Life of Pi

This is a 2001 novel by Yann Martel. I listened to the audiobook version.

I haven't seen the movie, and I didn't know anything about the book, and just picked up the audiobook at the library when I had just a minute before I had to run. 

I almost stopped after the first few chapters, being irritated by all the preaching and religious blather. But I didn't have an alternative to make my commutes productive, so I persisted. Boy, am I glad! 

Soon, this book blossoms into an un-put-downable thriller in unlikely settings. Piscene "Pi" Patel is the 16 year old son of a zoo keeper from Pondicherry. His family decide to wind down the zoo and emigrate to Canada. On the way on a cargo ship, they all perish with the ship except for Pi and a couple of the animals. As it all shakes out pretty soon, Pi is left with Richard Parker, a 450 pound adult Bengal Tiger. He somehow survives the Tiger, the elements and the sea for 227 days before coming up ashore in Mexico.

Being from the very south Indian province (Tamil Nadu) the protagonist hails from, I found the cultural references surprisingly accurate and nuanced. Except for his name itself, perhaps. Toward the end (of the main narrative), the book was a bit stretched out, but I didn't mind it too much. The prose was really good, and the narrative kept surprises coming. Enjoyable.

And that's the first layer. Beneath it is a deeper and subtler layer of "truth" as tantalizingly alluded to toward the end. It is one of the best "twists" I have come across in any story. To even call it a twist is cheapening it - it's brilliant, and deeply satisfying, no matter what you believe.

To be honest, it took me a couple of days after I finished the book to really understand the ending. It's just brilliant. 

PS:
I read that Barack Obama read the book with his daughter, and wrote to the author, in which he said "It is a lovely book — an elegant proof of God, and the power of storytelling." I think that's awfully clever, and to me just shows what a smart man Obama is!

Contrafreeloading

I came across an interesting term "contrafreeloading" in Dan Ariely's "The Upside of Irrationality."

Explanation from birdchannel.com

Contrafreeloading: (verb) The behavior in which animals offered the choice between eating food provided to them for free or working to get that food would eat the most food from the source that required effort. This term was created in 1963 by animal psychologist Glen Jensen. Jensen ran a study on 200 male albino rats where the end result was the rats ate more from the food source where the rats had to press on a bar to get the pellet rather than the dish of pellets where they didn’t have to do anything at all. Jensen then studied the behaviors of gerbils, mice, birds, fish, monkeys and chimpanzees. In fact many have studied contrafreeloading since then with similar results, except for the domestic cat – which likes to be served. This 1963 study’s results were surprising because it would be more logical, from an evolutionary point of view, to not expand energy to get food when food is freely available. 

Interestingly, I read about this on the same day our 1 year old decided she'd run around and around her high chair, instead of sitting on it, while taking one spoon of her dinner per round. We found it funny, and also satisfying since she ate more. 

I started wondering if there is a connection. How about humans? Do we exhibit contrafreeloading too? I doubt adults do, at least when it comes to food. But perhaps kids do? Should try some experiments at home!

The Fine Print

The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use "Plain English" to Rob You Blind by David Cay Johnston

Suppose I buy a mannequin and house him in an apartment in say the Cayman Islands. Then I declare that he owns me - at least my intellect and by limbs, so that whatever I may do to earn an income, I'll be using his property. So I need to pay him royalty. He's one cruel master - he wants all my income (except may be my expenses for food and shelter.) So come tax time, I write off all my royalty expenses, leaving me with a very small income on which to pay tax. Hopefully, I'll be below the lowest bracket and not have to pay any taxes. Perhaps I may even qualify for some government benefits like social security. Meanwhile, my master the Mannequin takes all my income and has no taxes to pay, since he lives in a tax shelter. May be one day I'd want to buy a car or a house, in which case I can borrow money from my master. Of course, he'll demand a steep interest rate, which I'll get to write off on my taxes as well. 

Sounds nuts? If you were a US corporation, you can do all this and much much more. Replace the mannequin with a "holding company", the "intellect and limbs" with patents/intellectual-property and brand/trademarks, social security with tax credits. And probably you don't even need to go all the way to the Caymans - something like Delaware would do.

This and so many high blood pressure causing financial shenanigans by big corporations and the rich are revealed and explained in this book. The key take-aways are, what's practiced in the USA is not the free markets that Adam Smith talked about, but it is all about corporate socialism. It's a story of how monopolies and oligopolies rob the many to enrich the very few at the top, with a active and slavish support of the government.

The book itself is well written and full of clear explanations of complex subject matter. It may be a it tilted to the left, but the passion is to be expected if the author really cares about the subject, which is does. 

Simon Singh's Big Bang

Just finished reading Simon Singh's "Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe". I have read quite a few popular books on Cosmology, but this one is probably the best so far in terms of reading pleasure. Despite being nearly 500 pages long, it kept my interest throughout. It was total joy to read - probably the funnest long book I've ever read.

This is an excellent historical narrative of the development of the Big Bang theory; one gets an overview of the science, but also of the process and personalities involved. I always crave for a historical perspective or a chronological narrative when learning science concepts. I have often thought to myself, if I ever taught someone a science course, I'd peel the onion as it really unfolded in history - I feel this will give the student a great perspective and a deeper understanding of the concepts. Well, this book does exactly that.

This is no way a comprehensive or an in depth work. Any book on Big Bang that mentions inflation and quantum mechanics in the Epilogue, and doesn't mention String theory at all, can't be. But for someone new to the subject, this should be an ideal first book. Even for me, who was familiar with much of the subject matter beforehand, this was worth every minute. I'll probably read it again some time - it's a lot of fun!