Monday, December 31, 2018

Book Review: The Word Is Murder by Anthony Horowitz


The Word Is MurderThe Word Is Murder by Anthony Horowitz
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the first book in the series of Detective Inspector Hawthorne's investigations. Author is narrating the story first hand as he too plays a part in the story. Author has signed up to write about a murder investigation that inspector Hawthorne has been working on.

The story begins with the a middle aged woman going to an funeral parlor to arrange for her funeral proceeds. A few hours after her meeting with the undertaker she is found strangled at her residence. Some items are missing to give an impression of burglary being the intent behind the murder. In the past (10 yrs ago) a child was killed in a road accident and the driver in the car was the same middle aged woman who is murdered. The lady's son is a famous actor in Hollywood and he flies down to London to attend his mother's funeral. On the day of the funeral the actor son also gets murdered in the most gruesome manner.

Metropolitan police hires consultant detective inspector Hawthorne to investigate this murder.

Inspector Hawthorne contacts the author to write a book about this investigation as it unfolds. The risk was that if someone else from Met solves the case before Hawthorne does then there will not be any point in writing a book. Author accompanies Hawthorne as he interviews all suspects. Eventually Hawthorne solves the mystery. This approach to writing is reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson where Dr Watson writes about Holmes' investigations.

Overall the story is fast paced and not too long so it does well in retaining reader's attention. Looking forward to the second book in the series - the sentence is death - which is due for release in June 2019 in US.

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Book Review: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie


How to Win Friends and Influence PeopleHow to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What a great book .. it is full of common sense techniques on how a human being should interact, converse or deal with another human being. The book does not talk about any magical ways of influencing people, nor does influencing mean cheating people. It is about understanding what generally works with most humans and the results are a win-win for both parties who are interacting and not just one benefiting at the cost of the other.
I listened to the audio book so i could not take any notes then but thankfully several others on the internet have done. I am referring to https://fs.blog/2012/07/how-to-win-fr... and will elaborate some of the points in my own words (for examples on each of these points you should read the book as it is full of anecdotes related to each item below):
Part 1 - How to influence people:
When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.

The only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.

1. Don't criticize instead tell others about what you find good in them. Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself. Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment. …. Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain—and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.
2. Be honest in your appreciation. No one likes insincere praise (flattery).
3. Kindle the desire in the other person to want to do the thing you need them to do so you both benefit.

Part 2 - How to be liked by other people or make a good first impression:
1. Be genuinely interested in other person.
2. Smile while talking to others. It gives a positive impression and also makes the other person feel comfortable talking to you.
3. Remember a person's name (as that is the sweetest thing for them).
4. Be a good listener. Encourage the other person to talk about themselves. Many people like to talk about themselves.
5. Talk in terms of other person's interests - how what you are proposing to them will benefit them.
6. Make the other person feel important - and do it with sincerity. One way to do so will be to mention their good in front of others so they feel they are being recognized and will feel important that way. But we should only praise them for what we see as good in them sincerely.

Part 3 - How to win people to your way of thinking:
If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.

1. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it. Don't argue.
2. Show respect for the other person's opinion. Never say - you are wrong. That will hurt their pride and they will become defensive.
3. If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically. This goes a long way at times to prove to the other person that you are being honest.
4. Begin in a friendly way. Don't get to the complaint you have to tell the other person right away ... beginning in a friendly doing some loose talking before gently putting across your point of complaint will make the other person more receptive to your point of view.
5. Get the other person to saying - "yes"es. This is called the socrates way.
6. Let the other person do a great deal of talking.
7. Let the other person feel that the idea or ownership of the work is theirs.
8. Try to see other person's point of view.
9. Be sympathetic with the other person's ideas and desires.
10. Appeal to the nobler motives.
11. Dramatize your ideas.
12. Throw down a challenge (this works especially well for kids).

