The writings of John Cassidy

For the last several weeks I have been enjoying John Cassidy's "How Markets Fail". I am almost done with the volume and have to say that it is one of the best and most balanced critiques of markets that I have read. Cassidy who was educated at Oxford and certainly knows his economics carefully documents the history of how academic mathematical theories like Arrow's impossibility theorem and Robert Lucas's theory of rational expectations came to be mistaken as practical rules for application to the free market when they were really supposed to be not much more than ideal mathematical constructs. Quants fell into the same trap (incidentally I saw a book today by Scott Patterson named "The Quants" which looked quite engaging).

Cassidy also documents very well how most free market theorists did not include the behavioral economic approaches later pioneered by psychologists like Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. One of the important points that Cassidy makes is that a lot of these people who came up with models for finance and the free market thought that anomalies would not persist for long and that the market would iron them out, except that it doesn't, usually as a result of the (rather obvious) failure of models to forecast human behavior.

Even more enlightening is Cassidy's series of interviews with Chicago school economists like Richard Posner, Gary Becker and Eugene Fama in the New Yorker. It is heartening to see how most of these people who were once die hard free marketeers are now taking a more moderate stance towards the world and accepting the limitations of things like rational expectations and the efficient market hypothesis. One reason for the decline of the Chicago school has been the death of Milton Friedman, but another reason seems to be the genuine flaws that at least some of the practitioners seems to have acknowledged. All except Eugene Fama, who in his interview appears to be as much of a stubborn free market "fundamentalist" as anyone else; the last man manning the fort, keeping a brave face and clinging to the flag known as the efficient market hypothesis, with smoke and mirrors being his main weapon of combat. Behavioral economists who were once despised at Chicago are now part of the establishment there.

Very enlightening and more than a little gratifying. I would strongly suggest especially the interviews and also the book.

Mandatory movie post

Since everyone and his uncle seems to have held forth on this, I have a few words about the great Avatar.

I saw it in an IMAX last week and was totally underwhelmed. Sure, the special effects were interesting and novel but almost everything else was sub par. The dialogues were leaden, the attempts at humor were so weak that I am still confused about whether they were indeed such attempts or not, the performances were unimpressive and most annoyingly, the characters defined "stock" and "stereotype".

The scientist, arrogant at first and motherly later, the embodiment of a woman staking out her territory in a man's world, generally consigned all female scientists to a skeletonized cliche. Most prominently, the general or colonel or whoever he was must have been the most stereotypical Curtis Le May wannabe I have seen in a long time (of the "Yeah, we are gonna bomb those critters back to the stone age" variety). Plus, the "law of economy of characters" seemed to admirably kick in halfway through since you could tell exactly which brave-hearted souls were going to die.

In short, the story was generally childish and the direction was terrible. I expected much better from Cameron who I consider to be a pretty good even if not great director. Compare this with "Titanic" which even with the love story and the Bollywood type drama is still a fantastic movie.

I really hope Jimmy does not get another chance to yell at the top of his voice on the stage at the Oscars this year.

Is the Drake Equation for hookups borrowed from The Big Bang Theory?

The Drake Equation was devised in the 1960s by pioneering astronomer and "extraterrestriologist" Frank Drake who was the main founder of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). The equation essentially lists the product of a variety of probabilistic terms related to intelligent life arising on an earthlike planet somewhere in the universe to come up with an estimate of "N", the number of intelligent civilizations in the universe.

The equation's rather limited utility can be gauged from the fact that over the years, estimates of N have ranged from "infinity" to one to essentially zero. In any case, it does provide for a useful way of thinking about the sheer number of obstacles that would come in the way of a mirror image of myself arising a million light years away and saying "Howdy".

But Peter Backus does not care as much about green-blooded aliens as he does about very much red-blooded earthly females. He has used a modified version of the Drake equation to calculate his chances of finding a girlfriend in 2010. You can read his paper here.

