Accidental Blogger

Jeevan, the Casteless

July 1, 2008

The headmaster asked the parents, who had come with their ward, to sit in the chairs before him, and began to fill the application form.

"What’s your name, son?"

"Jeevan"

"Good. Nice name. Father’s name?"

"Anvar Rashid."

"Mother’s name?"

"Lakshmi Devi."

The headmaster raised his head, looked at the parents and asked:

"Which religion should we write?"

"None. Write there is no religion."

"Caste?"

"The same."

The headmaster leaned back in his chair and asked a little gravely:

"What if he feels the need for a religion when he grows up?"

"Let him choose his religion when he feels so."

This is the passage that has been singled out by the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF), the Church and Muslim organisations. They are demanding immediate withdrawal of the Class VII social studies book, being taught under the Kerala board, from which this passage has been taken.

The reason? Large portions of the book, they allege, is an an attempt to teach atheism to impressionable schoolchildren. They say that such lessons and others which illustrate caste cruelties will sow sectarian discontent.

The last week has seen pro-UDF "student activists" out on the streets, burning text-books, fighting pitched battles with the police and damaging public property.

… such lessons and others which illustrate caste cruelties will sow sectarian discontent. Aha!!! Children shouldn’t be taught about caste cruelties (and other religious injustices) then? How very convenient for those who would like nothing better than to have a stranglehold over young minds – to sculpt them according to age old prejudices that perpetuate the discriminatory, exploitative and divisive religious status quo.

Whenever a thought or deed is deemed "secular and atheist" and it simultaneously provokes the united ire of august bodies such as pander-prone government coalitions and Indian religious organizations, it usually means that it is a progressive and benefical idea. Kerala’s Left Democratic Front (LDF) government has agreed to examine the text books. But despite the protests and violence, the state has refused to withdraw the "secular" content of the lessons. Kudos to the Kerala government and the state school board. I hope they can withstand the book burning and threats from bullies and let the "offending" passages stand. We’ll have to wait and see how much courage they have in store.

See the full report in Outlook India. (link via 3QD)
Sculpting the Mind (Sujatha)

June 29, 2008

From an earlier discussion on memory, a chance wrong link sent me on the search for information on neuroscientist Ian H. Robertson. While I couldn’t dig up the much quoted research article regarding the inability of younger people to remember phone numbers as well as the older generation(primarily on blogs, which ought to have thrown up a relevant hyperlink or two), I did come across a bevy of articles penned by Dr.Robertson as a columnist for the British Medical Journal, which whetted my appetite for more.

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It was her outfit!

June 26, 2008

Maria Sharapova, the winner of three Grand Slam singles titles in tennis and the # 3 seed at this year’s Wimbledon, was upset in the second round by a 6-2, 6-4 loss to Alla Kudryavtseva who is ranked # 154 in the world. Among the things that motivated Ms Kudryavtseva to beat the fashionable 2004 Wimbledon champ was the tuxedo style tennis outfit that Sharapova wore.

Kudryavtseva was asked if she was glad to have beaten Sharapova, and said, "Yes", following it with a long pause, after which she explained smilingly that this was because "I don’t like her outfit".

Hmm. I wonder if Kudryavtseva will take similar offense with the Williams sisters in case she faces one or both of them during the course of the tournament. Sisters Venus and Serena are well known for their flashy sartorial style on the court. They are also known for their fierce playing style.
Japanese “Bottom Line” on Energy Conservation

June 26, 2008

In one of my previous posts on Japan, I had mentioned the Japanese zeal for cleanliness, conservation and recycling. In the same post I also made a passing reference to Japanese toilets. Yes, bathrooms in Japan are well appointed. In most hotels where I have stayed the toilets featured warmed seats and water jets designed for washing. Some even had separate jets aimed at male and female anatomy for accurate and thorough ablution. I had also described toilets outfitted with background "natural" sounds and music that automatically come on when the bathroom is occupied. I know all this from my experience in Japanese hotels. What I did not know is that more and more homes in Japan also boast such precision guided, ultra-comfy, multifunctional, energy guzzling and musical (Ave Maria is a favorite) toilets.