Part 4 - How to be a leader without offending or arousing resentment:
1. Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
2. Call attention to people's mistakes indirectly - so as to not hurt their pride.
3. Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person - this will soften the blow for the other person as they will realize that you too are not impeccable.
4. Let the other person save face.
5. Praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement. Be "hearty in your appreciation and lavish in your praise".
6. Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
7. Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
8. Make the other person happy about doing the thing you suggest.


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Saturday, October 13, 2018

Book Review: The Lottery by Shirley Jackson


The LotteryThe Lottery by Shirley Jackson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In a village of 300 people, an annual ritual takes place called the lottery. All village folks, men, their wives and their children come join the occasion. Children collect stones and pile them up in a corner. Every family has a representative that picks a piece of paper from a black box. There is one paper that has a black dot in it, the rest are blank. The surprise is the winner in the lottery is stoned to death by the villagers as an act of sacrifice so the farmers get good corn produce that year. In the words of 77 years old Old Man Warner - "Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon".

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Tuesday, August 07, 2018

Moved to Austin


We recently moved to Austin - a.k.a. the capital of the lone star state Texas and Silicon Hills (due to its growing tech worker population). It is also touted as the #1 place to live in the US these days.



Things we love so far about our move here are:

  1. Warm place - it gets pretty hot during summer but coming from eastern part of India we have already seen such heat in summers and it did not feel any different.
  2. Warm people - one can feel the warmth and genteelness of locals when communicating with them. 
  3. Small town feel - things are newer but spread out so it is common to see large tracts of open spaces with trees and shrubs.
  4. Open spaces and greenery 
  5. Lakes and hills - there are lakes and on western part of Austin there are hills too. 
  6. Mostly newer buildings - in general most constructions seem relatively new.
  7. Far less crowded than Silicon Valley - less number of people in general but population is growing here as more people move from other more expensive parts of US to Austin.
  8. Far less traffic on road than Bay Area
  9. Most major tech employers present - though the number of positions open in those employers may be a fraction of their offices in Silicon Valley yet many of the big companies of the Bay Area have a significant presence in terms of the number of employees they have here.
  10. Lower cost of living - a gallon of gas is $1 cheaper, no state tax, no sales tax and things in general cost less. 
  11. Lower housing cost - it is higher than many other cities in Texas but still way lower compared to Bay Area.
  12. New construction homes - we can still find plenty new homes at close proximity to work places and good schools (though they are typically higher priced and price reduces as we move further away from where most jobs are).
  13. Excellent schools - schools get 1% of the 2+% property tax so they get good funding i think. Most schools seem to have newer campuses - at least the ones we saw did.
We got an apartment in the north eastern part of Austin bordering Round Rock city. The Round Rock ISD is 21st largest school district in Texas and has some very good schools. This part of Austin has all amenities (classes for kids, restaurants, cinemas etc) available at a short distance so it is quite convenient for families. Also this part of Austin is where most of the major employers have their offices, apart from downtown area of Austin. There is metro train that makes the commute to downtown convenient. 

We are yet to explore the city and all that it has to offer but from what we saw thus far we have found no reason to regret though we still miss our friends and our San Jose home in the Bay Area.



Sunday, April 01, 2018

Book Review: The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle


The Sign of FourThe Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It is the second Sherlock Holmes book after "A Study in Scarlet". This is the story in which Dr Watson meets his future wife Ms. Mary Morstan.

Mary's father was a colonel in the British army and was posted at Andaman and Nicobar Islands. When he returned to London he wrote to her to meet him in a hotel. But Captain Arthur Morstan went missing the day he was supposed to meet his daughter. Then Mary replied to an anonymous newspaper ad asking for her whereabouts and started receiving a pearl every year. The last one she received was the 6th year since she her father went missing and it came with a letter asking her to meet one Mr Thadius Sholto. It was then that Mary contacts Mr Sherlock Holmes to accompany her to the meeting.

