sneaker.org

I’ll be on the road for the next few days enroute to Nova Scotia, Canada driving through most of New England. I’ll be stopping by in Vermont to meet an old high school friend at Dartmouth and then taking the ferry from Bar Harbor, Maine, over to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. On my way back I’ll stop by Boston and visit my friend at MIT in Boston… get some great grub at Penang and Toscy’s and then head on back to the ‘burgh. Here’s a visual…

So needless to say, my Net access will be limited and I won’t be writing as often. But I promise to put up a few more pictures when I’m back!

Honestly, I really don’t remember seeing the movie based on this book, that is why I picked it up. Figured it would be good to listen to the book in it’s original form. But it turned out that I must have seen the movie at some point or seen a similar movie as the beginning of the book sounded very familiar and the descriptions and even the names of the characters sounded familiar. I guess I’d have to see the movie again to really recall if I’d seen it before!

Anyhow, on to the book… Susanna Kaysen’s description of her time spent in a mental hospital is definitely intriguing. Her description makes one question the line between sanity and insanity. Between reality and psychosis. The descriptions of the characters at the hospital is first class. Their behavior, their qirks, their likes and dislikes as seen through the author’s eyes exemplifies the flailings of the mind. The experience of the author and her fellow “patients” at the “hospital” really makes one question the virtues of psychotherapy.

Her dissection of her diagnosis of having a borderline personality disorder as defines in the Diagnosis and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) published by the American Psychiatric Association really makes one wonder as to whether there is any merit what to ever to psychiatry and especially to getting a “diagnosis” based on statistics and perceptions of the person’s behavior. To some extent the lines the author quoted from the DSM diagnosis did not seem to far of from the open-ended horoscopes or reading of the shamans, astrologers and psychics which are always open to interpretation with very little objectivity.

My biggest complaint with the book was that it lacked continuity. I guess my bias for structure and flow impeded my ability to simply go with the flow of the authors words. I tried to tie the ends together and bridge the when sometimes it’s better not to even attempt it. Though I liked the book, unfortunately, it didn’t move me as deeply as I would have expected. My expectations were probably too high. So the most I can give this book is a partial thumbs up.

I’ve always liked Robin Cook’s books. I guess it is because I always seem to learn something from them. I like books that I learn things from, yet they are not completely bone-dry and academic in nature. A book which makes you learn without you realizing it is definitely up my alley. Robin Cook’s style seems to lend itself to that since he is a medical doctor by training that is writing fiction, but based on real life events and real life science and medicine.

In Vector, Robin Cook does an excellent job of depicting the dangers of bio-terrorism. I already wrote about this is the writings section of the site. Though the story is somewhat predictable, the author has done a great job of providing vivid descriptions in the book which truly make it come to life. The one pitfall was that too many things seemed to just fall into place in order to help the protagonist get to the bottom of the investigation. It was borderline unrealisic how the coincidences played out, but everything is still possible.

Overall, the book made for a enertaining and thought-provoking story which deserves a thumbs up since I pretty much listened to all 11 CDs (over 800 minutes) in a single marathon session!

I’ve been listening to the radio and hearing more and more noise about the Taliban in Afghanistan… just the stories that one can find on the Taliban are enough to make one wonder…

• Photos document destruction of Afghan Buddhas - CNN, March 12, 2001
  
• Taleban move to make Afghan Hindus wear ID Badges - CNN, May 22, 2001
  
• Taliban Orders Foreign Women to Stop Driving in Afghanistan - News.com, May 31, 2001
  
• Taliban kisses goodbye to lipstick, movies - CNN, July 19, 2001
  
• Internet latest target for Taliban - CNN, August 26, 2001
  
• Afghanistan bars Web use - News.com, August 27, 2001
  

The articles mentioned above are just the tip of the ice-berg. CNN has an excellent special report on the Taliban, which is really worth looking at to get a sense of the insanity that still prevails in some parts of the world.

Their “Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice” has got to be the most ridiculous form of beaurocracy that I have ever heard of. In fact it puts the word beaurocracy to shame. Because this is not just government meddling in people’s live, but it is a clear and outright suppression of basic human rights. Come on… banning the Net? How can anyone live without the Net!! …okay, bad joke, but seriously…

What is happening in Afghanistan is akin to what happened in Germany prior to the World War II. In fact, in some ways it seems even more extreme. but since Afghanistan is one of those countries whose economy has been decimated over the past 20 years of stupidity and insanity that has prevailed in that nation and therefor it has little to no impact on the global economy, you don’t hear much about it at all. There is all this talk about human rights abuse in China, but very little with regards to what is happening in Afghanistan. Because China has an impact on the global economy and Afghanistan doesn’t matter.

