Occupational Hazards.... ;)

"Every life is a profession of faith, and exercises an inevitable and silent influence."

So said Henri Frederic Amiel. 

A slight mutation in the statement is going to be what this post is all about. 

"Every profession is a life of faith, and exercises an inevitable and silent influence." 

I am sure there are a lot of puzzled expressions but just sit back and think about how much of our profession actually shows up in our life - in the way we dress, we talk, we think ! With a little observation and experience, one can actually try and predict people's occupations. And it could be quite a fun exercise too. 

Take for example the scientists - the clan that I happen to belong to !

We mostly have a rather disheveled and unconcerned appearance, quite unlike a management student who is forever seen in these carefully tailored attires - shirts, suits and well fitting dresses. We, the scientist lot, walk into our interviews and conferences and expect people to disregard our appearance and focus solely on our work and our brilliant ideas. We talk jargon all the time and we think everyone will understand it. Its almost second nature for us to think that everyone on the street understands what a gene is or what cancer is or what DNA is !!  

Not just that, we have a weirdly nerdy and geeky sense of humor as a lot of our jokes will involve names of proteins, techniques, experiments, results and the likes. 

How nerdy can one be, right ?

And academic life was the only life we had for a long time. When on a residential campus, in a PhD program, your life usually moves from one experiment to another than from one day to another. Your friends are all geeks and nerds and everyone is going through the same phase and your conversations would reflect that. 

Imagine these conversations at some of the dinners that we have had at our friend's homes (actual homes, where non-scientists lead their normal lives in ;)), far away from the influence of work or science.

"Hey, Let's cook in situ today na ? Let's not pick up something from somewhere! Its been ages since we've had a home cooked meal !" (Instead of saying "let's just cook at home na")

"Hey, what is the volume of that thing? How much stuff can it carry ?" (Volume ? Seriously... i ve rarely heard any of the normal people use the word at a suitcase shop... nothing wrong, it perfectly conveys the point but perfectly occupational too!

"Hey, I made that completely de novo - no precooked ingredients !" (I made it from the start ! - how difficult is that but no that's not what we end up saying)

"Hey ! Can you please aliquot the dessert for everyone ?" (Aliquot ?? Seriously ! When all you want is someone should portion out the dessert for all present)

"Don't give me the abstract of the story. Give me the full version of the article !!" This is self explanatory but that doesn't make it less hilarious.

"She talks like a Nature article while I go on and on like a Cell article" This is something that one can appreciate when they open the two journals and compares their articles. While the artciles in Cell are complete narratives and span at least half a dozen pages, the ones in Nature are extremely succint and wrap up the story in 2-3 pages at max. I guess, the reason we laugh at this should have become clear by now.

"How much do you think this will shrink  - 10%, 20% ?" Not one size or two, not one inch or two... but 10% or 20%. Well, that's how we are !!

"Come for a run, the endorphin release will do you good !" Yes, exercise does release endorphins and they do make you feel good but do the normal people even care for how it makes you feel good !?!

"Listen, we'll put this at 4 degrees and this at -20. We can heat it tomorrow." (Fridge and freezer respectively... but for all scientists I have met, nothing but the actual temperatures define what they truly are - 4 and -20 degrees Celsius)

There here are only some of the prominent examples that I can recall at the drop of a hat. There are many such idiosyncrasies that one could see when we went out eating  or grocery shopping.

And so for a long time, our work life invaded our actual life and almost took over it. And this was a life in faith. In faith and in hope. 

All through those years, closeted in the close confines of the academia, I didn't realize that all the professions leave an imprint. From history, to management to psychology to photography, they all invade the life of their respective professionals. They all use words, phrases and language that is typical to their line of work and no one but an outsider would find it odd. Software guys routinely use the words bug, chip and code everywhere. Management guys use words like start ups, venture capital, proposal, data, balance, turnover, growth, policy and cash flow even as they dine with normal people. Accountants and finance guys randomly sprinkle (at least to me, it sometimes does seem random) the words debit, credit, deficit, fiscal, cash flow, taxation and budget. 

Every professional has a language (a speaking and writing style), a personality, an attitude. What is the cause and what is the effect is of course difficult to speculate !
Do all nerds become scientists or does science make one a nerd ?
Who knows ... ?

And at this point someone I know might just tell, we need an experiment but the right controls are difficult to get... ;)

Just one of those things...

Having recently written a post on the ineffectiveness of current scientific research in helping to save lives in the immediate future here,  I found it ironical when I read about Ralph Steinman, the recent Nobel Laureate and his struggle with Cancer. Now Dr Steinman died three days before the Nobel was announced and the committee announced the decision without knowing of his demise. However, despite the fact that the Nobel prize is not awarded posthumously, in this case the committee on being appraised of the situation, decided to let the award hold. That itself to me was dramatic and a very appreciative and practical gesture. 

But the whole story behind Dr Ralph Steinman's life and his struggle with the disease make the entire situation very poignant in more ways than one. Many of you may have already come across this article but I thought I would share it just in case... 

 http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111011/full/478163a.html

The bigger picture....

We are all searching for the truth. An honest answer. A simple explanation. But what we forget is that often there is none to be had. Answers are often not simple and direct. 

Events are a result of causal chain of events - one leading to another while we are only able to catch a snap-shot of it at one finite moment. Science and scientists have understood this inherent defect with our mode of study. We know that we are limited by only being able view snap-shots of a disease in a progress or of the life of a cell. And so we have struggled to put together a story based on vignettes here and there adding in our own intelligent speculation. As we do this, we narrow down the variables and focus on the minutiae. 

We stare down at a microscope and tear apart a problem to its smallest parts. To the tiniest, tangible parts that we can intelligently handle and comprehend. To parts that can be individually tampered with, studied, modified, understood and exploited. So we understand truth one experiment at a time. We paint our pictures, one pixel at a time. But life is not really waiting for us to complete our experiments and paint our pictures. 

We keep working and looking under a microscope and ever so often, we need a reminder. A reminder to the fact that we are only looking at one flower, in a big garden of flowers, in a big city, in a big country and all of this in one big universe. It helps to stop once in a while just to step back from our microscopes as we dissect every truth, every statement and every answer to just see a bigger picture. A bigger picture, where we are all the part of one big whole. A whole where progress in one stimulates progress in another and knowledge in one leads to more questions in another. A whole, where understanding the past is as helpful as imagining and creating the future.

And this is why, I often feel like slipping into the folds of history. In fact, as the years have passed, my fascination with history has grown steadily. From a clear and unequivocal dislike to the subject to tolerance, to curiosity, to fascination and to a strong interest now, I have grown to love the past. Nothing seems to make sense except in the light of history. I could sound anachronistic when I say this because talking of the past when people are building humanoids does seem like a sacrilege but If asked today, I'd much rather spend my time reading history than futuristic science fiction. Every one of the books I have read that have detailed the origin and development of a field have made me realize that one needs to look at a bigger picture, the whole story. One needs to step back from the microscope to see the world as it was and is. And that is the only view that can show us our blind spots and our prejudices and open our eyes to new facts which we had ignored for so long. 

