Bullshit!

O random visitor to this blog,

Check out this funny little article (that is apparently now a book) titled "On Bullshit". Its quite a remarkably accurate description of blogging (with this blog being a piece of evidence in this regard).

A fragment:

"...Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person’s obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic are more excessive than his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic. This discrepancy is common in public life, where people are frequently impelled — whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others — to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant. Closely related instances arise from the widespread conviction that it is the responsibility of a citizen in a democracy to have opinions about everything, or at least everything that pertains to the conduct of his country’s affairs. The lack of any significant connection between a person’s opinions and his apprehension of reality will be even more severe, needless to say, for someone who believes it his responsibility, as a conscientious moral agent, to evaluate events and conditions in all parts of the world...."




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This is....

....an exercise in the ab

Words from the Metro

I've been doing the daily crossword on the Metro newspaper for the last few weeks out of sheer boredom. They tend to be easy (and probably why I do them). Well 95% of the words are usually pretty easy but the last 5% can be a lot of fun. As always, its been particularly cool to discover some interesting new things, such as (more to follow in later posts):

1. Peck = A unit of capacity for dry goods equal to a quarter of a bushel, now equivalent (in Britain) to two imperial gallons (approx. 9.09 litres) or (in the U.S.) to eight quarts (approx. 8.81 litres).
   
   
2. Ogee = An arch whose curve is formed by two S-shaped or double curves meeting at its apex. [related to the more familiar ogive]
   
   
3. Keen = An Irish funeral song accompanied with wailing in lamentation for the dead.
   
   
4. Lorelei (this one is terrific) = "...The Lorelei (originally written as Loreley) is a rock on the eastern bank of the Rhine near St. Goarshausen, which soars some 120 meters above the water line. It marks the narrowest part of the river between Switzerland and the North Sea. A very strong current and rocks below the waterline caused many boat accidents in former times....The rock is associated with several legendary tales originating in German folklore. It appears in many forms, but is best known through a poem by Heinrich Heine that begins "Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten" (which means in English, "I don't know what to make of it"). In the most common form of the story, the Lorelei is a maiden who threw herself into the Rhine in despair over a faithless lover, and became a nixe whose voice lured fishermen to destruction..." [Wikipedia]
   
   
5. Nix = Nix (also known as Näcken, Nøkken or Nixe) are water creatures in German and Scandinavian folklore, usually shown in human form. The name is related to the Anglo-Saxon nicor, and Old High German nihus, all designating some kind of water fiend.
   
   
6. Nixie = U.S. Post which cannot be forwarded by the postal services because it is illegibly or incorrectly addressed.
   
   
7. Stet[1][2] = Direction on a printer's proof or manuscript to indicate that the alterations be undone and the original word or passage be restored.
   

A feeling for the organism...

".........In her lifelong study of heredity in corn Barbara McClintock achieved insights into hereditary patterns that were far ahead of her times. [...] Evelyn Fox Keller asks: “What enabled McClintock to see further and deeper into the mysteries of genetics than her colleagues?” McClintock’s answer is simple. Over and over again, she tells us one must have the time to look, the patience to “hear what the material has to say to you,” the openness to “let it come to you.” Above all, one must have “a feeling for the organism.” … “I start with the seedling. I don’t feel I really know the story if I don’t watch the plant all the way along. So I know every plant in the field. I know them intimately, and I find it a great pleasure to know them.” … “I have learned so much about the corn plant that when I see things, I can interpret [them] right away.”...."





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The secret life of balloons

A bunch of photos that I took at the Boston Marathon in 2003 (with an ultra-cheap $7.59 single use camera) as part of my investigation into the secret life of balloons. [Click on image to see all the photos.]

Fetus, not, foetus!

'SIR-
The unborn child is not to blame
For bastard spelling of his name
The Romans knew their Latin best.
To Virgil, Ovid and the rest
He was a FETUS and so stayed
Till later Isidore made
A diphthong of the vowel E
Confusing us and Dr. B.

The FETAL noun you can relate
To the verb feo - generate.
Its origin cannot be hung
On the verb foeto - bring forth young.
If so, then FOETUS should adorn
The newborn child, not the unborn,
And so in mother's arms we'd see
Our FOETAL physiology.

To other words the diphthong came,
But they've their old form back again
You won't be thanked in '69
To tell your bird she's foeminine.
To call the FETUS transatlantic
Will drive the editors quite frantic
Ere Norsemen on Cape Cod were wrecked,
The spelling FETUS was correct.'

Geoffrey Chamberlain, King's College Hospital,
London SE5, Lancet 2(1309) 1969

A place that...

...betwixt the rivers lies. Given the remote likelihood that a Baltimore Oriole would ever make it to this place - Kondayampettai or for that matter Thiruvanaikaval - my good deed for the day is to make this a tangible possiblity.

Habit

Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.
- Virginia Woolf






[click on image to enlarge]


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Year

YEAR, n. A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.

From: The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

Today -- World AIDS Day

Long ago

Long, long ago I used to spend numerous, uncountable evenings up on top of the leaky water tank on the roof of my hostel all alone watching flocks of green parakeets fly by against the backdrop of the blue waters of the lake and the expanse of trees, with the distant hum of homebound traffic. Hours would go by as the sun gradually set and the darkness crept in. The question remains -- what was running through my head? This was a question people used to ask me all the time -- Was I thinking profound thoughts? Was I was pining for somebody [nudge, nudge, wink, wink]? Was I contemplating the world's problems? Was I worrying about something? etc., etc. But it was never any of this and the answer was always truthfully "nothing".

Reading this little passage (Jon Elster quoting Georges Perec) puts it in perspective: The visions blurred, became jumbles; they could retain only a few vague and muddled bits, tenuous, persistent, brainless, impoverished wisps...They thought it was happiness they were inventing in their dreams. They thought their imagination was unshackled, splendid and, with each successive wave, permeated the whole world. They thought that all they had to do was to walk for their stride to be a felicity. But what they thought they were, when it came down to it, was alone, stationary and a bit hollow: A grey and icy flatland, infertile tundra.

That's it -- the bleak tundra of daydreams lacking any constraint which would descend into a numb blankness where my brain was simply processing stimuli without registering neither emotion nor thought or anything else for that matter including creating memories. This may be a complete and accurate summary of my life -- existence as an excuse to drift into the blankness of dreamy muddleness.



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Of Thumbs

Of Thumbs (Michel de Montaigne, 1533-1592)

Tacitus reports, that among certain barbarian kings their manner was, when they would make a firm obligation, to join their right hands close to one another, and intertwist their thumbs; and when, by force of straining, the blood it appeared in the ends, they lightly pricked them with some sharp instrument, and mutually sucked them.

Physicians say, that the thumbs are the master fingers of the hand, and that their Latin etymology is derived from “pollere.” The Greeks called them Anticheir, as who should say, another hand. And it seems that the Latins also sometimes take it in this sense for the whole hand;

“Sed nec vocibus excitata blandis,
Molli pollice nec rogata, surgit.”
["Neither to be excited by soft words or by the thumb." --Mart., xii. 98, 8.]

