Accidental Blogger

9/11 – Public vs Private Mourning

September 11, 2007

It is the sixth anniversary of the dreadful events of 9/11/2001. Tributes will be paid to those who lost their lives on that day. Families will grieve, politicians will posture and the nation will remember. What is the appropriate manner of commemorating the fateful day that set the course for how we think of security at home and abroad? For how long do we need to personalize the memories of those who lost their lives? Columnist Froma Harrop argues that while it is understandable for family members of the victims to grieve the loss of loved ones, others can step back.

Public Tires of 9-11 Tributes

How to remember Sept. 11 has set off a hard debate. Many who lost loved ones in the terrorist attacks are demanding that the mass grieving and reading of names remain a national ritual. Others, however, want to lower the volume and make the remembrance more about the event than the 2,880 individuals who died as a result.

It was inevitable that even for a horror like Sept. 11, the edge would wear off. Six years have passed.

This argument says a lot about America’s modern culture of public mourning. Roadside memorials pop up at sites of fatal traffic accidents. Parents whose children died from violence or disease try to place memorials in town centers — right next to plaques with names of soldiers who perished in war.

Not everyone likes this trend. And in the case of the 9-11 survivors, some families seem to have crossed a line into self-dramatization and an unseemly money chase based on what they consider their unique grief…..

….. Perhaps some of the survivors have become addicted to the extraordinary amount of attention that’s come their way. They’ve lost perspective on the significance of their sorrows, relative to those of others.

Some 9-11 survivors understand that, at some point, their loss is no longer communal. "The grieving part has to become more personal," Lesli Rice, whose mother died in the attacks, told The New York Times. "The whole city wasn’t affected by my mother’s death."

Untimely death visits most families. While the 9-11 victims perished in an especially spectacular manner, their survivors, in the end, must swim in the same vale of tears as everyone else. They may always grieve their loss, but the public has the right to move on.

How do readers feel? Is Harrop being heartless? Should lives lost on 9/11 occupy a unique place in our collective memory? With passing of time, is it enough to commemorate an event rather than the individuals inadvertently caught up in it?
What’s In Your Garage?

September 10, 2007

I am not much of an automobile aficionado. For me a car is a convenient instrument for getting from point A to point B, not a social statement. As long as I can see over the steering wheel, my feet reach the pedals, the vehicle fits in my garage, accommodates my grocery, is painted a color I like and has reasonable safety ratings and mileage per gallon, it is good enough for me. I hate car shopping. Which is why I let my husband, who delights in mind numbing vehicular nitty-gritty, choose my cars. (Ladies, don’t get agitated. This is not a man-woman thing. I am just not very interested. If a car measures up to my mundane criteria, I don’t much care about make or model … and I reserve the sole veto power after a test drive.) So when I came across this Time magazine compilation, I browsed through it with some interest only because it is the "worst cars of all time" list. That made it a more engrossing read than the fawning, over the top showroom jargon of sensuality, grace, power, elegance and status enhancing qualities associated with the "best" automobiles. The "worst" list is perhaps also more interesting and its colorful language more convincing because nobody is trying to sell us anything. In fact its whole point is to alert us to automotive follies, past and present, foreign and domestic. Here for example is the withering put down of the Renault Dauphine, the worst car of 1956.

The most ineffective bit of French engineering since the Maginot Line, the Renault Dauphine was originally to be named the Corvette, tres ironie. It was, in fact, a rickety, paper-thin scandal of a car that, if you stood beside it, you could actually hear rusting. Its most salient feature was its slowness, a rate of acceleration you could measure with a calendar. It took the drivers at Road and Track 32 seconds to reach 60 mph, which would put the Dauphine at a severe disadvantage in any drag race involving farm equipment. The fact that the ultra-cheap, super-sketchy Dauphine sold over 2 million copies around the world is an index of how desperately people wanted cars. Any cars.

The list tracks the 50 worst cars since 1899 to present with accompanying photos and description of the features which qualified them as a clunkers. I was not surprised to see the perennial lemon Edsel, the volatile Pinto, the unmanageable Corvair and the East German Trabant ( the car that gave communism a bad name) among the all time duds based on style, safety and engineering. Included are also lesser known flops – comical, ugly, ambitious, lugubrious and just plain impractical.

I was somewhat surprised to find the 1909 Model T on the roster. I mean, come on! What was the gold standard for motor cars in 1909? How many other machines on wheels were on the tarmac for a decent comparison? Wasn’t any car, including the Tin Lizzy, however junky and tinny, an improvement on the horse and buggy? Then I realized that the criticism isn’t based solely on defects of design and failure of mechanics. The Time writers have also taken into consideration the harmful philosophical impact some automobiles have had on our society. Ford’s efficiency in churning out Model Ts set the tone for the assembly line culture of 20th century industrial manufacturing which later became the target of Charlie Chaplin’s satire, Modern Times .