In life too, as in science, one needs to step away from the details and minutiae of everyday living to look at the bigger picture. A whole where stepping away from the microscope only shows us how grainy our pixels looked up close, but with millions like those, our picture is not all that bad. A picture where we can count our "blessings" and thank our failures for the lessons we learnt.  A picture where we can view our lives in third person in addition to living them in the first person. Where we can be objective about our past simply because we are removed from it and because we have seen that what seemed like a catastrophe was actually a blessing in disguise. Sometimes, this understanding takes years to come because I still rue many things in my past... but I don't stop looking. Looking for that one clue that would make sense of it all. That would show me that things, for what they were, have only left me better and stronger !

From the Quirky Panda's thumb to the QWERTY keyboard...

Biology, Technology and Culture - the three things that in more ways than one define our existence today.

Biology of course arose as a result of the well known and well understood Darwinian Selection where the struggle for the "Survival of the Fittest" leads to the evolution of forms with greater and greater adaptation to the changing world systems. Now this is a subject where one can write volumes of books with numerous examples, exceptions, theories, principles etc. But lack of time, energy, effort and more importantly knowledge force me to limit my ramblings on this subject to the barest minimum. The point of relevance of course is that the forces of natural selection which drive evolution are limited by the availability of raw material. This means that selection pressure can only act on already existing variations, and not "design" something altogether new. These tiny variations in existing form arise due to mutagenic events which confer a phenotypic change. And then this pre-existing pool of variation gets subject to the forces of natural selection to generate diverse forms. In fact, as SJ Gould says, "the complex and curious pathways of history guarantee that most organisms cannot be designed optimally. Indeed, to make an even stronger statement, imperfections are the primary proofs that evolution has occurred...". This principle of imperfection in biology has been interestingly named by Gould as the Panda principle to honor the example of design imperfection as seen in a Panda's unique thumb. I would have probably been more anthropocentric and would have probably chosen "the appendix principle" or "the pain in the back" principle but then Gould was ahead of me in time and thought and I will stick with his terminology.... ;)

To summarise the Panda's thumb, Pandas are herbivorous descendants of carnivorous bears whose anatomical thumbs were committed to limited motion suited to their carnivorous lifestyle. However, a Panda's adaptive diet of bamboos requires greater manipulation with the appendages and this required some redesigning. Since the Panda's anatomical thumb was irrevocably committed to a different morphology, they developed an enlarged radial sesamoid bone of their wrist as a false thumb, serving a similar function but having a very different origin. So while the enlarged sesamoid is a sub-optimal structure, it functions and serves the pandas fairly well. And thus change in the panda's biology was in someways limited by their history.

Culture. Now culture is yet another constantly changing aspect of human existence. In fact, it is a well accepted notion that while biology changes in a Darwinian manner, human culture evolves based on Lamarckian principles which entail the inheritance of acquired characters. What it simply means is that the changes/advancements in human culture are transmitted from one generation to another through education, publication, word of mouth etc. Consequently, cultural evolution is faster by orders of magnitude than biological change. Also the basic topologies of cultural evolution is very different from that of biological evolution. While biological evolution constantly diverges without a subsequent rejoining of branches, human culture grows with transmission across lineages - spatially and temporally. We learn from people who are spatially and culturally far away from us and from our past.

So two of fundamental aspects of human existence - biology and culture are both subject to different kinds of "evolution".

Technology however is an odd one here, at least that's how it seemed to me till I read Gould's essay called "The Panda's Thumb". Now this is an essay which I had read a few months back and I thoroughly enjoyed the read. It was thought provoking in many ways.

In this essay Gould builds a case for the existence of the "Principle of Panda's thumb" in the arena of technological development. This is in some ways counter intuitive because technology is aimed at simplification and efficiency and one would think that technology should be able to easily rid anything unsuitable and inefficient in light of newer advancements. After all constraints of genealogy and inheritance do not apply to steel, glass, plastic and therefore to change in technology. Theoretically we should all be able to make a switch to a more efficient technology in a span of a few years. In fact this is one thing that keeps us all updating to newer and newer gadgets - smart phones, laptops, e-readers, operating systems etc etc. So, who would think that some of our technology is also limited and shaped by History... ? Atleast i didn't till I read Gould's essay.

Think about it ! Which parts of the technology that we currently use is actually inefficient and suboptimal but is still used by virtue of history.

Gould does justify his argument in the essay and his argument is based upon something ubiquitous in our lives these days - the keyboard which starts with QWERTY. Now, anyone who works with a keyboard would wonder the weird and counter-intuitive organization of the keyboard. Instead of being alphabetical or based on the usage the current keyboard is efficient in that the frequently used alphabets are least accessible. Consider this - More than 70% of english words can be typed with the letters - DHIATENSOR, and one would imagine that logically they should be the most accessible. But, one look at the keyboard will tell you that they are actually scattered all over the keyboard. For those who type with the eight finger touch typing method, these keys and the vowels are either placed away from the home row or are placed in such a way that they are used by the weaker fingers - like the little pinky finger.

So clearly, by your observation and by that of many others, our present keyboard is inefficient and suboptimal. It is a relic of history that has gotten embedded in our fabric of life in such a way that a change to a more efficient system would cause more disturbance and upheaval than continuing with the same inefficient approach. QWERTY however began as a sensible adaptation with a sound rationale in the early technology of typewriting but soon became a constraint on faster typing as the advances in the technology erased the initial problems which mandated a QWERTY system. A little history at this juncture should clarify the whole point. Typewriters when they evolved suffered with one basic drawback which was that excessive speed or unevenness of stroke would lead to jam two or more keys near the striking point. And if this entanglement is not resolved the subsequent uses of these keys would type a repetition of the key leading to the jam. These problems were magnified in early machines which were constructed so that the keys approached the paper from the underside, invisible to the typist and thus the typist would not know till the end if there was a Jam at some point. As a result a page full of prose could be garbled into a repetition of A's or D's when the keys were jammed. This necessitated that the frequency of the jam be minimized or that the speed of the typing be reduced and this is how the frequently used characters ended up being scattered all over the keyboard. One would imagine however that as technology evolved to make the paper visible to the typist at all times, the keyboard and its organization would have changed to permit greater efficiency. But then through coincidences of history which Gould has elaborately described in his essay, it so happened that the 8 finger touch typing on the QWERTY keyboard became established as the most efficient mode of typing. And thus this feat of anti-engineering in the form of a QWERTY keyboard got successfully carried through history and into our lives as an evolutionary relic of no present day relevance.

This was certainly a great example which nailed Gould's point for me but then despite a lot of thinking, I could not come up with any other examples which substantiated his point of technological advancement being a prisoner of history.

