Books I enjoyed in 2009..

In random order:

1). The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes

2). Love Marriage by VV Ganeshanathan

3). Brave companions by David McCullough

4). 2666 by Roberto Bolano

5). Toss of a lemon by Padma Viswanathan

6). Gifted by Nikita Lalwani

7). Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

8). The Forever War by Dexter Filkins

9). Netherland by Joseph O'Neill

10). Where the heart is by Billie Letts

Will do better and read more in 2010. There..thats my resolution for the New Year.

A wonderful read

Just finished The Toss of a lemon by Padma Viswanathan. And I haven't enjoyed a book and been touched by it so much in a long, long while. Last time I felt this way it was 2005 and I'd just read Salman Rushdie's Shame. But this book affected me differently...I could relate to it in so many tiny, little, different ways that I found myself nodding vigorously, or laughing or shaking my head in resignation as I read. In case I haven't made myself clear, a bond was forged, we connected, the book and I.

This book brought back so many memories. Of childhood summers in Mayavaram. Of daily visits to the local temple, a small little cubby hole of a temple it was, served by a small little man I only knew as kurukkal. Of helping my Tatha pluck flowers for his daily pooja from the garden. Of sitting by my Tatha as he did his daily pooja and waiting for the naivediyam, so I could eat! Of the sweet, sweet smell of Jasmine that grew on the terrace, where I lingered on sultry evenings to escape the heat of the power cuts that ravaged us. Of afternoon story time with Tatha (he told wonderful stories and took pains to vary them and read up new ones for me) and coconut trees in the backyard, and cycle rickshaw trips to town. Because the author has captured the essence of a small village in Tamil Nadu, and a Brahmin household so beautifully that I can't help but remember.

Mostly though, the protagonist in this book, Sivakami, reminds me of my Lakshmi paati. My maternal grandmother. She wears madisar, follows madi-aacharam, yechal-pathu, and until recently didn't eat food cooked by anyone but herself. She also brought up five kids, and one grandchild. She followed all the rules associated with being "out of the house" 3 days a month..something I resented as a 13 year old. She never forgets birthdays or anniversaries. And she has the quiet inner strength that Sivakami has. She's made of something more than I will ever be. She has courage, resilience, tenacity, and a generous, loving heart occupied in equal portions by her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And she believes in feeding people well...one of Sivakami's most enduring qualities!

Oh, this book brought back so many memories of days long gone and reminded me of the people I love the most, and don't call often enough! It has been a rare and most enjoyable treat.

Nothing ever happens in August.....

Have you ever dropped an air-conditioner out of a window? Its not fun. It makes a loud thudding noise and you know its never going to be fixed again, and you just threw 200$ out of the window. But then, have you ever had your super-excellent landlord fix it and install it back in the window where it belongs? And then after it works fine for 2 days, have you ever had an irate landlady come up to tell you you can't use it anymore because its leaking water into her wall? And then have you had to buy a new air-conditioner and have your super-nice landlord help you fix it? And then have you discovered 3 days later that the new air-conditioner leaks too? And then have you had to clean it out...spilling water over your floor and smelling your room up with a weird, mossy wet smell that won't go away for a week? And then have you had to fix it into the other window and keep your fingers crossed it doesn't leak this time around because you installed it tilting outwards? No? Oh, what a humdrum life you lead! Its been a week and I still have a yucky, wet smell in my room and I'm waiting for the air-conditioner to do something weird. Maybe it will do me a favor and give me Legionnaire's disease..

I can't wait for winter.

Also, there is a mouse in my house. I can handle mice in a controlled lab environment...not in the wild....and by wild, I mean my home.

On the bright side, I had the best email conversation I've had in months. Reproduced here for your benefit.

It all began with this innocent note sent by player A:

http://www.bollywoodhungama.com/broadband/video/Interviews/CF3n3z100/3/Shahid-Kapoor-Speaks-About-Kaminey-Part-1.html

Kaminey! Apun ka agla target!

Have a happy working week :)

To which Player B, replies thusly:

I heard that there is a prequel planned for this..."Kutte" ;-p

And I (player C, of course!) couldn't resist:

And its being produced by Dharmendra:)

And then player D was forced to reply:

And the planned sequel to be directed by Ramsey brothers is named "Mein Tera Khoon Pe Jaoonga"

And so and so forth for 15 emails. Which resulted in players A and B watching Suryavanshi that night. And me youtubing every ghostly movie I could think of from Madhumati and Bees saal baad to Bees saal baad!