Captain Morstan and his colleague Major John Sholto were told about the secret of a hidden treasure by a captive in the Andaman Islands named John Small in return for their help in arranging for a boat in which Small and his 3 Sikh friends will escape from Andaman Islands prison. But Major Sholto double-crossed everyone and stole the treasure for himself. He went back to London and lived a royal life.

Small with the help of a native islander named Tonga goes to London to take his revenge on both Sholto and Captain Morstan and to get the treasure back. Sherlock Holmes with his ingenious detection abilities, tracks Small down as he and Tonga try to escape on a boat.

The stories of Sherlock Holmes have been written in such an appealing fashion that even after so many years they still capture the imagination of the reader and are unputdownable.

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Saturday, February 24, 2018

Book Review: Superhuman by Habit: A Guide to Becoming the Best Possible Version of Yourself, One Tiny Habit at a Time by Tynan


Superhuman by Habit: A Guide to Becoming the Best Possible Version of Yourself, One Tiny Habit at a TimeSuperhuman by Habit: A Guide to Becoming the Best Possible Version of Yourself, One Tiny Habit at a Time by Tynan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a book about how building good habits and being consistent with those habits can make a man a superman. Author tells about about how he does it in this book. Here are some notes that i took:
1. When people learn that I write every single day, study a foreign language every day, work on my big projects every day, eat healthy every day, work out every other day, and maintain a consistent sleep schedule, they marvel at the deep well of self discipline that I have. In truth, though, it's all just habits that feel easy. Habits are the closest we can get to having superpowers.
2. Replacing just a few key negative habits with a few positive habits can easily be the difference between being mostly unhappy and being happy almost all of the time.
3. The benefit of a habit isn't the magnitude of each individual action you take, but the cumulative impact it will have on your life in the long term.
4. Missing two days of a habit is habit suicide. If missing one day reduces your chances of long-term success by a small amount like five percent, missing two days reduces it by forty percent or so. Three days missed and you may as well be starting over.
5. When you first miss a habit, the next occurrence of it should become a top priority. You must execute on that habit at any level possible. Do it perfectly if you can, but do it terribly if that's all you can handle. Just make sure that you do it.
6. Just like a marriage, any habit that's intended to last forever will require loyalty through good and bad, sickness and health.
7. Remember that the power of a habit isn't actually in the individual execution, but in the consistency. It is far far worse to skip doing something than to just do a horrible job of it.
8. So if you're trying to lose weight, evaluate yourself based on how well you stick to your plan rather than the number on the scale, especially in the short term.
9. Track your adherence to process, not your results.
10. Sometimes building small habits can build momentum and self-confidence that gives people the strength and motivation to tackle the larger ones.
11. The first phase of habits, countering your weaknesses, makes you the best version of yourself.
12. Exploring areas that “just aren't you” is how you expand how you define yourself and take things to the next level.
13. create habits to surround yourself with positive people. The way I did this was to create a habit of only hanging out with people who I wanted to become better friends with. Within half a year this changed my social circle significantly for the better.
14. Whether other people are doing smart things, dumb things, things that help us, or things that harm us, both parties can be best served through fostering compassion and minimizing focus on how wrong the other is.
15. “Remember that everyone is just doing their best and trying to be happy, just like you.”
16. Eating healthy food may be the single most important habit that you can cultivate.
17. Sugar and highly-refined grains are the most significantly unhealthy things in the standard diet. Eliminating those two groups of foods is about eighty percent of getting to a healthy diet.
