What the Dog Saw - Malcolm Gladwell

A compilation of random articles that Gladwell wrote for the NY Times. They are all available online too, but somehow I have a preference for reading them on paper. Well, I am old-fashioned that way :).

As you can expect from Gladwell - lots of lots of interesting stats, lots of anecdotes and good story telling. But he does not go beyond the "safe" boundary and make bold statements or conclusions. Nevertheless, it is definitely a fun read and gives a good deal of new information and new perspectives.

The things that impresses me most about him is that he is interested in and collects information/anecdotes from people from all walks of life - from doctors to construction workers to dog trainers. Reading his articles, you realize how little you are exposed to, to people from fields that are not yours.

Read this for a sample: http://www.gladwell.com/2000/2000_03_10_a_rock.htm

What I Believe - Bertrand Russell

"A good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge" - Bertrand Russell

"What I believe", an essay outlining Russell's thoughts and hopes, written early in the 20th century (1925) is a 40-page successor to his pessimistic world view outlined in "Icarus" . Perhaps one of the boldest and brightest philosopher and writer the past century has seen, most of Russell's thinking has stood the test of time. The reason being pretty simple, his thoughts far-sighted and their basis not ephemeral.

In this essay, Russell starts off with the neutrality of nature, nature being neither good nor bad. This is a direct attack against Liebniz-like optimism and extreme pessimism. He then moves on to define a "good life" (quote at the beginning of this post) and talks in length the importance of both love and knowledge, it's key components. Russell points out the dangers of having one but not the other component with examples. Russell moves onto discussions around morals, quoting that morals and ethics are derived from conflicting desires, a code or rule book that prevents or avoids such conflicts. In the entire essay, Russell is particularly harsh on the church, on religion and even nationalism.

The author also delves into the concept of salvation, the fallacies of education and the tradeoffs involving scientific advancement. Russell is not convinced with the education system in his times (I am not sure if it has changed much) and feels that children lose their faculty in curiosity as they spend their precious years in schools.

Overall, a quick read, many issues that author has brought into light are very much pertinent even to this day. Russell is pretty caustic in some places, but that's when he is at his best.

The Meaning of it all - Richard Feynman

The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice. - Bertrand Russell

A compilation of a series of 3 lectures delivered by Richard Feynman at the University of Washington, Seattle, in 1963, this book delivers profound ideas with a very simple style that can be understood and imbibed by anyone, scientist or not alike. The three lectures are titled, "The Uncertainty of Science", "The Uncertainty of Values" and "This Unscientific Age". The first two lectures have a very good build up and are in continuum, talking about the importance of being uncertain, both in science and in morals or values. The third lecture is a little bit more adhoc as the person delivering the lecture admits and deals with some of the problems we are facing in the current age. Feynman covers both the glaring issues and those that are pretty subtle in nature, potentially harmful nevertheless.

The first lecture is about how uncertainty is important in science inorder to discard older scientific beliefs and embrace newer and more precise ones. Feynman gives the 3 views of the meaning of science, science seen in application of inventions and discoveries (also called technology), science as a body of knowledge arising out of certain inventions and discoveries and the very traditional definition of Science, as a method of inventing and discovering new things. He talks about how scientific statements have to be stated in a precise fashion, leaving very less vagueness and a low tolerance for interpretation, or worse, misinterpretation.

The second lecture is much more interesting as Feynman explores the differences between religious views and scientific views, how uncertainty in values is important, how a "certain" leader is more harmful than an uncertain one, how democracy stems from uncertainty and so on. He makes it a point that "if something cannot be disproved it has to be true" is the most dangerous assumption to be making. This is the same point that the Russell's teapot (see The God Delusion review) analogy explains.

The last lecture is the longest one and deals with a list of problems in this age that makes this age an unscientific one. Here he talks about how quoting probability in experiments after an event has occurred rather than before is not right, how sampling needs to be done for any kind of statistical experiment, how gullible people are by falling for advertising, a skeptic outlook on some of the space missions, questions the need for English teachers and spelling rules, how mind-reading and astrology need to be disowned and so on.

Overall, an engrossing and entertaining 120+ pages, by one of the greatest Physicist and Nobel prize winner in the past century. Though it may not give you the meaning of it all, it does make you a little more uncertain, a little more skeptical and helps you avoid the biggest intellectual vice, Certainty.

ABC Of Relativity - Bertrand Russell

Science is a powerful potion whose consumption converts a dogmatic to a sceptic, and like travel, is fatal to prejudice and pride. But much of science is not popularized and it's depth and concepts are accessible to only unkempt haired, bespectacled, equation-wielding, greek alphabet ace stereotypes whom we brand as scientists. Bertrand Russell, a thinker, philosopher and mathematician, in this book attempts to explain the mysteries of Einstein's theory of Relativity to the common man, a person who has the thirst for this knowledge, but doesn't have the depth or expertise to understand the mathematical intricacies behind it. The 200 pager ABC of Relativity is one of a series of books written by Russell on different topics in science. This 1925 book, written 7 years after Einstein's General theory of relativity, is a credit to Russell's open-mindedness and foresight, personal attributes that are far ahead of his times.

Russell starts off the book by urging the reader to give up thinking in terms of Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics that we are so used to on earth, a pre-requisite for understanding the theory of relativity. He moves on to explain the misconceptions about the theory of relativity and to describe the properties of light, particularly it's velocity. Russell introduces the Michelson-Morley experiment to measure the velocity of light, whose results called for a new theory, the special theory of relativity. In the middle chapters of the book, the author introduces concepts like the constancy of the velocity of light, time dilation, object length alteration in the direction of motion, Lorentz contraction and space-time, essential concepts behind the Einstein's special theory of relativity.