More than made up for bad days at work and air-conditioning woes and suchlike.

5000 words of nothingness

I like the Arts & Letters website. They usually do a wonderful job of linking to the most interesting articles on the web...erudite, whimsical, funny...you name it..they cover it. Which is why I was surprised when I clicked on today's articles of note link, and landed up here. It was a silly article really. Clearly, she is bitter and unhappy. Even more clearly, she is also self-absorbed and narcissistic. I feel for her, as a person. As a reader, I cringe. There's really nothing she has to say that is at all important. All she has are stories of her girlfriends who all seem to have sucky marriages and sexless lives and a rather disenchanted piece of advice about avoiding marriage because love is fleeting. So, it didn't work for her, so nobody should get married? Sour grapes anyone? She is the anti-Sanford. He, of the sappy e-mails, and rambling press conferences. The only thing they have in common is their unhealthy obsession with themselves.

David Brooks wrote a rather nice article in the NYT about the loss of dignity in America. (Which aldaily linked to!) The Sandra Tsing Lohs of the world need to give it a dekko. She is a writer and a commentator..must she not strive to bring dignity to her writing? And if she isn't capable of doing that for any reason, can't she just go on vacation or something? Not churn out some crass piece which makes my head explode at 10pm at night, because of its sheer idiocy.

PS: I was trying to think of more dignified people. Here's my list in random order: Hema Malini, Naseerudin Shah, Rachel Maddow, Julia Roberts, Sachin Tendulkar, AR Rahman, Michael J. Fox come to mind immediately.

My thoughts on this

Its incredibly hard to get funded by the NCI. Just ask my advisor. He just got his first RO1 from them...and he literally jumped through hoops to get it. The final version of the grant that got funded had enough data to publish a paper...almost.

But its not just about funding high-risk projects..if faster progress has to be made in cancer research, the entire grant review system needs to be revamped. Some soul-searching on the part of the scientific community is imperative. Lets not blame the NIH entirely. A simple example is study section. Ideally, you'd want the best and brightest minds in Study section to judge the grants, and make suggestions for improvement. But many a time the best and brightest minds are unavailable for study section. A lot of top notch researchers don't go to it, (too busy, don't care enough..whatever) because it is voluntary.

The competition for NCI funding is fierce. Less than 10% of the grants get funded. This means a lot of very very good grants fall by the wayside just because there isn't enough money to go around. So, I say we stop building Nuclear weapons and fund more scientific research. I guarantee that this will speed up the "war on cancer". BTW, I find it amusing that it is referred to as a "war on cancer", as if all cancers were the same, and there is one single cure out there. As someone who works on cancer biology, I can only say that the level of complexity is astounding.

We've made great strides in the last 50 years...really molecular biology is just coming into its own. We've identified tumor suppressors, worked out whole signaling pathways that regulate cell proliferation, developed technologies to model diseases (cancer included) in mice and now have the power to analyze whole genome sequences. I believe the best years of cancer biology research are ahead of us.

These are heady times. Yamanaka has figured out a way to engineer iPS cells. The field of RNA biology has exploded, and microRNAs are beginning to make their mark in the field. Paper after paper identifies new genes as oncogenes/tumor suppressors. People in the field of cancer biology study phenomena ranging from embryo development to aging in an effort to understand normal physiological processes and how they can affect neoplastic transformation. Its just an exciting time to be a researcher in cancer biology.

That said, the level of uncertainty amongst faculty is disturbing to see. People are genuinely afraid for their livelihoods. So, in the midst of this sucky economy, with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and one threatening to spillover into Pakistan, a 10% NIH funding rate, and a PhD that doesn't seem like its going to end anytime soon, do I really need to read Gina Kolata's article in the NYT about how we're not making good enough progress? I really must stop reading the news. Or, like everyone else in the 18-30 year age group, I should get all my news from here.

Sigh.

NB: I find her reference to a study on colon cancer that may also impact breast cancer disturbing. There are many commonalities between different cancers, just as there are many differences. I see no reason to be dismissive of it just because.

