The Creative Spark

Puzzle-solving is an ancient, universal practice precisely because it depends on creative insight similar to the primitive spark that ignited the first campfires. But where does this creative spark come from. Now, modern neuroscientists have gotten into this game. In an interesting article, Benedict Carey follows the growing consensus in science on the birth of the creative spark. And it will make you smile.

In a just completed study, researchers at Northwestern University found that people were more likely to solve word puzzles with sudden insight when they were amused, having just seen a short comedy routine. “What we think is happening,” said Mark Beeman, a neuroscientist who conducted the study, “is that the humor, this positive mood, is lowering the brain’s threshold for detecting weaker or more remote connections to solve puzzles”.

This and other recent research suggest that the appeal of puzzles goes far deeper than the dopamine-reward rush of finding a solution. The very idea of doing a crossword or a Sudoku puzzle typically shifts the brain into an open, playful state that is itself a pleasing escape, is captivating to many people. And that escape is all the more tantalizing for it being incomplete. Unlike the cryptic social and professional mazes of real life, puzzles are reassuringly soluble; but like any serious problem, they require more than mere intellect to crack.

“It’s imagination, it’s inference, it’s guessing; and much of it is happening subconsciously,” said Marcel Danesi, a professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto and the author of “The Puzzle Instinct: The Meaning of Puzzles in Human Life.”

“It’s all about you, using your own mind, without any method or schema, to restore order from chaos,” Dr. Danesi said. “And once you have, you can sit back and say, ‘Hey, the rest of my life may be a disaster, but at least I have a solution.’ ”

For almost a century scientists have used puzzles to study what they call insight thinking, the leaps of understanding that seem to come out of the blue, without the incremental drudgery of analysis. All along, researchers have debated the definitions of insight and analysis, and some have doubted that the two are any more than sides of the same coin. Either way, creative problem-solving, it seems, usually requires both analysis and sudden out-of-the-box insight.

Yet the “Aha!” moment of seeing a solution is only one step along a pathway. In a series of recent studies, Dr. Beeman at Northwestern and John Kounios, a psychologist at Drexel University, have imaged people’s brains as they prepare to tackle a puzzle but before they’ve seen it. Those whose brains show a particular signature of preparatory activity, one that is strongly correlated with positive moods, turn out to be more likely to solve the puzzles with sudden insight than with trial and error (the clues can be solved either way). In the case of insight puzzle-solving, it seems that the brain widens its attention, in effect making itself more open to distraction, and to weaker connections. The punch line is that a good joke can move the brain toward just this kind of state.

But the idea that a distracted brain can be a more insightful one is still a work in progress. So, for that matter, is the notion that puzzle-solving helps the brain in any way to navigate the labyrinth of soured relationships, uncertain career options or hard choices that so often define the world outside.

But at the very least, acing the Saturday crossword or some mind-bending Sudoku suggests that some of the tools for the job are intact. And as any puzzle-head can attest, that buoyant, open state of mind isn’t a bad one to try on for size once in a while. Whether you’re working a puzzle or not.

Blink of an eye

"She heard a swift uptake of breath, a soft sigh and then he was gone.

It had been a long struggle. And the five year battle had aged him. His hair was now streaked with deep lines of grey, the lines below his eyes were crinklier, the hollow in his cheeks deeper. And the once rakish black goatee was now almost pure white.

It had been almost five decades when she had invited him to come to a play based on Che Guevara. The journey back from the theater in his ramshackle car, held together with handkerchiefs and wire, had taken four hours and from it had sprung her lifelong romance. She had loved his passion and his commitment and even though she was aware of the problems she would face with his conservative family, she had not hesitated when he had proposed a few months later. But the estrangement from his family had knocked something akilter in his ideal universe and there was a undertow of sorrow from then on. He never did show his hurt but it was there and she could sense its depth and pain.

But then children had come and all changed. He doted on them and his life from then on consisted of family and work. The passion for work still remained - and was to remain for all of time to come- but now it was softened with his great love for his children.

