A Catcher In The Rye

A tribute to Pink Floyd is long due.

My favourite band which I regard as one of the greatest band ever. Followers of ‘Led Zeppelin’ , ‘The Doors’ , ‘The Who’ , ‘Beatles’ might not agree with this though. Well , what can I say to that! … “To each, its own”

And now to the question , ‘what makes them that special?’.  To be candid , there is no specific answer for that. There are so many aspects to music which one can identify to. It would be unfair to put down one or two of those aspects here based on my personal biases. Although I am certain about one thing , you would be able to relate yourself at some level no matter what aspect of music you are attached to.

And that relation Pink Floyd brings to/in/around you is what makes them God of all bands.

Atlast, chessbase gave the solution for the puzzle I posted under “Chocolate,Coffee and Chess” post. Here it is:

“There are two surprising things about the solution to this puzzle. Firstly, although the position is symmetrical, the play leading up to it is anything but. Secondly, the ‘obvious’ sequence of moves leads to Black lacking a tempo move at the end of the sequence. Therefore Black has to make his tempo move earlier (see Black’s 6th move in the solution). Anyhow, by now you probably want to see the solution, so here it is: 1 a4 c6 2 a5 Qb6 3 axb6 axb6 4 Ra3 Rxa3 5 h4 Rb3 6 cxb3 h6 7 Qc2 h5 8 Qxc6 Nxc6 9 Nc3.”

I can’t believe that the h4-h5 moves were achieved in two steps and their main purpose was to initially pass the tempo from white to black and then from black to white. A very clever deception and counter-intuitive ofcourse, but yet possible to work out.

* Tempo – Normally referred to a single move. Suppose there are 3 places A,B and C , all inter-connected. You have to move from A to C and you do it in the following way: Move from A to B and then from B to C. Another person moves directly from A to C. Now this other person has gained one tempo over you.

(The definition is not strictly correct but yet the basic idea is the same.)

Warning: This post is a bit technical.

I first came across this problem in the movie ‘21′ . Not paying much attention to it at that time, the problem came back to me later in some stroke of random thought. Heres a discussion of the problem along with my blabberings juxtaposed in between:

“You are on a gameshow. There are 3 doors, 2 of which have goats behind them and one of them has a car behind. Now as a participant of the show, you need to choose a door. Whats the probabilty of you picking up the door with the car?”

Easy huh! 1/3 . Anyone with a basic knowledge of probability could figure that out.

Now comes the twist:

“The host of the gameshow asks you to make your choice. After you have made your choice of the door, the host opens up one of the remaining doors out of the two and reveals a goat. Now the host asks you whether you would like to change your choice and choose the other unopened door. So, the million dollar question here is that should you stick to your original choice, change your choice to the other door or it doesn’t make any difference?”

Intuitively, you would say, hell! It doesn’t make any difference. There are 2 doors, one of which has a car and the other has a goat. Whatever I choose will anyways give me the probability of winning the car equal to 1/2. So switch my choice or not, it doesn’t matter.

But here’s where you are mistaken. Here’s where the climax of the film begins. Here’s where the hero rescues the heroine away from the evil clutches of the villain. And here’s where I attempt to explain a bit.

First of all, to drive you away from your intuition, consider a gameshow where there are 2 doors, one with a car and the other with a goat. You are asked to pick up a door by the host. Whats your probability of winning the car? “1/2″ , you would say and thats right. But is this situation identical to the situation(2 unopened doors, 1 opened door with a goat and you in a dilemma to switch your choice or not) as mentioned previously?

No , its not. Its not and its not simply because its not.

Why?

Well, lets say your making a choice in case of 3 doors is an Event A which gives you 1/3 chance of winning the car and 2/3 chance of winning a goat. Now your deciding to switch your choice or not(after one door is opened revealing a goat) and thus, finalizing a door out of the remaining two is a decision which I label as Event B. The two events , mark my words , the two events are not exclusive(as shown in diagram).

Event A –> Event B –> Car or Goat?

Event A gives rise to the situation in Event B. The events are not independent of each other. And now you would ask, how?

Ahem! Had these events occurred on two separate gameshows ie only Event A in the gameshow with 3 doors and only Event B(finalizing a door out of two!) in the show with the 2 doors, these events would have been mutually exclusive whatsoever. However, such is not the case.

“So what?” , says you…

Ok. So here’s my pie for you. When you made a choice for one door in Event A, you have submitted yourself to 2/3 chance of winning a goat and 1/3 chance of winning a car. In simple terms, out of 3000 tries, you’d pick up the door with the goat 2000 times and the door with the car 1000 times.

Now, a door revealing a goat has been opened. Consider for a moment what does that mean for you! If you switch your choice now, all the cases of 2000 times where you have picked up a goat would turn into the winning ones. Why? grrr … simply because you chose a door with the goat in those 2000 attempts(which locks one door with the goat) , the host has opened up a door with the goat(which locks the second door with goat) and so, the third door is the one with the car.

