The Cycle

To see my father slowly become irrelevant, less and less of a man, less and less of a person, to be treated like an annoying and almost unwanted baby; to see him shrink and shrivel physically, become fragile and broken in so many places in his body, has been hard. We all have almost forgotten what he used to be. For some of us in the family, especially my children, this ghost is all they know of him, which is sadder in a way. This is all deeply personal, of course. I am unconsciously aware that this could very well be my fate too. Consciously, I worry about  what my kids are learning about the roles and capacities of elders, or the way to interact with one’s aged parents.

As I wait outside his ICU, day after day, I go through the whole gamut of emotions – sadness, anger, anxiety, guilt, tenderness, impatience, resignation, and boredom. I see other families around me, just waiting, looking passive, going through the motions, and remarkably not exhibiting much emotion. I got to know one family who had to make that Big Decision – to let their loved one fade away in comfort, and not be subjected to more and more interventions and invasions. To Let Go. Amazingly, they had smiles on their faces as they checked out and took their father home.

As I witness the miraculous rescue efforts these doctors and nurses are staging to save my father and the other patients in the ICU, most of them with severe head injuries, I simultaneously marvel, on the one hand, at the human ingenuity that teased out all this knowledge and invented all these technologies , and on the other, realize how we are so powerless in the face of nature’s relentlessness in enforcing its rules. Two different doctors told me in just the past few days, that medicine is not a science, and it’s more of a trial-and-error-and-hope-for-the-best craft. This humility is actually refreshing, though not reassuring. There is work to be done, progress to be made. Or, if you are in a cynical mood, it’s all pointless. Either way, it’s good to remember: nature is neither kind, nor cruel; it just IS.

I am afraid I am no wiser in the end. Irrespective of the outcome, life will go on, and most of these little revelations will recede from my consciousness. Until the next crisis. And so on. Until, one goes down to the vile dust from whence one sprung.

Who's after one-term President Mrs. Clinton?

At some point, I still predict (ok, hope), Americans will wake up to the fact that Trump is an a****le and not qualified to lead a country, handing Hillary Clinton a historical presidency.

Which she will blow by not so much as doing something bad, but by an inability to inspire and rally the people in the midst of Republican obstructionism.

But the GOP will go through a thorough purge and emerge strong in 2020 and some sane leader will emerge there and sweep to power.

Who will that be?

On Astrology

(Pretty much a cut/paste from a facebook post of mine. Yes, this is what I do on facebook. Apart from feeling jealous of other people's vacations, that is)

This is how astrology started: people always asked 'why' questions. But nature/life is brutal - there are no easy answers, and many times there are *no* answers. But the human brain being wired to find patterns, started noticing patterns in events. These were mere coincidences: like when this planet was rising, this king died; when that comet appeared, there was a famine. etc. This was not stupid - this was the state of the art at that time. Sometimes this kind of pattern matching worked - like in predicting weather. But most of the time it was mere correlation (with a modestly positive R) mixed with human frailties of selective memory, confirmation bias etc. that led to such false beliefs getting entrenched.

This knowledge, which was indeed acquired by the best minds of the time, after meticulous observations and sometimes amazing mathematical feats, got codified as the rules of astrology (panjangams, shasthras etc. in Hindu culture).

But knowledge moves on. Every new generation has smart minds. (Seriously - even among the millennials!) New facts and better patterns are uncovered, and occasionally fundamental pieces of understanding emerge. When this happens, the old knowledge has to be thrown away. It's no longer valid, however dear to us.

Here is where many people stumble. No matter how venerable the old scholars were, they were wrong in many things about nature. We now know better.

To be clear, just because I know about the latest scientific theories, am I smarter than Aryabhata or Aristotle? Absolutely not. They were giants of human thought. But if I cling on to a geo-centric theory of the universe because those great ancestors of ours believed that, then I am indeed stupid.

Books I Read in 2015

1. Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks and Big Pharma Flacks by Ben Goldacre: A passionate, succinct attack on medical pseudo science and fraud

2. The Arabian Nights Adapted by Neil Philip: (bed-time reading to son) A very abridged version aimed at children. These stories can be improved! One day...

3. Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath by Ted Koppel : magazine article stretched to ~300 pages. Would have been a hard-hitting, eye-opening article though

4. A Series of Unfortunate Events - The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket : why the popularity?

5. In The Country: Stories by Mia Alvar : Fascinating collections of shorts that helps one get a glimpse of the world as seen from a Filipino emigrant perspective. The author has a gift for great observation and simple but elegant prose.

6. Living Trusts for Everyone by Ronald F. Sharp : very practical

7. The Very Best of Feynman Lectures : Audio CDs; without looking at the blackboard, can't understand large parts of the lectures

8. The Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder : (bed-time reading to son) - Well deserved classic; takes on to the frontier.

9. The House on the Cliff by Franklin W. Dixon (read in parallel with son to help with his 3rd grade book report work)

10. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy : (Listened to audiobook primarily) : fantastic novel - would have rated 10/10 if not for the disappointing late conversion of Levin to faith on rather flimsy grounds

11. The Inside Tract: your good gut guide to great digestive health by Gerard E. Mullin, Kathie Madonna Swift : Provided the catalyst in diagnosing gluten sensitivity

12. The Opposite of Spoiled: Raising kids who are grounded, generous and smart about money 

13. How To Raise a Wild Child by Scott D. Sampson

14. The Test : Why our schools are obsessed with standardized testing..by Anna Kamenetz

15. Billions and Billions by Carl Sagan, one of the most awesome people that ever lived. 

16. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome: picked it up on Project Gutenberg because I remembered the author's name form a middle school text I read. Turned out to be a pretty good read; typical brit humor.