I have contemplated on this for a few months and I have seen that we have adapted to change in many avenues and things have moved forward. The older desktops have now been replaced by the laptops. Windows is being challenged by Mac. Paper cash is being fast replaced by plastic money. Operating systems are being driven out faster than they are being developed. Automobiles are being engineered and re-engineered for fuel economy and emissions. In fact, to my understanding, technology was constantly changing in ways faster than we could comfortably learn them. And so, to my mind, this solo example of a relic in the form of a keyboard (even this was changing as most cellular phones did have an alphabetical keyboard and still do) was not sufficient to justify a whole principle that held technology hostage to history.

But then a couple of weeks back I came across this example of the width of a rail road gauge that perfectly illustrates the same point yet again. I do not have all the evidence to substantiate this example but I do see some truth in this whole chain of thought and that prompted me to finally keep a more open mind to Gould's statement of having more common underlying principles between biological evolution and technological advancement than what is superficially apparent.

So here is the example as I found for your judgement -

"The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.

Why was that gauge used?

Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US railroads.

Why did the English build them like that?

Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did 'they' use that gauge then?

Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?

Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads?

Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England ) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads?

Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.
Bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder 'What horse's ass came up with it?', you may be exactly right.

Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horse's asses.) Now, the twist to the story:

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRB's. The SRB's are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRB's would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRB's had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRB's had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel

is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced

transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass.

And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important?

Ancient horse's asses control almost everything ...

and CURRENT Horses Asses are controlling everything else."

Now, while this is a humorous post and is probably an overtly simplifying description of the complex history of the origins of standard railway gauges, it is easy to see that a lot of our present day technology is also in someways trapped by the past. I mean, even if, we have had the standard broad gauge railroad tracks for the past few centuries, we should be able to switch out of them as and when there is a better system but the vast prevalence of the older system and the cost-benefit ratios tilt the scale against such massive change and we end up sticking to the old and the familiar.

I am still not completely convinced in applying Gould "Panda's thumb" principle more generally to technology, but with these two examples, I believe that history, like in all other fields, does mould the future of technological advances too. Sometimes, by acting at the level of economy, sometimes acting at the level of convenience and at other times by acting as blinders which tint our view of the world and limit our perspectives.

In case you are able to think of other such examples and/or opinions on the same, do write in.

A tongue twister, an attempted alliteration or a journal title...

"Telomeric and extra-telomeric roles for telomerase and the telomere-binding proteins"

This is the title of a review from a recent issue of nature reviews.... found it hard to believe !!!

Predictably irrational...

A twitter link, a you tube video and book review later, i came across a book by this title .... Predictably Irrational.

It is a popular book written by Dr Dan Ariely describing the irrationality that is coded in our behavior and its implications in our economic and financial dealings.

Dan Ariely (born 1967 in New York) is an Israeli American professor of psychology and behavioral economics. He teaches at Duke University and is the founder of The Center for Advanced Hindsight. In his book, Dan Ariely challenges the rational thought theory which has been the foundation for present day economics. Through various examples, he illustrates that we as people are not completely rational and that our actions are governed by our emotions. He uses many examples to illustrate how we make our choices on a relative scale when compared to the options presented to us than on an absolute scale of their economy and efficiency. He highlights the wonder of free and discount as we run from store to store or product to product to get that one free thing. He uses these and many such everyday examples to demonstrate how our behaviors influence our financial dealings and as to how these are predictable enough for companies and advertisers to exploit us. I am sure for those who have not read it, it sounds like a fascinating book. It is not disappointing too. I mean, it shows you how irrational we all can be. But to me, a number of the outcomes seemed predictable for some reason but since the book was a funny and a light read, I finished it in a few hours (Maybe i should have added that i was on a 5 hour train journey !!). Anyways the book is certainly worth a read for anybody interested in understanding the daily economics.

But there were also a couple of points in the book that i didnt quite agree with and i decided to write an email to the author seeking his opinion on the questions raised by me.

So here is the mail is wrote:

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"Dear Dr Dan,

I am a graduate student at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India and have been pursuing my graduate studies in Molecular Oncology.

I have recently read your book "Predictably Irrational" and found it to be quite a page turner. I must say I agreed with you on most accounts and had come to similar conclusions (on an intuitive level of course) a lot of times. I must also say that i thoroughly enjoyed the experimental designs you and your team have come up with (Especially liked the beer and restaurant one)! However, while i was reading your book, two points you mentioned did jump out at me as seemingly odd...

The first of course is with your chapter where you talk about the endowment value... where we value what we possess more than what we don't have. The point was well illustrated with your example of the basket ball tickets and i do agree with your case to some extent. However, a more common place observation i have is that people often value something a lot more when they don't have it and the charm wears off once you own it... let me cite a few examples:
- I am sure you've found a book to be irresistible when you are issuing it from a public resource like a library, but the moment you manage to purchase the book, you know that you own it and can therefore read it at any time. You thus move onto other books that you are desirous of reading.
- Similarly, we all wish for the great dress which costs a bomb and looks great on the mannequin but then if we get hold of it and we find that it doesn't match up to our glorious expectations, then the mere possession of the dress makes it less elusive and less desirous.
- Once a student gets into a great school, he really doesn't think it is too difficult to get there and therefore doesn't value it as much as someone who was rejected, who holds on to the school as a dream for a lifetime.

In case of the basket ball game too, I wonder if the ticket winners would have had a different quote to make with the benefit of hindsight... I mean, say the game was not all that great or say that it was not worth all the hype after all... Just that, once you truly experience what you've paid for, i doubt if it will hold the same charm. It is possible that the experience at the game would in hindsight allow someone to change his mind and devalue the ticket.

Thus, I see a certain disagreement with your statement that people tend to value things they possess than what they haven't managed to get hold of. In your experiment you are only measuring the value people attach to the prospect of a game and that too before the game happened. In my opinion, your point will be well justified only if the same differences hold when the students have seen the game...

The second is not really a point of contention but i was merely surprised (like your students) at the result with the increased levels of cheating with the tokens. I would expect increased levels of dishonesty with non-monetary transactions but that would not be expected to be so high especially when tokens were only one step away from cash (as was declared already). I find it extremely surprising and a bit too alarming too at the thought that in a world that is fast moving away from cash, our moral fibers are becoming more and more lenient with cheating (esp since the rewards are non monetary). I do share your concern for the same and I wish there could be solution other than a moral code.

I also have a feeling that while signing on a moral code and reminding people of the ten commandments did inspire honesty, i do have a fear that such honesty would probably be worn off under repetitive use. I mean, would people be so affected by the code if the same was offered all the time.... well, witnesses in court swear to honesty before their statements and yet they manage to blatantly lie.... It is just that with adequate training, work and time, we could all get over our moral inhibitions.
(Though, i really hope that this doesn't happen.)

