Rigveda: Mother Sarasvati, with the wealth of your knowledge, protect us and further our thoughts
Sarasvati is one of the important deities of Rigveda. She is described as the best mother, best river, and the best goddess. She is invoked with the other gods and goddesses for various blessings at the rituals of Soma Sacrifice. She is metaphorically described as the wealth giver, feeder of choicest things, etc. She is the slayer of demons like Paravatas, like Indra killed demons like Vrtra. According to the following hymn she confers wealth: Rigveda 8.21.17, “Indra or blest Sarasvati alone bestows such wealth, treasure so great, or thou, O Citra, on the worshipper.” Rigveda 7.35.11 says, “May all the fellowship of Gods befriends us, Sarasvati, with Holy Thoughts, be gracious.” Rigveda also describes her as the one who brings the capacity for rational or intelligent thought in this hymn, Rigveda 10.30.12: “For, wealthy waters, ye control all treasures: ye bring auspicious intellect and Amá¹›ta. Ye are the Queens of independent riches Sarasvati give full life to the singer!” Some of the blessings sought during the Soma ritual is described in Shukla and Krishna Yajurveda. For example, in Taittiriya Samhita 29.8, “Bharati with Adityas love our worship! Sarasvati with Rudras be our helper, And Ida in accord, invoked with Vasus! Goddesses - place our rite among the Immortals.”
One of the highlights of this book is the widely discussed location of River Sarasvati as described in Rigveda, other Vedic texts, the Brahmanas, the Mahabharata and Puranas. Different accounts of Sarasvati are narrated in puranas including the course of this river as well as the location of her disappearance. The intermittent nature of the flow purporting up to a stretch of distance followed by her disappearance as an underground channel and then the reappearance down towards the west into the Indian Ocean. The scriptures are interpreted not only with reference to the literature, but also based on the results of the research and the various archaeological and geological studies undertaken so far. Instead of adopting a segmented approach in identifying the Vedic Sarasvati, an integrated approach is used in a holistic manner.
The disappearance of the River Sarasvati is also attributed to the river drying up in stages but continues to flow as a subterranean channel. Some recent studies have attributed the drying up of Sarasvati to a tectonic shift in its catchment area which sizably reduced the flow. But in earlier period around 1900 BCE, the lower reaches of the Sarasvati were crowded with Harappan settlements. This may be the reason why Sarasvati is described as a mighty river in the earliest Vedic text, but in latter Rigvedic hymns, the descriptions allude to the confluence of two rivers, Sarasvati and Sutlej.
The Vedas and the Brahmanas introduce Sarasvati as the River Goddess of speech, and the Puranas complete her as a goddess of learning, fine arts and culture. The Vedas and the Mahabharata emphasizes the sacredness of Sarasvati as a river and catalogues the holy sites of the mighty river. The pilgrimage of Balarama described in Book 9 of Mahabharata suggests the course followed by this river is a sacred and spiritual part of Hindu practices. The Puranas reinforce through legends and folklore. Markandeya Purana describes Sarasvati as the mother of all worlds and the originator of all gods. She is known to have supreme knowledge, undefinable, imperishable, celestial and supreme personality. She symbolizes the concept of Brahman of Upanishads and Vedanta. Sarasvati represents the equality afforded to women in early Hindu scriptures that are not found in Abrahamic faiths.
This is a very readable, engaging and well written book about goddess Sarasvati with extensive study of Vedas, Brahmanas and Puranas.
Monday, December 30, 2019
Saturday, December 21, 2019
Book Reviewed: The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of Their Lost World Paperback, by Steve Brusatte
Highway to Hell Creek; the discovery of the remnants of Jurassic park
In this dazzling rehash, author Steve Brusatte tells the mesmerizing story of dinosaurs; their origins, evolution, diversity, habitats and their cataclysmic extinction. This is a captivating narrative that engages the reader till the end of the book. Highly readable and well researched that interest readers focused in ancient history this planet, dinosaurs, and life in late cretaceous era (100 – 66 million Years). The book describes immediate events after planet was hit by 6.5-mile-long asteroid (Chicxulub meteorite), at the speed of 67,000 miles per hour, 65.5 million years ago. The fossils from this event are preserved all over the planet, which gives a grim picture. It simply demonstrates that life on earth is susceptible to the wrath of nature. This was the sixth extinction of life in 4.5 billion history of the planet, and it was colossal, cosmic and catastrophic. How did life witness this? The author describes in detail as what may have happened immediately before and after the greatest hit in the recent history of our planet. Although this has been discussed on several TV shows on Nat Geo, Discovery, PBS and Science channels by geophysicists, astronomers and paleontologists, it is interesting to read from the point of a paleontologist who studies dinosaurs with passion. In fact, it is common in recent days to read about the discovery of new species of dinosaurs, birds and mammals from this event. One of the goldmines for finding the lost species is Hell Creek, Montana where treasure trove of fossils is preserved. It is a mixing of fossil carcasses and a layer of glass tektites from meteorite hit with impact impressions deposited minutes to hours after the apocalypse.
The Hell Creek Formation in the Upper Great Plains of Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota were laid down by ancient rivers and streams as they traveled from the Rocky Mountains in the west toward the east before emptying into a large interior seaway that bisected North America during the latest Cretaceous period. Due to rise in sea-level in the Late Cretaceous, North America was bisected by a seaway stretching from the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico. The states of NM, AZ, CO, SD, ND and MT were buried under water in a shallow sea that ran from Mexico to NW Canada. At that time the states of CA, OR, WA and ID were on the West and the rest of United States were on the east. The Hell Creek rocks preserve the remains of dinosaurs after Chicxulub meteorite struck into the ocean in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. The death and destruction of the most iconic dinosaurs include Tyrannosaurus Rex, the three horned dinosaur, Triceratops, the duckbilled dinosaur, Edmontosaurus, and the tank-like armored dinosaur, Ankylosaurus. The fossils also include; crocodiles, lizards, snakes, turtles, frogs, salamanders, fishes, plants and mammals.
At this time, the planet was largely one supercontinent called Pangea, but it had started to split into several fragments. Europe and Asia were still globed together, and they were linked to North America by a series of islands. But what made these animals to become big? They had to eat and digest vast quantities of food, they had to grow fast, must be able to breathe very efficiently, and shed excess body heat. This process was enabled by their unique body plan that included a highly efficient lung more related to a birdlike lung because many bones of the chest cavity had big openings. There were many air sacs that extended throughout their body that helped lungs to take in enough oxygen to stoke their metabolism.
During the final 20 million years of the Cretaceous, tyrannosaurs flourished, ruling the river valleys, lakeshores, flood plains, forests, and deserts of North America and China. Colossal tyrannosaurs never seemed to gain a foothold in Europe or the southern continents, where other groups of large predators prospered, but in North America and China, species of tyrannosaurs were unrivaled. They had become the transcendent terrors that fire our imaginations. The species of Tyrannosaurus Rex was not a global but existed only in North West of United States.
On that fateful morning 66 million years ago, when a pack of T. Rexes woke up on what would go down as the final day of the Cretaceous Period, all seemed normal in their Hell Creek kingdom, the same as it had for two millions of years. Forests of conifers and ginkgoes stretched to the horizon, interspersed with palms and magnolias. The distant churn of a river, rushing eastward to empty into the great seaway that lapped against western North America. For the last several weeks, the more perceptive of the T. Rexes may have noticed a glowing orb in the sky, far off in the distance and a hazy ball also had a fiery rim. The orb would appear and disappear for hours. As it appeared again, it was bigger, its shine illuminating much of the sky to the southeast in a cloudy psychedelic mist. Then a flash. No noise, only a split-second flare of yellow that lit up the whole sky, disorienting the animals for a moment. As they blinked their eyes back to focus, they noticed that the orb was now gone. Moments later, and then they were blindsided. Another flash, but this one far more vengeful. The rays lit the morning air in a fireworks display and burned into their retinas. In fact, no noise at all. By now, the birds and flying raptors had stopped chirping, and silence hung over Hell Creek. The calm lasted for only a few seconds. Next, the ground beneath their feet started to rumble and shake, and then flew like waves; pulses of energy were shooting through the rocks and soil, the ground rising and falling as if a giant snake were slithering underneath. Everything not rooted into the dirt was thrown upward; then it crashed down, and then up and down again, the Earth's surface was acting like a trampoline. Everything within a radius of about six hundred miles from the Yucatan Peninsula of modern-day Mexico was annihilated, and vaporized. For several years, the Earth turned cold and dark because of soot, sulfur, sulfuric acid and rock dust in the atmosphere that blocked out the sun. The darkness brought severe winter for years that only the hardiest of animals could survive. The rains were highly acidic that wiped out much of marine species. Here and there, species of lizards, crocodiles, turtles, birds and rat-size mammals made it but with lots of duress under the fury of nature. Hell-Creek was turned to Hell that reverberated in rest of the world.
In this dazzling rehash, author Steve Brusatte tells the mesmerizing story of dinosaurs; their origins, evolution, diversity, habitats and their cataclysmic extinction. This is a captivating narrative that engages the reader till the end of the book. Highly readable and well researched that interest readers focused in ancient history this planet, dinosaurs, and life in late cretaceous era (100 – 66 million Years). The book describes immediate events after planet was hit by 6.5-mile-long asteroid (Chicxulub meteorite), at the speed of 67,000 miles per hour, 65.5 million years ago. The fossils from this event are preserved all over the planet, which gives a grim picture. It simply demonstrates that life on earth is susceptible to the wrath of nature. This was the sixth extinction of life in 4.5 billion history of the planet, and it was colossal, cosmic and catastrophic. How did life witness this? The author describes in detail as what may have happened immediately before and after the greatest hit in the recent history of our planet. Although this has been discussed on several TV shows on Nat Geo, Discovery, PBS and Science channels by geophysicists, astronomers and paleontologists, it is interesting to read from the point of a paleontologist who studies dinosaurs with passion. In fact, it is common in recent days to read about the discovery of new species of dinosaurs, birds and mammals from this event. One of the goldmines for finding the lost species is Hell Creek, Montana where treasure trove of fossils is preserved. It is a mixing of fossil carcasses and a layer of glass tektites from meteorite hit with impact impressions deposited minutes to hours after the apocalypse.
The Hell Creek Formation in the Upper Great Plains of Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota were laid down by ancient rivers and streams as they traveled from the Rocky Mountains in the west toward the east before emptying into a large interior seaway that bisected North America during the latest Cretaceous period. Due to rise in sea-level in the Late Cretaceous, North America was bisected by a seaway stretching from the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico. The states of NM, AZ, CO, SD, ND and MT were buried under water in a shallow sea that ran from Mexico to NW Canada. At that time the states of CA, OR, WA and ID were on the West and the rest of United States were on the east. The Hell Creek rocks preserve the remains of dinosaurs after Chicxulub meteorite struck into the ocean in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. The death and destruction of the most iconic dinosaurs include Tyrannosaurus Rex, the three horned dinosaur, Triceratops, the duckbilled dinosaur, Edmontosaurus, and the tank-like armored dinosaur, Ankylosaurus. The fossils also include; crocodiles, lizards, snakes, turtles, frogs, salamanders, fishes, plants and mammals.
At this time, the planet was largely one supercontinent called Pangea, but it had started to split into several fragments. Europe and Asia were still globed together, and they were linked to North America by a series of islands. But what made these animals to become big? They had to eat and digest vast quantities of food, they had to grow fast, must be able to breathe very efficiently, and shed excess body heat. This process was enabled by their unique body plan that included a highly efficient lung more related to a birdlike lung because many bones of the chest cavity had big openings. There were many air sacs that extended throughout their body that helped lungs to take in enough oxygen to stoke their metabolism.
During the final 20 million years of the Cretaceous, tyrannosaurs flourished, ruling the river valleys, lakeshores, flood plains, forests, and deserts of North America and China. Colossal tyrannosaurs never seemed to gain a foothold in Europe or the southern continents, where other groups of large predators prospered, but in North America and China, species of tyrannosaurs were unrivaled. They had become the transcendent terrors that fire our imaginations. The species of Tyrannosaurus Rex was not a global but existed only in North West of United States.
On that fateful morning 66 million years ago, when a pack of T. Rexes woke up on what would go down as the final day of the Cretaceous Period, all seemed normal in their Hell Creek kingdom, the same as it had for two millions of years. Forests of conifers and ginkgoes stretched to the horizon, interspersed with palms and magnolias. The distant churn of a river, rushing eastward to empty into the great seaway that lapped against western North America. For the last several weeks, the more perceptive of the T. Rexes may have noticed a glowing orb in the sky, far off in the distance and a hazy ball also had a fiery rim. The orb would appear and disappear for hours. As it appeared again, it was bigger, its shine illuminating much of the sky to the southeast in a cloudy psychedelic mist. Then a flash. No noise, only a split-second flare of yellow that lit up the whole sky, disorienting the animals for a moment. As they blinked their eyes back to focus, they noticed that the orb was now gone. Moments later, and then they were blindsided. Another flash, but this one far more vengeful. The rays lit the morning air in a fireworks display and burned into their retinas. In fact, no noise at all. By now, the birds and flying raptors had stopped chirping, and silence hung over Hell Creek. The calm lasted for only a few seconds. Next, the ground beneath their feet started to rumble and shake, and then flew like waves; pulses of energy were shooting through the rocks and soil, the ground rising and falling as if a giant snake were slithering underneath. Everything not rooted into the dirt was thrown upward; then it crashed down, and then up and down again, the Earth's surface was acting like a trampoline. Everything within a radius of about six hundred miles from the Yucatan Peninsula of modern-day Mexico was annihilated, and vaporized. For several years, the Earth turned cold and dark because of soot, sulfur, sulfuric acid and rock dust in the atmosphere that blocked out the sun. The darkness brought severe winter for years that only the hardiest of animals could survive. The rains were highly acidic that wiped out much of marine species. Here and there, species of lizards, crocodiles, turtles, birds and rat-size mammals made it but with lots of duress under the fury of nature. Hell-Creek was turned to Hell that reverberated in rest of the world.
Tuesday, December 17, 2019
Book reviewed: Stories Jesus Told: How to Read a Parable Paperback, by Greg Carey
The principals of Dharma found in the Parables of Jesus
Would you believe that Jesus preached something besides love, forgiveness and peace? In fact, one-third of Jesus' words in the Synoptic Gospels are parables, which are enigmatic and oracular but still constitutes the only form of his teachings. In this book, the author says that by devoting a significant time to study parables, one can learn how to interpret them. Historically, millesimal number of Biblical scholars have read and re-read parables, and the literature filled with both scholarly and faith based commentaries that change the perspectives of millions who believe that Jesus is the son of God who died for the sins of his believers.
Parables have more value from a literary and cultural point of view than pulpit interpretations. They illustrate parallels with rabbinic teachings. The first-century Judaism was not merely the backdrop for Jesus' teachings but that was the center stage from which Jesus delivered his message. His ethics and theology are from Old Testament, Jewish laws, and the Greco-Roman history. The metaphoric and polyvalence of the parables offer challenges in reconstructing the historical Jesus. The three apostles used the parables within the literary and theological frameworks of their gospels. However, it is also confounding that the book of John does not have any parables, and the Gospel of Thomas, excluded from Bible, is very different in tone and structure from other New Testament apocrypha and the four Canonical Gospels. It is not a narrative account of life of Jesus; instead, it consists of sayings attributed to him, sometimes stand-alone, sometimes embedded in short dialogues. The text contains a possible allusion to the death of Jesus but does not mention his crucifixion, his resurrection, or the final judgment; nor does it mention a messianic understanding of Jesus. There is no mention of Jesus having performed miracles. Instead, Jesus provides insight about our true self and offers a way of salvation. For Thomas, resurrection is a cognitive event of spiritual attainment, one even involving a certain discipline or asceticism. This is contrasting to John's bodily resurrection, which is an indispensable part of Christian faith. According to Thomas, Jesus’ teachings align with that of Buddha, and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, both of which remain outside the canonical boundaries.
Most of Jesus' ethics are grounded in Buddhism. Buddha attained enlightenment while meditating under the Bodhi tree, then he remined silent and fasted before he started preaching with five of his former companions, the ascetics with whom he shared six years of hardship. Buddha gave the first presentation of the Four Noble Truths, which are his foundational teaching that lead one's liberation from suffering in life. The wheel of dharma leads to enlightenment. Similarly, the Sermon on the Mount is a collection of teachings of Jesus that emphasizes morality found in the Gospel of Matthew (Chapters 5, 6, and 7). This is after he was baptized by John the Baptist, Jesus goes fasting and performs meditation in the desert, and then begins to preach in Galilee at the Mount of Beatitudes with widely recited Lord's Prayer.
Jesus Seminar, a group of Biblical scholars and academics re-created gospels and evaluated the historical Jesus. Among other things, they asserted that the Gospel of Thomas is more authentic than the Gospel of John. The authors of synoptic gospels used oral and written traditions of first century to re-create their work, and sightings of risen Jesus is visionary experience rather than physical encounters.
The author of this book uses an academic approach to re-define and review the parables rather than a faith-based approach. Hence, this book is interesting and intellectually stimulating than a book written by those who preach from the pulpit.
Would you believe that Jesus preached something besides love, forgiveness and peace? In fact, one-third of Jesus' words in the Synoptic Gospels are parables, which are enigmatic and oracular but still constitutes the only form of his teachings. In this book, the author says that by devoting a significant time to study parables, one can learn how to interpret them. Historically, millesimal number of Biblical scholars have read and re-read parables, and the literature filled with both scholarly and faith based commentaries that change the perspectives of millions who believe that Jesus is the son of God who died for the sins of his believers.
Parables have more value from a literary and cultural point of view than pulpit interpretations. They illustrate parallels with rabbinic teachings. The first-century Judaism was not merely the backdrop for Jesus' teachings but that was the center stage from which Jesus delivered his message. His ethics and theology are from Old Testament, Jewish laws, and the Greco-Roman history. The metaphoric and polyvalence of the parables offer challenges in reconstructing the historical Jesus. The three apostles used the parables within the literary and theological frameworks of their gospels. However, it is also confounding that the book of John does not have any parables, and the Gospel of Thomas, excluded from Bible, is very different in tone and structure from other New Testament apocrypha and the four Canonical Gospels. It is not a narrative account of life of Jesus; instead, it consists of sayings attributed to him, sometimes stand-alone, sometimes embedded in short dialogues. The text contains a possible allusion to the death of Jesus but does not mention his crucifixion, his resurrection, or the final judgment; nor does it mention a messianic understanding of Jesus. There is no mention of Jesus having performed miracles. Instead, Jesus provides insight about our true self and offers a way of salvation. For Thomas, resurrection is a cognitive event of spiritual attainment, one even involving a certain discipline or asceticism. This is contrasting to John's bodily resurrection, which is an indispensable part of Christian faith. According to Thomas, Jesus’ teachings align with that of Buddha, and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, both of which remain outside the canonical boundaries.
