Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Reading in the Brain by Stanislas Dehaene explains at length how we read. The first chapter starts with the eye. I was surprised that: “The fovea, which occupies 15 degrees of the visual field is the only part of the retina that is genuinely useful for reading.” Just 15 degrees of the visual field is useful for reading? No wonder then: “Our eyes do not move continuously across the page… They move in small steps.” In steps of 15 degrees coverage, that is.   McConkie and Rayner’s experiment proves this window is real. The setup involves a special device that tracks eye movement of the wearer. It then changes the visual display on the screen accordingly. In real time . It shows only a few characters to the left and right of the center gaze, the rest it fills with x’s.             We the pexxx xx xxx xxxxxxx xxxx xx xx xxxxxx xx When the eye moves, the screen gets updated to align where the gaze has moved: ...

I read this Hourly History book on the Ottoman empire . The book felt like reading through Mughal history in India, constrained to an hour of reading (such a book would probably have been limited to Babur, Akbar, Aurungzeb, and fading away with Bahadur Shah Zafar with the rise of the British; with some tidbits like the Taj Mahal thrown in). Except that, unlike the Mughal era, a lot of the Sultans were short-lived, and so there was a lot of churn in policies and governance mechanisms. While not a very informative book (it has too much to cover), it’s enough to get the broad brushstrokes. ~~   One amusing tidbit went like this. When the empire was still small and growing, the Sultan Murad II felt he had secured the place with expansion and treaties. So he abdicated the throne in favour of his son, Mehmed II. Except the son was just 12 years old! The Sultan retired to “enjoy a lifestyle worthy of an ex-Sultan”. But, as would happen repeatedly, the areas to the west, being Chr...

Why did Bill Watterson fight the merchandising of Calvin and Hobbes so much, so bitterly, asks and answers Matthew Morgan.   One gets a clue from a question fans of the strip asked: Was Hobbes real or imaginary? Here is Watterson’s own Zen koan-like answer: “Calvin sees Hobbes one way, and everyone else sees Hobbes another way. I show two versions of reality, and each makes complete sense to the participant who sees it. I think that’s how life works.”   The article summarizes Watterson’s answer perfectly: “You could say Hobbes is both imaginatively real and really imaginary, depending on your perspective. Hobbes can be either, which also means he’s both. Is Hobbes a tiger or a toy? Yes.”   If Watterson looked at Hobbes with this Zen/quantum mechanical duality lens, one can understand: “(Why Watterson was so averse to) some toy manufacturer settle it by turning Hobbes “into a stuffed toy for real, and deprive the strip of an element of its magic”. ...

I found Matthew Morgan’s long post on Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes , refreshing – it provided a new perspective. ~~   The post starts with Watterson in his college dorm (hostel) “thinking that his dorm room needs an amateur rendition of Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam”! “What the work will lack in “colour sense and technical flourish” it’ll make up for with comedy — specifically “the incongruity of having a High Renaissance masterpiece in a college dorm that had the unmistakeable odour of old beer cans and older laundry”.” Like all college kids, it’s only when he’s half done that he remembered he should have asked for permission! He goes to ask the housing director. Who immediately guesses the kid’s probably already done it. So the director agrees, on the condition the ceiling be restored to its original condition before the term ends. Watterson agrees, completes his “work”, and then wipes it clean. ~~   Calvin and Hobbes was always a one...

Yoga postures are hard enough; try doing them with your eyes closed and it becomes almost impossible. Kids on the other hand seem do those same poses fairly easily with their eyes closed.   I understood why it’s easier for kids to balance with their eyes closed as I was reading this excerpt from Eureka!: Mindblowing Science Every Day of the Year . The answer starts with an interesting observation: “Children obviously enjoy the feeling of dizziness -- just look at how roundabouts in parks and playgrounds are packed with young­sters.” Why is that? Because, it turns out, our balance system is controlled by 3 senses: Inner ear (vestibular system) Receptors in joints and muscles (proprioceptor system) Eyes (visual system)   These 3 systems mature at different rates from the time we are born: “The vestibular system is fully operational by the time a child has reached 6 months of age; proprioceptors need three or four years more. The development of the visual elem...

Malcolm Gladwell’s The Bomber Mafia talks of several problems from the Second World War that I had never thought about. They do seem obvious once you hear of it…   With bomber planes flying at high speeds at high altitudes (to avoid being hit by anti-aircraft fire), the odds of any bomb landing where one wanted it to was remote. What was the windspeed? The speed of the aircraft? Was the plane level when you dropped the bomb or moving up/down? Or side to side? And you couldn’t even see the tiny target so far below clearly anyway.   Even though some devices (they were practically analog computers!) were built to try and solve this problem, they never worked out. Because in practice, the person operating it had to set the dials while under enemy fire, in a shaking plane, and sometimes with clouds hiding the target altogether.   This could explain why both the Allies and the Axis powers practiced indiscriminate bombing during the war. If you can’t aim precisely, ...