I also thoroughly enjoyed the parts of your books that dealt with the placebo effect. It is true that the mind has a great influence on our physical self as well and this understanding is important in many aspects. The ethical issues that arise are also pretty serious. And i guess, the use of randomized trials with patient consent is the most sensible way of going about it - where people are informed about the treatment, its side effects and the placebo/alternative treatment. The patients could then be randomly divided into two - one which gets the treatment and one which gets the placebo. This is how a lot of trials are being carried out these days.

Finally, I would like to thank you for writing a book in such a non-technical manner that people who are not in the field like me too can understand the underlying concept.

I am sure you have pretty hectic schedule but I would love to hear your opinion on my thoughts.

Looking forward to hearing from you"

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And then I got a prompt response:


"Dear Suvasini,

Tanks for the email and your kind words

I am not sure that people value things less once they get them, but it is an interesting ideas that the endowment effect is larger because of our inability o predict that we will like something less once we have it. Worth checking one of these days

As for the signing of the honor code -- for sure this will only work temporarily. I did not propose it as a long term approach ...

Irrationally yours"

Other than the fact that he isn't as verbose as the book suggests, i haven't quite had much to take home from the email.

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However, i would like to hear your take on the subjects ?

A few questions and an answer...

Interesting talk on the concept of morality in animals and man (differentiating him from the other animals as we egocentric humans tend to do)...

Speaker: Frans de Waal, the dutch primatologist.

He presents two theories of morality :

1) As formulated by Huxley and renamed as the veneer theory which says that humans are basically immoral at the core but they put on a veneer of morality to achieve their selfish interests. Being social animals humans tend to be "good" to achieve their selfish interests.

2) the second theory as proposed by Darwin himself, says that evolution has provided a built in framework for morality, empathy, honesty, righteousness, cooperation etc. Thus, he says that we and other primates have evolved to be moral beings and that our actions are governed by emotions more than the anticipation of a physical reward.

I did not find much of a difference between the two theories and so I decided to drop in an email to the speaker, without quite expecting a response.

The following are the contents of my email to Dr De Waal which is followed by his response to it... (Yes, he did reply !! I guess, i got lucky !!)

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My email:

"Dear Dr Frans de Waal,

I am a post doctoral fellow at the Salk institute and was lucky enough to be present for your the Crick lecture that you delivered last week at the Institute. First of all, I must say that it was a great lecture - delightful, fact-based, thought provoking, insightful and sharp.

At the end of it, i did have a lot of thoughts to ponder about. However, despite a lot of deliberation i do seem to have some reservations about the two concepts of morality - one as propounded by Huxley and one, as presented by Darwin. While the veneer theory, as you call it, suggests that humans are inherently "bad" and self centered individuals who seem to resort to empathy, generosity and righteousness out of a selfish/ materialistic need. The other theory as was advocated by Darwin, seems to suggest that evolution has programmed a moral framework in humans and in other mammals. While you pointed to radical differences between the two theories, i seem to feel that there is not much of a difference between the two ideologies. Let me clarify..

While, Huxley says that humans maintain a veneer of morality to attain their selfish ends, the fact is that it is true. All our actions are geared to an end point, even altruistic acts: there may be a tangible, materialistic goal for some but for some it is an emotional high. We feel good, righteous and happy when we do the right thing and when we act moral and a burden of guilt when we are astray. All our acts, including charity and altruism can be traced to these "emotional" components one way or the other. I dont seem to be able to come up with an example of people acting moral despite feeling terrible (physically and emotionally) after committing the act. I guess, the evolutionary principle of "survival of the fittest" has selected for a rather self centered streak within us, although our social propensities have ensured that this streak is kept in check through the modulation of our emotions and feelings.

As for Darwin's view, well, i do agree that we have an evolutionary built sense of morality and it has evolved like the other parts of humankind. I also do not disagree that other animals (primates and other mammals) could have a sense of morality (atleast the building blocks of empathy, generosity, problem solving etc).

So, I hope that at the end of this rambling from me, you will be able to sense my quandary. I will appreciate if you share some of your thoughts on these points.

I would also like to know how you chose to define morality (because you still shy away from calling mammals like chimpanzees as moral !). Also, on a more fundamental aspect what do you see as the difference between religion and morality (if you think morality is our ability to work in a social framework) ?

I hope I do hear from you,

Thanks and regards,
Suvasini"

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Thanks for contacting me.

Yes, all behavior serves an end, but the difference is that Huxley didn't see how evolution could have produced morality whereas Darwin did. The problem is that if we call everything selfish (me helping you or me walking away from you in need) then the word selfish has become meaningless and doesn't help us distinguish between acts. But you're right, doing good makes us feel good, which means that nature has offered us a built-in incentive to be so, in the same way it has offered such an incentive for eating, sex, nursing and other things we need to do in order to survive.

A good introduction into the issues is perhaps my discussion with philosophers in Primates and Philosophers (Princeton UP).

All the best,

-- Frans de Waal

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As I said in the title, he has only answered some of the questions that i have raised in my email which is still appreciable since he has taken the time out to answer someone who has no standing in the subject.

Coming back to the subject at hand, I find a theory which is a compromise between that of Darwin and Huxley's viewpoint most acceptable.

"While evolution has built in a moral framework of sorts making animals more cooperative, honest, altruist etc... these evolutionary frameworks are not devoid of self interest. We are good because we get an emotional high by doing the right thing. Material reward is not the only reward and in that light there is not much of a distinction between the two schools of thought."

Something for you to ponder about... !!!

Those deep brown eyes...

I see your little brown eyes staring at me through the bars and I try not to think of what they can see. I give you food and water and my silent words. I follow your life as I would follow mine. I have seen you grow up from that tiny helpless being to this scampering, fighting adult. Over the months, I have cared for you with all my might but then one day I know, it is going to be the time for your last night. For the day when you will be just another subject. Just another answer and just another number. I tell myself this over and over again but your eyes still pierce my shell.

I can see death as I stare into the mirror. I can feel the pain that you may never feel. I feel your heart racing in my hand and I feel my heart racing too. Out of fear and out of guilt. I try to keep you away from the truth through a veil of darkness but somewhere, deep down inside, i think you know.

I feel your soft skin as i hold you in my hand. I can see the future and I know I am the cause. I see your struggle against the inevitable. I know you sense the future and I know you don't like it. I try not to pain you, even as i do the unmentionable. They tell me you don't feel a thing and that you are now in a blissful sleep. I pinch and prod only to make sure they are right. They tell me i should be calm, for you can feel my pulse through my fingers and I hope that you can feel my pain too.

My pain at giving you pain. My regrets at letting them do it. But then they tell me, it is inevitable and that I should look at the bigger picture. That some people must suffer for the greater good of many. And that your death was inevitable, and this way i just learnt more through it. They tell me you've made a difference in your death. I rationalize my actions and I try to look at the bigger picture. I say to myself, I am only the means and the end is already pre-ordained. I say to myself though i find it hard to believe that your life is justified by the end because that's what you were meant to do.

