Features

The Rosie Project
Graeme Simsion
US: Simon and Schuster, 2013
Pp. 295
 

Big parts of this novel are simply hilarious but that does not mean it is frivolous. Both the humour and the important thoughts in “The Rosie Project” stem mainly from the unique take on the world of the main character and narrator, Don Tillman. Don is a genetics professor at a university in Melbourne, Australia. As the story opens, he gives a lecture on the genetic aspect of Asperger’s syndrome, the mildest form of autism. Soon, one realises that he could have spoken from a more personal angle.  

Don’s social awkwardness, emotional paucity and rigidity, combined with his phenomenal memory and scientific career, place him in the Asperger’s category, though author Graeme Simsion doesn’t label him outright. Being unable to interpret people’s facial expressions, or understand jokes and idiomatic speech, Don doesn’t fit in; he has few friends, and often responds inappropriately and lands in awkward situations.

Some of his interpretations and reactions to other people’s words are truly funny, and one will laugh out loud, but also pause to think: What do people really mean with the phrases they reel off? What do they really want with their social interaction? 

The Rosie Project is the last of many projects which Don undertakes. It all starts with the Wife Project, based on a meticulous, 32-page questionnaire designed to be circulated over dating sites, in order to weed out unsuitable women and lead him to the perfect life partner. Looking for a mate in this way is part of his obsession with charting his life according to logic, rather than instincts or emotions, but when Rosie walks in, his rigorously observed daily schedule and usual rules are overturned.

For the first time, a woman gives him her phone number and says to call her, causing him to think, “I had temporarily been included in a culture that I considered close to me… Another world, another life, proximate but inaccessible.” (pp. 72 and 95)

Rosie is a stunning redhead, a psychology graduate student who presents herself as a bartender (her part-time job). Don thinks she is applying to the Wife Project, but she was sent by a mutual friend to make Don have some fun. So, from the start, they are at cross purposes — he finding her totally unsuitable because she smokes, is always late, and other faults; she wondering at his Wife Project-related references. 

Their interaction is odd but not only because of Don’s idiosyncrasies; Rosie is also off-beat. When Don discovers that her bad relationship to her father, and her belief that he is not her real father, are causing her much mental distress, he offers to help her find her real parent via genetic research. In total denial as to how attractive he finds her, he justifies his new project as a scientific pursuit. 

Thus begins the Father Project, a series of charades and escapades aimed at obtaining DNA samples from over 100 doctors who were in Rosie’s now dead mother’s graduating class. The project includes Don becoming a quite successful bartender at these doctors’ class reunion, and Don and Rosie travelling to New York together to track down other suspects. Their search adds another layer to the suspense already building as to where Don’s and Rosie’s relationship is heading. 

As different “father” candidates are eliminated, so too Don eliminates many of his presuppositions about bartenders, sports enthusiasts and other types of people he thought he had nothing in common with, as well as what things he could enjoy doing. A subtheme of the novel is gently ridiculing the pretensions of academics, while the trip to New York offers an opportunity to laugh at the American penchant for superlatives as Don and Rosie eat the World’s Best Breakfast and the World’s Best Pizza, and peruse the World’s Longest Cocktail List, etc.

But feelings remain the sticking point. It is unclear to the end if Don can overcome his inability to trust and articulate his feelings. What is very clear, however, are the advantages of throwing conventions to the wind, of having fun and trying new things, of not only recognising but relishing individual differences, and of accepting others as they are. This is the first novel for Australian author Gaeme Simsion, and he delivers a fast-paced, funny story, full of well-developed, quirky characters, credible dialogue and original insights.

“The Rosie Project” is available at Readers/Cozmo Centre.

WASHINGTON — In a remote part of the Venezuelan Amazon, scientists have discovered that members of a village isolated from the modern world have the most diverse colonies of bacteria ever reported living in and on the human body.

The microbiome — the trillions of mostly beneficial bacteria that share our bodies — plays a critical role in maintaining health. Friday’s study raises tantalising questions about the microbial diversity of our ancestors, and whether today’s Western diets and lifestyles strip us of some bugs we might want back.

Most surprising, this group of Yanomami indigenous people harboured bacteria containing genes with the ability to resist antibiotic treatment, even though the villagers presumably were never exposed to commercial medications.