Most of Jesus' ethics are grounded in Buddhism. Buddha attained enlightenment while meditating under the Bodhi tree, then he remined silent and fasted before he started preaching with five of his former companions, the ascetics with whom he shared six years of hardship. Buddha gave the first presentation of the Four Noble Truths, which are his foundational teaching that lead one's liberation from suffering in life. The wheel of dharma leads to enlightenment. Similarly, the Sermon on the Mount is a collection of teachings of Jesus that emphasizes morality found in the Gospel of Matthew (Chapters 5, 6, and 7). This is after he was baptized by John the Baptist, Jesus goes fasting and performs meditation in the desert, and then begins to preach in Galilee at the Mount of Beatitudes with widely recited Lord's Prayer.
Jesus Seminar, a group of Biblical scholars and academics re-created gospels and evaluated the historical Jesus. Among other things, they asserted that the Gospel of Thomas is more authentic than the Gospel of John. The authors of synoptic gospels used oral and written traditions of first century to re-create their work, and sightings of risen Jesus is visionary experience rather than physical encounters.
The author of this book uses an academic approach to re-define and review the parables rather than a faith-based approach. Hence, this book is interesting and intellectually stimulating than a book written by those who preach from the pulpit.
Saturday, December 14, 2019
Book Reviewed: Paul vs. James: What We've Been Missing in the Faith and Works Debate, by Chris Bruno
A brief story of the early Christian church
James, the brother of Jesus connected with him closely and as a typical Essene, he was zealous for the Jewish laws. However, Paul departed from the Jewish laws to introduce faith as the most fundamental part Christ’s message. James strongly resisted Paul’s law-free version of the gospel, but the relationship between James and Paul was important for early Christianity; it epitomized the need to preserve the movement’s Jewish roots as its membership became predominantly non-Jewish. Though it created tensions, the connection of James with Jerusalem was important for Paul; his letters reflect both his theological departure from James and James’ authority on Jerusalem community. It also undermined James’ firsthand encounters with Jesus. But Paul’s strong personal experience of the risen Christ shaped his theology and identity as an apostle to the Gentiles.
The Pseudo-Clementine writings of the late fourth century illustrate the tensions between James and Paul. These writings are based on sources and traditions derived from Christian Jews from Jerusalem who fled to Pella around the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. These writings portray Paul as the enemy of James and Christian Judaism. Historically, however, the evidence suggests that though the relationship involved tensions, the two were not enemies. In fact, this is the message of the author of this book
In the last chapter titled, Life and Works in Real Life, the author addresses controversial issues like same-sex marriage. He concludes that we need to apply whole of Bible’s teachings on faith and works. Because the scripture is clear that faith alone justifies. If that is the case, then gay-life styles, same-sex marriage and transsexualism is a sin as Sodom and Gomorrah. The author’s approach is understandable as a preacher, but one must separate belief and reality.
Jesus Seminar, a scholarly group that re-created early gospels found that the historical Jesus was a Jewish revolutionary and a faith-healer who preached a gospel of liberation. Jesus broke with established Jewish theological dogmas and social conventions in both his teachings and his behavior, often by turning common-sense ideas upside down, confounding the expectations of his audience. The Seminar also concluded that the sightings of a risen Jesus was a visionary experience rather than a physical encounter. The belief systems are man-made and strict adherence to gospels are unscientific and unrealistic.
James, the brother of Jesus connected with him closely and as a typical Essene, he was zealous for the Jewish laws. However, Paul departed from the Jewish laws to introduce faith as the most fundamental part Christ’s message. James strongly resisted Paul’s law-free version of the gospel, but the relationship between James and Paul was important for early Christianity; it epitomized the need to preserve the movement’s Jewish roots as its membership became predominantly non-Jewish. Though it created tensions, the connection of James with Jerusalem was important for Paul; his letters reflect both his theological departure from James and James’ authority on Jerusalem community. It also undermined James’ firsthand encounters with Jesus. But Paul’s strong personal experience of the risen Christ shaped his theology and identity as an apostle to the Gentiles.
The Pseudo-Clementine writings of the late fourth century illustrate the tensions between James and Paul. These writings are based on sources and traditions derived from Christian Jews from Jerusalem who fled to Pella around the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. These writings portray Paul as the enemy of James and Christian Judaism. Historically, however, the evidence suggests that though the relationship involved tensions, the two were not enemies. In fact, this is the message of the author of this book
In the last chapter titled, Life and Works in Real Life, the author addresses controversial issues like same-sex marriage. He concludes that we need to apply whole of Bible’s teachings on faith and works. Because the scripture is clear that faith alone justifies. If that is the case, then gay-life styles, same-sex marriage and transsexualism is a sin as Sodom and Gomorrah. The author’s approach is understandable as a preacher, but one must separate belief and reality.
Jesus Seminar, a scholarly group that re-created early gospels found that the historical Jesus was a Jewish revolutionary and a faith-healer who preached a gospel of liberation. Jesus broke with established Jewish theological dogmas and social conventions in both his teachings and his behavior, often by turning common-sense ideas upside down, confounding the expectations of his audience. The Seminar also concluded that the sightings of a risen Jesus was a visionary experience rather than a physical encounter. The belief systems are man-made and strict adherence to gospels are unscientific and unrealistic.
Wednesday, November 13, 2019
Book Reviewed: The Universe, by Lonely Planet
The Wild but Dazzling Universe
Even in the 21st century, there are places on the planet where few people tread. Lonely mountain tops, desert interiors, Arctic ice floes, or the vast ice sheets of Antarctica. The Kerguelen Islands of Indian Ocean and Spitsbergen of Norway are good examples. Earth is a very tiny place in our universe that is made of spacetime fabric with matter and energy. They come in various forms; planets, stars, galaxies, and black holes. The observable universe is estimated to be 93 billion light-years in diameter.
Solar system is a well-studied system and a good deal of information is available here. The Sun and eight planets with about 170 known moons and countless asteroids, some with their own satellites; comets and other icy bodies; and vast reaches of highly tenuous gas and dust known as Kuiper belt and Oort cloud. There is also other information; physical and chemical characteristics of exoplanets, galaxies, nebulas and galactic clusters. There are many colored pictures to admire the wonders of our universe.
One of the surprises is that the Pillars of Creation taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of interstellar gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula is prominently displayed on the cover but not documented in the book. This is about 6,500–7,000 light years from Earth and it is also known by other names like Messier 16 or M16, NGC 6611, the Star Queen Nebula and The Spire.
This is a good reference book that prepares you for exploring the universe. It provides a comprehensive review of cosmic structures in the observable universe. Lonely Planet offers a good guide for readers interested in astronomy.
Even in the 21st century, there are places on the planet where few people tread. Lonely mountain tops, desert interiors, Arctic ice floes, or the vast ice sheets of Antarctica. The Kerguelen Islands of Indian Ocean and Spitsbergen of Norway are good examples. Earth is a very tiny place in our universe that is made of spacetime fabric with matter and energy. They come in various forms; planets, stars, galaxies, and black holes. The observable universe is estimated to be 93 billion light-years in diameter.
Solar system is a well-studied system and a good deal of information is available here. The Sun and eight planets with about 170 known moons and countless asteroids, some with their own satellites; comets and other icy bodies; and vast reaches of highly tenuous gas and dust known as Kuiper belt and Oort cloud. There is also other information; physical and chemical characteristics of exoplanets, galaxies, nebulas and galactic clusters. There are many colored pictures to admire the wonders of our universe.
One of the surprises is that the Pillars of Creation taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of interstellar gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula is prominently displayed on the cover but not documented in the book. This is about 6,500–7,000 light years from Earth and it is also known by other names like Messier 16 or M16, NGC 6611, the Star Queen Nebula and The Spire.
This is a good reference book that prepares you for exploring the universe. It provides a comprehensive review of cosmic structures in the observable universe. Lonely Planet offers a good guide for readers interested in astronomy.
Monday, November 11, 2019
Book Reviewed: The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans Hardcover, by David Abulafia
The Captive Sea: Communication and Commerce in the last four millennia
Long before Columbus set off for India, merchant mariners had been plying trade from Rome to the Indian subcontinent trading silk, spices, timber and ivory. This book is voluminous work at 1050 pages that takes the reader to far depths of the planet on water from the Pacific to Atlantic and Indian Oceans. There are 50 chapters and the reader can pick and choose a continent of interest rather than read from beginning. The five sections of the book, each dealing with the three oceans is a magnificent work and describes the tenacity of human beings for their struggle to survive, prosper and dominate the planet.
The Great Sea since the beginning of civilization is amazing as the author begins to focus on Mediterranean’s capacity over the last 3,000 years and reveals the imagination, resilience and ruthlessness of sailors. The unending domination continues as recently China leased the Piraeus docks from a cash-strapped Greek government. Building on economic and political strength is as old as the birth of civilization.
The trade of Indian Ocean from Alexandria and Red Sea ports to Indian coasts brings together the robust trade from Rome to India and the tremendous impact on commerce, culture and religion. The trade continues onwards into the eastern side of Indian Ocean to Malay Archipelago. The navigation based on monsoons propelled trade between China, the eastern archipelago and India. The Indian trade also brought Hinduism and Buddhism to South East Asia.
Author Abulafia decodes successive generations testing the sea as a source of survival. He also shows that it is a bearer of promises and rewards. The waterways were an ecosystem swayed by oceans currents and monsoon. But the political initiative and commerce determined the importance of Mediterranean cities and Asia. This is a fascinating book that includes every continent and brings amazing amount of history. I recommend this to readers interested in human adventure and ancient history.
Long before Columbus set off for India, merchant mariners had been plying trade from Rome to the Indian subcontinent trading silk, spices, timber and ivory. This book is voluminous work at 1050 pages that takes the reader to far depths of the planet on water from the Pacific to Atlantic and Indian Oceans. There are 50 chapters and the reader can pick and choose a continent of interest rather than read from beginning. The five sections of the book, each dealing with the three oceans is a magnificent work and describes the tenacity of human beings for their struggle to survive, prosper and dominate the planet.
The Great Sea since the beginning of civilization is amazing as the author begins to focus on Mediterranean’s capacity over the last 3,000 years and reveals the imagination, resilience and ruthlessness of sailors. The unending domination continues as recently China leased the Piraeus docks from a cash-strapped Greek government. Building on economic and political strength is as old as the birth of civilization.
The trade of Indian Ocean from Alexandria and Red Sea ports to Indian coasts brings together the robust trade from Rome to India and the tremendous impact on commerce, culture and religion. The trade continues onwards into the eastern side of Indian Ocean to Malay Archipelago. The navigation based on monsoons propelled trade between China, the eastern archipelago and India. The Indian trade also brought Hinduism and Buddhism to South East Asia.
Author Abulafia decodes successive generations testing the sea as a source of survival. He also shows that it is a bearer of promises and rewards. The waterways were an ecosystem swayed by oceans currents and monsoon. But the political initiative and commerce determined the importance of Mediterranean cities and Asia. This is a fascinating book that includes every continent and brings amazing amount of history. I recommend this to readers interested in human adventure and ancient history.
Sunday, November 10, 2019
Book Reviewed: The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution, by Eric Foner
The constitutional, political, and social issues after American Civil War (four stars)
This is an historical account of the constitutional, political, and social crisis after the Civil War. United States was faced with an enormous task of ending the slavery constitutionally and offering a solution to institutional racism. The constitutional amendments; Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth were adopted between 1865 and 1870 to guarantee freedom to former slaves and offer equality and citizenship rights. The 13th ended slavery. The 14th made anyone born in the U.S. a citizen and a state in the union can't deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law. The 15th gave the vote to black men but not any women. What followed their adoption was the way the constitutional power was eroded by state laws and supreme court decisions throughout the late 19th and first half of 20th centuries. The full benefits of these amendments were not realized until the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The reconstruction amendments were nullified in the south, step-by-step with the compliancy of the Supreme Court of the United States. Violent groups like KKK resorted to violence to deprive blacks of their rights. This challenge to the 14th was direct but Supreme Court interpreted that it is not a state action, and the private individuals committing private acts of violence should be handled by state laws. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the states. There were additional challenges associated with slave states like Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri, which had nearly three-quarters of a million slaves. Since the Proclamation was a war measure against the Confederacy, the states that were in the Union retained the constitutional protections of slavery.
In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled that the separate but equal facilities in South is constitutional, which suggested that separation is not a form of prejudice or discrimination. It opened the door to all sorts of laws that the Southern states would pass requiring segregation in every phase of life. This became central to the Jim Crow Laws in the 20th century South.
This is an exciting book written by Columbia University Professor Eric Foner who has researched this material much of his academic life. The interpretation of constitutional amendments by states and court systems is highly engaging. United States was born with a belief in individual liberty and reconstruction was intended to create a new republic. But it was created in a harsh environment of racism.
This is an historical account of the constitutional, political, and social crisis after the Civil War. United States was faced with an enormous task of ending the slavery constitutionally and offering a solution to institutional racism. The constitutional amendments; Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth were adopted between 1865 and 1870 to guarantee freedom to former slaves and offer equality and citizenship rights. The 13th ended slavery. The 14th made anyone born in the U.S. a citizen and a state in the union can't deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law. The 15th gave the vote to black men but not any women. What followed their adoption was the way the constitutional power was eroded by state laws and supreme court decisions throughout the late 19th and first half of 20th centuries. The full benefits of these amendments were not realized until the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The reconstruction amendments were nullified in the south, step-by-step with the compliancy of the Supreme Court of the United States. Violent groups like KKK resorted to violence to deprive blacks of their rights. This challenge to the 14th was direct but Supreme Court interpreted that it is not a state action, and the private individuals committing private acts of violence should be handled by state laws. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the states. There were additional challenges associated with slave states like Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri, which had nearly three-quarters of a million slaves. Since the Proclamation was a war measure against the Confederacy, the states that were in the Union retained the constitutional protections of slavery.
In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled that the separate but equal facilities in South is constitutional, which suggested that separation is not a form of prejudice or discrimination. It opened the door to all sorts of laws that the Southern states would pass requiring segregation in every phase of life. This became central to the Jim Crow Laws in the 20th century South.
This is an exciting book written by Columbia University Professor Eric Foner who has researched this material much of his academic life. The interpretation of constitutional amendments by states and court systems is highly engaging. United States was born with a belief in individual liberty and reconstruction was intended to create a new republic. But it was created in a harsh environment of racism.
Saturday, October 26, 2019
Book Reviewed: Vedic index of names and subjects, by Arthur Anthony Macdonell and Arthur Berriedale Keith
Very exhaustive study of Vedic literature
This is an excellent e-book that provides a bibliographical information of key words in Vedas, and Brahmanas. Readers doing research in Vedic and Post-Vedic literature may find this work very helpful. This is an exhaustive study that include references, elucidation or annotation to the hymns of Rigveda, Yajurveda, Atharvaveda and Brahmanas. The authors are well known scholars of Sanskrit and Vedic scriptures: Very highly recommended.
This is an excellent e-book that provides a bibliographical information of key words in Vedas, and Brahmanas. Readers doing research in Vedic and Post-Vedic literature may find this work very helpful. This is an exhaustive study that include references, elucidation or annotation to the hymns of Rigveda, Yajurveda, Atharvaveda and Brahmanas. The authors are well known scholars of Sanskrit and Vedic scriptures: Very highly recommended.
Book Reviewed: A Vedic Index Meaning and explanation of some important Vedic symbols, words, images, and concepts in the words of Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo’ explanation of selected Vedic terms (Four stars)
The title of this book is somewhat misleading. I thought that this book is about Vedic terms from Rigveda, but this is about selected words and phrases from Vedic literature. The interpretation of Sri Aurobindo’s is somewhat metaphysical and does not include references, elucidation or annotation to the hymns of Rigveda. It refers to the page numbers of the Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo (CWSA). It is not as exhaustive as the book about Vedic Index by Arthur A. MacDonnell and Arthur B. Keith.
The interpretation of Vedic terms in this book is quite metaphysical. The Vedic literature interprets that Rigveda has little philosophy except for Nasadiya Sukta (Rigveda 10:129,1-7), but the author relates to the mind of Vedic seers. The post-Vedic scriptures like Upanishads are intensely metaphysical, which led to six schools of Hindu philosophical system unlike any other Abrahamic faiths. This could not have dropped out into the hands of Vedic Seers from nowhere. The preceptors of Upanishads were Vedic scholars knowledgeable about Vedic practices found metaphysical wisdom in early Vedic literature.
Mystical elements are associated with sacrificial performance of Vedic culture. This ritual was believed to please the Vedic gods and bless the performer with strength. It is said that the Vedic altar which is the seat of sacrifice is referred to as the farthest extremity of earth. Paro antah prithvyah (Rig-Veda I.164.35) as the nodes of Truth, Rtsya nabhih (Rig-Veda V. X.13.3). In some places the sacrifice is referred to as an entity with conscious activity, Tatramtsya cetanam yajnam te tanavavahai (Rig-Veda I.170.4) and the gods themselves perform conscious sacrifice, Cetanam Yajnam. Thus, sacrifice is deemed as a wheel for generating the power. Everything connected to a sacrifice has a symbolic meaning. Behind the external ceremony, there is an inner sanctum in which the sacrifice offers his material possessions to the higher powers with full devotion and dedication. It is a self-consecration with Agni who witnesses this journey to the inner sanctum. Agni is considered as the inner flame, a leader and the pathfinder.
In Rigveda 1.164.46, we find, “ekam sat viprah bhaudha vadanti,” translation; The Truth is One; Sages call it by different names. This sets the tone for very early metaphysical ideas that were later developed in Upanishads. The scribe of this hymn suggests that deities appear to be different and independent from each other, but they are manifestations of One Supreme God, referred to as Brahman in Upanishads.
According to the author, the Vedic Word or mantra is the expression of the intuition arising out of the depths of the soul or being. The Vedic hymns possess a finished metrical form, a constant subtility and skill in their technique, great variations of style and poetical personality; they are not the work of rude, barbarous primitive craftsmen but the living breath of a conscious being. The Vedic hymn composed by a Rishi sought to progress for himself and for others. It rose out of his soul and became a power of his mind; it was the vehicle of his self-expression in some important or even critical moment of his life's inner history. It helped him to express the god in him and to destroy the devourer and the expresser of evil. The core Hindu principles that dharmic practices lead to moksha and karma follows the evil deeds. Practicing bhakti-yoga and jnana-yoga lead to enlightenment.