And then, i wonder if I too am just another mode of inquiry. If my life too rests at someone's mercy ? And if I too am fighting the inevitable ? Am also just another pawn who is unable to see the bigger picture ? Am I struggling in vain for someone higher up is pulling my strings too ? Am I also clothed in veil of darkness, a veil I am trying to break through.

Even as these thoughts haunt me, I know i have other things to take care of. And so I listen to them and shut my mind off. I get busy and my mind moves onto other matters, only to be reminded again when I find another you peeking through those doors and nibbling at my fingers.

For those who are wondering ....

Its all about the "smelling the roses" ....

The wonderful thing about science is that it unweaves the fabric of the living world, warp by weft, for our understanding. It explores the world and brings to light these tiny facts, nuggets of information, these hypotheses and theories that give you wonderful explanations for your everyday observations. This is one reason which makes neuroscience, neurophysiology, neuroanthropology and neuropsychology (basically all these multiple disciplines beginning with neuro, as you may have validly surmised by now) particularly attractive to me !

The reason I say this is because, on so many occasions, i have read through articles on these and similar subjects and found wonderful insights into our everyday observations. These random explorations (basically an activity I indulge in when I am unable to focus on the job that i should legitimately be doing) have helped me sustain my fascination with science despite having completed a PhD (A PhD, as many of the graduates will agree is genuinely a degree in philosophy because it truly teaches you to accept failures and be philosophical about them :)). Anyways, getting back to the subject on hand, the most recent article to have caught my fancy in such a quest, is my discovery of a beautiful explanation for a common complaint of many women or rather of many chefs in general. Ever so often I have heard many of my friends complain that they feel satiated by the mere process of cooking. So much so that their appetite almost vanishes for the food that they have painstakingly cooked. This is a very common observation and for some reason i had always associated it with the smell of food activating the brain's satiation and pleasure centers before the actual food was partaken. This was of course just meaningless conjecture on my part, unsupported by any background search or review.

But then in a recent issue of the major science journal - Cell, I found a beautiful explanation for the above phenomena amply supported by evidence and not merely speculation. This chain of evidence, as I found out later, extends from times much earlier than now and in fact, the subject of olfactory perception and the activation of specific regions in the brain has been under study for many years now.

As some of the careful observers would have noticed in their life too, it is true that olfactory and visual, sensory signals do indeed contribute to our sense of satiation after or during a meal. A small portion of great looking and smelling food in a restaurant is much more pleasurable because of the sheer presentation, smell and ambience (even though the taste may not be dramatically different from a local take out place)! The importance of the aromas and the visual appeal of food in augmenting gastronomic pleasure has been duly stressed for several centuries now by both connoisseurs and lay men/women like me. I make special attempts at making the food atleast look good if not taste great... :)

Interestingly, I also learnt of one of the last diet fads, called the sensa diet, on the above hypothesis that enhancing the smell of foods (by sprinkling fragrant crystals of flavors and scents) decreases calorie intake by boosting the satiation signals in our central nervous system.

So, the first question that arises is - is their any merit to this observation ? What is the role of smell in altering our mind state ? Can food aromas increase our satiety ? How does this work ?

My brief search on some relevant literature led me to this paper by a research group in Yale, published in 2005 and which laid the foundation for the more recent finding.

I did realize a few interesting things through a perfunctory perusal of this manuscript. Interestingly, an odor molecule may reach the olfactory epithelium via the nose (called as orthonasal olfaction in technical jargon) or the mouth (called as retronasal olfaction). A smell is perceived as coming from the outer world when sensed through the nose whereas when sensed retronasally, it is perceived as arising from the mouth. In fact this illusion is so strong that people routinely mistake retronasal olfaction for "taste". So much so that even though our tongue is only capable of recognizing a limited palette of tastes - sweet, sour, salty, savory and bitter, we often can discern more complex tastes - medicinal, pleasant, fruity, rotten etc etc. And these "tastes" that we often sense are actually a result of the odors being sensed retronasally. Pinching the nose while eating or drinking is a simple experiment that will demonstrate this point. In fact, pinching the nose while drinking something distasteful / medicinal is a common strategy adopted by many, especially when dealing with kids.

A wise man called Rozin, had also observed that "olfaction" is the only dual sensory modality that senses both objects in the external world and inside (mouth). Based on this he further proposed that the same olfactory stimulation / smell may be perceived and evaluated in two qualitatively different ways depending on whether it is referred to the mouth or the external world.

Exploring this possibility the authors in 2005, showed through careful and controlled experimentation that although the smells traveling through the orthonasal or the retronasal route lead to the same olfactory receptors, they activate distinct regions of the brain. By delivering the aroma of chocolate (along with other chemicals about which i am not discussing now but which did yield interesting results) through distinct tubes that utilized the two distinct modes of olfactory perception, they studied the effect of the aroma and the mode of delivery on the brain activity. Monitoring the brain activation through functional MRI (fMRI), they clearly show that orthonasal delivery of smells activated the amygdala (which is involved in reward anticipation) while the retronasal mode of delivery triggered the activation of the medial orbitofrontal cortex, which is implicated in initiating the pleasure response upon the receipt of the reward. This was thus suggestive of the fact that retronasal olfaction possibly contributed more to satiation than the orthonasal route.



It was to test this hypothesis that the second group of researchers began their study. They used a special Mass spectrometry technique to quantify the aromas generated in an individual's retronasal passage. In their study asking volunteers to eat as much as they want to feel satiated, the experimenters found that the individuals who released more retronasal odorants tended to consume fewer calories. However, intriguingly, the authors also found that the total concentration of aromas released from a given food varies significantly among individuals. This is something i fail to understand but it does suggest that the complexity of a food's odor is only one component contributing to the satiation signals in the brain.

I wonder if there is any research on the visual component of the food... !!!

Meanwhile, this study does give some ray of hope for the foodies battling with weight loss plans.... You can make food smell great and end up eating less but still having the same pleasure index !!! So one can binge without a cringe !!

Refernces:
Small, D.M., et al. (2005). Neuron 47, 593–605.
Ruijschop, R.M., et al. (2009). J. Agric. Food Chem. 57, 9888–9894.

PS - Now, it does make me wonder though... it must be a tough choice for a restaurateur... Should he cut down on the aromas and the appearance of the food, so that people order more or should he allow people greater pleasure and satiation so that they come back again ? Guess that's why better restaurants cut down on the portions size and make great looking/smelling/tasting stuff... they make you want to eat more and let you eat more too !!!

Hype and hoopla - Much ado about nothing... !!

A glimpse at the Indian media last week would have definitely made everyone hear the victory bugles that were playing from every quarter. The reason being the supposed apology from the editor of Lancet - the medical journal where the article on NDM-1 super bug (New Delhi metallo lactamase) was first published. This super bug has become a celebrity of sorts as it is forever in the media limelight for all the wrong reasons! First, there was the super bug controversy subsequent to the publication of the article in Lancet and then there is another hullabaloo now about the "apology" from the editor.

