Relevant to politics and education are the myriad perspectives of authors and engineers, and artists, people who live their lives building new tools, researching ideas and concepts and putting forward radical new knowledge and techniques for the general progress of mankind. Sadly we ignore them until it's too late and even when we do think their ideas are relevant and important, politics of selfish agenda and self aggrandisement often discourage and muffle the voices of these usually unsung revolutionaries without guns.
Here I present two brilliant minds and review of their books: one who gave us the PC as we know it today, the other Steve of Apple. The latter, Matt Ridley, even less known, is a science writer who brings to the non-scientific community of readers a deeper understanding of genetics and biotechnology, through introduction of the human genome, the book of life about which, owing to mainly politics and lack of awareness, so much is either misunderstood or not understood at all by the general populace but yet often suppressed frequently without any real justification.
Why Indians cannot hold their drink... A genetic explanation?
Book review of:
Genome
by Matt Ridley
The wOz Way
Book Review:
I, Woz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon - Getting to the Core of Apple's Inventorby Steve Wozniak
Unknown to many, it was the other Steve, not Jobs but Wozniak who engineered the first Apple computers, Apple I and II. The latter has possibly brought about the revolution in desktop computing and changed the public perception of computers as large boxes with complicated panels of lights and switches which only rocket scientists could operate to the what it's current avatar looks like: the quintessential desktop home PC or laptop as we know it today which you don't have to be a geek to use.
The book is full of exciting insights into the what goes on in an inventor's mind, how engineers are really artists, and what honesty, firmness of purpose and integrity really means for them. A must-read for not only geeks and engineers who aspire to leave their mark on the all too well known frontiers of computing today, but also any lay person who wants to know more about how engineers change the world with technology, and don't quite always subscribe to the often repeated jaded view about the bad effects of technology and science.
Wozniak clearly explains how technology in itself is not a bad thing at all and it's use to make people's lives and work much easier comes from a dedication to human-centric causes rather than power, money, fame or glory. In many a funny incident recalled vividly in the narrative, what comes through is the author's great capacity to have fun while working on serious and challenging projects and at the same time his brash disregard for formal, corporate hierarchies when he argues that no revolutionary products or ideas were ever really born from committees formed in large companies comprising of technocrats, sales people and managers. He urges every engineer or inventor in the making to work alone at night after regular work hours in order to create something new, something that has the potential to change how things are done. This coming from someone who single-handedly created products which would revolutionise computer usage is advice you cannot afford to shrug away.
Apart from being the supergeek that he is, Wozniak's book has delightful stories, many of which were first time events in history or about things which one does not ordinarily come across even in a lifetime full of travelling and accomplishments: the US music festival, satellite uplink with USSR, the management of a movie theatre, the invention of the universal remote, phreaking subculture... Wozniak is the kind of genius that does not restrict itself to one domain for an entire lifetime. An engineer's engineer, he is also a much accomplished philanthropist, humorist, music-lover, parent and teacher. It's amazing that so few know about this quiet and unglamorous man, a man who nevertheless has a "cool" road named after him called the "Woz way".
Here I present two brilliant minds and review of their books: one who gave us the PC as we know it today, the other Steve of Apple. The latter, Matt Ridley, even less known, is a science writer who brings to the non-scientific community of readers a deeper understanding of genetics and biotechnology, through introduction of the human genome, the book of life about which, owing to mainly politics and lack of awareness, so much is either misunderstood or not understood at all by the general populace but yet often suppressed frequently without any real justification.
Why Indians cannot hold their drink... A genetic explanation?
Book review of:Genome
by Matt Ridley
For most science journalists, writing about the latest research and breakthrough in the frontiers of genetics is quite an "in" thing today as it was not so long ago about all things related to IT or the info-highway. Perhaps this is rightly so. I am not attempting to share yet another scoop from that world, no. This is just a review of the book I recently finished, in many readings on genetics which is subtitled, and aptly so, the autobiography of a species in 23 chapters. The book is "Genome" by Matt Ridley and each chapter is dedicated to one gene in each of the 23 chromosomes of the human body (other species do not share this number with us, but that does not prove anything about superiority: far less apparently complicated life-forms might have almost the equal number of chromosomes as human beings and also more than ours).
