Sunday, February 22, 2009

Concert by Shobana Vignesh

Shobana Vignesh gave a Classical Carnatic music concert yesterday at the Mahalakshmi Temple in Hockessin, DE. She was accompanied on the violin by Sandhya Srinath, a well known artist from the DC Metro area Rajana Swaminathan on the Mridangam.

The concert started with Saraseeruha Sanapriye in Raga Nattai followed by a piece in Raga Atana. The second half of the concert was devoted solely to crowd pleasers such as

Kurai Ondrum Illai by Rajaji
Chinnan Chiru Kiliye by Bharatiyar
Bho Shambo by Svami Dayananda Sarasvati

There were only three songs that I would rate as more serious or heavy. The first was in Raaga Lalitha, the second was in Raaga Dharmavati and the last was Raaga Thodi, although the last is a popular concert raaga. She closed out her concert with two songs in Raaga Madhyamavati and Raaga Kurinji.

Shobana has a crystal clear voice. They ranges effortlessly in the upper ranges of the scale (tarastayi) where she shows no signs of stress. In fact I told her after the concert that it felt as if she had a whole octave to spare. I did feel that she did not dwell a lot in the lower ranges (mandarastayi), but that I feel is not surprising. In general I think male singers fare better in the lower scales whereas women seem more comfortable in the upper reaches. Overall, she was keenly aware of the pulse of the audience and picked her songs very wisely. This was not a crowd of hard core Carnatic music connoisseurs besides there was a decent sprinkling of children. So typically the songs contained a brief alapana and short svara kalpana. The bulk of the time was spent rendering the Kriti itself.

Click here for a complete list of songs.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Genome - Matt Ridley

Two years ago Raji introduced me to Matt Ridley by lending me a copy of the book Genome. This is a book that should be read in one sitting. I did. This is a book that should be read many times. I have. Three times - so far.

The book consists of 23 chapters and each chapter focuses on one of the 23 chromosomes in our species. The author goes about with his description in an interesting manner. He takes various topics that are important or interesting to humanity and weaves a story about the chromosome using that topic. The author credits this approach to a similar approach by another famous author, the late Primo Levi. In his book, The Periodic Table, Primo Levi described the elements of a periodic table by relating them to various stories, some of them taken from his own life and experiences.

Without revealing too much details, let me describe some of the chapters that were very good, the rest being merely good!!

Chapter One sets the tone for the book with a grand title Life!! It deals with several important topics, RNA, DNA, 5S gene on chromosome, and surprisingly a Turing machine!! What on earth does a central concept from computer science have to do with biochemistry? Well you have to reach this chapter for that. Trust me it is not incidental. A brief digression - Alan Turing was a genius. If Noble Prize could have been awarded for outstanding work in Computer Science, he would have easily won one or two.

Chapter Four is Fate. Religious people and others who are not aware of advances in biochemistry generally misrepresent or misunderstand how genes work. They imply a determinism to genes - if you have this gene then this bad thing (put a suitable disease) will happen to you - that does not exist. First of all, genes do not exist to cause diseases. They exist to serve a purpose. It is when a mutation occurs in a gene that bad things could happen. The key here is could. Second, genes are no more deterministic than the weather is, both being examples of nonlinear systems. Just as weather man never gives absolute answers but couch their prediction in probabilities of certain weather patterns occurring, so does a geneticist.

Chapter Seven is about Conflict. This chapter was really scary - at least for men. Men may rule the world, but out in the world of gene, it is the women who have the men on the run!!

I will just list the titles of a few more chapters that I loved; Stress, Immortality, Sex, Memory, Politics, Free Will, and Death.

If there is one message I took away from this book, it is this - Genes are not there to cause diseases.

Dubya's affliction with The Foot In the Mouth Disease

George W Bush has a well documented affliction with this disease. In fact the store of inanities attributed to Dubya, or Bush-isms as they are called, is so large this site has indexed it by the year it was uttered. Here is a short list of my personal favorites.
  1. See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.
  2. I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office.
  3. Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?
  4. There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on --shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again
  5. Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country
Note - In case you wonder about the phrase Foot In the Mouth Disease, it is a play on Foot and Mouth Disease that typically afflicts domesticated animal. I thought of this phrase, but I am sure I was not the first to come up with it. I googled the phrase but could not find a definitive answer as to who came up with it first.

Prince And I

You all know the maxim - If at first you don't succeed, try try again. The spider at the center of the legend surrounding King Bruce required eight attempts to succeed.

But George W Bush succeeded in only his second attempt!!

4-5 months ago it was finally clear that Dubya, as the former President is affectionately addressed, had done it. I mean he had succeeded in ruining our great economy. The economy is now officially in recession. Over 10 trillion dollars of wealth has evaporated!!

It is such a large number, that it makes no sense to ordinary folks like us who need a calculator to compute 15% tips at the restaurant. So I tried various ways to put it in perspective - if you counted one dollar a second you would need nearly 30000 years to count it all!! I am sure that leaves you as clueless as before as to the sheer enormity of this number. Don't worry. I am in your company. I am no more capable of comprehending 30000 years as I am of 10 trillion dollars. It leaves you with a feeling of helplessness.

