by NHMRC Australia that found, "Based on the assessment of the evidence of effectiveness of homeopathy, NHMRC concludes that there are no health conditions for which there is reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective. People who choose homeopathy may put their health at risk if they reject or delay treatments for which there is good evidence for safety and effectiveness."

It is surprising to believe that in this day and age that people flock to this pseudoscience but then people have always been enamored by snake oil salesmen with their panaceas. It is shocking though that some in the medical research community, *cough* my father *cough cough*, continue to defend practices such as homeopathy. Let me reassure you, dear reader, that I have no skin in this game. I am not paid by big pharma and if there is a global conspiracy to discredit homeopathy, I haven't been receiving their newsletters. 

There are two ways to approach the problem of effectiveness of a health system; the social sciences approach and the scientific way. The social sciences approach is simply to ask people who have used a medical treatment if they thought it was effective in curing them.  One of the pillars of the argument for homeopathy seems to be based on this "It worked for so and so". Clearly this is a tempting proposition. But fraught with danger. For one, it will almost entirely miss the "Didn't do a damn thing to me" demography. That is, if we are predisposed to believe in a treatment, we'll remember all the people who claimed that it worked and don't count the people who have had partial or no success with this approach. Call it confirmation bias. This works just as well for the opposite view. Say I am skeptical about a particular medicine, then I am bound to remember the negative reviews than the positive ones. 

Researchers can work to control this bias in their studies. If a questionnaire was sent to a hundred people asking what they thought of kittens, you can bet that the people who take the time to respond will be predominantly cat-lovers. This selection bias can be accounted for in a study but the layperson who says that they heard from their sister that her friend's mom had a colleague whose niece suffered from asthma which was miraculously cured when they went to a homeopath.... not so much.

The scientific method would be to look at the theory behind the medicine and try to understand the mechanisms by which they cure the disease. For instance, to say that chemical compound A has effect X on organ Y which releases a secretion of  Z which results in reduction of a particular symptom. The problem that scientists have with homeopathy is because this particular line of enquiry yields terrible results. Homeopaths make claims about "water memory" or "super-dilution" that have been tested and the results show that the active ingredient in the "medicine" is so minuscule that it cannot actually effect change in the human body. That is, there is no difference between a sugar pill with no trace of active ingredient and a real pill with a one-thousandth trace of the active ingredient. 

(Side note: western medicine has a similar problem sometimes, when scientists are not able to trace all the causal links and have to say that they don't know which reaction causes particular symptom to vanish but it does. Yes, we don't know everything but the body of knowledge is growing and we are understanding things that we didn't before)

So, why does homeopathy seem to work? It could just be the placebo effect or it could be more complex than that. Many complimentary medical treatments talk about holistic medicine and demand changes in the lifestyle choices of the patient. For instance, the homeopath may demand that you give up meat during the treatment. Or to go on early morning walks. Or breathing exercises. These may allow the natural immunity of the body to fight back and get better. Post hoc ergo propter hoc. After this, therefore because of this. 

It is important to note that the claim that a homeopathic medicine works (it does not and from what we know about chemistry, it cannot) is debunked but they may still have value as lifestyle gurus. Governments and medical institutions have an obligation to call them out for what they are, so that the unsuspecting public may make informed decisions. The NHMRC report is a step in the right direction.

The blind leading the blind

What do you make of Chetan Bhagat, considering he's often credited to have gotten more and more Indians to read through his books?

I don't know. Is it that you write third rate books and people can't do much better than to read those third rate books? Is it really an achievement? What is the achievement exactly?

We can't count Chetan Bhagat as an airport novelist. He's not an airport novelist -- he apparently writes about important, relevant things. In other countries when they are having kind of a moment in which they are writing about significant things, you see some great literature come out. Chetan Bhagat is not great literature. 

...

Chetan Bhagat doesn't find an audience because no one outside India can read him. He might just be a symptom of the fact that in English, India is basically a semi-literate country and Chetan Bhagat is the best it can do.

It doesn't seem to me that we need to look for a deeper explanation.

- Aatish Taseer

Human engineering

Read this awful article on a magazine called NewPhilosopher, where the author, Clive Hamilton, scoffed at the idea of human engineering. His article was a rebuttal of sorts to a paper by three bio-ethicists who published a paper titled, "Human engineering and climate change", where they discuss possibilities such as genetic engineering. One of the methods they discuss is genetic modification to obtain night vision (like cats) which would absolve the need for street lights. (I personally think that is an inspired idea)

I can't believe that the NewPhilosopher outright scoffed at the idea going so far as to calling it bizzare and laughable.  They write "Why not genetically modify people to make them white in order to cool the Earth by increasing its reflectivity?" - It's like they haven't even heard of reductio ad absurdum

He writes, "...the question of why anyone who is unwilling to buy a smaller car or switch to green power would be willing to genetically engineer their children".

