I have decided to port this blog over to another server running
Wordpress (an open-source blog publishing application) which will provide me with a whole host of cool features not to mention a slicker design. The
MIT blog server has been graciously hosting the eloquent delinquent for almost 4 years now and I am grateful to them for their services (though they have been very sluggish in rolling out the latest in blogging technology). Please visit the eloquent delinquent at its new home
here.
I just finished reading The Elegant Universe by Columbia Physics professor
Brian Greene and had mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, the book (published in 1999, and thus a little dated) is an eloquent recapitulation of physics from the dawn of Newton up through the 20th century intellectual upheavals of Einstein and quantum mechanics, and on that front it is a mostly enjoyable read given Greene's flair for invoking wonderfully familiar analogies to explain fiendishly subtle material. Yet on the second front, the book presents a forceful advocacy of string theory, making cogent arguments for this (relatively) nascent field's pre-eminence among the unification theories hitherto put forward to bridge the colossal divide between Einstein's laws of general relativity with the peculiarities of quantum mechanics at microscopic length scales. Putting aside oft-repeated notions of "tiny, vibrating strings in eleven dimensions" that purportedly can account for all known physical properties of particles
and reveal insights into the origins of the universe, the book's final pages center on the potential limits of scientific inquiry, in other words, can we really know everything? The last 400 years have unquestioningly been an embarrassment of riches of sorts for science in its unyielding quest to peel back the inner workings of the universe. Yet, as Greene muses, are we fast approaching the very edge of the scientific knowledge where sheer complexity and insurmountable technological obstacles preclude us from advancing further. It is no accident that a string theorist is one of the first to enunciate these observations: the length scales of such vibrating strings are incredibly small (below the
Planck length of 1e-34 metres!) requiring extremely high energy particle accelerators (way beyond the capabilities of the recently deployed Large Hadron Collider) to probe such minute depths. It is this last point that has garnered string theory much animosity among the wider physics community (lead by
Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute) who lambaste its ability to evade experimental confirmation. Nevertheless, notions of limits in science, are troubling for they run counter to all of our known modern experience and would fundamentally cause a rethinking of the confidence we place in our intelligence: can there possibly be areas in which our reasoning mind cannot explore? That's a very startling thought.
On December 11 of last year as the financial meltdown worsened, a legendary 70 year-old fund manager, Bernard L. Madoff, confided to his family that his entire investment business had been a fraud, that he had literally stolen billions of dollars that had been "invested" in his company and used it to fuel his playboy life of swanky south Florida country clubs, glittering yachts, sensational international getaways and multi-million dollar mansions. The sheer size of the money lost is staggering and numbers into the tens of billions. Yesterday Mr. Madoff pleaded guilty to all charges against him as throngs of news reporters and ordinary people (among which, were many of his victims) camped outside the Manhattan courtroom on a bitter cold morning to catch a glimpse of the man that had destroyed so many lives. The real tragedy lies in his victims' demographics, mostly retirees with advanced age, some of whose entire life savings have been wiped out as a result of this extraordinary charade and who are now forced to quickly liquidate their remaining assets to procure the basic means to survive the downturn and some even despairingly to come out of retirement to make ends meet. The craftiness of Madoff's operations was, admittedly, brilliant: by creating an aura of exclusivity among his clients (only the wealthiest need apply, referrals made only through personal contacts), he masterfully lured his victims by the droves who all sought the promised dazzling return rates on their hard-earned money. Mr. Madoff capitalized on his sterling reputation on Wall St -- he had built his empire from nothing (working as a lifeguard in his teens), rose to become a former chairman of the Nasdaq stock exchange and could boast of personal ties to a vast network of top financial executives on Wall St and even, brazenly, the regulators whose responsibility was to monitor him (he boldly
