Books: Beautiful Data and The Passionate Programmer

Beautiful Data: The Stories Behind Elegant Data Solutions
by Toby Segaran and Jeff Hammerbacher (try here)
Looking forward to his book which is due in July 2009.

The 39 contributors of the book explain how they developed simple and elegant solutions on projects ranging from the Mars lander to a Radiohead video.

Some of the topics include:

• opportunities and challenges of datasets on the Web
• visualize trends in urban crime using maps and data mashups
• challenges of data processing system of space travel
• crowdsourcing and transparency helps drug research
• automatic alerts when new data overlaps pre-existing data
• massive investment to create, capture, and process DNA data

The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development
by Chad Fowler (try here)

Chad Fowler argues here that your career in Software has to be a personal enterprise. And this publication from Pragmatic Bookshelf is one of my picks for the new engineers joining the Software industry, and who come for advice (and expects me to fortune tell for them :-)

This book is about creating a remarkable career in software development. In most cases, remarkable careers don't come by chance. They require thought, intention, action, and a willingness to change course when you've made mistakes. Most of us (including me to a larger part, and most of those that I know personally) have been stumbling around letting our careers take us where they may. While the uncertainty is not entirely avoidable, Fowler argues that it can be controlled, and this book aims to lay out a strategy for planning a possible successful life in software development.

Success in today's IT environment requires you to view your career as a business endeavour. This book tries to teach how to become an entrepreneur, driving your career in the direction of your choosing. Fowler talks about building your software development career step by step, following the same path that you would follow if you were building, marketing, and selling a product. After all, your skills themselves are a product.

• See also:
• Related post: Some from the Bookshelf.

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Cheers! to Life '09

~ Cheers! to Life '09 ~



In the joy of your heart
may you feel the living joy
that sang one spring morning,
sending its glad voice across a hundred years...

--Rabindranath Tagore,
The Gardner (1915), pp85.

Today, May 7, is also Tagore's Birth Day.

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Some from the Bookshelf

UMERTO ECO'S LIBRARY is supposed to be about books on the pending list waiting to be read - a rather twisted argument by Taleb at knowledge assimilation when he philosophises that the unknown is more important than acquired knowledge itself. Perhaps makes sense, if you are a nihilist as well.

Frank Zappa almost gave it up saying, "Too many books, too little time". And this post claims to be no improvisation either. In fact, following are a few from the pending list from my night-stand that give a rather sarcastic stare almost every time. Reviews and comments welcomed.

The Future of Technology (Economist)
by Tom Standage (try hereThe Future of Technology (Economist))

This book gathers together some of the best writings that has recently appeared in The Economist on the way technology and its use is developing, and is likely to develop and change in the future.

Taking a look at the index was a compulsion of sorts to pick this engaging read. And the opening para alludes towards how IT will have to be a utility, like electricity.

Other comments: From the industrial revolution to the railway age, through the era of electrification, the advent of mass production and finally to the information age, the same pattern keeps repeating itself. An exciting, vibrant phase of innovation and financial speculation is followed by a crash, after which begins a longer, more stately period during which the technology is actually deployed properly. This book examines the post-technology era, drawing on the best writing on technology that has appeared in The Economist...

Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition
by Guy Kawasaki (try here)

Picked it up from the airport lounge last week -- the reviews are generally good -- some rather uncommon common-sense observations and ideas on business in hi-tech/IT industry from a Venture Capitalist pov promises this to be an interesting read.

Other comment: In Silicon Valley slang, a “bozo explosion” is what causes a lean, mean, fighting machine of a company to slide into mediocrity. As Guy Kawasaki puts it, “If the two most popular words in your company are partner and strategic, and partner has become a verb, and strategic is used to describe decisions and activities that don’t make sense” . . . it’s time for a reality check.

The Halo Effect: ... and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers
by Phil Rosenzweig (try here)

While discussing Taleb's ideas with an economist through his blog, he came back with this book recommendation, suggesting that The Halo Effect shall prove a worthy prequel to Taleb's work (later, Amazon book selling trends seconded this).