This isolated population offers “a unique opportunity to put our microbial past under the microscope”, said lead researcher Jose Clemente, an assistant genetics professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.

The results bolster a theory that diminished microbial diversity in Western populations is linked to immune and metabolic diseases — allergies, asthma, diabetes — that are on the rise, said senior author M. Gloria Dominguez-Bello of NYU Langone Medical Centre.

“The challenge is to determine which are the important bacteria whose function we need to be healthy,” she said.

Everyone carries a customised set of microbes that live in our noses and mouths, on our skin and in our intestines. This microbial zoo starts forming at birth and varies depending on where you live, your diet, if you had a vaginal birth or a C-section and, of course, antibiotic exposure.

Most of what scientists know about the human microbiome comes from studies of Americans, such as the US government’s Human Microbiome Project, or of Europeans. But increasingly, scientists are attempting to compare non-Western populations, especially those that keep traditional lifestyles like the isolated Yanomami.

“It’s a fascinating study,” Dr Lita Proctor of the National Institutes of Health, who wasn’t involved in the new research. “The more diverse your microbiome, the more those microbes bring properties to your body that you might need.”

The Yanomami continue to live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle in rainforests and mountains along the border of Venezuela and Brazil, and as a group are fairly well-known. But Friday’s research, reported in the journal Science Advances, stems from the discovery of a previously unmapped Yanomami village in the mountains of southern Venezuela. Researchers aren’t disclosing the village’s name for privacy reasons but say it was first visited by a Venezuelan medical expedition in 2009 that collected faecal, skin and mouth swab samples from 34 villagers.

Scientists compared the bacterial DNA from those villagers with samples from US populations and found the Americans’ microbiomes are about 40 per cent less diverse. The Yanomami’s microbiomes also were somewhat more diverse than samples from two other indigenous populations with more exposure to Western culture — the Guahibo community of Venezuela and rural Malawi communities in southeast Africa.

Intriguingly, the Yanomami harboured some unique bacteria with beneficial health effects, such as helping to prevent the formation of kidney stones, the researchers reported.

Then genetic testing uncovered silent antibiotic-resistant genes lurking in some bacterial strains. Antibiotics still could kill the bugs. But when the genes were switched on, by antibiotic exposure, they could block activity of some common modern antibiotics, said study co-author Guatam Dantas of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Today, exposure to antibiotics in medicine or agriculture spurs germs to become harder to treat. But bacteria in soil were a natural source of early antibiotics, Dantas explained, and probably these villagers at some point picked up those bugs which had evolved resistance genes as a defence from competitors. He said it suggests people have a natural reservoir of genes that may have other duties but that can activate to trigger drug resistance in the right environment.

“It emphasises the need to ramp up our research for new antibiotics because otherwise, we’re going to lose this battle against infectious diseases,” Dantas said.

HANOVER, Germany — Collaborative robots and intelligent machinery may have wowed the crowds at this year's Hannover Messe, but experts see German industry as having some way to go towards incorporating them on factory floors in what could become the fourth industrial revolution.

The undoubted star of the world's largest industrial trade fair which closed its doors in the northern German city on Friday was YuMi, a collaborative dual-armed robot made by Swiss-based automation technology group ABB.

ABB says it developed YuMi primarily for the consumer electronics industry and it is capable of handling the delicate and precise parts of a wristwatch to components used in mobile phones, tablets and desktop PCs.

But it will increasingly be rolled out to cover other market sectors as well, the company said.

And it is completely safe, so that YuMi and human co-workers can work side-by-side on shared tasks without protective fencing or cages.

Chancellor Angela Merkel put its safety features to the test when she visited the stand and placed her finger inside the gripper on YuMi's right arm, causing it to stop.

At another stand, the German firm Beckhoff showed off its automated assembly line able to adapt itself seamlessly to handle different parts according to their shape, size and colour, while the human co-worker is equipped with a special smartwatch to monitor the process and intervene if necessary.

Digital revolution 

Industry views the merging of production and online technology as the way forward for manufacturing, where "smart" factories use information and communications technologies to digitise their processes, boosting quality and efficiency at the same time as cutting costs.

Digitisation is being heralded as the fourth industrial revolution — hence the term widely used in Germany of "Industrie 4.0" — following the invention of the steam engine, mass production and automatisation.

With nothing less than Germany's mighty industrial prowess at stake, politicians and business leaders are keen to wave the "Industrie 4.0" flag.