bragged once to one of the many charity groups whose money he managed, that he knew the regulatory jungle well but that it was essentially infallible, to assuage his clients' concerns). Willing investors, driven by sheer greed, lined up by the hundreds to get in on Madoff's pot, rarely stopping to question the legitimacy of his modus operandi, (many) presuming that the strict regulatory apparatus of the government (particularly the Securities & Exchange Commission) had, by carefully monitoring his transactions, tacitly given their seal of approval (afterwards, it turned out that all he was doing was shuttling funds from one bank to another around the world to create the preposterous illusion of financial activity). Ironically not one of his victims were the large banks who for very peculiar reasons had every reason to mistrust the man that they counted as one of their own. At the very heart of this affair, lies the institution of trust, that formed the core of the business relationship that Madoff's clients and he engaged in -- the fact that he preyed on mostly Jewish seniors meant that he could readily exploit his "insider" status needed in order penetrate this community with ease (technically, whats referred to as an affinity scam). Given the sheer complexity involved in current investment decisions (see the second previous post), mainly wrought by the burgeoning but now defunct derivatives market (what Warrent Buffett once referred to as "financial weapons of mass destruction"), oversight was completely entrusted to the government. Not everyone had been duped by Madoff's seemingly consistently spectacular performance, a former competitor of his, a Boston-based trader by the name of Harry Markopolos, had noticed warning signs as early as 2000 that something was amiss, and in his
recent interview with Steve Kroft of 60 minutes, confided: "I had a hunch something was wrong in 5 minutes. And after four hours of math, I knew for certain that something was wrong." Mr. Markopolos claims that he approached the SEC numerous times with concrete allegations of fraud on the part of Madoff only to be dismissed repeatedly (in fairness, the SEC did launch a formal investigation in 2006, but the case was quickly closed, without rigorous scrutiny that uncovered no wrongdoing). Mr. Markopolos, and many others, attributes the Madoff disaster and other such schemes to gross governmental incompetence, but is that really the problem here? Perhaps the one person who sees the issue with more clarity than others is Congressman Ron Paul (the former Republican presidential nominee who has a near cult following in some circles) in a
recent congressional hearing on the scandal in which he forcefully accused the government of being complicit in the fraud and reserved his harshest critique for Madoff's
victims who had misguidedly confided in the government's competence and not pursued their own personal form of due diligence in the Madoff affair. Why was the SEC seemingly the only (legitimate) watchdog in this vast & mirky marketplace? I will surmise that the fallout from this debacle will soon engender a whole slew of private, independent, financial sleuths whose responsibility will be to meticulously screen the transactions of large investment firms in direct competition with the SEC. There is a career to be made here for anyone interested (Harry Markopolos, come on down)
I finally finished reading
The Ancestor's Tale: Journey to the Dawn of Evolution, a book by one of my favorite science authors -- the notable Oxford evolutionary biologist
Richard Dawkins. I will confess, I have a special affinity for Dawkins and this was his fifth book that I have read (certainly not the last) and unquestionably one of the most fascinating (the first book of his I read, the much vaunted Selfish Gene, left an indelible stamp on me and to borrow a popular phrase of his, "raised my consciousness" regarding life on this planet to new dimensions). Dawkins' penchant for conveying grossly captivating yet challenging material with eloquence has the uncanny ability to force his readers to grasp them too is simply amazing (perhaps it's due to his being British that can explain his impeccable ease with and grasp of the English language). His writing, even after devouring so many of his pages, is endlessly fresh and the sheer range and scope of ideas he expresses quite monumental for a scientist in any field. He makes a special point not to repeat similar themes in his many books and doesn't shirk from presenting challenging, highly technical ideas from the field of evolutionary biology to a non-specialist audience. The central, organizing paradigm of the Ancestor's Tale that first drew my attention is thus: to travel back in time through the epoch of Earth's history in order to recount the story of our species' evolution; in each chapter we encounter a major, (mostly) extant group with whom we diverged along the evolutionary tree at some point in the past. Along the way, Dawkins has us meet up with Neanderthals, chimpanzees, lemurs, kangaroos, axolotls, cichlids, fruit flies, jellyfish, sponges, redwoods and bacteria that in total constitute 40 grand chapters spanning hundreds of millions of years. There is a nice discussion in the final pages regarding notions of the evolution of evolvability (that is, the observation that the rate of evolution increases with evolution, highlighted by several seminal moments in our evolutionary past, ie. the onset of body segmentation in arthropods) and convergent evolution (first proposed by Simon Conway-Morris that suggests that there are common solutions to various evolutionary problems, for instance the fact that the eye has been independently evolved 19 times lends credence to this theory) are quite amusing. Surely his largest undertaking, this 614 page tome is bursting at the seams with insights into the intricate workings of evolution and is exceptionally well researched (some of the chapters are acknowledged as having been written with a graduate assistant). It is not a light read, demanding the utmost attention and patience of the reader, but is nevertheless hugely rewarding for the body of knowledge that it is able to distill. The wonders of evolution by natural selection are truly breathtaking & never cease to amaze. Bravo, Dawkins.
