In Praise of Cold

Recently, we had a lot of guests coming to Boston for the wedding of our daughter. Many of them came from the warmer part of the country, like California, and they were quite vociferous in their displeasure of having to spend a few days in New England’s late winter.

This made me think—why is there such a resistance against cold weather?

I not only have no problems with cold, I actually prefer colder climate than hot. Perhaps it has to do with growing up in the extreme heat of an arid part of India. In those days, an air-conditioned room was bliss (we did not have any), and going for vacation in the cold areas, such as a “hill station,” was heaven. Perhaps that experience has shaped me into being who I am.

However, I am convinced that one does not have to be me to enjoy cold weather; I feel that the resistance against it is entirely irrational.

First of all, most of us get exposed to weather only when we step outside. Our homes are comfortably heated or cooled and so are our cars. Many of those who complain about cold hardly step outside these comfortable cocoons, so what difference does it make to them whether they live in cold climate or hot?

Second, when you do step outside, you can always protect yourself against cold by wearing warm cloths. You cannot do that when the outside is very hot. After peeling off that last layer of clothing, you just have to endure heat. So, as it turns out, you are more likely to be cooped up inside if you live in a hot place than in a cold one.

Third, it is more likely that the interior is heated in a cold place than cooled in a warm one. Air-conditioning is expensive and not considered essential. I lived without it when I was growing up in India. Even now I experience hot non-air-conditioned rooms in our own house (we do not have central AC), or when we stay in inexpensive hotels in many parts of the world. So, not only are you miserable walking outside in a hot place but also being inside. The same will not be true if you lived in a cold place.

Fourth, you feel more invigorated and healthy in a cold environment than hot. Being sweaty and perspiring does not lead to having a lot of fun. Lethargy takes over and the level of activity is curtailed.

If, by these arguments, I have convinced you that cold is not all that bad, and even could be good, you may be able to get more out of your life.

For instance, I don’t know how many times I have heard folks telling me that they would not go to Antarctica because they are afraid of being cold.  This irrational fear is keeping them from experiencing one of the most magical places in the world. (By the way, Antarctica in summer is warmer than Boston in winter.)

Also, unless you are living in the extreme north, most places that have cold winter also have distinct spring, summer, and fall. This four-season living provides you with constant change, and most people would agree that change is an important element in being happy. One can get bored if there is no change, no matter how “good” the situation is.

As an illustration, I go for walks on nearby trails in woods and around ponds, camera in my hand. Every time I go, I see something different.  The leaves turn from light green to dark green and then red and orange. Water turns to snow and ice. Birds come and go. The sunlight comes at different angles as the year progresses.

Try to get this variation and freshness in a place where the weather remains the same year around. 

How Will We Win This War?

A war is never good.  The misery it brings to people involved, the death and destruction, is not something human being should aspire to. However, the wars are not the same. Some are worse than the others.

Of all wars, I think of the First World War as one of the most miserable of all. It was started on a dubious pretext, and soon bogged down to two huge armies facing each other in miles of trenches. Millions of soldiers were slaughtered in the endless game of fruitless attacks on enemy lines. The boundaries stayed the same, only the number of fatalities soared to levels never seen before.

The problem was---WWI suffered from a Structural Stalemate. That is, the structure of the war prevented it from being resolved quickly.

In most wars offense and defense both have a chance of being successful. Thus, one side eventually wins and the carnage stops. In WWI, the offence had no chance, leading to an unending stalemate. This is largely because of two technological advances, barbed wires and machine guns. In order to advance, the soldiers had to successfully negotiate the barbed wires in face of machine gun fire. It was just not possible, and they got slaughtered. The break came when tank was invented and deployed. It could go over the barbed wires and trenches, finally resulting in one army advancing against the other.

I am afraid that the current “war” against terrorism is also suffering from a Structural Stalemate, except this time the defense has no chance.

Take the recent bombings in my hometown, Boston. The suspects, two misguided youths, went across the border to buy gunpowder in form of firecrackers (it is illegal to do so in Massachusetts). They learned about how to make a bomb on the Internet. All they had to do then is to brazenly walk to a crowd of people and detonate two bombs thus constructed.