Weirdness, death and a change of mind

So MJ is dead. Larry King is all over it like a rash. He's interviewing Cher. And she comes on and gives the most rambling, weird, disingenuous spiel I've ever heard, on her relationship with the man and what she thought of him. I heard her go on for about 2 minutes about how he'd walk his swaddled baby back and forth from his trailer for no apparent reason, and how she wondered about it, and I just had to laugh. Poor Larry. He tried hard to bring her to say something nice...something that resembled a eulogy, but she just wouldn't oblige. And I was thinking, here is the man who dangled his baby out of a window. He was accused of being a child molester. And lets face it..he was weird..surgeries and all. And Cher is surprised at his walking his swaddled baby? But I still like Cher. Because she did this awesome movie.

And I take back what I said about Reza Aslan yesterday. I guess I read more than I should have into a certain eloquence of speech and distinguished demeanor. He's just another Muslim apologist saying all the politically correct things. A species I distrust completely, because they're too smart to let you know what they actually think.

But nothing can make me love Jon Stewart less. Nothing. My devotion to him is unwavering. I worship at the altar of Jon, and at the altar of Jon alone.

Nailed it!

On a day when every news channel was going hammer and tongs at the pathetic extra-marital affair of a much married governor who gave an all too juicy press conference, Jon Stewart nailed it. He spent about 2 minutes on the whole sordid affair, in which he managed to give it the status it deserves...just another politician with a conservative mind and a liberal penis! And then, he talked about real news. The emerging threat from North Korea. The conflict in Iran. He had Reza Aslan as his guest, a guy who knows Iran and talks intelligently. In other words, Jon relegated this whole sorry Sanford saga to the backburner. Where it belongs. And therein lies his genius.

For all her professions of prudishness, Rachel Maddow spent 40 minutes of her 1 hour show dissecting his evident lack of composure, his lying habits, his wife's statement and even his amorous emails to the mystery woman. Here is another pathetic hypocrite whining about his mistakes, and this is headlines! As opposed to the demonstrations that have paralyzed Iran, the nuclear tests carried out by North Korea and the Talibanisation of Pakistan. Some idiot Governor who couldn't keep it in his pants is news. Here's the deal...till today, I didn't know who this Mark Sanford dude was. And now, I do. Unfortunately.

It was one of the funnier Daily Shows I've seen lately. With Bush out of office, there's only so much matter for Jon to make fun of. And Reza Aslan speaks well, even if he does gel his hair too much!

The spelling bee

I watched the last hour and a half of the spelling bee on ABC last night. 4 of the last 7 were Indian girls. With names like Aishwarya, Kavya, Ramya and Anamika. The words were weird...as usual. Nothing we'd ever heard of..like palatschinken..a pancake of some kind.

So, they can spell oriflamme and neufchatel and oeillade. But Aishwarya misses menhir. Menhir. I say..get your noses out of the dictionary and go read an Asterix comic already. Its almost ironic. That was the only word (apart from iliopsoas and Becquerel) that I could spell correctly.

When I have kids..they will be spanked if they ever read a dictionary. And for every A they get in school, they'll be grounded at home. They can be Wimbledon champions or bikers. Or struggling artists. But definitely not overachieving spellers who go on to become neurosurgeons. Not to take anything away from these clearly intelligent (and supremely hard-working) kids. But it just seems to me to be a sort of boring competition. But thats just me.

For the moment, lets all of us South Indians forget the ignominy heaped on us by Kavya Viswanathan and bask in the reflected glory of Kavya Shivshankar instead! Nice job Kavya!

Joke of the day

This morning my advisor was laughing when I walked into his room for our weekly chat. He says, we have a student coming in the summer, and its going to be really confusing, guess why? I was like..Oh..I dunno. He says we already have a Hong (himself) and a Hang (post-doc) in the lab. Guess what this student's name is? I was like..dunno...you tell me.

His name is Hung.

Can you believe that..we'll have a Hong, a Hang and a Hung. I mean this is hilarious. I laughed for about 5 minutes before we started to talk science.

Made my day, it did.