The genome, or the collection of genes in chromosomes which usually come in pairs for mammals, is often called the ultimate book of life. Ridley's remarkably well researched presentation of facts and arguments reflects a true academician's creativity and love of connecting concepts to derive other original concepts although sometimes it may be a bit too fastidious and lengthy for laymen. At the same time for the lay reader, even those with basic high school knowledge of science, he is careful enough to tell it all like a story, or 23 short stories on the same theme and each titled with a chromosome number and a general theme such as "history", "environment", "politics", "eugenics" and yes, even "sex".
Ridley's amazing accomplishment as a popular science writer shines through and I would dare compare him with some stalwarts of our times as well as the past in this area: Stephen Jay Gould, Arthur C. Clarke, Richard Dawkins, etc. the last whose exposition of the "digital" basis of life as expressed in the "Blind Watchmaker" is a well known exposition of theories of creation, and a strong and definitive rebuttal against intelligent design championed by the creationists.
In Ridley's form of writing I came across various influences. Notably,there is the anecdotal style of Gould's presentation of obscure facts from the world of palaeontology (study of fossils) and linking them to broader concepts of universal and moral-ethical import. Ridley also presents facts in such way that moral, ethical and universal concepts come forward and shake us up in a radical way so as to make us think from a different perspective. This is reminiscent of Gould, who was a radical Darwinist thinker who even exposed the stupidity of the so-called intelligent quotient test (IQ), a well-known racist segregation tool that most of the academic world know to be of little use to measure intelligence, but sadly still used to this day by a lot of ill-informed or "half-baked" educationists and human resource professionals. (FaceBook users, don't take the IQ test, it will only prove how stupid you are!). Ridley is a science writer and though it might be ill-advised for me to dare to compare such a brilliant figure as Gould with him, remember this is in context of popular science writing, not the science itself.
Professor Dawkins is also known as somewhat of a "failed" scientist, a remark which I came across during a casual discussion with a robotics engineer, and it seems his later works like the God Delusion has been criticised among other things as being not so well written, which may well be the case as most writing by even the most brilliant minds for any cause (in this case atheism) are often known to suffer from such defects. However, Dawkins's earlier books of the theory of creation with which I am more thoroughly acquainted is definitely a thought provoking and well written book that gets across difficult ideas and concepts, and the latest theories from the scientific frontiers to the lay reader with remarkable ease and mastery, no doubt because of his writing style. And popular science books are just that,... not literature!
I must also observe that Ridley's style is brilliant both in style, content presentation as well as in the overall idea of form (those 23 chapters). Each chapter often starts or sooner or later zeroes on to the a particular gene with a statement like such and such gene "found on the long arm of" such chromosome or something like that... Remember that 23 chromosomes of various shapes like the sickle-shape are repeated as almost cloned copies of each other in the millions and millions of cells that make up our body. The mind not only boggles at the concept of astronomical numbers of genes, proteins and other organic "chemicals" within, the chapters gave me almost equal reading pleasure I get reading about objects in deep space such as some radio wave emitting quasar in some arm of some spiral galaxy or Horse-head nebula.
What is radically different from the frontiers of space in genetics is that it is so real, so near and so personal that it is mostly very uncomfortable to talk about. One may be tempted to use a sort of reasoning as in Freud's theory of dream interpretation "censorship mechanism" in this case as a likely reason for such discomfort (however circular the logic might be), or others may bring up ethical or moral issues, as is more common in any debate about genetics. We must clearly distinguish that for one genetics is not a social science as psychoanalysis which is more often considered as one these days. Also, more importantly, the ethical and moral issues involved do not change natural laws which are in some reasonable set of circumstances explained by a deterministic framework. Therefore it follows that since genetics or biotechnology is generally proved more often than not a well established empirical science, certain causal phenomenon which have been established as scientific facts in this discipline are worth considering as facts however alien or unacceptable they may feel to our individual subjective sensibilities.