The current economic malaise, widely described as the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, that first began with the collapse & subsequent government rescue (with one exception, Lehmann Brothers) of several important American financial institutions (dramatically recounted in this
fascinating PBS Frontline documentary) has many intriguing ties to theoretical research in the sciences here at MIT and elsewhere. Over the years, on account of my being in theoretical physics at MIT, I witnessed several of my peers (at least two were in my own research group) ravenously eager to finish up their doctorates in engineering & the sciences in order to pursue a coveted position as a 'quant' on Wall Street. These nerds-turned-financiers made handsome fortunes by developing very sophisticated mathematical models that were used to make highly-rewarding investment decisions by their employers: large investment banks, hedge funds & other financial institutions. These quants applied their quantitative skills, honed solving (mostly abstract) physics & math problems, to nascent problems in finance in a quixotic attempt to predict the volatility of the market (a prescient movie,
Pi, made in the late 90s captured much of this fascination with taming the markets). This investment nirvana was carried mostly on the backs of the exploding number of tradeable securities, credit default swaps and other equity during the financial heydays of the mid 2000s when mortgages (especially sub-prime ones) were a dime a dozen since the prevailing theory at the time was that there would be no end to sky-rocketing housing prices coinciding with an unprecedented construction boom in the United States. A
recent article in today's Times, by no-less than their chief science correspondent, aims to uncover the role of these (once) ubiquitous geeks in the run-up to the recent economic meltdown that has gripped the world and paralyzed global trade. The beauty of science and the promise of paradigm-shifting technology has always been my principal interest; a career crunching numbers in finance never quite resonated with me. And thankfully so.
I returned three days ago from a 10-day whirlwind trip to the
United Arab Emirates, landing first in the wealthy capital
Abu Dhabi to spend six days, before leaving for the bustle of
Dubai for the remaining four days and departure. The purpose of my trip was to visit the
Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (MIST), a newly established graduate-only research university in
partnership with MIT, that is at the heart of a bolder, more ambitious project spearheaded by the Abu Dhabi government:
Masdar City, the world's first zero carbon, zero waste city. Having read and heard much about the UAE's break-neck pace of development in its full throttle quest for modernization, I was quite keen to visit the country for myself and the
Masdar Initiative was a suitable case study. The
aims of the Masdar Initiative are nothing short of spectacular: to establish a knowledge economy based on renewable energy in a country that is one of the leading exporters of petroleum (the UAE has 9% of the world's oil reserves that is expected to last for another hundred years). That this initiative was borne out of a small country (consisting of a federation of seven emirates) that gained its independence in 1971 and is today among the world's fastest growing economies speaks to the daring vision and relentless determination of its rulers to reassert national, cultural and regional supremacy in a variety of different sectors (tourism, financial, and now education). It has been said that Dubai contains the largest concentration of cranes in the world (to which I readily would attest), but that Abu Dhabi, it's smaller yet more wealthy sibling is keen to herald it's own presence on the international stage yet with more diligent planning (note: the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority is one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world, assets totaling almost one trillion dollars). It is for this reason that this more conservative Emirate, accounting for 87% of the UAE's total land mass and almost all of its petroleum wealth, has made renewable energies the centerpiece of its future. Masdar City is a $22 billion, six square kilometer urban dwelling powered entirely by renewable energies (particularly solar) that is currently under construction near the Abu Dhabi International airport (the environs of which include a host of other property development in progress). Once completed in 2016, it will house 50 000 businessmen and academics who will live and work in a city that will be a model for sustainable infrastructure. MIST will form the core of the city as it will be the engine for spawning solutions to the world's most pressing energy problems backed by hundreds of millions of dollars of venture seed capital. I had a chance to tour Masdar City during my trip and was awestruck by sight of the emerging tangle of concrete, steel and glass bubbling up from the barren, desert landscape as a sea of migrant labour worked feverishly 24 hours a day in three shift intervals to meet the project deadlines. It was readily apparent that in the UAE, things happen very fast: unconstrained by budget and bureaucratic red tape, the government has been pursuing grander and grander projects with zeal. The newly paved superhighways, gargantuan air-conditioned Western-styled malls, exotic sports cars and gleaming skyscrapers create the effect of a true 21st century empire in progress. Yet when one peeks behind the Western facade, a very different indigenous culture is revealed. The Arabian peninsula has been inhabited by nomadic
