Bangalore traffic (and I can’t seem to get enough of it) can be partially dealt with. Indeed. If you take more than an hour to get to your work place then one thing you can do to utilize all that commute time is listen to audio books on your phone or mp3 player. If you don’t take more than an hour to reach your workplace, you definitely don’t stay in Bangalore and can ignore the rest of this post. Unless, of course, you are a fan of my writings.

All you need to do is buy an audio book or download one from the hundreds of free AND legal versions available out there. While the audio versions of new books are relatively expensive, there are hundreds of classics which are in the public domain and are available for free download!

Legally free? Yes. Head over to OpenCulture and check out the catalogue there. The caveat is that only classics are available for free. But then, when were you going to sit down and start reading all the classics? Never. So it makes sense to be done with them while driving through all that mess of this city. If not anything, you definitely will come across as a well-read road-ragist.

I have finished two audio books in the recent past: Stephen Hawking’s The Grand Design and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. The Grand Design has been shared over at InGoodBooks.com.

I am now reading, er, listening to E. M. Forster’s A Room with a View. The only drawback I see (hear?) with audio books is that it is difficult to appreciate fine writing while listening to it. Sure, a book like Hawking’s can be listened to since the core there is the idea, the concept. In Forster’s book, for instance, the emphasis is more on the writing styles, the metaphors, the juxtaposition of prose over a poetic framework – all a tad difficult to infuse in your literary senses while you are avoiding potholes and other fellow motorists.

Nevertheless, an audiobook is worth giving your ear to. If not anything else, it will keep you well-insulated from those seemingly clever music radio stations and their mind-numbing RJs and the singularly inane music that they dish out in between screams of sponsor company names and equally mind-numbing advertisements. Enjoy, ladies and gentlemen.

This blog has been missing out on a lot of action in the recent past. The reasons are plenty and not necessary to get into. One noteworthy fact is that Twitter has managed to steal a greater percentage of my digital communication.

I also understand that I had cited a similar reason many months ago to explain the paucity of posts here. Things seldom change. While I re-resolve to blog regularly, here are some interesting links which you might find interesting (some have already been shared in my tweet stream):

• Tour de France 2010: Circle of Death marks century of suffering http://bit.ly/dx4ogO – Fantastic writeup on the history of the Tour de France and how arduous it really is! Must read to give you an idea of man’s endurance limits (or rather the lack of limits)
• Penguin’s next march http://bit.ly/atGj9i – This is about the publishing house named after the black and white forever freezing bird. Penguin’s 75th anniversary (yes, it is that old) is coming up and as it approaches this milestone, how does it deal with the rising challenges of the industry
• The urban housing conundrum http://bit.ly/9ZNlLS – Rahul Chandran writes at The Mint on the problem of “inclusive” accommodation. How India’s cities need to plan to accommodate the ever-growing population of the urban poor. Very insightful and well written.

And oh yes, in the meanwhile The Better India celebrated its 2nd anniversary.

Enjoy, ladies and gentlemen.

This is perhaps one of the biggest and most important milestones in the history of mankind. Craig Venter has created the world’s first synthetic life form. The new organism was created in a lab entirely out of four bottles of chemicals.

Excerpt from the article in Guardian:

The new organism is based on an existing bacterium that causes mastitis in goats, but at its core is an entirely synthetic genome that was constructed from chemicals in the laboratory.

The single-celled organism has four “watermarks” written into its DNA to identify it as synthetic and help trace its descendants back to their creator, should they go astray.

“We were ecstatic when the cells booted up with all the watermarks in place,” Dr Venter told the Guardian. “It’s a living species now, part of our planet’s inventory of life.”

Details of this process in some other articles indicates that the creation of this new synthetic “life-form” did involve yeast as an intermediary. Does that still count as synthetic then? Keeping that minor fib aside, I believe this is an incredibly big achievement for mankind. Creating life was the prerogative of God and by imitating Him, man has reduced Him to a much lesser stature. That is of course based on the assumption that He existed in the first place. This particular experiment and all subsequent ones might well question that assumption a lot more strongly.