After acute analysis Phil Rosenzweig observers in this book, contrary to many other mega-selling memes, that success finally comes down to "shrewd strategy, superb execution and good luck"

Other comment: Much of our business thinking is shaped by delusions -- errors of logic and flawed judgements that distort our understanding of the real reasons for a company's performance. In a brilliant and unconventional book, Phil Rosenzweig unmasks the delusions that are commonly found in the corporate world.

Happy reading. More to follow.

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Depicting Consumption Behaviour in the Recession Era

INTERESTING ILLUSTRATION OF CONSUMPTION BEHAVIOUR in the recession era by Armano on his personal blog Logic + Emotion based on a recent article on the topic in The Economist.



Here is Armano's post, and here is the original write-up at The Economist.

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TED, Memes, Metaphors, but no Economics?

TED: IDEAS WORTH SPREADING is the welcome line at ted.com - an intellectual platform blending Technology, Entertainment, and Design, and almost attaining a cult status. Who's who of the world have marked their presence at its annual conferences starting 1984. This is the stage where Prof. Stephen Hawking urged mankind to colonise neighbouring planets; where the UN peace ambassador Jane Goodall spoke about her 45 years old chimpanzee studies; where Bono won the price of expressing three wishes in a bid to change the world; and where Bill Gates opened a jar of mosquitoes to the audience to spread (with them) awareness about malaria (later, when the panic subsided it was declared that the mosquitoes were harmless for they were cured of the germs. I am not entirely sure though which anti-virus was used by Mr. Gates.)

A meme is an information packet with an attitude. For the current young generation world over, and those leaning towards entrepreneurship, TED is the "in thing". So also for the Darwin look-alike scientist-philosophers such as Daniel (Dan) Dennet, who is deliberately mistaken by his followers for a living personification of the old Greek philosopher statues of Delphi museum. In the video clip that follows Canadian professor Dan Dennet, during his presentation on the stage at TED, spoke about the subject he is famous as well as controversial for: Memes and Atheism.

In a interesting spin to the subject, Dan places Creationists, Terrorists, Memes, and Viruses in the same basket. What comes out is a curious argument surrounding memes (pronounced meem, as in theme), presented in a rather entertaining and gently forceful manner. You are free to disagree with it, that may prove to be the harder part though.


[Above: Prof. Dan Dennet on stage of TED talking about Memes and their power.]

A few points that shall immediately stick an observer:

• Where is Economics? There is no apparent stab against commerce and economics, but there is no explicit mention of it as being one of the driving forces for T / E / D either. (Do have a look at the list of sponsors. After all, running TED is not without large commercial help.)
• If memes are all about spreading ideas, would you call TED's slogan a good meme? (Apparently, Dan seem to have taken a frown at all kind of memes.)
• Spending a good amount of time on Google wasn't that helpful in trying to ascertain the definitive difference between what Richard Dawkings coined as Meme in 1976, and what historians, philosophers and priests over the millennia have traditionally called a Metaphor.
• The viral social media seem to provide the perfect medium for meme concept; it remains unclear, however, how far and deep it take the impact of meme theory into the social fabric already. And what, where and who are the checks and balances?
• Dan and Dawkings may take offence on the use of the word coincidental on their part, but coincidental it might be that Meme and the social media moto of "Me, me, me..." sounds so alike. (If it was intentional on Dawkings' part, he is surely a visionary. And should belong to the Social Sciences rather than Biology.)

Daniel Dennet's book, Kinds of Minds, is as entertaining as it is serious and thought provoking.

• See also:
• Go here for the above video of Dan Dennet on YouTube, and here for more on memes.
• Go here for Ted.com and its various links, and here for subscribing to TEDtalk videos.

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The Dunbar Number and Limits of Our Social Networks

THE SOCIAL MEDIA AND WEB 2.0 (though both are considered synonymous by some) provided the netizens with amazing new possibilities, like a new universe opening up with everyone mingling with everyone else. While the web (no pun intended) of these collaboration network, social in nature, kept increasing in complexity and continued expanding, there was no measure for if it were to follow the same yo-yo model of the actual Universe (try here). In other words, it was very difficult to ascertain if the motion was inward or outward, for there were no clear boundaries defined or known.