Season finales

So, I'm addicted to House and Bones. They both had their season finales this week. House had a pretty interesting case of "alien hand syndrome" and a hallucination that he did it with Cuddy. The soap opera twists are why we really watch the show...the medicine is just a sideshow anyway. And the ending was pretty nifty. I can buy that House hallucinated the sex and everything else. How he still managed to be his usually brilliant self and figure out his patient I do not know. I have a bone to pick with the House producers. Why do the season enders always have to be so damn dark? Last year Amber died. This year House went to a Mental Hospital. And Cuddy. I don't get Cuddy. She's a conflicted woman she is. Anyway..the season ender was not too bad, but not great either. A solid B-minus.

Bones, is a totally different story. Their season finale was total, utter and complete rubbish. There was no case that anyone even superficially cared about. It was some weird story/alternate universe/dream thing that annoyed me, my roommate and every Bones fan out there. We love Bones because of "I don't know what that means" Brennan and the Cocky belt buckle wearing Booth. Not some lovesick couple who are totally secure in their love for each other. Thats not Bones and Booth. Also, we love Bones because of the totally far out Forensic Science that mostly makes no sense but is cool to watch. Also, we love their holograph machine and we like to see Hodgins and Angela get it on. We like the chemistry between Bones and Booth, we like that she is super-intelligent and he's quite accepting of the fact without getting all touchy about it. We like her lack of social skills. We love Sweets for his lovable puppy dog eyes and his psychobabble. After last season's Gormogon shocker, this finale was a total letdown. Also, the whole amnesia thing. Was that really necessary? What is this, Days of our lives? Get over yourselves. I can deal with Bones and Booth not getting together...that is A OK. But this whole cow patty in the form of a season finale is not acceptable. Sorry. You get an F.

Lie to me had an excellent season ender. Twists and turns, accidents and separations. Love and infidelity and terrorist attacks. I like Tim Roth. But since the show is only about 11 episodes old, its too early to make a judgement about it. They still have plenty of time to screw it up. Also, Lie to Me has a totally far out premise as its basis. It might be based in science, but certainly isn't as solid as they make it out to be. I liked last weeks' episode even better than the season ender. There's nothing better than a well-played serial killer angle. Good on you, Lie to me. So far, A minus.

NCIS ends next week. Should see some sparks what with Tony killing Ziva's boyfriend and all.

I do work as well. I know this doesn't sound like it. But I do. Promise.

What I did in the first week of my vacation..

1). Watched more bad Hindi movies in a week than I have in a year. Examples include: Pyar Kiya nahin jaata, Hamara dil aapke paas hai, Dil maange more, Shikhar...you get my drift.

2). Watched more Varun Gandhi on NDTV than I bargained for. He's become the Sarah Palin of this election. Lots of attention. No substance. Divisive. Expert BS-er.

3). Ate more mango ice-cream and gajar ka halwa than is good for me.

4). Ate more everything than I should have.

5). Visited more malls in 1 week than I have in 2 years. And they're all shiny and new. They put the malls in the US to shame. You could eat off the floors. Seriously.

6). Saw more Mercedes' and BMWs on the road than I've ever seen before. And a Ferarri and Maserati showroom besides.

7). Tried to watch Hindi soaps. (I don't know why. I guess I had the time!) Man..they suck just as bad now as they did last year. Except there seem to be less K serials. Or maybe I didn't look hard enough.

8). Saw the Burj-al-Arab...and was sadly disappointed. Firstly, its not in the middle of the ocean. Secondly, it has a faintly phallic look about it. Thirdly, I'm not rich enough to go in and have a drink at their bar.

9). Went on a desert safari..dune-bashing, belly dancing, camel rides..the works. It was the mostest fun. Except for: 1). I got a little queasy during the bashing.

2). The queasiness was increased by the excessively cuddly couple who were riding in the same car as us. Like she was sitting in his lap queasy. And she had a loud, screechy voice queasy. And they smoked like engines queasy.

3). The belly dancer just did some Bollywood style jhatkas and matkas. She didn't like flip a coin on her belly or anything.

10). Stayed home and chilled out with the folks. That was the funnest. I haven't thought about work in a week. I check my email only once every day. And I do nothing. Awesome.

On to India now! Yay...best friends and pani-puri and adoring grandparents and new babies and Vaishali and FC Road and Fab India and Shoppers Stop and fun, fun, fun awaits...

Home.

There are no worries just now. No need to try. No need to pretend. Now I'm relaxed and happy. And eating mango ice-cream. And watching silly reality TV. And reading Neruda, and feeling him too. For now, I am home.