Andrew Brown raises interesting questions in his article titled “Has Venter made us gods?” Some points made by him:

The man who can make life can also give humans apparently godlike powers. “We are as gods and might as well get good at it” said the Californian visionary Stewart Brand 40 years ago; and Venter’s techniques should make it possible to engineer bacteria to do almost anything we can imagine, from cleaning up the oceans to supplying us with energy. The bacteria found in nature can work like the philosophers” stone, transforming almost any substance into anything. If we can design them to turn pollution into energy, that would be wonderful; but the same techniques could produce weapons of unparalleled cruelty and efficiency.

This is exciting stuff! God knows what the future will hold for all of us. Oh wait, change that sentence…

Steven Strogatz returns with his 8th post of the “math, from basic to baffling” series, this time focusing his articulate discourse on the concept of differential geometry.

It is a must read and will leave you a whole lot clearer on things like geodesics and shortest paths.

Loved the final paragraph, which I present below:

Sometimes when people say the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, they mean it figuratively, as a way of ridiculing nuance and affirming common sense. In other words, keep it simple. But battling obstacles can give rise to great beauty — so much so that in art, and in math, it’s often more fruitful to impose constraints on ourselves. Think of haiku, or sonnets, or telling the story of your life in six words. The same is true of all the math that’s been created to find the shortest way from here to there when you can’t take the easy way out.

Two points. Many paths. Mathematical bliss.

Steven Strogatz continues his series on “math, from basic to baffling” with his latest article talking about complex numbers. Very interesting, especially the fractal representation of multiple roots of a polynomial. Check out the article here.

Excerpt:

Better yet, a grand statement called The Fundamental Theorem of Algebra says that the roots of any polynomial are always complex numbers.  In that sense they’re the end of the quest, the holy grail.  They are the culmination of the journey that began with 1.

Which one-time TV actor in Coronation Street and Crown Court released a record on which he sang selections from The King and I with Julie Andrews, before being told by two of the Beatles that he should really take up a musical career? You want a clue? His middle name is Pandit.

Infact, his full name is Krishna Pandit Bhanji. To find out, read this article.

Dilip D’Souza’s Roadrunner is a travelogue that goes way beyond the usual duty of chronicling events and sights. Pick up the Roadrunner if you want to question your assumptions, your prejudices and your understanding of concepts like patriotism and communities. Pick it up if you want to get a clue on how a culture of a country gets defined, how that culture impacts the lives of the people.

The entire concept of he taking up this road journey through the US is an enviable thought. I have lived in that country for a very short while, and yet I was able to comprehend and relate to many of the concepts that Dilip touches upon.

One such topic is that of accessibility. Specifically, tennis courts. During my brief stay in the US, I was able to access the sport, learn it and play it every single day without having to spend a fortune (for the record, I had to discontinue the sport once I got back to Bangalore. Access is too expensive and seems to be reserved for the elite. Ofcourse, getting to tennis courts in the snarling traffic is a huge deterrent too). Second, I had such easy access to public libraries that I was able to read a wide variety of books there for a nominal fee. Most importantly, it was so easy to get around from one place to another. Dilip brings about this contrast in his own distinctive style which is a treat to read.

Then there are interesting details about The Cadillac Ranch and the Prada Marfa. The Cadillac Ranch, as the name suggests, is a place where rows of Cadillacs have been stuck head-down into the ground. Why, you might ask? Dilip asks a more poignant question, ‘Would a Fiat ranch have had the same impact as that of a Cadillac ranch?” Why? And why not? I thought to myself, “Was that something to do with the Cadillac being a home car? Is patriotism defined this way?”