18. Items to cut out include refined sugars (including all fruit juices), agave and maple syrups, and honey, and refined grains such as white flour, white rice, and white pasta.
19. increase your intake of complex carbohydrates, like brown rice, as well as natural simple carbohydrates like fruit.
20. The goal isn't to have a perfect diet in every way, but to eliminate the dozen or so foods that do the most damage, and to enjoy your diet enough to make it sustainable.
21. When you successfully tackle sugar and refined carbohydrates, you can turn your attention to fats. The greatest threat is consuming too many Omega-6 and Omega-9 fats. These are found in most cooking oils as well as non-pasture raised meat, eggs, and dairy.
22. limit your oil intake to coconut oil for cooking and dressing, olive oil for dressing, and grass-fed butter. Meat should be limited to grass-fed beef and lamb, pasture-raised pork and poultry and wild-caught fish.
23. experiment with extremely healthy foods like miso soup, kale, cruciferous vegetables, tempeh, nuts, and seeds.
24. I eat a sardine sandwich and tuna sandwich almost every day for lunch. Any time I'm running low on Ezekiel bread, spinach, hummus, or fish, I restock so that I'm never more than a few minutes away from a healthy meal.
25. The goal with good sleep is to get as much sleep as your body wants, probably around 8 hours on average, and to wake up without an alarm clock.
26. The first step towards a good sleep habit is creating a good sleep environment. The key components of a good sleep environment are complete darkness and silence.
27. The tipping point for me was reading the excellent book, the Willpower Instinct, which said that the two best practices for increasing willpower were working out and meditating every day.
28. There are a lot of purported benefits of meditation, all of which I'm sure are experienced by one person or another, but the most significant benefit I've derived is better impulse control.
29. Every day, just sit for five minutes in a quiet space, close your eyes, and focus on your breath. For the first minute or two, it can help to subvocalize, “breathe in.... breathe out... breathe in... breathe out...” Such a simple task is enough to keep your mind focused.
30. Your overriding goal is just to sit there for five minutes. Any time you do that, you have successfully meditated. When you notice that your mind starts thinking about something else, refocus on your breath.
31. The most tangible benefit I noticed from meditation was that it created a space in between feeling an impulse and acting on it.
32. Work out three days a week, doing three exercises each day. Monday is deadlifts, pullups, and rows. Wednesday is bench press, incline bench press, and curls. Friday is squat or leg press, straight-leg deadlift, and cable crunches. Deadlifts of both varieties are two sets of 4-6 reps, pullups are three sets of 4-6, everything else is three sets of 8-12.
33. Shifting your diet to 30-40% protein, including a shake one hour before working out, will help.
34. Ideas don't exist in a vacuum, so whatever outside influences we're exposed to become a part of our creation process and affect our output.
35. Our brains are lazy and we're creatures of habit. That means that without conscious effort, we will only do what is comfortable and familiar.
36. By making desirable behaviors comfortable and familiar, we can change them from being cumbersome and mentally taxing to comfortable and easy.
37. I noticed that having a clean and uncluttered living and working space makes it easier to think, helps keep my stress levels low, and improves my mood.
38. The essential habit of becoming a minimalist is the habit of regularly evaluating how your possessions either add to or detract from the conscious life you're living and then getting rid of those things that are burdensome.
39. Twice, then Quit is very simple. When you want to quit working for the first time, don't. Push through and work some more. The second time you want to quit, also don't quit. Push through again. The third time you want to quit, go ahead and quit. This habit is deceptively simple, but is very effective.
40. To truly exceed our normal capabilities, we must learn to use that willpower as efficiently as possible. To do that, we habitualize as much as possible, taking actions that previously consumed willpower and making them automatic.

A good and easy to read book.