The Nasadiya Sukta, the Hymns of Creation, Rigveda 10:129,1-7 describes the cosmos in highly metaphysical terms; it describes the essential features of quantum reality. It may also have contributed to furthering metaphysics in Upanishads. The first and last hymns reads as;
1. Then even nothingness was not, nor existence,
There was no air then, nor the heavens beyond it.
What covered it? Where was it? In whose keeping?
Was there then cosmic water, in depths unfathomed?
7. Whence all creation had its origin,
the creator, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not,
the creator, who surveys it all from highest heaven,
he knows — or maybe even he does not know.
The title of this book is somewhat misleading. I thought that this book is about Vedic terms from Rigveda, but this is about selected words and phrases from Vedic literature. The interpretation of Sri Aurobindo’s is somewhat metaphysical and does not include references, elucidation or annotation to the hymns of Rigveda. It refers to the page numbers of the Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo (CWSA). It is not as exhaustive as the book about Vedic Index by Arthur A. MacDonnell and Arthur B. Keith.
The interpretation of Vedic terms in this book is quite metaphysical. The Vedic literature interprets that Rigveda has little philosophy except for Nasadiya Sukta (Rigveda 10:129,1-7), but the author relates to the mind of Vedic seers. The post-Vedic scriptures like Upanishads are intensely metaphysical, which led to six schools of Hindu philosophical system unlike any other Abrahamic faiths. This could not have dropped out into the hands of Vedic Seers from nowhere. The preceptors of Upanishads were Vedic scholars knowledgeable about Vedic practices found metaphysical wisdom in early Vedic literature.
Mystical elements are associated with sacrificial performance of Vedic culture. This ritual was believed to please the Vedic gods and bless the performer with strength. It is said that the Vedic altar which is the seat of sacrifice is referred to as the farthest extremity of earth. Paro antah prithvyah (Rig-Veda I.164.35) as the nodes of Truth, Rtsya nabhih (Rig-Veda V. X.13.3). In some places the sacrifice is referred to as an entity with conscious activity, Tatramtsya cetanam yajnam te tanavavahai (Rig-Veda I.170.4) and the gods themselves perform conscious sacrifice, Cetanam Yajnam. Thus, sacrifice is deemed as a wheel for generating the power. Everything connected to a sacrifice has a symbolic meaning. Behind the external ceremony, there is an inner sanctum in which the sacrifice offers his material possessions to the higher powers with full devotion and dedication. It is a self-consecration with Agni who witnesses this journey to the inner sanctum. Agni is considered as the inner flame, a leader and the pathfinder.
In Rigveda 1.164.46, we find, “ekam sat viprah bhaudha vadanti,” translation; The Truth is One; Sages call it by different names. This sets the tone for very early metaphysical ideas that were later developed in Upanishads. The scribe of this hymn suggests that deities appear to be different and independent from each other, but they are manifestations of One Supreme God, referred to as Brahman in Upanishads.
According to the author, the Vedic Word or mantra is the expression of the intuition arising out of the depths of the soul or being. The Vedic hymns possess a finished metrical form, a constant subtility and skill in their technique, great variations of style and poetical personality; they are not the work of rude, barbarous primitive craftsmen but the living breath of a conscious being. The Vedic hymn composed by a Rishi sought to progress for himself and for others. It rose out of his soul and became a power of his mind; it was the vehicle of his self-expression in some important or even critical moment of his life's inner history. It helped him to express the god in him and to destroy the devourer and the expresser of evil. The core Hindu principles that dharmic practices lead to moksha and karma follows the evil deeds. Practicing bhakti-yoga and jnana-yoga lead to enlightenment.
The Nasadiya Sukta, the Hymns of Creation, Rigveda 10:129,1-7 describes the cosmos in highly metaphysical terms; it describes the essential features of quantum reality. It may also have contributed to furthering metaphysics in Upanishads. The first and last hymns reads as;
1. Then even nothingness was not, nor existence,
There was no air then, nor the heavens beyond it.
What covered it? Where was it? In whose keeping?
Was there then cosmic water, in depths unfathomed?
7. Whence all creation had its origin,
the creator, whether he fashioned it or whether he did not,
the creator, who surveys it all from highest heaven,
he knows — or maybe even he does not know.
Saturday, October 12, 2019
Book Reviewed: Incredible Journeys: Exploring the Wonders of Animal Navigation, by David Barrie
The animal instinct for migration
Animals make use of a range of navigational cues, including the sun, earth's magnetic field, olfaction and vision. Birds such as the Arctic tern, insects such as the monarch butterfly and fish such as the salmon regularly migrate thousands of miles to and from their breeding grounds. Monarch butterfly employs an internal clock, calendar, compass, and map to commence and measure the two-thousand-mile annual journey to Mexico with a very tiny brain. The homing pigeon depend on a global positioning system (GPS) to let them know where they are. Avian migratory behavior is a well-studied phenomenon in biology and the author could have presented some scientific basis for this deportment. I am disappointed, this is just a description of animal migratory behavior without any discussion of biological basis. This is disengaging and fail to motivate readers.
Animals make use of a range of navigational cues, including the sun, earth's magnetic field, olfaction and vision. Birds such as the Arctic tern, insects such as the monarch butterfly and fish such as the salmon regularly migrate thousands of miles to and from their breeding grounds. Monarch butterfly employs an internal clock, calendar, compass, and map to commence and measure the two-thousand-mile annual journey to Mexico with a very tiny brain. The homing pigeon depend on a global positioning system (GPS) to let them know where they are. Avian migratory behavior is a well-studied phenomenon in biology and the author could have presented some scientific basis for this deportment. I am disappointed, this is just a description of animal migratory behavior without any discussion of biological basis. This is disengaging and fail to motivate readers.
Book Reviewed: The Science of Interstellar, by Kip Thorne and Christopher Nolan
Flying along the perils of a black hole
In a recent 2019 paper published in journal Nature, astronomers glimpsed the blackness of a black hole with an event horizon, the perilous edge against a backdrop of swirling light. This is the gate of hell and the end of spacetime. At a distance from the event horizon, the radio waves emitted by plasma of matter spiraling towards the black hole bends while orbiting the black hole. The resulting light ring is referred to as ‘photon ring’. This is very exciting about a black hole, and you will learn from the best, Caltech Professor Kip Thorne who won the 2018 Nobel prize in physics for his work on gravitational waves.
When the movie Interstellar was released in 2014, this book was also published on the same day. But many physicists rushed to comment on the movie erroneously. Looking back at their comments, I wished they read the book first. Author Kip Thorne discusses the physics behind the path to black hole, Gargantua. Warping of space is the key in the story. The existence of the wormhole connecting the solar system to the far reaches of the universe where Gargantua exist. The distortion of space around the wormhole and Gargantua creates a path for the flight to the distant part of the universe.
Black holes can spin just like earth, and a spinning hole drags space around it into a vortex-type, whirling motion. Like the air in a tornado, space whirls fastest near the hole's center, and the whirl slows as one moves outward, away from the hole. Anything that falls toward the hole's horizon gets dragged, by the whirl of space. But where does space bend to in a black hole? Physicists conjecture that space bends inside a higher-dimensional hyperspace called "the bulk," which is not part of our universe! How do we visualize this? Suppose if we look horizontally along the Sun's equatorial plane, it would appear as a two-dimensional surface, a two-dimensional membrane (brane), and at Sun’s core space bends slightly downward in a higher-dimensional bulk. This is extremely small for a star like Sun but very large for a black hole. When Professor Brand works with equations of relativity, he discovers the possibility of gravitational anomalies triggered by physical fields that reside in the bulk. In fact, the bulk is known to contain much of the gravity that belongs to our universe.
The Tesseract is an enormous, hyper-cubic, grid-like structure and a means of communication for the bulk beings to express action through gravity with Earth. Copper lands in tesseract that is placed by bulk beings near Gargantua, and he is carried into the bulk. The bulk beings can perceive five dimensions including the time dimension; every moment in the past, present, and future. They can influence gravity within any of those time frames.
Director Christopher Nolan wanted the Miller's planet circling Gargantua where one hour is seven years on Earth. Thorne figured out a way out, a black hole can have a maximum spin rate. When a black hole spin is one part in 100trillion smaller than the maximum possible, then that black hole has difficulty capturing objects that orbit in the same direction as the hole rotates. This will get the extreme slowing of time on nearby Miller's planet and such a black hole will not have any harmful jets of radiation streaming through the sky. In addition, the Ranger spacecraft gets a gravitational slingshot maneuver at such an extreme gravity to fly toward Edmund planet.
Life is made of atoms and molecules. Atomic structure evolved in three-spatial dimensions to create specific atomic orbitals in space that leads to the valence structure, like carbon has sp, sp2 and sp3 hybridizations that result in specific spatial orientation leading to various molecular structures. Exposing atoms to four-spatial dimension will destroy the three-dimensional molecular and atomic shapes, and instantly collapses life in the a four-space world. Kip Thorne argues that Cooper is confined to reside in one of the tesseract's three-space-dimensional faces, and he does not experience the tesseract's fourth spatial dimension. This is highly speculative!
Another interesting fact you will learn is that If it is not possible to go backward in time. But you can only do so by traveling outward in space and then returning to spacetime at starting point before you left. You cannot go backward in time at some fixed location, while watching others go forward in time. You can’t engineer your own salvation or exclude your existence by causing the demise of your parents before you were born. That physical reality is strongly favored by the existing laws of physics.
Thorne is a top-notch writer and a narrator of the physics behind the movie “Interstellar.” This book is highly engaging, but some segments may be rough going. That's the nature of real science, it requires thought, but thinking is rewarding, or you may skip rough parts. Thorne explains the fact of this book in three parts, some are science-truths, others are educated guess, and some speculation. The 2019 Nature paper essentially confirms the black hole we saw in the movie Interstellar, and this is described in significant detail in this book.
In a recent 2019 paper published in journal Nature, astronomers glimpsed the blackness of a black hole with an event horizon, the perilous edge against a backdrop of swirling light. This is the gate of hell and the end of spacetime. At a distance from the event horizon, the radio waves emitted by plasma of matter spiraling towards the black hole bends while orbiting the black hole. The resulting light ring is referred to as ‘photon ring’. This is very exciting about a black hole, and you will learn from the best, Caltech Professor Kip Thorne who won the 2018 Nobel prize in physics for his work on gravitational waves.
When the movie Interstellar was released in 2014, this book was also published on the same day. But many physicists rushed to comment on the movie erroneously. Looking back at their comments, I wished they read the book first. Author Kip Thorne discusses the physics behind the path to black hole, Gargantua. Warping of space is the key in the story. The existence of the wormhole connecting the solar system to the far reaches of the universe where Gargantua exist. The distortion of space around the wormhole and Gargantua creates a path for the flight to the distant part of the universe.
Black holes can spin just like earth, and a spinning hole drags space around it into a vortex-type, whirling motion. Like the air in a tornado, space whirls fastest near the hole's center, and the whirl slows as one moves outward, away from the hole. Anything that falls toward the hole's horizon gets dragged, by the whirl of space. But where does space bend to in a black hole? Physicists conjecture that space bends inside a higher-dimensional hyperspace called "the bulk," which is not part of our universe! How do we visualize this? Suppose if we look horizontally along the Sun's equatorial plane, it would appear as a two-dimensional surface, a two-dimensional membrane (brane), and at Sun’s core space bends slightly downward in a higher-dimensional bulk. This is extremely small for a star like Sun but very large for a black hole. When Professor Brand works with equations of relativity, he discovers the possibility of gravitational anomalies triggered by physical fields that reside in the bulk. In fact, the bulk is known to contain much of the gravity that belongs to our universe.
The Tesseract is an enormous, hyper-cubic, grid-like structure and a means of communication for the bulk beings to express action through gravity with Earth. Copper lands in tesseract that is placed by bulk beings near Gargantua, and he is carried into the bulk. The bulk beings can perceive five dimensions including the time dimension; every moment in the past, present, and future. They can influence gravity within any of those time frames.
Director Christopher Nolan wanted the Miller's planet circling Gargantua where one hour is seven years on Earth. Thorne figured out a way out, a black hole can have a maximum spin rate. When a black hole spin is one part in 100trillion smaller than the maximum possible, then that black hole has difficulty capturing objects that orbit in the same direction as the hole rotates. This will get the extreme slowing of time on nearby Miller's planet and such a black hole will not have any harmful jets of radiation streaming through the sky. In addition, the Ranger spacecraft gets a gravitational slingshot maneuver at such an extreme gravity to fly toward Edmund planet.
Life is made of atoms and molecules. Atomic structure evolved in three-spatial dimensions to create specific atomic orbitals in space that leads to the valence structure, like carbon has sp, sp2 and sp3 hybridizations that result in specific spatial orientation leading to various molecular structures. Exposing atoms to four-spatial dimension will destroy the three-dimensional molecular and atomic shapes, and instantly collapses life in the a four-space world. Kip Thorne argues that Cooper is confined to reside in one of the tesseract's three-space-dimensional faces, and he does not experience the tesseract's fourth spatial dimension. This is highly speculative!
Another interesting fact you will learn is that If it is not possible to go backward in time. But you can only do so by traveling outward in space and then returning to spacetime at starting point before you left. You cannot go backward in time at some fixed location, while watching others go forward in time. You can’t engineer your own salvation or exclude your existence by causing the demise of your parents before you were born. That physical reality is strongly favored by the existing laws of physics.
Thorne is a top-notch writer and a narrator of the physics behind the movie “Interstellar.” This book is highly engaging, but some segments may be rough going. That's the nature of real science, it requires thought, but thinking is rewarding, or you may skip rough parts. Thorne explains the fact of this book in three parts, some are science-truths, others are educated guess, and some speculation. The 2019 Nature paper essentially confirms the black hole we saw in the movie Interstellar, and this is described in significant detail in this book.
Friday, October 4, 2019
Book Reviewed: Agents of Influence: A British Campaign, a Canadian Spy, and the Secret Plot to Bring America into World War II, by Henry Hemming
Fake news, disinformation and World War II
Disinformation is as old as humanity. Although the rise of social media has made disinformation even more pervasive and pernicious, but news-outlets and diplomatic channels have always used the system to manipulate the political outcome. In this decade terrorist organization like ISIS and Russian government used the same playbook: ISIS sought to globalize Islam and Putin wanted to influence the outcome of 2016 presidential elections in the United States.
During WW II it was imperative for German and British to serenade the support of United States. With Britain enduring intense German bombing, its only hope for survival was getting the United States to enter the war with only 7% in favoring in 1940. For British spy agency MI6 operative William Stephenson, it was crucial to get U.S involved. President Franklin Roosevelt’s sent Ambassador Bill Donovan to communicate with British government. The American political atmosphere was not conducive for British. American leaders like Charles Lindbergh was one of the main obstacles. Lindbergh, who addressed huge crowds at anti-war rallies and justified Nazi aggression due to economic imbalance. He was fed wrong information by German spy machinery. But William Stephenson managed to get full confidence of Bill Donovan who together built an extensive propaganda drive ever directed by one sovereign state at another. They also used forgeries, organized protests, and wiretaps and hacked into private communications. Similar strategies were used by CRP, the Committee to Reelect the President during Nixon administration.
On Oct. 27, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took the stage at The Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC, to speak in honor of Navy Day. With Britain under Nazi siege, Roosevelt wanted the United States to join the fight. The American public was not convinced. “I have in my possession a secret map made by Hitler’s government. It is a map of South America and part of Central America, as Hitler proposes to reorganize it,” Roosevelt told the shocked assemblage. The president then revealed another German document that pledged to eliminate the world’s religions. The reaction was explosive, but the facts were not.
Hans Thomsen, the senior diplomat at the German Embassy in the U.S. was also active in keeping Americans out of WWII. He fed pro-German material to sitting members of Congress, and bribed newspapers to publish false material.
The book is well researched and referenced; it is engaging for readers interested in the history of WWII. The story flows well but the role played by German spy agency in creating their own misinformation has not been well documented.
Disinformation is as old as humanity. Although the rise of social media has made disinformation even more pervasive and pernicious, but news-outlets and diplomatic channels have always used the system to manipulate the political outcome. In this decade terrorist organization like ISIS and Russian government used the same playbook: ISIS sought to globalize Islam and Putin wanted to influence the outcome of 2016 presidential elections in the United States.
During WW II it was imperative for German and British to serenade the support of United States. With Britain enduring intense German bombing, its only hope for survival was getting the United States to enter the war with only 7% in favoring in 1940. For British spy agency MI6 operative William Stephenson, it was crucial to get U.S involved. President Franklin Roosevelt’s sent Ambassador Bill Donovan to communicate with British government. The American political atmosphere was not conducive for British. American leaders like Charles Lindbergh was one of the main obstacles. Lindbergh, who addressed huge crowds at anti-war rallies and justified Nazi aggression due to economic imbalance. He was fed wrong information by German spy machinery. But William Stephenson managed to get full confidence of Bill Donovan who together built an extensive propaganda drive ever directed by one sovereign state at another. They also used forgeries, organized protests, and wiretaps and hacked into private communications. Similar strategies were used by CRP, the Committee to Reelect the President during Nixon administration.
On Oct. 27, 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took the stage at The Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC, to speak in honor of Navy Day. With Britain under Nazi siege, Roosevelt wanted the United States to join the fight. The American public was not convinced. “I have in my possession a secret map made by Hitler’s government. It is a map of South America and part of Central America, as Hitler proposes to reorganize it,” Roosevelt told the shocked assemblage. The president then revealed another German document that pledged to eliminate the world’s religions. The reaction was explosive, but the facts were not.
Hans Thomsen, the senior diplomat at the German Embassy in the U.S. was also active in keeping Americans out of WWII. He fed pro-German material to sitting members of Congress, and bribed newspapers to publish false material.
The book is well researched and referenced; it is engaging for readers interested in the history of WWII. The story flows well but the role played by German spy agency in creating their own misinformation has not been well documented.
Wednesday, October 2, 2019
Book reviewed: American Radicals: How Nineteenth-Century Protest Shaped the Nation, by Holly Jackson
The network of dissent after American Revolution
A new network of dissent appeared in the New World about fifty years after American Revolution. They were men and women, black and white, fiercely devoted to causes that pitted them against mainstream America. One of them was heiress Frances Wright, whose critiques of religion and the institution of marriage led to calls for her arrest; the radical Bostonian William Lloyd Garrison, whose commitment to nonviolence would be tested as the conflict over slavery pushed the nation to its breaking point. Henry David Thoreau, a philosopher, espoused the need to morally resist the actions of an unjust state. Thoreau was a leading figure in the movement along with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Abagail Alcott, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. They were illustrious sons and daughters of Massachusetts. One of the highlights of Alcott family including author Louisa May Alcott was their belief that all people are born equal. They were ardent abolitionists and fighters for equal rights. The future of suffrage movement that paved the way for the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that granted American women the right to vote, a right commonly known as women's suffrage was born out of passion for equality in Alcott household. Another figure which I liked in this book was about Frances Wright. In the late 1820s, Wright was the first woman to speak publicly before men and women about political and social reforms. She advocated for universal education, the emancipation of slaves, birth control, equal rights, sexual freedom, legal rights for married women, and liberal divorce laws. She expressed against organized religion and capital punishment. William Lloyd Garrison and Susan B. Anthony fought against slavery, racism, gender equality in family and labor laws. They were firebrand hippies of the 1960s era but operating in middle of 19th century America.