She recalled their adventures around the world- from the green valleys of Bali to the rain sodden plateaus of Dalat, from the silver village of Mexico to the beaches of Nice, from wine country of Provenance to the lush landscape of Hawaii. She had met princes and prime ministers, singers and ballet dancers, child prodigies and destitute orphans. She had dined at the finest restaurants in the world, seen the latest plays in London. They had packed in a lot in their lives.

Yes, they had had a good life, she reflected, full of joy and happiness, of creativity and wonder.

And then she gently- oh so gently-bent over and closed his eyelids.

View from across the border

Here is an interesting and honest piece written by a Pakistani Journalist about India.


" Capital Suggestion
By Dr Farrukh Saleem. Dr. Farrukh Saleem is the Executive Director of Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS), a newly established (Dec 07) think-tank focusing on Pakistan's political/economic, security, regional and environmental issues.

"Here's what is happening in India :

The two Ambani brothers can buy 100 percent of every company listed on the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) and would still be left with $30 billion to spare.

The four richest Indians can buy up all goods and services produced over a year by 169 million Pakistanis and still be left with $60 billion to spare.

The four richest Indians are now richer than the forty richest Chinese.

In November, Bombay Stock Exchange's benchmark Sensex flirted with 20,000 points. As a consequence, Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries became a $100 bill ion company (the entire KSE is capitalized at $65 billion). Mukesh owns 48 percent of Reliance. In November, comes Neeta's birthday. Neeta turned forty-four three weeks ago. Look what she got from her husband as her birthday gift: A sixty-million dollar jet with a custom fitted master bedroom, bathroom with mood lighting, a sky bar, entertainment cabins, satellite television, wireless communication and a separate cabin with game consoles. Neeta is Mukesh Ambani's wife, and Mukesh is not India 's richest but the second richest..

Mukesh is now building his new home, Residence Antillia (after a mythical, phantom island somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean ). At a cost of $1 billion this would be the most expensive home on the face of the planet. At 173 meters tall Mukesh's new family residence, for a family of six, will be the equivalent of a 60-storeyed building. The first six floors are reserved for parking. The seventh floor is for car servicing and maintenance... The eighth floor houses a mini-theatre. Then there's a health club, a gym and a swimming pool. Two floors are reserved for Ambani family's guests. Four floors above the guest floors are family floors all with a superb view of the Arabian Sea On top of everything are three helipads. A staff of 600 is expected to care for the family and their family home.

In 2004, India became the 3rd most attractive foreign direct investment destination. Pakistan wasn't even in the top 25 countries.

In 2004, the United Nations, the representative body of 192 sovereign member states, had requested the Election Commission of India to assist the UN in the holding elections in Al Jumhuriyah al Iraqiyah and Dowlat-e Eslami-ye Afghanestan. Why the Election Commission of India and not the Election Commission of Pakistan? After all, Islamabad is closer to Kabul than is Delhi .

Imagine, 12 percent of all American scientists are of Indian origin; 38 percent of doctors in America are Indian; 36 percent of NASA scientists are Indians;

34 percent of Microsoft employees are Indians; and 28 percent of IBM employees are Indians.

For the record: Sabeer Bhatia created and founded Hotmail. Sun Microsystems was founded by Vinod Khosla.

The Intel Pentium processor, that runs 90 percent of all computers, was fathered by Vinod Dham.

Rajiv Gupta co-invented Hewlett Packard's E-speak project. Four out of ten Silicon Valley start-ups are run by Indians.

Bollywood produces 800 movies per year and six Indian ladies have won Miss Universe/Miss World titles over the past 10 years.

For the record: Azim Premji, the richest Muslim entrepreneur on the face of the planet, was born in Bombay and now lives in Bangalore .

India now has more than three dozen billionaires; Pakistan has none (not a single dollar billionaire).

The other amazing aspect is the rapid pace at which India is creating wealth. In 2002, Dhirubhai Ambani, Mukesh and Anil Ambani's father, left his two sons a fortune worth $2.8 billion. In 2007, their combined wealth stood at $94 billion. On 29 October 2007, as a result of the stock market rally and the appreciation of the Indian rupee, Mukesh became the richest person in the world, with net worth climbing to US$63.2 billion (Bill Gates, the richest American, stands at around $56 billion).

Indians and Pakistanis have the same Y-chromosome haplogroup. We have the same genetic sequence and the same genetic marker (namely: M124).