Take the possible explanation of why Indians or people in tropical regions cannot consume as much amount of alcohol as those who come from Europe and other colder regions. While some may disagree to this idea, and there might be many Indians who are able binge drink equally at par with any person of a race historically from colder regions, I am sure you will agree that Indians are much less of alcohol drinkers. The argument goes that we don't drink as much as people in the cold countries because it's too hot to drink alcohol here (or rather we should not). While this is somewhat true, it is not entirely the real reason. When one starts to drink anyway, and especially a chilled beer in a hot afternoon, most will inform you that it's a pretty pleasant experience.
The argument that alcohol was never brewed in India may seem to be evidently true based on the social taboos about drinking alcohol in most Indian households. Nothing can be further from truth. Among the aboriginal santhals and the Indo-Aryans who invaded India a few thousand years ago, alcohol was well known in various forms. The rice beer called "Hariya" of the Santhals have probably existed since the early days when man discovered cultivation of rice right here in the tropics and it is said this light alcoholic beverage actually helps in digestion.
Shom Ras was known to Aryans who even called it Amrit (the elixir of life and immortality: note that the ancient Gaelic word whisky also translates as the same) and there's a good chance it contained ingredients like alcohol and even some opium in very low quantities. Furthermore there's even evidence that a similar drink exists to this days in the north-west frontier province of Pakistan and on the other side of border, in Afghanistan, the land around the ancient silk route, the land which now faces in first hand the intolerable consequences of extremism and religious intolerance born out of politics of cold war and deprivation.
To add another example from many more, the popular "tari" (fermented date palm juice) is definitely not an import from a colder region where date palm would not even grow.
While alcoholism is just the slow poison for ruining relationships, families and of many untold miseries, including road accidents and rages that often rob us of our near ones, it can hardly be called a liquid with life lengthening properties to be named as an elixir. I know what you are thinking: it must have originated from the typical drinkers' talk glorifying the taste and effects of their favourite drink. All drinkers they say will call their poison in an affectionate term which can only be of comparable to tongue-in-cheek poetic notions: remember "My mistress's eyes are nothing like the sun"? My brother whose wife's family hails from Poland says that in the Polish villages, vodka is perhaps jokingly considered as a cure-all drink!
Now for the radical theory that the study of genetic theory seems to have pointed out. Ok, I do admit that this is a bit of fact which may not have been proved beyond reasonable doubt: it might be still at a hypotheses level. I am no expert on this. But just be open to this proposition and think how plausible this explanation might be. In the tropics there is an abundance of microbes in the water as in the air, much more than in the colder regions. Evolution simplistically put according to genetics is an effect of gene mutation, which consequently leads to racial differences (very tiny changes) to speciation (which sometimes takes thousands of years even in splendid isolation as in Australia or the Galapagos). Even for the former, it can easily take natural selection thousands of years to allow a particular genetic mutation in an isolated race to spread in the majority of the population if it proves to be "beneficial" in evolutionary terms.
However mutations are happening all the time, even in your life time and mine owing to the sheer number of cell production in our bodies. Often this leads to irreversible fatal cell growth outbreak called cancer. Ridley takes pains to often emphasise that genes are not there to cause diseases, it's accidental mutations that can cause diseases: the book of life is like the book of knowledge in this aspect. You can use knowledge to create, preserve and but also destroy.
I digress, but please hold on for a little while if you are still with me: the connection lies in tropical populations' resistance to the abundance of microbes that are sometimes not even found in colder places. And it is precisely because of this reason, in cold countries from ancient times, water borne microbes could wipe out the population easily and natural resistance to it would build up through genetic mutation of some people in the affected population in a far longer period than in the tropics where the population would normally be more exposed to such microbes or similar specimens, and therefore more likely to have already developed resistance through generations of drinking the same water laden with these invisible agents of deadly disease.
Prevention is better than cure goes the old adage. Probably without realising it people learned to digest or to be more precise, break down alcohol into digestible sugars easily ("hold the drink") as it proved to be a life saver: plain water could potentially carry life-threatening germs (and in most of human history people could die just as easily by dysentery as by some more rarer and still considered dangerous disease). The so called Elixir of Life makes new sense doesn't it? It is a well known fact that boiled water and fermented water (once jokingly called "sara hua pani" by own of my teetotaller vegetarian ex-boss, literally rotten water in Hindi) are liquids in which few or no microbes can survive!
