Shelly, Monk, Russell and Frankenstein …

… unite in The Spirit of Solitude.

Byron too.

Actually, it is not Frankenstein but Frankenstein’s Monster. I used to get it wrong. A lot of people still do.

The sackful of books I had mentioned earlier, included a 1904 edition of Shelly’s ‘Poetical Works’. Yes, I have a book that was printed more than hundred years ago. One of these poems is called ‘Alastor: Or, the Spirit of Solitude’. Ray Monk’s biography of Bertrand Russell is called ‘Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude’. And ‘Frankenstein’ was, of course, written by Mary Shelly (who happened to be P.B. Shelly’s wife, in case you are not aware).

Note the unshakable sexism or general bias in ‘Shelly’ sufficing to refer to ‘P. B. Shelly’ but not to ‘Mary Shelly’.

The above may just be interesting trivia, but there is something else related to the title of this post which is not so trivial.

I had watched a film version of ‘Frankenstein’ as a child on TV. After that, innumerable times, I have read about the book as well as film versions. Almost always the only themes that are discussed are some variations on man’s meddling in God’s creation or the unimaginable effects of scientific magic.

Many years ago when I read Mary Shelly’s original ‘Frankenstein’, I was completely taken aback by the fact that (what seemed to me) the main theme was not mentioned anywhere. Not prominently at least.

Of course, someone might have mentioned it prominently and I may not have come across it. I don’t know everything, you know.

Today I happened to pick up that 1904 book and came across the poem mentioned above. And I was amazed to see that the poem is on the same theme which I had thought was one of the main themes of ‘Frankenstein’. It can also be mentioned here that the idea for this novel was conceived during a long conversation among the Shellys and Byron in the Alps.

If you are not too straitjacketed, you can find similarities between Byron and Frankenstein’s Monster and also between the hero of the poem mentioned above and Frankenstein’s Monster. And Ray Monk used the title of that poem for his biography of Bertrand Russell. Not fascinating?

I hope you do understand that having similarities doesn’t mean being the same. And also that similarities in such a context have to be of some significance. That doesn’t include the fact that all of them had two eyes and two ears etc. Moreover, the similarities are uninteresting without the differences.

What’s the bloody theme?

The theme is quite a familiar one, except that the intensity is what makes it special. That intensity is in the individuals concerned. In how the society responds to the individuals. And vice versa.

But I have already mentioned the theme more than once.

The Spirit of Solitude. What else?

Pray, what does ‘The Spirit of Solitude’ mean?

Well, it doesn’t exactly mean what you may at first think. For example, it doesn’t only mean that the individual concerned Likes to be Alone. He might. Usually. But not always. Remember that old saying? Man is a social animal? Well, even misanthropes need some company. Friendly company. Reliable company. It also means other things which I will talk about later.

By the way, neither the Shellys nor Bertrand Russell can truly be called misanthropes. Byron was perhaps one. Was Frankenstein’s Monster a misanthrope? Well, whether he was or was not, but he certainly was forced to become one, as the novel quite clearly (and in detail) shows.

I don’t know about Ray Monk.

Aren’t you going overboard, comparing a monster to those literary and philosophical giants?

No, I am not. I have thought quite a lot about it and tried to find evidence for and against it. Frankenstein’s Monster, as presented in Mary Shelly’s novel, was hardly the monster he is made out to be in the movies, in popular culture and even in language (as in “BJP has created a Frankenstein”: That monster is much more dangerous than poor Frankenstein’s ever was).

But the connections get still more interesting.

I have not Googled all this information. I have earned it all in the old fashioned way.

The connections get interesting because Bertrand Russell, in his great and unique ‘History of Western Philosophy’ called ‘Frankenstein’ an allegory of the Romanticist movement of the 19th century. (Byron, Shelly and Keats were the central figures of that movement in literature). This is one of my favourite (favorite) books, but I have no hesitation in saying that Russell got it (at least partly) wrong. He also missed the theme I have mentioned. I mean he was right in pointing out some of the shortcomings of the Romantics, but he got the Frankenstein part wrong. I don’t agree with his interpretation of the novel or of the character.

Since Shelly has done the work for me, I will just point to him to further elaborate on the theme.

No apology for name dropping because, as I said earlier, I have earned it all. In the old fashioned way. Even if I am writing about it in the new fashioned way.

A Silly Undreamt-of Adventure

Let me first remind you (whoever you are) that my secondary Gmail account is still disabled and there has been no response from Google, even though I had filled in their contact form days ago.

So, just to make myself a bit secure, I created a Yahoo! account as a backup. Some of you will understand what I mean. Now, after creating this account, there was a link on the left side of the window asking ‘will you marry in 2008?’. I don’t know why I clicked on it. But there is more. I created a profile on the page that came up. Yes, a Shaadi.com page. So, I actually did something as silly as creating a profile on Shaadi.com! Even if I didn’t put much information (or misinformation) there.

What came over me? Nothing, it’s just that my sense of humor is gaining breadth.

Anyway, since the deed is done, I thought may be I will let the profile remain there for some time and see what happens.

After having a reasonably good time at the research conference (IJCNLP), may be it’s time to have a silly undreamt-of adventure. Why not?

As always, I am thinking that things can’t get any worse.

I know. They can.

Back to Notwork as Usual

The wireless network had been working well for sometime. Now there is major conference at the institute in which I am involved in several things (very unusual). Tomorrow I have to give a demo. Today I had to setup the system for that demo.