While some of the analysis of the terms is delightfully droll, it does seem uncannily similar to a Drake equation for hookups that the great Howard Wolowitz formulates in an episodes of The Big Bang Theory. As a BBT fanatic, the episode immediately popped up in my mind when I read about Backus. It's Episode 20 in Season 2, "The Hofstadter Isotope". Watch Howard expound on the equation just after Sheldon rattles off the terms.

There is no indication in Peter's article that he was inspired by this episode. If he was, I think poor Howard deserves a nod. If not, the odds of both Peter and Howard coming up with such a formula are...well, similar to estimates of N.

When radiation misfires...literally

The New York Times has a rather chilling account of how radiation overdose in the treatment of some cancer patients caused deadly side effects leading to death. The entire sobering article deserves to be read. In one case a man's tongue was going to be selectively irradiated; instead his whole face received a blast of radiation that led to a horrible, slow death. His story makes for very painful reading. In another case, misguided radiation beams literally cut out a hole in a woman's chest that gradually killed her.

And all this mainly because of computer errors that were not detected by human beings, errors that caused the radiation to be overdosed or misdirected. Seems like one of those classic "technology is a double-edged sword" kind of scenarios with the whole system just becoming too complex for human understanding. In one instance, a wedge in a linear accelerator delivering the radiation was supposed to focus the beam in the "in" position. But the computer that used Varian software- the same software that I used in grad school for operating the NMR spectrometer built by the same company- made a mistake and instead pivoted the wedge to the "out" position, removing the radiation shielding. The mistake was not detected 27 times, leading to acute radiation overdoses in the wrong parts of the body. In the case of the man whose tongue was supposed to be treated, an error in the software failed to save the critical settings for the accelerator which would have focused the radiation to the right parts.

The statistics unearthed by the Times are startling. From 2001 to 2009, more than 600 cases of improper radiation treatment were reported. Out of those, 255 were related to an overdose, while 284 were related to the wrong parts of the body being exposed to radiation. Even in its idealized form radiation has side-effects, so one would assume that doctors and technicians would be deathly serious about operating these protocols. These statistics were collected for New York State, which is apparently supposed to have some of the strictest radiation standards in the country.

What is even more shocking is the lack of transparency due to "privacy laws". Names of the culprits have been withheld, and some of them seem to have been let off the hook with a simple reprimand. Some doctors who have participated in the treatments refused to talk to the journalists. There also does not seem to be a single agency responsible for these radiation safeguards. On top of it all there seem to be scant ways for patients to pick beforehand which hospital they would like to receive radiation treatment in, since records of mistakes are not available to the public. The whole shebang sounds appalling.

Now I understand that 600 cases in 8 years is probably peanuts compared to the total number of cases in which radiation has worked successfully. Nonetheless, the factors responsible for the lapses and the horrendous consequences deserve scrutiny (seriously, death due to "computer error" sounds like something out of a bad science fiction horror movie). For something as serious as radiation treatment for cancer, one would assume that the same kinds of safeguards, fail-safe mechanisms and backup checks would be in place as are used in nuclear reactor safety. Yet it seems that shoddy training, computer error, and lack of accountability are dealing out death and enormous physical and psychological suffering to patients and their families.

Is a book refund a "bribe"?

So here's an experience I had with an Amazon used book seller named "Booxygen". I had ordered a book from him and the book arrived on time. However the book's spine was detached about halfway down the middle. Problems with the spine constitute probably the most serious problems you can encounter with a book. So I wrote a lukewarm review on Amazon in the "seller feedback" section complaining about the spine.

About two days later I get an email from Booxygen. While they apologize for the problem, they also make me an intriguing offer. They say that they will refund the price of the book if I take back my negative review and either write a positive review or no review at all.

Now I know this sounds reasonable and is probably the norm for most book sellers, but in my view, such an offer clearly constitutes a "bribe" for a simple reason. Reviews are supposed to attest to the quality of a particular bookseller. Consider what happens if I accept Booxygen's offer. While my money is refunded, because I don't write a negative review, future buyers like me who are planning to buy from Booxygen never get to know that I was shipped a defective item. The whole purpose of reviews is to accurately represent the quality of a bookseller's service, warts and all. A failure to write an unfavorable review or the misrepresentation of such a review clearly misleads future buyers.

