Guten Tag!
Okay I got book tagged by Nupur so here goes:
Total Number of Books I own: about a 100
Last book I bought:
I bought two during my last trip to the bookstore:
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: Haven't read it yet and I haven't heard a lot of good things about it.
Catcher in the Rye: I've read this one before and it has such a lot of trivia connected to it. Mark Chapman was reading it around the time he killed John Lennon, It's fairly depressing, so it doesn't surprise me.
Last book I read:
1984 by George Orwell if you mean read completely.
Currently I am reading Brighter than a thousand suns by Robert Jungk.
Five books that mean a lot to me:
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach - I think this book influenced me a lot as a child. It was the first time I was introduced to the idea of perfectionism and I found it fascinating. The story of how the pursuit of one's dreams can result in being ostracized by society.
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho - Again a very motivating book. Talks about a shephard boy and the power of dreams. It kind of taught me that resting on one's laurels isn't the way to live life. Learn to dream big. Best summarized by Shaw in these lines: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle - One of the finest mysteries I've read. I loved Sherlock Holmes when I was in Loyola. I read virtually everything ever written about Sherlock Holmes by class 10. I wanted to take up forensic medicine as a profession. Well that was another time.
Surely you're joking Mr Feynman - Incredibly interesting book. Richard Feynman is a rolemodel to me. I am going to sound awfully cliched with this, because I've seen a lot people mention this book in their tags so far, but I think his life is an example of how to live a very complete life. Here is a nobel prize winner in physics who played the bongos, sketched, played pranks on people, taught at Caltech, brought to light Challenger Shuttle failure.
The Great Escape - A world war 2 thriller. It is the book that the famous movie is based on and it describes how POWs in Germany hatched a plan to escape. It goes into really fascinating details of how they hid the tunnels they dug, how to make uniforms and IDs out of regular materials, make them look older and such. This is that rare rollercoaster ride in 300 pages.
Tagging along:
Sumeet
Ashutosh
Hob
Manish
Saturday, June 18, 2005
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
The merits of melanin
Something struck me as really queer the other day when I was talking to this American friend. Most people categorize me as South Indian given my dark complexion (although my family is from Western India). So this American friend also knew about the increasing amounts of melanin as one goes from North to the South in India. But when we continued talking about India further I realized that he had also assumed that South India must be less developed than North. His assumption that dark skin implies technological backwardness came as a little surprise to me.
I tried analyzing that issue further and I guess that's the trend that we find globally. Areas inhabited by white caucasians, be it America, Australia or Continental Europe are more affluent than others. The poorest countries in the world are from Africa, where people's skin colors are the darkest. Mongoloids are probably just as good or better than South Asians... Japanese people ofcourse are among the most affluent. People from the Middle East are also among the wealthiest. So if my American friend thought what he did, I guess he didn't realise that India is among the only exceptions to that rule. Southern India is industrially and economically superior to Northern India inspite of the lighter skins found up North.
I've partly read this book called "Guns Germs and Steel" which talks about why Europeans dominate the world today. The author summarizes his theory in the title, Gun Germs and Steel. It makes me wonder.. Had the invention of the gun been first made in Africa, would people have made similar judgements about light skinned people? Would the world be dominated by companies selling suntan lotions rather than sunscreens? ;-) Would matrimonials in India have read "smart dark and well-educated"?
Something struck me as really queer the other day when I was talking to this American friend. Most people categorize me as South Indian given my dark complexion (although my family is from Western India). So this American friend also knew about the increasing amounts of melanin as one goes from North to the South in India. But when we continued talking about India further I realized that he had also assumed that South India must be less developed than North. His assumption that dark skin implies technological backwardness came as a little surprise to me.
I tried analyzing that issue further and I guess that's the trend that we find globally. Areas inhabited by white caucasians, be it America, Australia or Continental Europe are more affluent than others. The poorest countries in the world are from Africa, where people's skin colors are the darkest. Mongoloids are probably just as good or better than South Asians... Japanese people ofcourse are among the most affluent. People from the Middle East are also among the wealthiest. So if my American friend thought what he did, I guess he didn't realise that India is among the only exceptions to that rule. Southern India is industrially and economically superior to Northern India inspite of the lighter skins found up North.