It put America on wheels, supercharged the nation’s economy and transformed the landscape in ways unimagined when the first Tin Lizzy rolled out of the factory. Well, that’s just the problem, isn’t it? The Model T — whose mass production technique was the work of engineer William C. Klann, who had visited a slaughterhouse’s "disassembly line" — conferred to Americans the notion of automobility as something akin to natural law, a right endowed by our Creator. A century later, the consequences of putting every living soul on gas-powered wheels are piling up, from the air over our cities to the sand under our soldiers’ boots.

Ouch! This made me take a closer look at the list and some of the better known socially troublesome cars. The automobile after all is more than a vehicle of transportation. It is also a civilizing (or uncivilizing) trend setter.

According to the authors, some recent domestic debacles from Detroit are the 1995 Ford Explorer, the 2000 Ford Excursion and naturally, the 2003 Hummer H2 which its critics claim contributed to GM’s emerging image as the Dick Cheney of car companies.

1995 Ford Explorer: How could the best-selling passenger vehicle in America 14 years running, the mother of all mom-mobiles, the beloved suburban schlepper of millions, wind up on this list? In its very success, the Ford Explorer is responsible for setting this country on the spiral of vehicular obesity that we are still contending with today. People, particularly women drivers, discovered that they liked sitting up high. Even though more fuel-efficient minivans do the kid- and cargo-hauling duties better, people came to prefer the outdoorsy, go-anywhere image of SUVs. In other words, people became addicted to the pose. And, as vehicles got bigger and heavier, buyers sought out even bigger vehicles to make themselves feel safe. Helloooo Hummer. All of that we can lay at the overachieving feet of the Explorer.

More blistering commentary on the other two behemoths here and here.
Case Closed

September 5, 2007

In October of 2005, just two months after Hurricane Katrina ripped through New Orleans, I wrote this story. After the deadly storm hit and paralyzed the city, a group of employees at the Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans decided to inject nine elderly and critically ill patients in the long-term care unit of the hospital with lethal doses of morphine. The step was taken after the staff evaluated the disaster and decided that the evacuation of those patients (they believed the elderly patients were not going to live long in any case) was going to be impossible.

Their action was seen as merciful by some and criminal by others. The Louisiana Attorney General investigated the affair and decided to bring charges against some of the hospital personnel who had participated – nurses and one surgeon. This past July however, all charges against them were dropped after a grand jury refused to indict. The controversial case is now closed but debate rages on among medical ethicists and the law enforcement about its ramifications. When I first posted the story, the information was still murky and I felt conflicted about the incident. On the one hand I understood the desperate situation and felt that the decision was indeed "humane," but on the other, I saw it as rash and perhaps unnecessary. I used the word, "insane" to characterize the action of the medical personnel and was taken to task by a couple of commenters. I replied as follows:

The insanity I had in mind is one of a legal nature, not a moral one. Euthanasia is illegal in Louisiana. That a group of people would undertake this course of action, even in an utterly hopeless situation, with each other as witnesses to the "crime", is the insanity and desperation I refer to in my post.

As for the morality (and sanity) of mercy killing under proper circumstances, such as you mention, you and I agree.

I am still not clear as to how to react to this story. While I do not think that the doctor and the nurses acted with criminal intent, their unilateral decision to "hasten the deaths" which they believed to be inevitable, bothers me. No family member or the patients themselves were involved in the decision making process. Were they ethical "angels of mercy" taking the best course of action under desperate circumstances or were their actions hasty and arrogant and amounted to "playing God?" Newsweek magazine has an exclusive report describing Dr. Anna Pou’s (the surgeon who administered the deadly drugs) side of the controversial case.

(more…)
This Post Is About Boring Academic Writing (Dean)

September 4, 2007

Prof. Brian Leiter (Law & Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin) has remarked upon a brief article recently published by Prof. Jonathan Wolff (Philosophy, University College London) about the preponderance of boring writing in academia. (They implicitly seem to mean humanities and social science writing, since it is difficult even to apply the criterion to writing in the hard sciences.) Both are interesting reads, not surprisingly, since nobody would dare pen a tedious disquisition on boring writing.

