Singapore Travelogue: The Departure

(Posted on behalf of Kumar)

The flight was scheduled to depart at 11PM, and I was at the airport at 8PM, the requisite 3 hours in advance. I believe it was overkill. There were 2 people in line ahead of me (travelling by business class has its advantages), and security had a separate line for business class (I did not know till now – not having travelled in business class since 9/11). I whiled away the 2 hours in the waiting lounge, with last minute conf-calls to the teams, goodnights to the kids and wife, and chatting with a co-passenger. All in all, the waiting lounge was very good, with the expected supply of requisite amounts of C2H5OH imported from different regions of the world, and vegetarian food.

The flight! The flight was a vey different experience. I have traveled business class a few times cross-continent and once across the Pacific. But these seats and this plane are somewhat new. First, I was warned in the lounge that this is some kind of “first of its kind”. I paid no attention. Once inside, I instantly realized, and was incessantly reminded, that this is the only flight in the US that flies to Singapore – all business class! There are no other types of seats!! It has about 200 business class passengers, and no one else!!

The seats are all equipped with flatbeds. In other words, these are like Indian Railways’ Two-Tier AC berths next to the windows (topologically speaking only; the analogy stops there). Singapore Airlines brings ergonomics and hedonism mixed into conveniently sized goblets of ambrosia, served delicately by the dainty Singaporeans, right at your flatbed side.
There are only 4 seats (1-2-1) in the entire width of the plane (2-seaters are intended for couples, I guess) and I got my own window-and-aisle seat; the most common format is 2-3-2 (in most other classes). The nap on the flatbed reminded me of travelling in the Indian Railway berths, adding a cradle like or hammock-like cadence to the experience. All in all, I must say it was a very desirable and different experience! There was a US-Electric supply available for my laptop, and a small compartment to put away accouterments. A three course meal was served as soon as we were 30K feet up (almost as tall as the Mount Everest, or, 1/3 the height of Mt. Olympus as Sidharta’s quick repartee would remind me). [Well, actually, Sidharta would be referring to Olympus Mons, Mars' mega-volcano, but who's counting? -- Dawn] There were three choices of vegetarian – reminded me of old days when they used to ask – do you want HVML or AVML (Hindu versus Asian). The meal, Indian Vegetarian meal (I guess should be IVML) was reasonable. Not at the same level as I would have expected – it was still packed, not prepared on board, although served in plates instead of packages. Now, you may say preparing on board for 200 people is unreasonable at best. That is correct, and they knew it. I was just trying to see how far I can imagine! If we can accomplish that, these planes would be like flying cruise ships. After the meal, I went to bed listening to Mahler’s first Symphony 3rd movement.

The trip is a non-stop night of 20 hours. There is no Sun seen in the trip, and hence, you break it up as “nights”, “mornings” and “daytimes” as you wish. After a few hours of sleep, I woke up, pretended that it is morning, and asked for breakfast – served again in style. I tried to sleep a little more and then got myself ready for the upcoming meetings by studying all the presentations, papers and such.

Kumar's Singapore Travelogue: Prelude

(Posted on behalf of Kumar)

Seven years after a previous non-stop long-haul from the East coast of the US to the Pacific Rim (PAC Rim), I left this time to a tinier country, nay a city state, and possibly on a more daunting business mission. Whereas the previous trip was to educate through case studies some key businesses in Japan on Rational Software tools, this trip after 7 years was to understand, analyze and publish an architectural review of a major software platform my company is developing; very different purposes, people & destinations.

What a change can seven years bring! My daughter was barely 3.5 years old then, and now a flourishing eleven with the ability to understand and absorb information, science math or languages -- as rapidly as a black hole sucks matter! My son was barely 3.5 months old then, and now has amassed enough knowledge to keep me on toes while he professes his faith in a long-lost sea creature in a certain lake (the infamous Loch Ness monster) or, lectures on types of baleen whales or types of volcanoes – all in one fell swoop. The family cousin was yet to be born, whereas now she can bellow mavayya for the entire suburb! There are other large-scale changes as well[1].