Socialists of early America deeply believed that the new nation was heading in the wrong direction. This part of American history with its fragile political and economic system was breaking away from its experiments of throwing British out of the country. The American dream was rapidly disappearing; only a few privileged families had this for real. Very few dared to question this as the political and economic climate was developing into a catastrophe.
Professor Manisha Sinha of UConn documents the influence of the Haitian Revolution and the centrality of slave resistance in shaping the ideology of abolition in the Unites States. Her work takes a much broader look at its impact since it was a successful anti-slavery and anti-colonial insurrection against French colonial rule. However, it was an expensive experiment since European colonists retaliated against Haiti with economic isolation.
In this book, University of Massachusetts Professor Holly Jackson walks us through these pages about liberals and antiestablishment figures who fought to change the American institution. Professor Jackson teaches American literature and antiestablishment movements in early America at UMASS, Boston has a smooth and engaging style of narrating her story. I strongly recommend this book to readers interested in American history and social movements in 1800s that was dominated by abolition, suffrage, and equality.
A new network of dissent appeared in the New World about fifty years after American Revolution. They were men and women, black and white, fiercely devoted to causes that pitted them against mainstream America. One of them was heiress Frances Wright, whose critiques of religion and the institution of marriage led to calls for her arrest; the radical Bostonian William Lloyd Garrison, whose commitment to nonviolence would be tested as the conflict over slavery pushed the nation to its breaking point. Henry David Thoreau, a philosopher, espoused the need to morally resist the actions of an unjust state. Thoreau was a leading figure in the movement along with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Abagail Alcott, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. They were illustrious sons and daughters of Massachusetts. One of the highlights of Alcott family including author Louisa May Alcott was their belief that all people are born equal. They were ardent abolitionists and fighters for equal rights. The future of suffrage movement that paved the way for the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that granted American women the right to vote, a right commonly known as women's suffrage was born out of passion for equality in Alcott household. Another figure which I liked in this book was about Frances Wright. In the late 1820s, Wright was the first woman to speak publicly before men and women about political and social reforms. She advocated for universal education, the emancipation of slaves, birth control, equal rights, sexual freedom, legal rights for married women, and liberal divorce laws. She expressed against organized religion and capital punishment. William Lloyd Garrison and Susan B. Anthony fought against slavery, racism, gender equality in family and labor laws. They were firebrand hippies of the 1960s era but operating in middle of 19th century America.
Socialists of early America deeply believed that the new nation was heading in the wrong direction. This part of American history with its fragile political and economic system was breaking away from its experiments of throwing British out of the country. The American dream was rapidly disappearing; only a few privileged families had this for real. Very few dared to question this as the political and economic climate was developing into a catastrophe.
Professor Manisha Sinha of UConn documents the influence of the Haitian Revolution and the centrality of slave resistance in shaping the ideology of abolition in the Unites States. Her work takes a much broader look at its impact since it was a successful anti-slavery and anti-colonial insurrection against French colonial rule. However, it was an expensive experiment since European colonists retaliated against Haiti with economic isolation.
In this book, University of Massachusetts Professor Holly Jackson walks us through these pages about liberals and antiestablishment figures who fought to change the American institution. Professor Jackson teaches American literature and antiestablishment movements in early America at UMASS, Boston has a smooth and engaging style of narrating her story. I strongly recommend this book to readers interested in American history and social movements in 1800s that was dominated by abolition, suffrage, and equality.
Tuesday, September 24, 2019
Book Reviewed: From Matter to Life: Information and Causality, Edited by Sara Imari Walker, Paul Davies and George Ellis
Maxwell’s Demon of a living cell
The cosmos is like a computer, and the information about matter and energy is processed in this computer to make physical reality. But the idea of “information” makes sense only to a conscious observer according to quantum physics. Classical/relativistic physics affirms that reality exists independent of conscious observers. In recent years, thermodynamics and the information dynamics have refined our understanding of physical reality.
In thermodynamics, entropy is related to a concrete process, but in quantum mechanics, this translates into the ability to measure and manipulate a system based on the information gathered by this measurement. A well-known example is Maxwell’s demon. Like life, Maxwell's imaginary demon seems to violate the second law of thermodynamics. But on careful examination it doesn't, so long as information is treated as a physical resource, an additional fuel.
In this book, physicist Paul Davies applies information as the key to understand life. Simple elements assemble to form molecules and then turn into life. But non-living matter also consists of the same atoms, then how do we explain this conversion? Non-life to life? Life is generally defined by its hallmarks: reproduction, harnessing energy, responding to stimuli, etc. But that doesn’t tell us what life is. We may know all about the complete genome of a mouse, but we don’t know what it is like to be a mouse!
The information flow in genetics is complex. This is illustrated in an experiment that chops the head and tail of a worm and applying electricity, which disrupts the information flow in regrowth. This results in a worm with a head at both ends, and they reproduce with those physical traits, even though they have the same DNA as the original one-headed worm!
Life is marked by a remarkable transformation in the organization of information facilitated by the operation of laws of physics. The cellular dynamics that includes complex biochemical reactions occurring in a concerted manner to support life. Genes, the molecular components of hereditary materials are read, decoded and translated into proteins. Then “life” uses these informational pathways for regulation and functioning of cells. Treating information as a physical quantity formulate "laws of life" that transcend life's physical substrate. This is where non-life is turning into life, but it is the information dynamics and not mere matter to matter transformation!
The authors take a cross-sectional view of quantum physics, chemistry, nanotechnology and information processing considering hardware (physics and chemistry) and software of life (biology). They don’t describe the nature of biological Maxwell Demon nor we can measure any of its physical attributes.
The first two chapters, Introduction; and the "Hard Problem" of Life by Sara Imari Walker and Paul Davies, Chapter 15. Biological Information, Causality, and Specificity - An Intimate Relationship by Karola Stotz and Paul E. Griffiths; Chapter 13. Living through Downward Causation - From Molecules to Ecosystems by Keith D. Farnsworth, George F. R. Ellis, and Luc Jaeger are interesting chapters. A college level physics, and biology would be helpful to appreciate this book.
The cosmos is like a computer, and the information about matter and energy is processed in this computer to make physical reality. But the idea of “information” makes sense only to a conscious observer according to quantum physics. Classical/relativistic physics affirms that reality exists independent of conscious observers. In recent years, thermodynamics and the information dynamics have refined our understanding of physical reality.
In thermodynamics, entropy is related to a concrete process, but in quantum mechanics, this translates into the ability to measure and manipulate a system based on the information gathered by this measurement. A well-known example is Maxwell’s demon. Like life, Maxwell's imaginary demon seems to violate the second law of thermodynamics. But on careful examination it doesn't, so long as information is treated as a physical resource, an additional fuel.
In this book, physicist Paul Davies applies information as the key to understand life. Simple elements assemble to form molecules and then turn into life. But non-living matter also consists of the same atoms, then how do we explain this conversion? Non-life to life? Life is generally defined by its hallmarks: reproduction, harnessing energy, responding to stimuli, etc. But that doesn’t tell us what life is. We may know all about the complete genome of a mouse, but we don’t know what it is like to be a mouse!
The information flow in genetics is complex. This is illustrated in an experiment that chops the head and tail of a worm and applying electricity, which disrupts the information flow in regrowth. This results in a worm with a head at both ends, and they reproduce with those physical traits, even though they have the same DNA as the original one-headed worm!
Life is marked by a remarkable transformation in the organization of information facilitated by the operation of laws of physics. The cellular dynamics that includes complex biochemical reactions occurring in a concerted manner to support life. Genes, the molecular components of hereditary materials are read, decoded and translated into proteins. Then “life” uses these informational pathways for regulation and functioning of cells. Treating information as a physical quantity formulate "laws of life" that transcend life's physical substrate. This is where non-life is turning into life, but it is the information dynamics and not mere matter to matter transformation!
The authors take a cross-sectional view of quantum physics, chemistry, nanotechnology and information processing considering hardware (physics and chemistry) and software of life (biology). They don’t describe the nature of biological Maxwell Demon nor we can measure any of its physical attributes.
The first two chapters, Introduction; and the "Hard Problem" of Life by Sara Imari Walker and Paul Davies, Chapter 15. Biological Information, Causality, and Specificity - An Intimate Relationship by Karola Stotz and Paul E. Griffiths; Chapter 13. Living through Downward Causation - From Molecules to Ecosystems by Keith D. Farnsworth, George F. R. Ellis, and Luc Jaeger are interesting chapters. A college level physics, and biology would be helpful to appreciate this book.
Saturday, September 7, 2019
Book Reviewed: Plant Behaviour and Intelligence, by Anthony Trewavas
Plant Neurobiology
Adaptive information processing is a crucial evolutionary process in biological systems. Cells and tissues/organs in an organism function cooperatively as one complete biological machinery through which biological information flows. The author emphasizes the work of Nobel Laureate Barbara McClintock who expounded the idea that a biological cell integrates all information and responsible for cell-cell communication.
Although plants do not have a central nervous system or peripheral neurons, but they have intelligence. They perceive their surroundings and actively compete for limited resources and perform cost-benefit analysis. They take appropriate adaptive actions in response to environmental stimuli with their integrated signaling and communicative systems. Thus, plants adapt to their environment and evolved with different sensory and regulatory systems; they have complex adaptive behavior. This contrasts with animals which select their environment to find food and mate, but they also migrate with changing seasons. Since plants are fixed to a location, their adaptive behavior is different. For example, plants must synthesize their own food using basic components from soil and atmosphere using sunlight. An additional short-coming stems from the fact that half of plant behavior is in the root system that grows below the ground against gravity.
Adaptive differences between plants and animals is illustrated in some of their functions. For example, quantum mechanics has become an integral part of biochemical phenomenon such as photosynthesis in plants, and in avian migration and navigational systems. It is known for almost a century that almost all biological and biochemical interactions are known to follow the laws of classical physics with quantum mechanics operating indirectly through the electronic structures of the molecules. But now life is known to be lot more intricate since quantum physics operates directly in living beings. This offers the full benefits of its laws making life highly efficient and self-sustaining. Birds and insects (butterflies) migrate hundreds and thousands of miles using internal navigation systems that also operate on the laws of quantum physics. Evolved species like mammals seem to lack this highly efficient mechanisms illustrate the complexity of adaptation, natural selection, heritable characteristics, variation, mutation, reproduction and gene flow.
This is one of the better books I have read in this field that puts plant neurobiology in perspective without using the term “neurobiology.” The author addresses plant memory and learning mechanisms by focusing on cell-cell communication and plant behavior. Plants evolve just like animals, and experiments demonstrate that they have memory, intelligence and learning behavior.
Adaptive information processing is a crucial evolutionary process in biological systems. Cells and tissues/organs in an organism function cooperatively as one complete biological machinery through which biological information flows. The author emphasizes the work of Nobel Laureate Barbara McClintock who expounded the idea that a biological cell integrates all information and responsible for cell-cell communication.
Although plants do not have a central nervous system or peripheral neurons, but they have intelligence. They perceive their surroundings and actively compete for limited resources and perform cost-benefit analysis. They take appropriate adaptive actions in response to environmental stimuli with their integrated signaling and communicative systems. Thus, plants adapt to their environment and evolved with different sensory and regulatory systems; they have complex adaptive behavior. This contrasts with animals which select their environment to find food and mate, but they also migrate with changing seasons. Since plants are fixed to a location, their adaptive behavior is different. For example, plants must synthesize their own food using basic components from soil and atmosphere using sunlight. An additional short-coming stems from the fact that half of plant behavior is in the root system that grows below the ground against gravity.
Adaptive differences between plants and animals is illustrated in some of their functions. For example, quantum mechanics has become an integral part of biochemical phenomenon such as photosynthesis in plants, and in avian migration and navigational systems. It is known for almost a century that almost all biological and biochemical interactions are known to follow the laws of classical physics with quantum mechanics operating indirectly through the electronic structures of the molecules. But now life is known to be lot more intricate since quantum physics operates directly in living beings. This offers the full benefits of its laws making life highly efficient and self-sustaining. Birds and insects (butterflies) migrate hundreds and thousands of miles using internal navigation systems that also operate on the laws of quantum physics. Evolved species like mammals seem to lack this highly efficient mechanisms illustrate the complexity of adaptation, natural selection, heritable characteristics, variation, mutation, reproduction and gene flow.
This is one of the better books I have read in this field that puts plant neurobiology in perspective without using the term “neurobiology.” The author addresses plant memory and learning mechanisms by focusing on cell-cell communication and plant behavior. Plants evolve just like animals, and experiments demonstrate that they have memory, intelligence and learning behavior.
Wednesday, September 4, 2019
Book Reviewed - The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate―Discoveries from A Secret World by Peter Wohlleben
Tree Sociology; is this science or slobber?
Much of discussion refers to author’s experience with trees in Europe as a caretaker of a German forest. He is neither an experimental biologist nor did he investigate plant intelligence in any scientific rigor. He does not stay focused; and he doesn’t engage in any serious discussion that is relevant to plant behavior, but quickly drivel into ecology and environment. The book chapters are extremely short; in fact, there are 38 chapters which facilitates the author to deviate from the hub. There is no attempt from him to connect with readers with a scientific mind but rely upon their sensibilities. Environmentalism is a very appealing subject, and this book from a former forest ranger interests a casual reader.
I did not find anything unique in this book that stands out as a good scientific argument. The author’s efforts to tell us that trees have more than life; they have social behavior akin to animals is not convincing. How did this book become a bestseller? Because this is about tree sociology, ecology, environment, forestry and interconnectedness. The author provides scientific facts in bits and pieces to to convey his beliefs that trees have consciousness and mind.
Much of discussion refers to author’s experience with trees in Europe as a caretaker of a German forest. He is neither an experimental biologist nor did he investigate plant intelligence in any scientific rigor. He does not stay focused; and he doesn’t engage in any serious discussion that is relevant to plant behavior, but quickly drivel into ecology and environment. The book chapters are extremely short; in fact, there are 38 chapters which facilitates the author to deviate from the hub. There is no attempt from him to connect with readers with a scientific mind but rely upon their sensibilities. Environmentalism is a very appealing subject, and this book from a former forest ranger interests a casual reader.
I did not find anything unique in this book that stands out as a good scientific argument. The author’s efforts to tell us that trees have more than life; they have social behavior akin to animals is not convincing. How did this book become a bestseller? Because this is about tree sociology, ecology, environment, forestry and interconnectedness. The author provides scientific facts in bits and pieces to to convey his beliefs that trees have consciousness and mind.
Tuesday, September 3, 2019
Book Reviewed: The Revolutionary Genius of Plants: A New Understanding of Plant Intelligence and Behavior, by Stefano Mancuso
Do plants have memory and consciousness?
Plants do not have a central nervous system or neurons, but they have intelligence, because they perceive their surroundings; actively compete for the limited resources in the soil and atmosphere; they perform cost-benefit analysis; and take appropriate adaptive actions in response to environmental stimuli. plants have integrated signaling and communicative systems with complex adaptive behavior. Most animals choose their environment to find food, mate, and migrate with changing seasons, but plants adapt to their environment and hence have evolved different sensory and regulatory systems.
Author Mancuso argues strenuously that plants have consciousness and memory even though these terms are traditionally linked to brain. The term plant neurobiology is an intimidating word. He could have discussed numerous experimental evidences from literature that illustrate plants and animals behave similarly under some experimental conditions. For example, plants can be rendered unconscious by the same anesthetics that put animals out: drugs can make plants unresponsive like they are in a state of sleep; methyl jasmonate can induce a plant to produce defense substances such as phytoalexins (antimicrobial), nicotine or protease inhibitors. The protease inhibitors interfere with the insect digestive process and discourage the insect from eating the plant.
Instead of taking this traditional route of discussion to support his views, the book over-emphasizes the idea that plant neurobiology is real. But this idea is not new. Plant biologist Daniel Chamovitz wrote a book entitled, “What a Plant Knows: A Field Guide to the Senses” in 2012. The journal, Plant Signaling & Behavior was launched as a platform for fostering research in plant neurobiology. This is certainly an emerging field, but the author does not sound convincing in his presentation.
Plants do not have a central nervous system or neurons, but they have intelligence, because they perceive their surroundings; actively compete for the limited resources in the soil and atmosphere; they perform cost-benefit analysis; and take appropriate adaptive actions in response to environmental stimuli. plants have integrated signaling and communicative systems with complex adaptive behavior. Most animals choose their environment to find food, mate, and migrate with changing seasons, but plants adapt to their environment and hence have evolved different sensory and regulatory systems.
Author Mancuso argues strenuously that plants have consciousness and memory even though these terms are traditionally linked to brain. The term plant neurobiology is an intimidating word. He could have discussed numerous experimental evidences from literature that illustrate plants and animals behave similarly under some experimental conditions. For example, plants can be rendered unconscious by the same anesthetics that put animals out: drugs can make plants unresponsive like they are in a state of sleep; methyl jasmonate can induce a plant to produce defense substances such as phytoalexins (antimicrobial), nicotine or protease inhibitors. The protease inhibitors interfere with the insect digestive process and discourage the insect from eating the plant.
Instead of taking this traditional route of discussion to support his views, the book over-emphasizes the idea that plant neurobiology is real. But this idea is not new. Plant biologist Daniel Chamovitz wrote a book entitled, “What a Plant Knows: A Field Guide to the Senses” in 2012. The journal, Plant Signaling & Behavior was launched as a platform for fostering research in plant neurobiology. This is certainly an emerging field, but the author does not sound convincing in his presentation.
Thursday, August 29, 2019
Book Reviewed - Superheavy: Making and Breaking the Periodic Table, by Kit Chapman
The synthetic proposition
This is a very specialized book that may interest readers who appreciate synthetic chemistry. The author narrates the story behind the discovery of new elements in the laboratory and briefly discusses the chemistry of atoms. These synthetic elements do not exist in nature and decay very rapidly because of very low half-lives. A college level chemistry is helpful to understand and appreciate the work of this author.
