Haaris' Weekly Round-up 10

I hate Sundays. They're the little fiends who make you realize you've got nothing going in your life. They're the insouciant critters who make you sleep a little more than usual and give you body pain and arrested movement in return. And Sundays are responsible for making Mondays so unbearable; lulled into a false sense of freedom you are pushed back into the workhouses.

Nothing has changed

This week's HWR has some tennis (the US Open is on) and some other random links:

1. A brooding article on the inevitable decline in Roger Federer's tennis. Great read.
2. On the more positive side, here's an attempt to mentally simulate a match between Federer and Sampras (both at their respective peaks). You may also read a very old post on Federer written by yours truly.
3. Sinkholes are rare occurrences in India because people don't recognize them for what they are. I once recall an elderly couple beaming with happiness when their puja was disrupted by a sinkhole that developed in front of their eyes. Their explanation? "Dharti maa phat gayi!" [Mother Earth has, err, blown up]. Read this great article on National Geographic explaining what conditions lead to the formation of sinkholes and do look at this mind blowing picture of a sinkhole in Guatemala.
4. Recommendations on non-mainstream sci-fi shows on TV. And, if you've missed it, my take on science fiction as art.
5. Elon Musk's transportation panacea is predated by more than a century of development on pneumatic transport. The history in a nutshell.

Sleep is a great drug. Use it well. Happy Sunday!

HWR - 9

This is the first ever edition of an HWR that comes a week after the last one was published. Yup, I've become serious with my life.

1. Starting off with one of the biggest disappointments of my life. Most of us know the Discovery Channel as an authoritative source of spectacular visual education. I've spent my childhood growing up with NGC and Discovery. It was a shock to all of us when this year's shark week started off with a fabricated story. That's right, the whole documentary was a lie.
2. A bit late in the day to post an article on Man of Steel but I might as well tell you how superman was just not superman in the movie.
3. Jeff Bezos has bought the Washington Post. It's an acquisition that's thought provoking, to say the least.
4. Barack Obama recently intervened in a patent dispute between Apple and Samsung. It has interesting implications.
5. The internet has allowed many of us to speak out our minds. Unfortunately, most of the people in the world are dumb so that's not always a great thing, especially when they are reviewing classics on Amazon.
6. Raghuram Rajan is the new Governor of the RBI. What better time for us to read Rajan's own words on the tricky role that a central bank plays, written a few months ago.

HWR - 8

All it takes is some blood from your tonsils, dizziness and an excruciatingly painful throat to sit patiently in front of the laptop and write a few sentences.

Welcome to Haaris' Weekly Round-up:

1. A crisp case for shale gas and its future. No environmental speculation please.
2. I won't go into the Sen-Bhagwati debate. You can have a field day reading about it on the net. Instead, I offer some speculation why Bhagwati may not win the Nobel, ever. Again, don't pick sides. Yet.
3. It took money to open people's eyes in accepting anthropomorphic climate change. Insurance money.
4. Time to bring out your debating books. Zeus could have been alive; he might still be there.

And that's a wrap.

HWR-7

I had a choice between writing another long and winding philosophical discourse on the nature of the human mind on one hand, and putting up a Weekly Round-up on the other. Laziness wins hands down.

1. Facebook's IPO was much talked about before it came out and is much maligned now after falling from the lofty heights of expectation. Some people made a lot of money.
2. The Great Gatsby evoked mixed opinions on aspects such as the casting, the use of 3 D and the interpretation of the original book. My favourite review.
3. Stephen Fry nearly killed himself. Seriously.
4. The best review of Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In. A tad over-critical maybe but excellent analysis overall.

That's it for now. I am going back to that long and winding article once more. Stay tuned.