How can a country defend against such incidences? Granted this is not a World War with millions of lives being lost every year, but one feels the same level of helplessness of seeing no clear pathway to victory. As neither side is about to give up, we see a complete stalemate.

The last time it was a technological breakthrough that broke the impasse. What will it be this time? What will put defense on the same footing as offence in what has thus far been a patently asymmetrical war?

I have a feeling that the solution will not be technological. There is no way to detect or prevent a person from becoming a radical. Once the person is bent on destruction he will come out with a way to cause destruction. If you close down one pathway, he will think of another.

The solution will have to come from making peace with Islam. The winding down of two wars will go a long way toward that goal. Guiding Israel and Palestinians toward a solution in the Middle East will be another step in the right direction. Finally, the moderate Muslims will have to stand up against the radical ones. These are hardly new ideas but I do not think there is much choice.

The First World War went on for more than four years.  This war might go on for decades unless something is done to break the stalemate. 

Picture Pleasure Score

One of the activities I have undertaken in this early stage of retirement is to sort through thousands of slides and prints I have taken over the years. While I see the benefits of preserving a lot of these pictures, I am also convinced that I need to throw away a substantial part of this collection. The question is how do I make decisions on what to keep and what to discard.

Being a good engineer, I thought that I should come out with a framework on the merits of old pictures and apply the resulting rules rigorously (and mercilessly). When I started thinking about it, I realized that pictures need to be classified in three different categories before proceeding further: Snapshots, travel pictures, and artistic pictures. I am sure that purists will argue that many pictures are combination of these three. To them, I will reply that think about the most important aspect of your work of creation and treat it like that henceforth. 

On a high level, the purpose of pictures of any of these three categories is to provide pleasure. This pleasure is derived from your own viewing a well as from the reaction of someone you are sharing the picture with. Further, there is a time element involved---the level of pleasure derived in the future is different from that at the moment or soon after the picture is taken.

So far so good.

The real insight I gained is that the three types of pictures have different pleasure characteristics. Let me elaborate.

In my opinion, the snapshots provide highest level of pleasure when they are viewed by you (or family/friends) some years after they are taken. In fact, older they are, more fun it is to look at them. Interestingly, the pleasure level is not that high when you are taking this type of pictures. Also, the reaction of someone else to these pictures, soon after they are taken, is likely to be polite and muted, especially if you inundate them with hundreds of some pictures. This is not a particularly pleasing experience.

At the other end, as far as the artistic pictures are concerned, the biggest pleasure comes while taking them. You are in a creative zone and the right brain is deeply engaged as you scour the scenery for art worthy captures. If these are good pictures, additional kick comes in when they are shared and you receive praise from those who bother to look at them. However, unlike the snapshots, their value in providing pleasure drops as time goes by. Seen ten years later, as you improve your skills and equipment, you may wonder what made you take that old picture. Also, at that point, do not expect any one else to be much interested in these type of pictures.

The travel pictures occupy a place in between the above two.  They are sometimes difficult to take and distract you from enjoying the experience. However, the real pleasure comes when they are shared with folks once you return. The applause you get for your fine photography (and the jealousy it causes---admit it) constitutes the return on your investment of effort. These photos allow you to relive the experience if you view them years later.

The level interest others will show while looking at your travel pictures in the future depends on the content of the picture. If it includes people, the interest level will be high, because they really are snapshots, albeit in a non-local environment. On the other hand, if the picture shows the place you visited, the interest level will reduce as the place starts becoming less exotic. Finally, an artistic travel picture will suffer the same fate as that taken in your backyard, unless it shows some exotic plant or animal.  Overall, I would rate the interest level to be low.

The diagram below summarizes these observations and provides a Picture Pleasure Score for each box on a scale of 1-5.  As you can see, the snapshots age well, while the artistic photos do not. The travel pictures are somewhere in between.

Coming back to the original reason why I created this framework---what should I do with my old pictures---here are the guidelines that can now be derived: Keep a reasonable number of snapshots, keep only a few travel pictures, and throw away almost all of the artistic pictures, which is almost exactly opposite of the value I assign when I take these pictures.