Much of the study of new elements took place at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at Berkeley, California, and at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research facilities at Dubna, Russia. Other notable work also occurred at the Institute for Heavy Ion Research at Darmstadt, Germany and at Japan's RIKEN Linear Accelerator Facility in Wako.
My own interest in this book is to understand what happens when you keep adding protons and neutrons to the nuclei. At some point, the stability of the orbital electrons is destroyed as more protons are added to the nucleus. The maximum atomic number predicted is between 170 and 210; Uranium is the last naturally occurring element that has an atomic number of 92. But the nuclear stability (physics) is not the same as stability of the electronic shells (chemistry). The electronic basis for the periodicity disappears as we go higher in atomic numbers, because electronic shells 8p and 7d orbitals may be very close in energy to 5g an 6f orbitals (closely spaced energy levels.) This is reflected in a series of new elements that show multiple and barely distinguishable oxidation states.
If you look at the physics part, the nucleus also has nuclear energy shells. Just like the electrons orbiting the nucleus have electronic shells. Each nuclear shell will have a cluster of protons and neutrons. If you filled those shells, the nucleus became stable; if left unfilled, the nucleus will break apart.
The author says that element 118, oganesson does not have electron shells, then how do you call that an element? Its atomic number suggests that it is a noble element like helium, neon and argon that contain filled electron shells, and hence known to be inert. It is likely that in oganesson, the electron shells are like electron soup, which makes it quite reactive contrary to other noble elements of the periodic chart. The periodic table stops being relevant here in terms of predicting properties. Theoretical studies indicate that heavy atoms may contort - nuclei stretching out, folding in on themselves, even warping into a doughnut shape with a hole in the middle. The author does not elaborate, nor does he discuss what is “hole” in terms of spacetime warping. There is a certainly relativistic effect. We need more discussion here. Elements with very high atomic numbers challenge traditional way thinking about reality just like black holes. Tightly packed spacetime help us understand the very fabric of this universe.
This is a very specialized book that may interest readers who appreciate synthetic chemistry. The author narrates the story behind the discovery of new elements in the laboratory and briefly discusses the chemistry of atoms. These synthetic elements do not exist in nature and decay very rapidly because of very low half-lives. A college level chemistry is helpful to understand and appreciate the work of this author.
Much of the study of new elements took place at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at Berkeley, California, and at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research facilities at Dubna, Russia. Other notable work also occurred at the Institute for Heavy Ion Research at Darmstadt, Germany and at Japan's RIKEN Linear Accelerator Facility in Wako.
My own interest in this book is to understand what happens when you keep adding protons and neutrons to the nuclei. At some point, the stability of the orbital electrons is destroyed as more protons are added to the nucleus. The maximum atomic number predicted is between 170 and 210; Uranium is the last naturally occurring element that has an atomic number of 92. But the nuclear stability (physics) is not the same as stability of the electronic shells (chemistry). The electronic basis for the periodicity disappears as we go higher in atomic numbers, because electronic shells 8p and 7d orbitals may be very close in energy to 5g an 6f orbitals (closely spaced energy levels.) This is reflected in a series of new elements that show multiple and barely distinguishable oxidation states.
If you look at the physics part, the nucleus also has nuclear energy shells. Just like the electrons orbiting the nucleus have electronic shells. Each nuclear shell will have a cluster of protons and neutrons. If you filled those shells, the nucleus became stable; if left unfilled, the nucleus will break apart.
The author says that element 118, oganesson does not have electron shells, then how do you call that an element? Its atomic number suggests that it is a noble element like helium, neon and argon that contain filled electron shells, and hence known to be inert. It is likely that in oganesson, the electron shells are like electron soup, which makes it quite reactive contrary to other noble elements of the periodic chart. The periodic table stops being relevant here in terms of predicting properties. Theoretical studies indicate that heavy atoms may contort - nuclei stretching out, folding in on themselves, even warping into a doughnut shape with a hole in the middle. The author does not elaborate, nor does he discuss what is “hole” in terms of spacetime warping. There is a certainly relativistic effect. We need more discussion here. Elements with very high atomic numbers challenge traditional way thinking about reality just like black holes. Tightly packed spacetime help us understand the very fabric of this universe.
Monday, August 26, 2019
Book Reviewed - End Times: A Brief Guide to the End of the World, by Bryan Walsh
An interesting perspective for the future of the planet
The author offers an interesting view for the future from a variety of catastrophes; asteroid impact, volcanoes, nuclear war, climate change, diseases, biotech, artificial intelligence, and aliens. He articulates these world-ending apocalypse with passion. It's not just the rising tide of climate change and the deadly natural disasters that seem to be piling up with each passing year. Our very future is in danger as it has never been before, both from an array of cosmic and earthbound threats and from the very technologies that made us prosperous.
We know how bad it can get; the two world wars; the Black Death which killed 200 million people in the fourteenth century; the biggest hurricanes and most devastating earthquakes. These risks are darker than the darkest days humanity has ever known. Our species has always lived under the shadow of existential risk we just didn't know it. At least five times over the course of our planet's 4.5-billion-year history, life was wiped out completely, but each time it was reborn with vengeance. It is good to know that life regenerates itself when the planet offers interesting possibilities. Solar system has another 4.5 billion years to go and earth may shape into new future.
The author offers an interesting view for the future from a variety of catastrophes; asteroid impact, volcanoes, nuclear war, climate change, diseases, biotech, artificial intelligence, and aliens. He articulates these world-ending apocalypse with passion. It's not just the rising tide of climate change and the deadly natural disasters that seem to be piling up with each passing year. Our very future is in danger as it has never been before, both from an array of cosmic and earthbound threats and from the very technologies that made us prosperous.
We know how bad it can get; the two world wars; the Black Death which killed 200 million people in the fourteenth century; the biggest hurricanes and most devastating earthquakes. These risks are darker than the darkest days humanity has ever known. Our species has always lived under the shadow of existential risk we just didn't know it. At least five times over the course of our planet's 4.5-billion-year history, life was wiped out completely, but each time it was reborn with vengeance. It is good to know that life regenerates itself when the planet offers interesting possibilities. Solar system has another 4.5 billion years to go and earth may shape into new future.
Sunday, August 25, 2019
Book Reviewed - Superior: The Return of Race Science by Angela Saini
Politically correct but scientifically unsound
This book drew a lot of attention recently in which the author suggests that the use of race in biological/medical research is due to widespread racism. For example, in Chapter 1, she argues that Out of Africa theory is invented by Europeans, and Nazis wanted to prove superiority of Aryan race. This is false; Hitler made alliances with Muslims from the Middle east against Jews. The Third Reich was anti-Semitic. If Hitler was really a racist, he would have invaded Africa. In fact, many SS officers who went to live in Egypt after the war became Muslims and followed Islamic practices.
The author is also in error when she reminds readers that races correspond to “arbitrary” divisions of population variation that are “politically and economically useful,” The fact is that there are heritable characteristics that allow us to divide into a set of races in such a way that all the members share traits and tendencies with each other that they do not share with members of any other race. These traits and tendencies are viewed as race. Natural barriers such as oceans (e.g. the Atlantic), deserts (e.g. the Sahara) and mountain ranges (e.g. the Himalayas) impeded gene flow between different populations for substantial periods of time. When there is limited gene flow between populations that have come under different selection pressures, we would expect them to gradually diverge from one another over via the processes of genetic drift and natural selection. Races therefore correspond to human populations that have been living in relative isolation from one another, under different regimes of selection. This means that racial categories identify real phenotypic differences and reflect real genetic variation. Natural philosophers began to classify humans into different races because they looked different from one another. These differences reflect their divergent geographical origins. But the most controversial area of “race science” is research into population differences in cognitive ability.
Chimpanzees share the distinction of being our closest living relative which share about 99% of our genes. A unique collaboration between the humanities and the natural sciences; geneticists, historians, archaeologists and linguists found a common ground about the origins of modern human beings including the common origins of languages from an ancient language called Indo-European language. Europeans today are a mix of the blending of at least three ancient populations of hunter-gatherers and farmers who moved into Europe in separate migrations. Modern human beings arose some 200,000 years ago, and for 190,000 years, they we were all dark-skinned, reflecting the origins from Africa. Caucasians are the product of a work of evolution across Europe, while scientist have discovered three genes that produce light skin – they have played a part in the lightening of Europeans’ skin color and the color of the eye over the past 8,000 years. The process of skin lightening, known as “depigmentation,” occurred due to a series of mutations in one particular gene called SCL24A5.
Equating hereditarian claims with racism is illogical and irresponsible. Many of the ideas that Saini classifies as “scientific racism” are empirical claims. Besides, race is not a social construct, but nationalism and regionalism are certainly social constructs. She uses false arguments to fit her theory. This is a blatant abuse of scientific data to write a politically correct fable. Her conclusions are inaccurate. I would recommend staying away from this apologue.
This book drew a lot of attention recently in which the author suggests that the use of race in biological/medical research is due to widespread racism. For example, in Chapter 1, she argues that Out of Africa theory is invented by Europeans, and Nazis wanted to prove superiority of Aryan race. This is false; Hitler made alliances with Muslims from the Middle east against Jews. The Third Reich was anti-Semitic. If Hitler was really a racist, he would have invaded Africa. In fact, many SS officers who went to live in Egypt after the war became Muslims and followed Islamic practices.
The author is also in error when she reminds readers that races correspond to “arbitrary” divisions of population variation that are “politically and economically useful,” The fact is that there are heritable characteristics that allow us to divide into a set of races in such a way that all the members share traits and tendencies with each other that they do not share with members of any other race. These traits and tendencies are viewed as race. Natural barriers such as oceans (e.g. the Atlantic), deserts (e.g. the Sahara) and mountain ranges (e.g. the Himalayas) impeded gene flow between different populations for substantial periods of time. When there is limited gene flow between populations that have come under different selection pressures, we would expect them to gradually diverge from one another over via the processes of genetic drift and natural selection. Races therefore correspond to human populations that have been living in relative isolation from one another, under different regimes of selection. This means that racial categories identify real phenotypic differences and reflect real genetic variation. Natural philosophers began to classify humans into different races because they looked different from one another. These differences reflect their divergent geographical origins. But the most controversial area of “race science” is research into population differences in cognitive ability.
Chimpanzees share the distinction of being our closest living relative which share about 99% of our genes. A unique collaboration between the humanities and the natural sciences; geneticists, historians, archaeologists and linguists found a common ground about the origins of modern human beings including the common origins of languages from an ancient language called Indo-European language. Europeans today are a mix of the blending of at least three ancient populations of hunter-gatherers and farmers who moved into Europe in separate migrations. Modern human beings arose some 200,000 years ago, and for 190,000 years, they we were all dark-skinned, reflecting the origins from Africa. Caucasians are the product of a work of evolution across Europe, while scientist have discovered three genes that produce light skin – they have played a part in the lightening of Europeans’ skin color and the color of the eye over the past 8,000 years. The process of skin lightening, known as “depigmentation,” occurred due to a series of mutations in one particular gene called SCL24A5.
Equating hereditarian claims with racism is illogical and irresponsible. Many of the ideas that Saini classifies as “scientific racism” are empirical claims. Besides, race is not a social construct, but nationalism and regionalism are certainly social constructs. She uses false arguments to fit her theory. This is a blatant abuse of scientific data to write a politically correct fable. Her conclusions are inaccurate. I would recommend staying away from this apologue.
Friday, August 16, 2019
Book Reviewed: The Trouble with Gravity: Solving the Mystery Beneath Our Feet, by Richard Panek
Gravity: A tour of a heavy topic
Gravity is a fundamental force that creates physical reality we experience and become conscious of. Three major figures of science unlocked the mysteries gravity: Galileo, the first to take a close look at the process of free and restricted fall; Newton, originator of the concept of gravity as a universal force; and Einstein, who proposed that gravity is a curvature of the four-dimensional space-time continuum. But it goes further in quantum physics which describes spacetime in discrete quanta, i.e. in bits and pieces at the most fundamental quantum scale. In other words, it contrasts traditional wisdom that spacetime is continuous.
Gravity is still a cold case and we are not any closer to solving this, but it is leading into many new avenues about the cosmos. Detection of gravitational waves and black holes have been exciting in physics, and information is emerging as the key player in the operation of matter and energy in spacetime. It is the transformation of matter (nonliving) into a living material (life), and how forces of nature become essential for existence (physical reality).
If you are looking for a book to read about the recent advances in gravitation, then I would suggest looking elsewhere. The author does not focus on the concept of gravity to any significant extent that would generate interest. He reports a mishmash of news and physics ideas that looks like a smorgasbord than a navel discussion.
Gravity is a fundamental force that creates physical reality we experience and become conscious of. Three major figures of science unlocked the mysteries gravity: Galileo, the first to take a close look at the process of free and restricted fall; Newton, originator of the concept of gravity as a universal force; and Einstein, who proposed that gravity is a curvature of the four-dimensional space-time continuum. But it goes further in quantum physics which describes spacetime in discrete quanta, i.e. in bits and pieces at the most fundamental quantum scale. In other words, it contrasts traditional wisdom that spacetime is continuous.
Gravity is still a cold case and we are not any closer to solving this, but it is leading into many new avenues about the cosmos. Detection of gravitational waves and black holes have been exciting in physics, and information is emerging as the key player in the operation of matter and energy in spacetime. It is the transformation of matter (nonliving) into a living material (life), and how forces of nature become essential for existence (physical reality).
If you are looking for a book to read about the recent advances in gravitation, then I would suggest looking elsewhere. The author does not focus on the concept of gravity to any significant extent that would generate interest. He reports a mishmash of news and physics ideas that looks like a smorgasbord than a navel discussion.
Wednesday, June 26, 2019
Book Reviewed: Fentanyl, Inc.: How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic, by Ben Westhoff
The Fentanyl Crisis
On April 15, 2016, on his way home after performing in Atlanta, pop entertainer Prince's plane made an emergency landing in Moline, Illinois. He was found unresponsive and taken to a local hospital. Six days later, he passed away. Toxicology reports revealed that an overdose of opioid Fentanyl caused his demise. In January 2015, Bailey Henke, an 18-year-old kid from Grand Forks. North Dakota overdosed himself to death causing deep sorrow and dolor for his parents. Opioid Fentanyl put faces of the victims to its name. In 2016, the Centers for Disease Control estimated that 20,000 Americans were killed by fentanyl, a highly addictive synthetic painkiller.
This synthetic opioid is 50 times more powerful than heroin. With street names such as Drop Dead, Murder 8, China white, China girl, dance fever and goodfella, fentanyl is marketed by drug dealers as the ultimate high.
These new drugs aren't grown in a field; they are made in a laboratory. Plants that yield marijuana and heroin were grown in Mexico and Latin America, but Fentanyl is manufactured in laboratories in China. The author dares to infiltrate Chinese drug operations, a sophisticated laboratory operation distilling outsize quantities of the world's most dangerous chemicals in industrial-size glassware. The Chinese drug industry is not run by cartels and criminal organizations, but by university-educated chemists who often play by their government's rules.
Many health-care workers who help treat substance abusers believe the American traditional focus on “supply-side” law enforcement, which emphasizes the prosecution over treatment is futile. This approach fails to address the root of the problem: demand, and under-funded addiction treatment programs. Other alternative harm-reduction program is taking center stage in combating opioid addiction. Experts agree that it would be easy to establish supervised-injection facilities for opioid-ravaged communities in the United States to create one-stop shops where people could test their heroin and fentanyl exchange needle and shoot up safely. On-site help would be ready with Narcan, and users could also receive counseling. Information and medical assistance are slowing the opioid crisis. These facilities are showing a track record of success, but federal and many state authorities are not enthusiastic. The tension is encapsulated in an October 2018 exchange when former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell announced that he had incorporated a nonprofit seeking private funding to open a supervised injection facility in Philadelphia. The US deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein angrily said that if one opened it would be immediately shut down by federal authorities. "I've got a message for Mr. Rosenstein," Rendell said, "They can come and arrest me first."
How is that lethal synthetic opioid is creating a global drug addiction crisis? The author presents a grim picture of the origin of the epidemic. He observes that the harm-reduction initiatives remain diluted beneath the shifting weight and influence of political red tape, global capitalism, and the biological and psychological bondage of drug dependency. He visits the shady factories in China from which these drugs emanate, providing startling and original reporting on how China's vast chemical industry operates. He chronicles the lives of addicts and dealers, families of victims, law enforcement officers, and underground drug-awareness organizers in the U.S. and Europe. This is a fascinating book that reads flawlessly and touches your consciousness when you read the stories of families affected by this tragedy.
On April 15, 2016, on his way home after performing in Atlanta, pop entertainer Prince's plane made an emergency landing in Moline, Illinois. He was found unresponsive and taken to a local hospital. Six days later, he passed away. Toxicology reports revealed that an overdose of opioid Fentanyl caused his demise. In January 2015, Bailey Henke, an 18-year-old kid from Grand Forks. North Dakota overdosed himself to death causing deep sorrow and dolor for his parents. Opioid Fentanyl put faces of the victims to its name. In 2016, the Centers for Disease Control estimated that 20,000 Americans were killed by fentanyl, a highly addictive synthetic painkiller.
This synthetic opioid is 50 times more powerful than heroin. With street names such as Drop Dead, Murder 8, China white, China girl, dance fever and goodfella, fentanyl is marketed by drug dealers as the ultimate high.
These new drugs aren't grown in a field; they are made in a laboratory. Plants that yield marijuana and heroin were grown in Mexico and Latin America, but Fentanyl is manufactured in laboratories in China. The author dares to infiltrate Chinese drug operations, a sophisticated laboratory operation distilling outsize quantities of the world's most dangerous chemicals in industrial-size glassware. The Chinese drug industry is not run by cartels and criminal organizations, but by university-educated chemists who often play by their government's rules.
Many health-care workers who help treat substance abusers believe the American traditional focus on “supply-side” law enforcement, which emphasizes the prosecution over treatment is futile. This approach fails to address the root of the problem: demand, and under-funded addiction treatment programs. Other alternative harm-reduction program is taking center stage in combating opioid addiction. Experts agree that it would be easy to establish supervised-injection facilities for opioid-ravaged communities in the United States to create one-stop shops where people could test their heroin and fentanyl exchange needle and shoot up safely. On-site help would be ready with Narcan, and users could also receive counseling. Information and medical assistance are slowing the opioid crisis. These facilities are showing a track record of success, but federal and many state authorities are not enthusiastic. The tension is encapsulated in an October 2018 exchange when former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell announced that he had incorporated a nonprofit seeking private funding to open a supervised injection facility in Philadelphia. The US deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein angrily said that if one opened it would be immediately shut down by federal authorities. "I've got a message for Mr. Rosenstein," Rendell said, "They can come and arrest me first."
