Collating thoughts

Here are some news items that have caught my fancy in the past few days.

a) First up: Aakash Chopra's latest installment about how cricketer's perceive the world. This episode deals with pre-match preparation and what goes on in a top notch player's mind the day before the game.

Rohan Gavaskar wouldn't play a single ball in the nets, while Viru likes a long hit. Similarly Gautam Gambhir needs his throw-downs before every match, while Sachin Tendulkar's batting in the nets depends purely on how he's feeling about his game at that point of time. While Sachin didn't bat too often in the nets during the 2003-04 series, when he did, he made someone bowl at him from 15 yards most of the time.

There was one extraordinary instance of Dravid and Viru missing the practice session and watching a movie instead. It was before the memorable Adelaide Test in 2003. Sometimes, simply unwinding is the need of the hour.

b) Does this apple look funny to you? Even if it does, don't be alarmed since it is just a rejigging of the base-pair sequences, the odds of which occurring are set at about one in a million.

It seems to me that the odds need to be even larger, since I don't ever recall hearing of a half-and-half apple.

c) If you have been following this blog closely, and since only a select few do follow this blog you must a close follower, then you know that I am an unabashed admirer of Roger Federer's skills on the tennis court. In an age of conditioned, IMG-programed, PC-soundbites to the media, I like Roger's candor and honesty when he is interviewed. Here's an interview he did between the French Open and Wimbledon, before the birth of twin girls. Plenty of nuggets in there, so do read it in its entirety. Here are some excerpts that caught my eye.

5. What would you want to have to be the perfect tennis player – without Roger Federer?
Serve, I take Andy Roddick, in addition David Nalbandian’s backhand, Rafael Nadal’s forehand and Lleyton Hewitt’s fighter qualities. There is no longer so many volleys today, but I would say Stefan Edberg, Patrick Rafter or Tim Henman. And in the mental area, I take probably once again Nadal. This doesn’t guarantee success, but it would be a very difficult to play against this opponent.

40. What surprises me about Rafael Nadal is:
His consistency in his early years.

d) Somethings are better left for you to comprehend and digest.

... administration officials objected to giving author J.K. Rowling the Presidential Medal of Freedom because her writing “encouraged witchcraft”.

e) "Do unto others as others do unto you" is the theme of this long article on Dan Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code. Using Dan Brown's style of writing (if it can be called that) Francis Storrs sets about trying to unravel the man behind the book series that is minting money by the millions.

For an English teacher, Dan Brown is extremely limited as an author. He is repetitive, uses big words to try to impress the reader, and his characters do not talk like normal people at all. At the drop of a hat they are ready with a long discourse on the topic of discussion. Coincidences abound aplenty and the story is just stitched together to put forth the information the author really wants to share. Robert Langdon has now appeared in three stories but very little character development has occurred. If anything, there is less detail about Robert in the latest book - The Lost Symbol. Dan Brown would be better served reading books by Dick Francis to see how a few words and implied gestures here and there in a book can help paint a very vivid picture of a character.

f) Finally, a sobering thought: what if someone knew your every move in the virtual world? What if they could then use that information to profile you and get to you? What would you think of it? Some say that world is already here. George Orwell's world where Big Brother is watching (1984) does not seem like fiction any more, does it?

...by cleverly combining log-in data, cookies, and IP addresses, Google is able to connect search queries to a particular individual across time – with impressive precision.

The result is striking. Google knows for each one of us what we searched for and when, and which search results we found promising enough to click on them. Google knows about the big changes in our lives – that you shopped for a house in 2000 after your wedding, had a health scare in 2003, and a new baby the year later. But Google also knows minute details about us: details we have long forgotten, discarded from our mind as irrelevant, but which nevertheless shed light on our past: perhaps that we once searched for an employment attorney when we considered legal action against a former employer, researched a mental health issue, looked for a steamy novel, or booked ourselves into a secluded motel room to meet a date while still in another relationship.

Each of these information bits we have put out of our mind, but chances are Google hasn't. Google knows more about us than we can remember ourselves.

While it is disquieting, I do not quite share the same sense of doom that the author does. Yes, my personal information is out there in cyberspace, but not any more than I want to share with others. There are lots of parts of me that have never made it outside my mind, or my inner circle, and that will stay that way, no matter how hard any search engine tries.