Bedouin Arab tribes for as long as antiquity and it is this tribal culture that is prominent amongst the locals (constituting a mere 20% of the UAE's population) who are easily identified by their traditional dress, the
dishdasha, that is synonymous with wealth & prestige. The sight of local men and their four
niqab-cladded wives at restaurants, malls and beaches was a reminder that even in this outwardly modern looking universe the traditional, patriarchal society in which men still reign supreme still forms the bedrock. From the droves of Filipino service attendants, Indian labourers and Pakistani taxi drivers, I was also struck by how warm and engaging the indigenous and foreign population was. Almost unanimously among those I surveyed, people were quite satisfied with their life in the UAE which had enabled them to make a prosperous living in spite of the scorching summers (a recurrent theme). Moreover, many commented on the safeness of society pointing to the low rates of crime: this had to do with both the fact that the government very closely monitors its borders to ensure that everyone is employed and the draconian penal code that acts as a strong deterrent. I also noticed a strong cultural contrast between Abu Dhabi and Dubai: the former's infrastructure, societal norms and synergy were far less developed than the latter's. One of my most memorable moments was having traditional Bedouin lunch with two local students where we sat on the floor in a makeshift camp site and ate with our hands while I subjected them to a litany of questions about the lifestyle and culture of their country that I found fascinating. Dubai was very reminiscent of southern California albeit a more upscale version: I visited the Burj Al Arab (the world's only seven star hotel, costing a measly $2000/night), Mall of the Emirates, Ibn Battuta Mall, Madinat Jumeirah, partied with Persians at the Boudoir night club overlooking the beach, explored the old town near the Dubai Creek, swam in the turquoise waters of the Persian Gulf, gaped dumbfoundedly at the Burj Dubai, took a desert safari into the barren sand dunes of the Arabian peninsula and of course had some delicious ethnic regional fare. That Dubai felt at times soulless did indeed dawn on me, but it was a memorable experience nonetheless (see pictures
here).
The era of President Barrack Hussein Obama has begun. There is a palpable and unmistakable sense of energy & enthusiasm that has engulfed these United States: a crowd of over a million braved chilly temperatures in Washington, DC at yesterday's inauguration to witness history being made as a biracial man who bridged vastly disparate worlds was sworn in with tens of millions more fixated to their televisions. He is everywhere: his picture is plastered on t-shirts & buttons sold on the streets of Harlem, posters of his visage dot sidewalks and busy intersections of major urban centers, a Google search of 'Obama' reveals 263 million hits ('Jesus'
only returns 234 million), and in the liberal bastion of New England where Obama first entered the national stage a little over four years ago at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, people seem to be smiling more frequently than is usual given the bone chilling winds coming off the Atlantic this time of year. Maybe it was the lost Bush years, maybe it was his race or his message, but whatever the reason for this euphoria, people of all stripes are feeling tremendously upbeat these days (and even those who voted for McCain are
starting to come around). Yes indeed I followed last year's primary season with interest and knew (as did most sensible people) the moment Mrs. Clinton officially withdrew from the race in June that he would become the next President in November (I especially enjoyed
this editorial the day after the election). The significance of this accomplishment really hit me yesterday as I was walking over to the largest lecture hall at MIT to catch the inauguration speech expecting to find merely a handful of people but as I was about to enter the room, a burst of elated joy erupted from within as he had just taken the oath of office seconds before. Entering the cavernous hall, I was stunned to find an overflowing, standing-room only crowd, bursting at the seams with humanity, and recognized familiar faces of students & professors; some cupping their hands in admiration, others wiping a tear or two from their face, and others with a slight smirk of approval. And at last, the full reality of this monumental moment dawned on me. America is a very special place.