Unimaginable that in this day and age, things like this can still happen. But then again, if Adolf Hitler could convince so many people to follow his screwed up belief system, what’s preventing some Islamic fundamentalist in Afghanistan from doing the same?

The book I listened to over the past weekend (Vector by Robin Cooke) was a work of fiction based on Bio-terrorism. At the end of the book the authour’s note made some pointed observations about the threat of N.B.Cs - Nuclear, Biological or Chemical weapons. Each one has the power to literally annihilate huge masses of people, animals, plants and pretty much the immediate world around us. It’s indeed stuff that makes you sit up and wonder.

In the examples of real-life examples of bio-terrorism that the author mentioned were those initiated by followers of Rajneesh - salmonella poisoning of salad bars in Oregon which affected 751 people in 1994, infectious muffins causing dysentery in 1996 and the infamous Sarin gas attack by the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan in 1995.

What is scary about Nuclear, Bilological and Chemical warfare is not the sheer power of mass destruction that it posesses, but the fact that the knowledge of these weapons of mass destruction is accessible to people who are so screwed up in their heads so as to use it for terroristic activities. Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City is said to have been incited by the FBI raid on Waco Texas. The bombing of the US embassy’s in Kenya by Islamic fundamentalist and militant group led by Osama Bin Laden. So there is more than enugh evidence of people who believe that killing others in the name of their religious or fundamentalist beliefs is justified. I shudder at the thought of any such people using biological/chemical weapons instead of the conventional methods they have employed thus far.

In a recent conversation with a friend of mine, I remember passing a remark that these days I often wonder whether Darwinism has been reversed especially when it comes to human beings. Innocent people are killed by psychopaths. The birth rate in uneducated masses is significantly higher than that amongst those who are educated.

Bilogolocal and chemical warfare is indeed a real threat and as suggested by the author in his closing note, the only prevention against such attacks is counter-intelligence. Once again information becomes the key.

One of the characters in the book had a quote something along the lines that the threat of bio-terrorism is so real that the question is not if, but when it will happen…

For those of you who remember seeing the very cool sci-fi flick Short Circuit you will probably remember No. 5’s plea for input. Well, that’s what I feel like saying too. Coz. all you folks come take a look, but you don’t really talk back. So tell me what you like and what you don’t like or even what you think.. email me or leave a comment. Malfunction. Need Input. Need Input!

Oh, and BTW, sneaker.org got listed on blog of the day for August 26th, 2001. Thanks to Arthur Coddington for the nomination.

I recently finished listening to a novel (Vector by Robin Cook… yes, it’s fiction, but it’s based on real events that happened and extrapolates on what could happen…) in which all the pieces of the puzzle just seemed to fall into place. The book was a great, and I’ll have a full review shortly in the Rants and Raves section for it; but the thing that I wanted to address here was just the way events seem to line up.

Conicidence is a curious thing. There are so many circumstances and situations that we are presented with which very often makes us all wonder what-f that wasn’t what happened? What if you didn’t accept that job and then you wouldn’t have been in that city and then you wouldn’t have met the person you’re with and things would be completely different. Right? The different paths that our life can take based on the simple decisions we make everyday is indeed fascinating. Reminds me of those old Hardy Boys books that I used to read as a kid which allowed you to choose your own path to the ending (Make your own mystery?). I used to enjoy figuring out ways to read every possible scenario and combination! Even till today when I think of depth first searches and breadth first searches in trees, I always think of the mystery books since that’s where I figure out how to traverse a path of a tree with multiple options.

The difference is that in those book, I could always go back and take the path that was previous not chosen and then see where that would lead. Unfortunately, we don’t have that luxury in life though. In life we make that decision and then that’s the one we have to go with. All we can do is simply wonder, what-if we had chosen a different path. (I’ve written previously about having no regrets, I still stand firm on that, but the what-ifs of coincidence are intriguing nonetheless). In the book, the male protagonist is able to piece together the cause of somemysterious deaths based on things as far-fetched as his colleague attending a conference on veterinary medicine and coming back and relating a story about a large number of rats having mysteriously perished in the sewers recently. Now, what if his colleague hadn’t gone to the conference. Or even if he did, if he didn’t come back and relate that particular story? Things would be different.

There are those among us who believe that there is no such thing as coincidence and everything is predestined and predetermined. I don’t buy that crock one bit, but still cannot help wonder about co-incidence. What if I hadn’t come to the US for my education…. would my entire outlook, my perspective and my weltanshaaung me completely different? Our environment has such a deep impact on how we develop and how we think. And the subtle experiences (and also the not-so-subtle ones for that matter) that shape how life progresses.