The size of the neocortex of the brain allows humans to have stable networks of about 150. This is known as "the Dunbar number".

With the help of Dr. Robin Dunbar’s research, perhaps we now have the first indications toward the limitations of Web 2.0 vis-a-vis human psychology and behaviour. Dr. Dunbar is an anthropologist currently with the Oxford University and has studied primates and humans and their social behaviour.

Many of the activities and exchanges on the online social networks are considered "grooming". In the wild, grooming is time-consuming: keeping track of who to groom —and why— demands quite a bit of mental computation. One needs to remember who is allied with, hostile to, or lusts after whom, and act accordingly.

On the web, social 'networking' algorithms and computations power help with these calculations. Yet, the cognitive power of the human brain limits the size of the social network that an individual of any given species can develop. Dr. Dunbar suggested that the size of the neocortex of the human brain allows for having stable networks of about 148 connections (or 150 in round figures). This is known as "the Dunbar number", and recent sampling of Facebook users network gives an average of about 120, which seems consistent with this hypothesis. The research continues further as follows:

Many institutions, from Neolithic villages to the maniples of the Roman army, seem to be organised around the Dunbar number.

[In the modern era] An average man —one with 120 friends— generally responds to the postings of only seven of those friends by leaving comments on the posting individual's photos, status messages or "wall". An average woman is slightly more sociable, responding to ten. When it comes to two-way communication such as e-mails or chats, the average man interacts with only four people and the average woman with six. Among those Facebook users with 500 friends, these numbers are somewhat higher, but not hugely so. Men leave comments for 17 friends, women for 26. Men communicate with ten, women with 16.

Humans may be advertising themselves more efficiently. But they still have the same small circles of intimacy as ever.

This also goes on to say that if you are "in touch" with that person fairly regularly with whom you are perhaps yet to work out a one-on-one, you are better off treasuring those interactions, for you have gotten into the "core" within the Dunbar circle. At the same time, in his 2005 book —The Human Story— Dunbar quotes Bob Marley's Redemption Song (try here), suggesting not to fall pray to the omnipresent temptations of 'grooming'.

(More to read and write on the Attention Economy in the coming posts.)

• See also:
• Go here for the relevant research paper [PDF] by Dr. Dunbar titled "The Social Brain Hypothesis" at the University of Liverpool website
  
• Go here for The Economist article: "The size of social network".
• Go here for a video lecture by Dr. Dunbar titled "What Makes Us Human?" at pulse-project.org

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Atlas' Second Coming, and the Shrugs

THE FINANCIAL MELTDOWN MIGHT HAVE MADE THE ATLAS TICKLE, or so it may have seemed if one takes the metaphor literally. But Atlas, in spite of shrugs, is going strong on its part.

Interestingly, Audacity of Hope by President Obama was overtaken by Atlas Shrugged on the sales charts for a while just before the presidency change. This is the second coming of Ayn Rand that started in 2007. Honestly though, I never got this book right. There was always something ultra-right about the acceptance and success of her (cold-war incubated) concepts of having a platonic state of a democracy (where one would be expected to demonstrate as much dexterity with the left hand as the right. Over the past ten years or so I must have gifted her books, selectively and carefully, to at least three people of my immediate reckoning -all of whom fell out of touch. Not so carefully, after all!).

Ayn Rand's rendition of the perfect world —much more vividly worded in her previous notoriety, The Fountainhead— could only be realised by finding the means of fitting the world within mathematical formulas (or vice versa), something refuted at its very basis most recently by professor and mathematician Stephen Hawking through his commentaries on quantum mechanics (also, try here). There is no room for spirit in Rand's 'predictable world', nor for an experience of it (except perhaps in nakedness, which is to be perceived without sensitivity: ask Mr. Wynand, who, according to a female friend, is the real hero of the story for her). Even though they claimed to keep the torch burning when the oil ran out.