This is a memoir [2]of my trip to Singapore, and yet again, the pre-teen in me jumped up for another adventure! Adventure borne by the audacious intent of (or maybe hubris?) being able to observe an entire society, culture and country in a matter of 2 weeks, and summarize the observations as if they were fully accurate. But, again, without adventure, without risk and without a tad bit of hubris, nothing big has ever been accomplished[3]

A minor digression is warranted about the pre-teen that jumps out of me every so often; 1973 is my most favorite year in life. Dad had just returned from Canada in the early summer, along with Mom & Sister all of whom disappeared for a couple of years in the pursuit of his Ph.D. The reunion, as exhilarating and fun-filled as it was, it was nearly not as revolutionary as the post-reunions track of years - a track that as I climbed more, I could see more. He achieved this by negating everything I believed in – by saying “don’t believe anything until you have a proof” – starting with religion, caste, math and everything I knew. This led to a forceful and relentless pursuit of roots of any topic I endeavor to understand – because I could no longer be persuaded by mere assurances of mere mortals. I needed a proof[4]! This attitude has benefits of any exploration and discovery, but the pains of having to spend enormous energy to explore and discover. Additionally, it required years of practice to refrain from commenting on other peoples’ un-explored and unexamined opinions. It is this well nurtured zeal for discovery of roots that makes me what I am: a constant skeptic in pursuit of knowledge so I can continuously correct myself, and defend myself or others in an intellectual judo.

This story of Singapore, therefore, is another discovery or exploration to achieve a smattering of understanding.

Hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing. Don’t believe everything I say; discover for yourself!

[1] For example, Japan is no longer the pre-eminent manufacturer; China is. India is no longer an exotic curiosity with snake charmers, but the destination of millions of dollars and workers with a giant sucking sound of flow of capital from US!
[2] Hopefully my daughter would read it with 1% the zeal, rapture and ardor she has for “Crack of Dawn”, a novel she’s been reading of late. [editor (Dawn)'s note: Make that "Breaking Dawn" -- Kumar is well known for forgetting details that are beneath his dignity]
[3] As Hardy puts it in his memoir “A mathematician’s apology”, (paraphrase) a math professor has to exaggerate the importance of his subject in the firmament of knowledge, and his own importance among other explorers of the firmament.
[4] As Plato and Erdos after him said, Proofs come directly from God’s book.

Putting the Potty to Good Use

Now here is the wave (or perhaps I should say flush) of the future!

The San Antonio Water System is apparently recapturing methane generated during sewage treatment, and selling it to an energy company, to the tune of $250,000 per year.

Now that's probably a drop in the bucket to an organization with a $300,000,000 or so budget, but let's think about it. What were they doing with that methane before? Burning it off. So why not get a free $250K, and use the gas for something useful?

I wonder how our town can get in on the action.

Mary Anning Sells What?

Random bit of trivia for the day:

Bet you never thought too much about the tongue-twister "She sells sea shells by the sea shore".

Well...there's more to it than meets the eye.

Through an odd series of link clickthroughs I found out today that this tongue twister is probably a reference to Mary Anning (1799-1847), discoverer of the Plesiosaur, among other things.

Mary Anning was apparently taught to collect fossils off the Dorsetshire coast by her father. He died when she was about 10, leaving the family close to destitute. She managed to bring in some money by continuing to collect and sell fossils. As time went on, she became quite an expert, eventually, in 1821, discovering the first Plesiosaur.

(We're not in) The Age of Reason

Inspired by the previously mentioned biography, I recently finished reading Thomas Paine's Age of Reason, written partly 1792-3 and partly around 1802.

I loved it!

It is a juicy, incisive, cogent, persuasive argument against organized religion, especially Bible-based religion, in favor of Deism.

Paine's argument is roughly as follows:

1) There can be no such thing as a written "revealed" Word of God. Because

• a) Human language intrinsically limits it -- E.g. If it is "revealed" in Hebrew, it loses something in the translation to English

• b) Written records are prone to changes, intentional or accidental

• c) Most importantly, short of the revelation being delivered personally to every individual, it must be treated as hearsay. And as hearsay, a believer would have to rely on the integrity of the message he or she receives. I.e. they would need to trust

• i) The person to whom the Word of God was revealed

• ii) The person who wrote down the revealed Word of God (which may or may not be the same as i)

• iii) All the people in intervening generations who had to pass the Word of God down correctly and unaltered (and translation is a particularly sticky point here)
  
  If you lose faith at any of these points, you must call into question your faith in the Word.
  

