Maxwell's Demon: a useful devil!

Demons are scary and Maxwell's Demon is bound to be even more so. Maths and physics frighten many of us as much as any ghost or devil. But did you know that physicist James Clerk Maxwell, in 1867, actually birthed a demon in a thought experiment? 

In the thought experiment, a demon controls a small massless door between two chambers of gas. As individual gas molecules (or atoms) approach the door, the demon quickly opens and closes the door to allow only fast-moving molecules to pass through in one direction, and only slow-moving molecules to pass through in the other. Because the kinetic temperature of a gas depends on the velocities of its constituent molecules, the demon's actions cause one chamber to warm up and the other to cool down. This would decrease the total entropy of the two gases, without applying any work, thereby violating the second law of thermodynamics.

Most demons are rather useless in practice, because they simply don't exist. However, Maxwell's demon has helped scientists, pointing the way to overcome problems even in concrete aspects of life. 

To understand more about Maxwell's demon, try How Maxwell’s Demon Continues to Startle Scientists:

Ideas like this could prove useful in designing more efficient thermal systems, like refrigerators, or even in developing more advanced computer chips...

But, if that's too much too, try a short story based on Maxwell's pet thought experiment: Maxwell's Demon Went Down to Georgia.  

And, if that is also not your cup of tea, try this:

While too many humans still cling to beliefs about supernatural beings, and while such persons often end up causing devilish horrors in real life, there are also a number of people who prefer to flex the muscles of their brain to learn more about the world in which we live. So let's put all our mythical monsters into fiction where they belong and enjoy them only in stories.  

Our children would do better to learn more about Maxwell and other great minds than be brainwashed into primitive belief systems which are causing barbaric bloodshed in the present. James Clerk Maxwell produced his first scientific paper, “On the Description of Oval Curves,” when he was only fourteen! If parents can focus on reading to improve their knowledge of the world, rather than on consuming best sellers, would it not give a nation's children a better chance at improving the world? 

 

Tolstoy's War and Peace: a tale of two families

War and Peace was much in the news in India some years back. Apparently, it was considered a dangerous book by some arm of the law. But did the noise it created incite interest in the book?

Leo Tolstoy - a painting by Ilya Repin

Not for me, at least. In my case, the tipping point came early in the pandemic when some people began online readathons to keep sane during the lockdowns. And what can be better for the purpose than books that people insist should be read in a lifetime? So I began the big book.

I began it on June 4, 2020. However, I seem to have suddenly picked up the pace in more recent months. Certainly it was after I came across an article which looked at reading for 30 minutes a day and covering some 30 pages in that rhythm. And thus it is that I finished the book sooner than anticipated.

It is an easy book to read and holds your attention most of the time. People love family gossip. War and Peace is as easy to get into as is the TV series, Friends. And, while friends are many in the book, the story mainly revolves around two families: the Rostovs and the Bolkonskys.

The Rostovs are father and mother and their three children. There is also a poor relative, a girl called Sonia. But our attention from the start is focused on fair young Natasha, the little daughter running hither and thither at a grand party for the grownups. Although we will plod through the wastes of war after all that partying, she will linger in our memory and slowly but surely emerge as the love interest for Prince Andrew Bolkonsky, one of the major figures in the story.

Though Natasha’s confidante is mostly poor Sonia, she is equally at ease with both her brothers. And the destinies of the two major families in the story are further cemented when the elder brother, Nicholas, falls in love with Andrew’s sister, Princess Mary.

While both families are wealthy and from noble lineages, the Rostovs reach ruin as the elder son incurs gambling debts but their father is no less responsible for rapidly running through the family’s finances.

And, lastly, there is the youngest son, Petya, with whom Natasha continues to enjoy childhood joys well into her womanhood.

Last but not least is the long suffering Sonia who is in love with the elder brother, Nicholas. Having no money of her own, she spells tragedy for the family if Nicholas marries her and so it is soon established that this is a lost cause.

In contrast, the Bolkonskys are an aloof lot. An eccentric father spends his days in study and torments his frail daughter out of contempt. He is rather more proud of his son who, in any case, respects his aged father.

We meet most of this star cast early and mostly in the grand settings of ballrooms and at dinner parties. Except for the elderly Prince Bolkonsky and his daughter who live in exile.

Then comes the war – Napoleon has marched into Russia. Prince Andrew goes to battle as does Nicholas. And, in time, Petya too.