What if I didn’t decide to graduate early? What if I didn’t go to CMU for my grad work? What if the professor whose course I taught had not left for the valley? What if wasn’t at the cave late that night when the person who showed up and chatted with me on my site said should start my own company and in the process gave me the entrpreneurial bug? What if I didn’t meet the person who introduced me to my first financiers? What if the guy who became my best developer had already found a summer job before I got to him!? What if I didn’t hire the people I did? What if I didn’t send that email?

Just so many questions… each one the what-ifs of coincidence. Curious.

Before I end though, I do want to emphasize that I do not have any regrets about any of it.. None at all. Because I love the randomness. I love the fact that you cannot predict what will happen. And I wouldn’t want to either. Because the surprise is what makes it interesting. It’s what makes us adapt and develop.

Life is an improv.

Everyone has some vice. Some have several. But everyone has atleast one. Some smoke. Some drink. Some do drugs (that’ a little over the edge in my opinion though…). Some shop (yes, shopping can be a vice too). So what is a vice? The handy old Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary website, describes it as:

Main Entry: ¹vice

Pronunciation: ‘vIs

Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English, from Old French, from Latin vitium fault, vice

Date: 14th century

1 a : moral depravity or corruption : WICKEDNESS b : a moral fault or failing c : a habitual and usually trivial defect or shortcoming : FOIBLE <suffered from the vice of curiosity>
2 : BLEMISH, DEFECT
3 : a physical imperfection, deformity, or taint
4 a often capitalized : a character representing one of the vices in an English morality play b : BUFFOON, JESTER
5 : an abnormal behavior pattern in a domestic animal detrimental to its health or usefulness
6 : sexual immorality; especially : PROSTITUTION
synonym see FAULT, OFFENSE

Now, before, I continue, lets get is straight, that when I say vice, I mean it in definitely in the context of a a habitual and usually trivial defect or shortcoming for anything beyond that is tad too extreme and often not worth it. Also, when I say vice here, I mean a vice that we can recognize by ourselves and willingly accept as a personal vice. That is to say there may be many oher things wrong with us, but we may not recognize them. But in the contexr of this entry I’m talking specifically about that trivial defect or shortcoming in our character or behavious that we consciously choose to accept… because we all need some way of being bad right?

My previous vice was most definitely chocolate. I often said that “death by chocolate” would be the ideal way to go… well actually that’s the name of a desert that we used to have at the good old Scotland Yard @ Carnegie Mellon a long time ago Recently, I’ve tried to give up my chocolate vice, simply by telling myself that I’m not going to succumb to chocolate any more. And it’s working because I can look at chocolate and still be fine. Just depends on my state of mind. If I feel like not giving a damn any more, then I may still have it, but more often than not, I can control whether or not I want something or at least I’d like to think so!!

But then being without a conscious personal vice is tough. Coz. then you don’t know what to vent on! So I’ve recently tried drinking, but it doesn’t seem to work so well. I already wrote in a previous entry about drinking. My experimentation with alcohol has been perfunctory at best, but it definitely doesn’t seem to be the one for me thus far. Some nights I could have a dozen drinks and not even feel it and on other days three or four would do me in. Again, it seems like more of a mental thing about whether or not I want to get drunk. If I’m away from home or know that I need to drive back, I can still maintain my composure reasonably well.

Based in recent conversations with some of my college friends (uhh.. you should know here that we were the non-drinking, highly studious and responsible types) more and more of them seem to be experimenting with inebriation. In fact, just this afternoon, I got a call from a friend who I have a lot of respect for and who I consider to be amongst one of the smartest people I have ever had the honor of working with… and what for? For recommendations on good drinks. Needless to say I was glad to oblige!

So any how back to vices. Everyone has them. It seems like we all need them. You can’t always be a Mr. or Mrs. Good Goody Gum Drops right? So now that I’ve tried chocolate as a vice and decided to move away from it, and been disappointed at the efficacy pf alcohol as a vice for me, I’m open to suggestions. Incessant blogging, hermitism, working out excessively (I’m still sore from the firecely competitive racquetball yesterday though!) seem to be good options so far, but I’m not sure I like either of those enough. I already spend too much time on the net, already spend too much time by myself and exercise as well.. so neither of those would be new and interesting enough.

What do you think??

Me: I want to do research on computing and emotion… maybe…

Gibson: You mean you enter data into Excel and it gets happy on you or you delete a file and it starts crying? Or is it that you do a search on Hedonism and the machine gets all excited?

:The witty Gibson humor gets me again…

Me: But they’ve got to have some brains..

Gibson: Brains are overrated. If you want intelligent conversation call me.

:Ahh.. the ever hilarious Gibson humor on women…