The Roads Less Travelled …

Imagine a robot that seemingly crashes to the ground every instant and  yet assiduously manages to overcome the obstacles that come in it’s path without any effort. That does not rely on wheels for locomotion in rough terrain. Researchers at NASA have developed such a machine.

A key challenge in the development of walking machines is how to effectively maintain the position of the center of gravity. Too much shifting of the CG would make any machine or human topple. Walking comes to us so naturally that the complexity of the process is not immediately evident to us. Wheels are so popular because a fixed base with wheels keeps the CG within spatial limits and thus allows people to concentrate on locomotion rather than the stability aspect of the problem.

What the researchers above have done is to convert one of the greatest challenges in the area of locomotion studies into an opportunity. With a robot that naturally falls, maintainance of the CG position ceases to be a challenge. Flexible limbs give the robot its shape shifting capabilities. This is thinking out of the box at its very best.

technorati tags:technology, robotics

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Courtesy this post by Anurag or Bataas as we know him here in WIMWI, I suddenly got inspired to write down the psycho-literary history of my head. Those who are yet unaware of my incoherent ramblings might see some chaos in the order. I can however assure you there is only chaos. So, without further ado,

1. The book that has affected me the most

“Catch 22“. This was literally “love at first sight”. The fight of the individual over the collection that he had no wish of becoming a part of in the first place (Yossarian), the mindless exploitation and hoarding of power by some in the name of collective good (Milo) and the many who get stuck, squirm, scream and die in this entire process changed the entire way I have since looked at people and collections. And yes there is something called as Free Will and Choice

2. The book I have read more than once

Too many of them actually. The “Harry Potter series“, “Sherlock Holmes” novels and stories, the “Lord of the Rings trilogy“, “Hundred Years of Solitude“, “Catcher in the Rye” and “Slaughterhouse V” are some of the more memorable ones. Then are parts of the book you keep on re-reading rather than the entire book. I for example have read the first few chapters of War and Peace or the Nabokov’s description of his nymphets in Lolita so many times that those pages now look different.

And though I don’t read too much poetry, “Four Quartets” by T.S. Eliot and “If” by Kipling have over the years become regular companions.

3. On a deserted island I would like to have …

“Ulysses” by Joyce. Maybe out of sheer despondency I will finally read it and maybe even understand it. Yeah and the entire box of Asterix comics to keep me sane.

5. The book that made me cry

Can’t remember any. Lots of movies have done that to me. But not books for some reason except for a couple of short stories in Oriya that I read long back. Some of them made me feel really sad on the state of the world and stuff like that. “Petals of Blood” is a good example.

6. The book that made me laugh

Lots (maybe except Sartre’s works). Actually almost every good book will make you laugh at some time or the other. “Three men in a boat: to say nothing of the dog” takes away my prize for simplicity and inventiveness of its humour. “Breakfast of Champions” is also bitingly sarcastic and outrageously funny if you are not a George Bush fan.

7. The book I wished was not written

“Five point someone” … I was next in the line to write it

8. A book I wished was written

An Indian epic of the scope of “War and Peace” or “Brothers Karamazov“. Premchand’s works reputably have the same epic proportions but have yet to read them.

9. I am now reading …

“Anna Karenina“. Again

Now … that was a long post …

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Through a Glass Darkly, is the first and probably the most engimatic and yet the most lucid of Bergman’s Winter Light trilogy (Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence). It is also the starting point of his collaboration with Sven Nyquist, the master cinematographer who is credited with the creative and masterful use of natural light and shadows in many of his other works.

As in many of his other works, Bergman subject matter centers around the struggle to define one’s own concept of God, a struggle that was intensely personal to him. The greatness of the film lies in the fact that it is a compelling family drama on the surface and that Bergman never loses the grip on this narrative while all the time posing to the viewer the question of conception of a creator. David, a reasonably successfull author is torn between the love of a  father for his daughter Karin, a schezophrenic, and the artist’s urge to observe and record her descent into madness in view of creating a magnum opus. The other major characters are Minus, the brother and Martin, the husband of Karin. All characters love Karin and yet each of their affections is distorted by their own percpetions of her. The movie is set in a desolate island; the characters have nowhere to escape and have to face and come to terms with their feelings, fears and inhibitions about each other.

The literal English translation of the original Swedish title (Såsom i en spegel) of the movie, taken from Corinthians 13:12 in Bible

“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass darkly, but then we shall see face to face. . .”

obfuscates and obscures the intent of the film - to expose the distorted view we have of people through the mirrors of our own minds and bring us face to face with our own emotions. Our search for God, Bergman contends is to end within our own selves if it has to ever end and not in some external creation.

As with many of his other movies, the harrowing psychological analysis of the characters and the ascetic setting of the movie give, Through a Glass Darkly, the reputation of a depressing film. The use of natural light and the brilliant interplay of shadows give the viewer far keener insights into the minds of the characters than is possible through the spoken word. It is here that Bergman displays the power of cinema as a medium and his forte as a director. As many critics have said, Through the Glass Darkly is probably best construed as a cinematic equivalent of a String Quartet; each character with his own story to tell and at the same time taking forward the main storyline in a coherent manner.

technorati tags:bergman, cinema

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