It was at Rome a signification of favor to depress and turn in the thumbs:

“Fautor utroque tuum laudabit pollice ludum:”
["Thy patron will applaud thy sport with both thumbs" --Horace]

and of disfavor to elevate and thrust them outward:

“Converso pollice vulgi,
Quemlibet occidunt populariter.”
["The populace, with inverted thumbs, kill all that come before them."--Juvenal, iii. 36]

The Romans exempted from war all such were maimed in the thumbs, as having no more sufficient strength to hold their weapons. Augustus confiscated the strength of a Roman knight, who had maliciously cut off the thumbs of two young children he had, to excuse them from going into the armies: and before him, the senate, in the time of the Italic war, had condemned Caius Vatienus to perpetual imprisonment, and confiscated all his goods, for having purposely cut off the thumb of his left hand, to exempt himself from that expedition. Some one, I have forgotten who, having won a naval battle, cut off the thumbs of all his vanquished enemies, to render them incapable of fighting and of handling the oar. The Athenians also caused the thumbs of the Aeginatans to be cut off, to deprive them of the superiority in the art of navigation.

In Lacedaemon, pedagogues chastised their scholars by biting
their thumb.  

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Lacedaemon = alternate name for Sparta (follow link to see map of ancient Greece)


And for comparison, follow the link below to see a map of modern Greece

The F.L.A.M.E.S. problem -- SOLVED!!

UPDATE: Here is a first draft

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:) I (and a friend of mine P) have come up with a rigorous solution to the FLAMES problem! It turns out to have a really simple (though not quite obvious) and extremely elegant solution. Full writeup of the proof to be posted within the next few hours.

F.L.A.M.E.S. -- is it fair?

This post is "inspired" by the so called FLAMES algorithm.

For the uninitiated, this is a very simple exercise. Take names of two people, usually of opposite genders and cross out all the common alphabets between the two names. Post that, count the number of alphabets that remain and get that number. Now write F L A M E S on a piece of paper and start counting from F to S, then go back to F and again the same process is done, with the number you have. Every time the count ends, cross out that alphabet, and restart counting from the next alphabet. Repeat this till you cross out five of the alphabets and remain with one....

I've never encountered this before even though it seems to be common knowledge, maybe this was for the better. Anyway, this is a curious little calculation game and out of curiosity as to whether this "game" is really fair or whether it has something about it that makes it unpredictable, I did a little empirical investigation.

Terminology
Mismatched letters: If the names are GEORGE W. BUSH and NELSON MANDELA. Then the number of mismatches is the number of letters that do not appear in both names. Here GEORGE W. BUSH and NELSON MANDELA, so the number of mismatches = 7 + 10 = 17. For simplicity, lets call the number of mismatches M. With that background, I generated the outcomes and the sequences by which they arise for every M in the range 1 to a 1000.

Sequence: The sequence in which the letters of FLAMES are struck out, i.e. M then A then L then F then E then S, etc.

Some interesting findings(yes, yes, I dont have a rigorous proof (as yet) but the following seem to hold true for M = [1,1000])

• Observation - 1: There are only 60 unique sequences for any value of M. Why is this interesting? Since there are 6 letters in FLAMES, the number of possible sequences by which each of these letters can be struck out is 6! = 720. But of these only 60 can occur.
  
  
• Observation - 2: All of these unique sequences occur in the range M = 1 to 60. This means that every M in the range 1 - 60 has a unique sequence associated with it. From M = 61 onwards, the sequences begin to repeat. This is probably why the game seems so unpredictable as most reasonable pairs of names would have M in this range and at every step it seems like you cannot predict what outcome will emerge.
  
  
• Observation - 3: For M greater than 60, the sequences begin to cycle with period 60. The sequences for M = 1, 61, 121, .... are identical and so are the sequences for M= 2, 62, 122, 182,.., for M = 3,etc. In fact this is true for all M in the range 1 to 60 where the sequences for any M' = 60*n + M are identical (where n belongs to the Natural numbers).
  [I dont have a proof of this beyond exhaustive checking]
  
  Observation - 4: Each of the six possible outcome is equally likely in the range 1-60. (see Figure 2 below). So, if pairs of names can uniformly lie in the M = 1 to 60 range, then the outcome is "fair". But if we look at specific ranges then it is not so fair (see Figures 3 onward).
  

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Figure 1: Variation in predicted outcome for different numbers of mismatched letters. Looks arbitrary but is it so?

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Figure 2: Percentage of each possible outcome for numbers of mismatched letters over the entire range 1 to 60. Surprise -- every outcome is equally likely in this range!!!

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Figure 3: Percentage of each possible outcome for numbers of mismatched letters varying from 1 to 10. Definitely skewed towards 'E'

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Figure 4: Percentage of each possible outcome for numbers of mismatched letters varying from 11 to 20. Absolutely no 'S'

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Figure 5: Percentage of each possible outcome for numbers of mismatched letters varying from 21 to 30. Absolutely no 'L'

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Figure 6: Percentage of each possible outcome for numbers of mismatched letters varying from 31 to 40. Absolutely no 'E'

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[More updates on this investigation shortly...]
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A thought (not mine)

From: "The Light of Asia: Book the Eighth" by Edwin Arnold

Ho! ye who suffer! know

Ye suffer from yourselves. None else compels,
None other holds you that ye live and die,
And whirl upon the wheel, and hug and kiss
Its spokes of agony,
Its tire of tears, its nave of nothingness.

Is this vacuous profundity or a glimpse of the "truth"? And then we have the koan

Circumstances arose one day which delayed preparation of the dinner of a Soto Zen master, Fugai, and his followers. In haste the cook went to the garden with his curved knife and cut off the tops of green vegetables, chopped them together, and made soup, unaware that in his haste he had included a part of a snake in the vegetables.

The followers of Fugai thought they had never tasted such great soup. But when the master himself found the snake's head in his bowl, he summoned the cook. "What is this?" he demanded, holding up the head of the snake.

"Oh, thank you, master," replied the cook, taking the morsel and eating it quickly.

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Elements

With the incredible amount of secondary content on the World Wide Web, it is always a rare and extremely delightful experience to stumble on a website with not just excellent primary content but a very high "coolness" coefficient. Today is one such day where I came across the website on Elementymology (by Peter van der Krogt). As the name suggests, it has the detailed etymology of the different elements on the periodic table and does a very excellent job of it (from what I can tell).

Absolutely do check it out!

(Also, see Gernot Katzer's brilliant website on the spices of the world)




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Buldi market

PTI photograph of Buldi market in Nagpur on Sunday evening prior to Diwali (October 2005)

Trash

Check out Trash cans of India - a very amusing collection of photographs.






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Mmmmm...mosquito

History of the Idli

The word idli originates from a two Tamil words - "Ittu" + "Avi" (To lay and steam). Although the precise history of the modern idli is unknown, it is a very old food in southern Indian cuisine. The first mention of it in writings occurs ca. 920 A.D., and it seems to have started as a dish made only of fermented urad dal. One description ca. 1025 says the lentils were first soaked in buttermilk, and after grinding, seasoned with pepper, coriander, cumin and asafoetida. The king and scholar Someshwara III, reigning in the area now called Karnataka, included an idli recipe in his encyclopedia, the Manasollasa, written in Sanskrit ca. 1130 A.D. There is no known record of rice being added until some time in the 17th century. It may have been found that the rice helped speed the fermentation process. Although the idli changed in ingredients, the preparation process and the name remained the same.

Source:Wikipedia

More information would be much appreciated.

Dowry and culture?

Dowry Murder:The Imperial Origins of a Cultural Crime, by Veena Talwar Oldenburg

I stumbled on this book while browsing through the new books section of my library, and ended up reading not once but several times. One more shocking new revelation that challenges the belief that I know anything about India at all. The book's claim is that the somewhat harmless practice of dowry-giving began its long evolution towards its modern pernicious form due to the colonial government's "good-intentioned" attempt to end the practice of female infanticide in Punjab. Her central point of attack is that treating practices like female infanticide and dowry-murder as a "cultural practice" that is peculiar to a particular community is a flawed construct, where "culture" is treated as some unchanging property of a community that is uneffected by other socio-economic and political factors.

