Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Facts rarely make anyone change their mind. We know that all too well. This is true not just about political matters but also about every belief that people hold.   Why is that? Seth Godin takes a stab at the question. We have consciously or unconsciously built stories around our beliefs, political or otherwise. And that, he says, explains why facts rarely convince anyone: “Because a good story feels true. A good story resonates.” So he says: “If I bring facts to rebut your story, they will fail .”   Is there no hope then? Godin says one can succeed: “(If) the facts I bring are the foundation for a new story .” Therefore, he says: “Part of the job of making change is working to make sure a bad story doesn’t get in the way of good facts. ”

In an earlier blog , I mentioned the discovery of bacteriophages (viruses that kill bacteria) and asked why they weren’t used as treatment/prevention for bacterial diseases? Pranay Lal’s Invisible Empire answers that question.   First, says Lal, hierarchy matters. Some top biologists at the time offered alternate explanations – what if, they said, the killer wasn’t a virus but enzymes released by other bacteria? While d’Herelle was outranked, he used bacteriophages to treat a handful of patients suffering from bacterial dysentery. Years later, he cured a few more patients suffering from the bubonic plague. He tried his method in India to treat cholera outbreaks with great success. Sadly, his successes were few and even with the India case, where the effects were on large number of people, the trials had to stop due to the start of the Satyagraha movement (non-cooperation).   The few trials conducted after that didn’t help the case for various reasons: “The small-...

Marina Bay Sands. An iconic landmark of Singapore.   A 5-star resort with a casino. It includes a luxury shopping mall. An ArtScience museum. A huge theatre. A floating Apple store. Celebrity chef and signature restaurants. The hotel part consists of 3 curved towers of 55 floors each. Joining their tops is the Sands Skypark, a 340 meter skyway shaped like a ship. The purpose of this resort? To aid with Singapore’s economic and tourism objectives. The video below gives an all-round view.   As our 14 yo daughter never tires of reminding us, we rarely never splurge on anything. So we decided to spend two days at this iconic hotel (We initially considered a one-day stay, but that would have meant we’d barely have unpacked before it would be time to checkout).   Our room was on the 13 th floor, with a great view of the Gardens by the Bay and its light show. That is a huge urban park with cooled conservatories (lounges for growing delicate plants), a (pay) area with a spe...

This summer, we’d planned to visit Dubai. But repeated attacks on Iran early this year made us reconsider. What if another round of attacks happened during our visit? What if our flight got cancelled at the last minute? What if we got stranded after reaching there?   (This was before all out war began).   So we switched to Singapore as the destination, even though we’d been there before. Even then, we were nervous – what if jet fuel ran out due to the closure of the Straits of Hormuz? Anyways, we went ahead. A benefit in all this? My wife found if we re-did the hotel bookings with the uncertainty of the war and the ceasefire, prices were a lot less! ~~   Singapore immigration was impressive. You place your passport on a scanner, look at the camera and the system compares details and face with the visa application already submitted. That’s it – the turnstile opens and you’re done. No human interaction, no questions from an immigration official about purpose of v...

One of the chapters in Pranay Lal’s Invisible Empire starts with these lines: “Say the word ‘virus’ and the first thought that comes to the mind is of the diseases they cause.” But they can also be the cure for some diseases, he writes.   The Britisher, Ernest Hankin, was sent to India. His job was to “protect British troops from infectious diseases”. Like cholera. By 1894, he was curious about the Maagh Mela in Allahabad, on the banks of the Ganga. Over 3 million devotees arrived every day during that festival. He inspected the waters during this period: “There was very little bacterial contamination of their waters despite the multitudes of people and their cattle bathing in them, discarding their waste and burning corpses along their banks.” By 1895, he had written a paper that the Ganga was cleaner than most British or European rivers , “despite the way they were treated”. He wondered why that was the case, how the Ganga managed to avoid the decay seen in European ...

We think of viruses as being tiny, much tinier than bacteria. But as they say about mutual funds, past performance is not indicative of future results! In 2003, scientists discovered a “giant” virus. A typical virus has around 100 genes, this one had 1262. More giant viruses were found from that point onwards. Pranay Lal points out something startling in Invisible Empire : “Some viruses are so large that they can be parasitized by smaller viruses.” Sounded like Russian dolls.   The discovery of giant viruses reopened the debate on how viruses came to exist. Broadly speaking, there are two schools of theories. The first one says that viruses got started just before or around the same time as life on earth (remember how viruses are said to be on the border of living and non-living? And that viruses need to insert themselves into living cells to kick into action? That is why, in theory at least, they could have gotten started before life got started). The second one says that...