For the uninitiated, the reputed British journal LANCET had published a collaborative work, involving several groups from India, Pakistan the UK, which claimed that a bacterial gene that confers resistance to practically all the β-lactam antibiotics was widespread across the Indian subcontinent. Furthermore, riding on carriers and patients, this “superbug” was traveling to other continents. Since most antibiotics, including the frontline carbapenems were ineffective against the bacteria that harbored this gene, it seemed to be an unstoppable medical crisis. This resistance conferring gene is mainly carried on plasmids and was called the New Delhi β-lactamase (NDM-1). It was named after New Delhi simply because it was first identified in european patients who had just returned from India (as medical tourists) and extensive molecular analysis suggested that the bug did originate on the Indian subcontinent. This was done probably without any great thought by simply following normal scientific convention for nomenclature of new discoveries especially the beta lactamases.

This article however created a frenzy in the Indian media. A normal thinking person would probably say that the frenzy is justified because after all you've discovered a bug which is resistant to all available antibiotics and India is a densely populated country with significant health care issues, so it is time that the government did something to control the spread. But, here is the TWIST !!!

Surprise Surprise, the media hype was not for the problem of the bug or the medical issues at the forefront but it was about the nomenclature !!!!

"Why was the bug called 'NDM-1'?" The entire country went on a hyper-emotive overdrive as it criticized the researchers, the journal, etc etc. The media and the government were quick to denounce the findings of the report. It was labeled unscientific and unacceptable in addition to being the handiwork of a pharmaceutical lobby! It was declared to be treacherous plot by the west to destroy our burgeoning “medical tourism industry”! This report was thus portrayed as an attempt by the West to paint a dirty and disease-spreading image of India, the rising economic power. Hence, it was implied, that it is the duty of every patriotic Indian to protest to this “national insult” towards restoring the “India shining” image.

I have already clarified the underlying dynamics of this issue in a previous post of mine but basically, it is imperative to remember that naming a new organism or enzyme after its source, site-of-first-identification or discoverer is part of scientific convention, specifically, with regard to this particular group of enzymes! Think Lyme disease, as in Lyme, Connecticut, or Norwalk virus, as in Norwalk, Ohio. Think of Clostridium botulinum strain Alaska and Anaplasma centrale strain Israel. And several other organisms have been named so - the banyan tree is named as Ficus benghalenesis ; one of the most virulent of pathogens, the causative agent for TB, is called Mycobacterium tuberculosis Beijing ; a new frog species found in Sahyadari (Western Ghats) has been named Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis. In 1961, a dinosaur was named as Barapasaurus tagorei as its discovery coincided with the birth centenary of Tagore. All these were also named after India or other cities in the world. No one raised a hue and a cry then. Thus, there doesn't seem to be much of a case against the naming of the bug !!!

But clearly, the bug was a health hazard and there were other more important issues to consider than just focusing on the nomenclature. But thats what happened eventually, as everyone ignored the potential pandemics that could spread through this bug or the urgent need for the discovery of new antibiotics or even the need to cut down on unnecessary prescription and consumption of antibiotics (which has led to the development of such a strain in the first place... ). All that remained was this feeling of hurt and insult because a disease causing pathogen was named after New Delhi !!!

And then with time, as is true for most media frenzies, this controversy died a slow death and everyone forgot about it, till of course the editor of lancet decided to come to India to launch an India chapter of the journal. And then as journalists usually do for a scoop or two, they probed him on the past controversy and the editor - placed in the tough spot that he was, issued rather diplomatic (and meaningless in my opinion) apology. He said that he stood by the findings of the report but is sorry about how the organism was named after India. First of all, this was a diplomatic defense because the editor of a Journal really doesn't have any jurisdiction/opinion on the nomenclature issued by the writers. We all generate several plasmids during the course of our research and no editor can/does ever object to these names!! Secondly, there was no need to apologize because the nomenclature was as per normal scientific convention and there is no need for an entire country to get sentimental about something like this because it honestly doesn't mean anything. And more importantly, despite the apology, he does stand by the findings of the paper !! And thus, this apology is merely a gesture of politeness than of any merit. I guess, the editor, amidst all the media glare just chickened out of telling his host country that they should get over it and should focus on other pressing things.

And here I am, miles away from my country and all i can think is "Why?"...
Why do we as a country focus on appearances and verbal assurances than on the underlying truth and the facts ? It is far more important that we work of eradicating the threat of this super bug than on how and why it was named. Why are we as a country so insecure about ourselves and the worlds perception of us ??? We are a growing nation which is on the threshold of stepping on to the world stage and instead of solving our pressing problems like population, inflation, terrorism, naxalism, corruption, education, health and infrastructure, we are focusing on the name of a bug, on questions of national pride and respect. Ridiculous !!! If we as a people are proud of our nation, it truly shouldn't matter what the west thinks of us. We should have a sense of confidence in our worth which is independent of another view. And we should learn to be mature and self critical not for an award or a title but for our own self. Why doesn't anyone understand that in an increasingly competitive world market, sentiments hardly dictate anything. What matters is efficiency and cost effectiveness... and if we achieve this, the rest of the world will be playing in our backyard like they are in China's now... !!!

As for the editor while I do see his dilemma, i do wish that he was more forthright and had used his diplomatic tact elsewhere. Instead of chickening out he should have been honest and raised the very valid issues behind the naming of the organism and of the other concerns which are more important than the name. But I guess, its easy for me to comment when I am far away from the glares of a nation, seething with hurt and anger.

Through all this, all I see is the need for an effective media which can present news accurately and provide the right perspectives. A media which will responsibly use rationality and evidence to gain an audience than manipulating the sentiments of the masses to gain their petty ends.

Evolutionary drive towards greater complexity - fact or fable ??

"Life began in the primordial soup and the evolutionary drive has resulted in the origin of organisms of greater and greater complexity."
"Organisms get better as they evolve. They get more advanced, more modern and less primitive."
"From the first cell that coalesced in the primordial soup to the magnificent intricacies of the Homo sapiens, the evolution of life has been one long drive forward towards greater complexity."

True or False ?

Well, as far as I see, a lot of people would tend to agree to these statements...

But then once in a while you come across these books and authors who question such statements and our implicit acceptance of their veracity and they end up shattering many of the myths which we often accept unquestioningly ...

I haven't come across too many such people but one person who makes me think, question, argue and answer, as I read his thoughts is Stephen Jay Gould. SJ Gould is a famous naturalist and evolutionary biologist who has written several wonderful essays (more than 300 in fact, as a continuous monthly series over a period of several years) and quite a few books. While his essays are eye opening with their exquisite ability to interlink diverse events and delving into the depths of any subject to identify patterns and similarities, his books have this uncanny ability of exposing questions to which people have often assumed answers without rigorous questioning.

A good example would be the question of an increasing drive for complexity. Most people, even most biologists, would agree with the statements listed at the start of the post which suggest an inherent drive for complexity. In his book, "The Full House", Gould exposes this fallacy and attempts at convincing us of an alternate possibility.