In this regard she points out how the colonial govts stringent policies to stop female infanticide treating as a "cultural problem" had little effect as the government failed to recognize that the high rate of female infanticide in the Punjab area was closely correlated with the progressive masculinization of the economy under the British.

Interestingly, she makes a parallel to the dowry issue in the modern day. There are stringent laws against dowry thanks to active lobbying by women's groups but this had little effect on the spiralling rates of dowry-deaths. She questions whether the Indian govt is being blind to the broader problem of marital violence against women by treating every incident of marital violence as a dowry death.

• An interview with the author, and below is a summary that I found.
  
• Kerosene, Weapon of Choice for Attacks on Wives in India, By Celia W. Dugger - "...Others, like Geetha, 20, offered harrowing testimonies, supported by a growing body of new research, that place them right in the international mainstream of brutishly mistreated wives. The use of fire as a weapon, which seems so exotic, is simply expedient: kerosene, a ubiquitous cooking fuel here, is a cheap, handy weapon, much like a gun or a baseball bat in an American home..."
  

Another summary floating around on the web:

The recognition of gender-based violence in a domestic setting as an important issue and the search for solutions to address it at different levels has been widely recognized as a critical priority. That said, the point that I wish to make is not a novel one but reiterating the need to recognize the relation of this priority to gender-related developments on other fronts. Situating the issue of gender violence in this broader context suggests an added urgency towards addressing this issue.

The reasoning for this is drawn from Veena Talwar Oldenburg's study of the evolution of the practice of dowry-giving in India under colonial socio-economic policies. This evolution is from dowry being implicitly provided as an economic safety net for the newly-wed bride; to its particularly heinous modern form as an explicit currency of status demanded by the groom's family. In this modern form, it has become a motive for inflicting violence on newly-wed women when the dowry demands are not satisfactorily met. Apart from significant harassment often driving women to commit suicide, this act of violence at its worst takes the, now much sensationalized, form of the husband, aided by his parents and relatives, dousing his hapless wife with kerosene and setting her on fire.

Using the historical perspective provided by her study Oldenburg observes that, despite the prevalence of this dowry-motivated burning, this form of violence cannot entirely be ascribed to the practice of dowry alone. Often wife burning in an Indian home is a particular method of inflicting violence comparable to guns and baseball clubs in an American settings. The use of kerosene is as much due to the "advantage" that it leaves little forensic evidence of an attempt at murder and reduces suspicion of a crime having been committed as the widely used kerosene-stoves are known to be dangerous devices in themselves. In this sense, the burning of women by their husbands (and relatives) is to be seen as a part of the general problem of domestic violence arising in marital settings, rather than singularly through the narrow lens of it being a unique product of a cultural practice or even as a culturally mandated form of violence, as often mistakenly believed.

From this perspective, the increasing number of such burning incidents in the last two decades in India presents an explanatory problem, as the legislated penalties in dowry-related crimes, both in principle and implementation, are notably stringent. Here, the important point Oldenburg raises is that the increased incidence of this form of domestic violence may have as much to do with the correlated increase in Indian women asserting their independence as a consequence of other gender-related socio-economic developments. So, increased domestic violence may be an indicator of changing gender relations, with the increased violence being a response of the entrenched patriarchy to challenges to the power structure.

This is an observation that is of much importance. Increased efforts at reducing discrimination against women in obtaining economic opportunities and legal remedies, increased educational levels of women, and the overall increase in age at which women get married are well known positive changes occuring in the Indian public sphere, even if slowly and unevenly. That these positive developments would be accompanied with changes in the behavior and attitudes of women in the domestic sphere is a critical consideration. And as Oldenburg argues, in a strongly patriarchal setting that the consequences may well take the form of increased violence as more women "speak up", and resist being "moulded" to the wishes of their husbands and in-laws.

The point then is that such correlations between changes in the public sphere to the domestic sphere suggests that domestic violence has a dynamic character to it. This emphatically brings an added urgency to recognize and address this issue. Furthermore, it suggests that treating gender-related domestic violence as a problem that is born at the first act of violence within marriage may be overly narrow, even though this forms the basis for measurement and (as Oldenburg points out) even though women start their narratives about violence starting from within marriage. Maybe agentive strategies to "end" domestic violence could be aided by an inclusion of the conditions prior to and leading up to marriage as well.

Factorial of 999

999!
= 402,387,260,077,093,773,543,702,433,923,003,985,719,374,864,210,
714,632,543,799,910,429,938,512,398,629,020,592,044,208,486,
969,404,800,479,988,610,197,196,058,631,666,872,994,808,558,
901,323,829,669,944,590,997,424,504,087,073,759,918,823,627,
727,188,732,519,779,505,950,995,276,120,874,975,462,497,043,
601,418,278,094,646,496,291,056,393,887,437,886,487,337,119,
181,045,825,783,647,849,977,012,476,632,889,835,955,735,432,
513,185,323,958,463,075,557,409,114,262,417,474,349,347,553,
428,646,576,611,667,797,396,668,820,291,207,379,143,853,719,
588,249,808,126,867,838,374,559,731,746,136,085,379,534,524,
221,586,593,201,928,090,878,297,308,431,392,844,403,281,231,
558,611,036,976,801,357,304,216,168,747,609,675,871,348,312,
025,478,589,320,767,169,132,448,426,236,131,412,508,780,208,
000,261,683,151,027,341,827,977,704,784,635,868,170,164,365,
024,153,691,398,281,264,810,213,092,761,244,896,359,928,705,
114,964,975,419,909,342,221,566,832,572,080,821,333,186,116,
811,553,615,836,546,984,046,708,975,602,900,950,537,616,475,
847,728,421,889,679,646,244,945,160,765,353,408,198,901,385,
442,487,984,959,953,319,101,723,355,556,602,139,450,399,736,
280,750,137,837,615,307,127,761,926,849,034,352,625,200,015,
888,535,147,331,611,702,103,968,175,921,510,907,788,019,393,
178,114,194,545,257,223,865,541,461,062,892,187,960,223,838,
971,476,088,506,276,862,967,146,674,697,562,911,234,082,439,
208,160,153,780,889,893,964,518,263,243,671,616,762,179,168,
909,779,911,903,754,031,274,622,289,988,005,195,444,414,282,
012,187,361,745,992,642,956,581,746,628,302,955,570,299,024,
324,153,181,617,210,465,832,036,786,906,117,260,158,783,520,
751,516,284,225,540,265,170,483,304,226,143,974,286,933,061,
690,897,968,482,590,125,458,327,168,226,458,066,526,769,958,
652,682,272,807,075,781,391,858,178,889,652,208,164,348,344,
825,993,266,043,367,660,176,999,612,831,860,788,386,150,279,
465,955,131,156,552,036,093,988,180,612,138,558,600,301,435,
694,527,224,206,344,631,797,460,594,682,573,103,790,084,024,
432,438,465,657,245,014,402,821,885,252,470,935,190,620,929,
023,136,493,273,497,565,513,958,720,559,654,228,749,774,011,
413,346,962,715,422,845,862,377,387,538,230,483,865,688,976,
461,927,383,814,900,140,767,310,446,640,259,899,490,222,221,
765,904,339,901,886,018,566,526,485,061,799,702,356,193,897,
017,860,040,811,889,729,918,311,021,171,229,845,901,641,921,
068,884,387,121,855,646,124,960,798,722,908,519,296,819,372,
388,642,614,839,657,382,291,123,125,024,186,649,353,143,970,
137,428,531,926,649,875,337,218,940,694,281,434,118,520,158,
014,123,344,828,015,051,399,694,290,153,483,077,644,569,099,
073,152,433,278,288,269,864,602,789,864,321,139,083,506,217,
095,002,597,389,863,554,277,196,742,822,248,757,586,765,752,
344,220,207,573,630,569,498,825,087,968,928,162,753,848,863,
396,909,959,826,280,956,121,450,994,871,701,244,516,461,260,
379,029,309,120,889,086,942,028,510,640,182,154,399,457,156,
805,941,872,748,998,094,254,742,173,582,401,063,677,404,595,
741,785,160,829,230,135,358,081,840,096,996,372,524,230,560,
855,903,700,624,271,243,416,909,004,153,690,105,933,983,835,
777,939,410,970,027,753,472,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