• d) And as a minor point, but one that I think was particularly insightful for a man of the 1700's: What about all the people who live on other planets or in other solar systems? Wouldn't the Word of God have to apply to them, too? But all of our candidate Words are pretty Earth-bound.

2) Ok...so you still think there can be a written revealed Word of God. Sorry but the Bible ain't it. Let's look at 1c more closely

• a) What reason do you have to trust the person to whom the Word of God was revealed? You can't possibly know him personally, nowadays. But ok...you trust him for whatever reason.

• b) Notwithstanding your trust in the person to whom it was revealed, what reason do you have to trust the person who wrote down the word?

• i) In most cases the person who wrote down the word was not the same as the person to whom the word was revealed. In some places this is openly acknowledged (as in the case of the Gospels), while in others Paine demonstrates that the purported authors cannot possibly be the actual authors, e.g. due to their referring to events that happened long after their death. He is particularly emphatic that Moses cannot be the author of the first 5 books of the old Testament that were attributed to him.

• ii) Paine also demonstrates that large swaths of the Bible were written down hundreds of years after the events they record took place. Plenty of time to get the Word or the facts wrong, even if the authors weren't actively trying to put on a political spin. Which they were.

• iii) If you accept that the Word of God must be literally true, then you must reject at very least portions of the Bible. It is absolutely full of logical and historical inconsistencies, so if you choose to believe one portion, you are obliged to accept that another portion is mistaken.

• c) Use your brain. Does this stuff sound like something that a benevolent, omnipotent God would want you to think about Him?

• i) Does Satan really have so much power that he can win over all humanity without God sacrificing a son? Doesn't that kind of make Satan more powerful than God?

• ii) Does a benevolent God really condone (or demand) collective punishments? Like making all of us suffer for Eve's mistake? Or like the assorted glorified genocides that involve gruesomely wiping out whole populations, including innocent babies?

• iii) Does an omnipotent God really need to resort to implausible devices (such as a virgin birth) that none of us can verify?

3) Ok, so you agree that the Bible isn't literally the Word of God, but you think it's divinely inspired, a good document to live by that sets a good moral example. I don't think so.

• a) Yes there are some good moral precepts in there, but they're mostly common sense, and are certainly common to other non-Bible-based religions, as well as most human societies. But follow these, by all means.

• b) There are some atrocious moral examples in there, too. Like the genocides mentioned above. It is simply more plausible to see these passages as after-the-fact self-aggrandizing historical revisionism written by the victors, than to continue to assert that they are divinely inspired and twist our notion of God to accept such injustice.

• c) If you're after good documents to live by with good moral examples, there are plenty of them, starting with some that are older than many good parts of the Bible (certainly than the New Testament)

4) Science is the true road to God

• a) If you want to know about God, don't rely on written words. Just look at natural law.

• i) It doesn't suffer the limitations of language -- it doesn't get lost in translation, it can't be altered maliciously or accidentally by humans

• ii) It is consistent with the notion of a benevolent God, and doesn't encourage us to commit genocide against each other

• iii) It doesn't require us to believe in it "just because I said so" regardless of implausibility - it is patently true

• b) It's much more awe inspiring to study nature than to take a load of nonsense "on faith".

This is a poor, deflated summary of the work. I couldn't possibly do justice to the sheer logic and entertaining presentation of the piece, not to mention the detailed analysis of Biblical events. I'm no Bible scholar, but the bits that I am familiar with jibe well with Paine's analysis, and I must say that I have generally felt the same horror and incredulity at the events described.

Paine's analysis had one extra point of interest for me. As a computer security nut, I noticed that many of his criticisms of the credibility of the Bible are precisely those we worry about in information security. How reliable is the information in your database? No more reliable than

• The information that goes in, in the first place (the guy to whom the Word was revealed)
• The people who manage to modify it (the guy who writes down the Word)
  
• Legitimately, in the course of their duties (the guy who really believes it)
  
• Maliciously, e.g. "crackers", disgruntled employees, etc. (the guy who puts a political spin on the Word)
  
• The programs that manipulate it (translation, copying, etc.)