Why is human engineering so absurd? Because it wouldn't work. So are a lot of plans of reducing emissions, but you wouldn't laugh at a guy who proposes smaller cars.

Of course some bio ethicists are going to write a paper saying what if the choice is between total annihilation and reinventing ourselves as a species . We know that in the past when threatened with extinction, various species have adapted by growing big, growing small, getting a hard shell, etc. One of evolutions tricks is that the size of humans will decrease over several generations if there is a resource drought.The problem is that humans may not have the luxury of waiting for hundreds of thousands of years to develop gills or something to adapt to new earth. So, perhaps human engineering and gene manipulation will not be optional. We will come to a time when changing a lightbulb is not going to be enough to save the human species and drastic changes, including some forms of human engineering will be necessary. You don't wait until after it becomes a reality to talk about the ethics of it. What can we do, what should we not. These discussions should happen now. And in magazines that call themselves NewPhilosopher. (What kind of a magazine are they, really?)

If Clive Hamilton can do nothing to contribute to this conversation but point fingers and sneer, maybe he should be sent to the naughty corner. No cat eyes for you.

I have a dream

The internet is an amazing place. This is what someone called Ian McLean wrote on a Youtube post by Hank Vlogbrother Green.

Dream interpretation isn't really a thing, scientifically speaking. There are some theories, but all we're really sure of is that your dreams often (though by no means always) reflect stuff you've been thinking about in the last couple of days. I prefer to think that when you're asleep, you brain basically plays video games using your memories as source material. So, sometimes, it's playing Road Simulator. And then you dream about being a road. Probably not that often, though. Road Simulator isn't a very good game.

Holiday fatigue - Politics edition

As anyone who has spent a month-long holiday with their parents knows, they sure do drive you nuts. It is not just their waking up at god-awful hours and pottering about (which they do) but every thing. EVERY THING. Take for instance, my father's views on Modi, the rockstar prime minister of India:

1. He is the first guy to really talk 'Change' and he is/will be a transformational figure.
2. People should not criticise him because you have to give the guy a chance.
3. And really, even if he doesn't manage to change anything, it is not his fault because a. he is just one man and he has to deal with a party of old-timers and b. the system is broken.

This "true believer" logic is unbreakable. He will change everything. But even if he doesn't, it is not him but others. And shut up.

What annoys me the most about this fanboy-ness (which everyone is entitled to - refer: John Green / I am giddy as a school girl) is the sort of I-am-above-this-ness that comes with it. Instead of admitting that yes, I fell for Modi hook line and sinker and think that he is the second coming of our Lord and Saviour, one poses as someone who doesn't have any skin in the game. I am just an objective observer and ye shall bow before my pronouncements.

The response and I have to admit that I hardly had the patience to be so clear is:

1. There have always been and will always be politicians campaigning on hope and change. Refer Kevin Rudd, Barack Obama for two of the most recent examples. This is because people want change and they want hope that things will change. And it is not cynical to suggest that politicians want to sell them exactly that. If people want puppy sized elephants, you can bet your ass that the politician will campaign on how he always supported puppy sized elephants and free puppy sized elephants for all.

2. Just as it is valid that people do not criticise Modi before he has had a chance to do anything, it is perfectly acceptable, why, even necessary, that he be not praised for something that he has not achieved. To be fair to the guy, the higher the pedestal, the further he falls.

And we don't need people shushing the naysayers. Firstly there are too few of them compared to the vocal and loud supporters. Secondly, some of the naysayers are not actually naysayers but just wait-a-minuters, who are merely asking a question about some tall claim or talking about actual policy positions. We need more people to criticise and question the government to have any sort of balance with the unbirdled euphoria of the yesmen.

3. I have some sympathy for the politician who promises the sky and can't deliver. Obama peddled hope and change and he turned out to be a big nothing. His meagre achievements are only partially due to the corrupt system or intransigent opposition. There is a lot of inertia built into the political process such that no one person can either do great harm or great good. But there is no fun in campaigning that I will be better than average president. But it is important that one has the ability to call out the emperor when he has no clothes. The "true believer" is a problem because he sees everything through the prism of his hero-worship; my leader is pure and unimpeachable but it is the others. We also saw the Democrats switch their positions from "Bush is an evil war-criminal to wiretap on citizens" to "Sometimes it is necessary to kill our own citizens because Obama says so".

Well! at the end of the day, Meh!

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