From: Fun With Numbers


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Summer film list

My annual summer film blitz has begun. Here's the list of films that I've seen so far. Though all of these are classics, the titles with the little asterisk next to them have been my particular favorites:

Cynara [*]
Directed by King Vidor
US, 1932, b/w, 75 min.
With Ronald Colman, Kay Francis, Phyllis Barry

Under the Roofs of Paris (Sous les toits de Paris)
Directed by René Clair
France, 1930, b/w, 92 min.
With Albert Préjean, Pola Illery, Edmond T. Grèville

Nightfall
Directed by Jacques Tourneur
US, 1957, b/w, 78 min.
With Aldo Ray, Brian Keith, Anne Bancroft

Great Day in the Morning
Directed by Jacques Tourneur
US, 1956, color, 92 min.
With Virginia Mayo, Robert Stack, Ruth Roman

A Brief Vacation (Una Breva Vacanza) [**]
Directed by Vittorio De Sica
Spain/ Italy, 1973, color, 112 min.
With Renato Salvatori, Florinda Bolkan, Daniel Quenaud

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini)
Directed by Vittorio De Sica
West Germany/Italy, 1970, color, 94 min.
With Lino Capolicchio, Dominique Sanda, Fabio Testi




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Flashy-ass Gordon

"Although firefly remains the literary and formal word, lightning bug is the term used by the majority of Americans for the slow-moving flying insect that flashes in the dark. Nearly 80 percent of those interviewed for the Dictionary of American Regional English volunteered lightning bug, while not quite 30 percent said firefly (including those who said both). Only in the northernmost states, especially New England, and along the Pacific coast, does firefly hold its own with lightning bug. Bug itself is nowadays an American term; since the 18th century, the British have preferred insect."
(The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language)

Also:

• Did you know that - "If you live in the United States, west of about the middle of Kansas, you are not apt to have the flashing type of fireflies in your area. Although some isolated sightings of luminous fireflies have been reported from time to time from regions of the western U.S., fireflies that glow are typically not found west of Kansas. The reason for this phenomenon is not known." [Ref]
  
  
• A great photo series of the developmental stages of a firefly. Strangely, the larvae of the firefly are predators but the adults seem to feed on plant nectar. Guess the fire in their bellies dies out with age ;)
  
  
• You cannot miss the excellent website BugGuide.net
  

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American Psycho (2000)

The character Patrick Bateman in the film American Psycho:

"There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better world for anyone, in fact I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape, but even after admitting this there is no catharsis, my punishment continuous to allude me and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself, no new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing."

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Preformation and ghosts

Here is another interesting titbit to do with long-dead natural historians (also see entry on Lamarck and clouds).

Charles Bonnet [ref-1][ref-2] was a Swiss biologist who was associated with the theory of preformation, atleast he was one who went to great lengths to explicitly spell it (so Gould(*) tells us). Also, he is often considered to be the first person to use the word "evolution" as a biological term (but Gould(*) notes that the credit really ought to belong to Albrecht von Haller).

Anyway, Charles Bonnet was the first to describe a strange psychological condition. In 1760, he "described vivid, complex visual hallucinations in his psychologically normal 87 year old grandfather, who had cataract operations on both eyes and was practically blind. His grandfather saw pictures of men, women, birds, carriages, buildings, tapestries and scaffolding patterns.".[ref]. This condition is now known as Charles Bonnet's syndrome.

From Paulig and Mentrup (2001)(J Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, 2001;70:813-814):

"...We describe a patient with a 2 year history of Charles Bonnet's syndrome with macular degeneration, with persistent and frequent hallucinations that have disappeared after treatment with gabapentin.

The 86 year old woman had a 2 year history of complex visual hallucinations on being admitted to our hospital. A senile macular degeneration had been diagnosed by her ophthalmologist 10 years previously. She complained of a daily and repetitive occurrence of images predominantly showing human beings such as medieval women and knights in bright colours, but also torsos or isolated heads. None of the faces were familiar to her. They were of realistic size, coincided with normal perception of the external space, and mainly emerged when looking at a wall or lying supine facing the ceiling. The hallucinations were exclusively of a visual nature and static, but moved when she moved her eyes. They never occurred when her eyes were closed. She also sometimes experienced hallucinations of tiny homunculi strolling on the floor and climbing on her legs when she tried to step on them. Rarely, the content of the hallucinations changed while being watched---for example, from a female to a male head. The duration of the phenomena ranged from seconds to a few minutes. The patient recognised an increase in hallucinations during exhaustion or inflammatory diseases with raised temperature. A condition which regularly evoked hallucinations was using a mobile phone. A complex pattern of rhomboid shapes emerged with a short latency and faded away soon after having switched off the phone. The patient had full insight into the non-realistic nature of her experiences and she did not feel distressed by them. None the less, she argued that the hallucinations sometimes interfered with perception when she was driving a car; therefore convincing her to seek therapy.

We asked the patient to document the time and content of the hallucinations throughout the day in a pretreatment diary. It showed that they were most likely to occur in the morning and in the evening. The most prevalent features were parts of human beings, predominantly heads. Sometimes, objects such as old fashioned clocks or tombstones were described.

There was no psychiatric history. Medical history showed no diseases apart from hypertension and a severe polyarthrosis. She only irregularly took an antihypertensive medication (an angiotensin II antagonist and a diuretic) and pain killers (tilidine). Her general practitioner also prescribed Ginkgo biloba extract and pentoxifylline to treat the hallucinations, but without any effect. On admission to our hospital she was only taking homeopathic medication.

Neurological examination was normal. A dry atrophic macular degeneration was confirmed by our ophthalmologist. Visual acuity was 0.4 in the left eye and 0.6 in the right eye, without perimetric signs of scotomas. No cognitive dysfunction (mini mental state examination 29/30, above average performance in testing alertness, and selective attention) or additional psychotic symptoms could be found. Laboratory tests were normal. Her EEG and brain SPECT disclosed no pathology. Cranial MRI only showed an age related circumscribed frontal atrophy but no abnormalities in the brain...."

Bizarre -- who knows maybe this is an explanation for why some folks claim to see "ghosts"!?


REFERENCES:
(*) Gould, Stephen J., Ontogeny and phylogeny, 1977, Harvard University Press.


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Clouds

Did you know that Jean-Baptiste Lamarck [Complete works][Short bio], a pioneer (though now much reviled*) evolutionist, also pioneered the concept of classifying clouds? Well, his classification never become popular though and the scheme in present usage (i.e. cirrus, cumulus,etc) was developed independently and almost simultaneously by Luke Howard [Luke Howard: The Man Who Named The Clouds(Keith Heidorn)]

• Check out the Met Office website for a fascinating description (with lots of photographs) of the modern cloud classification scheme.
  