The storyline of The Fountainhead, as well as the fiction of Atlas Shrugged are nonetheless entertaining provided one can handle a thousand pages each.

The Economist argues today that the current financial crisis, and various bail-out announcements, have a direct correlation with unit sales figures and sales rank of Atlas Shrugged (see chart. source: ecomonist.com). The author attributes the pattern to mass social media -- such as Facebook, and certain user groups aiming at personifying the storytelling as if "Atlas Shrugged is happening in real life" (try here). Above all, it is believed that Alan Greenspan is a fan of Rand's work, and thus his every recent move was like a stimuli to the book's gift-wrapping counters at Amazon.com.

However, it is to take it too far to compare Rearden's (one of the book's characters who invents a unique metal) visit to the senators in Washington DC with that of the Banking CEO's meeting with the US congress these past weeks.

I am at a loss of expectations from the movie based of Rand's works which is in the making for a 2011 release. I can only shrug for the moment. As a fan of Rand's work, however, it actually makes sense, for it largely belongs to the fairyland.

Let's wait and see who is John Galt?

Update: Have you read "The Driver" (try here) by Garet Garrett? Arguably, Rand lifted a few key concepts and phrases from this rather obscured 1922 work. His first work in 1911 was titled "Where the Money Grows and Anatomy of the Bubble".

• See also:
• Go here for WSJ.com jumping in the bandwagon with "'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years".
• Go here for Amazon.com bestselling list among Classics where four out of top 10, including the first three, are Rand's books as of this week (Feb 28, 2009).

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Geek post: How to use Google Search APIs on your blog

HOW CAN YOU MAKE GOOGLE SERVE YOU BETTER? Customizing Google search to suit one's needs in a more controlled manner has been a fairly less exploited area - at least by the end-users. Perhaps because there are enough 3rd party widgets available to assist a normal tusker with her Blog to do this work. This post, though a diversion from the normal theme of discussion here, is about getting a little hands-on with Google Search API to put a professional looking search-box on your blog - all the while utilizing existing components available on (what's called) the Google OS.

How To: Use Google Search Ap Is On Your Blog

View more presentations from mutex07. (tags: technology google)

With a little tweak, this method also works with TypePad. Now, if you have means of posting CSS and JavaScript on your WordPress hosted blog, you can use Step-1 through Step-11 to create your customised Google Search Engine and plug it into your personal blog.

All the best!

• Seel also:
• Go here for documentation of the Google Search API.
• Go here for (official) Google Ajax API's Blog
• Go here for Ajax Search API Playground for some ready made code if you are ok with that black template (the blog is dead through).

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Taleb and (guru) Mandelbrot together on Credit Crunch

THIS ACTUALLY TOOK PLACE AT PBS STUDIOS some five months ago when the $700bn bail-out package aka Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was announced at the U.S. Senate. Nassim Taleb features here with his Guru Benoit Mandelbrot in this joint interview by Paul Solomon titled 'Experts Examine Future of Credit Crunch'.

For anyone new to Mandelbrot and Taleb or the subjects of Chaos theory and randomness that they deal with, this shall provide a good introduction (and a starting point to what could become a very interesting journey. I have been meaning to post these for a few months now. Finally, the cat is out of the draft.).

Below are two excerpts from the talk, followed by the direct PBS podcast:

The increased concentration among banks seems to have the effect of making financial crises less likely. But when they happen, they are more global in scale and hit us very hard. True, we now have fewer failures, but, when they occur, I shiver at the thought. -- Nassim Taleb in his book The Black Swan

Mandelbrot, after talking about the Butterfly-effect, elaborates that:

[The Butterfly-effect creates turbulences] The word "turbulence" is one which actually is common to physics and to social scientists, to economics. Everything which involves turbulence is enormously more complicated --not just a little bit more complicated, not just one year more schooling-- just enormously more complicated. [...] That is not well-understood. In fact, that is misunderstood for which tools have been developed which assume that changes are always very small. If one of them comes, nothing bad happens. If several of them come together, very bad things have happened...

