Is this a way to achieve peace?

I have Israeli friends as well as lots of Jewish ones. I also have some Muslim friends, although I do not know anyone from Palestine. I do not have any religious affiliation and consider all religions to be equal. Thus, I believe I have the credentials to be considered objective in my reaction to what is going on in Gaza at the moment.

I completely agree with Israel's claim that they have a right to defend themselves, and abhor Hamas' objective of wiping them from the face of the earth. If Hamas is trying to wipe out Israel by throwing missile that do not seem to hit anything in particular, they have a thing or two to learn. Obviously, they are not that stupid. They are trying to get the attention of the world to the grievances of people they govern---specifically, to get Israel remove blockade of Gaza. They have tried this before and it did not work. Repeating the same tactic is a sign of desperation. Didn’t they know what Israeli response would be? Perhaps they think there is no other alternative.

I am angry at Hamas for using an ineffective tactic that disrupts the lives of Israelis, occasionally kills a few, and makes them retaliate in a predictable way.

However, if I am angry at Hamas, I am outraged at Israel. I find their tactics revolting and strategy hard to understand.

Their current tactic is to kill all the Hamas fighters, and destroy their infrastructure through bombs and shells. We all know what a carnage that has produced. I am speechless and feel sick when I see pictures of innocent children dead or dying.

The reasoning put forward by Israelis is that they are dying because they are being used as human shield by Hamas. That may be true in some cases based on what I have heard. In those cases, I think of the situation as similar to the one that evolves when a school is taken over by a mad gunman, a scenario all too familiar with us living in US. The SWAT team can find a way to negotiate with the gunman or take him out with a precision shot. Alternately, they can flatten the entire school with a bomb and blame the resulting carnage on the mad gunman. How will public react to that?

Suppose, later on, it is found out that the mad gunman took the student hostages because he was angry at the police force and wanted to make them look bad when the images of dead children appear on the TV screens around the country. True. He may be doing that. However, would that finding exonerate the SWAT team?

Further, in many (if not most) cases, the civilians that die are not being used as a shield by Hamas. Given that there are two million people in that crammed place, with nowhere to go, innocent people always surround a Hamas fighter, no matter where he hides. Are all those people still considered to be deliberate shields?

Israel claims that they are always taking pains to spare civilians. To demonstrate, that we are shown pictures of their air force being very surgical in their strike…blowing up a building of a Hamas fighter with a precision guided bomb. But how can you be surgical when you fire a shell in a neighborhood? Add to that, we all know that errors happen and weapons malfunction. In that case, won’t a “surgical” strike become a catastrophe?

Finally, at least some of the shelling is reported to be in retribution to avenge the killing of Israeli soldiers. In one instance the Israeli army reportedly wiped out a whole neighborhood, including a family of 27 who had gathered for Ramadan dinner, as punishment for killing some of their own.

So what is the end game? Extrapolating from the current trajectory, is the plan to achieve destruction of Hamas by flattening all of Gaza?

So much for the tactics; now, about the strategy.

Has this type of response worked in the past? No. This is the third or fourth time (I have lost count) that exactly the same scenario is being played out. Why would the end result be different this time? In fact wouldn’t the situation be worse?

At the end of this round of carnage, when cease-fire is achieved, one can think of two scenarios to describe the thinking of a Palestinian who is currently not a member of Hamas. One is that he will think, "Yes Israel is right in punishing us for what Hamas has done. Hamas is the real culprit and has brought this misery on us. The next time I will not make a mistake and elect them. " Another scenario is that he will think, "I had little before, and now I have nothing. My son is killed and this family that I used to know has been blown away. All around me is utter destruction. I have no job and no prospects. I have nothing to lose. I am not going to take this lying down. I am going to sign up with Hamas and fight."

Which scenario do you think is more realistic?

Is this a sound strategy to achieve peace?

Photography and social media

A couple of months ago, I went through an amazing experience of the power of social media as applied to photography.

I use a popular website called Flickr for showcasing my artistic photographs and currently have a portfolio of over 500 pictures, posted over more than 5 years. One of the pictures I uploaded (of a bird) was selected by Flickr to be in their “Explore” showcase. Although some 500 photos are selected everyday for this honor, the odds are quite small considering the fact that 8.6 million pictures are uploaded on an average day. The selection is done through a secret algorithm (which I think relies on who likes your pictures and how many likes you get). 

In any case, that initial selection was followed by three more of my pictures being so selected, all within ten days. Now, Flickr has 100 million members, and many of them look at Explore on a regular basis, so this is what happened:

-- In just one day, I had more than 22,000 views of my portfolio, about fifth of the total number over five years!

--Just one picture (of a female Red-Winged Blackbird) had over 30,000 views in two days, far exceeding 3,000 views of a picture I had posted previously, and that took a few years.