• The US Post Service Cloudscape stamps
  

* = "Lamarck is the only major figure in the history of biology whose name has become, to all intents and purposes, a term of abuse" - C.H.Waddington in "The evolution of an evolutionist" (1975, p.38). This unfortunate status being in no small part due to the association with the infamous Trofim Denisovich Lysenko.


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Travelogue

A colleague of mine told me about a friend of his, Michael Benanav, who makes a living by going on hiking expeditions in remote places and then writing up his travelogues for the New York Times. Here are a couple of his absolutely fascinating adventures:

• A Nomad Among Nomads In Mongolia, published: October 5, 2003.
  
  
• Learning Spanish In Life's Classroom, published: July 7, 2002
  (about a trip to the Eco-Escuela de Espanol in San Andres, Guatemala)
  

Apparently, he just got back from a 6-month trip with a camel-caravan on the historic Timbuktu salt road to the salt mines of Taudenni (in Mali), and there is a book in the offing about this expedition. Something to look forward to. Till then here is an article (with some nice photographs) from the National Geographic on this tradition that continues to this day.



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What was that again!?

A most bizarre quote from the AP news article Chessmaster Garry Kasparov Retires

Shay Bushinsky, who programmed Deep Junior, one of Kasparov's famous computer opponents, said Friday that the grandmaster is "the closest thing to a computer that I know as a man. Sometimes I think he has silicon running in his veins."

i.e. since we can't solve the AI-problem (i.e. make computers do the things humans/living-organisms do), let's turn the tables and start calling humans computers instead. Voila - problem solved!



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;) Icheumon (contd)

From The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce (thanks to Kes for this link)

BASILISK, n.
The cockatrice. A sort of serpent hatched form the egg of a cock. The basilisk had a bad eye, and its glance was fatal. Many infidels deny this creature's existence, but Semprello Aurator saw and handled one that had been blinded by lightning as a punishment for having fatally gazed on a lady of rank whom Jupiter loved. Juno afterward restored the reptile's sight and hid it in a cave. Nothing is so well attested by the ancients as the existence of the basilisk, but the cocks have stopped laying.

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The saga of Ichneumon

This is a really interesting curiosity that I stumbled on while looking up the etymology of the word mongoose. The entry at the Online Etymology Dictionary says:

mongoose: "snake-killing ichneumon of India," 1698, perhaps via Portugal, from an Indic language (cf. Marathi mangus "mongoose"), probably ult. from Dravidian (cf. Telugu mangisu, Kannada mungisi). The form of the Eng. word altered by folk-etymology.

The surprise was the use of the term ichneumon for mongooses, as I had always heard the term being used with respect to the ichneumon wasps. Well, a little further investigation cleared that up, well sort of.

So:

• Mongooses belong to the family Herpestidae. The Egyptian mongoose is classified as the species Herpestes ichneumon. But there is also a genus in the family called Ichneumia with a single species the white-tailed mongoose
  Ichneumia albicauda (which is the literal Latin translation)
  
  
• On the other hand, the ichneumon wasps belong to the family Ichneumonidae

The word ichneumon is a Greek word which literally means ‘tracker’, with variants meaning 'to track or trace out', and 'track, footstep'. [from the Oxford English Dictionary]. It is still unclear to me why the Greeks came to associate the word with the mongoose and also with the wasp.

• Aristotle in The History of Animals: Book IX(350 BC) uses it both for the wasp and the mongoose:
  • "..The eagle and the snake are enemies, for the eagle lives on snakes; so are the ichneumon and the venom-spider, for the ichneumon preys upon the latter." (Here referring to the wasp)
    
  • "...The Egyptian ichneumon, when it sees the serpent called the asp, does not attack it until it has called in other ichneumons to help; to meet the blows and bites of their enemy the assailants beplaster themselves with mud, by first soaking in the river and then rolling on the ground." (Here referring to the mongoose, with some imaginative extrapolations)
  
  [interestingly this book was translated into English by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson of On Growth and Form(1917) fame]
  
  
• I imagine that the Greeks' familiarity with mongooses comes from their high status in neighboring Egypt. From the blurb on the Coffin of an Ichneumon in the form of the goddess Wadjet:Last period (7th-5th century BCE) at the Israel Museum website:
  

  The ichneumon (mongoose) was revered for its ability to kill snakes and crush crocodile eggs. Together with the shrew-mouse, it was regarded as the animal manifestation of the sun god Horus at Letopolis in the Delta, whose name, "the Blind and the Seeing", reflects the complete daily cycle of day and night. The ichneumon, active during the day, represented daytime sunlight, while the shrew-mouse, a nocturnal animal, symbolized the darkness of night.
  The ichneumon became a sacred animal of the lion-headed goddess Wadjet as a result of religious developments of the Late Period, when local traditions were frequently linked, and new mythic associations were established. The deities of the Delta cities of Letopolis and Buto became associated through myth, and the ichneumon - a sacred animal of Horus of Letopolis - became a sacred animal of the goddess Wadjet of Buto.
  Unlike other sacred animals, which were usually placed in coffins made in their form or in boxes surmounted by figurines depicting their image, mummified ichneumons were occasionally placed in statuettes of the lion-headed goddess Wadjet. The most common type depicts the goddess seated on a throne, usually crowned by the uraeus - the rearing fire-spewing cobra at the king's brow, with which Wadjet was identified. The throne, or a base attached to it, which was usually hollow, contained the mummified ichneumon.

  
  
  
• Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus) in Naturalis Historiae(apparently drawing on Aristotle) says:

  As for the little Wasps, called Ichneumones (and lesse they be than others) they use to kill one kind of Spiders called Phalangia, and carrie them into their nests: they besmeare them all over with a liniment, sit over them, and so procreate their owne kind. Moreover, all the sort of these live upon flesh, contrarie to the manner of Bees, which will not touch a dead carcasse. But Waspes hunt after the greater flies: and when they have whipt off their heads, carrie away the rest of their bodies for that provision.

  
  
  
• Now, it all begins to get extremely confusing with writers beginning to confuse ichneumons with crocodiles, serpents, otters, etc to produce a composite beast called the cockatrice. The Oxford Dictionary has a really interesting history of the word, and this is a reasonable summary (from the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia):
  

  kok'-a-tris, kok'-a-tris (tsepha'; tsph'oni; Septuagint, basiliskos, "basilisk" (which see), and aspis, "asp" (see ADDER; ASP; SERPENT)): A fabulous, deadly, monster. The name "cockatrice" appears to be a corruption of Latin calcatrix, from calcare, "to tread," calcatrix being in turn a translation of the Greek ichneumon, from ichnos, "track" or "footstep." Herpestes ichneumon, the ichneumon, Pharaoh's rat, or mongoose, a weasel-like animal, is a native of northern Africa and southern Spain...
  
  Pliny (see Oxford Dictionary, under the word "Cockatrice") relates that the ichneumon darts down the open mouth of the crocodile, and destroys it by gnawing through its belly. In the course of time, as the story underwent changes, the animal was metamorphosed into a water snake, and was confused with the crocodile itself, and also with the basilisk. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, the cockatrice was believed as late as the 17th century to be produced from a cock's egg and hatched by a serpent, and "to possess the most deadly powers, plants withering at its touch, and men and animals being poisoned by its look. It stood in awe however of the cock, the sound of whose crowing killed it. .... The weasel alone among animals was unaffected by the glance of its evil eye, and attacked it at all times successfully; for when wounded by the monster's teeth it found a ready remedy in rue, the only plant which the cockatrice could not wither." The real ichneumon does kill the most deadly snakes, and has been supposed to resort to a vegetable antidote when bitten. It actually dies however when bitten by a deadly snake, and does not possess a knowledge of herbs, but its extraordinary agility enables it ordinarily to escape injury. It is interesting to see how the changing tale of this creature with its marvelous powers has made a hodge-podge of ichneumon, weasel, crocodile, and serpent.
  