I spent the bulk of my holidays this year in
New York City staying in an empty room of a friend's apartment in
Morningside Heights. While I have been to NYC many times before (it is a relatively brisk 4 hour bus ride from Boston) this was the longest consecutive time I had spent there and really helped me glimpse into what it would be like to actually live in this megalopolis. Among the number of things I did were: visit independent artist studios in Chelsea, explore
New York harbor aboard the Staten Island ferry, shop in
SoHo, dine at several fabulous ethnic restaurants, wander around
Harlem, tour the
Museum of the City of New York, trek through
Central Park, attend a Sunday black church service at the
Apollo Theater, pay hommage at the tomb of former Civil War president
Ulysses Grant, watch time stop at
Grand Central Terminal, walk across the
Brooklyn Bridge to explore
DUMBO,
Brooklyn Heights and the
Brooklyn Museum, and finally enjoyed a couple of lively dinner parties with friends studying at Columbia University. Needless to stay I racked up many miles on my feet and on one memorable day began my journey at 120th St near the Columbia campus and finished all the way at 14th St in Greenwich village needling through the lush landscape & whizzing runners of Central Park. Aside from the people watching (& evading), I remember fondly the majestic views of the New York skyline from the Brooklyn promenade and the upscale Brownstone neighborhoods nearby. The crush of crowds in town for New Year's eve did at times seem overwhelming as a plethora of different European languages could be heard all over Manhattan yet, in the midst of this mayhem, I had (paradoxically) one of my most relaxing vacations; unperturbed by the hustle & bustle of the masses and the unyielding movement of goods & people across this sprawling city of 300 square miles. I remember as a child visiting NYC with my parents and becoming terribly vexed with claustrophobia and yet somehow as I have gotten older and with each passing visit have become more & more enchanted by what the city has to offer. Whether it's the 24 hour social vibe, access to world-class cultural institutions or the sheer variety of humanity on display, I have felt myself become more & more at ease in a city I once vowed I would never return to. However, I did develop a sense for how lonely NYC can feel (reminiscent of Robert De Niro's gloomy portrayal of Travis Bickle in Scorsese's masterpiece
Taxi Driver) that despite the ubiquity of human beings, there is a general sense of social apprehension that pervades New Yorkers: the propensity to keep to oneself, to appear stoic when eye contact is made, to shun the outside world are all features that I readily sensed (and made even more apparent through conversations with my student friends who have lived in the city for years). New York is a city that has seen continual urban transformation since its discovery by Henry Hudson in the early 1600s who claimed it for the Dutch and is now a beacon of American civilization. That it remains so liveable, so vibrant, and so inclusive is a testament to the American experiment itself.
As part of my minor for my doctorate, I took the opportunity to explore the rapidly developing field of computational biology by taking
6.878 taught by
Manolis Kellis. The decision was partly inspired by my voracious reading of late of the popular literature - Matt Ridley's Genome, Richard Dawkin's The Ancestor's Tale, Blind Watchmaker and the celebrated
Selfish Gene - and my general interest in mathematical & computational methods in science. Fortunately, Boston happens to be a hub for genomic research (MIT was the lead institution that revealed in 2000 a rough draft of the human genome, thanks to the pre-eminent leadership of MIT biologist (formerly mathematician)
Eric Lander) and is home to the famous
Broad Institute as well as the vaunted Harvard Medical School establishment. A major component of the class was a final project that inspired me to pursue a collaboration with one of the leading groups in the field of population genetics lead by
Professor David Reich at Harvard (who made
headlines in 2006 for proposing complex speciation between humans & chimpanzees). Given that I did not have much time for the project (one month) but had much ambition, I set to work on a project proposed to me by Professor Reich that involved studying the genetic variations of various European sub-populations in search of stratification (clustering of groups). The work was an extension of a
recent letter published in Nature that established a direct link between the variations in
single nucleotide polymorphisms (one letter change) and the origin of individuals within several European populations. The most striking result of this work was the reconstruction of a geographic map of Europe from the genetic samples of approximately two thousand individuals. In the report, genetic data was obtained from individuals whose four grandparents all originated from the same country and analyzed at some 300 000 loci on chromosomes 1-22, the autosomes. My final project consisted of extending this analysis to the sex chromosomes, specifically the female X chromosome, in the hope that any findings could be used to infer the sex-specific migration patterns of founder populations within Europe (anthropological studies have demonstrated that typically females had shorter migration lengths than males). Working with a large dataset consisting of two thousand individuals from twenty-two different European countries, I used
principal component analysis (a standard tool in statistical analysis), to study the variations of SNPs but discovered that the X chromosome contained far more noise than the autosomes. Attempts at boosting the signal to noise ratio by selecting only amongst those loci which had high
recombination rates did not markedly improve the analysis (see my
final report for more information). In addition to the faschinating work I was doing, one thing that struck me was how readily I was able to work at the forefront of this field with very little formal preparation (though I should mention my strengths in computational research). In all, it was a satisfying experience and I have been thinking very hard of late whether I want to pursue more aspects of computational biology in a future post-doctoral setting. The emergence of high through put genetic sequencing technologies coupled with sophisticated computational modelling is surely to lead to significant breakthroughs in the near future.