I don't know if I have convinced you to read the book, but let me tell you this: it's one of those rare books that will give you a new and original perspective about how you perceive your own self, the inner space within. No, man is not only an island, no man is just one individual too: man has a universe within. The concept of "self" can itself radically change and you can even begin to may be get a glimpse of why you make a decision or why you act or fail to act in a somewhat deterministic pattern, a pattern which is often termed as personality.
So, my fellow compatriots, those with more historically "tropical" ancestors, for the want of a less racially incorrect term for native Indians, drink, but learn to drink in moderation, as you may not be hold it easily: it's not you, it's your genes which has not evolved to hold that drink. And it's not a negative trait either: Think of it, you can enjoy puchkas and chaats served with tamarind water of dubious source or quality on the streets without a worry than your friends from Finland who are sure to suffer from the Delhi Belly or equivalent. I am willing to bet serious money on this: if they eat like us is India, within a week after arrival they will suffer from a much more nasty case of ill-digestion than you and I! Anyone in the house ready to take my bet? Cheers!
The genome, or the collection of genes in chromosomes which usually come in pairs for mammals, is often called the ultimate book of life. Ridley's remarkably well researched presentation of facts and arguments reflects a true academician's creativity and love of connecting concepts to derive other original concepts although sometimes it may be a bit too fastidious and lengthy for laymen. At the same time for the lay reader, even those with basic high school knowledge of science, he is careful enough to tell it all like a story, or 23 short stories on the same theme and each titled with a chromosome number and a general theme such as "history", "environment", "politics", "eugenics" and yes, even "sex".
Ridley's amazing accomplishment as a popular science writer shines through and I would dare compare him with some stalwarts of our times as well as the past in this area: Stephen Jay Gould, Arthur C. Clarke, Richard Dawkins, etc. the last whose exposition of the "digital" basis of life as expressed in the "Blind Watchmaker" is a well known exposition of theories of creation, and a strong and definitive rebuttal against intelligent design championed by the creationists.
In Ridley's form of writing I came across various influences. Notably,there is the anecdotal style of Gould's presentation of obscure facts from the world of palaeontology (study of fossils) and linking them to broader concepts of universal and moral-ethical import. Ridley also presents facts in such way that moral, ethical and universal concepts come forward and shake us up in a radical way so as to make us think from a different perspective. This is reminiscent of Gould, who was a radical Darwinist thinker who even exposed the stupidity of the so-called intelligent quotient test (IQ), a well-known racist segregation tool that most of the academic world know to be of little use to measure intelligence, but sadly still used to this day by a lot of ill-informed or "half-baked" educationists and human resource professionals. (FaceBook users, don't take the IQ test, it will only prove how stupid you are!). Ridley is a science writer and though it might be ill-advised for me to dare to compare such a brilliant figure as Gould with him, remember this is in context of popular science writing, not the science itself.
Professor Dawkins is also known as somewhat of a "failed" scientist, a remark which I came across during a casual discussion with a robotics engineer, and it seems his later works like the God Delusion has been criticised among other things as being not so well written, which may well be the case as most writing by even the most brilliant minds for any cause (in this case atheism) are often known to suffer from such defects. However, Dawkins's earlier books of the theory of creation with which I am more thoroughly acquainted is definitely a thought provoking and well written book that gets across difficult ideas and concepts, and the latest theories from the scientific frontiers to the lay reader with remarkable ease and mastery, no doubt because of his writing style. And popular science books are just that,... not literature!
I must also observe that Ridley's style is brilliant both in style, content presentation as well as in the overall idea of form (those 23 chapters). Each chapter often starts or sooner or later zeroes on to the a particular gene with a statement like such and such gene "found on the long arm of" such chromosome or something like that... Remember that 23 chromosomes of various shapes like the sickle-shape are repeated as almost cloned copies of each other in the millions and millions of cells that make up our body. The mind not only boggles at the concept of astronomical numbers of genes, proteins and other organic "chemicals" within, the chapters gave me almost equal reading pleasure I get reading about objects in deep space such as some radio wave emitting quasar in some arm of some spiral galaxy or Horse-head nebula.