How is that lethal synthetic opioid is creating a global drug addiction crisis? The author presents a grim picture of the origin of the epidemic. He observes that the harm-reduction initiatives remain diluted beneath the shifting weight and influence of political red tape, global capitalism, and the biological and psychological bondage of drug dependency. He visits the shady factories in China from which these drugs emanate, providing startling and original reporting on how China's vast chemical industry operates. He chronicles the lives of addicts and dealers, families of victims, law enforcement officers, and underground drug-awareness organizers in the U.S. and Europe. This is a fascinating book that reads flawlessly and touches your consciousness when you read the stories of families affected by this tragedy.
Saturday, June 1, 2019
Book Reviewed: String Theory for Dummies by Andrew Zimmerman Jones
A book for absolute beginner in string physics
String theory for Dummies is an instructional/reference book that is intended as guides for readers new to this field of physics and cosmology. The author describes the theory in brief and how it is used to understand physical reality. The operation of matter and energy in spacetime is explained by classical theories of physics or quantum mechanics but they do not offer a unified explanation of gravity or the bending od spacetime in presence of matter. This book is free of mathematics; and the narratives are brief and to the point. Not intensive in terms of physics. The book is helpful for a beginner but contains some conceptual errors.
String theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. It describes how these strings propagate through space and interact with each other. On distance scales larger than the string scale, a string looks just like an ordinary particle, with its mass, charge, and other properties determined by the vibrational state of the string. This theory has been applied to describe black holes, cosmology, and quantum gravity. It is a candidate for a theory of everything, but runs short of verifiable predictions, hence some physicists refuse to accept that it is a real science.
String theory for Dummies is an instructional/reference book that is intended as guides for readers new to this field of physics and cosmology. The author describes the theory in brief and how it is used to understand physical reality. The operation of matter and energy in spacetime is explained by classical theories of physics or quantum mechanics but they do not offer a unified explanation of gravity or the bending od spacetime in presence of matter. This book is free of mathematics; and the narratives are brief and to the point. Not intensive in terms of physics. The book is helpful for a beginner but contains some conceptual errors.
String theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. It describes how these strings propagate through space and interact with each other. On distance scales larger than the string scale, a string looks just like an ordinary particle, with its mass, charge, and other properties determined by the vibrational state of the string. This theory has been applied to describe black holes, cosmology, and quantum gravity. It is a candidate for a theory of everything, but runs short of verifiable predictions, hence some physicists refuse to accept that it is a real science.
Saturday, May 18, 2019
Book Reviewed: Black hole blues and Other Songs from Outer Space by Janna Levin
An odyssey for the Kiss of spacetime
This book narrates the building of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory and the detection of the of gravitational waves in 2015. It describes the determination and perseverance of a team physicists dedicated to discovering the existence gravitational waves or spacetime ripples that travel at the speed of light. Spacetime ripples was predicted by Einstein in 1915 but over the past 100 years skepticism existed among cosmologists. The cost of building a machine was astronomical and some physicists questioned the wisdom of such a vast and unwarranted expenditure. But to understand the nature of physical reality and the very fabric of our universe, this effort was necessary. We come across the works of three major players in this odyssey, Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne, and Ron Drever
Columbia University Professor Janna Levin is an author of several books and as a writer and a cosmologist she has a unique style of describing the excitement, joy and drama behind this important discovery in our lifetime. She works closely with physicists, writers, artists and musicians in an ever-expanding role of a scientist interested in art and beauty of creation. Despite her efforts, for a casual reader, the writing may not generate enthusiasm since the story is about the efforts of people who contributed to the success of a physics experiment. The fact that this is the costliest project the National Science Foundation (NSF) has ever funded, exceeding $1 billion, you would have to be very interested in physics and cosmology to appreciate this work.
This book narrates the building of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory and the detection of the of gravitational waves in 2015. It describes the determination and perseverance of a team physicists dedicated to discovering the existence gravitational waves or spacetime ripples that travel at the speed of light. Spacetime ripples was predicted by Einstein in 1915 but over the past 100 years skepticism existed among cosmologists. The cost of building a machine was astronomical and some physicists questioned the wisdom of such a vast and unwarranted expenditure. But to understand the nature of physical reality and the very fabric of our universe, this effort was necessary. We come across the works of three major players in this odyssey, Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne, and Ron Drever
Columbia University Professor Janna Levin is an author of several books and as a writer and a cosmologist she has a unique style of describing the excitement, joy and drama behind this important discovery in our lifetime. She works closely with physicists, writers, artists and musicians in an ever-expanding role of a scientist interested in art and beauty of creation. Despite her efforts, for a casual reader, the writing may not generate enthusiasm since the story is about the efforts of people who contributed to the success of a physics experiment. The fact that this is the costliest project the National Science Foundation (NSF) has ever funded, exceeding $1 billion, you would have to be very interested in physics and cosmology to appreciate this work.
Saturday, May 4, 2019
Book Reviewed: Pete Duel: A Biography, by Paul Green
The loveable outlaw
I am fascinated with the life and work of actor Pete Duel. His television performance in the TV series “Alias Smith and Jones” is fascinating to his fans. It is a cool and collective role as a loveable cowboy. He was a master of his craft who was able to make us believe he was the wisecracking reformed outlaw in the light-hearted TV western that earned him recognition and respect from his peers. He was heading on an upward curve but became obvious that his definition of success was at odds with society's definition. Deuel had both wealth and fame but wasn't happy. He felt more like a commodity than a success; owned by Universal Studios in a seven-year contract that still had over two years to run at the time of his death.
In interviews Deuel expressed his frustrations; in 1971 he felt he should have gravitated to more meaningful roles in feature length movies. His weekly television show with a work schedule that left little time for relaxation. But he enjoyed working with respected fellow actors and close friends like actress Sally Fields and Judy Carne. He was a man of many faces. He could be a charmer with a winning dimple. But he did not maintain perfection in his private life. He abused alcohol obsessively and transformed himself into a verbally abusive and confrontational personality, resulting in a string of DUI convictions. He literally became a Jekyll and Hyde character, according to his female friends. Duel lived in a time when an actor who suffered from depression and addiction couldn't talk openly about their personal problems. It was a sign of weakness. Unable to bring his own mood swings, he lost his sense of psychological balance and became alienated from friends of his life. With the passing of his beloved grandmother in the summer of 1971 and his fascination with handguns, the result was tragic.
During his acting career, he developed a deep connection with spirituality through his beliefs in Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) based on the teachings of Bhagavad-Gita. SRF teaches that the purpose of life is the self-evolution, through self-effort, a human’s limited mortal consciousness transcends into God Consciousness. His funeral services were held at the Pacific Palisades temple in California. Pete Duel also became involved in politics during latter part of his life. He participated in the primaries for the 1968 presidential election and campaigned for Eugene McCarthy. He strongly opposed the Vietnam War.
His fellow actors Ben Murphy and close friend Sally Fields did not attend Duel’s funeral services. In fact, much of this book devote on many of Duel’s friends and acquaintances but rarely mentions Murphy. The author blames easy availability of guns and Duel did not get better treatment from studios he worked for. The reading at the end becomes dry and unenthusiastic.
I am fascinated with the life and work of actor Pete Duel. His television performance in the TV series “Alias Smith and Jones” is fascinating to his fans. It is a cool and collective role as a loveable cowboy. He was a master of his craft who was able to make us believe he was the wisecracking reformed outlaw in the light-hearted TV western that earned him recognition and respect from his peers. He was heading on an upward curve but became obvious that his definition of success was at odds with society's definition. Deuel had both wealth and fame but wasn't happy. He felt more like a commodity than a success; owned by Universal Studios in a seven-year contract that still had over two years to run at the time of his death.
In interviews Deuel expressed his frustrations; in 1971 he felt he should have gravitated to more meaningful roles in feature length movies. His weekly television show with a work schedule that left little time for relaxation. But he enjoyed working with respected fellow actors and close friends like actress Sally Fields and Judy Carne. He was a man of many faces. He could be a charmer with a winning dimple. But he did not maintain perfection in his private life. He abused alcohol obsessively and transformed himself into a verbally abusive and confrontational personality, resulting in a string of DUI convictions. He literally became a Jekyll and Hyde character, according to his female friends. Duel lived in a time when an actor who suffered from depression and addiction couldn't talk openly about their personal problems. It was a sign of weakness. Unable to bring his own mood swings, he lost his sense of psychological balance and became alienated from friends of his life. With the passing of his beloved grandmother in the summer of 1971 and his fascination with handguns, the result was tragic.
During his acting career, he developed a deep connection with spirituality through his beliefs in Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) based on the teachings of Bhagavad-Gita. SRF teaches that the purpose of life is the self-evolution, through self-effort, a human’s limited mortal consciousness transcends into God Consciousness. His funeral services were held at the Pacific Palisades temple in California. Pete Duel also became involved in politics during latter part of his life. He participated in the primaries for the 1968 presidential election and campaigned for Eugene McCarthy. He strongly opposed the Vietnam War.
His fellow actors Ben Murphy and close friend Sally Fields did not attend Duel’s funeral services. In fact, much of this book devote on many of Duel’s friends and acquaintances but rarely mentions Murphy. The author blames easy availability of guns and Duel did not get better treatment from studios he worked for. The reading at the end becomes dry and unenthusiastic.
Sunday, April 14, 2019
Book Reviewed: Theodore Roosevelt for the Defense: The Courtroom Battle to Save His Legacy by Dan Abrams and David Fisher
Teddy Roosevelt’s Libel Trial
On May 22, 1915, after a five-week trial, in the William Barnes vs. Theodore Roosevelt libel suit, the jury’s verdict was in favor of the President. Barnes, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee had sued Roosevelt for $50,000 for an alleged libelous statement “a political boss of the most obnoxious type.” The trial did not begin well for the President, he was frustrated by the proceedings and on the witness stand, he spoke after his attorney’s objections and judge’s use of gavel. While the book is about the other end of Roosevelt’s life. This case threatened the president to humiliate and humble him. He still had big plans to make another run for the president. He was forced to defend his reputation and honor under questioning by the plaintiff’s attorneys. The stakes were high, and this courtroom drama brought the president up close and unscripted to the American public. This was the trial of the century in 1915, and it inspired many modern-day counselors looking for name and fame.
Roosevelt’s rise to power is like trajectory of a rocket. In effect, he was a naturalist, a writer, a lover, a hunter, a ranchman, a soldier, a Nobel Prize winner, and a politician; at the age of forty-two he was the youngest President in American history. He came as a progressive reformer and then committed himself to deep reform in the Bull Moose campaign of 1912. During his life, he chased thieves across the Badlands of North Dakota, and he was a night-stalking police commissioner in New York City. As assistant secretary of the navy under President McKinley, he almost single-handedly brought about the Spanish-American War. After leading “Roosevelt’s Rough Riders” in the famous charge up San Juan Hill, Cuba, he returned home a military hero, and was rewarded with the governorship of New York. Despite all his achievements and monumental contributions in the service of the nation, he was humbled at the end of the trial. The president’s life is a great inspiration and the authors have described in detail the events leading to the court proceedings in Syracuse, New York
On May 22, 1915, after a five-week trial, in the William Barnes vs. Theodore Roosevelt libel suit, the jury’s verdict was in favor of the President. Barnes, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee had sued Roosevelt for $50,000 for an alleged libelous statement “a political boss of the most obnoxious type.” The trial did not begin well for the President, he was frustrated by the proceedings and on the witness stand, he spoke after his attorney’s objections and judge’s use of gavel. While the book is about the other end of Roosevelt’s life. This case threatened the president to humiliate and humble him. He still had big plans to make another run for the president. He was forced to defend his reputation and honor under questioning by the plaintiff’s attorneys. The stakes were high, and this courtroom drama brought the president up close and unscripted to the American public. This was the trial of the century in 1915, and it inspired many modern-day counselors looking for name and fame.
Roosevelt’s rise to power is like trajectory of a rocket. In effect, he was a naturalist, a writer, a lover, a hunter, a ranchman, a soldier, a Nobel Prize winner, and a politician; at the age of forty-two he was the youngest President in American history. He came as a progressive reformer and then committed himself to deep reform in the Bull Moose campaign of 1912. During his life, he chased thieves across the Badlands of North Dakota, and he was a night-stalking police commissioner in New York City. As assistant secretary of the navy under President McKinley, he almost single-handedly brought about the Spanish-American War. After leading “Roosevelt’s Rough Riders” in the famous charge up San Juan Hill, Cuba, he returned home a military hero, and was rewarded with the governorship of New York. Despite all his achievements and monumental contributions in the service of the nation, he was humbled at the end of the trial. The president’s life is a great inspiration and the authors have described in detail the events leading to the court proceedings in Syracuse, New York
Book Reviewed: Chasing Cosby: The Downfall of America's Dad by Nicole Weisensee Egan
The life of a sexual predator
Race had always been a haunting backdrop to Cosby’s story. Defense attorney Andrew Wyatt was hoping that Cosby’s downfall would invoke memories of so many tragic cases in which innocent African Americans were wrongly accused and convicted. But in the case of Bill Cosby, it was not a wrongful conviction, having 60 women accuse him of sexual assault, he looked more like a serial rapist who got off easy. In fact, Cosby’s case reverberates as a case of reverse-racism, since most of his victims were white and very attractive women. It was sad that the benefits of civil rights and injustices done to black men in this country played favorably for Cosby in a politically correct atmosphere.
In October 2014 comedian Hannibal Buress's comedy routine of Cosby’s sexual misconduct resulted in more women coming forward with their experiences of Cosby’s sexual misconduct. About 60 women have accused him of drug-facilitated sexual assault and sexual misconduct that span from 1965 to 2008. Luckily for Cosby, the statute of limitations for criminal trial expired in nearly all cases except for Andrea Constand. After a year-long trial, Cosby was found guilty of three counts of aggravated indecent assault and sentenced to three to ten years in prison in a Pennsylvania court. Bill Cosby admitted to sex involving the use of the sedative methaqualone (Quaaludes). Famed book publisher Judith Regan also took the stand at the criminal trial and confirmed that she told model Janice Dickinson that she couldn’t include her account of being drugged and raped by Cosby in her memoir due to potential legal issues. During this trial the judge allowed five accusers to testify being drugged and sexually assaulted by Cosby; Janice Dickinson was one of them.
Egan is an experienced journalist and she was the first reporter to investigate Cosby illegally administering the drug and sexually assaulting his victims. This is very well researched work with numerous references. The story is discussed in distinct periods, and how it evolved to bring Cosby to justice. Jan 2005 to Oct 2014 section starts with Andrea Constand being sexually assaulted by Cosby at his home in Philadelphia; Oct 2014 to June 2017, exposing the skeletons from Bill Cosby’s closet by stand-up comedian Hannibal Buress during his comedy sketches. He was an unknown stand-up trying to break into the comedy business by discussing the rape allegations against Teflon Cosby. The last section, June 2017 to Sep 2018 ends with Andrea Constand’s victory in the criminal case against Cosby. Bill Cosby was handcuffed and led to the place where he always belonged. At the end of the book, there is a detailed notes for each chapter as an appendix where readers could find more facts in the Cosby drama. This is a very well narrated story and reads flawlessly. I recommend this book to readers interested in Bill Cosby’s predatorial behavior.
Race had always been a haunting backdrop to Cosby’s story. Defense attorney Andrew Wyatt was hoping that Cosby’s downfall would invoke memories of so many tragic cases in which innocent African Americans were wrongly accused and convicted. But in the case of Bill Cosby, it was not a wrongful conviction, having 60 women accuse him of sexual assault, he looked more like a serial rapist who got off easy. In fact, Cosby’s case reverberates as a case of reverse-racism, since most of his victims were white and very attractive women. It was sad that the benefits of civil rights and injustices done to black men in this country played favorably for Cosby in a politically correct atmosphere.
In October 2014 comedian Hannibal Buress's comedy routine of Cosby’s sexual misconduct resulted in more women coming forward with their experiences of Cosby’s sexual misconduct. About 60 women have accused him of drug-facilitated sexual assault and sexual misconduct that span from 1965 to 2008. Luckily for Cosby, the statute of limitations for criminal trial expired in nearly all cases except for Andrea Constand. After a year-long trial, Cosby was found guilty of three counts of aggravated indecent assault and sentenced to three to ten years in prison in a Pennsylvania court. Bill Cosby admitted to sex involving the use of the sedative methaqualone (Quaaludes). Famed book publisher Judith Regan also took the stand at the criminal trial and confirmed that she told model Janice Dickinson that she couldn’t include her account of being drugged and raped by Cosby in her memoir due to potential legal issues. During this trial the judge allowed five accusers to testify being drugged and sexually assaulted by Cosby; Janice Dickinson was one of them.
Egan is an experienced journalist and she was the first reporter to investigate Cosby illegally administering the drug and sexually assaulting his victims. This is very well researched work with numerous references. The story is discussed in distinct periods, and how it evolved to bring Cosby to justice. Jan 2005 to Oct 2014 section starts with Andrea Constand being sexually assaulted by Cosby at his home in Philadelphia; Oct 2014 to June 2017, exposing the skeletons from Bill Cosby’s closet by stand-up comedian Hannibal Buress during his comedy sketches. He was an unknown stand-up trying to break into the comedy business by discussing the rape allegations against Teflon Cosby. The last section, June 2017 to Sep 2018 ends with Andrea Constand’s victory in the criminal case against Cosby. Bill Cosby was handcuffed and led to the place where he always belonged. At the end of the book, there is a detailed notes for each chapter as an appendix where readers could find more facts in the Cosby drama. This is a very well narrated story and reads flawlessly. I recommend this book to readers interested in Bill Cosby’s predatorial behavior.
Friday, April 12, 2019
Book Reviewed: A Philosophy for Europe: From the Outside, by Roberto Esposito and Zakiya Hanafi
A metaphysical analysis of the Islamic invasion of Europe
The refugee crisis in Europe is conceptualized as economic and socio-political problem; the European culture is in dire-straits. In particular, the increase in Muslim population and terrorist attacks represent challenges to the European wisdom. The author calls this an overlap between inside and outside; Europe as one nation, a form a united states of Europe, and the migrants threatening the European identity. European Union is handling this with a degree of tolerance and acceptance in the hopes that this will diffuse the hostilities. The European leaders are subjecting its population to changes in its traditional identity towards multiculturism. The political leadership is lost and inefficient to deal with the situation.
European Union was created with little thought on the long-term effects on it’s on its racial identity. The political, social and economic forecasting would have easily predicted the changing political environments in Africa, Middle East, Pakistan and Bangladesh and ensuing migration crisis. The uncontrollable rise of migration is caused to a large extent by the European colonization, and the economic consequences and conflicts in the Middle East and African nations. EU was also short-sighted that it created external borders but opened of its internal borders. This caused more harm to the union; the new Brexit crisis; German and Austrian nationalism; Hungarian and Polish autonomy in matters of immigration; and the pathological reactions triggered by the dynamics of globalization.