Last night after a delightful dinner party in a fabulous
South End brownstone (one of my favorite neighborhoods of Boston), three friends & I decided to go see the newly released film
Slumdog Millionaire. Admittedly, I was a little apprehensive since I had not heard about the film despite the goading of friends (who failed to realize how picky I am about choosing movies to watch). All I was told was that it was directed by
Danny Boyle, the famous British director of the idiosyncratic hit Trainspotting and that it was filmed in India -- I was interested. Slumdog Millionaire turned out to be a captivating, heart breaking look at the abject poverty of India that reminded me of the books of one of my beloved Canadian authors
Rohinton Mistry (in particular,
A Fine Balance &
Such a Long Journey) that explores the grim life of lower class Mumbai society in the turbulent years of the late 1970s, a period of political deadlock gripped the country as Indira Gandhi had imposed a
state of emergency after being accused of rigging the elections. The pretext under which the story of Slumdog Millionaire is told is interesting & dare I say novel: a young tea-fetching servant (a ``chai-walla'' in Hindi) who works in a customer service call center finds himself in the thrill of his life vying for twenty million rupees on the
Indian version of the game show ``Who Wants to Be a Millionaire''. That the story opens with such a scene is amusing but the real story unfolds with a clever bit of temporal juxtaposition of how the protagonist, Jamal Malik, came to be in such an unexpected predicament as he relives various episodes of his (extraordinary, improbable) life that revealed to him answers to questions he's asked. I will say nothing more other than the obvious: the recapitulation of this young man's harrowing life will leave you awestruck as it probes into the depths of Indian society and exposes the ruthless struggle for survival of the millions of poor people. The ending, as my friends & I discussed on our way out, was too cliched and failed to elevate this magnificent work beyond a trivial romance. Nevertheless, given the recent
horrific terrorism inflicted on Mumbai, perhaps the local citizens & the global community at large need an uplifting message but I will make not make excuses for the film, the ending was lousy. India has always attracted artists and it is no wonder that so many artists are fascinated by Indian society & find inspiration in it (
Yann Martel visited
Tamil Nadu when his career was waining in order to break his writer's block and in turn ended up winning a Booker Prize for
A Life of Pi), for the maddening crush of crowds, colorful fashions and visceral sights & smells of humanity's rawness are surely to stimulate anyone. Sitting mesmerized in the darkened theatre and overcome by the far ranging sensual delights (the soundtrack is wonderful, the camera work is captivating), I felt myself momentarily transported into a world far away & through the wondrous abilities of cinema was able to probe another dimension of humanity. With the exception of the ending, this is a gem of a movie and I strongly recommend it.
She came to me with thoughts of delusion.
I helped her sort out the mess of the confusion.
Having been altered, she insisted upon compensation.
Being dignified, I declined her insinuation.
Insulted by my refusal, she severed communication.
Unable to resist hearing her voice, I succumbed to my infatuation.
There seems to have been a reawakening amongst consumers, journalists and activists alike on the detrimental effects wrought by capitalism's unyielding desire to commodotize, homogenize and streamline the vastness of the American agricultural industry. No individual has made the case more eloquently and sounded the alarm more effectively than
Michael Pollan, Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley. I enjoyed his 2006 bestseller,
``Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals'' in which he sets out to investigate the efforts required to produce food for oneself as a way to look behind the curtain of agribusiness (needless to say what he found startled him greatly). In the book he addresses a whole range of pertinent issues: the deleterious effects on the environment from a massive confined animal feedlot in Kansas that houses more than a million steer, the role of genetically modified foods on the ecosystem and human health, the moral conundrum of meat consumption among many others. His writing is sincere, informative and polished and he has done much to become an advocate for sustainable eating lifestyles. I recently watched his
talk at Google where he was promoting his latest book,
``In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto.'' Mr. Pollan calls for an entire paradigm shift in the way we consume our food, advocating an approach not based on nutritional content alone. The American public's obsession with concise nutritional summary is misguided, argues Pollan, since the interaction of food with our bodies is a highly non-reductive process. Take for instance, as he argues, the case of carrots in which scientists extracted the main source of its nutrients:
beta carotenes. However, beta carotene, in its pure, extracted form was found not to confer the same healthy benefits as that of a real carrot for reasons that are still unclear. Pollan speculates on some hitherto unexplained interaction of the carrot's fiber with our intestines that may somehow aid the beta carotene's absorption into the blood stream; emphasizing that it is a far more complicated system than it appears. His memorable call to avoid the middle of the grocery store in favor of the periphery where perishable goods are stored is interesting and brings to light the large amounts of artificial preservatives used in highly processed food. More importantly, Mr. Pollan argues a return to a more traditional way of thinking about food: culture, a paradigm that has itself taken many generations to refine and distill wisdom. There is however one glaring omission from Michael Pollan's book which someone should write a book on, that is the genetic effects of metabolism. Is it any wonder that certain immigrant populations in the United States are more susceptible to high blood pressure, congenital heart defects, diabetes, obesity than others? It has become a cliche for Americans to admire in rapt awe the infamous French diet, high in saturated fat, carbohydrates and wine. Yet presumably the French (at least the indigenous population of that area) has been consuming such a diet for many generations and has evolved the (best?) ability to metabolism those foods better than other populations on other diets. Unfortunately, I have not found many authors willing to discuss the important contribution of our genes to our health but am hopeful that the ushering in of a whole new era in genomic research will soon bring to light a host of startling revelations.