What is radically different from the frontiers of space in genetics is that it is so real, so near and so personal that it is mostly very uncomfortable to talk about. One may be tempted to use a sort of reasoning as in Freud's theory of dream interpretation "censorship mechanism" in this case as a likely reason for such discomfort (however circular the logic might be), or others may bring up ethical or moral issues, as is more common in any debate about genetics. We must clearly distinguish that for one genetics is not a social science as psychoanalysis which is more often considered as one these days. Also, more importantly, the ethical and moral issues involved do not change natural laws which are in some reasonable set of circumstances explained by a deterministic framework. Therefore it follows that since genetics or biotechnology is generally proved more often than not a well established empirical science, certain causal phenomenon which have been established as scientific facts in this discipline are worth considering as facts however alien or unacceptable they may feel to our individual subjective sensibilities.
Take the possible explanation of why Indians or people in tropical regions cannot consume as much amount of alcohol as those who come from Europe and other colder regions. While some may disagree to this idea, and there might be many Indians who are able binge drink equally at par with any person of a race historically from colder regions, I am sure you will agree that Indians are much less of alcohol drinkers. The argument goes that we don't drink as much as people in the cold countries because it's too hot to drink alcohol here (or rather we should not). While this is somewhat true, it is not entirely the real reason. When one starts to drink anyway, and especially a chilled beer in a hot afternoon, most will inform you that it's a pretty pleasant experience.
The argument that alcohol was never brewed in India may seem to be evidently true based on the social taboos about drinking alcohol in most Indian households. Nothing can be further from truth. Among the aboriginal santhals and the Indo-Aryans who invaded India a few thousand years ago, alcohol was well known in various forms. The rice beer called "Hariya" of the Santhals have probably existed since the early days when man discovered cultivation of rice right here in the tropics and it is said this light alcoholic beverage actually helps in digestion.
Shom Ras was known to Aryans who even called it Amrit (the elixir of life and immortality: note that the ancient Gaelic word whisky also translates as the same) and there's a good chance it contained ingredients like alcohol and even some opium in very low quantities. Furthermore there's even evidence that a similar drink exists to this days in the north-west frontier province of Pakistan and on the other side of border, in Afghanistan, the land around the ancient silk route, the land which now faces in first hand the intolerable consequences of extremism and religious intolerance born out of politics of cold war and deprivation.
To add another example from many more, the popular "tari" (fermented date palm juice) is definitely not an import from a colder region where date palm would not even grow.
While alcoholism is just the slow poison for ruining relationships, families and of many untold miseries, including road accidents and rages that often rob us of our near ones, it can hardly be called a liquid with life lengthening properties to be named as an elixir. I know what you are thinking: it must have originated from the typical drinkers' talk glorifying the taste and effects of their favourite drink. All drinkers they say will call their poison in an affectionate term which can only be of comparable to tongue-in-cheek poetic notions: remember "My mistress's eyes are nothing like the sun"? My brother whose wife's family hails from Poland says that in the Polish villages, vodka is perhaps jokingly considered as a cure-all drink!
Now for the radical theory that the study of genetic theory seems to have pointed out. Ok, I do admit that this is a bit of fact which may not have been proved beyond reasonable doubt: it might be still at a hypotheses level. I am no expert on this. But just be open to this proposition and think how plausible this explanation might be. In the tropics there is an abundance of microbes in the water as in the air, much more than in the colder regions. Evolution simplistically put according to genetics is an effect of gene mutation, which consequently leads to racial differences (very tiny changes) to speciation (which sometimes takes thousands of years even in splendid isolation as in Australia or the Galapagos). Even for the former, it can easily take natural selection thousands of years to allow a particular genetic mutation in an isolated race to spread in the majority of the population if it proves to be "beneficial" in evolutionary terms.
However mutations are happening all the time, even in your life time and mine owing to the sheer number of cell production in our bodies. Often this leads to irreversible fatal cell growth outbreak called cancer. Ridley takes pains to often emphasise that genes are not there to cause diseases, it's accidental mutations that can cause diseases: the book of life is like the book of knowledge in this aspect. You can use knowledge to create, preserve and but also destroy.
