The Hindu Business Line : Why men cling to the phone while women keep chatting

WOMEN find men crazy, as much as men find women inscrutable. They study together, work as a team, but Simon Baron-Cohen lets the secret out, to confirm what you would have been suspecting all along: that men and women are different.

His book The Essential Difference, from Penguin Allen Lane (www.penguin.com) proves that women's brains are better at "empathising and communicating", while men are stronger at "understanding and building systems — not just computers and machinery, but abstract systems such as politics and music."

The blurb talks of one more theory: That autism is an example of extreme male brain. Those who live with this condition are brilliant at analysing the most complex systems, yet cannot relate to the emotional lives of those they live with." There's more:

Empathy makes real communication possible. Talking to a person is not real communication. It is a monologue. If you talk for significantly more than 50 per cent of the time every few sentences, it is not a conversation. It is venting, story telling, lecturing, indoctrinating, controlling, persuading, dominating, or filling silence.

In any conversation there is a risk that one party will hijack the topic in an undemocratic manner. Empathy ensures this risk is minimised by enabling the speaker to check how long to carry on for, and to be receptive to the listener's wish to switch to a different topic.

People with the balanced brain can be excellent architects if they not only understand buildings but also understand their client's feelings, and the needs and feelings of the people who will be inhabiting the space they are designing. Or talented company directors, grasping the mathematical details of economics and financial planning whilst building a strong team around them.

Systemising is the drive to understand a system and to build one. System is anything governed by rules specifying input-operation-output relationships. Good systemisers are skilled at understanding, using and constructing tools, including mechanical systems and weapons. Good systemising would allow you to spot fluctuations in any marketplace so that you know when to buy and when to sell.

Boys in early childhood are more likely to do what is called `grandstanding' — that is, giving a running commentary on their own actions, whilst ignoring what the other person is doing. Boy's talk tends to be `single-voiced discourse'. In contrast, female speech style tends to be `double-voiced discourse'.

Women are much more prepared to say when they feel hurt or offended by the other person in the conversation, and will also talk to each other when they feel offended by somebody else. Men are more likely to simply note an offence and withdraw contact, rather than working at repairing the relationship through conversation.

Put your brain to good use, by understanding how it works in the first place.

Hands-free math

YOU don't expect computers to be used only by programmers, nor telephones by operators. Likewise, efficient problem-solving is not just the job of a few but almost everybody — be a student, salesman, CEO or neta. To solve problems smartly, K. Venkataraman proposes an adventure with quantitative problems in Think Without Ink, or TWI.

The book from TWI Foundation (twi@trytwi.com) notes on the back-cover that the technique is `applied creativity' that "helps one develop a mindset that relishes the mental exercises associated with problem solving". A few glimpses of TWI:

When it comes to strengthening, toning and development, the human mind is no different than our muscles. Constant exercise is required to develop it as well as to maintain it. Interesting games or problems will make you think laterally and help you tone up your brain cells. Pens and calculators are to the human mind what junk food and idiot box are to the human body.

A box contains 28 socks of different colours — seven white, nine blue and 13 black. There is no electricity and the room is dark. What is the minimum number of socks to be picked up in order to be sure of getting at least one matching pair? This problem is, more often than not, confused to be a problem on permutations and combinations.

Try another problem: Car A starts from X toward Y at 12 noon while car B starts from Y towards X at 2 p.m. Both these vehicles cross each other exactly at 4:05 p.m. and reach their respective ends exactly at the same time. When do these vehicles reach their destinations?

A child was asked to add a first few natural numbers (that is, 1+2+3... ) as long as he could. As the child stopped, he gave the answer of 564. Is he right? Well, I can tell you that the answer is wrong and the child has missed out one number while adding. Can you tell me the number that the child has missed out?

Another friendly poser: Three friends, Paul, Suresh and Ram, work together to complete all the despatches of mass mail mailers their company is sending to potential customers. The time it takes them to do the work together is two days less than Paul would have taken to do alone, 10 days less than Suresh to do the work alone and one-third of the time that Ram would have taken working alone. How long did it take them to do the work together?

Sharpen your skills with this whetstone.

On reflections

IT IS there waiting to tell the truth to you when you see it. Many consult it so often that they carry it as part of their essential kit. Yes, we're talking about the mirror. Mark Pendergrast's Mirror Mirrror from Basic Books (www.basicbooks.com) is a history of the human love affair with reflection. "This is the fascinating tale of how a reflective surface that means nothing without an observer - a truly blank slate — has had a remarkable impact on myth, religion, science, psychology, business, and the arts," states the blurb. The author calls it `our first technology for contemplation of the self' and `arguably as important an invention as the wheel'. A sampler:

The glass mirror industry, since its inception in the Middle Ages as a secret Italian guild, followed by the 17th century French industrial espionage that broke the monopoly, has grown to huge proportions. With the advent of cheap industrialised glass and modern methods of applying reflective material to it, mirrors have become common objects even in the poorest homes.

Modern mirror technology owes a great debt to the Greek obsession with geometry, particularly the rather odd study of cones, begun around 350 BC by Menaechmus, a contemporary of Plato.

Glass is nearly as magical as light itself. Made primarily from sand, it can be virtually invisible, as clear as water or air. Because its chaotic molecules are not held together in rigid crystalline form, glass is a kind of solid liquid. Yet it is hard enough to be moulded, sanded, blown, ground, polished, melted, coloured, and twisted.

Scientists have made tiny mirrors the size of a pinhead that may revolutionise the telecommunications industry. While multiple wavelengths of light reflect off the interior sides of fibre-optic cables incredibly quickly — duh, at the speed of light — they must be converted into electrons at every routing junction, then get reconverted to light, and so on. It's as if one flew on a jet but had to walk between terminals before taking another jet.

Using micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) to make minuscule mirrors that can swivel on two axes, Bell Lab scientists are working to reroute fibre-optic light by simple reflection.

Worth reflecting upon.

(Books courtesy: Landmark, Chennai. www. landmarkonthenet.com)

Tailpiece

"When crime rises and good people get killed... "

"There would be a new avatar?"

"May be, but that is when if you dialled hell, it would be a local call."

ReadingRoom@TheHindu.co.in

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Why men cling to the phone while women keep chatting