Thus, while it sounded reasonable, I regarded Booxygen's offer as a bribe. My reply somehow got buried in the drafts section of my email. I discovered it three months later and emailed Booxygen a deal which to me sounds much more honest; mail me a good copy of the same book and I will gladly take back my review and write a new favorable review for the book. Regrettably, Booxygen sent me a very rude reply saying that they refuse my suggestion and that I should not do business with them again. I am glad they said this themselves because I am pretty sure I won't feel the need to buy from them again. In addition I am quite sure I am not going to accept such a bribe from other booksellers; if you want good reviews, sell me good quality products. It's that simple.

Haiti

I am planning to donate money to the earthquake relief effort in Haiti. As usual I want to make sure the money is actually used promptly and through the right channels. Any thoughts on which organization it would be best to donate to? Candidates include Partners in Health, the American Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, the White House and musician Wyclef Jean (in many of these cases you can simply donate by texting; the amount will be added to your mobile phone bill)

Book reviews: A hawk, a dove and the missile man of America

Two books on the Cold War

1. The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War - Nicholas Thompson

In this book, Nicholas Thompson provides a fascinating account of the life, times and work of probably the two most important American diplomats of the Cold War. George Kennan and Paul Nitze were starkly opposite in many respects, yet both provided immensely important direction to American geopolitics through their advice to many Presidents and shaped the Cold War more than any other two American policy makers.

Of the two Kennan is the more famous and is regarded by many as the most important American diplomat of the twentieth century (he passed away in 2005 at the ripe age of 101 and was known for the resplendent prose in his many books which I could strongly recommend). Kennan is mainly known for a famous 1946 telegram that he sent from the Soviet Union. At this time Americans were still trying to understand the looming Soviet menace and Kennan was probably the most knowledgeable Soviet expert in the country. He rightly understood Stalin's bluster and sent a telegram describing the intentions and nature of the Soviet state. The telegram instantly catapulted him to recognition and set in place the official policy of "containment" which Kennan's name became synonymous with. In the telegram Kennan indicated that the Soviets would respond to only strength and not reconciliation and weakness. In his book on the hydrogen bomb, Richard Rhodes says that it was this telegram along with Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech and Stalin's rousing speech in Moscow that inaugurated the Cold War.

However Kennan did not advocate necessarily employing military strength. This was advocated by Paul Nitze, a man who may not be as famous as Kennan but who was no less important. Nitze is regarded by many as the "father of threat inflation". As a measure of his influence as a hawk, it suffices to realize that many of the neo-conservatives in the Bush administration were either Nitze acolytes or acolytes of Nitze's proteges. Just like Kennan Nitze also became famous for a secret 1950 document called NSC-68 that advocated the use of preemptive force against the Soviets and exaggerated their military might. This was a pattern that Nitze and his growing band of followers (among them in various ways were Albert Wohlstetter, Richard Pipes, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld) would consistently pursue; whenever they thought that liberals were trying to be too reconciliatory toward the Soviet Union, they would prepare documents and advocate polices exaggerating Soviet military potential and intentions. Their policies frequently worked and became especially influential during the Reagan administration (formerly they did a good job of portraying Carter as being weak on the Soviets). To some extent they were responsible for the dangerous arms race between the two nations.

Needless to say, such hawkish views radically differed from those of Kennan the dove whose more measured opinions fell somewhat out of favor in later years. Yet the book does an outstanding job of showing that the agendas of both men were more subtle and complicated. Occasionally when it was necessary Nitze would take a softer approach, and during the later Reagan years he joined the President in pressing for open disarmament and reconciliation when many of his followers continued to take a hard line. In his later life Nitze mellowed down, and in 1999 went so far as to write a New York Times op-ed recommending unilateral nuclear disarmament for the US. Although Nitze rightly perceived the work that he had done to be very important in dictating Cold War policy, it is tragic that unlike him, others did not have the sense to see the shortcomings and detrimental effects of these policies in a post Cold War world (Nitze and the accompanying rise of the neo-cons are very well-documented in J. Peter Scoblic's
"Us vs Them: How a Half-Century of Conservatism Has Undermined America's Security").

