Appropriate Technology

I guess a few of you might have already seen this. But for the benefit of the few ignorant others. Personally, I found this very inspiring. I hope you too.

Excitement++

whoa!!! Nolan!!!

I started the summer with Inception and Raavan being my top 2 most anticipated movies. But with Raavan trailers decreasing my excitement a little, and with this trailer being so exciting, Inception is now officially the most anticipated movie of the summer for me.

Chatting with Chopras

Found a pretty good interview of Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Anupama Chopra. I quite enjoyed reading it. Awesome couple. :)

Here. Read it.

For those who don't recognize the names: VVC is the director of Parinda, 1942-A Love Story and Eklavya, among others.. and produced Munnabhai movies, 3 idiots, Parineeta etc. Anupama Chopra, his wife, is a movie critic/writer who has written some well-reviewed books about hindi movies.

De Palma Woos Abrams' Bird?

One of my favorite directors, Brad Bird (based on just 2 great movies and another decent one, but what amazing movies they were!!), is now going to direct Mission: Impossible IV. I don't know what to think. Perhaps that it can only be good for M:I franchise and give them their best movie? After all, this is exactly the situation we were in when it was announced that Christopher Nolan will take on Batman reboot project; and see what HE did there!

There's still a little disappointment because his dream project 1906 seems to be on hold forever. But perhaps directing an M:I movie will help him get the enormous funding he needs for 1906. We'll see how things turn out next year.

news via empireonline.

Google Chrome

Following changed appearance of Google search, the next thing I read today was the release of the new beta version of Google Chrome which boasts of highly improved browsing speed besides other new features.
Here's the link for the original blogpost and here's the video for the crazy experiments they did to showcase the (literally) lightning fast Chrome:




Enjoy!!!

Your mind is the Scene of the Crime.

New poster for Inception is here, along with a pretty intriguing synopsis.

"In the film, Dom Cobb (DiCaprio) is a skilled thief, the absolute best in the dangerous art of extraction, stealing valuable secrets from deep within the subconscious during the dream state, when the mind is at its most vulnerable. Cobb's rare ability has made him a coveted player in this treacherous new world of corporate espionage, but it has also made him an international fugitive and cost him everything he has ever loved. Now Cobb is being offered a chance at redemption. One last job could give him his life back but only if he can accomplish the impossible—inception. Instead of the perfect heist, Cobb and his team of specialists have to pull off the reverse: their task is not to steal an idea but to plant one. If they succeed, it could be the perfect crime. But no amount of careful planning or expertise can prepare the team for the dangerous enemy that seems to predict their every move. An enemy that only Cobb could have seen coming."

Courtesy: Comingsoon.net

"The Empire on which the sun never sets"

As you know, the title phrase of this post refers to the global empires set up by Europeans between the 15th and the 19th centuries.
Imperialism or European colonisation was heralded by the Spanish and Portuguese explorers in the early 15th century, a period known as the "Age of Discovery". We have all heard of Columbus and Magellan; there were many many more of them who spread out to discover "new lands"...the Americas, African coast, Middle east, India, eastern Asia and even Australia. Soon after, they were joined by the British, the French and the Dutch in direct competition in exploration (they actually started as pirate attacks on Spanish fleets loaded with riches obtained from the new lands...but soon they developed their own expeditions and settlements).
The Spanish colonialization was primarily for bolstering their economic status by trade and religious conversions; on the other hand, the British colonization was mainly aimed at "making new societies" as per the whims of the colonists and then began the enslavement of "native savages". British Imperialism, as it turned out, flourished over all others especially after Napolean's downfall and its span across the globe ensured that the sun was always shining on at least one of its numerous territories.....!!
Decolonization began in earnest only in the 20th century. This interesting animated link here shows the rise and fall of British Empire. Over the hundreds of years of colonization, millions of people moved to and from the British colonies. There have been pros and cons of this Imperialization; on one hand spread of technology early on was one of the advantages, on the other, tension and discontent between the native and non-native settlers continues till date.