So I stopped my attempts at getting a handle on how someone could evaporate this large an amount of money and I did the next best thing. I decided to refinance. I had a more aggressive 15 year mortgage and wanted to move to a easier 30 year loan in case one of us loses our job.

I searched for one and found a lender named Prince Aurora. When I met him, I was not able to place him accurately. He was tall; over 6 feet, of wheatish complexion, smart looking, well dressed and generally presented an air of quiet confidence.

The phrase wheatish complexion is a familiar one in Indian matrimonial circles. When used on a man it is complimentary; a man who is neither too dark not too fair. God forbid if it were used to describe a girl; it means she is dark. And Indians discriminate very well on the basis of color!! The Hindi word गोरी pronounced funnily enough "gory" means fair maiden!! Not for nothing is our caste system called वर्ण (varna); it means color.

Back to Prince. Now I am a curious fellow and my curiosity takes the form of trying to figure out origins of names. His first name, Prince, gave me no help and his last name Aurora had a Scandinavian sound to it; Aurora Borealis. Prince did not look like he was from Norway or Sweden. So I caved in asked where he was from. I was pleasantly surprised to find that he was from India and was raised in West Delhi quite close to where I used to live as a child. So I asked him how did he get the name Aurora and it turned out his father when he became a naturalized American, changed the Punjabi name Arora to Aurora to make it easier for folks in the good old USA.

My curiosity was now sated. I could now sleep well at night.

Sunday, February 01, 2009

Sporophyte and Gametophyte - When is a human a human?

Alternation of Generation - I remember reading about this in 9th grade and not paying much attention to it. But it is very interesting. In simple terms, there are two phases, the haploid when the cells of the plant have one set of chromosomes and then the diploid phase where the cells have two sets of chromosome. The former is also called gametophyte and the latter sporophyte. The diploid form is produced by fusion of two haploid and the haploid form by meiosis of the diploid form. In most higher forms of plants (the word higher is not used in a pejorative sense) the dominant phase is mostly diploid and the haploid form is restricted typically to flowers. But in Bryophytes such as moss the dominant phase is the haploid phase.

Well humans and also most animals are diploid, that is, the majority of the tissue contains two sets of chromosomes. The haploid phase is restricted to the gametes, namely the sperm and the ovum.

What does this all mean?

Think of it this way - the broyophyte is either made of all sperm like tissue or ovum like tissue. I do not mean in physical appearance.

Why is it all important to us?

It is a question of when a human being is a human being. Is there some humanity in the sperm? How about the Ova? People use the 24th week of pregnancy as a magic mark, as the line that differentiates a human from what is euphemistically called a fetus. We use that word fetus so we can be objective when decisions involving termination of pregnancy is being made. But is that obvious? Not to me. In certain creatures the entire life is made up of sperm and ova like entities and the diploid form shows up for only a few days during spore formation!! As I see it, the sperm, the egg, and the fetus have as much humanity as does the individual that reads this post. There can be no individual without the sperm, the egg, or the fetus.

Despite all this I still am Pro-Choice. Why?

I am opposed to the Church, which means Men, controlling the womb.

But I also hope we could have an educated conversation on this topic. Abortion after all should be a means of last resort and not a form of birth control!!

I actually like Federer now

Before 2008 there was an air of inevitability about men's tennis matches. Unless it was French Open, it was a given that the winner would be Roger Federer. Even at that venue, there were some doubts - what if Rafeal Nadal were to succumb to a hot player in an earlier round and lose. After all Federer had been in 19 consecutive Grand Slam Semi-finals and 18 of the past 23 Grand Slam Finals!! You had the sense you were watching Borg in their relentless mission to assimilate and nothing would get in his way - Resistance is futile and all. If there was a smidgen of suspense left, it was always who was going to be the bridesmaid.

If all this did not give away my opinion, let me state it before it is too late. I do not like Federer, I do not mean as a person, since I do not know him at all. I know, it is sacrilege, as if I said I did not like Michael Jordan. Yes I did not like Michael also; only one who has lived in Detroit or New York and rooted for Pistons or Knicks respectively would understand. Similarly I always rooted for Pete Sampras from the outset. Sampras lost at Wimbledon in a 5 setter to Federer in 2001 in their only head to head meeting in an ATP tournament.

Before 2008, the question was when would Federer win more Grand Slams than Sampras's tally of 14. Then came the year 2008 when Federer won only a single grand slam title and lost in (holy cow) of all places Wimbledon to Rafa. Now people could actually dare to ask - will he ever get more than 14?

In 2009 it gets more interesting. Roger Federer aiming for the 14th grand slam title, loses again to Nadal in a final of 2009 Australian Open in another 5 setter epic considered by many to be one of the best matches. To compound it he breaks down and sobs during the the award ceremony!!

The Borg do not cry!!

I was always afraid that if we we ever peered inside Federer, we would see nuts, bolts and micro chips not blood and guts. I guess, this was the first time I saw the human side of Federer. I could even conceive of the possibility of actually rooting for Federer, since no matter what, he is definitely now the underdog whenever he plays Nadal.