With such differing perspectives one would think that Nitze and Kennan would have been mortal enemies. But remarkably, through several decades of acute differences and disagreements, the two men remained close personal friends. As Thompson who is Nitze's grandson shows, it is a mark of the character of both men that they managed to rise above their political differences no matter how severe these were. Thompson shows in this highly readable volume, the tremendous impact on US foreign policy that the work of Nitze and Kennan had. He bring both of them to life and sensitively and wisely dissects their personalities, thoughts and lives. Very strongly recommended for foreign policy/Cold War enthusiasts.

2. A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon- Neil Sheehan

Neil Sheehan apparently spent 15 years writing this account of a little known Air Force General, Bernard Schriever, and the time he spent on the man shows in this comprehensive account. He has performed a very valuable service in bringing this rather obscure character to life and driving home the importance of his accomplishments. Schriever was one of the individuals most responsible for jump starting the US's missile program, especially shepherding the development of the ICBM. Sheehan does a great job bringing to life all the characters that Schriever was associated with, from his mentors in flight school (including General "Hap" Arnold) to his bete noir, the notorious Curtis LeMay, to his contact with brilliant scientists John von Neumann and Edward Teller whose contributions were critical for America's missile and atomic bomb programs.

Sheehan provides ample background and little known tidbits of Schriever's life and times. For instance I was not aware that the US Air Force was a rather inefficient backwater organization till the mid-1930s, easily outclassed by its European counterparts. Apparently at one point, pilots were asked to deliver the mail in the wake of a post office scandal. Their inexperience in flying and the loss of life that resulted galvanized FDR and others to issue directives for a modern Air Force that would become among the best in the world.

The main problem I have is that while Sheehan's digressions (for instance on the atomic bomb project and Soviet espionage) are fascinating and reflect the most up-to-date information, they are too many and too frequent. An editor who could have shaved off a few pages and encouraged a tighter narrative would have definitely helped. The digressions draw your attention from direct information about General Schriever. To be fair the book is not supposed to be just about him, but a little less meandering would have been a boon.

In spite of this deficiency, the book will be fascinating for Cold War enthusiasts who want to know about the development of the US Air Force and its atomic and missile arsenals during the early Cold War. There is also a fair amount of technical detail about missiles explained in relatively plain and accurate language. After JFK came to power Schriever's influence waned and the latter part of the book is not as interesting. Nevertheless, Sheehan has done a valuable and outstanding job in bringing a little known individual to life and telling us about his enormous contributions during a critical period of American history.

Particle or nuclear?

This is interesting. A Tehran University physics professor has been killed by a bomb planted outside his home. There is speculation whether this could be the work of outsiders, especially from Israel or the US.

To me the accusation that this was an Israeli operation seems anything but far fetched. After all there has been ample talk of the Israelis bombing Iran's nuclear facilities the way they did with Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1980. But any such action would likely cause immense international outrage and political problems for Israel, not to mention added Arab animosity. Thus from their perspective the next best option would be to do something like this, assassinate someone who was playing a key role in the nuclear program with the hope that it would at least slow down Iran's plans and intimidate them.

The trouble is that until now the specialty and role of the assassinated professor is not known. As the NYT reports,

There was some dispute about his field of scientific specialization.

The English-language Press TV said he taught neutron physics at Tehran University, although it was not clear whether he was part of Iran's contentious nuclear enrichment program.

The broadcaster called the professor a ?staunch supporter of the Islamic Revolution? of 1979 that overthrew the Shah and initiated three decades of theocratic rule.

But two Iranian academics, who spoke in return for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said in telephone interviews that he was not a nuclear physicist and had specialized in particle and theoretical physics. The Web site of Tehran University lists him as a professor of elementary particle physics.

Now that's silly. A professor who teaches neutron physics would likely know a lot about nuclear reactors and bombs; in 1939, the greatest expert in neutron physics in the world was Enrico Fermi, probably the most important physicist working on nuclear energy. Everyone should know that it does not matter much whether the dead professor's field of specialty is "nuclear" or "theoretical and particle" physics since it is quite easy for a particle physicist to learn nuclear physics and vice versa (even the movies seem to have understood this; in the George Clooney-Nicole Kidman blockbuster "The Peacemaker", the scientist working for the bad guys is an astrophysics PhD.)