So now you may ask...why this discussion on the history of colonization, especially British Imperialism :)
Well, yesterday I watched this movie called Pocahontas (animated Disney movie) where the story backdrop is an English governor who is seeking gold and riches in the "new land" and is ready to sacrifice the savages inhabiting the land which is now "His".
What the discussion between me and my friend led to was......... human settlements evolved and developed at several places simultaneously across the globe... why was it then that the European settlements progressed and developed much faster than the others?? The civilizations may have arose across several parts of the world and grew too, but technological development was much faster here which empowered them to dominate the world....why was it so? I have not yet been able to find an answer to that yet. So....help!!!! :) and if you think that I have got some points wrong...feel free to point them out.

Why SSMTWTF

Repetition of a post after four year (OMG!!! dint know that I am blogging since then) from my blog

There are a lot of things in life we take for granted and hardly think about its origin or reason. We rarely think that at some stage of history obvious looking things were a point of research or debate. Sequence of days in a week is one such thing about which I never thought. Why it should be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and so on? Why not any other sequence? Few days back I was reading a book about Indian astronomy and found the answer.

There are five visible planets in the sky - Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury, and in older days Sun and Moon were also categorised as planets. So there were total 7 visible planets. (Navgrah concept in Indian astrology includes Rahu and Ketu, which are not physical objects but imaginary points, intersection points of Moon's orbit with the plane of Earth's revolution around Sun.)

Now arrange all the 7 planets in decreasing order of period (time taken to make a complete circle with reference to stars as seen from the earth)- Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury and Moon.

Each day has 24 hours. Assume that each hour has one ruler planet. Suppose that today's first hour ruler planet is Saturn, second hour ruler will be Jupiter, Third will be Mars, fourth will be Sun and so on. First hour ruler decides the day. Hence today is Saturday.

Repeating the above mentioned sequence we see that 22nd hour ruler is again Saturn, 23rd is Jupiter, 24th is Mars and 25th will be Sun. Now 25th hour is 1st hour of tomorrow, so it is Sunday tomorrow. Similarly tomorrow's 22nd hour is ruled by Sun, 23rd by Mercury, 24th by Venus and 25th by Moon. So day after tomorrow is Monday.

Wow.... its simply amazing to learn the way sequence of weekday has been setup.

Zimbabwe!!!

Courtesy: Wikipedia

Smiling lips and singing hearts

I recently finished reading "Musicophilia" by Oliver Sacks, and I thought that a condition mentioned in one of the chapters is worth posting about here. It is called "Williams Syndrome".

In WS, certain anatomical features are underdeveloped or faulty. This includes certain facial features (you'll see them having unusually wide-eyed expressions), certain heart and artery muscles etc. More importantly, perhaps, specific parts of the brain are highly underdeveloped, while others are either overdeveloped or at least unusually dominate because the others parts aren't developed properly. The parts that are underdeveloped are the ones that have an important role in numerical/logical thinking and spatial sense. The parts that are often overdeveloped or seem to dominate are the ones that have roles in linguistic skills, social skills and apparently emotional impact of music (thats where "musicophilia" comes in).

So, people with WS are highly gregarious... extremely friendly and social with everyone.. they almost completely lack any social inhibitions, so that they seem to be completely comfortable in the presence of almost anyone, regardless of whether they are familiar with them. Moreover, they actually seem to enjoy such interactions and seem to be unusually clued-in to the emotional cues in other peoples behavior/facial expressions etc.

Their linguistic skills are almost always highly developed, making them highly articulate. This, along with their friendly/social nature means that you'll always find them having long, extended conversations with almost anyone. On the other hand, they find it extremely difficult to do even the most simple math problems. You could be talking on phone with someone who has WS and probably won't realize that anything is unusual (other than the person being unusually charming and friendly) until you ask him/her to tell you what 3+5 is. Chances are, they'll fumble through the problem and will probably only guess an answer, which will probably be wrong anyway. Lack of a normally developed spatial sense means that they find it hard to work with even simple geometric shapes (like the toys that toddlers play with) and can hardly draw even simple things like a triangle or a circle. In short, as Sacks says, they are almost anti-autistic in their characteristics.