Until now. I, too, have an opinion on the matter. And it goes something…like…this…

First, I think the topic is ripe for discussion, since it acknowledges the aesthetic component of a style of writing whose style is ordinarily ignored. Second, Prof. Wolff makes a good point, but he seems to assume that non-academic writing—even the sort that maintains the mystery—is not often boring. Right off the top of my head I can think of a couple of highly acclaimed novels I’ve tried to endure during the past two or three years that I found painfully boring: Don DeLillo’s Underworld and Stephen Carter’s Emperor of Ocean Park. Both were tedious, to my mind, in part because of the stylistic factor Prof. Leiter notes (Carter’s being much more agonizingly overwrought than DeLillio’s). On the other hand, I adore the work of a novelist whose books tend to be fairly predictable, Anita Brookner, largely because of the stylistic elegance of her writing and also, I suppose, because I enjoy her thematic concerns.

Third, Prof. Wolff’s plot/story dichotomy was famously illustrated by E.M. Forster, along these lines: A story reads, "The queen died, then the king died." A plot, "The queen died, then the king died of grief." This mildly complicates Prof. Wolff’s notions of "tension" and "suspense," since the plot as Forster illustrates it actually provides more information than the story ("the narrative sequence," as the professor puts it), inasmuch as it addresses causation, a human emotional factor that invites empathy, and so forth.

In short, I think that academic writing does not have a monopoly on boring writing, and that the secret to interesting writing is not as easily formulated as Prof. Wolff recommends. I also think there are examples of literary analysis of academic writing, albeit not of the sort Prof. Wolff intends, I imagine. But that topic will have to wait for another day.
Vacation Hold

September 2, 2007

I am on vacation for the next few days and will not be posting anything new (except one story which I have lined up to appear in the middle of the week) until the 10th of September. Unless other A.B. authors find time to publish during my absence, there won’t be much fresh material here in the coming week.

Happy Labor Day.
Article in Vanity Fair About Arthur Miller’s Relationship to His Son with Down Syndrome (Anna)

August 30, 2007

A must read article in Vanity Fair for those with an interest in literary figures, in disabilities, or in the relationship between individual rights and the community, which is both a touchstone of Miller’s work and part of what has made disabilities issues my own life work.

The playwright Arthur Miller’s son, Daniel, was born with Down Syndrome in 1966. Miller, although an activist for a number of causes on the Left relating to personal liberty, immediately institutionalized Daniel, then ignored and hid his existence. The story of Daniel’s experience in a state-run institution for 17 years, his release with the consent of his parents, his self-advocacy, and ultimately, his inclusion into the younger generation of his family and inheritance when his father died is a fascinating illustration of the ways that American policies and attitudes toward people with disabilities have changed through time. It also captures better than any recent major magazine article I can remember, why it is an injury and loss for everyone, when people with disabilities are "written out of the picture" through institutional segregation.

No photograph of him has ever been published, but those who know Daniel Miller say that he resembles his father. Some say it’s the nose, others the mischievous glimmer in the eyes when he smiles, but the most telling feature, the one that clearly identifies him as Arthur Miller’s son, is his high forehead and identically receding hairline. He is almost 41 now, but it’s impossible to say whether his father’s friends would notice the resemblance, because the few who have ever seen Daniel have not laid eyes on him since he was a week old. When his father died, in February 2005, he was not at the funeral that took place near Arthur Miller’s home, in Roxbury, Connecticut. Nor was he at the public memorial service that May, at Broadway’s Majestic Theatre, where hundreds of admirers gathered to pay homage to his father, who was, if not the greatest American playwright of the last century, then certainly the most famous. In the days after his death, at the age of 89, Arthur Miller was eulogized around the world. Newspaper obituaries and television commentators hailed his work—including those keystones of the American canon Death of a Salesman and The Crucible—and recalled his many moments in the public eye: his marriage to Marilyn Monroe; his courageous refusal, in 1956, to "name names" before the House Un-American Activities Committee; his eloquent and active opposition to the Vietnam War; his work, as the international president of pen, on behalf of oppressed writers around the world. The Denver Post called him "the moralist of the past American century," and The New York Times extolled his "fierce belief in man’s responsibility to his fellow man—and [in] the self-destruction that followed on his betrayal of that responsibility."

In a moving speech at the Majestic, the playwright Tony Kushner said Miller had possessed the "curse of empathy." Edward Albee said that Miller had held up a mirror and told society, "Here is how you behave." Among the many other speakers were Miller’s sister, the actress Joan Copeland, his son the producer Robert Miller, his daughter the writer and film director Rebecca Miller, and her husband, the actor Daniel Day-Lewis. Miller’s oldest child, Jane Doyle, was in the audience but did not speak.