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Friday, February 16, 2018

Book Review: The Perfect Score Project: Uncovering the Secrets of the SAT by Debbie Stier


The Perfect Score Project: Uncovering the Secrets of the SATThe Perfect Score Project: Uncovering the Secrets of the SAT by Debbie Stier
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A book true to its name - uncovers some of the facts about SAT exam taken by 3 million students world wide. Author is a single mom with 2 kids. She works in book publishing industry and is an avid and a speed reader. She wanted to inspire her elder son Ethan by taking the SAT exam herself. A good SAT score is also a pre-requisite to getting scholarship. Being a single mom, author decides it was important that her son does well in SAT exam and be able to get some scholarship and admission to a good college. So she starts the perfect score project and she sets out to write a book on her experiences of taking the SAT exam in the year 2011. SAT exams are held 7 times in a year. She takes all 7 of those exams starting in January 2011. In the process she discovers other moms who were like her and did not consider it an oddity that she was taking SAT exam at the age of 47, just so she can inspire and work with her son to take it one day and do well in his exam. She reads several of the prep books for SAT exam on the market - from Kaplan (which was the earliest of its kind to come in the market), Princeton Review (which came next) and others. She concludes that the original material by the college board was the only good source to prepare with. The other prep books cannot get the same licensed material for the passages in the exam as college board can so they generally get some free material published ages ago (as such material won't have copyright restrictions) and this makes the exams in the prep books harder than the actual SAT exam. She also emphasizes on the use of paper and pencil to write the exam so one can practice with filling the circles (SAT exams are still conducted on paper as of this writing). Author tries different tutors for critical reading, grammar and math. She did up her score with all her attempts but still could not get a perfect score of 800 in any of the sections. She mentions that it is vain to invest too much time in preparing for essay writing as there is no guarantee if that will fetch a 12 marks instead of more commonly gotten 9 or 10. Instead students should focus more on math and answering critical reading comprehension questions correctly. Likewise she also mentions that preparing for vocabulary with the most frequently asked words for SAT should suffice and one will be wise to not put too much time in trying to learn a dictionary or learn advanced words or get vocabulary building books. There is not too much to be gained from such pursuits. SAT exams generally test the knowledge of vocabulary from the limited set of oft repeated words that appeared in the previous SAT exams. Another thing she mentions was her son became motivated to do well in his SAT exam after having visited college campus in the Spring of his Junior year. But on hindsight author feels it was too late and she should have taken her son earlier to visit college campuses. Another thing author learned was that skill at Math is not built overnight. In her final attempt she could get 560 out of 800 in math. She could not get beyond it as not that she did not know the answers but she was not fast enough in math. She says that Kumon is a worthwhile approach to practice math from younger years so one can build good speed with good understanding of math. Also she thinks the timed tests in Kumon are also great help in preparing students for SAT exam. She also mentions of some important prep websites that she discovered:
http://thecriticalreader.com/ - by Erica Meltzer who was also author's tutor.
https://kitchentablemath.blogspot.com/ - by author's friend Catherine Johnson who was going to co-author the book and is also a mom like the author who took SAT herself.
https://www.erikthered.com - a good site to practice math
http://perfectscoreproject.com/ - this is author's website for this book.

I liked the interview between author and her son towards the end of the book. Author asks her son if he was at all inspired by her efforts and to which her son does say that he was and it meant a lot to him to have his mother work with him and be able to guide him during his preparations. Ethan wrote the exam twice and could up his score by 30 marks in his final attempt. This book is recommended for parents who want to learn about the exam so they can help their kids in the right time. Remember, higher SAT score also means good college and good scholarship.

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Tuesday, February 06, 2018

Book Review: A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William B. Irvine


A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic JoyA Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William B. Irvine
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is an account of author's practice of stoicism as a philosophy for a good life. He presents different facets of stoicism as taught or practiced by the ancient greek and roman philosophers. Seneca, Zeno, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius are some of the renowned practitioners of stoicism that have been cited in the book. It talks about how we can deal with negative emotions like anger, jealousy, consumerism, desires, repulsion from annoying company, lust, the fear of death and of old age or ill health etc.

It talks about the practice of negative visualizations in life (for example, thinking if what we love today in our life may go away, die or perish the next moment), and this will enable us to give more attention to the things we cherish in the present (now) when we are fortunate to have it/them. For example, our kids who we love but are too busy in our lives to give our due attention at times. This practice of negative visualization will shape our minds to not suffer as much from the loss of our beloved ones and in the mean time also let us cherish the moments with them we are blessed to have in the present.