My favorite books of 2007

Here are some of the books I enjoyed most this year, in no particular order:

1. Wicked by Gregory Maguire.
   
2. The Boleyn Inheritance by Phillipa Gregory
3. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Also enjoyed, but in a more qualified way:

1. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. An exploration of many kinds of social boundaries, told from the point of view of the ultimate fence-straddler -- a genetic hermaphrodite.
   
2. The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl. It is similar in flavor to The Alienist. It concerns a psychopath who is systematically inflicting the tortures of each circle of Dante's Inferno on targets that have personally offended him. Several distinguished poets and writers in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Dante Club" are the only experts who know enough about Dante to recognize and anticipate the pattern, to catch him. I loved most of this story and except for the fizzle out ending, it would have made it to my first list.
3. Harry Potter 7. An enjoyable page turner, as always, but longer and more rambling than necessary (again, as usual). And I found the ending a bit too kiddie
4. The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory. A fictionalization of the life of Catherine of Aragon. Gives historical perspective, in an entertaining way, as usual.
   
5. The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh. A very interesting story about the marginal existence of people living on the remote Sundurban Islands of India. Writing quality varies considerably, and there is a fairly high proportion of melodrama, which brings the book down to my second tier list, but I do recommend it.
6. Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie
   

I highly recommend that you stay away from:

1. The Darwin Conspiracy by John Darnton
2. The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl -- this was a big disappointment considering how much I liked The Dante Club.
3. Fury by Salman Rushdie
   

The House of Mirth

I just finished listening to a wonderful recording of The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (narrated by Barbara Caruso other of whose recordings I have also enjoyed greatly...especially Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH).

I'd never read any Edith Wharton before but I must say that now I'm planning to.

This story of turn of the (20th) century New York concerns Miss Lily Bart, a "poor, miserable, marriageable girl" who is accustomed to the lap of luxury. Think of it as a Jane Austen set up, but much, much darker.

When we first meet Lily, she is scheming to marry wealthy, dull Mr. Percy Gryce. With her beauty, charm, and wiles, it should be a shoe-in. But just as she is about to clinch the deal, she ruins everything, by realizing how much more she enjoys being with an interesting man. Whom she doesn't want to marry because he can't support her in the style to which she has become accustomed.

Lily has been a poor dependent of wealthy friends and relations for the past 10 years or so. As her name suggests, she has been brought up in wealth as a fragile, ornamental young lady, dependent on all the resources of a hothouse to fully blossom. That is until she is thrust into poverty by her father's economic ruin and death. She lives by making herself useful in various ways to the pleasure-seeking leisure class ladies in her circle, and so, acquires the both the tastes and expensive needs of associating with the rich. Because of her extraordinary beauty and charm she has never lacked suitors. But here lies the problem -- she's just too picky. And like many beautiful, charming young women, she finds that her assets also make her a target for many kinds of insult and victimization.

We watch as one scheme after another that she formulates for her economic preservation falls apart, due to malice, bad luck, misunderstanding, lack of communication or arbitrary social rules that hamper young women. Though some of the factors that contribute to Lily's plight would no longer be relevant today, I think most of them would. But what makes the book so powerful is that Lily's growing backbone is what causes the pillars of her world to crumble, and we weep that her strength is not properly valued.

At the beginning I thought I would hate the story...Miss Bart seems at first such an unsympathetic, spoiled, conniving little gold-digger. But it didn't take long to get me interested. And by the end...well...I am not, in general, a crier, but I must say, I did tear up. I loved every bit of the book except the ending, which I disagree with. Without giving a spoiler, all I can say is that that I think Edith Wharton wrote the ending that Lily would have wanted, but I as a reader found it unsatisfying. I wanted more poetic justice.

I will add that on the strength of my taste for the book, I borrowed the 2000 movie of the same name, starring Gillian Anderson. Don't bother. While it is fairly faithful to the dialog of the book, and the costumes are nice, the acting is pretty bad. And they made some fairly critical plot changes for no better reason that I can see than to save money by cutting down on the number of roles.