TOKYO — When it comes to saving energy, the Japanese have much to teach the United States and other rich countries, whose leaders descend on Japan next month for a Group of Eight summit.

Energy consumption per person here is about half that in the United States, and the growth of greenhouse gas emissions is slower than anywhere in the industrialized world.

There is a hiccup, though, in this world-beating record. It happens inside the Japanese home, where energy use is surging. And nothing embodies the surge quite like the toilet — a plumbing fixture that has been reengineered here as an ultracomfy energy hog.

Japanese toilets can warm and wash one’s bottom, whisk away odors with built-in fans and play water noises that drown out potty sounds. They play relaxation music, too. "Ave Maria" is a favorite….

At the G-8 meeting next month, Japan will be pushing the United States and other member countries to accept mandatory limits on emissions of the gases, which cause global warming.

Since the oil shock of 1973, no industrialized country has been more effective in squeezing more affluence out of less imported energy than Japan, experts say. Relative to its economy, Japan consumes only a third as much oil as it did 35 years ago…..

No such shotgun marriage, however, has taken place in the Japanese home, where energy consumption has jumped by 213 percent since the 1973 oil shock. Government figures have shown that household power use has risen at almost exactly the same rate as personal spending. (Despite the rise, per capita residential emissions of greenhouse gases in Japan are only 41 percent of those in the United States.)

"Consumers won’t sacrifice comfort for the sake of energy conservation," said Yasuhiro Tanaka, chief of the energy efficiency division at the agency for natural resources and energy. "Consumers won’t follow that path because we are richer."

Since the government cannot stop affluent consumers from buying flat-screen televisions and super toilets, it has chosen to squeeze manufacturers, requiring them to meet increasingly strict energy targets.
George Carlin: Comedian, Thinking Man

June 26, 2008

We are a bit late here in reporting George Carlin’s death at age 71. Some of us are fans of the comic but no one felt up to posting anything personal or substantive about Carlin’s life or his philosophy that has not already been widely reported in the media. Rather than try to explain why his sharp mind and social commentary impressed me, here are some links to videos where Carlin took aim at religion, football and America’s love of war.

While right wing hypocrisy was most frequently the target of Carlin’s withering satire, he was hardly easy on self righteous smugness on the other side of the political divide. Watch Carlin take on ardent environmentalists.
What Were They Thinking?

June 25, 2008

I haven’t read the book – only seen a couple of reviews. As Sam Anderson says in the New York Books article, Intercourse, a collection of 50 stories by Pulitzer Prize winning author Robert Olen Butler, is a well written gimmick. But a fine gimmick no doubt, because public interest in the sex lives of others is insatiable. The author tries to capture in his imagination the solitary thoughts of famous couples while they were … well, copulating. The stories are not so much an account of physical intercourse or historic pillow talk, as "mental monologues" of the participants during sexual interludes. Given our knowledge of history and current affairs, the idea is at once funny and salacious. To cite a railroad analogy, the author attempts to map the life journeys of well known partners-in-passion through their individual streams of consciousness running on monorail tracks while their bodies coupled at required and prescribed physical junctions.

Robert Olen Butler’s new story collection, Intercourse, is, as its title suggests, totally about doing it. It imagines the thoughts of 50 iconic couples as they knock the proverbial boots, beginning with Adam and Eve copulating on “a patch of earth cleared of thorns and thistles, a little east of Eden,” and ending with Santa Claus blowing off postholiday steam in January 2008 by doing the nasty with an 826-year-old elf in the back room of his workshop. But, as the clinical tone of Butler’s title also suggests, Intercourse is very much not a work of erotica. It tends to ignore messy fluids and crotch-logistics in favor of wordplay and psychological nuance. The book proceeds through twinned vignettes—complementary stream-of-consciousness prose-poems paired across facing pages, with the primal physical act implied in the margins between. (When you close the book, each of the couples gets pressed together.)