People of Europe fought each other until the middle of the last century. The continent was always dominated by the nationalist instincts, distinct languages and cultures. How could you achieve integration like the United State of America? The author calls for a social reconciliation that would restore political strength to the European Union. But this may not fix the developing problem. Because European system is built on Christian civilization and logic. This is built into political, economic and social life. Islam is an alternative model that works on totally different logic and expectations. If one looks at the 1400 years of Islamic history, one concludes that the two cultures are directly colliding with each other and may not reconcile.
This book is interesting in that it relates well with a recent book by French philosopher Pascal Bruckner on Islamo-fascism, and Marc Weitzman’s book on rising antisemitism in France and the rest of Europe due to Muslim migrants. In this book, the political, economic and social parameters are evaluated in philosophical terms. This is not for a casual reader. You may be lost while reading this book unless you have deep interest in metaphysics.
The refugee crisis in Europe is conceptualized as economic and socio-political problem; the European culture is in dire-straits. In particular, the increase in Muslim population and terrorist attacks represent challenges to the European wisdom. The author calls this an overlap between inside and outside; Europe as one nation, a form a united states of Europe, and the migrants threatening the European identity. European Union is handling this with a degree of tolerance and acceptance in the hopes that this will diffuse the hostilities. The European leaders are subjecting its population to changes in its traditional identity towards multiculturism. The political leadership is lost and inefficient to deal with the situation.
European Union was created with little thought on the long-term effects on it’s on its racial identity. The political, social and economic forecasting would have easily predicted the changing political environments in Africa, Middle East, Pakistan and Bangladesh and ensuing migration crisis. The uncontrollable rise of migration is caused to a large extent by the European colonization, and the economic consequences and conflicts in the Middle East and African nations. EU was also short-sighted that it created external borders but opened of its internal borders. This caused more harm to the union; the new Brexit crisis; German and Austrian nationalism; Hungarian and Polish autonomy in matters of immigration; and the pathological reactions triggered by the dynamics of globalization.
People of Europe fought each other until the middle of the last century. The continent was always dominated by the nationalist instincts, distinct languages and cultures. How could you achieve integration like the United State of America? The author calls for a social reconciliation that would restore political strength to the European Union. But this may not fix the developing problem. Because European system is built on Christian civilization and logic. This is built into political, economic and social life. Islam is an alternative model that works on totally different logic and expectations. If one looks at the 1400 years of Islamic history, one concludes that the two cultures are directly colliding with each other and may not reconcile.
This book is interesting in that it relates well with a recent book by French philosopher Pascal Bruckner on Islamo-fascism, and Marc Weitzman’s book on rising antisemitism in France and the rest of Europe due to Muslim migrants. In this book, the political, economic and social parameters are evaluated in philosophical terms. This is not for a casual reader. You may be lost while reading this book unless you have deep interest in metaphysics.
Thursday, April 11, 2019
Book Reviewed: Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe, by Steven H. Strogatz
This book does not make calculus interesting
Calculus is widely perceived as important part of science in understanding basic laws of physics. But it also has important applications in advanced physics; relativity and quantum mechanics, cosmology, astronomy, biology, chemistry, medicine, geology, ecology and in everyday life. In this book, the author discusses calculus as catch-as-catch-can story in an historical context without giving some ideas of how calculus helped physics to evolve. This is not a recipe book and at the same time it is not overwhelming. But in the absence of clear mathematical methods or its applications, this is a slapdash story that does not make calculus interesting.
Calculus is widely perceived as important part of science in understanding basic laws of physics. But it also has important applications in advanced physics; relativity and quantum mechanics, cosmology, astronomy, biology, chemistry, medicine, geology, ecology and in everyday life. In this book, the author discusses calculus as catch-as-catch-can story in an historical context without giving some ideas of how calculus helped physics to evolve. This is not a recipe book and at the same time it is not overwhelming. But in the absence of clear mathematical methods or its applications, this is a slapdash story that does not make calculus interesting.
Wednesday, April 10, 2019
Book Reviewed: Designing the Future, by James M. Morgan and Jeffrey K. Liker
Lean Product Development as a System: A Case Study for Development at Ford
Lean product development is like just-in-time (JIT) process. Mass production emphasizes cost reduction within processes through economies of scale, while lean production emphasizes flexible response to the customer building in quality at every step of the value stream. In mass production, the principle of quantity is better. Each process builds to its own schedule and pushes inventory onto the next process resulting in large inventory buffers. The inventory buffers protect processes from each other; if one process shuts down or is slow it will not affect the next process until the buffer runs out. But lean production discussed in this book is based on the principle of just-in-time (JIT), building only the parts needed by the next process when they are needed based on a “pull” system. Processes are tightly coupled, and one process have an almost immediate impact on other processes in the linked chain. A system’s view of lean product development discussed in this book integrates people, process, and tools. The principles and methods based on this model of lean product development was applied to Toyota and Ford Motor Companies. This resulted in a record number of products leading to the financial success of these companies.
The principle of lean product development is also applicable to healthcare industry in the development of clinical processes. Readers interested in business management, medical technology and other diverse applications do appreciate this book.
Lean product development is like just-in-time (JIT) process. Mass production emphasizes cost reduction within processes through economies of scale, while lean production emphasizes flexible response to the customer building in quality at every step of the value stream. In mass production, the principle of quantity is better. Each process builds to its own schedule and pushes inventory onto the next process resulting in large inventory buffers. The inventory buffers protect processes from each other; if one process shuts down or is slow it will not affect the next process until the buffer runs out. But lean production discussed in this book is based on the principle of just-in-time (JIT), building only the parts needed by the next process when they are needed based on a “pull” system. Processes are tightly coupled, and one process have an almost immediate impact on other processes in the linked chain. A system’s view of lean product development discussed in this book integrates people, process, and tools. The principles and methods based on this model of lean product development was applied to Toyota and Ford Motor Companies. This resulted in a record number of products leading to the financial success of these companies.
The principle of lean product development is also applicable to healthcare industry in the development of clinical processes. Readers interested in business management, medical technology and other diverse applications do appreciate this book.
Monday, April 8, 2019
Book Reviewed: The Vinyl Frontier: The Story of the Voyager Golden Record by Jonathan Scott
TThe voyager’s golden record
The contents of this record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by cosmologist Carl Sagan. Sagan and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind, thunder and animals, including the songs of birds and whales. The record also carries an hour-long recording of the brainwaves of writer and producer Ann Druyan. This is a kind of time capsule for the extraterrestrial species, should these spacecrafts land on an alien planet or intercepted by intelligent beings. They may be able to determine that there are intelligent species in this universe.
Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecrafts have left the solar system and journeying in interstellar space. The message recorded on the disc, from President Jimmy Carter, says that this is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings.
Music includes that of Mozart, Beethoven, and Stravinsky; Indian classical music of Hindustani vocalist Kesarbai Kerkar, music of Guan Pinghu, Blind Willie Johnson, and rocker Chuck Berry. The inclusion of Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" was most controversial and highly debated.
The record is constructed of gold-plated copper and is 12 inches in diameter. The record's cover is aluminum and electroplated upon it is an ultra-pure sample of the isotope uranium-238. Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.468 billion years. It is possible that an alien civilization would be able to determine the age of the record.
The author narrates the story of how the record was created from an historical perspective but does not go into the Voyager missions. This book is not for an average reader but may be interesting to readers of Voyager spacecrafts and the work of Carl Sagan.
The contents of this record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by cosmologist Carl Sagan. Sagan and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind, thunder and animals, including the songs of birds and whales. The record also carries an hour-long recording of the brainwaves of writer and producer Ann Druyan. This is a kind of time capsule for the extraterrestrial species, should these spacecrafts land on an alien planet or intercepted by intelligent beings. They may be able to determine that there are intelligent species in this universe.
Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecrafts have left the solar system and journeying in interstellar space. The message recorded on the disc, from President Jimmy Carter, says that this is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings.
Music includes that of Mozart, Beethoven, and Stravinsky; Indian classical music of Hindustani vocalist Kesarbai Kerkar, music of Guan Pinghu, Blind Willie Johnson, and rocker Chuck Berry. The inclusion of Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" was most controversial and highly debated.
The record is constructed of gold-plated copper and is 12 inches in diameter. The record's cover is aluminum and electroplated upon it is an ultra-pure sample of the isotope uranium-238. Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.468 billion years. It is possible that an alien civilization would be able to determine the age of the record.
The author narrates the story of how the record was created from an historical perspective but does not go into the Voyager missions. This book is not for an average reader but may be interesting to readers of Voyager spacecrafts and the work of Carl Sagan.
Sunday, April 7, 2019
Book Reviewed: Primate Change: How the world we made is remaking us, by Vybarr Cregan-Reid
Climate Effects on Human Evolution
Life moves fast; but the biological evolution is slow. Small anatomical changes have occurred in the last 250,000 years of human history, but they are insignificant and marginal. But technological advancement has significant impact on the behavioral adaptation that has progressed rapidly on evolutionary scale towards transhumanism. By the time genetic evolution that would be reflected in thickening of tooth enamel and our back-bone structure because of our diets and sedentary life styles, other non-biological events will impact the future of human beings. The artificial intelligence (AI), brain-machine interface and quantum realities would have taken over body and mind. Species of Transhumanism would have adapted to life in alien worlds such as Mars, and moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
The genus Homo, to which our species belongs, had the capacity to adjust to a variety of environmental conditions, and Homo sapiens were able to cope with a broad range of climatic conditions, hot and cold environments, arid and moist ones, and with all kinds of varying vegetation like expanding dry grasslands or thick forests. The adaptations that typify Homo Sapiens were associated with the largest oscillations in global climate: (a) hominin origins, (b) habitual bipedality, (c) first stone toolmaking and eating meat/marrow from large animals, (d) onset of long-endurance mobility, (e) onset of rapid brain enlargement, (f) expansion of symbolic expression, communication, discovering, and the ability for learning and innovation.
Environmental biologists are too hung up on the Armageddon that would be created by climatic effects of excessive fossil-fuel usage, deforestation, and the lack of clean-air acts. Environments have changed dramatically too many time in the past 3.9 billion years of life forms on this planet. Complete destruction of life occurred a few times, but life came back with vengeance and evolved successfully. What lies ahead is that technology will take over biology. Climatic effects would be bad and so is nuclear proliferation and the willingness of United States and Russia to sell nuclear technology to Islamic countries in the Middle East which would make threat of nuclear war more of a reality. This would make climatic effects due to human involvement much more dangerous than mere fossil-fuel usage.
Life moves fast; but the biological evolution is slow. Small anatomical changes have occurred in the last 250,000 years of human history, but they are insignificant and marginal. But technological advancement has significant impact on the behavioral adaptation that has progressed rapidly on evolutionary scale towards transhumanism. By the time genetic evolution that would be reflected in thickening of tooth enamel and our back-bone structure because of our diets and sedentary life styles, other non-biological events will impact the future of human beings. The artificial intelligence (AI), brain-machine interface and quantum realities would have taken over body and mind. Species of Transhumanism would have adapted to life in alien worlds such as Mars, and moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
The genus Homo, to which our species belongs, had the capacity to adjust to a variety of environmental conditions, and Homo sapiens were able to cope with a broad range of climatic conditions, hot and cold environments, arid and moist ones, and with all kinds of varying vegetation like expanding dry grasslands or thick forests. The adaptations that typify Homo Sapiens were associated with the largest oscillations in global climate: (a) hominin origins, (b) habitual bipedality, (c) first stone toolmaking and eating meat/marrow from large animals, (d) onset of long-endurance mobility, (e) onset of rapid brain enlargement, (f) expansion of symbolic expression, communication, discovering, and the ability for learning and innovation.
Environmental biologists are too hung up on the Armageddon that would be created by climatic effects of excessive fossil-fuel usage, deforestation, and the lack of clean-air acts. Environments have changed dramatically too many time in the past 3.9 billion years of life forms on this planet. Complete destruction of life occurred a few times, but life came back with vengeance and evolved successfully. What lies ahead is that technology will take over biology. Climatic effects would be bad and so is nuclear proliferation and the willingness of United States and Russia to sell nuclear technology to Islamic countries in the Middle East which would make threat of nuclear war more of a reality. This would make climatic effects due to human involvement much more dangerous than mere fossil-fuel usage.
Friday, April 5, 2019
Book Reviewed: Mama’s last hug; Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us About Ourselves By Frans de Waal
Animal Emotions
Early ethologists studied animal behavior to understand a shared motivation. Their experimental setup was elegant and objective, but the underlying motivation for animal behavior was ignored. For example, fear and anger, and the animal reactions to it were carefully examined and conclusions were drawn. The prevailing assumption in these studies were that animals had instincts that gave inborn actions triggered by a situation. Behavioral biologists have changed this approach because the instincts are inflexible, and they have started to look from the point of emotions which allow flexibility. They prime body and mind, but do not dictate any specific course of actions. Emotions are neither invisible nor impossible to study; they can be measured. Levels of biomolecules associated with emotional experiences, from the “cuddle hormone” oxytocin to the stress hormone cortisol, can easily be determined. The hormones are virtually identical across the board; from humans to birds to invertebrates.
The artificial intelligence (AI) recognize the importance of emotions. AI with emotions would interact with humans with empathy and human-like emotions, and hopefully do not destroy mankind when they become too powerful. It is expected to facilitate engagement and working together for common good.
In this book, the author, a well-known primatologist proposes that animals experience emotions in the same way as humans do. Emotions infuse everything that inspire cognition and drives all animals and humans. By examining emotions, this book puts these vivid of mental experiences in evolutionary context, revealing how their richness, power and utility stretch across species and back into the history of animal kingdom.
Early ethologists studied animal behavior to understand a shared motivation. Their experimental setup was elegant and objective, but the underlying motivation for animal behavior was ignored. For example, fear and anger, and the animal reactions to it were carefully examined and conclusions were drawn. The prevailing assumption in these studies were that animals had instincts that gave inborn actions triggered by a situation. Behavioral biologists have changed this approach because the instincts are inflexible, and they have started to look from the point of emotions which allow flexibility. They prime body and mind, but do not dictate any specific course of actions. Emotions are neither invisible nor impossible to study; they can be measured. Levels of biomolecules associated with emotional experiences, from the “cuddle hormone” oxytocin to the stress hormone cortisol, can easily be determined. The hormones are virtually identical across the board; from humans to birds to invertebrates.
The artificial intelligence (AI) recognize the importance of emotions. AI with emotions would interact with humans with empathy and human-like emotions, and hopefully do not destroy mankind when they become too powerful. It is expected to facilitate engagement and working together for common good.
In this book, the author, a well-known primatologist proposes that animals experience emotions in the same way as humans do. Emotions infuse everything that inspire cognition and drives all animals and humans. By examining emotions, this book puts these vivid of mental experiences in evolutionary context, revealing how their richness, power and utility stretch across species and back into the history of animal kingdom.
Wednesday, April 3, 2019
Book Reviewed: Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice, by Mary Fulbrook
Understanding the genocide during holocaust
What made people to participate in a genocide that systematically killed six million Jews and destroyed much of Europe? How was that possible that Nazi-collaborators worked coherently to bring holocaust to a massive scale? Did anyone know what was happening and why didn’t they try stop it. These are some of the questions posed by the author in this 620 pages of anthology. I am not sure if all the historical facts documented in this book is authentic and verifiable, but the author is a well-respected German scholar and a professor at the University College, London.
The Third Reich was complicit in many ways for political and economic dominance of German race. War efforts and displacement was preceded by chronic abuses in German life. They grew indifferent to the fate of those who were suffering. But passivity was born due to the fear of the consequences of acting. Lots of people did feel sympathy with victims of persecution but had themselves also experienced it: their husbands was in a concentration camp for having been a communist, socialist, gay, Jew or a Romani gypsy. There was also a sense that your own father, brother, son, friend, or neighbor was fighting for the good of the fatherland. Jews were undoubtedly the largest and widest victims of Nazi era, but less sung victims like Romani gypsies, gays and communists also suffered. Gay were criminalized for a quarter of a century after the war. They often didn’t talk about it because they were so ashamed, and if they did talk about it they were shoved back into prison. Homosexuality was a mortal-sin and was treated as a criminal offence in German justice system. Gypsies were regarded as harmful to the German society. They were treated with suspicion and distrust.
Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi camp were built in March 1933 in Dachau after Hitler became Chancellor, and his Nazi Party was given control of the police. Holocaust scholars draw a distinction between concentration camps and extermination camps. The latter was built by Nazi Germany for the industrial-scale mass murder of Jews using gas chambers.
The iconic picture of Nazi atrocities is remembered by the numerous pictures published since WWII. There were several notorious concentration camps; one of them is Auschwitz in Poland. Many photographs published in books and museums stand as monuments of this great tragedy. One of them is Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the train ramp that was used as a "debarkation-stop" during 1942–1944 operation. They are the monuments of intense human suffering; you hear a shrill of chill, coldness and emptiness that took the lives of so many children, women and men.
When humanity was abused at such a massive scale; justice was never done with accuracy. Big fishes found a way to escape punishment, and even mid-level masterminds of SS Army, Gestapo, administrators of armed forces, doctors and engineers, anti-Semites, reactionaries, and collaborators of the Third Reich didn’t come close to being caught. But it was frequently the minions like care-assistants and nurses in sanatorium and euthanasia clinics. Auschwitz, one of the largest concentration camps in the history of mankind employed more than 6,000 people, but only about 50 of those were brought to justice system.
The book is long and sometime repetitive, but readers interested in holocaust find this book appealing.
What made people to participate in a genocide that systematically killed six million Jews and destroyed much of Europe? How was that possible that Nazi-collaborators worked coherently to bring holocaust to a massive scale? Did anyone know what was happening and why didn’t they try stop it. These are some of the questions posed by the author in this 620 pages of anthology. I am not sure if all the historical facts documented in this book is authentic and verifiable, but the author is a well-respected German scholar and a professor at the University College, London.
The Third Reich was complicit in many ways for political and economic dominance of German race. War efforts and displacement was preceded by chronic abuses in German life. They grew indifferent to the fate of those who were suffering. But passivity was born due to the fear of the consequences of acting. Lots of people did feel sympathy with victims of persecution but had themselves also experienced it: their husbands was in a concentration camp for having been a communist, socialist, gay, Jew or a Romani gypsy. There was also a sense that your own father, brother, son, friend, or neighbor was fighting for the good of the fatherland. Jews were undoubtedly the largest and widest victims of Nazi era, but less sung victims like Romani gypsies, gays and communists also suffered. Gay were criminalized for a quarter of a century after the war. They often didn’t talk about it because they were so ashamed, and if they did talk about it they were shoved back into prison. Homosexuality was a mortal-sin and was treated as a criminal offence in German justice system. Gypsies were regarded as harmful to the German society. They were treated with suspicion and distrust.
Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi camp were built in March 1933 in Dachau after Hitler became Chancellor, and his Nazi Party was given control of the police. Holocaust scholars draw a distinction between concentration camps and extermination camps. The latter was built by Nazi Germany for the industrial-scale mass murder of Jews using gas chambers.
The iconic picture of Nazi atrocities is remembered by the numerous pictures published since WWII. There were several notorious concentration camps; one of them is Auschwitz in Poland. Many photographs published in books and museums stand as monuments of this great tragedy. One of them is Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the train ramp that was used as a "debarkation-stop" during 1942–1944 operation. They are the monuments of intense human suffering; you hear a shrill of chill, coldness and emptiness that took the lives of so many children, women and men.
When humanity was abused at such a massive scale; justice was never done with accuracy. Big fishes found a way to escape punishment, and even mid-level masterminds of SS Army, Gestapo, administrators of armed forces, doctors and engineers, anti-Semites, reactionaries, and collaborators of the Third Reich didn’t come close to being caught. But it was frequently the minions like care-assistants and nurses in sanatorium and euthanasia clinics. Auschwitz, one of the largest concentration camps in the history of mankind employed more than 6,000 people, but only about 50 of those were brought to justice system.
The book is long and sometime repetitive, but readers interested in holocaust find this book appealing.
Sunday, March 31, 2019
Book Reviewed: Hate: The Rising Tide of Anti-Semitism in France by Marc Weitzmann
The face of new Anti-Semitism in France
In the last forty years, tens of thousands of Jews have left France for Israel or to the peripheries of Paris and Lyon, where Muslim populations is rapidly rising. Across the globe, in Islamic countries and in Muslim communities elsewhere, Anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiments are increasing largely fueled by Muslin clerics strengthening the Islamic teachings against Jews. The Quran makes forty-three specific references to Children of Israel using the term Yahud for Jews. The Qur’an teaches Jews as evil and projects them negatively in verses: 5:82; 2:79; 3:75, 3:181; 5:64; 5:41;5:13; 2:247; 3:78; 2:14; 2:44; 2:109; 3:120; 5:18; 4:161; 4:46; 2:61; 2:74; 2:100; 5:79; 59:13-14; and 4:53.
Over the course of the past decade, France never had less than 400 anti-Semitic acts a year, including the brutal murder of Ilan Halimi by the “gang of Barbarians” in 2006; and the massacre at the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse in 2012. Jewish gravestones are routinely defaced and desecrated with swastikas and anti-Jewish slogans. The northwestern Paris represents a tactical retreat for Jews; It has become a haven for many Jews who say they have faced harassment in areas with growing Muslim populations. Ms. Galilli, a Jewish woman moved to this neighborhood said that they spit when she walked in the neighborhood for wearing a Star of David. France has a painful history of anti-Semitism with its worst hours coming in the 1930s and during the German occupation in World War II. But in recent months, journalists and academics have called this “new anti-Semitism,” and they trace a wave of anti-Semitic acts to France’s growing Muslim population. For the French government, it is touching the country’s rawest political nerves, as well as ethnic and religious fault lines. They cannot categorize people by race or religious affiliation. In the eyes of the law and the French constitution all French citizens are equal. Gunther Jikeli, a German historian at Indiana University who conducted a study of Muslim anti-Semitism in Europe, called the phenomenon “blindingly obvious,” in his interview with the newspaper Le Monde. A manifesto signed by a former president, a former prime minister and numerous intellectuals warned of a “silent ethnic purge,” a reference to what Mr. Fourquet called the “large-scale phenomenon” of internal migration. The manifesto called on Muslims to renounce what it deemed anti-Semitic verses in the Quran. Author and philosopher Pascal Bruckner said that “For fear of not setting one community against another, you wind up hiding things.”
Routine expression of anti-Semitism is also linked to the state of Israel. Michel Serfaty, a rabbi, has led good-will bus tours in Muslim communities in France for more than 10 years acknowledged an uphill battle. “I’ve seen it myself,” he said. “Day after day, the insults, and finally people say, ‘Right, that’s it, we’re leaving.’ Complicating the matter, as it is happening all over the world is that the radical left and liberal feminists align with Muslim community in its expression of antisemitism. This is sad for European countries where the political, social and economic landscape is rapidly changing. The Roman Catholic Church tried to control the lives of Europeans for centuries. Now, when they are enjoying the freedom of free expression, the population is facing an uphill task of fighting the domination of Islam over their lives.
The book is very narrative and describes in detail some of the terrorist attacks on Jewish business and Jewish individuals. The author analyzes the circumstances that led to the brutal murder of Ilan Halimi by the gang of Barbarians, and other cases. For a reader interested in the influence of Islam on the growth and nurturing of antisemitism, this is quite interesting.
In the last forty years, tens of thousands of Jews have left France for Israel or to the peripheries of Paris and Lyon, where Muslim populations is rapidly rising. Across the globe, in Islamic countries and in Muslim communities elsewhere, Anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiments are increasing largely fueled by Muslin clerics strengthening the Islamic teachings against Jews. The Quran makes forty-three specific references to Children of Israel using the term Yahud for Jews. The Qur’an teaches Jews as evil and projects them negatively in verses: 5:82; 2:79; 3:75, 3:181; 5:64; 5:41;5:13; 2:247; 3:78; 2:14; 2:44; 2:109; 3:120; 5:18; 4:161; 4:46; 2:61; 2:74; 2:100; 5:79; 59:13-14; and 4:53.
Over the course of the past decade, France never had less than 400 anti-Semitic acts a year, including the brutal murder of Ilan Halimi by the “gang of Barbarians” in 2006; and the massacre at the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse in 2012. Jewish gravestones are routinely defaced and desecrated with swastikas and anti-Jewish slogans. The northwestern Paris represents a tactical retreat for Jews; It has become a haven for many Jews who say they have faced harassment in areas with growing Muslim populations. Ms. Galilli, a Jewish woman moved to this neighborhood said that they spit when she walked in the neighborhood for wearing a Star of David. France has a painful history of anti-Semitism with its worst hours coming in the 1930s and during the German occupation in World War II. But in recent months, journalists and academics have called this “new anti-Semitism,” and they trace a wave of anti-Semitic acts to France’s growing Muslim population. For the French government, it is touching the country’s rawest political nerves, as well as ethnic and religious fault lines. They cannot categorize people by race or religious affiliation. In the eyes of the law and the French constitution all French citizens are equal. Gunther Jikeli, a German historian at Indiana University who conducted a study of Muslim anti-Semitism in Europe, called the phenomenon “blindingly obvious,” in his interview with the newspaper Le Monde. A manifesto signed by a former president, a former prime minister and numerous intellectuals warned of a “silent ethnic purge,” a reference to what Mr. Fourquet called the “large-scale phenomenon” of internal migration. The manifesto called on Muslims to renounce what it deemed anti-Semitic verses in the Quran. Author and philosopher Pascal Bruckner said that “For fear of not setting one community against another, you wind up hiding things.”
Routine expression of anti-Semitism is also linked to the state of Israel. Michel Serfaty, a rabbi, has led good-will bus tours in Muslim communities in France for more than 10 years acknowledged an uphill battle. “I’ve seen it myself,” he said. “Day after day, the insults, and finally people say, ‘Right, that’s it, we’re leaving.’ Complicating the matter, as it is happening all over the world is that the radical left and liberal feminists align with Muslim community in its expression of antisemitism. This is sad for European countries where the political, social and economic landscape is rapidly changing. The Roman Catholic Church tried to control the lives of Europeans for centuries. Now, when they are enjoying the freedom of free expression, the population is facing an uphill task of fighting the domination of Islam over their lives.
The book is very narrative and describes in detail some of the terrorist attacks on Jewish business and Jewish individuals. The author analyzes the circumstances that led to the brutal murder of Ilan Halimi by the gang of Barbarians, and other cases. For a reader interested in the influence of Islam on the growth and nurturing of antisemitism, this is quite interesting.
Friday, March 29, 2019
Book Reviewed: An Imaginary Racism: Islamophobia and Guilt by Pascal Bruckner
Is there such thing as Islamophobia?
Brilliantly written by a well-known French writer and philosopher, Pascal Bruckner has published scholarly work in the area of Islamo-fascism. He is highly analytical and skilled in describing the Muslim invasion of Europe in a historical context and the impact of modern-day immigrants from Asia and Africa.
The word “Islamophobia” was invented by Muslims that amalgamates two opposing concepts: the persecution of non-believers of Islam is acceptable; and debating Islamic belief system is unacceptable: God’s Word is too sacred for interpretation! This notion supported by all Muslim countries has made Islam above all other religions. In October 2013, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, who persecute Hindus, Jews, Christians and Buddhists into extinction, demanded that Western countries put an end to freedom of expression about Islam. Even though by all estimates, by the middle of this century, non-Islamic faiths like Christianism in Muslim Middle-East is expected to be extinct. Muslims and journalists supportive of the “Religion of Peace” enlistment leftists, neo-liberals and feminists in the defense of Islam in non-Muslim countries. They have rebaptized it as the religion of the poor. In fact, they are making criticism Muslim faith an international crime. Blasphemy laws in countries like Pakistan, Indonesia, and Malaysia have seriously affected the lives of non-Muslims. To contest a form of obedience, and to reject dogmas that is absurd or false is the very basis of intellectual life, but belief in the existence of Islamophobia renders such contestation impossible. The fundamentalist preacher Tariq Ramadan, now in a French jail for rape, explained that the situation of Muslims in Europe was like that of Jews in the 1930s. The implication is, if we criticize Islam, then it is nothing less than a Holocaust. The notion of Islamophobia is meant to give the religion of the Prophet a status of exemption denied to other spiritual systems. Thus, we have the reprehensible laws enacted by the U.K, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other nations that prohibits criticism of Islam, while other faiths still can be denigrated without any fear!
In Cologne, Germany, on New Year’s Eve of 2016, around 1,000 Muslim migrants congregated by the city’s main train station, where they sexually assaulted hundreds of German women, defied police; and one attacker crowed, “I’m a Syrian! you have to treat me kindly! Mrs. Merkel invited me.” In response, Cologne Mayor Henriette Reker vowed to make sure that women change their behavior so that they don’t provoke the poor immigrants to sexual assault again. The teachings are progressively taking over the cultures of Christian world.
This book is strongly Euro-centric and favors to discuss Islamic takeover of Europe rather discuss in a broader context. The efforts of Muslims to conquer India, Asia and Africa where Hinduism, Buddhism sand Christianism has suffered immensely throughout the history.
Brilliantly written by a well-known French writer and philosopher, Pascal Bruckner has published scholarly work in the area of Islamo-fascism. He is highly analytical and skilled in describing the Muslim invasion of Europe in a historical context and the impact of modern-day immigrants from Asia and Africa.
The word “Islamophobia” was invented by Muslims that amalgamates two opposing concepts: the persecution of non-believers of Islam is acceptable; and debating Islamic belief system is unacceptable: God’s Word is too sacred for interpretation! This notion supported by all Muslim countries has made Islam above all other religions. In October 2013, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, who persecute Hindus, Jews, Christians and Buddhists into extinction, demanded that Western countries put an end to freedom of expression about Islam. Even though by all estimates, by the middle of this century, non-Islamic faiths like Christianism in Muslim Middle-East is expected to be extinct. Muslims and journalists supportive of the “Religion of Peace” enlistment leftists, neo-liberals and feminists in the defense of Islam in non-Muslim countries. They have rebaptized it as the religion of the poor. In fact, they are making criticism Muslim faith an international crime. Blasphemy laws in countries like Pakistan, Indonesia, and Malaysia have seriously affected the lives of non-Muslims. To contest a form of obedience, and to reject dogmas that is absurd or false is the very basis of intellectual life, but belief in the existence of Islamophobia renders such contestation impossible. The fundamentalist preacher Tariq Ramadan, now in a French jail for rape, explained that the situation of Muslims in Europe was like that of Jews in the 1930s. The implication is, if we criticize Islam, then it is nothing less than a Holocaust. The notion of Islamophobia is meant to give the religion of the Prophet a status of exemption denied to other spiritual systems. Thus, we have the reprehensible laws enacted by the U.K, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other nations that prohibits criticism of Islam, while other faiths still can be denigrated without any fear!
In Cologne, Germany, on New Year’s Eve of 2016, around 1,000 Muslim migrants congregated by the city’s main train station, where they sexually assaulted hundreds of German women, defied police; and one attacker crowed, “I’m a Syrian! you have to treat me kindly! Mrs. Merkel invited me.” In response, Cologne Mayor Henriette Reker vowed to make sure that women change their behavior so that they don’t provoke the poor immigrants to sexual assault again. The teachings are progressively taking over the cultures of Christian world.
This book is strongly Euro-centric and favors to discuss Islamic takeover of Europe rather discuss in a broader context. The efforts of Muslims to conquer India, Asia and Africa where Hinduism, Buddhism sand Christianism has suffered immensely throughout the history.
Wednesday, March 27, 2019
Book Reviewed: Memes to Movements: How the World's Most Viral Media Is Changing Social Protest and Power, by An Xiao Mina
The Meme machine and the social media
This book looks at media created by users of social media who express their emotions, feelings, thoughts, deeply-held beliefs; social and political, and the highs and lows of their lives. They bring a variety into the online world where they share, laugh and cry. The social media evolve continuously and educates us into socio-political movements. Photo-remixes, selfies, YouTube videos, hashtag-tweets, and all the silliness of meme culture. Sometimes the silly creations lead to social and political revolutions. This book is not about comprehensive history of memes in social movements nor is this a guide book to be creative online. The author explores the digital culture to illuminate broader-side social media. Memes are analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures. They are a viral phenomenon that may evolve by natural selection in a manner analogous to that of biological evolution. That is through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance, each of which influences a meme's reproductive success.
This book is very enjoyable, and the author’s style of writing add an extra-dimension to the meme culture that has evolved. So, what is next? Perhaps a cloud feature where we can upload our thoughts and emotions in place of videos, music, pictures and emojis.
This book looks at media created by users of social media who express their emotions, feelings, thoughts, deeply-held beliefs; social and political, and the highs and lows of their lives. They bring a variety into the online world where they share, laugh and cry. The social media evolve continuously and educates us into socio-political movements. Photo-remixes, selfies, YouTube videos, hashtag-tweets, and all the silliness of meme culture. Sometimes the silly creations lead to social and political revolutions. This book is not about comprehensive history of memes in social movements nor is this a guide book to be creative online. The author explores the digital culture to illuminate broader-side social media. Memes are analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures. They are a viral phenomenon that may evolve by natural selection in a manner analogous to that of biological evolution. That is through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance, each of which influences a meme's reproductive success.
This book is very enjoyable, and the author’s style of writing add an extra-dimension to the meme culture that has evolved. So, what is next? Perhaps a cloud feature where we can upload our thoughts and emotions in place of videos, music, pictures and emojis.
Monday, March 25, 2019
Book Reviewed: Do Robots Make Love? Transhumanism in 12 questions, by Laurent Belando and Jean-Michel Besnier
Transhumanism and the future of humankind
This is a very short and concise book about futurology and transhumanism. Some of the topics included in the discussion are; Should humans be improved? Can the technology fix everything? Does artificial intelligence (AI) will kill mankind? And could we change the way we reproduce? These discussions provide brief introduction to the technological advancement for the future of life.
transhumanists look forward to a time when we can wrest the reins of our nature from evolution using technological enhancements to increase our intelligence, communicate brain to brain, and even upload our consciousnesses into the cloud. We use writing to extend our memories and cooking to improve our diets. But technology provides us with prosthetics that enhances strength, but there is also difference between enhancement and medical corrections that restore “normal” functions. Transhumanism believes that by altering human reproduction, genetically and technologically augmenting the body, human kind will be very different. Technology is expected to offer biological freedom and be masters of our own evolution.
Market forces and the technological advancements will drive humanity to the same end point as the “singularity” of cosmology. At the center of a black hole where matter, energy and time “dissolves” in quantum space under intense gravity. Similarly, AI transcends humanity into a unified human-machine consciousness. This unification will alter human consciousness, physical strength, and emotional state.
Both wearable and implantable brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) are being developed by Elon Musk’s Neuralink, Facebook, and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). For example, when we speak, we are limited by the speed we can speak, but with a computer, we are limited by the speed of typing. But BMIs enable us to communicate at the speed of thought. For example, when we share our vacation experiences, we upload photos and videos. With BMI we can share our sensory and emotional experience during a vacation. We can buy contact lenses that can take pictures or video, and earbuds with the capability of universal language translator that allow us to communicate anywhere in the world.
This book is poorly organized and the style of writing (French translation into English) could have been better. It is not reader-friendly. In fact, there are numerous discussions and blogs on the web that is informative and engaging.
This is a very short and concise book about futurology and transhumanism. Some of the topics included in the discussion are; Should humans be improved? Can the technology fix everything? Does artificial intelligence (AI) will kill mankind? And could we change the way we reproduce? These discussions provide brief introduction to the technological advancement for the future of life.
transhumanists look forward to a time when we can wrest the reins of our nature from evolution using technological enhancements to increase our intelligence, communicate brain to brain, and even upload our consciousnesses into the cloud. We use writing to extend our memories and cooking to improve our diets. But technology provides us with prosthetics that enhances strength, but there is also difference between enhancement and medical corrections that restore “normal” functions. Transhumanism believes that by altering human reproduction, genetically and technologically augmenting the body, human kind will be very different. Technology is expected to offer biological freedom and be masters of our own evolution.
Market forces and the technological advancements will drive humanity to the same end point as the “singularity” of cosmology. At the center of a black hole where matter, energy and time “dissolves” in quantum space under intense gravity. Similarly, AI transcends humanity into a unified human-machine consciousness. This unification will alter human consciousness, physical strength, and emotional state.
Both wearable and implantable brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) are being developed by Elon Musk’s Neuralink, Facebook, and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). For example, when we speak, we are limited by the speed we can speak, but with a computer, we are limited by the speed of typing. But BMIs enable us to communicate at the speed of thought. For example, when we share our vacation experiences, we upload photos and videos. With BMI we can share our sensory and emotional experience during a vacation. We can buy contact lenses that can take pictures or video, and earbuds with the capability of universal language translator that allow us to communicate anywhere in the world.
This book is poorly organized and the style of writing (French translation into English) could have been better. It is not reader-friendly. In fact, there are numerous discussions and blogs on the web that is informative and engaging.
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