Russell's explanation of concepts is neither rhetorical nor mathematical, making it very powerful as it can be understood by anyone. His examples are very "earthly", involving objects that we see everyday. After explaining the special theory of relativity, Russell moves to harder concepts like gravitation, formed by space-time hills leading to the general theory of relativity. Personally, I felt concepts around accelaration and gravity a little harder to understand. Perhaps the concepts here are a little more abstract and hard to visualize and imagine. The author also explains the vastness of our expanding universe, sowing seeds of humility in the reader. The book concludes with some philosophical insights.

Overall, a fantastic attempt at popularizing the theory of relativity. After reading the book, I did some research on the web for more attempts at simplified explanation of the theory and here is an article that attempts to explain the theory in 4-letter words or less.

The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins

When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion, it is called Religion. - Robert Pirsig, Author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance.

The God Delusion, a 400 page best-seller by one of the world's most passionate atheists and renowned biologist is an eye-opener into the realm of religion, creationism and intelligent design. Richard Dawkins, a Darwinian at soul, asks the hard questions about existence of God and religion, that most of us dare not ask with fear. Though the book may not convert a theist into an atheist, it definitely influences you in becoming a deist or makes you ponder about the other options (other than being creationist) or at least makes you think twice the next time you follow something that is indoctrinated on you.

The book starts off by clarifying the misconstrued word "God", when used by Einstein and other scientists ("God does not play dice" -Einstein). The book gets riveting as Dawkins proposes different arguments justifying the existence of God. Some of the arguments are truly intriguing and the author refutes all of them pretty systematically. The best arguments are,

The Ultimate 747 Gambit - "probability of life originating on Earth is no greater than the chance that a hurricane, sweeping through a scrapyard, would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747"

The Pascal Wager - "even though the existence of God cannot be determined through reason, a person should "wager" as though God exists, because so living has potentially everything to gain, and in theory nothing to lose"

Irreducible complexity - "A single system which is composed of several interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning."

Dawkins brings forth the infinite regress of "who is the creator of the creator?" as a counter-argument. He also feels that the proposer of a particular dogma should prove it logically rather than claiming it as proved just because it cannot be disproved. Bertrand Russell's teapot logic is used to humorously present this idea. The author then moves on to show that morals don't stem from the scriptures, for people who believe that for a human being to act morally fear of God/religion is very important. Dawkins criticizes the scriptures, drawing examples from both the new testament and the old testament as well as religions like Islam to show that the scriptures are devoid of morals. He talks about the moral zeitgeist by citing examples of changing moral standards over time to prove this point. He ends the book by talking about religion for consolation and inspiration and discussing their importance. Dawkins feels that the world of science, with it's infinite unknowns and truth seeking is inspiration enough to lead a motivated life making religion unnecessary.

A good read that opens up our minds into the limitations of our mind, the possibilities of science and the pitfalls of religion. Dawkins is very meticulous in his research and his presentation is commendable. He doesn't cover oriental religions in depth and feels that Buddhism is more of philosophy rather than a religion, with which I concur. I loved the theme that Dawkins reiterates, "There is no Catholic child or a Muslim child, rather there is a child born to Catholic parents or Muslim parents". Religion should be a prerogative of the child. The ten commandments of humanism is pretty impressive and is quoted in the book. I am yet to read and gather from the critics of this book, which will be my exercise over the next few month.

Here is an excerpt from the preface that is very compelling,

“Imagine, along with John Lennon, a world with no religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as 'Christ-killers,' no Northern Ireland 'troubles,' no 'honour killings,' no shiny-suited bouffant-haired televangelists fleecing gullible people of their money ('God wants you to give till it hurts.')”

The Elephant, the Tiger, & the Cell Phone

For those who are new to Shashi Tharoor's non-fiction work this might be a good start. It is a collection of essays covering a wide range of subjects from politics, ailing sports except for cricket, the rising economy and pluralistic Indian society. It is a good collection of facts, analysis, sprinkled with sometimes subtle but otherwise straight humor. Dr. Tharoor talks about Indianness in the emerging world of globalization. He touches on oddities such as India being at the forefront in adopting technologies like cell phone but still believing strongly in theories of numerology/astrology may be even while choosing a cell number. This is a serious piece of work one might want to read to get in touch with issues, conflicts, advantages and sometimes plain facts about India in the past 10 years.

Here is Shashi Tharoor on his book..

Freakonomics

I have been wanting to write this review for a long time now. I picked up this book from my favorite Tata Book House in Bangalore. (for an extra 10% discount and told the lady at the counter how much I liked the store and have been buying books from them for the past 10 years in spite of me working for the world’s biggest online book retailer).

Now about the book, I should say a very interesting read. A must read for information junkies, it provides numerous references to facts and correlates many of them. The main theme of the book is about asking interesting questions and trying to answer them with numbers and statistics. It is mostly analyzing tons to collected data and arriving at conclusions. And I should say in most his examples he makes a very interesting case for the way he munches these numbers to bring out the bottom line.

Here is one of the interesting questions:
Why do drug dealers still live with their moms ?
In most cases he talks how answers derived by conventional wisdom are not entirely correct and how numbers can be used to better answer such questions.
A fun read over all, easy writing style and is kind of gripping when you see it unfold and the way it defies common sense in many occasions.

Well if you are too lazy to read, then watch this author talk, the talk is very funny and nice, it is only 20 mins.