Nukes and Guns

We are struggling with two weapons of mass destruction…the nuclear one and the gun.  The former is scary as hell but has not killed anyone in the past sixty-seven plus years, while the latter kills tens of thousands every year in the US alone. How to control both of these is a major challenge facing us.

In an ideal world, there will be no nuclear weapons. All of the existing stockpiles would be destroyed and the recipe to make them erased. That will be the safest “steady-state” our civilization can achieve. But that is an impossible dream to achieve.

At the other extreme is a situation in which there are no controls and every country that wants one is allowed to have it. Given the speed with which an unfettered technology can spread these days, every country will have these weapons in no time. Perversely, that is also a potentially “safe” situation, because the fear of mutually assured destruction will prevent any country from using these weapons.

The trouble is that it is a very unstable steady state. One flock of geese mistaken for incoming nuclear missiles, or one deranged head of the state, and the entire world will be engulfed in unimaginable horrors.

The same applies to guns. A world without guns will be the safest alternative. As that is not possible, NRA suggests that everyone should be armed, so that the bad guys with guns will not harm the good guys with guns. This is their version of peace caused by the fear of mutually assured destruction. Unfortunately, this suffers from the same issue as is the case with nukes---one false move or one deranged individual, and what would have been a heated argument becomes a bloodbath.

We should not allow that and seek alternatives.

In the case of nuclear weapons, there is the non-proliferation treaty and active involvement of world community to prevent uncontrolled spread of the dreadful weapon.

Of course, this plan of action prevents the “good” guys getting these weapons, just as the “bad” guys.  However, this exposure to vulnerability is acceptable by the “good” guys because it reduces the overall number of weapons in circulation and makes it awfully hard for the “bad” guys to get their hands on one.

If we accept this plan for preventing nuclear destruction, we need to do the same for curbing gun violence. Yes, gun controls will make it harder for good guys from acquiring guns, just as it does for bad, but it is a safer alternative then the NRA proposal of going back to the days of  “Wild West”. 

A Time Odyssey

One of my favorite science fiction writers was Arthur C. Clarke. He is most famous for his short story “The Sentinel” which got converted into one of the best science fiction movies of all time, “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

During the last phase of his life, he carried some of the ideas from that book into a series of novels, co-authored by Stephen Baxter, called “A Time Odyssey.” This, somewhat obscure piece of work is based on non-benevolent aliens trying to regulate life in the universe. This requires destruction of many intelligent species in order to save the universe from dying due to harnessing of too much energy. Human beings, not surprisingly, are selected for destruction.

That is however, not the most interesting idea in this series of novels.

What is interesting is that the aliens create an alternate earth to preserve a record of what they are going to destroy. This alternate earth-museum contains human beings from different time periods co-existing. So, the first novel includes the saga of the main character living in year 2037, co-existing with Rudyard Kipling from 1885, Genghis Khan and his army from the 13^th century, and Alexander the Great from the 4^th century BC.  Most of the story in the first novel deals with all these disparate folks duking it out.

Some days I feel like we are living in such an alternate earth created by non-benevolent aliens. We now have people living in:

•          The medieval times who believe that god created universe in six-days some six thousand years ago and that it is OK to kill someone for not believing in god,
•          The 1780s who believe that we need every citizen of our country to own guns to be able to fight against a tyrannical government,
•          The early 1900s who think that women have no rights and should be second-class citizens,
•          The 1960s who have no problem wasting energy because it is their birthright to do so,
•          The 1970s who are still fighting the cold war, and
•          The 1980s who still think that the climate change is just a theory created by greedy scientists in order to win research grants.

In Clarke’s book, the folks from the old times attacked the modern humans with weapons they had during their time---spears, swords, bows and arrows. What is different in our reality is that people living in the medieval times have or will soon have nuclear weapons.  Even more frightening, we are not an earth-museum, as in the book, but the real deal. Although, the aliens have not targeted us for annihilation, perhaps they do not need to.

We are capable of doing that ourselves!