--Previously, some of my pictures were "favorited" by about 10 people, while one of the pictures that appeared on Explore (of a Bluebird) had 240 people favoriting it.

Although, this is not strictly a viral distribution, I experienced what it must feel like. I got a glimpse at how social media works in the world of photography.

This is how it works.

Just like the other social media sites, like FaceBook and LinkedIn, Flickr creates a network of people interested in a common goal. The "social contract" on Flickr is that two photographers "follow" each other. This is essentially the same as making friends on FaceBook or contacts in LinkedIn, except; in this case, you do not know the other person. Once you decide to follow someone, his/her pictures are displayed for your reviews and comments.

The way you expand your network is to "follow" photographers at large, say, based on what is displayed on Explore, and hope that he/she will do the same. Soon, the reverse starts happening, and people request you to follow them, and you accept request, partly based on what type of pictures he/she takes and who else within your network is common (much like on LinkedIn or FB).

The "currency" in use is how many people "favorite" your photo (much like "like" in FaceBook) and comments they make, which are almost always positive. The more of these you get, the better you feel about your picture. These number of favorites you get is based on two criteria, how "good" is the picture, and equally important, if not more, how large is your network. My network has suddenly expanded after appearance on Explore because of two reasons: (i) I have lots of people I can approach ---those who favorited my Explore photos (since I know they like my photographs), and (ii) A lot of people now want to follow me, as I now have the distinction of having some of my pictures selected to be on Explore.

This is how social media works in the wonderful world of photography. It is all fun and games and, as such, hopefully does not inflate ones ego too much ;-)

Good photograph

Just by keeping up with Facebook and Flickr I get exposed to numerous photographs during the course of the day. An awful lot of these pictures do not fit the definition of being “good” in terms of composition, lighting, contrast, or any such attributes that are highly regarded by photographers. However, I have come to realize that a photograph does not have to meet these standards to be judged “good”.

A photograph can be considered good if it meets its intended purpose.

Broadly speaking, a vast majority of photographs are taken to memorialize a moment.  These are pictures of people doing something, visiting somewhere, or just having a good time. The photographer is not paying much attention to anything except getting all the folks or place where the picture is being taken within the frame. As long as it meets some basic criteria---one can see the face, and the head is not cut off---it can be considered a good photograph, because it will serve as an aid to remember the moment, and what everyone looked like at that moment. It can be shared with others, or stored for future viewing.

Another major purpose one take a picture is to create, or at least attempt to create, a work of art. Photography is a relatively easy way to channel the need to exercise the creative right brain. As a work of art, a “good’ photograph has to appeal to the subconscious in some way. There are some guidelines that good photographers follow while taking a picture. These generally relate to composition, lighting, subject, use of space, contrasts, colors, and so on. However, some magic needs to happen to make it a really memorable photograph. I think the bar a photo has to clear in the second category to be called “good” is higher than that in the first.

There is also a third reason for taking pictures, and that is for photojournalism. These are the pictures taken by professionals that say a thousand words, and convey the meaning of an event, person or place in a powerful manner. However, most amateurs like us are not involved with this type of photography.

It is unfair to use the yardstick of one group of photograph while measuring the “goodness” of other type. Thus, an art photographer cannot call a snapshot “bad” because it does not meet the basic requirements of a work of art (composition, lighting, contrast, etc.). Likewise, a person used to taking snapshot should not judge an artistic photograph as useless because it just shows water, trees, and stones---and besides has no person.

That having been said, I would not necessarily call the person who took a good photograph a good photographer. Pointing the camera in the right direction, putting it on automatic, and pressing the shutter does not require much skills. A good photographer can create really memorable pictures of a family get together in the first category, or a work of art from the most mundane subject in the second.

Value of Life

General Motors is in hot water because of faulty ignition switches they installed in some of their cars. This switch had a problem that caused cars to lose electrical system while being driven. As a result the driver of the car would not have power steering or power brakes operating and that could lead to a collision. Worse, such electric malfunction would also make the airbags stop working, increasing the likelihood of death in such collisions.

A key issue is that GM knew about this problem for a long time and did nothing about it. Meanwhile at least 13 people have died because of this fault. Worse, the solution would have cost as little as two dollars a car. This has infuriated people at large, because it indicates what a low value GM places on lives of people.

GM may argue that we have accepted many other similar actions that they, and other carmakers, take, without any protest. For example, we know that a collision avoidance system, if made available on all vehicles, not just the expensive ones, may save lots of lives. Similarly, side airbags can do the same---save lives in case of a collision. Should the fact that GM does not have these systems installed in all their cars indicate that they put money above lives? If we have already allowed GM to get away with that, why do we make a fuss about the faulty ignition switch?

This is an interesting point. However, there are grounds to say that this is comparing apples and oranges. The faulty ignition switch causes accidents, the other example cited either prevent an accident or reduce its impact. That is not the same.