Latest read: The Forever war

I just finished reading "The Forever War" by Dexter Filkins. It was an interesting read. I liked it..for most part. I picked it up because it was on the Nytimes list of must-reads for 2008. I didn't know at the time that Filkins worked for the Times! That doesn't make the book any less readable, thankfully! Its pretty well written. No need to embellish the story to make a point here. He's been there, done that and seen it all. Its hard to not to admire his guts...and his stomach! Initially, the lack of commentary bothered me. I felt like I wasn't getting his perspective on things..just a bald description of facts. But then, he let his thoughts slip in once every couple of chapters. And that was enough. His style of writing is...spartan..for want of a better word. A little jarring at times. Lots of to-ing and fro-ing between times and countries. But it worked for me.

There's a lot of Crash, boom, bang and a healthy amount of Eww! Gross moments. Descriptions of where Marines crap in the middle of war and suchlike. But then there are the little stories of people he met. Like the 9 year old orphan Fatima who ran with him one day. The story of the cool discussion of his kidnapping between a sheik he was interviewing and his translator. The story of how the warring factions in Afghanistan seemed uninterested in the war...they even fought lazily! Those little stories had me hooked.

I felt like he'd lost some part of himself in Iraq. I honestly have to wonder why he kept going back. That hellhole...why would anyone go back...unless they had to? I guess he had to. If I see him around in Cambridge someday, I'd like to tell him I thought it was a brave book.

I've decided to read Rajiv Chandrasekaran's Imperial Life in the Emerald City next. I liked the guy when he came on "The Daily Show" and I feel like I want to understand this war better. My benchmark for liking people is now linked to their performance on the Daily Show. Hmm.

Next in line: I've got 2666 by Robert Bolano on the way, and Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra at home. Also, an anthology of Pablo Neruda's poems and a collection of essays by David McCullough. If only I didn't have a PhD to get through!

Dilli-6

A few questions about Dilli-6:

1). Why does Abhishek Bachchan not speak Hindi in the first half hour of the movie, and later in the movie (2 weeks later timewise!) sound like a born and bred Delhi-ite? He even speaks chaste Urdu at some point. How? When?

2). AB can't rant about the futility of blind faith in one scene and deliver a heartfelt "God is in everyone" speech in the next. It doesn't make sense. Either he likes God, or he doesn't. He needs to make up his mind and pick a side. Or he can be ambivalent, but he still needs to make sense. This way, he sounds like a blithering idiot.

3). What kind of a name is Masakalli? Even for a pigeon. I ask you.

4). Does the symbolism have to be so completely overdone? We get stuff, you know. We're not complete nincompoops. I enjoyed the Ram Leela analogies in the beginning. Later, I just sighed wearily. I think I threw up a little when Masakalli was set free, and Bittu was running away. An unfettering of hearts, so to speak. Why so corny?

5). If I live to be a 100, I will never understand why a cow picked the middle of a crowded Delhi street to give birth. Cows don't do that. They find a nice quiet place to calve. I think.

6). Why wasn't this movie named Kale Bandar ki anhoni kanhaani? It might as well have been.

7). Rahman rocks. Rehna Tu and Genda Phool have been humming in my brain for the last 10 days. No questions here. Also, Waheeda Rehman is gorgeous as ever. She still looks radiant.

NB: I was just watching Pres.Obama's address..how much these people clap! Baap re. He cleared his throat and they clapped for 10 minutes. He said hello..there they went. He addressed his wife...that set them off again. I think they canned the sound of the clapping. To drown out whatever platitudes he was mouthing. All I know is, they gave 7 billion in research funding to the NIH..which has to be spent in 2 years. In other words, they just created another problem. People are going to be employed now, and then 2 years later, when their project is probably just taking off, and the funding dries up, they'll be kicked out. Fools!

In the news

So, Andrew Wakefield falsified data. The whole vaccine-autism thing has stunk royally since the very beginning. Nobody could ever replicate his data. Good reason why. He made it up. He made it up, and did such a good job of it that people decided against vaccinating their kids, leading to Measles becoming endemic in the UK again, and the UK losing herd immunity against the disease.