The volumes of the book that deal mostly with the war do not mention much about the rest of the family but there is a break in hostilities and we return to the families. Andrew comes back from being a prisoner of war to find his wife on her death bed from childbirth. It is a dark tragedy for him, compounded by the guilt he experiences as he had pure contempt for his childlike wife.

However, when his mind is more settled by working for the welfare of the peasants who toil for him,  and in the course of traveling for work, he stays a night with the Rostovs and there he becomes aware of Natasha. 

The seeds of love are sown and bear flower when he meets her next but his ill tempered father does not view the match with favour and so Andrew chooses to stay away from Natasha for a year.

As fate will have it, when his return is imminent, a scoundrel seduces Natasha and is about to elope with her. The bid is foiled but rumour spreads and Andrew coldly sets Natasha free of their engagement.

War returns to tear the families apart and, this time, Andrew is fatally wounded.

Battle of Moscow, 7th September 1812, 1822
by Louis-François Lejeune

Natasha serendipitously nurses him to the end and, somehow, that love is vindicated. 

Yet, somehow too, his death sets his sister free to marry Nicholas. Thus the story closes with the two families becoming very close.

Besides these two families there are, of course, several others but those are not shown to us in as great detail.

Taking these two families as background, Tolstoy paints for us a grand canvas of Russia in that time and exhorts us to remember how terrible war is.

Families lose dear ones in war. Even unarmed women and children get killed in battles. Wars destroy the finances of a nation, affect agriculture and lay low edifices that have taken years to build. The heart of a nation beats in its household hearths. War plunders not only the wealth of a country but decimates the peaceful pace of family life.

I Prefer Not To: Are we Bartlebys?

Unlike the Bartleby in the short story, I have recently decided to do things I prefer not to do. Thus, I'm back to a routine of writing a thousand words every day. That mode has always been productive. The first time I undertook the challenge, I wrote some short stories of which I remain fond.

Read the short story in question: Bartleby the Scrivener. Unless you prefer not to. You might want to listen to it instead:

Most do very little that is worth the while. Is it because, most of the time, we prefer not to? 

In writing a thousand words a day, is it the routine that becomes a chore over time and, one fine day after another, I find I prefer not to?

Reading the classics is another thing one avoids. And, thus, though a teacher tried hard, early in my life, to interest me in Herman Melville, I preferred not to. 

However, I recently came across a useful tip that will probably help me try some of Melville's longer works some day: Moby Dick, Billy Bud and Typee. There are films of these works and watching them might inspire some to proceed to the book:

or

The book is about a whale and it is a whale of a book. When that is the case it is not often that you have a whale of a time because you have to spend a whale-like amount of time on it. However, as a consequence of trying to write a thousand words a day, I've had to decide to read something good every day too. For it is impossible to churn out so many words a day without knowing much about anything. 

But how does one get around to reading when one prefers not to? I soon found some help online in an article on how to read the classics and it suggested reading twenty pages per day. And that is how I now have a whale of a time every day, galloping through Tolstoy's War and Peace for some thirty minutes at a time. 

However, fiction is not enough to provide fodder for a daily writing habit and I soon had to factor in another half an hour for reading research. All in all, one good habit leads to another.

And so I’ve managed to read up a tiny bit about Moby Dick and why it is considered so great. One thing becomes clear: like all the greats, Herman Melville was extremely well read. For example, in Moby Dick, he mentions the Indian matsya avatar.

‘Moby Dick’ says Elephanta has the oldest whale portrait. Where on earth did Melville get that idea?

To return to another specimen or avatar, Herman Melville's short story Bartleby the Scrivener is about a man who prefers not to. Whatever you ask of him, he prefers not to do it.

I was reminded of another story in this context. It was about a little boy who said no to everything. That was a very moral tale and I think the boy had the bad luck to meet a witch who cursed him for his 'no' to her. The poor lad then said 'no' to everything, even when he wanted to say 'yes'.

In the case of Bartleby, also, he comes to a rather sad end.

Melville’s story first introduces us to the narrator, a lawyer with an office and some employees. Then he describes these – two copyists and an office boy. Along comes an increase in work and enter our 'hero'. 

The work of a copyist must be a thing of the past, given that we now have photocopiers and such.

Bartleby does a lot of copying but absolutely nothing else. At first it seems like that’s alright but in time the narrator begins to be annoyed by the refusals and, indeed, at some point, Bartleby even prefers not to do any copying too.

Finally, to get rid of him, for he now even lives on the premises, the narrator has to shift office. All is well for a while until the new owners begin landing up at the narrator’s new office for Bartleby will not vacate their premises.