"The Full house" is a beautifully written book and in true Gould style, it leads to a healthy argument in the minds of the reader as they battle against the statements made by him only to finally accept his logic and rationale. At many times, I have found Gould to be a Stickler for semantics while i have often prioritized and aimed at distilling the meaning implied without stressing on the actual words used. But I guess, in science, a field that deals with rational thought and empirical observations, it is important that one does use the right words to convey the right insight.

In this book, Gould leads us through the labyrinthine maze of statistics and their role in our understanding of this "evolutionary drive for greater complexity". He leads us through a step by step argument that finally leads one to accept that evolution in all likelihood does not have any inherent drive towards complexity. He uses two elegant examples to demonstrate the existence of a left and/or a right wall in various everyday phenomena i.e. a natural upper or lower limit that is inherent to the system under study. The human body, for example, has certain inherent physical limitations which ultimately determine the performance and improvement of athletes (this is an example of a right wall, which means that our physical performance can keep increasing with rigorous training, technology, dietary intake, lifestyle, drugs etc but only till we hit the right wall...which is determined by the limits of the human body). He demonstrates very convincingly that the existence of such left and right walls can actually bias the statistics and thereby our understanding of particular phenomena, leaving plenty of room for wrong interpretations.

The book begins with a succinct explanation of the three major statistical measures - the mean, the median and the mode, Gould first convinces us that the mean is the farthest from the truth (as even a single erroneous value can truly skew our perspective of a population), while the Mode is the closest to the truth as it depicts the most common value in a population.

1,2,3,2,4,100,2,4,5,2,1,1000

The mean for this series would be 98.3 while the median and the mode are 3 and 2 respectively. This clearly highlights the fact that the mode is the best representation of a population and therefore the most likely candidate to be used to study variations in a population.

Extending this point further, he makes the case that in the history of evolution, the bacterial mode of life remains the single most dominant life form that has populated the earth. Bacteria have been the oldest and most successful occupants of this planet as they are found in almost every habitat known to man - ranging from the bacteria that exist as parasites and symbionts to the autotrophic bacteria that are inhabitants of hot thermal springs and volcanic rocks. Thus, considering the long history of evolution and the predominance of bacteria, these tiny, microscopic organisms seem to form the "statistical mode" of life on earth. This line of thought leads us to explore the possibility that life is not an really exhibiting a drive for greater complexity through evolutionary history.

Also, importantly, he draws our attention to one fundamental question which needs to be addressed in the context of evolutionary progress and this is the question of the very definition of progress. What is considered to be more advanced and what is more primitive ? On what basis would one say that a particular lineage is more complex or more advanced ? Does a bacteria become more advanced and complex because it is better adapted to a diverse set of environmental conditions or do humans become more advanced and complex due to their conscious nature ? Or does a virus become more complex, because it has managed to evolve a basic minimal set of functions essential for its propagation and survival ? What defines evolutionary progress or complexity ?

An immediate thought would be to say that the evolutionary success of an organism is the true indicator of its progress and thereby of its complexity; and this is where the impact of bacterial abundance truly hits. Based on criteria such as numbers, abundance, evolutionary ancestry, biomass and adaptation, the bacteria truly seem to be "superior" to all other species including man.

Gould's argument is that this increase in "complexity", as we perceive in terms of multicellularity, physiology, life span, consciousness, etc, is not the result of an inherent drive but is rather a consequence of the existence of a left wall in the history of evolution of life. In the evolution of life, the simplest organisms arose first and things couldn't get any simpler from there. The existence of such a wall on the left of the evolutionary scale meant that things can only move in one direction - to the right. Thus, the origin of multicellular organisms and of sentient life is the result of random events which could only drive the evolution of life in only one direction. He cites the example of a drunk man walking whose left end is determined by the existence of a wall and the right by a ditch. Under the circumstances, there is a good chance that the man would end up in the ditch even though he is walking without an inherent drive because that's the only way open to him. Thus, he says that the evolution of human beings from the single celled organisms is not the result of an inherent drive in evolution towards greater complexity but rather, is the result of random events which cannot be expected to yield the same consequence upon another repetition. Gould also uses the example of parasites and simpler organisms like viruses to introduce the idea that organisms on the evolutionary scale could also tend towards simplicity rather than complexity.

Gould's primary idea of course is to convince the reader that the complexity in life as it exists today is not the result of a pre-ordained or inherent evolutionary drive towards greater complexity but rather the result of random events which have resulted in sentient beings like us, ruling the planet today! While the question of evolutionary complexity does make one think about the possible criteria that can be considered, the ultimate aim of this book is to convince us that evolution, in itself, lacks any inherent drive towards complexity; thereby stripping off any modicum of special ordainment that may be conferred on the reasons for human existence at this point in evolutionary history.

From my perspective, the definition of complexity seems like a question of semantics because i chose to interpret complexity as a reflection of the extent of specialization and adaptation. This is a criteria that Gould has not explored. I think that there has been an undeniable increase in the complexity of organisms since the origin of the first protocells. In the history of evolution, life has moved from the single celled bacteria to mutlicelled humans and the organisms have grown more and more specialized along the way. I do not suggest the existence of an inherent drive towards complexity but I do think, there is a trend towards greater complexity. This increased complexity, as interpreted as increased specialization and adaptation, could also address the existence of parasites and viruses whose existence was difficult to explain by the other definitions of complexity.

The underlying cause for this increased complexity could certainly be the existence of the left wall, as rightly suggested by Gould, but I am definitely, not completely convinced, by his arguments against an increase in complexity. I am also quite taken by his argument for the modal bacterial life and i think that it is a very good point to make. In fact, one rarely realizes the ubiquity and antiquity of bacterial life forms and going by these parameters, the entire history of the evolution of life would seem like the age of bacteria unlike the other ages which have named based on the predominant life forms seen in the period.

Thus, while I understand the case made my Gould in the book against the commonplace understanding of an inherent drive for increased complexity in the origin and evolution of life and I do espouse his view of our existence on this planet being a result of purely random events, which need not (and most likely will not) end the same way, if the history of life is replayed; I am however not prepared to say that over the entire evolutionary history known to us, there is no increase in the complexity of organisms.

On a parting note, I would like to present here a beautiful thought which was used as the opening for the book's second chapter:

"I have often had occasion to quote Freud's incisive, almost rueful, observation that all major revolutions in the history of science have as their common theme, amidst such diversity, the successive dethronement of human arrogance from one pillar after another of our previous cosmic assurance. Freud mentions three such incidents: We once thought that we lived on the central body of a limited universe until Copernicus, Galileo and Newton identified the earth as a tiny satellite to a marginal star. We then comforted ourselves by imagining that God had nevertheless chosen this peripheral location for creating a unique organism in his image - until Darwin came along and "relegated us to descent from an animal world". We then sought solace in our rational minds until, as Freud notes in one of the least modest statements of intellectual history, psychology discovered the unconscious."