The government has even launched a new working group of businesses, unions and researchers to look into ways of moving digitisation forward and which will present its ideas and findings later this year.

But German companies still have a long way to go, experts say.

A recent survey by the BITKOM federation for information technology, telecommunications and new media, found that currently four out of 10 companies in key industrial sectors use Industrie 4.0 applications.

The automobile sector is leading the pack, with 53 per cent of companies using such applications, followed by electro-technology, the chemicals sector and mechanical engineering.

"Digitisation of German factories is in full swing, but still has a long way to go," said BITKOM board member Winfried Holz.

"In view of the fierce international competition, say from China and the United States, companies must invest massively in the digitisation of their processes and products if Germany wants to hold on to its leading position in the manufacturing sector," Holz said.

Catching up 

But German companies still have some catching up to do.

According to the BITKOM survey, around one in four companies currently have no Industrie 4.0 strategy, even if they insist it's on their radar in the future.

But as many as 14 per cent of companies say digitisation is not an issue for them at all.

Overall, 80 per cent of companies said they felt that industry was too reticent in the process of digitisation, with 72 per cent saying they were put off by the investment costs and 56 per cent by the complexity of the issue, the survey showed.

Another 56 per cent said they saw a lack of specialist personnel as a problem.

If digitisation "is to lead the way for the next 10-15 years, we only partially know exactly how to implement it", said Wolfgang Dorst, who heads BITKOM's own Industrie 4.0 department.

While many large companies have sufficient financial and human resources to digitise their production, frequently is the small and medium-sized companies which are not so well off financially that hvave the creative ideas, Dorst noted.

Bernhard Juchheim, the head of Jumo, a family-run company specialising in industrial sensor and automation technology, told AFP that his company would start building its own smart factory in Fulda in central Germany next year.

Critics fear digitisation could render humans obsolete in the manufacturing process.

But the process will actually create new jobs, said Michael Ruessmann of the Boston Consulting Group.

He authored a study which found that 390,000 new jobs and an additional 30 billion euros ($32 billion) in gross domestic product could be created in Germany over the next 10 years as companies switched to so-called "intelligent factories".

WASHINGTON — Hackers could exploit inflight entertainment systems to fatally sabotage the cockpit electronics of a new generation of airliners connected to the Internet, a US government report warns.

It comes weeks after a co-pilot crashed his Germanwings A320 into the French Alps killing all 150 on board, prompting talk of airliners one day being 100 per cent automated.

Inflight cybersecurity is “an increasingly important issue” that the Federal Aviation Administration [FAA] is just starting to address in earnest, said the audit and investigative arm of the US Congress.

“Modern communications technologies, including IP connectivity, are increasingly used in aircraft systems, creating the possibility that unauthorised individuals might access and compromise aircraft avionics systems,” the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report said.

In the past, the electronics used to control and navigate aircraft — known as avionics — have functioned autonomously, said the GAO.

“However, according to FAA and experts we spoke to, IP networking may allow an attacker to gain remote access to avionics systems and compromise them,” the GAO said.

In theory, firewalls ought to protect avionics “from intrusion by cabin-system users, such as passengers who use inflight entertainment systems”.

But four cybersecurity experts told the GAO that firewalls, being software components, can be hacked and circumvented “like any other software”.

The FAA, the aviation authority of the United States, has yet to develop regulations to make “cybersecurity assurance” for avionics part of its process for certifying new aircraft.

FAA officials told the GAO, however, that cybersecurity is an increasingly important concern and that it is shifting its certification focus to address it.

‘No evidence this has occurred’

Gerald Dillingham, a co-author of the GAO report, said the issue particularly affects a new generation of Internet-connected aircraft that includes the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and Airbus A350.

To date, he told AFP, there is no sign that any “bad actors” have successfully planted a virus or malware into an avionics system.

“We don’t have any evidence that this has occurred and we are hoping that raising this question will make it less likely to occur,” he said.

Last month’s Germanwings crash, in which the captain was reportedly locked out of the cockpit by his co-pilot, raised the spectre of robots one day taking the place of humans at the controls to prevent a deadly repeat.

Responding to the GAO report, Airbus said it was “constantly assessing and revisiting the system architecture of our products with an eye to establishing and maintaining the highest standards of safety and security”.