And, so it goes.

• See also:
• Go here for the podcast download, and here for the full transcript of the interview.
• Go here for the video of the show. I didn't embed it directly for I found it rather ominous for an introduction to show Taleb laughing over a grim topic.

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Language, Commerce, and Google Translate

WILL DURANT CHRONICLED IN HIS HISTORICAL COMPILATIONS THAT ancient trade provided the necessity for the invention of the alphabets. A theory contested by many, but not rejected in its entirety.

In this guest post, my friend and Language Technology researcher Jason M. Adams discusses the mutual history of language and commerce by looking at some of the ways that each has been changed by the other and how they will continue to shape each other going forward.

* * *

Commerce is a human convention deeply entwined with language. Economic motivations were among the many reasons ancient (and modern) empires conquered other lands, spreading their languages beyond their natural range. Traders would travel to distant lands, encountering speakers of exotic languages. Recent study of the immediate commerce and trade (focusing mainly around the era of last 500 years of European Maritime expansion) describes the exchange of languages at trade as follows: In cases where bilingual speakers were few to none, Pidgin languages –with simplified grammar and vocabulary– developed, which come about as a means of communication solely for the purpose of trade. When flourishing trade routes last long enough, and at the hubs trading travelers start settling down locally, a Pidgin starts being spoken widely enough. The children of such a community start growing up learning a Pidgin as a first language. This is when a Pidgin language changes into a Creole language (having many fascinating characteristics of its own). Contrary to simple trade relationships, when a conquering or dominating group of people bring their own languages, it either supplants the native language or influences it heavily, and later goes for linguistic homogenization. Pidgins, on the other hand, develop because speakers are motivated to communicate in order to trade.

[Above: "The Lydian Lion", arguably the oldest surviving coins, representing organized trade and the associated language it bore which gave it its "value".]
Commerce is one of the many factors that drive linguistic homogenization. In the modern era of the internet and mass media, attention is the scarce resource. Choosing a language of commerce (e.g. English being adopted as a language of business by other European and former Russian communities) helps to maximize one's reach in business. On the personal aspect, the attention economy of modern mass media is highly language dependant as well.

On the other hand, the same internet proliferation and mass media has provided us with what is called "Machine translation services", such as Google Translate. As the quality of these services improve, it becomes less and less necessary to publish exclusively in commerce languages. Linguistic homogenization may not be the inexorable force it appears to be today. Will the quality of machine translation improve fast enough, and will the business case for them be strong enough to turn the tide of linguistic homogenization? Certainly those betting on machine translation services hope so. But there is a dueling problem here: Tackling human languages using machines requires a significant investment. However, at the same time, in order for machine translation to truly counteract linguistic homogenization, it has to be freely available as a ridiculously cheap service.

While the future progress of commerce and language may be uncertain, what is certain is that they will continue to heavily influence each other. And there's nothing new about that.

• See also:
• Go here for articles related to the current economic crisis.
• Go here for Jason Adams' blog website.
• Go here for further discussion on "attention is the scarce resource".

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Remembering Mahatma

[Above: Mahatma Gandhi sharing a light moment with his granddaughters. source: Enc. Britannica]

[Gandhi's] words struck me so forcibly that there and then I committed myself to attempt to make a film about Mahatma Gandhi - a commitment that changed the subsequent twenty years of my life.
-- Richard Attenborough, in his introduction to the book - The Words of Gandhi

Today, Jan 30, 2009 is the 61st anniversary of Bapu's demise.
Update: Added Mahatma's speech on spirituality recorded by BBC at Kingsley Hall, London in Oct 1931 (~5:20 min.).

• See also:
• Go here for works of Gandhi at Project Gutenberg.
• Go here for Gandhi's speech at BBC.co.uk.

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Meltdown Graphics

SOME OF THE INTERESTING GRAPHICS recently found at certain online sources, two of which are real and one is creative.