GM may then argue that we are upset because the cost of fix is so small. What if the fix required GM to spend two hundred dollars per car not two? Would we be less upset?

This is when things get interesting. Most likely we will say yes---we will be less upset if the cost of fix was not so insignificant. However, in doing so, are we putting a dollar value to human life?

So, for example, if the number of cars with the ignition switch problem is 100,000, at $2 a fix, the cost per year will be $200,000 and that would have saved, let’s say, two lives. Since GM decided not to fix the problem, they are placing the value of a human life to be less than $100 thousand. This is clearly upsetting to all of us. However, if the cost is hundred times more, the value of life goes up to $10 million, and we will be less upset if they did not fix the problem. If we extrapolate this reasoning, there may be some dollar figure at which we would find GM’s behavior acceptable.

So, despite rhetoric, we all agree that the value of human life is not infinite and there is a dollar value that we are comfortable with.

It reminds me of a conversation, George Bernard Shaw (I think) had with a woman:

GBS, “Will you sleep with me, if I give you $10 million?”

Woman, “Yes.”

“What if I give you $20?”

“What do you take me for---a whore?”

“Madam, we have established that fact, we are just haggling over the price.”

I know that in a serious subject like the value of a human life, such levity might not be appropriate, but you get my point. Of course, once we do accept that the human life has a dollar value, the question shifts to how much.

In the future if such a dollar value is placed, the process of making all kinds of decisions will get simplified.

For example, the medical establishment may decide that a life may not be worth saving if it costs more than certain amount. Thus, the guideline can be that the life of a 100-year-old person is not be worth extending by 100 days if it costs more than one million dollars.

Actually, such decisions are already being made, but with much trepidation and without any publicity. A recent NY Times article reported that “some of the most influential medical groups in the nation are recommending that doctors weight the costs, not just the effectiveness of the treatment, as they make decisions about patient care”. “Protecting patients from financial ruin if fundamental to the precept of ‘do no harm,’” the article mentions in describing the policy of cardiology societies.

Given the rising cost of medical care, I believe such policy is necessary.

However, if we do so, what right will we have to hold GM accountable for any tradeoff they make related to cost of fix vs. number of likely fatalities?

Music preference

Different folks listen to different types of music. The question I ask myself is what makes them prefer one type of music over the other. The most likely answer to that question is ---people prefer to listen to the type of music they got exposed to early on in their lives.

When I examine my own preferences, that observation is certainly true. Growing up in India, the first music I got exposed to was the Hindi film music---or Bollywood music (although that is not strictly true because the term Bollywood did not exist then). The radio in our house was on most of the times and my parents, uncles and aunts (who lived with us at that time) enjoyed songs by Saigal, Pankaj Mullick, Hemant Kumar, Mohammad Rafi, Lata Mangeshkar, and Mukesh. Almost sixty years later, I still enjoy listening to these songs of my childhood. To me the era before the 70s was the golden age of that type of music and a favorite oldie from those days still gives me goose bumps.

However, if that was the only reason why I listen to what I do, I would not be enjoying the Western Classical music. I was not exposed to that at all until the late 60s when a pen pal of mine (a girl living in Germany) sent me a recording of Beethoven’s violin concerto. I truly enjoyed listening to it. My repertoire increased after I came to the US and started listening to the collection we had in MIT’s Ashdown house. I had friends who guided me along and soon I was hooked. After a while, listening to Beethoven’s ninth, or Mozart’s G minor symphony gave me the same level of excitement as those old songs of Mukesh, may be more. It still does.

Since I did not grow up with it, perhaps the reason I like it is that there is something intrinsic in me that attracts me to that type of music. It resonates with me. Resonance occurs when an external input has a characteristic (say, frequency) that matches that ingrained internally in a system. That is what makes a car vibrate furiously when you go over a rutted surface at a specific speed. Perhaps that mechanical phenomenon also takes place neurologically. I am an analytical thinker, organized to a fault, who likes mathematics and physics. May be these internal characteristics play a part in my appreciating an organized, mathematical, and primarily Germanic classical music.

That would also explain why my passion for the Indian Classical music is not as strong. Here, I had an early exposure. I actually learned Indian Classical music for a year and was a promising student. Even though I could not continue after one year, there was no dearth of listening opportunities for that type of music. That fact still holds true, but I just cannot put on a CD (or MP3) and listen to it, the way I do the other types. May be it is because of the fact that this form of music is improvised and not composed, or it lacks harmony. The “mathematics” of its rhythm is terribly complex, not easy to internalize. This is the case in which I had an early exposure, but the resonance factor, being more powerful, dilutes its effect.

My above theory probably also explains one type of music that I just cannot get into, and that is Jazz. It is improvised, just like the Indian classical music, but without its richness. It is just too loosy goosey for my taste. This is the case of no exposure growing up and no resonance.