“Beyond that, we don’t discuss design details or safeguards publicly, as such discussion might be counterproductive to security,” its Washington spokesman Clay McConnell told AFP by e-mail.

In a statement to US media, Boeing said its aircraft are delivered with more than one navigational system available to pilots.

“No changes to the flight plans loaded into the airplane systems can take place without pilot review and approval,” it said.

“In addition, other systems, multiple security measures, and flight deck operating procedures help ensure safe and secure airplane operations.”

Meanwhile, one of the world’s foremost experts on counter-threat intelligence within the cybersecurity industry, who blew the whistle on vulnerabilities in airplane technology systems in a series of recent Fox News reports, has become the target of an FBI investigation himself.

Chris Roberts of the Colorado-based One World Labs, a security intelligence firm that identifies risks before they’re exploited, said two FBI agents and two uniformed police officers pulled him off a United Airlines Boeing 737-800 commercial flight last week just after it landed in Syracuse, and spent the next four hours questioning him about cyberhacking of planes.

The FBI interrogation came just hours after Fox News published a report on Roberts’ research, in which he said: “We can still take planes out of the sky thanks to the flaws in the in-flight entertainment systems. Quite simply put, we can theorise on how to turn the engines off at 10,688 metres and not have any of those damn flashing lights go off in the cockpit.”

Interviewing for a job? Be prepared. According to a recent jobs outlook report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers the job market for new college graduates appears to be good.

But even with this increase in potential jobs, how do new college graduates ensure they are properly prepared for their first big interview? Here we offer some practical tips for new graduates to help them enter the workforce by being polished, professional and ready to outclass the competition. 

Refining your interpersonal skills 

Two of the most important communications skills to help make a lasting first impression are also the easiest — eye contact and firm handshakes. Because of the constant need to stay in touch, a majority of younger people grew up continuously monitoring their mobile devices. Even in formal settings, it’s amazing to watch so many people looking at their phones instead of having face-to-face conversations.

But not being able to make solid eye contact with a potential employer sends a message that can be interpreted as boredom, disinterest and a lack of trust on behalf of a potential candidate. The same is true of a limp handshake.

Conversely, a firm handshake implies confidence, collaboration and a willingness to get down to work. In every interview, college graduates should master these basic interpersonal skills that say you are the right man or woman for the job.

Digital footprint

With more employers routinely checking out the online presence of a potential job candidate, a digital footprint can come back to haunt someone more than ever. That’s why serious graduates need to think twice before posting that picture of winning a beer pong championship on social media.

Whether it’s removing any potential image challenging pictures and inflammatory posts or whether it’s simply changing your account settings to private, college graduates need to think of themselves as a brand and always present the best image on all social platforms.

The social interview

More and more companies are conducting interviews at lunches, dinners or in other off-site locales. But be aware that these seemingly less formal interviews are often used as a barometer to observe how a job candidate handles his or herself in a social setting.

This is where elbows should never meet white tablecloths, where closed mouth chewing will be noted and where a mobile phone should never be seen or heard. Also, make sure you never make this most common dining faux pas — snagging the roll of a dining partner. Always remember BMW — your BREAD is on the left, your MEAL is in the middle and your WATER is on the right.

Personalised correspondence

Recently a colleague told a story of a job prospect sending an interview query about an open position. The candidate noted how, after exhaustive research into their company, he realised he was the perfect fit for them. The only problem? The query letter was addressed to one of the prospect’s main competitors, indicating a multiple cut and paste approach in creating a “personal” cover letter.

Graduates, be warned. Take the time to tailor your correspondence to the company where you truly feel you’d like to be employed. And ensure your correspondence is grammatically correct and properly proofed.

Thank you cards

Whether you are thanking your grandmother for the graduation check or sending a note of gratitude to a potential employer for a recent job interview, take the time to say thanks in a handwritten and timely card. It will impress!

Does quality still matter in 2015 if 95 per cent of the population is satisfied with the digital contents it is living with?

Audiovisuals today are almost entirely digital. The under-30 generation actually knows nothing else and does not lose sleep over analogue to digital comparison. For them this is just not relevant. As for those who lived the revolution that took the world from analogue to digital, circa 1985-1995, they are still amazed by the change. Now that written communication and financial transactions are also well on the way to becoming almost exclusively in the digital domain, one has the right to stop and wonder what happened to quality on the way.