We have the same DNA molecule, the same DNA sequence. Our culture, our traditions and our cuisine are all the same. We watch the same movies and sing the same songs.

What is it that Indians have and we don't?

INDIANS ELECT THEIR LEADERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And also to mention: They think of Construction of own nation, unlike other nations who are just concerned with destruction of others...

Simple answer to why the Indians fare better than the Pakistanis - They don't focus on religion all the time and neither do they spend time and money in devising ways to kill their own and everyone else over religion."

Fifty Years After

It was a mildly hot day in July of 1957, when 350 young students from all over India made their way from the railway station in Kharagpur to the site of the Hijli jail. Hijli jail had been a prison for political workers only a few years ago but was now was the site of the one of the most exhilarating experiments in modern India. Pandit Nehru had constituted a committee to help design and set up a new Institute of Technology modeled on the world famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge U.S. Incidentally two of the committee that designed the college courses were among the first graduates of MIT. This new engineering college, set at the site of the old Hijli jail, was to train the best and brightest in the country to build the “modern temples of India- the dams, power stations, bridges”.

The selection process for the 350 places in the prestigious new college was brutal and almost everyone one who made it to the final list had a stellar record from whichever school he came from. All that of course would soon lead to crushing disappointment for many, as every student was brighter than the next. In this batch of 350, there were no females and so the competition was even fiercer for the top positions. The rigorous four-year schedule led to a graduation rate of almost 100% and all of us earned our bachelor degrees in 1961. Now it was time to celebrate our golden jubilee and to look back on how far we had come.

I had volunteered to design and edit the Reunion book and as I looked at a sample of my classmates from 1961 some fifty years later, some startling facts emerged. While all my classmates earned their bachelor of technology degrees, only 16% went on get a master’s degree and 10 % a doctoral degree. On average this class held only 3.4 jobs from the time of graduation till their retirement. Thus they shifted employers only once in a decade. They led stable and secure lives yet only one third of these jobs were in the public sector. While many of them started workshops and small manufacturing installations, most tended to work in established institutions whether in the public or the private sector. This was not a very entrepreneurial class and its achievements tended to be in building the infrastructure of modern India rather than in developing computer software. These entrepreneurial classes from IIT would come a few decades later.

Socially, too, this group was rather conservative. Most married only once and there were no divorces. But the women they married were not all housewives. Fully half of the wives were professionals in their own rights – doctors, teacher, editors, and consultants. They had an average of 2 children per family – following the precept of “ ham do hamare do” of the day. And only one third of these children followed in their father’s footsteps and became engineers and scientists. Others followed rather diverse trajectories from law to design, from banking to art.

Almost this entire batch had successful careers ending up as chief executives of various companies, big and small. They all travelled widely but when time came to retire, most returned home. Only a third of this batch settled abroad in places as diverse as U.S, UK, France, Australia and Brazil. In their retirement, many have started NGO’s while others travel the ends of the earth photographing the remotest of sites. Some have taken to writing while others spend their time teaching and consulting or playing golf.

Yet this group has also produced pioneers. Two became advisers to the leaders of two different countries – the U.S and India- one advised President Reagan on superconductivity while the other was science and technology adviser to Mrs Gandhi. There were a few who led technological revolutions in the country– which was one of the objectives in the setting up of the IIT in the first place- in esoteric areas like superconductivity, offshore technology, data and Internet, rural electrification, and development of a totally artificial heart. The last deserves some extra explanation- one of my class fellows after obtaining an degree in electrical engineering went on do his doctorate in engineering and followed it up with a doctorate in medicine. He combined the two to pioneer research in development of an artificial heart based on a cockroach and also reproductive system. Realizing the problems he faced, he made sure his two sons followed distinct paths – one became a doctor and the other an engineer.

Every year the IIT Kharagpur selects a few of its alumni who have made outstanding contributions to society and for their achievements. From the batch of 350 that had entered the portals of the institute some five decades earlier, the institute had selected four and honored them with their most prestigious award as Distinguished Alumnus. Since as of 2010, only fifty had been selected from the time the institute started in 1952, our contribution of four was nothing to be sneezed at.

All in all not a bad performance at all!