An enjoyable (albeit brief) trip last month to the Washington DC area to attend
my cousin's wedding provided me with a much-needed break from the daily grind of graduate life at MIT particularly as it came before the onset of another academic year. The trip itself was immensely worthwhile owing to numerous opportunities to spend time with various family members (my father's 89-year-old uncle's stories of his childhood and adult life in pre-Revolutionary Iran are grossly captivating). One of my younger cousins, a little girl who recently turned eight, whom I see approximately once a year with the others has unfortunately been plagued by chronic obesity since birth. She is abnormally large for a child of her age (a
BMI of, I'd say, well over 30) especially when juxtaposed with her normal-bodied fraternal twin brother; sadly, her condition has gradually worsened over the course of the last several years and I worry that the onset of psychological duress as she enters the social world of the classroom full of caustic and blunt children will isolate and further negatively affect her. At first, I suspected that her condition was mostly the result of a poor diet consisting of a treasure trove of high calorie sweets and weekly doses of McDonald's and so sometime back in 2004 after I had finished reading Eric Schlosser's influential book,
Fast Food Nation, I passed it on to her father as a not so subtle reminder that drastic changes were necessary in the children's dietary habits. However tonight as I watched
Professor Jeffrey Friedman's lecture entitled
``Deconstructing Obesity,'' I began to think more seriously about the major, and as he argues dominant, role of biology in explaining obesity. Professor Friedman's lab at the Rockefeller University was the first to establish the correlation between the hormone leptin and its regulatory function on human appetite. The human body has evolved a rather robust though sometimes faulty feedback system of maintaining a relatively stable body weight. As he explains in the lecture, leptin is produced by fat (rather
adipose) tissue in the body and secreted into the blood in response to the consumption of food: more leptin is produced when calorie consumption is high signaling the hypothalamus of the brain (the region in which primordial urges are regulated) to stop eating. Similarly, low levels of leptin induce hunger and insatiation. While he acknowledges the role played by lifestyle on obesity, he argues quite forcefully that the dominant effect is genetic and points to a remarkable case study of a young British boy who at the age of four was eating 2000 calorie meals and had 57% body fat. This young boy was identified to be suffering from a leptin deficiency causing nearly insatiable appetite and when artificially injected with leptin experienced appetite suppression and thus tremendous weight loss through drastically reduced food intake. More convincingly, Professor Friedman produces in his lab grossly overweight mice having genetic deficiencies to produce leptin (seeing these overweight mice next to their normal brethren is a little frightening). The body weight feedback system based on leptin is one reason he argues that diets are ultimately doomed to failure (statistically it is believed that anywhere from 75-90% of all diets fail) for they can never overcome the potent stimulus to consume calories brought on by the absence of leptin in the bloodstream. Alternatively, obesity can be caused by the failure of chemical receptors in the brain to respond to the increased levels of leptin and the data here is undeniable: there is a clear correlation as Professor Friedman presents between percentage body fat and the leptin content in the bloodstream (in the same way that insulin resistance is the main cause of diabetes that insulin deficiency). Thus there are (at least) two factors regulating body weight: leptin sensitivity in the brain and leptin levels in the blood. Can obesity really be viewed as a hormone deficiency? Returning to my overweight young cousin, I realize now that her brother (who shares half her genes with identical environment) and yet does not suffer from the same condition, could be proof-positive of these ideas. I will have to bring up these issues with their father the next time I see him, after I make an apology for being presumptuous early on.