For many digital is equivalent to quality. This is a misconception. Digital is just what you make it. Its main and huge advantage over analogue is that it will stand the test of time if well-kept and is easier to replicate and to exchange, remaining unaltered in such cases. Other than that you can have poor quality digital just like you can have poor quality analogue.

More than 30 years in the digital audiovisual age you still find exaggeratedly compressed MP3 music that does not sound good and amateur photos that are a real eye-sore. Cheap office scanners, some costing JD40 or less, create poorly digitised documents and low-end mobile devices playback music that should not be called music at all.

Look, for example, at great analogue printed photographs taken by real artists in the pre-digital era. I was admiring one of Ansel Adams photos taken in the 1950, a black-and-white landscape titled Golden Gate Headlands. The stunning definition, the subtle and smooth shades of grey, the tones, everything in the shot tells you that they didn’t need any megapixel count back then to come up with superior quality photographs.

The same kind of thinking applies to music. Fervent audiophiles still listen to recordings made between 1965 and 1980, the golden era of analogue vinyl stereo records. They swear that this gives them the greatest listening pleasure.

Does this mean that analogue is superior to digital and that we can’t get top quality with digital? Of course not. Digital can equal and even surpass analogue — but at a price!

Today’s technology can produce sound that exceeds what even the best human ear can perceive and images that challenge reality in terms of definition, sharpness and true-to-life colours. Unfortunately the tools that you need for that are not only expensive but aren’t always convenient to use.

A top-end sound adapter for computer costs at least JD200 and requires delicate settings to work, plus maybe some extra cabling. On the other hand the built-in sound adapter found in the average laptop costs JD5 to JD10 and requires no special settings to function.

A high-end full-size pro DSLR Nikon camera, for example, with the lenses to match, will set you off some JD4,000 to JD5,000, not to mention that you have to put up with its size and weight. Otherwise you’d be shooting with your smartphone most of the time. I know of people who are fortunate to own both kinds of devices but who use their smartphone camera most of the time simply because of the convenience it offers.

What rules now and in the overwhelming number of cases and situations today is practicality, not quality. Speed, cost, social networking, the urge to send and to receive quickly, to copy and to communicate, they all have priority over sheer quality. The latter remains an exception.

How often do you listen to music sitting comfortably in your quiet living room, doing absolutely nothing else? Virtually never, or so rarely these days. Most of the time you’d be driving, chatting with friends, reading, working, jogging, texting, etc. Who then cares if the music you are listening to is less-than-perfect in terms of sonic quality? Given the context and the listening environment you wouldn’t be able to tell average MP3 from pristine uncompressed 96KHz 20-bit audio.

WASHINGTON — Children just hate all vegetables, no matter how tasty you make them, right?

Wrong, says an influential study out recently that found US children in Massachusetts ate up to 30 per cent more vegetables when school dinners were made more palatable with the help of a professional chef.

The research, published by the Journal of the American Medical Association’s website, provided an encouraging sign in the battle to fight childhood obesity.

But it also found that the presentation of fruits and vegetables did not have a long-term impact on their consumption.

“The results highlight the importance of focusing on the palatability of school meals,” said lead author Juliana Cohen of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard University.

“Additionally, this study shows that schools should not abandon healthier foods if they are initially met with resistance by students.”

About 32 million children eat meals at American schools each day and many low-income students get up to half their daily calories from school meals.

Researchers conducted their trial during the 2011-2012 school year among 14 elementary and middle schools in two urban, low-income Massachusetts school districts.

A total of 2,638 children participated in the study.

The findings “really illustrated that through persistence, school-aged children can learn to like healthy whole grains, fruits and vegetables, especially if they taste good,” said senior author Eric Rimm, a professor at Harvard.

NEW YORK — No doubt you’ve run across your share of PDF documents in your work and personal life. Adobe’s Portable Document Format has become a common way to publish newsletters, instruction manuals and even tax forms. Creating your own PDF document is easy, with features built into major Web browsers and Apple’s Mac system, or available through an array of free Windows apps.

So why pay $156 or a more a year for Adobe’s Acrobat DC service? You get those free capabilities in one place, plus features for filling out forms, appending digital signatures and making changes on the go.

The basics 

Many people already use Adobe’s free Acrobat Reader for reading documents. But to create documents, you need to pay for Acrobat, or use a free PDF creator from an outside party. 