Besides Adam and Eve, the storied couples into whose heads Butler tries to take his readers are as disparate as Leda & Zeus of Greek mythology, Mary Magdalene (with a Roman centurion) of Biblical lore, Cleopatra & Mark Anthony of ancient history as well as modern day star crossed couples like Prince Charles & Princess Diana and Robert Kennedy & Marilyn Monroe. Among political couples currently in the news whose bedroom ruminations the author imagines are George W. and Laura Bush. Predictably the former thinks belligerent and ungrammatical thoughts while the latter safely dwells on bland home decorating notions. Yes, yes, Bill and Hillary are there too – circa 1971. While Bill may have heard Coltrane in his head while contemplating the young woman who would be his bride, Hillary, according to Butler was hearing a completely different musical refrain.

The ballsiest vignette, the “oh, snap” moment that will make you hunch over protectively on the subway and possibly Google the basic legal definition of slander, is Butler’s depiction of Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham as striving twentysomething law students: “this had to be done eventually,” Hillary thinks, and goes on to fantasize about sex on the floor of the Oval Office—“I don’t care if that’s the next time we do this, to be honest with myself, but I choose this time and I will choose some others in between because one day we’ll be fucking on the eagle and there’s a soft knock at the door and the secretary knows not to barge in and she says Madame President, the Soviet premier is on the phone.” Although it’s predictable— perhaps even because it’s predictable—the episode feels convincing, and even, in the dusk of our overheated never-ending primary, poignant. Hillary’s dispassionate scheming is right out of central casting, and recalls all the book’s other political lovers, from Eve to Cleopatra to Henry VIII. Butler seems to be telling us that repetition, above all, is the essence of humankind’s perpetual bump and grind. And, in a world in which all the secrets are out, perhaps the greatest art lies in making us blush anew at what we already know.
Zoos as old age homes

June 24, 2008

As the companion of a geriatric cat, I am acutely conscious of the changes in nutritional, psychological and medical care that must be afforded to aging animals. With advancements in veterinary science and safer environments, just as domestic pets in affluent nations are experiencing unprecedented increase in their longevity, so are the inmates of modern, better designed zoos. As a result, zoo animals sometimes survive much longer than they might in their natural habitats. Older animals in zoos offer up new challenges to their care takers who must learn to adapt to the changing and sometimes unexpected needs of their aging wards.

Even as a youngster, Rollie looked older and wiser than his years. His white mustache sprouted longer by the month, until it flamed from his cheeks like a German kaiser’s. In the past few years, though, the tribulations of age — not just the appearance of it — have begun catching up with Rollie. His keepers are reminded each time they get a look past the Emperor Tamarin’s flowing whiskers and into his jaws. The monkey, used to crunching on raw sweet potato, has surrendered all but six of his 32 teeth to the toll of time. At 17, Rollie — a resident of Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo — is a senior citizen of his species. In the Amazon he almost certainly would never have made it this long. In captivity, he’s got plenty of company.

The golden years have arrived at the nation’s zoos and aquariums, taking veterinarians and keepers, along with their animals, into a zone of unknowns.

Do female gorillas, living in to their 40s and 50s, experience menopause?

Can an aging lemur suffer from dementia?

How do you weigh the most difficult choice — between prolonging pain and ending life — when the patient is a venerable jaguar who feels like a member of the family?

All those questions hang on a larger one that, until recent years, has been left to educated guesswork.

"How old do animals really live?" says Sharon Dewar, a spokeswoman for the Lincoln Park Zoo, whose keepers adjusted to Rollie’s toothlessness by serving him soft-cooked veggies. "That’s the million-dollar question."

Zeroing in on the answer takes years of tracking births, deaths and the age of animal populations. But zoos, which have pooled information since the 1970s, are drawing conclusions. For example, records show that the median age of Siberian tigers in zoos has reached 15 years old, up from just over 11 in the two decades ending in 1990.