Haaris' Weekly Round-up - 6

Yup, it's still called a Weekly Round-up. I've spent three whole months in Bangalore and I have spent most of that period fixing things. Dealing with machines is tough because there are so many things that can go wrong. You might have a huge and complicated miracle of German Engineering producing high quality low cost products with interlocks and warrantees and all that it takes is one needle bearing to feel blue for the entire plant to come to a standstill. I've fixed a drier with a Hungarian dude who had one eye on the job and the other on how I could get him to a place with hooters (don't ask). I've had an entire pressure vessel replaced and tested with a tighter-than-a-dwarf's-bum schedule (I worked 14 hours for a month without holidays for that one). I've completed a crash course of sorts in kinematics. I've experienced week lag - a unique condition where you can't tell the day of the week because you've been working without any respect for the global convention of relieving weekends and frustrating Mondays.

Life couldn't have been harsher. A smart reader will now expect me to say something on the lines of, "And yet it was a brilliant experience." I will do nothing of that sort. It was stressful, strenuous and tortuous. I lost 8 kilos and a lot more besides fat.

I think I should stop right there. I was about to embark on another round-up and I ended up wasting valuable blog post material. Some other post then...

I'll soon be celebrating May Day with a mid-week holiday and here's the sort of links you should read if you are also part of a factory establishment (failing which you'll probably be on your way to work or to an exam).

1. A brilliant response from Chris Anderson who is the curator of TED to "fears" expressed by luminaries such as Deepak Chopra on TED's apparent censorship of "speculative" subjects. A must read.
2. Vincent Vega's red car from Pulp Fiction, Lost and Found.
3. A defence of the emoticon by a guy who really doesn't seem to like them so much.
4. The moment we all would have waited for if we had known John le Carre was writing another book. I did mention him in a previous round-up and I have read some of his other books since. Here's an abridged version of A Delicate Truth in the Guardian.

That's it for now. I generally like to have five links but I haven't managed to read anything worth putting here.

H

HWR - 5

Welcome to a new edition of Haaris' Weekly Round-up where I attempt to clear out all the links I had been meaning to put on my blog as far back as an year. Let's get down to it:

1. Even as the protests and media discussions push for justice, newspapers continue to be littered with more cases of abuse of women. Outraged citizens can think of all that goes unsaid; all that is swept under the carpet and bludgeoned or burned with their bodies. It makes sense to have an outside perspective albeit one with a historical context of our reaction to the many evils that plague our society. 
2. One of my first blog posts had been on how language was never in a state of stasis and was constantly evolving with almost random trends in popular usage. Here's another article with many interesting examples.
3. A long and winding article on the fonts which create the right sort of impact in different situations. A personal confession: I love Comic Sans and use it in my presentations when no one's looking.
4. On to the strange and increasingly inaccessible world of pure maths. A Japanese mathematician has claimed to have resolved the Diophantine problem, a result that would make the Fermat's Theorem a consequence of the general result. The problem? The paper is 500 pages long so any confirmation on its accuracy is not coming too soon.
5. All wars have "collateral damage" and the patent wars are no exception.

That's it for now. 

HWR - 4

Strictly or even loosely speaking, the following post is hardly a weekly roundup. I've been on the move for a month now with little or no internet access. I did manage to finish a couple of books. John le Carre's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold  was a well written espionage novel. It was the only copy left in the Carre section at a stall in the World Book Fair (I beat some good friends to that last book). The book is about an agent of the British secret service who's out on a mission, his final one, to discredit and ultimately eliminate his counterpart on the Red End. It's less of James Bond in terms of action and rather heavy with the tribulations of the battered and weary protagonist.

The highlight of 2012 will also most definitely consist of Roger Federer's 17th Grand Slam title, allowing the Swiss maestro to reclaim the rank 1 spot and further emboldening his place in the pantheon of sporting greats. I had written a post on him not so far back as a fan and it's a great privilege to see him play for some more glorious years.

Here, then, is a list of links and articles I found interesting:

1. Allow me to begin with a must read article on the state of Federer's mind before Wimbledon. Positive and slightly cautious in its outlook, it's worth a few minutes of your time.
2. This one's a really #longread. A mammoth 12000 word essay on Gandhiji.
3. I intended to write a long piece on the state of morality in the corporate world but then there are several articles on the Libor case already, including this one from HBR.
4. The demise of Rajesh Khanna closes another memorable chapter of Bollywood's history. Open magazine published an excellent story on the rise and fall of RK a month ago. Do read it.