So dudes n dudettes, isn’t it a bit clear now to switch your choice because you manage to convert those 2000 attempts into success , thus putting the probability of picking the car to 2/3.

“And what about the 1000 attempts amongst the 3000 where you manage to choose the door with the car in the first hit and then decide to switch your choice?”, says you.

Well, they all turn into events of failure putting your probability of failure to win the car equal 1/3.

But do you see the DIFFERENCE now?

When you decide to make a switch, your probability of success equals 2/3 while that of failure is 1/3.

When you do not make a switch, your probability of success is 1/3 and probability of failure is 2/3(Simple probability case as discussed at the very begining!)

Hence, my friends, switch , switch and switch your choice if given a chance on such a gameshow!

*I assumed all the while you wanted to win a car in the show. Ofcourse, if your preference is a goat, please do not switch your choice.

No , I didn’t read this book recently.

I read it during the final year of my college and ‘I DIDN”T LIKE IT’. At that time, two of my wingmates had read this book and appreciated it highly. So much so that I remember going in search for it from room to room in our wing and finally managing to borrow it for a few hours.

However, when I finished reading it, I didn’t quite understand why everyone was lavishing hyperbolic praises on the book. To me, the idea in the book which the author was trying to convey appeared hazy and unclear. The twisted plot which finally led to the ‘follow-your-dreams’ concept didn’t seem to be appealing. Reading it was like walking along a foggy path , not able to see anything and yet believing that in the end , as if by a miracle , the fog will clear up and bright sunshine will soon follow(enlightment!) just because everyone who has walked along this path has said so.

Remember the days when we tried to solve problems while preparing for competitive exams. At the time, we would appreciate a problem if it was complex and our teachers would painstakingly give us a two page solution that only a few of us could have comprehended. And yet such problems never turned out in exams which would test us with fundamental problems having simple, elegant solutions. My point here is that there is a tendency amongst most of us to appreciate what is hard to understand even though it might or might not be important/relevant to the context or even if there is a simpler way to look at things. This book felt to me like a similar two-page-solution problem to which most of us were in awe at.

If I have to recommend an alternative to reading this book, I’d rather say Richard Bach’s ‘Jonathan Livingstone Seagull’ which has a clear plot with a similar yet more clear message to convey or Napoleon Hill’s ‘Think and Grow Rich’ which is more towards the realistic side with a easy-to-understand message.

However, even with all my rantings, I am aware that I might be missing out something that has made me not to appreciate this book. And thus, keeping an open mind, I invite you to explain my missing pie if you are one of those who likes and understands ‘The Alchemist’.

Nick Drake

I have been listening to his music for quite a while now. I am not going to write a biographical article about him but rather tell you a few of my interpretations about him and his music.

Nick Drake was an unrecognized genius in his own times(late 60s period). His music and lyrics were way ahead of that period of Rock n Roll era. Probably, thats one of the reasons why he never got his due because people were crazy about Rock n Roll stuff in that period (Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin , Beatles, Jimmy Hendrix etc).

His music has a pure almost innocent quality in it. His songs lyrics are subtle but have great depths. Often, they reflect his own life and the lives around him as he saw them. And not to mention his voice which I can describe as haunting, reflecting and having a rare quality to spring up any mood with utmost ease.

The only two bands which come to my mind when listening to his songs are Pink Floyd and Nirvana. However, Drake was an individual songwriter, musician(guitar) and gave vocals in his own songs. A dream combination I can think of would be Nick Drake and Roger Waters(Pink Floyd) at vocals and Dave Gilmour(Pink Floyd) at the guitars.

Sadly, Drake’s genius was never recognized during his times. However, the past few decades have seen a cult growing over his music (owing largely to a television commercial in 2000s which used one of the soundtracks of his album). Its good to see his music being appreciated and recognized in our times. You can even hear some of the soundtracks in the film ‘Serendipity’.

One of the incidents that I would quote and his manager reveals in a documentary(‘A skin too few – youtube’) on him is where Drake comes to him, looking bad and dirty and asks him: ‘Everybody tells me I am great but I am broke. Why?’. In short, it was the manifestation of anger of a musician who thought he had something to give to the world by his music, yet felt like he failed in doing so. It was probably this feeling that saw him become isolated and recluse in his last years when he had given up on the world and rejected it.

Nick Drake passed away in 1974 at the age of 26 having recorded three albums in his lifetime. He is survived by his music which will always keep him alive in the memories of his fans.

*Here’s a list of some soundtracks to hear:

Time has told me, Cello Song, Fruit Tree, Northern Sky, Black Eyed Dog, Fly, Hazey Jane I and II, Pink Moon …