I should have known. The network is back to being the notwork with a perfect timing. Period. Either no one else is affected, or no one else cares.

Life is beautiful.
Hope springs eternal.
Human being are social animals.
All of us are good people.
Great are the wonders of civilization.
What a wonderful world.

Deja vu.
Which means snafu.

By the way, the Gmail account is still disabled.

Summary execution Google style.

Gmail Account Disabled (2)

It’s official now. Actually it has been for some time, I just didn’t know about it. A large number of genuine Gmail accounts being used without any abuse are being disabled. Some accounts seem to be up again, but only some. Mine isn’t either, although it’s much more than 24 hours (the expected response time). And, yes, I had filled the required contact form quite early.

As the Economic Times (India) article says, “The Internet giant Google Inc reportedly disabled a few Gmail accounts in an overzealous [attempt?] to combat spammers”. Except that ‘few’ here refers to a very large number, judging from the lists of complaints I have seen while searching with the query ‘gmail account disabled’.

It is being suggested that only the new accounts are affected by this, but my account is not really a new one. If I am not mistaken, it’s more than an year old. That’s old enough for Gmail.

The funny thing is that the spate of spam mails (I was the recipient, not the sender, in case someone is mistaken) after which my account was disabled asked the recipients to furnish information about their Gmail accounts and threatened that if such information was not sent within the specified period, the account will be disabled. And the account was actually disabled, even before that deadline. Most of the people who saw that mail (it was sent multiple times to my account and many people commented about it) immediately thought that it was another of those fake mails which are a regular feature of the email world. But given this funny situation, I can’t help wondering whether the mail was actually an official Google mail. Of course, it was not, but an absurd situation anyway.

I am still waiting for my account to be enabled again. And I hope the primary account is not disabled in the ‘overzealous attempt to combat spammers’. As I said earlier, I oppose spam but I don’t support anti-spam fanaticism.

I had once mentioned that my homepage had suddenly disappeared from the Google index. It has since come back on the index. I hope Google doesn’t become comparable with the official censors (of anything anywhere).

What if WordPress suddenly, ‘with or without any notice’ (as the Gmail Terms of Use say) disables my blog? Sounds sinister and utterly unethical to me. Even if I am using the free version of WordPress. Google may be providing the email service for free, but they are putting ads on the side, aren’t they? That’s the Internet business model. It’s not the same as the old world economic model. If the user accepts ads being put on their pages, they are actually paying in an online sort of way. So, you get what you pay for argument is not really valid. The (’free’) service may be theirs, but the content is ours.

The least acceptable could be this: give me back my content and I will look for another ‘free’ service provider, or I will get a ‘non-free’ provider if I can afford it. I want access to my content, and in the case of emails, I want access to them immediately, as soon as the account is blocked. You may have the right to disable my account, but you don’t have the right to take away my content. This, of course, applies to all service providers, not just to Google.

Gmail Account Disabled

I just tried to login to my secondary Gmail account found that my account has been disabled. What happened? Well, during the last two days, there were many spam (actually phishing) mails sent to my account. These mails asked the recipients to submit Gmail account information ‘otherwise the account will be disabled’. Several people commented about this to the others on the To: list. I responded to one of those mails (just a small retort to a stupid racist remark, which had a denial attached in advance, by one of the people who responded).

I thought I was the victim of a phishing attack, though I realized it was a case of phishing so I didn’t do what was suggested in the fake mail. I mean I was not the perpetrator of the attack or anything similar.

Does Google punish the perpetrators of such attacks or the victims? Nice New Year’s gift.

A few days ago when I tried to login to my primary account, I got the message that my account has been locked as ’some unusual activity has been detected’. Unusual? Yes, I do a lot of unusual things, but certainly not on my Gmail account. There I am as usual as you can get. Fortunately, I succeeded in logging in on my third attempt.

While I am on this topic, I might as well write about one suggestion for improvement in all email systems. Whenever you log into your account, you should be shown if there is some other session open for the same account. This will help in ensuring that one has not accidentally left one’s account open somewhere. And, in a worst case scenario, one would also be able to check whether someone else has somehow got access to one’s account, by stealing password or by hacking.

One lesson learnt from this story: It is not so good to rely on one email provider alone, even if it’s Google. I will have to do something about this.

Small comfort to find that I am not alone: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7].

There is one more thing I should say here. I am against spam like most people, but I don’t think heavens would fall if one gets a few useless mails on some particular day. I don’t support anti-spam fanaticism either.

Smart Spam, or is it Scam?

This is one of the few mails that get through the really good Google spam filter and a much better designed one that the ‘Nigerian Spam/Scam’:

How about having a Spam-Scam Aesthetics Appreciation Society?

Gmail Shifting to a New Version of the GUI

My Gmail was behaving in a funny way since at least yesterday. Some times there was a blank page when you clicked on something. Some other times there was a strange looking error message like “Zero Sized Reply” or something. Then the look of the interface was a bit different. Finally, the URL also was looking different: a small one instead of the usual long concatenation of apparently random letters, numbers and symbols.

On asking around and doing some experiments, I realized that Google is shifting to a new version of the Gmail interface. I wish they had given some explicit indication of this, so that I didn’t have to worry about what was happening. The network in my place has been behaving strangely and some other funny things have been happening (e.g., my academic home page suddenly and completely disappeared from the Google index).

This is what the new interface looks like:

I have not yet tried the new features (if any), except noticing that the GUI looks a bit different.

I have heard that there is a plan to shift to a Yahoo! like interface. Personally, I would prefer a Gmail like interface.