[Stock prices of three of the UK's largest banks bite dust. The most hit is Fred's RBS, which was eroded close to Zero pence. source: Economist.com]

[Three talk-of-the-doom-town financial phenomena: Long Tail, Tipping Point, and the Black Swan. source: Longtail.com]

[Fall of capitalism and the *new* United States by c.2010 (Or, apparently, Divided States?). source: WSJ.com]

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Welcome to MindGap.in

The ideation finally found a worthy digital label, an anchor, a domain name.

mind × the + gap claims MindGap.in.

[Above: the image *tries* to appear before the image is created through this post; as in Chicken & Egg; though theoretically it would require an infinite super-imposing of images, the way the rendering Mandelbrot algorithms goes for a Fractal imagery.]
Welcome!

• See also:
• Go here for MindGap.in

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Britain Officially Slips into Recession

ONLY A COUPLE OF MONTHS AGO, THE (SO CALLED) LEADERSHIP of the stalwarts from the land of the birth of modern finance and capitalism, namely the money streets of London, seem to show the way to the world, yet again. Leading economists from across the Atlantic cried to pay attention to the novel strategy through which the Britons claimed to wager a turnaround of the global financial crisis: by partnering the financial institutes and banks, not just bailing them out.

Today, Reuters shows the data declaring that Britain is officially under recession [See Right. Source: Reuters.com].

Now, there doesn't seem to be a consensus on why this happened in spite of all that happened. Nobody seems to be knowing what's going on, where it came from, taking us where. And apparently, Taleb would be having a laugh. But loosing Sterling suddenly could be much harder than the steady weakening US Dollar - it would probably mean that the hedge would become the target; cover is blown.

When George W. Bush assumed office, he had security crisis falling into his lap almost immediately (9/11) in 2001. The new president in 2009 has the financial crisis to grapple with from day one in the Oval office at the White House. Perhaps the only advantage (if one would want to call it as such) that President Obama might have is the foreknowledge of the crisis he and his country would be entering into. How much that knowledge goes to help him and America, and the world at large, only time would tell.

I would prefer the new President to be wary of this notion of saving the world, for a 'saviour' recently met the following fate. Take a look:


[Above: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown claiming to "Save the world" before the members of British Parliament in early Dec 2008 - roughly a month and a half before Britain slipped into recession. (via telegraph.co.uk).]
There is this old Sufi saying that roughly translates into "Hope anchors the world" (followers of the recent Obama campaign may find familiarity with the word). Almost immediately though, the nemesis definition of the notion is reminded that says,

Optimism is the mania
of saying all is well,
when one is in hell.

• See also:
• Go here for the Reuters data of 23 Jan 09 - Britain slips into recession.
• Go here for the above footage on YouTube.

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My Twitter Footprint (Dec'08)

TALKING ABOUT VARIOUS DATA MODELLING TRENDS, my experimental twitter footprint from the microblogsphere over the past 30 days of tweeting shows something like this.

Apparently, the patterns show (at least) three trends-of-the-month, if you like:

• Nassim Nicholas Taleb has been influential ("tbs")
• A lot of gratitude-filled human interaction took place ("thanks")
• Cricket was largely ignored (or any sports for that matter)

Overall, the positive vibes (:-), interesting, sure, lol, okay, good, ...) clearly outweighed the strains (in spite of having long and stretched work days). Surely, this would have its contributions towards the real-time positive attitude index which tracks people's moods within the twitter system.

• See also:
• Go here to get your own Wordle from your twitter-feed via TweetStats.com.

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Blog by A Mechanic

THE WEBSITE IS LOADED with a lot of caveats and disclaimers. That gets me thinking if they mean more fun than business..? After putting this blog through their "Analyzer" the results came back naming me to be a "Mechanic" and showed a brain-map claiming to indicate the areas of my brain that are supposedly activated while blogging these posts.

Interesting it may seem, I suppose I would take this simply on a lighter note (in any case, this blog is deliberately focused in certain areas by specifically shoving certain ideas. So, there it goes!).