A childhood lesson...

A brief glimpse walk down the memory lane made me recall this one sentence which was a constant companion through my school days. Hours were spent in the evenings, trying to write this sentence multiple times in cursive hand -

"A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog".

I was always amazed by the fact that this simple sentence contains all the alphabets in the english language which made it a pangram !

I used to still wonder how many of these are around...

And then a simple google search on a lazy morning yielded a huge list of pangrams none of which seem as elegant as this one simple sentence...

Here is a partial list that i came across.... Wonder if you have any ?

• Nymphs blitz quick vex dwarf jog. (27 letters)
• Big fjords vex quick waltz nymph. (27 letters)
• Bawds jog, flick quartz, vex nymph. (27 letters)
• Bawds jog, flick quartz, vex nymphs. (28 letters)
• Waltz, bad nymph, for quick jigs vex! (28 letters)
• Fox nymphs grab quick-jived waltz. (28 letters)
• Glib jocks quiz nymph to vex dwarf. (28 letters)
• Bright vixens jump; dozy fowl quack. (29 letters)
• Vexed nymphs go for quick waltz job. (29 letters)
• Jack fox bids ivy-strewn phlegm quiz (30 letters)
• How quickly daft jumping zebras vex. (30 letters)
• Two driven jocks help fax my big quiz. (30 letters)
• "Now fax quiz Jack!" my brave ghost pled. (30 letters)
• Vamp fox held quartz duck just by wing. (31 letters)
• Five quacking zephyrs jolt my wax bed. (31 letters
• The five boxing wizards jump quickly. (31 letters)
• Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz. (31 letters)
  
• Kvetching, flummoxed by job, W.zaps Iraq. (32 letters)
  
• My ex pub quiz crwd gave joyful thanks. (32 letters)
• Few quips galvanized the mock jury box. (32 letters)
• The jay, pig, fox, zebra, and my wolves quack! (33 letters)
• Quizzical twins proved my hijack-bug fix. (34 letters)
• The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. (35 letters) (Used to test typewriters and computer keyboards, and as sample text; famous for its coherency, dating back to 1888)
• Wolf zombies spot the jinxed grave. (36 letters)
• Heavy boxes perform quick waltzes and jigs. (36 letters)
• A quick chop jolted my big sexy frozen wives. (36 letters)
• A wizard’s job is to vex chumps quickly in fog. (36 letters)
• Sympathizing would fix Quaker objectives. (36 letters)
  
• Pack my red box with five dozen quality jugs. (36 letters)
• Fake bugs put in wax jonquils drive him crazy. (37 letters)
• Woven silk pyjamas exchanged for blue quartz. (38 letters)
  
• Brawny gods just flocked up to quiz and vex him. (38 letters)
• My faxed joke won a pager in the cable TV quiz show. (39 letters)
• The quick onyx goblin jumps over the lazy dwarf. (39 letters)

Happily forgetful and forgetfully happy !!!

Memory - our ability to remember.
Who would not want more of it ? We all yearn to remember a little more - that one extra book, one more dialogue, another new name or that old wicked answer !! Intelligence is often understood to be linked with a sharp memory. Almost all of us would like to have a fabulous memory - to be able to recall every tiny detail, as we try and pack our brains with as many facts, figures and details as we possibly can. In our attempts to remember everything, we lose track of the fact that forgetting is no less important.

In fact, as someone rightly said - "What makes us human is not our ability to remember. It is our ability to forget."

Imagine remembering every tiny detail about every single day for years on end. An excess of memory and we would find our mind cluttered with the minutiae of everyday existence - the shape of the cup, the crack on the side, the level of the tea, the temperature outside, the day, date and time, the brand of tea, the texture of the scones, the colors, the smells, the feelings and the emotions - All this with one cup of tea. Imagine this on a daily basis. for every activity of the day and you can imagine the nightmare that it will be. It would become impossible to glean relevant information in a timely manner from these heaps of facts. It would be like fishing for a needle in haystack all the time.

Now, imagine surviving the horrors of the world with such tireless memory. Our adverse experiences haunting us forever with the same intensity as that of the initial experience. One's entire life would just become a ceaseless trauma. The past would haunt us forever simply because we remember it far too well, to let go.

And this is why forgetting is more important than remembering. The ability of our brain to weed out unnecessary information as it builds connections in the brain is what makes us human. It is indeed this so called "handicap" of ours, this inability to remember that becomes our true strength.
And thus, every time I feel like kicking myself for not recalling that book, that line or that story, and when i catch myself wishing for more hard disk in my head, i show myself the possible consequences of having a great memory.... :)

And then I am back to my happier forgetful self again... :)

The inheritance of time...

Of the many things that we inherit, I am most amazed by our ability to view the past and the future while still trudging through the present.

We get a glimpse of our future in the life of our parents.
It is amazing how, as we grow, we tend to become more and more like them. While the nature vs nurture debate is still on going, the fact of the matter is, that we inherit both of these from them in more ways than one. Appearances, mannerisms, attitudes, aptitudes, priorities are all inherited from them in some measure, modified by the ways of the world and then passed on further. And thus, as part of our true inheritance we can potentially visualize our future in the lives of our parents. Few rarely realize or appreciate this gift of foresight. Foresight, about the consequences of our actions and their impact on us and the world. If only we would learn the right lessons and remember them long enough, we could carve out a very different future for ourselves. The tragedy of life however is that in avoiding some mistakes, we end up making others but then at least one knows that "they tried" to make a difference.

We also get a chance to re-live our childhoods with a greater awareness of it through our children. It gives us the ability to peep into a past, to sit down and revisit our childhood for its simple pleasures, amidst the flurry of daily activity. Our children are an essence of us that we leave behind in the world. They give us an opportunity to make the changes that we desired. They give us an opportunity to revisit some experiences with greater clarity and experience. They provide us with an opportunity to rectify the errors of the past and to lay a better foundation for the future.

Thus, our true inheritance lies in our being able to view a glimpse of our future in our present and to revisit our past. I wish I am able to learn the right lessons and remember them too....

A tiny list that keeps me going... :)

Sitting by the window ledge sipping chocolate all snuggled in a blanket...Walking on the beach with the waves lapping at my feet... traveling the world to capture its glory through my lenses....translating the visions of my mind on to a blank paper.... Sitting by a brook listening to its heart beat.... walking on a long country road, smelling the grass... listening to the rain drops... walking on the dew drops... gazing at the night sky... sitting on an open lawn as the sun sleeps and the moon stays on guard with you by my side... hearing the silences that dwell in the heart of the mountain peaks... listening to the sounds of the jungle... making wood sing... reading by the lamp light in a place of my own... feeling the wetness on the nose of my favorite canine waking me up on a lazy morning... snuggling up in my blanket without a care in the world... playing with colors... walking like the roads never end... flying with the wind in my hair... gliding like a bird... swimming like the fish exploring the depths unseen...

A tiny list that keeps me going... :)