Russ Williams, the executive director of the North Carolina Zoo Society ponders the same questions on his blog.
Cuss-O-Meter

June 23, 2008

Found this useful internet tool – it measures the cussing level on blogs by comparing the number of pages containing cuss words to the total number of pages published on the website. The average rate of cussing on blogs is 10%. A.B. rates low at 3.2% – registering around the "Darn It" region. (We cuss that much?) Measure your favorite blogs for foul mouthedness using the handy Cuss-O-Meter.
Pamphlet Literature

June 23, 2008

A very interesting article by George Orwell from 1943 in which Orwell weighed in on the art and value of pamphleteering. [link: 3Quarks Daily]

The interesting fact, not easily explicable, is that pamphleteering has revived upon an enormous scale since about 1935, and has done so without producing anything of real value. My own collection, made during the past six years, runs into several hundreds, but probably does not represent anywhere near 10 per cent of the total output. Some of these pamphlets have had huge sales, especially the religio-patriotic ones, such as those of Mr. Ferris, B.A., and the scurrilous ones, such as Hitler’s Last Will and Testament, which is said to have sold several millions. Directly political pamphlets sometimes sell in big numbers, but the circulation of any pamphlet which is “party line” (any party) is likely to be spurious. Looking through my collection, I find that it is practically all trash, interesting only to bibliophiles. Though I have classified current pamphlets under nine headings they could be finally reduced to two main schools, roughly describable as Party Line and Astrology. There is totalitarian rubbish and paranoiac rubbish, but in each case it is rubbish. Even the well-informed Fabian pamphlets are hopelessly dull, considered as reading matter. The liveliest pamphlets are almost always non- party, a good example being Bless ’em All, which should be regarded as a pamphlet, though it costs one and sixpence.

The reason why the badness of contemporary pamphlets is somewhat surprising is that the pamphlet ought to be the literary form of an age like our own. We live in a time when political passions run high, channels of free expression are dwindling, and organised lying exists on a scale never before known. For plugging the holes in history the pamphlet is the ideal form. Yet lively pamphlets are very few, and the only explanation I can offer – a rather lame one – is that the publishing trade and the literary papers have never made the reading public pamphlet-conscious. One difficulty of collecting pamphlets is they are not issued in any regular manner, cannot always be procured even in the libraries of museums, and are seldom advertised and still more seldom reviewed.

A good writer with something he passionately wanted to say – and the essence of pamphleteering is to have something you want to say now, to as many people as possible – would hesitate to cast it in pamphlet form, because he would hardly know how to set about getting it published, and would be doubtful whether the people he wanted to reach would ever read it. Probably he would water his idea down into a newspaper article or pad it out into a book. As a result most pamphlets are either written by lonely lunatics, or belong to the subworld of the crank religions, or are issued by political parties. The normal way of publishing a pamphlet is through a political party, and the party will see to it that any "deviation" – and hence any literary value – is kept out.

So what about modern day pamphleteering? Do blogs qualify? I think so. When before in our history have the disparate, emphatic, unfiltered and urgent voices of so many been heard in the public sphere? I think Orwell would have approved of the ubiquitous and cacophonous "machine", the literary merit of most blogs notwithstanding. I had once alluded to the blogging phenomenon as the equivalent of old time pamphleteering. I think Sinclair Lewis too would have approved of the modern day self appointed town criers – especially during the times of Bush-Cheney, when as Orwell noted, "organised lying exists on a scale never before known."
Sunday Selections

June 21, 2008

The weather is hot, blog traffic is down and I am out of ideas. So it’s links time again. The stories here range from extra terrestrial thrills to earthly narrow mindedness, with a bit of not so well known history thrown in the mix. Enjoy!

Phoenix Mars Lander unearths (un-Martiates?) Martian polar ice.

LOS ANGELES — The apparent discovery of ice near Mars’ north pole has scientists asking: Did the frozen water melt at some point in the planet’s long history to create an environment friendly for life?