My contribution to the Halloween Spirit

For your amusement (or my own) I posted a picture puzzle to allstarpuzzles.com

It's pretty tough :-)

Thomas Paine: Someone you should get to know

I just read a fairly painful biography of Thomas Paine (Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of the Modern Nations by Craig Nelson). However, despite the technical difficulty of getting through the text, I'm really glad I stuck it out, just for the sake of getting to know about this amazing individual.

I will be the first to admit that my knowledge of American History is shamefully thin. So forgive me if I go mushy about something everyone else already knows. I've decided they should assign Common Sense as required reading in high school American History, and I'm looking forward to reading Rights of Man.

Paine was a revolutionary among revolutionaries, a visionary among visionaries. In a community of extraordinary enlightenment thinkers, he was able to surpass all of their abilities to break out of the prejudices of the age.

This is a man who could see past monarchy in a time when it was taken for granted. Not so special...all of those revolutionaries did. But unlike those more commonplace icons like Washington and Jefferson and Hamilton, etc., he also championed universal suffrage (i.e. not property-based voting rights), abolitionism, feminism, something like Social Security and a one-time grant to young adults to start out in life. And he got himself into a lot of trouble for advocating Deism as opposed to the more narrow organized Christianity.

The breadth of his knowledge and vision is mind-boggling. He designed working bridges, wrote on economics, political science, religion, law. In his own time his writings were both blockbuster best-sellers and banned on two continents. Though he could have gotten rich on his published works, he deliberately refused royalties, in order to reduce the printing costs and make his work accessible to all. He was an active participant in both the American and French Revolutions (and was even a legislator in France until things got really nutty, when he was locked up for 8 months, escaping execution by a sheer accident).

His advanced thinking got him many friends in the most advanced circles. But his intellectual honesty also ended up alienating many of those same friends, as they could not or did not care to understand his meanings. In addition, interested parties published twisted interpretations of his works, which often created violent mobs against them.

As a society we nominally espouse many of the principles first set forth by Thomas Paine. But if he were to come back today and state the same things he did then, I suspect he'd still be controversial, misunderstood and condemned. Can you imagine anyone today proposing that every young adult should, as a right, be officially handed, let's say, $10,000 so that they could start a business or go to college or do whatever they needed to, to become a productive member of society?

I found this particular biography (which I actually listened to on CD) very hard to follow. It roughly follows the major chunks of his life: early life in England to age 37 in 1774; participation in the American revolution; return to Enlightenment gentleman's life in England; participation in the French Revolution; and return to America. But within these chunks, the text jumps around a lot in time, and not for any good reason, as far as I can see. The jumps seemed to me more like a stream of consciousness rather than in the interests of following any clear themes. The one thing that I found extremely valuable about the book is that it quotes liberally from Paine's works and correspondence, which really gave a good feel for his ideas and his historical context. Amazon reviewers gave the book 4 1/2 stars, though, so maybe my frustration is just because I generally don't read history books.

As one tidbit of trivia, after reading some of this material, I realized that there are several references to Paine's works in the preamble to The MTA Song (which you can listen to here)

I'm adding Thomas Paine to my list of people I'd like to meet, if they ever invent a time machine.

Labor Day Greetings

I was cleaning out my email spam folder when I noticed something surprising. I had several spam emails with the subject "Happy Labor Day" and "Labor Day e-Card".

Now, do I actually believe that the emails actually had something to do with Labor Day? Of course not. Did I even click through to the links in the emails, to see what they were really trying to sell me? Certainly not.

What I found interesting, though, was the fact that some spammer actually thought that Labor Day was something that would get a victim's attention. Spam subjects often address deep human fears: Body part size. Accessibility of prescription drugs. Finding Love. And now...labor.

I did a whois search at Sam Spade for the URLs that were linked in the message, and it looks like they lead back to US service providers. In other words, the originators of this particular spam do not seem to be in Eastern Europe or Nigeria or whatever. This would appear to be home grown, culturally-sensitive spam.

Apparently spammers are betting that Americans are starting to recognize that their labor is something to worry about or maybe even celebrate. Why else spam about it?

You might answer my observation by pointing out that spammers simply thought that people, having a day off, would be more likely to be on their computers and responding to spam. But I don't recall ever receiving a Memorial Day greeting or a July 4th greeting or even a New Year's greeting. Labor Day seems to be something special that spammers are guessing would attract people's attention. In my books, that's a good sign.