Sacks talks about some people having WS that he has met. There are really interesting stories here. e.g. when one little girl's mom told her not to talk to strangers, she replied with "but there are no strangers, there are only friends"

Another girl he met (she was about 7-8 years of age) was so clued in to other people's facial features and was so completely uninhibited in front of strangers that she surprised him by sensing his slight diffidence and said promptly something like  "don't be shy! I'll make some muffins for you". This, from a girl, who had never met Sacks before. Sacks had gone to her home to see her and was probably only about as inhibited as any of us would be when we go to someone's house for the first time (Well, some of us are probably more inhibited than others... my diffidence would probably be easy to sense for almost anyone. :P )

Anyway, so she went ahead and got some muffins for him. In some time, Sacks asked her (perhaps after covering the plate, though I am not sure) to guess how many muffins there were in the plate. She guessed, with some effort, "3". Then he asked her to go ahead and count them. She tried and counted them one by one and came up with 8. There were actually 13.

Another girl, a 15 year old, had an IQ of 49 - quite typical of people with WS. So, her average mental level was of around a 7-8 year old kid i.e. about a student of 2nd standard. But that doesn't mean, as I said before, that you'd be able to tell that by just talking to her. It's not as if they seem "retarted" in any sense. math/logic/spatial sense don't work properly, but they are exceptional in linguistics. They are highly articulate, which makes things difficult when they are in new company (difficult for them, sure, but also difficult for these new people). After all, none of us expect someone to be that articulate, YET having mental problems

Take this 15 year old girl with IQ 49. They asked her to tell them about what an elephant is. And her response, quoted below, is amazing in its detail. It is almost as if she is telling a story rather than answering a simple question :

"And what an elephant is, it is one of the animals. And what the elephant does, it lives in the jungle. It can also live in the zoo. And what it has, it has long gray ears, fan ears, ears that can blow in the wind. It has a long trunk that can pick up grass, or pick up hay… If they are in a bad mood it can be terrible…If the elephant gets mad it could stomp; it could charge. Sometimes elephants can charge. They have big long tusks. They can damage a car… It could be dangerous. When they're in a pinch, when they're in a bad mood it can be terrible. You don't want an elephant as a pet. You want a cat or a dog or a bird…"

So, to put it mildly, she knows something about what an elephant is. The amazing part is, after this, when they asked her to draw an elephant, this is what she drew -

copyright: Ursula Bellugi, the Salk Institute

(The labels were put by someone else to help others see what she might've been trying to make. She only made the figure.) Clearly, she knows about the fan like ears and tusks etc, but she can't draw any of those details at all.

The connection with music is pretty interesting actually.. all of them are strongly sensitive and emotionally attached to music. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that all of them are very good at playing music or singing (though a lot of them are). This is, as Sacks points out, quite unlike musical savants. Musical savants are almost finished articles. They will dazzle the whole world by their exceptional musical talents, yet, they might not necessarily derive as much pleasure out of music as a normal person around them. WS patients, however, invariably feel very strongly towards music.

This strong emotional connection to music, in combination with their completely uninhibited nature means that you'll find them merrily singing or whistling or playing music or swaying to music a lot of times. if you are walking on the road and they suddenly hear you even humming something they'll just smile broadly and will likely start singing along with joy. Some parents/guardians of a lot of WS patients decided to get a lot of together for a camp. Sacks describes what he saw at one of these camps and it sounds amazing. 15-20 people with WS - most, but not all, very young - sit together and talk to each other as if everyone is part of a close family. Talk about everything under the sun. And then, suddenly, someone starts humming and everyone joins in.. Some play their instruments, while others jump in and harmonize. Some just let their bodies follow the rhythm. I'd say that it is pretty sad to know about this, but it's really difficult to feel that way after reading about their joy in these camps or, indeed, their connection to music.