I digress, but please hold on for a little while if you are still with me: the connection lies in tropical populations' resistance to the abundance of microbes that are sometimes not even found in colder places. And it is precisely because of this reason, in cold countries from ancient times, water borne microbes could wipe out the population easily and natural resistance to it would build up through genetic mutation of some people in the affected population in a far longer period than in the tropics where the population would normally be more exposed to such microbes or similar specimens, and therefore more likely to have already developed resistance through generations of drinking the same water laden with these invisible agents of deadly disease.
Prevention is better than cure goes the old adage. Probably without realising it people learned to digest or to be more precise, break down alcohol into digestible sugars easily ("hold the drink") as it proved to be a life saver: plain water could potentially carry life-threatening germs (and in most of human history people could die just as easily by dysentery as by some more rarer and still considered dangerous disease). The so called Elixir of Life makes new sense doesn't it? It is a well known fact that boiled water and fermented water (once jokingly called "sara hua pani" by own of my teetotaller vegetarian ex-boss, literally rotten water in Hindi) are liquids in which few or no microbes can survive!
I don't know if I have convinced you to read the book, but let me tell you this: it's one of those rare books that will give you a new and original perspective about how you perceive your own self, the inner space within. No, man is not only an island, no man is just one individual too: man has a universe within. The concept of "self" can itself radically change and you can even begin to may be get a glimpse of why you make a decision or why you act or fail to act in a somewhat deterministic pattern, a pattern which is often termed as personality.
So, my fellow compatriots, those with more historically "tropical" ancestors, for the want of a less racially incorrect term for native Indians, drink, but learn to drink in moderation, as you may not be hold it easily: it's not you, it's your genes which has not evolved to hold that drink. And it's not a negative trait either: Think of it, you can enjoy puchkas and chaats served with tamarind water of dubious source or quality on the streets without a worry than your friends from Finland who are sure to suffer from the Delhi Belly or equivalent. I am willing to bet serious money on this: if they eat like us is India, within a week after arrival they will suffer from a much more nasty case of ill-digestion than you and I! Anyone in the house ready to take my bet? Cheers!
The wOz Way
Book Review:I, Woz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon - Getting to the Core of Apple's Inventorby Steve Wozniak
Unknown to many, it was the other Steve, not Jobs but Wozniak who engineered the first Apple computers, Apple I and II. The latter has possibly brought about the revolution in desktop computing and changed the public perception of computers as large boxes with complicated panels of lights and switches which only rocket scientists could operate to the what it's current avatar looks like: the quintessential desktop home PC or laptop as we know it today which you don't have to be a geek to use.
The book is full of exciting insights into the what goes on in an inventor's mind, how engineers are really artists, and what honesty, firmness of purpose and integrity really means for them. A must-read for not only geeks and engineers who aspire to leave their mark on the all too well known frontiers of computing today, but also any lay person who wants to know more about how engineers change the world with technology, and don't quite always subscribe to the often repeated jaded view about the bad effects of technology and science.
Wozniak clearly explains how technology in itself is not a bad thing at all and it's use to make people's lives and work much easier comes from a dedication to human-centric causes rather than power, money, fame or glory. In many a funny incident recalled vividly in the narrative, what comes through is the author's great capacity to have fun while working on serious and challenging projects and at the same time his brash disregard for formal, corporate hierarchies when he argues that no revolutionary products or ideas were ever really born from committees formed in large companies comprising of technocrats, sales people and managers. He urges every engineer or inventor in the making to work alone at night after regular work hours in order to create something new, something that has the potential to change how things are done. This coming from someone who single-handedly created products which would revolutionise computer usage is advice you cannot afford to shrug away.
Apart from being the supergeek that he is, Wozniak's book has delightful stories, many of which were first time events in history or about things which one does not ordinarily come across even in a lifetime full of travelling and accomplishments: the US music festival, satellite uplink with USSR, the management of a movie theatre, the invention of the universal remote, phreaking subculture... Wozniak is the kind of genius that does not restrict itself to one domain for an entire lifetime. An engineer's engineer, he is also a much accomplished philanthropist, humorist, music-lover, parent and teacher. It's amazing that so few know about this quiet and unglamorous man, a man who nevertheless has a "cool" road named after him called the "Woz way".
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