Thus the unfortunate man's specialty by itself does not at all preclude him from working on the nuclear program. Only time will tell what his exact role was.

A biochemical parody of Bryan Adams

For some reason when I was in high school Bryan Adams was big, and we used to listen to his songs all the time. These days I find many of his songs too sappy, but I still love some of the melodies and find myself going nostalgically down memory lane when "Summer of '69" or "Everything I Do" or "Cloud Number Nine" wafts on to the air from somewhere.

So yesterday I happened to be looking at a particularly ravishing picture of dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) and Adams's "Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman" randomly started playing on my iPod and Bam! The two topics meshed together in an ungodly union. So here is my tribute to Bryan Adams with profound apologies...an ode to that perfect protein which we can only covet. Chemically inclined folk will appreciate this more but others should also be able to smack their forehead. The original version is copied first to mitigate the trauma that will follow.

HAVE YOU EVER REALLY LOVED A WOMAN

To really love a woman
To understand her - you gotta know it deep inside
Hear every thought - see every dream
N' give her wings - when she wants to fly
Then when you find yourself lyin' helpless in her arms
You know you really love a woman

When you love a woman you tell her
that she's really wanted
When you love a woman you tell her
that she's the one
she needs somebody to tell her
that it's gonna last forever
So tell me have you ever really
- really really ever loved a woman?

To really love a woman
Let her hold you -
til ya know how she needs to be touched
You've gotta breathe her - really taste her
Til you can feel her in your blood
N' when you can see your unborn children in her eyes
You know you really love a woman

When you love a woman
you tell her that she's really wanted
When you love a woman
you tell her that she's the one
she needs somebody to tell her
that you'll always be together
So tell me have you ever really -
really really ever loved a woman?

You got to give her some faith - hold her tight
A little tenderness - gotta treat her right
She will be there for you, takin' good care of you
Ya really gotta love your woman...

Then when you find yourself lyin' helpless in her arms
You know you really love a woman
When you love a woman you tell her
that she's really wanted
When you love a woman
you tell her that she's the one
she needs somebody to tell her
that it's gonna last forever
So tell me have you ever really
- really really ever loved a woman?

Just tell me have you ever really,
really, really, ever loved a woman? You got to tell me
Just tell me have you ever really,
really, really, ever loved a woman?


HAVE YOU EVER REALLY LOVED A PROTEIN

To really love a protein
To understand her - you gotta know her deep inside
Hear every helix - see every sheet
N' give her energy - when she wants to jiggle
Then when you find yourself staring helpless at her domains
You know you really love a protein

When you love a protein you tell her
that she's really conformationally correct
When you love a protein you tell her
that she's catalytically perfect
she needs somebody to tell her
that her half-life?s gonna last forever
So tell me have you ever really
- really really ever loved a protein?

To really love a protein
Let her hold your high-affinity binders-
til ya know how she needs to be crystallized
You've gotta mass spec her - really sequence her
Til you can feel her atoms in your spectrometer
N' when you can see the unformed hydrogen bonds in her pockets
You know you really love a protein

When you love a protein
you tell her that she's really evolutionarily conserved
When you love a protein you tell her that she's peptidase-digestion preserved
she needs somebody to tell her
that her fold will always hold together
So tell me have you ever really -
really really ever loved a protein?

You got to give her some metal ions - hold her co-factors
A little pH-control - gotta treat her ionization state right
She will be there for you, takin' good care of your ligands
Ya really gotta love your protein...

Then when you find yourself staring helpless at her PDB coordinates
You know you really love a protein
When you love a protein you tell her
that she's really conformationally correct
When you love a protein you tell her
that she's catalytically perfect
she needs somebody to tell her
that her half-life?s gonna last forever
So tell me have you ever really
- really really ever loved a protein?