Not all PDF creators are the same, though. Some convert text to graphics, for instance, so you’re unable to search documents later. And editing capabilities tend to be limited and cumbersome.

I create a lot of PDF files instead of printing out records. 

Free tools are typically adequate for that, but Acrobat is much easier for rotating and reordering pages and combining multiple PDF documents into a single file. Acrobat also makes it easy to edit text and convert documents back to their original form, whether that’s in Word or a Web page.

Adobe Systems Inc. also makes an iPad version, though with fewer features. Versions for iPhones, Android and Windows Phone devices have even less. Files you create and edit will sync through Adobe’s Document Cloud storage service. All this comes with Acrobat DC.

Forms and more

My favourite tool is the Fill & Sign app for iPads and Android tablets. Take any form, such as a school permission slip for your kid. 

You simply snap the form with your tablet’s camera and enhance the image using technology Adobe borrowed from its Photoshop editing software. You can do more than standard cropping. 

Let’s say you snapped the form on your lap, so the page is curved rather than flat. On the app, you mark where the corners are, and the document magically stretches out so that it looks flat, as though scanned in. 

Then, you can type text, check boxes and even add your signature.

This can be useful for all the forms I hate filling out and mailing. And for forms that come in electronically, I can skip the printer.

But going paperless isn’t easy. I’m months late in mailing a housing form because I couldn’t find a stamp. 

Fill & Sign would be great, but there’s no place I could e-mail that form to, nor would a parent necessarily know where to e-mail a permission slip that’s designed to be handed in.

Plus, you can get this app for free. All the subscription does is integrate the feature with others in the package.

Signs and tracks 

For small business owners and others who deal with contracts, Adobe offers tools for sending out forms for signing — even to those who don’t have Acrobat. Signers can draw signatures with their mouse or type their names in a signature-like font (it’s not your actual signature, but Adobe says it’s legally binding). Tools help you track who’s already signed which documents. This also leaves a legal audit trail.

Speaking of tracking, another feature keeps track of who’s read or downloaded your document. Your recipients can no longer pretend they didn’t get it. Recipients can’t decline the tracking, which feels creepy, though they are notified if you opt for detailed tracking.

Pricing

The standard subscription starts at $13 a month, with a one-year commitment. 

A Pro subscription, at $15 a month, gives you additional features, including the ability to compare two versions of a document. If you just want it for a month, though, the subscriptions cost $23 and $25, respectively. 

You can also buy the Mac or Windows version the traditional way, for a one-time fee that starts at $299 ($139 for upgrades), but you don’t get all of the mobile, storage or tracking features. With the subscription, you can sign in on two PCs at a time, with no limits yet on mobile.

Acrobat DC does a lot, but the price tag will limit its appeal to small businesses and households with lots of forms to fill and sign.

SAN FRANCISCO — On the one hand, or wrist, there may be an eye-catching Apple Watch, while the other will sport with more discreet jewellery packed with Internet Age smarts.

Jawbone had that vision of the wearable computing trend in mind late Wednesday when it ramped its UP family of lifestyle-tracking bands and teased a coming model that enables American Express users to tap and pay at shop checkout counters.

“People often wear a watch at the same time they are wearing bracelets,” Jawbone vice president of product management and strategy Travis Bogard told AFP at the company’s San Francisco headquarters.

“We can now put technology into those situations in a way that doesn’t disrupt how you would wear it. Then you can collect that information and do interesting things with it.”

A UP3 bracelet that tracks heart rate along with activity and sleep is shipping after a delayed release while technicians improved water resistance.

Jawbone introduced another new Up band with an overhauled design and almost half the mass of its predecessor.

Bogard showed off a coming flagship UP4 model with sensors capable of measuring heart rate and other biometrics, and which could be used at checkouts that have American Express contactless payment systems.

“We have created a seamless payment experience all in the tap of a wrist,” said Leslie Berland, executive vice president of digital partnerships and development at American Express.

UP4 will be priced at $199 when it is released in the middle of this year, according to Bogard. The lowest priced UP model is $49.

In time with smartwatches

Bogard was undaunted by the pending arrival next week of Apple Watch, which unofficial estimates indicate has about a million pre-orders and could ignite the smartwatch market.

“Those are really daytime wear,” he said of smartwatches.