Another interesting article this week comes from Stanley Fish at the New York Times. He cites the case of one Prof.Rancourt, a physicist at the U of Ottawa who is clearly loony. And then proceeds to use this as an example of the misuse of academic freedom by tenured faculty in North America.

I really, really dislike straw man arguments. Pick a certified nutjob who is disliked by faculty and students alike, and make an example out of him. And then say academic freedom is misused to a great degree by tenured professors. So, the question is, can you run a university like you run a business? If so, then I think if you make a 55 billion dollar loss for your university, you should be handed out several hundred billion more to save it. That seems to be the current policy anyway. And judging from the NIH funding crisis..that is not the case. It is only the corporate fatcats who get rescued for screwing up bigtime.

Mood music

So I read that Bach is now being used to scare rowdy youth away. Its so sad that its not funny. What a topsy-turvy world we live in. Australia just lost 5 ODIs in a row, and we won our 9th. Nadal has Federer looking pedestrian. Whales gave birth on land! The world's upside down alright.

Moving on...I just discovered Joaquin Rodrigo. I absolutely love this piece. I'm totally in love with the Spanish guitar.



Beautiful. More on the deliciously named Fantasia para un gentilhombre here.

Most excellent link of the week

Would that I could explain my world view with such eloquence. Never mind. Tim Minchin does a brilliant job. Ekdum jhakaas!

Better than the morning coffee..

Want to read something completely crazy? I mean like utterly, totally, off the charts insane? Then read this. Its so crazy its funny. And after the first few lines, I only skimmed. But it was still totally mental. God. After all these years, she's still entertaining. Who knew.

Recent reading

I just finished reading Aravind Adiga's Booker prize winning novel, The White Tiger. Its fast-paced and engaging. I just couldn't the feeling out of my head that I was reading a novel meant for a Western audience. Much like I felt Slumdog millionaire was made for a Western audience. And it was an engaging movie too. Just didn't appeal to me or touch me in any way. Adiga's novel appealed a little more than SM did. But not too much. It felt a little preachy in parts. Its like he decided to put all his frustration and anger with "the system" in India into his protagonist, Balram Halwai. The black humor sort of felt flat for me. Also, the narrative, a series of letters to the Chinese premier didn't work for me. I felt it was contrived. The whole Darkness vs Light theme was overdone. (the poor are in the darkness, rich are in the light) Where's the nuance? But the story moves quickly, and its an interesting one. No excuses are made for greed and ambition. I see a cinematic version of this happening pretty soon.

Thats just my take on this one. But hey, what do I know? I disliked Slumdog and it won everything at the Golden Globes. Later, I was listening to the sound track. Its a real pity that out of all of Rahman's outstanding work, he wins for a pretty mediocre soundtrack, by his standards. Compare Jai Ho with Taal or Bombay or Roja. Not even close.

Two Men

2 cricket stories have dominated the last few days' news. And they couldn't be more more different from each other. One is Graeme Smith's courageous batting to try and save the 3rd Test against Australia, in what was technically a dead rubber. Says something about the character of the man and his hunger to win, that he would go out to bat with a broken left hand and tennis elbow of the right one. And almost pull it off. We don't have enough of that going around these days. Real. Actual. Courage. Of course, I could play Devil's advocate and say its lot easier to play Hero when you've already won the series and made history. But even so, it requires guts and gritting of teeth. And he did it. Awesome. Almost as awesome as Kumble's heroics in 2002.

The other one, which unfolded with all the drama of a Bollywood potboiler was the more unsavory English cricket crisis. Which culminated in the sacking of the Coach, and the captain being forced to resign. KP's behaviour has been Blago-like just for sheer brazenness. The man has an ego the size of China. And I pity poor Andy Strauss. What a terrible time and reason to be chosen as captain. Because the ex-captain was a self-serving egomaniac who believed HE was KING! On the other hand, expectations will probably be so low that he'd do have fail pretty spectacularly (read behave worse than KP. I don't think the cricket even matters at this point!) to be held accountable. On the other hand, he inherits a team fractured by internal politics, a star player with a chip on his shoulder and extremely dissatisfied backroom staff. Who wants to be king of that world? I was listening to the BBC podcast on this topic. They seem almost amazed that KP could show such poor judgement and believe he had the full backing of his team...when clearly he didn't. Its like his giant, inflated ego just took over the sane part of his brain.

Two very different men.