Just tell me have you ever really,
really, really, ever loved a protein? You got to tell me
Just tell me have you ever really,
really, really, ever loved (that helical, sheety, hydrogen bondalacious) protein?

Barbara Crossette is a computer (and she almost fails the Turing test)

That is the delightful conclusion I have drawn after having read her appalling "critique" of India in "Foreign Policy". Crossette seems to have been assigned a rather easy task fit for a search engine- trawl the internet and gather as many negative statements about India as can fit in a two page writeup. Even in this endeavor her failure seems to be laughably transparent.

Both Manasi and Nitin do excellent short work of the article so there's not much I can add. Among Crossette's most egregious transgressions are accusing India of being something of a rogue nuclear power who has not signed the NPT. Crossette blithely ignores India's impeccable non-proliferation record, its highly admirable success in the peaceful uses of atomic energy (India's thorium program has been praised by nuclear analysts worldwide) and the structural problems that have kept the NPT from being definitive and effective since its conception. And of course, with North Korea and Pakistan around, India should be a meek footnote when it comes to nuclear proliferation in South Asia. Perhaps Crossette conveniently forgets (or more probably ignores since it does not fit into her assumptions) that India has not been part of the China-North Korea-Pakistan club, members of which have regularly slapped quality control stamps on each others' missiles and bombs and in addition exported them.

Nor does Crossette's article hold even nanoliters of water when she accuses India of meddling in climate change legislation. As noted, India's emissions profile is significantly below the world average and it has made a commitment (non-binding perhaps but commitment nonetheless) to 20-25 percent reductions. Plus, India's achievements in nuclear power can have a very positive impact on reducing emissions. And of course the US is never out of practice when hypocritically preaching to the rest of the world to reduce greenhouse emissions while flying high on its own.

Crossette's criticism that India is "hardly a liberal democratic paradise" seems to be an exercise in making pithy, simplistic, misleading statements. Sure, incidents like the banning of James Laine's book on Shivaji sound discouraging, but these incidents are few and far in between compared to the big picture. In the bigger picture, India has survived probably the greatest assault of diversity, chaos and disagreement among its politicians and citizens of any country to remain a successful democracy, notwithstanding the serious flaws. The press in India is among the freest in the world (so free in fact that we have to berate journalists for being loose cannons who could endanger national security), the internet and other public forums in India are vigorously argumentative and even though taking offense to trivial things has become a fashion in our country, everyone is free in turn to take offense to taking offense and vociferously voice their opinions. One would be hard pressed to find a developing country where such robust and cantankerous debate exists amidst so much diversity and flared tempers.

Did Crossette sleep-walk through her tenure as a New York Times journalist in Delhi? Maybe it is another growing sign of the New York Times's waning days and their increasingly shoddy journalistic standards.

With such a fanfare of cherry picking and misleading statements, Crossette claims that India is the "elephant in the room". She needs to think twice if she plans to assault it with a spear, since if she does so she is almost certainly going to run straight through this invisible entity and smack her head on the wall. That should give her the "headache" which she thinks India is.

Almost back

I have been in Tasmania for the last three weeks visiting family, enjoying sunny weather while my home in the northeast faced the wrath of the Norse gods. Back next week for a new year of bloggity bloggings.

Happy New Year

A giant of economics

The "last generalist" is no more. No idea in modern economics in any field is divorced from his contribution. His textbook was the bestselling economics textbook of all time. My father used it to teach incoming freshmen in the 1970s, and my friends at IIT used it in their freshmen year in the 2000s.

In receiving the Nobel Prize in 1970, Mr. Samuelson was credited with transforming his discipline from one that ruminates about economic issues to one that solves problems, answering questions about cause and effect with mathematical rigor and clarity.

When economists “sit down with a piece of paper to calculate or analyze something, you would have to say that no one was more important in providing the tools they use and the ideas that they employ than Paul Samuelson,” said Robert M. Solow, a fellow Nobel laureate and colleague of Mr. Samuelson’s at M.I.T.

