February 19, 2008 by Sanjay.

I recently mentioned the redundancy of fiction in our hyper-absurd “real” world . As if one needed further proof, along comes a story of a Bush-appointed federal judge in drag arrested for DUI.

Needless to caveat, I fully support everyones right, regardless of birth sex, to don “a black women’s cocktail dress, fishnet stockings and high heels” as the mood strikes. But a conservative bankruptcy judge? Could even Roald Dahl have made him up?

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February 19, 2008 by Sanjay.

Who says Facebook is the biggest drain of human potential since the invention of Pacman? Why just recently, a member of my college Facebook group mentioned A Certain Ambiguity, a self-described “mathematical novel” by Saurav Suri and Hartosh Singh Bal. Existing these days as I do in a state of concentrated Obamanation, it’s quite unlikely that I would have otherwise encountered this enjoyable trifle.

Novels have become almost vestigial in our fictionalized reality, where Jon Stewart can get laughs merely by cocking an eyebrow as he reads transcripts of congressional hearings. But something about A Certain Ambiguity intrigued me enough that I checked it out from the local library. (Confession: anything to avoid VBA coding!)

The novel belongs to an as-yet-undiscovered literary genre I call the talkie novel. Talkie novels use a Socratic dialog (possibly an interconnected set of dialogs or even an internal monologue) to dissect a philosophical frog. Talkie novels are best read at fifteen. Talkie novels make lousy movies. Talkie novels can engender a curious type of monomania, which can lead to one being called eccentric. All in all, talkie novels should be avoided after leaving college. But done well and read at the right time, talkie novels provide a lifetime of pleasurable nostalgia.

The undisputed heavyweight champion of talkie novels, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, is a meditation on quality - specifically, on its immiscibility with mainstream Western values. A Certain Ambiguity, far less ambitiously, focuses on another unstable colloid - certainty and faith. Based on its rigorous proof methodology, mathematics (indeed, all of science) implicitly asserts superiority over religion. Suri and Bal attempt to show, through the narrative structure of a novel, that the two belief systems are not as divergent as commonly understood.

So. How does the novel work? In a word, it doesn’t. Certainly not as a novel. The structure isn’t bad: the narrator, an earnest Indian undergraduate at Stanford, enrolls in a math class seemingly targeted to non-math majors. In the course of learning about Euclid’s Elements, infinite cardinalities, and consistency and completeness of formal systems, our hero uncovers the mystery of his mathematician grandfather’s unfortunate incarceration in New Jersey, changes majors, and finds the girl of his dreams. (Godel waves from a distance; Ramanujan is heard from, but not seen.)

The granddad’s story (set in 1919) is told through the creaky device of an ongoing conversation with a judge appointed to decide whether he should be prosecuted on blasphemy charges. Grandpa, a fervent rationalist and atheist, has clumsily insulted the Christian townsfolk and found himself in jail. Over a course of multiple conversations - which sound suspiciously like all-night undergraduate gabfests and nothing at all like a quasi-legal discussion, even ca. 1919 - Grandpa and the judge come to the common realization that while faith is the basis of any belief systems, only objective reason can undergird certain knowledge.

As the Stanford story (it’s less a story than an exposition, really) clunks its way through plot devices including smoky jazz clubs, intense Jews, and pragmatic all-Americans, one wishes that the authors had consider spent a summer at the Iowa Writers Workshop. Or, at the very least, attended a writing course at the “Center for Annexed Learning” (an invention of the brilliant David Sedaris available in streamed audio; advance to the 5:30 mark.) Instead, we’re left with a novel not good enough as a novel to appeal to the adult reader, and without interesting enough mathematics to appeal to the genuinely mathematically curious. On the other hand, perhaps I am being too critical. Perhaps one should think of a “mathematical novel” as of a talking dog: it doesn’t matter what it says, that it exists is amazing enough!

If you’re into boundary-stretching (e.g., post-modern) fiction, you might do better with something like Calvino’s Once on a Winter’s Night a Traveler. And if learning math on your sofa is what gives you a buzz, consider Lakatose’s masterwork: Proofs and Refutations. But if you are a sentient young ‘un interested in mathematics, A Certain Ambiguity will give you a lot to look back fondly on when you’re old, like, thirty.

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February 11, 2008 by Sanjay.

Since I am much more at home these days, I end up cooking more than I used to, perhaps 2-3 nights every week. This frequency means that I am, for the first time, running out of things to cook. As a result, I now think of recipes like car-ful Indians regard traffic lights: suggestions, not imperatives.

Once you have mastered the basics (I am thinking here of Indian food; I imagine it isn’t very different in other cuisines,) each new recipe speaks to you like a poem, a clean number theory theorem, or a John Prine lyric. It either holds together, or it seems artificially constructed. Even if the former, following the recipe exactly is never really possible (for me). Sometimes it’s missing ingredients. Sometimes it’s lack of time for a particularly involved marination or pre-cooking prep. So I view every new recipe as an outline, a “treatment”. (This is especially true of Internet recipes, which often seem to be improvised precisely to get around lack of time or ingredients.)

Having tried numerous variations on a recipe, once I have decided on its merit, rather than continuing experimenting, I tend to converge to a “best practice”. Here, for example, is my reworking of:

Kavi Didi’s Vindaloo

Ingredients

• 3/4 lbs pork or beef, cubed 1/2 inch
• 1/2-inch ginger root, finely chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped or crushed
• 1 medium onion, roughly chopped
• 2 teaspoons coriander powder
• 2 teaspoons cumin powder
• 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
• red chilly powder to taste (1 = little bite, 2 = nicely hot)
• 3 tablespooons canola oil
• 1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
• salt to taste
• 1/2 teaspoon of cumin seed
• 1/2 teaspoon of coriander seed

Preparation

1. Add everything but the cumin and coriander seed, plus half a cup of water to pressure cooker.
2. Seal the lid, put on high heat and let it whistle at full pressure.
3. Reduce heat and let simmer 3 minutes. (Adjust time based on meat tenderness.)
4. Release steam, remove top and cook until dry. Stir as necessary.
5. Wait for oil to separate.
6. Roast cumin and coriander seeds together until brown. Grind and add to Vindaloo.
7. Serve hot with rice. (Also makes excellent sandwich with leaf lettuce, tomato, and good French bread.)

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