On the other hand it was surely fun to put some of my friends' blogs through Typealyzer (without their knowing) and to find funny details about them..! They most likely would be getting some pointy tweets now :-)


The analysis goes on describing the personality traits as follows:

The Mechanics: The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and fire-fighters.

Relax, this is strictly for fun!

• See also:
• Go here to analyse your writing personality by Typealyzer.com
• Go here for the Google directory on Personality types and theories.

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2008 in Pictures via The Big Picture at Boston Globe

ONE OF THE MOST REVIVING EXPERIENCE OF THE MONTH was to get the feeds from The Boston Globe's The Big picture compilation for 2008. These high-quality pictures capturing real life events from across the world left many spellbound. Whilst we live in this age of information overdose, and when "sensationalization" by every possible news breaker/baker blunts the senses of amazement in a normal mind, this photo-documentary of the time that we just lived past aroused mixed feelings.

Joys & sorrows, triumphs & trials, trusts & traumas: through these vivid pictures of selected events captured within this three-part series of 40 each, I came to be reminded that we hardly seem to live away from the pairs of opposites.

Following are just a couple of them that I randomly selected without applying any thoughts (for I would want you to enjoy at all of them).

[Kenyan athletes during the 2008 Summer Olympics. Courtesy: Boston.com]
2008 was here.

Edit: When I came back to this post and looked at the selected picture above (which I said I chose without any particular reason or thinking) I realized that perhaps this was the only picture among the set of 120 that actually glorified Africa. Arguably, peoples of that continent are challenged by more means than one - economically, medically, nutrition-wise, et al - however, after experiencing their living by spending a few months among them, I must mention that against all odds these people exhume Life - the spirit of being alive!

• See also:
• Go here for part I, then here for part II and here is part III.
• Go here to subscribe to this amazing picture feed from The Boston Globe.

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Indian Epic Goes Back to the Future: Ramayan 3392 AD

RECESSION, DEPRESSION, TERRORISM AND TERMINATIONS are rife. Someone said, we live in interesting times. And that makes me wonder about the difference between 'desperate' and 'interesting'.

The recent data shows that Beer consumption worldwide is on the rise, and the entertainment industry is all set to launch one mega project after another. Re-session!? On the same lines, Scott Thill of Wired magazine reports interviewing Gotham Chopra who is a part of the management team at Los Angeles-based Liquid Comics.

Liquid Comics is in the process of re-telling the nearly 500 centuries old Indian (Indic?) story of Ramayana as it would be set in 3392 CE. In other words, their project is to transport a tale through six millennia.

[Above: An artists rendition of the "Future" Ramayan where Lord Ram (the hero) is being carried on the shoulders of Hanuman (best supporting cast).]
And who knows, if the warmongerism under the shadow of terrorism (or the other way around!) continues at the same pitch of today, Albert Einstein might be proved right yet again - World War IV would be fought with stones, bows and arrows... Just like Ramayana!

["Ring the alarm... Lock the gates... Call RAMA! We are under attack!"]

• See also:
• Go here for the interview with Gotham Chopra at wired.com
• Go here for more on the original artist contributors Mukesh Singh and here for Jeevan Kang.

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Google GeoEye: 'Big Brother' for the whole World?

JOHN DE MOL TOOK THE OLD PRISON CONCEPT of confinement, absorbed its mentality, attached psychological strings, created a manipulative environment, introduced conflicting personalities into it, televised it via mass media, commercialised it by asking people to pay by "voting", and produced through Endemol one of the most popular reality TV shows "Big Brother". While the producers claim that the show is not scripted, it surely remains a prompted show. The show now runs to various international formats in nearly 35 host countries, and is broadcast to more than 100. The central concept of the show is that one is always being watched all the time so far as one is within the premise of the designated Big Brother house.

You can run, but you can't hide.

Expand this premise to cover the whole world, and we get close to the Google GeoEye project. On September 6, 2008, the world's most-accurate commercial imaging satellite, the GeoEye-1 was blasted off into the space. The 4,300-pound satellite moves from the north pole to the south pole in a 423-mile-high orbit at 17,000 miles per hour (or 4.5 miles per second). The spacecraft can take photos at a resolution of up to 41 centimeters - close enough to zoom in on the home plate of a baseball diamond.

