Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Penicillin . The most famous antibiotic of all time. In The Song of the Cell , Siddhartha Mukherjee asks and answers two questions about penicillin that had never even occurred to me. How does penicillin differentiate microbial cells from human cells? How did it work so well against such a wide range of microbes? (Before our overuse of antibiotics undid its effectiveness)   A slight digression first. In my 11 yo daughter’s Biology book, there is a chapter on cells. It mentions bacteria as examples of unicellular plants. Plants, that’s right, bacteria are plants!   Though Mukherjee doesn’t mention it, that weird fact (bacteria are plants) is the starting point of the answer to both questions. A plant cell has a cell wall. Bacteria being plants have cell walls. To create those cell walls, they have a particular enzyme. Humans cells, being animal cells, don’t have cell walls – hence, human cells don’t need or have that enzyme.   Penicillin “kills” those enzymes that create...

In The Song of the Cell , Siddhartha Mukherjee writes : “In the history of biology, there are valleys of silence that follow the peaks of monumental discoveries.” Like when Benjamin Marten reasoned that TB was caused by microscopic organisms in 1720. It would take another century before Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur linked diseases to microbial cells. Or when Mendel discovered genes in 1865. It was followed by 40+ years of no mention of genes.   But the reality is different: “If you zoom into these valleys of history, they are far from silent or inactive. They represent extraordinarily fecund periods when scientists try to wrap their minds around the magnitude, generality, and explanatory power of a discovery.” More questions follow in this period. Does the new idea explain any other “previously inexplicable observations”? Are there any further levels of organization beyond what was proposed?   Quite often, writes Mukherjee, one needs new instruments and model...

In Watterson’s telling, the fight with the Syndicate was David v Goliath. Goliath with its lawyers and money and binding legalese. David with a “pencil in hand and heart full of uncompromisable values”. Shades of grey v Black and White, as he famously captured in this strip:   Not entirely true, writes Matthew Morgan. Merchandising could only work if the strip continued, if the creator didn’t publicly air grievances. Options Watterson did have. In fact, the Syndicate did worry he might abruptly quit.   Besides, as the Syndicate bosses showed Watterson, others were creating illegal and unauthorized Calvin and Hobbes merchandise anyway. At least by licensing it, Watterson could control the narrative, the format. Watterson still said No; and the Syndicate backed off. Even rewrote the terms of his contract. ~~   One of the almost unheard-of terms of the revised contract was the sabbatical (extended leave from work, for between 3 and 12 months). Why was it unhear...

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, ...

There’s this blogger who goes by the moniker Southern Punk. Recently, he (she?) wrote a thought-provoking post titled “Why does Rome keep showing up?” . As American power (hard and soft) seems to be on the decline, more and more parallels to the slow decline of Rome are common.   He then brings up that famous Roman phrase, “Bread and circuses”. “Most people think it means entertainment. It doesn't. Not exactly. The bread kept people fed. The circus kept people occupied. The point wasn't the games themselves. The point was attention .”   Attention. Nowadays, the US government “seems to communicate through spectacle” only . “I don't remember a time when everything felt this performative… Sometimes it feels like we're living inside a never-ending competition for screen time.” He contrasts that with how things used to be. Once upon a time. “I miss the idea that government was supposed to be boring. Boring meant people were working. Boring meant budgets were...

How is China positioning itself to become the new reserve/international currency? China, writes Way Yuhl, has learned from and copied America.   Remember the New Silk Road project (aka Belt and Road), whereby China “financed roads, railways, ports, power plants, and telecommunications networks” across Asia, Africa and Latin America? Well, that’s not entirely about profits from interest on the loans. It is also how China has built financial leverage with much of the developing world. If their infrastructure projects all rely on China, well, they are likely to align/agree with China on economic and financial matters. On a side note, Yuhl mentions the Sri Lanka port that was handed over to China for 99 years when Sri Lanka couldn’t repay. While India’s concern was Chinese presence so close to our borders/waters, the West cited it as an example of Chinese predatory lending ( zamindar style). Guess what? “America used the same mechanism after WWI, converting Britain’s debt depe...

While reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book, I was amused by the discussion the US and Britain had as the tide of war started to turn in favour of the Allies. The Americans offered their bombers to assist the British air raids on Germany. One section of the US air force aspired for precision bombing – bombing precise targets that would yield the maximum benefits, rather than the prevalent indiscriminate reduce-everything-t0-rubble strategy. That section of the US air force was called the Bomber Mafia , the title of the book.   Illogical #1 : While this may sound great, both operationally and from a moral standpoint, the tech to do precision bombing did not exist! Equally relevant was that the if you intended to even try precision bombing, you needed to be able to see the target. Which meant you had to fly during the day (because radar tech was nothing like what it is today). That meant the enemy could see you and shoot at you that much more easily. All of this is why the British were...

How does an international currency get displaced? Does the contender need to do pre-work to take over when the transition point arrives? Way Yuhl looks at how the US dollar took over from the British pound as the international currency. As the colonial superpower, Britain ruled. The pound was the international reserve currency, and British banks handled most global commerce. “Deals that had nothing to do with Britain ran through British institutions.”   The popular belief is that the US dollar replaced the pound due to the second World War, the complete destruction of Europe and Britain, and the beginning of the end of the British empire. True, but that was just the tipping point. In the decades leading to that point, America had been preparing…   From the early 1900’s onwards, America progressively overtook Britain as the world’s largest industrial economy. It produced more steel than Britain and Germany combined. But that alone was never going to be enough to beco...