UP bands are designed to be jewellery that “disappears on the body” while being worn all day every day, using sensors to track activity, sleep and more.

The bands synch to smartphones and feed what they learn to the Internet cloud, where “smart coach” software provides personalised advice for healthier lifestyles.

Jawbone has focused on creating a platform that can synch to applications tailored for an array of smartwatches from major players including Apple, Huawei, Asus, LG and Motorola.

Data gathered by wearable computing devices can be used by “smart coach” to coax or nudge users towards lifestyle goals from losing weight to drinking more water or getting to sleep earlier.

“Data is good, understanding is better,” Bogard said.

Technology Holy Grail

While Jawbone believes people will want UP hardware, it has made the platform open so developers can synch devices, applications or services to the system.

“One thing that differentiates tech companies from competitors is being a platform,” Gartner analyst Brian Blau told AFP.

“That is something of a Holy Grail. Getting to that point and kick-starting an ecosystem is really lucrative, and could be for Jawbone.”

Having services, applications, smartwatches and more tuned to its platform diversifies opportunities for Jawbone to make money.

Gartner has found that while people have been showing interest in wearable computing, it hasn’t translated into massive mainstream purchasing.

“I think that the Apple Watch is going to pique people’s interest and they will pay more attention to wrist wearables,” Blau said.

The analyst doubted there would be a quick shift to people using watches, bracelets or other wearable computers as wallets since it is already easy enough to use credit cards for purchases.

Overall, it remains early days for wearable computing with innovations on the horizon including virtual or augmented reality head gear and sensors or chips embedded in clothing fabric, according to the analyst.

“The wearables industry is only just getting started,” Blau said.

“The conundrum the wearables industry is in today is which will stand out as the next platform or the next spot on the body where people will wear things.”

I have often wondered about a lot of things. Like for instance: Do we automatically attain maturity, as we grow older? Are we becoming a less tolerant society? Can respect be demanded and not earned? Is anger not a sign of weakness? Does yelling at someone, in private or in public, demean that person, or the yeller? Does raising your voice make you right? 

These and many such queries plague me as I see more and more bad mannered people around me. Folks who think their opinions are superior, so they cut others off in mid sentence during a disagreement. They talk in a monologue and if anyone challenges their views they resort to offensive language. They think their beliefs are the best and they interpret everything to their own advantage while being inflexible to any other version. 

These are not necessarily public figures but ordinary people like you and me who transformed themselves into demagogues at the drop of a hat. To the outside world they appear to be balanced and even meek individuals but within their homes, the mask comes off, and they spout extreme radicalism of thought. Whether it was politics or religion, they believe in exclusion rather than inclusion. 

I have an uncle who lives in the United States. He is in his early eighties and migrated to America fifty years ago. Even though he has been living abroad for such a long time, he follows everything that goes on in India — his home country. Despite the difference in time zones, he watches the Indian news channel on his television relentlessly from morning till evening. If there is even a mention of the political party that he is opposed to, he starts swearing at the idiot box. He saves his choicest curses for the Indian leader of opposition and if his long-suffering wife intervenes to ask him to calm down, he shouts at her too. 

I have never seen an angrier old man. He starts a discussion but does not allow anyone to participate in it, especially women, who according to him, should be seen but not heard. If a debate becomes a bit heated with the other party supplying sensible arguments he halts it by yelling. 

“Enough! I don’t want to hear another word. You know nothing. Nonsensical people!” he belts.

An awkward silence usually follows that. 

This entire thing came as a big surprise to me because I assume that men of a certain generation are very courteous and have good manners drilled into them. I would of course benchmark them against my own father, who had never spoken in a higher decibel to anyone on the planet, be it man, woman or child. When I was growing up, he encouraged freedom of thought and any conversation, however trivial, was incomplete, without all of us chipping in with our two bits worth.

The last time I was in America, my uncle was deriding Bapu Mahatma Gandhi and I could not bear it. 

“He was a foolish old man,” he announced. 

“I do not agree with you,” I said. 

“Good thing he was shot,” he continued. 

“Generations to come will scarcely believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth,” I quoted. 

“Who said this?” he thundered.

“German physicist Albert Einstein,” I stated. 

“As stupid as the Italian Sonia Gandhi,” he declared. 

“Where you going?” he hollered at my retreating back. 

“Long walk to freedom,” I retorted, lengthening my stride.