Ultimately the pest is jailed or something like that.

Melville takes on the challenge of writing about something in which no action is imminent. And which is low in the promise of emotion.

Yet you will read through the story as gripped by it as if it were a tense detective novel!

I don’t know where I read this but apparently, before the fall of man in Christian theology, man enjoyed idleness – a condition that is also revered in the Ashtavakra Gita. So Bartleby is suffering the indigestion of the apple.

Condensed Books - Readers Digest Classics

Volumes of condensed books lined library shelves when I was young. These were brought out by a then popular magazine called the Reader's Digest. It was a magazine that looked more like a book and, while the magazine survives, its bookish nature has not. The magazine is no longer worth more than flipping through where once many hoarded copies and read them over and over. Every now and then, the Reader's Digest also brought out enchanting books on useful topics. Of all these achievements,  their Condensed Books remains the best.

Each volume had a certain number of novels abridged quite elegantly. And this is a really honourable service for we cannot read all the good books in the world in one lifetime. And it is often a quick way to know what to expect when you finally get around to reading the unabridged version. A synopsis can often be found on the Net but most don't give you an adequate idea of the story. And many will try to make you pay for shoddy summaries by some person of low worth for the task.  

Here is one of the volumes of the Condensed Books:

Readers Digest Condensed Books, Volume 4, 1973

The volume has the following:

La Balsa: The Longest Raft Voyage in History - Vital Alsar with Enrique Hank Lopez

La Balsa

This is the account of a great and unrecognized adventure in fairly recent times. My father was fond of a book about a similar, earlier escapade  - the Kon-Tiki pacific expedition by Thor Heyerdahl.

The Sunbird - Wilbur Smith 

The second novel covered by the volume is equally inviting. However, it lost popularity as it is reported to have a colonial stance. My attitude to such things is that we can surely read anything even if it conflicts with our stances on issues. Otherwise, we run the risk of being as narrow minded as those we oppose. 

State Trooper - Noel B. Gerson

I could not find out much about this book but readers have enjoyed it.  

The Search for Anna Fisher - Florence Fisher

From reviews online, I gather that it's a moving account of a lady who was adopted and who seeks her biological parents.

Mrs. Starr Lives Alone - Jon Godden

Again, the net offers too little about this story but it appears to be quite thrilling.

So, dive in and enjoy four books in one volume!

 

The Reading Habit: the what and how of it all

Reading is good. But what to read? And how to read. Because there is so much to read.

The Bookworm - Carl Spitzweg 

What to read comes more easily to some. In some families, most enjoy reading. So each new member gets the habit.  Seeing adults reading for pleasure, the child imitates them even before learning to read, even holding a book, upside down, perhaps. In some families, if at all there are books, no one touches them. They are for show. But even these collectors of books are rare. Beyond books bought to pass an exam, there may be no other form of literature in the house. Some households have religious books but even in this scenario, few are those who actually read the scriptures. 

Not all those who merely collect books but rarely read them are unworthy cases. There is the famous Tsundoku and most of this set that I have met have merit. Somehow, just owning the right books makes a difference. However, most of the benefits of that mode can more easily and beneficially be obtained in another manner. 

Identify, first, what people say are good books to read. This is easy today: Type best books to read in the box on your search engine page and you will get many suggestions. Most will repeat certain books. Thus, you will soon see which books many say need to be read in a lifetime. 

But can you read so many books? 

Reading will never become a habit where reading speed is low. Here is a way to test your speed: Free Reading Speed Test. 

Once your eyes are trained to spend time with words, the brain automatically kicks into gear in time to make sense of what you read. And soon your eyes will pick out what is important in text as you skim over pages like the bird diving in and out the flower to extract honey. You will note that people who love reading do not find it difficult to consume books and, in no time, finish one and hunger for another.

Often, what stops people from reading in the first place is the question: why should I read? In fact, in many regions of the world, most families are illiterate and poor. In such a situation, it appears normal to consider reading a waste of time that should be spent doing something useful. Alas, such a consideration does not take into account the fact that books tell you all you need to know about almost anything. Reading provides you with all kinds of information about the world. Good books are like libraries or encyclopedias and give you a glimpse of the most important thoughts in the world. 

And, if you learn to love books, you are never really alone. What is more, reading makes you a more interesting person.

If you need a nudge, try Writer Rites on Facebook where I have curated some literary gems. You can also find such a feed on my Twitter account.   

Happy Reading, friends!