My 14 yo daughter is studying acids and bases in chemistry this year. Which is why I got a refresher that acids release hydrogen ions (H + ) when dissolved in water; and bases either accept those hydrogen ions (H + ) or release hydroxide ions (OH - ) when dissolved in water. Very elementary part of chemistry. ~~   Linus Pauling. In 1952, he hadn’t yet won a Nobel but was universally acknowledged as one of the world’s greatest chemists. At the time, the structure of the to-be-famous DNA molecule was unknown. Many teams were trying to figure it, including Watson and Crick. As also was Pauling – DNA was a molecule, so who better than a chemist to attack the problem? By the end of 1952, Pauling thought he had figured it, and communicated as much to his son, Peter, who was at Cambridge, same as Watson and Crick.   DNA’s structure was a rivalry – the British didn’t want to lose to the Americans. Peter mentions what his British colleagues were saying: “You know how childr...

As a kid, I struggled a lot with the assignment of gender to non-living things in Hindi. Neither of the other languages I knew (Tamil and English) have that concept, and it always felt weird why किताब (book) should have any gender. Even worse, there didn’t seem to be any logic to the assignment of gender.   English is an outlier in not assigning genders, says Guy Deutscher in Through the Language Glass . Most European languages (French, German) assign genders. On the other hand, several languages don’t even have words for ‘he’ and ‘she’! Like Turkish, Finnish, Hungarian, Indonesian, Vietnamese. Worst of all (confirming my childhood grouse on Hindi), most languages that assign genders to non-living objects don’t follow any pattern.   If a language loses gender words (he/she/it), well, it depends on which word(s) was lost. Spanish, French and Italian lost the “it” word (for non-living things) and so everything had to be male or female. Losing a gender word added to ...

What are the dangers if a single party dominates the political landscape for too long? Like the Congress did or the BJP is doing? Raghu S Jaitley analyzes .   One , he says, such extended dominance can change the “psychology of the electorate itself”! He elaborates: “Consider a voter born in 1992. That person would have been too young (under 18) to vote in the 2009 general election, the last election won by the Congress-led UPA. By 2029, that voter will be 37 years old. For their entire adult political life, for anyone below the age of 37 in 2028, the BJP would have occupied the political mindspace with continued narrative dominance. To such voters, the opposition begins appearing abnormal rather than an alternative.” It reminded me of the question as to how Rome, the Republic was transformed into an emperor-based system. The answer was that Julius Caeser’s successor, Augustus Caeser won the battle for succession fairly young and thus ruled for several decades. By the time ...

Like many companies, Meta (formerly known as Facebook) decided to use AI as its customer support chatbot (instead of humans). It resulted in a ridiculously easy way to hack Instagram accounts (Meta/Facebook owns Instagram).   So easy that even a layman can understand it (and be shocked). Hackers who wanted to hack anyone’s Insta account would initiate a chat with the AI support bot and ask for the email ID associated with the account be updated. The AI would do it, no questions asked! Then the hacker would initiate a password reset request on the target account. An OTP-like verification code would be sent to the associated email ID (But remember, this is now the mail ID that the hacker had changed via the chat bot). He’d enter the verification code, and bingo! Password reset and the Insta account had been hacked. “The attack did not rely on sophisticated malware, zero-day exploits or technical vulnerabilities in Instagram itself. Instead, attackers manipulated the AI system t...

How does the same party keep winning elections for abnormally long periods? Like the Left and Mamata (until this time) in Bengal? Like the BJP winning elections across the country for almost 15 years (except the last national election)? Like how the Congress used to win from independence onwards?   This is the question Raghu S Jaitley analyses and it makes for interesting reading. One would imagine that a party should not win continuously for long periods: “Economic underperformance naturally produces anti-incumbency, unemployment translates into anger, inflation gets punished, and that, over time, voters simply get tired.” What then explains all the “aberrations” listed in the first para? Why didn’t “anti-incumbency… mechanically restore equilibrium”?   Jaitley only focusses on the Congress and BJP because, at their prime, they were (are?) winning continuously both at the national level and at multiple state levels, and therefore they are relevant to all Indian...

There are two types of systems used in languages to give directions, writes Guy Deutscher in Through the Language Glass . First , the one most of us know ( egocentric ), i.e., directions wrt the individual. Turn left . Half a kilometer ahead . All directions are from the perspective of the individual. It is easy to understand why this is so popular – you don’t need a map or a compass, it feels so intuitive.   Except that, ( second ) many languages specify directions in geocentric terms. In those languages, directions are specified as north, south, east, and west, not left or right! Which languages are these? Many native languages of Australia, South East Asia, Mexico, Nepal and Madagascar. “We have simply mistaken the familiar for the natural.”   The obvious feeling would be that geocentric terms can only work for groups that stay in small areas all their life. When they tested this hypothesis by driving some natives far from their native areas, places they had ne...