Interestingly for GeoEye, Google as a partner is the second biggest customer who would use the data (real-time images of the entire world) for purely commercial purpose. The largest customer of GeoEye data consumption remains the U.S. Government agency - NGA, that has been putting satellites into the space since 1970's to 'spy' on targets within the US and abroad (such as the Kremlin Square of Russia). While the NGA capabilities can even read from space the headline of the newspaper that one is holding on the ground, for Google however, the max permissible zoom limit of up to 50 cms would apply. This means that while you can easily see the red Mustang on Hawthorne Boulevard junction in LA, you perhaps won't be able to recognise the face of the blond seating on the passenger seat. In other words, the satellite can see, but can not show to you all those details because of the current legislative limitations.

With the next launch of a more powerful 'prying eye' - GeoEye-2 scheduled around 2012, which is capable of going to the resolution of up to 25 cms, Google surely hopes that the zooming restrictions would be relaxed. In other words, you might be able to spot people anywhere on Earth. And you might be able to do it all the time. And your target may not even be aware of your act or intent. If you start 'selling' your 'show' on, say, YouTube, you might have your own commercial version of "Big Brother" show. If the idea sounds familiar you may already have watched the 1998 superhit movie The Truman Show written by Andrew Niccol (see trailer below).

"We're commercializing a technology that was once only in the hands of the governments," Mark Brender, GeoEye's VP of communications said. "Just like the internet, just like GPS, just like telecom - all invented by the government. And now we are on the front end of the spear that is commercializing this technology."

[Images on the Right: 1) The Google logo rides on the main booster stage of the Delta-II GSLV rocket that delivered GeoEye in the orbit. source: wired.com. 2) The GeoEye setallite being launched on Sep 6, 2008 on board United Launch Alliance Delta-II rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., USA. source: geoeye.com. 3) View from the space of Kutztown University campus in Pennsylvania. On Oct 7 GeoEye-1 satellite, going into action, took this first ever hi-res image from the space. source: wired.com.]

There already are enough surveillance cameras on our roads, streets, stations, offices, malls and all public places. As the technology improvises and more GeoEye's start orbiting the Earth prying downwards, "Someone would always be watching you..."


[Above: Actor Jim Carrey plays Truman Burbank in the 1998 Hollywood film The Trueman Show. Depicting a Big Brother like Reality TV show on extremes before the Big Brother format was even possibly conceptualised, the film chronicles the life of a man who does not know that he is living in a constructed reality soap opera, televised 24x7 to billions of viewers across the globe.
Go here for this trailer on YouTube.]
You can run, but you can't hide.

• See also:
• Go here for more on John De Mol. And here for Endemol official website.
• Go here for official GeoEye website. Looks like their business model expects you to pay for any image that you watch or use. Watch out!
• Go here for the related story at wired.com.

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The Financial Crisis: Who Let the Dogs Out

THE DEAL.COM HAS THIS USEFUL illustration explaining at a high-level chain of events leading to the current US financial crisis. The editor chose to describe it as chain-of-fools:



[Above: TheDeal.com illustration of chain-of-events leading to the US Financial crisis.]

The TIME MAGAZINE for this week features "Depression 2.0" through the following front-page across all editions worldwide. As the cover-story, economist Niall Ferguson narrates why it may not happen:



[Above: A B&W photo of depression-era Free soup line in the U.S. featuring as the cover page of 13 Oct 2008 issue of the Time mag.]

Update: Embedded this interesting video on the (simplified) explanation on "Crisis of Credit".


The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis.

• See also:
• Related article: Sub-prime Crisis for Dummies.
• Go here for WIRED.COM version of "economic explanations [of the crisis] even we could understand" targeted towards the techie community.
• Go here for the complete story "Chain-of-fools" at TheDeal.com
• Go here for the Time mag current issue (Oct 13, 2008) and a very interesting narration for the common man by economist Niall Ferguson.

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