The goal of a stoic is to look for inner peace or tranquility. If the inner peace is lost due some act then that act is not worth doing. A good read.


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Friday, January 26, 2018

Book Review: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline


Ready Player OneReady Player One by Ernest Cline
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I got to know about this book after having seen the trailer of the eponymous upcoming movie by Steven Spielberg. This book belongs to the cyber punk genre, my first book of its kind and though I have hardly played much of any video game or watched the 80’s movies that this book mentions of, i still enjoyed the story. Much like JK Rowling, author Ernest Cline has woven a new world of virtual reality. In the story, James Halliday is a creator of a virtual reality system called OASIS that much of the human world plays as it gives them an avenue to forget about the grim realities of the then real-world and become anything they wanted to be and yet remain anonymous in the virtual world. Wade Watts is a teenager who is an orphan and spends almost all of his time in OASIS, even going to a school within OASIS on a planet called Ludis. OASIS is made of several such worlds and Ludis is one of the several worlds. After Halliday dies his video announcement is released to the world where he declares that after him the person that inherits the authority over OASIS and his vast wealth will be the one who is able to find an Easter egg first that he had hidden in OASIS. That starts a hunt for the egg world wide.

The author describes the technology and usage of virtual reality in a way that seems feasible in the near future. He imagines how one can be connected to the virtual world and experience the virtual reality more vividly through the glasses that can draw the images directly on the retina that renders the virtual world so clearly that even real world looks blurry in comparison. He talks about how one experiences the weight of the things in he virtual world through haptic sensors all over their body and even have olfactory sensors to generate various kinds of smells for objects seen in the virtual world - like if one smells a rose flower in the virtual world then in the real world the olfactory sensors will produce the scent of rose flower thus making the experience more real. He goes on to explain several such experiences that one can have in virtual reality like going to school in OASIS and may be that could become a reality in our near future like a university offering their classes in VR. Recommended reading material.

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Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Book Review: Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson


Einstein: His Life and UniverseEinstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book describes the life and times of Albert Einstein, who was one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century. He was born in Germany and lived until the age of 75. He married Maleiva while studying in Zurich. They had a daughter who Einstein could never see and was given up for adoption. Later on they had 2 sons of whom Hans Albert Einstein was the elder one and Edward the younger. Edward was not mentally fit and had to spend most part of his life in an asylum. Einstein was not living with his sons and had married his cousin Elsa and lived in Berlin .. maleiva used to take care of their sons.. Einstein did not divorce her until much later and when he did he did so with the significant sum that he got from his nobel prize. He moved to the US at the time when Hitler was coming to power in Germany .. he chose to stay till the end of his life for almost 22 years in Princeton as a lecturer for physics and mathematics ..

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Book Review: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot


The Immortal Life of Henrietta LacksThe Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The book is about the HeLa cells and the story of the person from whose malignant tumor these immortal cells originated. They were first of their kind as most cells would die in the culture medium soon after they were separated from the human body. The HeLa cells were revolutionary as at that time in 1950s scientists wanted such immortal cells to experiment with and did not know how to make cells immortal (which they do now). So HeLa (first 2 letters from the donor's first and last name) cells proved to be a boon at that time and saved several lives indirectly by helping scientists do research on them and come up with vaccines for diseases like Polio and several others. The cells were grown in the culture medium and sold for money to different labs all over the world. The book talks about the ethical issues that this led to and the rights of the patients and their kith and kin's over the profits that were made in the process. Henrietta Lacks was from rural Virginia. She developed Cervical cancer and was being treated in Johns Hopkins university hospital in Baltimore. The doctors took some part of her tumor tissues and gave to one research lab where it was found that the cells were unique in that they survived longer than any previously known cell line. It was labeled as HeLa. Scientists all over the world got access to the HeLa cells for their research and most of them did not even think about who was the actual person behind those cells. There were several articles written about HeLa but none could go as deep as this book does. Rebecca Skloot dedicated herself to write the story of Henrietta and her family. She managed to get an interview with Henrietta's daughter Debra and they became good friends in the process as Debra whole-heartedly wanted to help and in the process get to learn more about her mother and her younger sister's fate. The plight of the family was such that they did not comprehend why Henrietta's cells were famous. They were poor and wanted to get some benefit out of their mother's famous cells that researchers did not take permission from Henrietta's family to use for research and did not provide any share in the profits that were made out of celling their mother's cells. They felt being wronged. And that is the ethical issue that this book debates about if a human needs to be informed that their tissue (a discarded part of their body) will be made use of in some kind of research, will they have any rights to the profits made from the research if there is any, will it hinder the progress of science if there are too many laws defined about the use of tissues and royalties to be paid to the donors, etc.. As it stands today, there is no law requiring consent of patient about use of their tissues by researchers and there is no right that the patients can exercise on the profits made in the process. A nice book on the subject and first one on the topic of cell culture and cell immortality for me.

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Book Review: Origin (Robert Langdon, #5) by Dan Brown


Origin (Robert Langdon, #5)Origin by Dan Brown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dan Brown is one of my favorite authors. In this book Robert Langdon is invited to attend a presentation by a celebrity geek Edmond Kirsch who was his student at Harward. During the presentation Edmond gets assassinated and Robert together with Ambra Vidal, the museum curator and also Edmond's friend, goes on a mission to show Edmond's presentation to the world. Edmond had created a super intelligent virtual assistant that could converse like a human would and was run by a new kind of Quantum super computer which was significantly better than Google's D-Wave and was called E-Wave. Edmond named his assistant Winston after Winston Churchill. Winston comes to the aid of Robert and Ambra to help them first find the password to unlock Edmond's presentation which Edmond told Robert was a sentence from a poem of 47 characters. With this vague information and his ingenious intuition to figure things out Robert Langdon first gets the password and then to the Edmond's lab and run Edmond's presentation to millions of viewers all across the world. The presentation was about 2 quintessential questions of mankind:
1. Where do we come from? - About our origin
2. Where are we going? - About the future
Edmond had found that given sufficient time the experiment to create life from chemicals in a test tube in the lab can be successful. This experiment was first conducted by UC San Diego professors in their lab and after 50 years they could not see sufficient signs of amino acid formation in the test tube and so the experiment was shelved. But Edmond realized that the time span of 50 years is nothings compared to how long it actually took life to form on earth since the beginning of earth's formation to the time when first unicellular protozoa came into existence. So he built a virtual time machine which was a data model for his super computer to make predictions with. He modeled the conditions of early days of earth with a test tube worth of chemicals just like the physical experiment and let the super computer generate the data of how things evolve with respect to time. This way he could go way ahead in time than mere 50 years and could see the formation of amino acid to unicellular to multi cellular organisms and to larger animal kind. He could also predict how the future will look like with technology becoming part of the human body.

The story line is not as interesting as other Robert Langdon books but it is still easy and fun to read.

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Book Review: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker


The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has DeclinedThe Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I came to know of this book from Bill Gates' review and he recommended this book so vehemently that i decided i will give this book a try. I did not read it but listened to the MP3 CD while commuting between home and work. The author Steven Pinker has done a very thorough research on the topic of how humanity has become more civilized during the course of history from being barbarians and savages to gradually more compassionate humans that we are today. He has put forth the findings from history based on what influenced humans to be more compassionate and less violent than we ever were in the past. Bill Gates puts it nicely and i will quote it from his review: "Many people are surprised to hear that we live in a far less violent time, because you see and read about tons of violence in the news. But Pinker argues convincingly that it’s our awareness and sensitivity to violence that have increased, not violence itself, which is way down."