So there it is: the saga of ichneumon.


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The Harvard controversy

The transcript of the Harvard President Lawrence Summers' controversial speech at the NBER conference: Remarks at NBER Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce.

Independent of the social sciences research on these issues that contradict or support his comments, I continue to wonder why the dichotomous Nature-Nurture debate persists so doggedly. As Susan Oyama in The ontogeny of information observes, this either-or idea of causality is like a boa constrictor where half-hearted attempts to get away from it only results in a tightening of the coils. Every time the words "innate", "genetic" (i.e. the Nature camp), "social structure", "culture" (i.e. the Nurture camp) are used as broad explanatory devices, it is a warning of the lurking boa constrictor that is waiting to wrap us up in its coils.

Salaam Bombay! (1988)

I saw the film Salaam Bombay!(1988) last night. This falls into the category of films that the only satisfactory descriptor is "unrelenting". Even though it came out in 1988 to rave reviews, I could never get myself to go see it due to that undescribable "fear"(?) of what it would do to me. (I must admit that I am still judiciously avoiding Hotel Rwanda for that reason). But last night I stumbled on it while channel surfing and ended up watching it with predictable consequences.

It would not do justice to this film to discuss the plot devices and why and how we are lead to associate with certain characters and dislike others; or pass judgement on whether the movie delivers or not - the film speaks for itself. It is a deeply touching worldview of a street urchin, Chaipu, who lives in the midst of the cruel world of poverty, hardship, hunger, prostitution and drugs in the filthy underbelly of Mumbai (Bombay). But this is not a documentary in disguise but has a genuine story with complex personalities, rather than being objects to be sympathized with or despised.

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An other film I saw recently (and vastly different from Salaam Bombay!), was In Good Company(2004) - which turned out to be surprisingly taut and enjoyable.

Gaping maws: a hyper-creative website

The Gaping Maws website is among THE most creative websites I've seen in ages. Check it out!! :)

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PS: I have some pressing work deadlines to meet so this blog has been suffering from "thin" posts this last week. Things will be back in full strength very shortly.

Work

POINT:
Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration. - Thomas Alva Edison [Harper's Monthly, 1932]

COUNTERPOINT:
If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. [...] I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor. - Nikola Tesla [New York Times, October 19, 1931]

(contd) Strategic political interpretation: the bane of the humanitarian act

"In Washington, Bush administration officials, members of Congress and analysts have suggested that the outpouring of humanitarian aid and the need for coordination could have positive results for U.S. and global security beyond saving lives.

One of the reasons for such efforts, Powell said Tuesday in Indonesia, is that "we believe it is in the best interest of those countries and it's in our best interest. It dries up those pools of dissatisfaction that might give rise to terrorist activity."

U.S. military commanders are hoping to improve ties with Indonesia's military, which they see as a potential ally in the war on terrorism despite a U.S. arms embargo because of concerns about human-rights violations during the East Timor conflict in the late 1990s."

[Gratitude for aid accompanied by suspicion of U.S., Hugh Dellios, Chicago Tribune]

Strategic political interpretation: the bane of the humanitarian act

I have deliberately sought to keep this blog free of traditional politics but I am breaking this moratorium here. Seeing the US State department and the President repeatedly tout it's humanitarian mission in South Asia as being evidence of it's goodwill towards the Muslim world taints the humanitarian motives of this mission. While America and the whole world are showing a truly admirable outpouring of support straight from the heart, such a strategic justification seems to be completely out of place. I strongly feel that the "liberal media" bears a good share of the blame, by adopting this spin to critique the government in the wake of Jan Egeland's statement about the rich countries being "stingy" in their aid contributions to this disaster. (PS: I watched the entire press conference where he made this comment and the knee-jerk imputation that he was talking about the US was not at all the case. He was referring to "rich countries" including the newly rich in Eastern Europe, the Middle-East, elsewhere in Asia, Latin America, Africa to also contribute rather than just expecting countries in the Northwestern corner of the world to be the sole donors).

I do not say this in the "blame-the-West/blame-the-media" mode (which I find acutely tiresome) but these pronouncements by career politicians adds to my growing disgust in already seeing Indian politicians seek to draw political mileage out of this crisis by ham-handed criticisms of the "other" party -- of the party in power for being inefficient, and of the opposition parties for not placing partisan concerns aside.

Finally, as bloggers are prone to do, I have found a convenient article on the web to justify my opinion (there always seems to exist an "authoritative" article on the web to support every opinion however crazy -- including mine -- isnt there?).

From a press release of Doctors Without Borders(Medecins Sans Frontieres), when they pulled out of Afghanistan:
"The violence directed against humanitarian aid workers has come in a context in which the US backed coalition has consistently sought to use humanitarian aid to build support for its military and political ambitions. MSF denounces the coalition’s attempts to co-opt humanitarian aid and use it to “win hearts and minds”. By doing so, providing aid is no longer seen as an impartial and neutral act, endangering the lives of humanitarian volunteers and jeopardizing the aid to people in need. Only recently, on May 12th 2004, MSF publicly condemned the distribution of leaflets by the coalition forces in southern Afghanistan in which the population was informed that providing information about the Taliban and al Qaeda was necessary if they wanted the delivery of aid to continue."

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That's my verbal diarrhea discharge for the day. "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

Sensitive reportage

India-uncut is one of those rare websites that I have found that stands head and shoulders above the rest in reporting on the tsunami in a sensitive and empathetic way. Yes, it's all words no less.

I have been one of those, like many others, who has been caught up in the urge to do something ...anything...to "help". One week later, the momentum of doing "my part" -- in having expended resources [time,energy,money] to justify the feeling of being "involved"; by being on top of the minute-by-minute unfolding news about this catastrophe; in cringing at the images of devastation and deprivation; in passing judgements on the politics and progress of the "relief" and "development" activity; in tirelessly preaching about the need for involvement to my family and friends with a preposterously inflated tone of righteousness -- has all begun to teeter towards taking on an aura of absurdity. A very strange and perplexing note indeed on which to start this new year.