I've partly read this book called "Guns Germs and Steel" which talks about why Europeans dominate the world today. The author summarizes his theory in the title, Gun Germs and Steel. It makes me wonder.. Had the invention of the gun been first made in Africa, would people have made similar judgements about light skinned people? Would the world be dominated by companies selling suntan lotions rather than sunscreens? ;-) Would matrimonials in India have read "smart dark and well-educated"?
Thursday, June 02, 2005
Long weekend in Southern California
Los Angeles is reminescent of Bombay. Huge, crowded, unclean, polluted... I have a zillion adjectives that fit for both. This weekend I visited Hollywood and Santa Monica in LA. Hollywood is such a hip sounding name, but the reality is so far from what one imagines. It's one of the most run-down looking neighbourhoods I have seen. California is replete with such contradictions. Silicon Valley is far from the cool sophisticated sounding name and Hollywood is a similar let down. Santa Monica Boulavard doesnt deserve a song but Santa Monica itself is quite scenic. The beach looked a lot cleaner than Monterey although the waters werent particularly enticing.
Sunday I was in San Diego at Sea World. The highlight of the visit is the show of Shamu the killer whale. Now it is fairly obvious that there are about 5 killer whales doing the tricks. But all of them are called Shamu... What's worse is Sunday was Shamu's birthday. I wonder which Shamu's birthday it was. But I must say all the Shamu's did some fabulous tricks and got some poor unsuspecting tourists completely drenched.
The other peculiar thing I did this weekend was visit each of the great schools in Los Angeles. Devang's friend Pranav gave us a tour of USC. One instantaneosly recognizes USC from the scenes of many Hollywood flicks. Apparently Steven Spielberg was rejected by the USC film school and he now teaches as a visiting professor.
I got a tour of Caltech again from Nachiket. I'd love to go to grad school there, but I don't think I have the credentials to be accepted.Another life time may be.
Finally we had dinner at a Mediterranean place outside UCLA. I was too tired to notice anything around me. I don't know why Arabs call their food Mediterranean. The Middle east doesnt border the Mediterranean, apart from Palestine may be. Egypt fits the bill too I guess... But so I smoked some hookah and ate some hummus and drove in downtown LA at 2 am for a third night in a row and got away unscathed.
Los Angeles is reminescent of Bombay. Huge, crowded, unclean, polluted... I have a zillion adjectives that fit for both. This weekend I visited Hollywood and Santa Monica in LA. Hollywood is such a hip sounding name, but the reality is so far from what one imagines. It's one of the most run-down looking neighbourhoods I have seen. California is replete with such contradictions. Silicon Valley is far from the cool sophisticated sounding name and Hollywood is a similar let down. Santa Monica Boulavard doesnt deserve a song but Santa Monica itself is quite scenic. The beach looked a lot cleaner than Monterey although the waters werent particularly enticing.
Sunday I was in San Diego at Sea World. The highlight of the visit is the show of Shamu the killer whale. Now it is fairly obvious that there are about 5 killer whales doing the tricks. But all of them are called Shamu... What's worse is Sunday was Shamu's birthday. I wonder which Shamu's birthday it was. But I must say all the Shamu's did some fabulous tricks and got some poor unsuspecting tourists completely drenched.
The other peculiar thing I did this weekend was visit each of the great schools in Los Angeles. Devang's friend Pranav gave us a tour of USC. One instantaneosly recognizes USC from the scenes of many Hollywood flicks. Apparently Steven Spielberg was rejected by the USC film school and he now teaches as a visiting professor.
I got a tour of Caltech again from Nachiket. I'd love to go to grad school there, but I don't think I have the credentials to be accepted.Another life time may be.
Finally we had dinner at a Mediterranean place outside UCLA. I was too tired to notice anything around me. I don't know why Arabs call their food Mediterranean. The Middle east doesnt border the Mediterranean, apart from Palestine may be. Egypt fits the bill too I guess... But so I smoked some hookah and ate some hummus and drove in downtown LA at 2 am for a third night in a row and got away unscathed.
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