Following are the changes that enabled humans to become more civilized or less violent during the course of history:
1. Agriculture - enabled humans to settle down in communities
2. Empathy for other humans increased as means of spreading ideas and knowledge increased with the advent of printing press and awareness of the lives and plights of the people in distant parts of the world increased
3. Better governance and the rule of law - countries where the governments are more stable and are able to enforce the rule of law in the society tend to have lesser violence.

The book also details how gruesome the past has been where humans came up with innovative ways to torture other humans, witch hunting practices, and other social evils like Sati-pratha in India, were prevalent. Those details are the evidence that author presents to support his argument that the time in which we live in is way less violent than the past.

This is a long book and i liked having listened to the audio book. I will like to read it now and take notes on my kindle.


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Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Book Review: The Dry by Jane Harper


The Dry (Aaron Falk, #1)The Dry by Jane Harper
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Author Jane Harper has written a beautiful mystery book which is unputdownable. The plot is fast paced enough and the characters in the prose come to life with the excellent writing.

Aaron Falk, a cop working in Melbourne, is visiting his native village to attend the funeral of his friend Luke Hadler who is thought to have killed his family and took his own life but Luke’s parents believe there is more to it and wanted Aaron’s help in figuring out the real reason. There is also a past incident where Aaron and his dad were forced to move out of their village 20 yrs ago as they were suspects in Aaron’s friend Ellie’s murder. Aaron reluctantly tries investigating the case first but as he gets deeper in it he extends his visit and tries to get the root of the mystery. The characters are not too many and they fit nicely in the plot.

Will look forward to reading the next book by the author.

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Book Review: The Wright Brothers by David McCullough


The Wright BrothersThe Wright Brothers by David McCullough
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I completed listening to the audio book The Wright Brothers today. It is an excellent biography of the two famous brothers who invented the flying machine. Wilbur was the elder one of the 3 siblings followed by 3 yrs younger to him Orville and the youngest one their sister Catherine. They lost their mother at a very young age and were brought up by their father who was a bishop at Dayton Ohio. The brothers had a bicycle shop in Dayton and they used to make and repair bikes. They were avid readers and after a reading a book on aviation by a French author Orville got interested in making their own flying machine. They were not educated in any reputed institution of the day but just by the dint of their hard work and ingenuity and perseverance they managed to invent a flying machine. At that time prof Langley was commissioned to research and create a flying machine but he failed miserably and the government sponsored project that he was working on drew harsh criticism for the money and time wasted in the attempt. Compared to $70000 that Langley’s failed project costed over a period of a decade the Wright brothers only spent $1000 of their own money to get a working model ready. They chose Kittyhawk in North Carolina as their site for flying machine experiments where they kept improving their machine to perfection and got it working around 1902. Wilbur went to France and gave a successful demonstration of their machine. They were able to demo the operation and train French pilots and got their first orders from French government. Back at home they demonstrated the first flight over Statue of Liberty at New York City. There were a million people that came to watch the spectacle. The brothers decided to not ride together in case if an accident befalls them then the surviving one will carry on the project. They established their company called the Wright company. Wilbur died at the age of 45 in the year 1914. Orville lived until 1948. There is a memorial at Kittyhawk and one in France to honor the two brothers. They never married and the book does not talk about what became of their company after Orville died. Several universities including Yale and Harvard conferred honorary degrees to the two brothers.

The invention of the flying machine was one of the greatest achievements of mankind. To make a machine fly independent of whether there was a favorable wind or not and to be able to control its direction while in flight was a challenge that many were trying to solve. Many lives were lost in the pursuit. To defy the pull of gravity and soar like a bird has been a dream cherished by many. What the Wright brothers achieved proves that man can surmount any problem with discipline and hard work. The author has a done a noble job in penning down the lives of the brothers who gave to us the magic and convenience of flight. What a leap of progress it was for mankind.




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