That's it.

H

HWR - 3

It was an emotionally turbo-charged week. I am out of IIT Roorkee...

(I'll write a post on it some time)

This week's round-up has variety and I hope you like the links. As usual, please comment and disagree:

1. Neil Gaiman gave a commencement speech at The University of the Arts. Really inspirational stuff.
2. A highly readable short piece on how minor and generally insignificant research is excitedly taken up by the media and grotesquely misrepresented.
3. Facebook has been lambasted too many times in the past 10 days and I thought I'd post this article on how it threatens to take down most of the net based companies as well.
4. I've shown this link to several friends but for those of you who have missed it, take a look at Darth L. Jackson.

That's all for this edition of HWR. 

P.S. My companions at my Alma Mater are sorely missed.

H

Update: The Neil Gaiman Vimeo link has been causing problems for a lot of people. You can watch it on Youtube.

HWR-2

A big yawn to you all. I'm not really in a mood to be articulate today. Let's just get on with the round up:

1. Theoretically, all electromagnetic waves can be refracted. The amount of refraction naturally depends on the wavelength and it's been very hard to see any such effect on gamma rays. Not anymore. Researchers have managed to bend gamma radiation, with many possible applications in technology.
2. This one's for movie buffs. Here's a rare picture of the impressive gamut of stars MGM was once proud to possess. (1943)
3. A link for the increasing number of committed friends around me. A list of 42 ways to break up. (Warning: The list is huge. I haven't gone through the entire thing myself)
4. On to football now. I'm not sure how many people know about it because I haven't seen any talk or discussion. John Terry's photo was used by the Indian Health Ministry in its quit smoking graphic on all cigarette packs produced in India. Let the jokes roll.

That's about it. The week has been consumed by my BTP and all that lack of sleep has turned me into a wreck. I hope I can post something apart from an HWR next time. 

H

Haaris' Weekly Roundup

Too much of free time can kill you. It's a lesson I've learnt the hard way, after spending weeks in bed with a few painful excursions to the bathroom. It's at times like this when you must get all the grime off your life, or you'll end up like a sloth in the jungle.

I'm starting a new feature on my blog. It's not original but I don't think anyone else will be doing it in my fields of interest. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, Haaris' Weekly Roundup, a collection of anecdotes, must read articles and other topics of interest for you and me to discuss. I'm sure a lot of you will crinkle your noses in disgust and say, "It's not going to work" but the thing is, life changes too quickly for anyone to regret a bad blogging decision. 

So (rubbing my hands together), let's kick off:

1. Most of us keep the Economist in very high esteem, and it's not uncalled for- they have a measured style of writing and their way of putting forward their case is seductive- but it seems that their opinion articles are, well, highly opinionated. Several economists have questioned the supposed absence of balance and meaning in their articles. Par exemple, read.
2. A lot of us (excluding me) have seen the Avengers movie and the response has been very good. The movie has earned about 200 million dollars beating the previous record set by HP 7-2. BUT, do our comic buffs know about the boycott of the same movie called by some prominent cartoonists . The reason (as I mentioned in a tweet) is the apparent injustice meted out to the illustrator of the Avengers and several other prominent Marvel comic characters, Jack Kirby. In an essay, read and feel.
3. Moving on to astronomy, if you've missed it, do take a look at how a blackhole devours a star.
4. Tom Alters has written a very sentimental and touching post on how Sunil Gavaskar has changed from being a stalwart of the Indian batting line-up to someone who has to endure amateurs discussing IPL cricket with him.

I can go on actually but I don't want to. I'll limit myself to a maximum of five links every week. Read the ones you're interested in, and do revert back and comment.

Never fracture your fibula. 

H