The Phoenix spacecraft exposed bright white crumbs at the bottom of a trench while digging near Mars’ north pole earlier this week. The bits disappeared in new photos sent back on Thursday, convincing scientists that the magic act was evidence of ice that vaporized after being exposed to the sun.

"The fact that there’s ice there doesn’t tell you anything about whether it’s habitable," chief scientist Peter Smith of the University of Arizona said Friday during a teleconference from Tucson.

To judge whether the Martian polar environment could be hospitable, scientists are using the spacecraft’s instruments to study minerals in the soil and ice for hints of carbonates and sulfates, which are formed by the action of liquid water.

Water is a prerequisite for life, but it’s just one piece of the equation. Scientists generally agree that organic carbon and an energy source like the sun are also considered necessary ingredients.

Mars today is arid and dusty, constantly bombarded by radiation and with no apparent trace of water on its surface. But carvings of channels and gullies on the Martian surface suggest a wetter past. Some scientists speculate that water may have evaporated into the atmosphere and the rest trapped beneath the surface in the form of ice.

"The holy grail is to find water near the surface of Mars," said astrobiologist Mitch Sogin of the Marine Biological Lab in Woods Hole, Mass., who is not part of the mission.

Hurt feelings in Houston: Two groups are expressing umbrage over a couple of public events – one a movie …

The Love Guru tells the story of Maurice Pitka, played by Myers, an American orphan left at the gates of an Indian ashram. He returns to the United States to try and make it in the world of self-help and spirituality.

The film is "rife with stereotyping," Chronicle film critic Amy Biancolli says in her review. "But the target is less Hinduism (the word never pops up) than the saffron-colored accouterments of the faith and its watered-down transference to the self-help industry."

Girish Naik, president of the Hindus of Greater Houston, found the film’s depiction of yoga poses vulgar. Vijay Pallod, a Houston Hindu activist, plans to go and see it this weekend – even though he hasn’t liked what he has seen in the movie trailers. He wants to have solid examples of portrayals or scenes he feels are disrespectful to his faith.

Some Hindu members in attendance at Thursday’s screening worried that audiences might think the movie is targeted at a particular spiritual leader.

The International Society for Krishna Consciousness, popularly known as Hare Krishnas, released a statement Friday rejecting calls to protest the movie. "We find it to be a typical satire that does not intend to hurt religious sentiments," the statement said, encouraging other Hindus "to view the film in its context as a comedy, and to draw on the tolerance and broadmindedness that are hallmarks of our faith."

Deepak Chopra, a friend of Myers and a New Age icon, who has a cameo in the film, thinks the issue has been blown out of proportion. The Hindu community needs a better sense of humor, he said.

But to Pallod and Shukla, it has nothing to do with humor."I have seen many people try to defame Hinduism, and as a Hindu activist, we have to protest and stand up," Pallod said. "In the past we kept quiet about movies, but we believe we have to do it because the media is very powerful."

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Worldwide Webb? (Andrew)

June 20, 2008

Political journalist Elizabeth Drew has a piece in the New York Review of Books this month that, while disguised as an appraisal of Jim Webb’s career, is actually something of a pitch for him as Obama’s VP. In describing how she was pleasantly surprised that he wasn’t irascible or ill-tempered — not like there’s ever been anyone like that in the Senate – experienced political reporter Drew sounds almost smitten with the guy:

Webb turned out to be an easy conversationalist with a low, gentle
voice, a ready smile, and a sometimes very full laugh. During an
hour-and-a-half-long conversation over sandwiches in his office, I kept
waiting for him to be weird, but that never happened. Even Webb’s looks
are surprising: on television his large, flat face, with its broad
forehead, looks like a potato—pale and pasty. In person his complexion
is ruddy—with piercing blue eyes that suggest a man who might in fact
have a wild side, a man whom one doesn’t want to cross. Yet there is an
air of almost preternatural calm about Webb, of a man who knows who he
is. He is reserved; one gets the sense that he’s seen things he just
doesn’t want to talk about. (This is a characteristic shared by other
Vietnam veterans.)