Fall is finally dawning upon us in New England, and frankly I couldn't be happier. The changing seasons are a visceral reminder of the impermanence of life, not just on our
pale blue dot but all over the vastness of the cosmos. It is a sensory delight: the brilliant hues of leaves in flux, the sprinkle of cool wind, the fresh scent of trees and of course, the start of another school year. Fond memories of my childhood growing up in Toronto are infused with the shades of autumn; I can remember vividly raking the mounds of leaves in our backyard and jumping into them in sheer delight. Those sensations were so real, that I can conjure them again many years later (it was revealed a few days ago that this is precisely how our brains works, see
Remembering is Like Reliving). The leafy campus of the University of Toronto (where I went for undergrad) nestled in cozy quarters in the heart of this bustling metropolis also lead me to reminisce of many happy strolls through the campus and its surroundings (the Annex, Yorkville, Kensington Market and beyond). Living and studying in the heart of a teeming, cosmopolitan city really awoke me to the endless possibilities that an urban landscape offers, in stark contrast to the moribund monotony of suburbia. One of my favorite photo blogs on the web delivers daily doses of this magnificent city (& other whimsical locales):
``daily dose of imagery'' is run by Sam Javanrouh, an Iranian-Canadian with a flair for composing breathtaking images that truly offer a different perspective of absorbing urban culture. His pictures evoke both realism and grace, and he's quite gifted at manipulating color when rendering images for mass consumption. He was partly responsible for my stepping into the forays of
amateur photography by investing in my first
digital SLR. This season is a wonderful opportunity for me to improve my skill.
Speaking at MIT's recent June commencement (which I had the pleasure of
attending),
Muhummad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank and champion of microcredit to the poor,
challenged the graduates on that rain soaked morning to pursue a socially conscious future. Dr. Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace prize for his contributions to raising literally millions of his fellow Bangladeshi countrymen out of poverty, was perhaps the most qualified contemporary to make such pleas. His arguments were cogent, dispassionate and reasoned and they were aimed squarely at everyone's inner moral compass. He made wise use of his rare opportunity addressing future global leaders by imploring them to follow his lead. I listened carefully to his words that day and was moved, yet like others seated around me, I could feel a palpable sense of powerlessness, especially when considering that the powerful forces of globalization unleashed on the world since the collapse of Soviet communism had manifestly contradicted such ideas. I was reminded of that speech again tonight as I watched another Nobelist
lecture (& economist) on the ills of today's market economy system and exactly what can be done about it.
Professor Joseph Stiglitz (MIT PhD '67) of Columbia University was discussing his then newly released book entitled
``Making Globalization Work'' to Google employees and though groping for words and stuttering incessantly managed to enunciate some interesting ideas. Stiglitz as I came to discover upon further research into his career is a well known critic of globalization management including both individuals (free market managers) and institutions alike (IMF & World Bank of which he was once Chief Economist), having written another influential book prior to this one (boldly titled
``Globalization and Its Discontents''). In his speech, he criticized protectionist governments (the US government subsidizing 25000 American cotton farmers to the detriment of millions of poor African cotton farmers) and blamed the rich countries for not doing enough to prevent the spectacular numbers of new market economies who have actually deteriorated more significantly since adopting free market principles (he points to the widening income disparity between the United States and Mexico since the adoption of NAFTA and describes his recent visit to Moldova, a country so impoverished by its embrace of globalization that the there has been a ``de-development'' as illustrated in the re-introduction of horse & buggys owing to the collapse of the currency in the wake of the Soviet roubles collapse in the early 90s). He describes environmental degradation (forest clearings, pollution) and specifically global warming as being the result of the absence of an externality cost: in turn, Stiglitz argues for a carbon tax in order that individuals and corporations become mindful of their footprint on the planet's health. Near the end of his talk, he shows support for a progressive tax code by mentioning an un-namemd
conservative lawmaker in the UK who had raised the idea of removing taxes on work & income in order to tax more far more deleterious things like carbon emission. A significant portion of the lecture was spent describing the role of intellectual property rights in today's society. Stiglitz readily admits the adverse effects of copyright laws in stymieing innovation by creating bloated monopolies, but nevertheless notes that these same laws also and most importantly are designed (perversely) to encourage innovation. Ideas, he argues, are easily transmitted from one mind to another with little cost but such is not the case for material goods ("you can't sit in my chair if I'm sitting on it without experiencing a little discomfort"). I would argue that ideas and software (in the form of digital bits) are one and the same: data can be effortlessly transmitted and copied with negligent cost and again private entities are lobbying for stringent and all encompassing patents to severely restrict this free flow of information (this is why I am a strong proponent of open source software, both as a user and producer). Professor Stiglitz's call for the more powerful entities of globalization (ie. rich countries) to take an active role in preventing widespread hemorrhaging among the smaller players is refreshing and I wish him much luck in this endeavor. His ideas have piqued my interest and now I must get my hands on those books.