Tsunami reporting guidelines

These are reporting guidelines but are also guidelines for how to interpret all the news that you may be seeing and reading about the tsunami

The following draft guidelines have been provided to the Psychosocial Support Programme of the IWTHI Trust (Tel: +94 11 4516408/ + 94 11 4515279; Email: pspcp@eol.lk/ pspdat@eol.lk). [from the Tsunamihelpsrilanka blog]

• Remember that the disaster is a national issue – so that partisan or other vested interests must not be considered in reporting and/or commentary…
  
  
• Remember that the disaster is regional in scope – so that the relief, reconstruction and rehabilitation work must be placed in context when reporting and/or commenting…
  
  
• Remember that the disaster is international in the attention it has and will receive – so that reporting and/or commenting will reflect the state of the nation, affect its national developmental agenda, and impact the responses of the global community in crucial matters of aid and relief…
  
  
• Report and/or comment responsibly, reasonably and fairly – keeping in mind not to sensationalise, speculate or generalise…
  
  
• Report and/or comment equitably – keeping in mind that the people affected are from all races, religions, communities and geographical areas…
  
  
• Report and/or comment accurately yet positively – keeping in mind the critical and crucial role that the media can play in the national effort to restore, reconstruct and rehabilitate Sri Lanka…
  
  
• Report and/or comment sensitively – keeping in mind that lives have been lost, livelihoods irreparably damaged, property irrevocably lost and future prospects inestimably compromised…
  
  
• Reporting and/or comment with an emphasis of expectation that normal recovery will eventually take place for communities that have been affected – keeping in mind that emphasising losses will increase the sense of hopelessness and despair that people feel…
  
  
• Report and/or comment in ways that are reassuring and empathic about people and their current situations – keeping in mind that people are normally expected to exhibit stress reactions at this time; as also that being confused, sad and anxious are natural signs of shock and stress… as are crying, screaming or anger; and also that these are not signs of psychiatric impact or trauma…
  
  
• Report and/or comment humanely – keeping in mind that people in these circumstances may still retain a sense of hope and humour, and may be active in reorganising their lives; as also that it is not a sign of ignorance or indifference if people who are affected smile or appreciate what they do have left…
  
  
• Report and/or comment while being mindful of human dignity – while remaining sensitive and aware of the repercussions of depicting mutilated and decomposed bodies, as family members of the deceased who may view these in the media could be further distressed…
  
  
• Resolve to be sensitive in interviewing people – keeping in mind not to ask them unnecessary personal questions, or force them to talk; as also allowing them to share what they would like to, even if it doesn’t make ‘good copy’…

The morbid dilemma

"...WHO's David Nabarro told CNN that survivors are at risk for diarrhea, respiratory infections and insect-borne diseases that could result in "quite high rates of death" but quickly added that the living are in more danger from other survivors than from the dead.
"The fundamental need at the moment is to look after the well-being of living people and to make sure that they have what they need for life," he said. "And the requirement to properly dispose of dead people through burial or some other method in a way that is appropriate for the local tradition is certainly there. But it's not urgent from the point of view of public health."

This is an important issue that came up even in Haiti when Hurricane Jeanne wreaked havoc leaving an estimated 1250 people dead. There was extreme concern that the situation could lead to an epidemic outbreak. And it is here that a morbid schism seemed to present itself. Officials in Haiti, including the president and the local UN officials believe that the large number of rotting corpses were the central danger and there was extreme haste to have mass burials of these bodies. But a WHO spokesperson in Geneva had criticised this as being a misled allocation of resources for the same reasons -- namely the misconception that undisposed corpses presented the most immediate public health hazard.

References:

1. Morgan O. Infectious disease risks from dead bodies following natural disasters. Rev Panam Salud Publica. 2004;15(5):307–12.
   
2. WHO warns against health misconceptions in the wake of Turkish earthquake

A generation suddenly depleted

"In country after country, children have emerged as the biggest victims of Sunday's quake-born tidal waves — thousands and thousands drowned, battered and washed away by huge walls of water that have decimated an entire generation of Asians.

"The power of this earthquake, and its huge geographical reach, are just staggering," said UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy. Hundreds of thousands of children who managed to survive in the affected coastal communities now "may be in serious jeopardy," she added.

The U.N. organization estimates at least one-third of the tens of thousands who died were children, and the proportion could be up to half, said UNICEF spokesman Alfred Ironside in New York. He said communities are suffering a double loss: dead children and orphaned boys and girls. "Our major concern is that the kids who survived the tsunami now survive the aftermath. Because children are the most vulnerable to disease and lack of proper nutrition and water." ..."

[Generation of Asians Lost in Disaster (Associated Press)]

A dark day

These are kids I met on a beach in Chennai who were from a fishing hamlet closeby. I fear greatly for what may have become of them in this disastrous tsunami.

5ed5, originally uploaded by linear_thoughts.

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Also from the same hamlet :(

Tsunami-5, originally uploaded by linear_thoughts.

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This was a fisherman whom I had chatted with and his daughter at a small hamlet near Pondicherry, another place that took the brunt of the tsunami.

Tsunami-3, originally uploaded by linear_thoughts.

Recent films

Saw these two films, both centered around sex but in vastly different ways. Both are way above your average film in every way and their low-level topical messages are skillfully conveyed. Yet that alone isnt enough. In the company of films in this above-average calibre both seemed (atleast to me) to lack that je ne sais quoi gut-level oomph that separates the good from the amazing. I'm going to leave it at that.

Kinsey (2004)

La mala educación (Bad education) (2004)

Rambler #134

:( A sadly accurate description of my years of graduate research:

"...He to whom many objects of pursuit arise at the same time, will frequently hesitate between different desires till a rival has precluded him, or change his course as new attractions prevail, and harass himself without advancing. He who sees different ways to the same end, will, unless he watches carefully over his own conduct, lay out too much of his attention upon the comparison of probabilities and the adjustment of expedients, and pause in the choice of his road, till some accident intercepts his journey. He whose penetration extends to remote consequences, and who, whenever he applies his attention to any design, discovers new prospects of advantage and possibilities of improvement, will not easily be persuaded that his project is ripe for execution; but will superadd one contrivance to another, endeavour to unite various purposes in one operation, multiply complications, and refine niceties, till he is entangled in his own scheme, and bewildered in the perplexity of various intentions. [...] He will attempt a treatise on some important subject, and amass materials, consult authors, and study all the dependent and collateral parts of learning, but never conclude himself qualified to write. He that has abilities to conceive perfection will not easily be content without it; and, since perfection cannot be reached, will lose the opportunity of doing well in the vain hope of unattainable excellence." -- Johnson: Rambler #134 (June 29, 1751)

The Amazings

:) Yes, that's what The Incredibles(2004) are. I saw it last night and it was thoroughly enjoyable. The movie felt like a Simpsons-episode on steroids. The correspondence between the two families and the setting is absolutely uncanny.

The "social statement" that the film makes is highly deceptive. On the face of it, the statement is about mediocrity and how such an incredible family has to act normal and mediocre to fit in. This is the low-fat, vanilla, feel-good statement that everybody wants to hear about how "society" does not allow them "to be who they really are". But, the film is way smarter than that, because this very message is also thoroughly mocked taking the form of the characters Buddy and the baby Jack Jack.

Buddy is not a superhuman by birth, but wants to be one. His way of overcoming this congenital fact of having been born "normal", is to use invention, ingenuity and prosthetics to be able to do what a "superhuman" does. His source of acute chagrin is that his ability to do things that superhumans do is still not accepted because he wasnt born as a superhuman. Well, this is not an acceptable result so he proceeds to change the world...with the ultimate vision that every normal person could have access to these prosthetics so that nobody could claim to be more super than anybody else. While mediocrity is frowned on and everybody (i.e. the mediocre) loves somebody who is outstanding, the character Buddy mocks the mediocre for being satisfied with their mediocrity and stands out as the rare person who expresses open rebellion against the membership of the elite club of superheros being decided on by birthright rather than capability.

Jack Jack again is the only "normal" (well atleast for most of the movie) human in the Incredibles family. While all the others are having difficulties dealing with having to act dumb in order to fit in, clearly Jack Jack would not. I shudder to imagine what a tortured and conflicted life it would be for him to grow up in this family, which is also evident in the movie, where the Incredibles treat him as not really being one of them. Guess that's why he's conveniently a baby who is oblivious to all these undercurrents.

Both of these characters significantly tie in with the earlier discussion about the film Gattaca and my belief that as a society we havent yet found a way to dealing with inter-human differences in a satisfactory way, and due to the deep conflicts in values involved, I don't see this being resolved anytime soon.

