M C Escher

This book has been a revelation to me. Right now, I am reading about the genius of Johann Sebastian Bach, and M C Escher. I will write more about the book once I am done with reading the first few chapters, but I couldn't miss the chance in the mean time to post a few pictures of the art work of Escher.

1. Waterfall2. Ascend/Descend

Coldplay

You gotta listen Coldplay's new album 'X&Y'. Will haunt you forever.

Been Tagged!

Well, it had to happen. The tag thing has come a full circle and I got tagged by A.T. So, I better cough up the numbers and let everyone know just how poorly read I am.

Number of books owned:
About 50.(I will be a little wicked here and include techincal books in the category).

Last Book Bought:
Well, I hit 'Blossoms' and walked out with not one, but 4 books. Here's the list:
1. Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter (more on this later)
2. Narcissus and Goldmund byHerman Hesse.
3. A Journey to the East by Herman Hesse.
4. Digital Fortress by Dan Brown

Last Book Read:
The Avenger by Frederick Forsyth - I found it just about ok.

Books that mean a lot to me - aaaa haaa moment for me :)
1. Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
2. English, August by Upamanya Chatterjee
3. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
4. C++ Programming Language by Bjarne Stroustrup ( yes, I know what I am typing)
5. Modern C++ Design by Andrei Alexandrescu
6. Stalin's Biography - Author unknown
7. The Gulag Archipelago by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
8. The Hitchhiker's Guide To Galaxy - Douglas Adams
9. The Day of The Jackal - Frederick Forsyth
10. Russia's Road From Peace To War 1917 - 1941 by Louis Fischer

Books I read as a kid - this is the smallest list :(
1. Hardy Boys
2. Nancy Drew( for want of others)
3. Tinkle Digest

Well, now comes the hard part. Who do I tag? As it turns out I am almost the last guy out here to cough up a book list. But wait there's one more, almost always late, guy out there: Goutham.

Static Data + Static methods != Singleton

Me and my collegue Srini had a debate about this topic. Firstly, whats a singleton? Roughly defined, it a class implemented in such a way that it can be instatiated only once. Well, ordinarily, C++ does not prevent you from declaring as many instances of a class as you want, but the singleton pattern( described in Gamma et al ) provides us with that construct.

Static data on the other hand, are properties of the class rather than the class members. So if a class had only static data, (and ofcourse, the static functions required to manipulate them), then it wouldn't matter how many instances of the class you declare - they would all share the same data between them. To me, this loosely simulates what the singleton construct does. However, there are some differences between the two styles:
1. There is no single point of initialization for such static data. In a singleton, however, there is a constructor(albeit a weird one) which would perform the initialization for us.
2. The order of initialization of static data across multiple translation units is undefined. Thats bad if your program expects everything(meaning initialization) to be rosy at the upstart before it begins execution.
3. Technically speaking, the singleton pattern is so named because you can create only instance of it ever(to flog a dead horse). But there is no such restriction with the static data pattern.

Combining static data and static methods is called 'Monostate' pattern. Dont go look up your Gang-Of-Four book yet - it isn't there in that book. This pattern came out quite some time after that book was published.

Nirvana and the Germans - Part 1

Much of the material in this post owes it origin to a small article in the pages of The Hindu's Literary Review that had appeared about 4 years ago. The title of the article was the same as that of my blog. It discussed the moorings of Germans and their interest in Eastern mysticism and philosophy. The phenomenon still raises a bit of incredulity in me - could Germans actually ever understand a concept as difficult to grasp as Nirvana? They have always proven their might in Sciences, but philosophy? That too, from an alien land? And from India? Surely you got to be kidding me....

But all these doubts were set far aside when I finished reading Herman Hesse's masterpiece 'Siddhartha'. Hesse displays a deep knowledge and understanding of the wisdom in Hindu philosophy. Vedas, Upanishads, he quotes them all. But thats not whats impressive about the novel. Its his deep insight into Nirvana and his interpretation of what it means is what warms one to the book. Some of the deep insights in the novel:

"Did you," so he asked him at one time, "did you too learn that secret
from the river: that there is no time?"

Vasudeva's face was filled with a bright smile.

"Yes, Siddhartha," he spoke. "It is this what you mean, isn't it: that
the river is everywhere at once, at the source and at the mouth, at the
waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains,
everywhere at once, and that there is only the present time for it, not
the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future?"

"This it is," said Siddhartha. "And when I had learned it, I looked at
my life, and it was also a river, and the boy Siddhartha was only
separated from the man Siddhartha and from the old man Siddhartha by a
shadow, not by something real. Also, Siddhartha's previous births were
no past, and his death and his return to Brahma was no future. Nothing
was, nothing will be; everything is, everything has existence and is
present."

There is no time? Huh? Using the metaphor of the river, Hesse weaves a rich tapestry of philosophy with deep underlying knowledge. Not wisdom, mind you, but knowledge. About Wisdom, Hesse has something to add -

Quoth Siddhartha - "Wisdom which a wise man tries to pass on
to someone always sounds like foolishness."

"Are you kidding?" asked Govinda.

"I'm not kidding. I'm telling you what I've found. Knowledge can be
conveyed, but not wisdom. It can be found, it can be lived, it is
possible to be carried by it, miracles can be performed with it, but it
cannot be expressed in words and taught. This was what I, even as a
young man, sometimes suspected, what has driven me away from the
teachers. I have found a thought, Govinda, which you'll again regard as
a joke or foolishness, but which is my best thought. It says: The
opposite of every truth is just as true! That's like this: any truth
can only be expressed and put into words when it is one-sided.
Everything is one-sided which can be thought with thoughts and said with
words, it's all one-sided, all just one half, all lacks completeness,
roundness, oneness. When the exalted Gotama spoke in his teachings of
the world, he had to divide it into Sansara and Nirvana, into deception
and truth, into suffering and salvation. It cannot be done differently,
there is no other way for him who wants to teach. But the world itself,
what exists around us and inside of us, is never one-sided. A person or
an act is never entirely Sansara or entirely Nirvana, a person is never
entirely holy or entirely sinful. It does really seem like this,
because we are subject to deception, as if time was something real.
Time is not real, Govinda, I have experienced this often and often
again. And if time is not real, then the gap which seems to be between
the world and the eternity, between suffering and blissfulness, between
evil and good, is also a deception."

It would take mighty long time for me to figure out what Hesse is saying here. The real significance of these words is lost on me at this moment, simply because I am too much of a mortal to comprehend it.