It is the ability of this book to make you ask such questions to yourself that makes it a must read. Then there are the mystery lights at Marfa which have a strange air to it – a platform has been set up in this small non-descript town called Marfa from where in the distance you are supposed to be able to see mysterious lights. Dilip sees the headlights of cars and trucks in the distance snaking through the winding road, but another set of people on the platfom do see them as the famous mystery lights. Who is to deny them the pleasure? And why?

Dilip gets his share of interactions with various sections of the American society. He gets to be with the ‘Bikers of Christ’ at the Sturgis bike carnival, gets to drive a fireman’s truck  and what’s more – he even gets to play music at a blues bar! To add to this, he also gets to meet Obama (and to whom he offered his burger) during the presidential campaigns.

While there are many such events that occur during this trip of his, the thread that binds everything together is his quest for understanding patriotism, freedom and the concept of being ‘liberal’. Here is an Indian, a member of the world’s largest democracy, taking a hard look at a country which is his second home and which is also another large democracy. How does patriotism get defined in the US, how do its citizens define and ‘practice ‘ its patriotism. He then relates the same to incidents back home in India. Why are they different? Who is right? Who is wrong? Or does that really matter as long as every one is compassionate to their fellow human beings?

The Roadrunner is a great read – a book that dwells on many serious topics and makes you think – and is very neatly wrapped in the guise of a fun travelogue.

Buy Roadrunner on Flipkart by clicking here.

Excerpts from Matthew Stewart’s book The Management Myth: Management Consulting Past, Present and Largely Bogus have been adapted in this article at the Independent: Masters of illusion, The great management consultancy swindle.

He talks about management consultancy and makes for really funny reading (perhaps funny for the non-consultants alone?). Excerpts:

On how he got his first break

I landed the job by providing a credible response to this question: How many pubs are there in Great Britain? The purpose of that question, I realised after the interview, was to see how easily I could talk about a subject of which I knew almost nothing, on the basis of facts that were almost entirely fictional. It was an excellent introduction to management consulting.

On his inspirations and ‘tools’

“The Whale” is a graph. Its official title is “Cumulative Customer Profitability” and it also goes by the generic name “skew chart”. The Whale is my madeleine. One glance at its distinctive curves and in my mind I’m back, cutting and pasting charts and text, running through airports, hovering over a transparency projector in front of sceptical men in suits, and trading boozy stories with team-mates in an overpriced hotel restaurant.

I learned the art of whale-hunting – as we called the art of landing a big client – from a partner I will call Roland. He was a jolly, well-rounded figure, with a face like a pink bowling ball. He had a thick French accent and drew heavily on a limited stockpile of American colloquialisms, cheerfully painting the world in the bold strokes and primary colours, in a style typical of those who live their lives in a foreign language.

In the firm, Roland was the harpooner. His specialty was sinking the barbed hook of our services deep within the flesh of unsuspecting clients. Roland would say: “I asked Joe (or whoever the client was) ‘Joe, can your people tell you, right now, which of your customers are profitable?’” (It always sounded like he was calling them “profiteroles”.) Joe would have had no idea how his profiteroles were doing.

In fact the entire piece is hilarious, so I will stop pasting excerpts. Go ahead and read the complete article.

Our good friend in Ahmedabad, Ekta Hattangady and her sister Shraddha, have been featured in the Ahmedabad Mirror for their “Care for Caregivers” initiative.

Ekta is also the person to whom we are grateful for all our wonderful dining experiences in Ahmedabad. Her recommendations included Agashiye, La Feasta and Tomatos. While the former is a par-excellence restaurant for fine Gujju food, the other two are famous for their western cuisine. All three are highly recommended!

Getting back to the point, do read Ekta and her sister Shraddha’s story of coping with life’s uncertainties. One thing not to be missed is the poem written by them in the article.

The Aman ki Asha initiative by the Times of India and the Jang group has created a fabulous advertisement. I really loved this one:

If you are unable to see the embed above, click on this link to watch the advertisement.