A book

Recently finished reading the book: "Women, Population and Global Crisis : A Political-Economic Analysis" by Asoka Bandarage -- a really interesting book. There is more to be said about this book particularly in light of issues that I've talked about elsewhere in this blog, much more to be said....

Signs of life

I am still here but have been caught up in a flurry of work to write about all the interesting things that have been happening or even follow up on the excellent comments to my previous post (which I will very shortly). I've seen a few films in the interim though...

• Alfie(2004): This is the somewhat new Jude Law movie, which I ended up seeing as the tickets for The Incredibles were sold out. It is a completely predictable moral tale of a callous hedonist who goes from woman to woman craving the next easy pleasure, to be eventually dealt with the ultimate retribution of all -- loneliness. But unlike other films where the character is overtly nasty (i.e. cruel to children, old people and small animals), Alfie isnt such a "bad" guy per se and there is something tragic about how his world progressively comes apart capped off with the final scene when he happens to meet one his many women on a cold, winter night. :) Maybe I'm just not sufficiently cynical about Hollywood films, but despite the terrible reviews it has received, I thought the film was...was...was....kinda nice.

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• Trading women(2003) [Directed and written by David A. Feingold]: This is a documentary investigating the socio-economic drivers of the trafficking of women in Thailand. Being a layperson, watching this film was highly informative and being from India, where similar kind of trafficking is rampant, I could closely associate with many of the issues brought up by the film.
  
  Synopsis: "A clear and consistent message of the film is that trafficking is not a localized problem. The international crime of trafficking is susceptible to a complex range of influencing factors, which include the economies of supply countries and their neighbours, government anti-drugs initiatives affecting agricultural communities, sexual demand for particular ethnic types, the legal status of communities, restrictive immigration policies, official corruption and cultural stereotypes." [Pile Them High, Sell Them Cheap: Women and Sex for Sale, United Nations Chronicle][also read an interview with the film-maker]
  
  A quote from the filmaker David Feingold: "Trafficking conferences, conventions and government statements of goodwill are not enough. It is time we stopped simply presenting horror stories of individual women, and looked at the root causes. It is time we stopped feeling good about feeling bad.".
  
  NOTE: Though the content of the film strongly spoke for itself, in general it didnt seem particularly well edited and seem to indulge in a fair bit of "hand waving" while trying to make certain points. I'm just nitpicking

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• Summer Interlude(1951): Bergman, Bergman, Bergman -- sigh -- what more can I say, he never disappoints. The Seventh Seal is the film that turned on the light in my head one cold January evening in 2000 and ever since then watching a film (any film) began to mean something very different.

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Gattaca (1997)

Last night, on a colleague's recommendation I watched Gattaca(1997). A very interesting film indeed, and one that provides a surprisingly mature and humanistic take on the complex issues surrounding the use of genetic screening.

You are wondering why "complex", isnt it an open and shut case of being plainly wrong?

There is an operational issue associated with genetic screening (to make hiring decisions), that I think hasnt been resolved even today.

As an example: suppose there is a job requiring a person to look at a flashing light and based on it's color press the appropriate button -- when the color flashes red, a red button on the panel is to be pressed within 5 seconds, and when the light is green or not flashing, no action is to be performed. So, it turns out that there is a single vacancy available for this job and we seek to find the "appropriate" candidate. What would be a rational approach to pick the one appropriate from the 50 applications for the job?

As such, to perform this job a person would need to have the basic physical capability for color identification and a certain level of eye-hand coordination. So, at the basic level, the very job description results in a separation of the group of 50 candidates into two groups -- A, those who possess the physical capability to perform the task, and B, those who do not have these capabilities. With regard to human categories, A would tend to coincide with a notion of "normal" people, and B coincide with those who have physical disabilities related to color-vision and eye-hand coordination, whether due to age or "abnormalities". This separation is based on a rational considerations of competence alone but at the same time it is also clearly discriminatory in the sense of separating the "capables" from the "incapables". Is this fair/acceptable? Is there a consistent way to conceptually resolve this scenario (no, Social Darwinism is not an acceptable solution!!)?

In Gattaca, this is taken several steps further where genetic screening is used to discriminate between those suited for space-expeditions and those who are not. At every step it is apparent that the "valids" are indeed physically "superior" to Vincent (the protagonist) who is an "in-valid" (i.e. they can run faster, swim faster, etc). However, the issue in the movie is that genetic screening as the only method of screening results in false negatives (i.e. could say that X is "incapable", when X is indeed capable). It is this operational shortcoming -- the possibility for false negatives -- that forms the basis for the film.

Now, on operational grounds one could argue that if the battery of tests were more comprehensive then such false negatives would be impossible, and an act of fraud like what Vincent perpetrates would in fact be unethical and dangerous putting other lives at risk. So to return to my main point: While the operational limitations and the possibility of mistakes is often the source for outcry, even in our present times discrimination based on the criterion of "competence" to resolve competition wouldnt make many people cringe especially when performed accurately with the tools and methods of science. How is this to be resolved?

Errol Morris

:) Errol Morris, the film-maker, was on campus last week and gave an excellent talk titled "Cinema, Photography, and Lying". Unlike other talks and discussions about this issue, he didnt take the philosopher's approach of starting with the semantic tar-pit of trying to define "truth" (I was greatly thankful for that!). Instead he talked about his deliberate anti-cinema verite approach to documentary making and using various film-clips and witty anecdotes by the end of the talk he had engaged with this issue in a very interesting way.

The key message that he emphasized was that human beings have an incredible capability for self-deception (yes that includes me and you, good reader), clogged up in a psychological morass of rationalizations, motivations, values and such. It was the strange absurdity of this that he sought to explore in all his documentaries (the clips he had were mainly from The Fog of War:Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, The Thin Blue Line, Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. and Vernon, Florida). In all of these films, as viewers we can see that the central characters seem to reveal an inordinate level of self-deception leaving us wondering -- how could anybody so thoroughly deceive themselves and have such beliefs, when further inquiry would reveal that the facts unambiguously indicate otherwise.

So his thesis is less about the ultimate questions of truth (i.e. whether it exists) but more about the pragmatics of it i.e. a person's capability to challenge the accuracy of his/her own beliefs and conception of the world and to place it under serious scrutiny. To illustrate it, he had a funny re-rendering of Santayana's observation -- "those who forget the past, are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility".

To summarize my understanding of all this, here's an example, suppose I have a red apple in a brown paper bag. Now Bob comes along and asks me what the color of the apple is, as he cannot see it through the brown paper bag. Now, I could deliberately lie to him and say that the apple is green in color, fully knowing that it was actually red. This is a vastly different scenario from the following situation where Bob comes along and to the same question I insist that the apple is green. Now all I need to do verify if I am right is to open the bag and see that the apple is actually red. However even after seeing that it is red if I continue to fervently believe it is green (and would even swear in court that it was so) then this situation begins to border on the absurd. When we map {apple, Bob, and me} in different ways to {films, film-makers, viewers}, we begin to see Morris' take on films, truth and it's relation to us the viewers.

Some updates

Films I've seen recently:

• Sideways(2004): A truly excellent film! Much like About Schmidt this is a very perceptive study of loneliness but wrapped in a package that is very funny and tasting like fine wine.
  
  
• The Weather Underground(2002): There is a lot to be said for this film but it will have to wait for another post and another day.
  
  
• Human Nature (2001): Yawn -- smart, innovative, a little too preachy, intermittently funny and not particularly compelling. [;-) how's that for being opinionated and snobbish!]