The strong point she makes for Webb as VP is that he is a pugnacious, military hero, angry about blue-collar pocketbook issues, from a crucial area in which Obama got clobbered — Appalachia. To my surprise I learned that he’s quite an energetic writer — he even wrote a history of the Scotch-Irish people in Appalachia. Given the large Obama-unfriendly Appalachian population in populous swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, Webb would be an excellent complement.

Less attractive to progressives are his continued support of Vietnam and late-70s, and ridicule of the idea that women can serve in combat (although he has since recanted his published views on female soldiers).

But since the VP position is more symbolic than substantive, I’d give it some serious thought. Political utility trump policy for this attack dog position. Plus, anyone who’s told W. to shove it, to his face, has my vote.
The GOP Gift Shop

June 19, 2008

Ah, the Republicans! See what else they were selling at their convention.
Mainstreaming Obama…. Or Baring The Head To Cover The Rear End

June 19, 2008

In order to make certain sections of America comfortable with his candidacy, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Hussein Obama has some nagging problems to tackle beyond just his skin color. He also has a Muslim problem, a patriotism problem, a friends and pastor problem. He even has an edgy wife problem. So it came as a surprise and a disappointment to those of us who supported and defended him against charges of un-American exoticism to learn that some overzealous campaign staffers of Senator Obama are themselves "othering" others who do not in their view fit the description of true blue Americans. It is somewhat ludicrous but not surprising in the realm of political pandering that the campaign of a candidate who is dogged by the suspicion of being a secret Muslim, should try to bar honest Muslims from being seen in the same frame as Obama on TV broadcasts.

Two Muslim women at Barack Obama’s rally in Detroit on Monday were barred from sitting behind the podium by campaign volunteers seeking to prevent the women’s headscarves from appearing in photographs or on television with the candidate.

The campaign has apologized to the women, both Obama supporters who said they felt betrayed by their treatment at the rally.

“This is of course not the policy of the campaign. It is offensive and counter to Obama’s commitment to bring Americans together and simply not the kind of campaign we run,” said Obama spokesman Bill Burton. “We sincerely apologize for the behavior of these volunteers.”

Building a human backdrop to a political candidate, a set of faces to appear on television and in photographs, is always a delicate exercise in demographics and political correctness. Advance staffers typically pick supporters out of a crowd to reflect the candidate’s message.

When Obama won the North Carolina primary amid questions about his ability to connect with white voters, for instance, he stood in front of a group of middle-aged white women waving small American flags.

On the Republican side, a Hispanic New Hampshire Democrat, Roberto Fuentes, told Politico that he was recently asked, and declined, to contribute to the “diversity” of the crowd behind Sen. John McCain at a Nashua event.

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Read Only (Dean)

June 17, 2008

Ruchira nudged the A.B. authors to respond to a recent story in Wired, the magazine that by my lights utterly confuses its content with its ads. "Tell us if you agree or disagree" with the story, she asks, noting incidentally that she agrees. I’m pretty sure I disagree.

First, however, I have to decide what it is I’m disagreeing with. The story, like the layout of the print edition of the magazine, is confusing. Is it suggesting that our ability to memorize basic data like "standard personal info" is declining? Or that we are simply learning to use technological devices to outsource memory tasks? Or both? It appears, contrary to the lede, that author Thompson is not in fact arguing that "we’re running out of memory," but that some of us are growing more adept at interacting with storage and retrieval devices in lieu of taking care to memorize simple data. Unfortunately, when he asks, "Does an overreliance on machine memory shut down other important ways of understanding the world?," I’m afraid it’s too late. As with jazz, if you have to ask, you’ll never know. In Thompson’s case, I’m afraid the answer to his query is "yes."

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When Age Is Just A Number

June 17, 2008

Dahlia Lithwick in Newsweek.

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