Rewiring my brain: A musical offering

For the last six months or so I am having to rewire my brain. That's because I am taking formal classical piano lessons for the first time. The piano lessons are making my brain do things it has never done before, and it's taking even longer for the message to get from my brain to my hands. But it's been an enriching experience so far, and I am getting there.

I have been playing the piano and keyboard for more than 20 years. My school and college days were filled with music as documented before. But being congenitally lazy, I never took the effort to actually formally learn to read and write music. I also used to let my fingers run willy nilly over the keyboard, fingering be damned. My parents and others never got tired of telling me what a difference it would make if I actually learnt something formally, but like many other things I dismissed their wise advice with cheerful repudiation. To some extent I myself was to blame for this state of affairs. That's because I have a reasonably good memory for music and can remember the main parts of a musical piece after hearing it a couple of times, unless it is hideously complicated. Since my memory filled in for formal instruction I never felt the need to learn how to read and write.

While learning to play by ear served me very well for all these years, it also had some distinct drawbacks. Many notes in a musical piece are contrapuntal notes, sometimes playing in the background, gently cajoling louder notes, making the musical landscape richer. But these notes are usually very hard to decipher because of their transient nature and low amplitude. Many of the "contra melodies" both in eastern and western music fall into this category. Thus, while learning by ear is adequate for the general structure of a piece and entirely satisfactory for most Indian songs which did not have dominant contra-melodies, it fails to various extents for more involved pieces, and fails spectacularly for compositions by composers like Bach who was the unmatched master of counterpoint.

Thus my musical education has always been somewhat lacking. So it was with immense trepidation as well as anticipation that I looked forward to my first lessons. The first lesson was terrifying since my music teacher asked me to directly compose a piece of music and write it; I almost felt like running away. Fortunately I realised that I have found an extremely patient piano teacher who, when I confessed to her that I could be abysmally slow, dismissed my concerns by pointing out that she has even taught mentally challenged children with special needs. The piano lesson is at 9 PM which also makes things slightly challenging. But her enthusiasm and patience rub off, and even after a long day at work I find myself feeling energetic after a while.

The last six months have been quite an experience. Learning how to read and decipher music felt like being someone who has lived his life until now in a candlelit room and has just found the switch for the 100 watt lightbulb.

At first the going was tough and not much was possible; I was learning how to play the classical equivalent of nursery rhymes. In addition I have to say this; a lot of musical notation is not exactly meant to simplify things. For instance consider the 22 notes spread across the treble and bass clefs. Each line as well as each space corresponds to a note (A, B, C etc.). However, the fact that the line and space are of unequal width make this notion counterintuitive, and a beginner tends to regard only spaces as notes (more so because that's how the notes on a piano would look if turned by 90 degrees). However upon further contemplation it becomes clear that the particular notion employed is a considerable space saving device, since one can essentially represent the entire spectrum of the instrument in a short space.

But even that experience of playing the most elementary pieces was immensely valuable as I could truly develop my left hand for the first time, that left hand which until now had been engaged only in playing chords and no melody, acting more as a substitute for rhythm than as my right hand's equal.

It was only in the last three months that I have progressed to intermediate stage. If beginner stage is like riding a bicycle, intermediate stage is like driving a car. Landscapes that were previously inaccessible suddenly bloom exponentially in front of you. Relatively few pieces by leading composers are at the beginner stage but many more are at the intermediate stage. Once I got to this stage it was like opening the door to a garden full of exotic flowers. I could take full advantage of Pianostreet.com which has a lot of sheet music from various composers. Intermediate stage is when the turbo charging starts. I could branch out from what my teacher taught me and strike out on my own a bit.

I started with simple pieces like Bach's Minuet in G and Beethoven's Russian Folk Song, but even here the advantages of learning formal music were eminently clear. I would never have been able to disentangle the relatively complex intertwining of notes in these pieces by ear alone. I felt like a physicst who has previously performed experiments to watch balls rolling down inclined planes, but who knows no mathematics to understand what's happening in all its fine glory.

However, curiously, my musical memory which has served as an asset until now actually became a liability. That's because the moment I painfully deciphered one part, my brain would immediately commit it to memory, which meant that the next time I could play it without looking. Now that would be a good thing if I weren't actually trying to learn how to read! But learning how to read means getting enough practice at reading and re-reading the notes and symbols, just like learning a language. Memory opposes this process.

The most difficult thing has been to learn and stick to fingering. Previously, certain of my fingers have been used to playing certain notes. The interrelationship of the fingers to each other has also been hardwired because of years of using them that way. For instance, for certain patterns of notes, my index finger will invariably arch over my thumb, whereas traditionally it would not be done that way. Every time I am supposed to use specific fingering, my fingers strain to break free of the new rules that their upstart owner is trying to impose on them. They prance around and resist and have a life of their own, like Dr. Strangelove's gloved arm. They insist on obeying their own laws of motion. I have to constantly command my brain to rein them in. It is sometimes excruciatingly painful and yet I know that after some effort, order will be restored to this unruly landscape.

So this is the first time that I am having to actively suppress my memory. Part of this effort has also meant that I deliberately ask my teacher to give me pieces which I haven't heard before, so that my memory does not help me play them at least during the first time. This is not very easy since I have listened to a substantial amount of classical music until now. But the treasure chest of classical music goes deeper than I think, and she always finds something. The latest effort is for a long transcription of Bach's famous Air on a G string. The measure is slightly tricky at times, and the piece should keep me occupied for some time.

Mostly I spend my time practicing these assigned pieces, but with my newfound ability I sometimes cannot resist the temptation to go beyond what she is teaching. In this spirit I have tried several pieces which I have heard before, which I could even play to some extent before, but which have acquired a whole new quality now that I can pry their notes apart. I tried "Fur Elise" of course, and I am trying out Schumann's beautiful "Traumerei" and Chopin's Mazurka in D which is a real challenge.

The most challenging of these right now in terms of coordination is Mozart's fast "Turkish March", the 3rd movement of his 11th Piano Sonata in A Major. Before I had spent literally months listening to this piece hundreds of times before I could get the right hand reasonably accurate. But the left hand's role was hidden in that sheet music, waiting all these years to be uncovered. And now that the left hand can dance over the landscape on equal terms with the right, life has acquired a golden hue.

The price of global warming science is eternal vigilance

John Tierney of the NYT weighs in on the hacked emails and accurately nails it

I’ve long thought that the biggest danger in climate research is the temptation for scientists to lose their skepticism and go along with the “consensus” about global warming. That’s partly because it’s easy for everyone to get caught up in “informational cascades”, and partly because there are so many psychic and financial rewards rewards for working on a problem that seems to be a crisis. We all like to think that our work is vitally useful in solving a major social problem — and the more major the problem seems, the more money society is liable to spend on it.

I’m not trying to suggest that climate change isn’t a real threat, or that scientists are deliberately hyping it. But when they look at evidence of the threat, they may be subject to the confirmation bias — seeing trends that accord with their preconceptions and desires. Given the huge stakes in this debate — the trillions of dollars that might be spent to reduce greenhouse emissions — it’s important to keep taking skeptical looks at the data. How open do you think climate scientists are to skeptical views, and to letting outsiders double-check their data and calculations?

We are all subject to the confirmation bias, and I can say from experience that we have to battle it in our research every single day as fallible human beings. But as Tierney says, when the stakes are so incredibly high, when governments and international budgets and debts and the fate of billions is going to be affected by what you say, you better fight the conformation bias ten times as much as usual.

Listen to Capt. Ramsey son:

"Mr. Hunter, we have rules that are not open to interpretation, personal intuition, gut feelings, hairs on the back of your neck, little devils or angels sitting on your shoulders..."

The damning global warming emails; when science becomes the casualty

By now everyone and his grandmother must have heard about the hacked emails of the prestigious University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU). The emails were sent by leading climate change scientists to each other and seem to express doubts and uncertainty. More importantly they also seem to display some troubling signs of rather dishonest discourse, with scientists trying to hold dangerously unfavorable opinions of journal editors who seem to be open to publishing papers that don't seem to agree with their views, and asking each other to delete emails which might signal doubt...

...Read the rest of the post on my Desipundit blog