Only a handful of people in the theater knew that Miller had a fourth child. Those who did said nothing, out of respect for his wishes, because, for nearly four decades, Miller had never publicly acknowledged the existence of Daniel….
China’s Virtual C.H.I.P.S. Patrol

August 29, 2007

Close on the heels of our recent post and discussion on China’s Great Firewall, comes this story. Not satisfied merely with blocking and banning "objectionable" internet sites, the government of China has devised a unique way to warn web browsers that their internet habits are being watched and monitored. The alert will come in the form of two cute comic cops popping up on the screen. The internet cops have been designed to remind Chinese citizens that nothing they see, read or do on the computer in the privacy of their home or office will escape government scrutiny. Happy surfing!

Big Brother will soon be making regular appearances on the screens of Internet users in China, but the velvet fist will take the unexpected form of a cute pair of manga cartoon cops.

It’s almost like C.H.I.P.S. meets George Orwell’s 1984 meets Murakami. The Chinese government has decided to use a pair of cartoon cops to patrol computer screens of Internet users to make sure they are abiding by strict censorship rules, and the duo will encourage others to help them by ratting out potential violators.

The man and woman cartoon crime-fighting duo will patrol the screens of Chinese Web surfers, sometimes on foot, sometimes on motorcycle, sometimes in a patrol car and sometimes — in true Chinese style — on bicycles.

Public officials are using the unusual policing method to remind Web surfers that their activities are under constant observation and that no deviations from explicit Chinese Internet-use restrictions will be tolerated. Particular sites of interest for this cute little cartoon dynamic duo will be pornography sites, online gaming sites and sites of political interest.

The Manga crime-fighters will start working their beat on Sept. 1 on the 13 most important Chinese Internet portals, including Soku and Sina. The government in Beijing claims that their patrol area will be expanded to include all Web sites registered in China by year’s end.

Thanks to Web 2.0, crime fighting and helping make a computer citizen’s arrest has never been easier. Nor has creating an Orwelian state. If something on a Web site people visit or something they see another Web surfer doing strikes them as legally unkosher, a simple click of the mouse on one of the comic figures takes them straight to the police Internet site, where they can file a report on any lapses.

It would seem that the traditionally draconian Beijing Public Security Ministry has decided to put on a friendly face when it comes to enforcing the cold rules of the road for Internet usage in China. "We will solicit even more images for our virtual police and update our tips on Internet security in order to further enhance the image of our Internet police and better adapt to the surfing habits of Internet users," an official said.
The Fear Factor

August 28, 2007

We know from experience and by intuition that it is not so much the source of danger which causes our anxiety but rather our proximity to it . This understanding is reflected in the old adage, "When the cat is away, the mice will play". A bear far down in the valley is not as scary as the one we come face to face with on a forest trail. Neuroscientists have studied the human brain when it is assessing the "fear factor" and indeed they found that different parts of the brain are stimulated when faced with imminent or remote dangers, thus giving rise to "panic" or mere "anxiety" in the two situations. Also interesting may be the ramification of the studies beyond actual fear assessment. It may well be that those who suffer from panic disorders have an overactive periaqueductal gray (PAG) area of the brain (the panic center).

William James, the late 19th- through early 20th-century philosopher, once proposed that people do not fear a bear when they see it but, rather, become frightened when running from it.

One hundred years later, a new brain-imaging study proves James may have been right. Using a Pac-Man–like video game and functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) scans, scientists showed that when a fear-provoking stimulus (say, a bear) is detected in the distance, the human brain switches on circuitry that analyzes the threat level and ways to avoid the animal or harm. Should the bear move closer—increasing the threat—other, more reactive regions of the brain jump into action, triggering an immediate protective response, whether it be to fight, flee or freeze in one’s tracks.

"This [duality] is evolutionarily advantageous because a system needs to be in place that evaluates and makes decisions about external stimuli and decides if it is a threat or not," says study co-author Dean Mobbs, a PhD candidate in University College London’s imaging neuroscience department. "Fast responses," he adds, "are also important because in early mammals, who were smaller and weaker than the larger reptiles, a quick response in the form of fight, flight or freeze were and still are critical to the survival of the animal." Human abnormalities in these functions, he notes, could lead to anxiety and panic disorders.
Now He Remembers Vietnam

August 27, 2007

The novel Anna Karenina begins with the memorable line, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Leo Tolstoy may as well have opened his other opus, War And Peace with its corollary, "Peace and prosperity are all alike in every place; every war torn nation is brutalized and haunted in its own way."

George W. Bush has been trying to stay out of Vietnam since he was in college. A little more than three years ago, during the run up to the 2004 presidential election, he had this exchange with a reporter.

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, April is turning into the deadliest month in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad, and some people are comparing Iraq to Vietnam and talking about a quagmire. Polls show that support for your policy is declining and that fewer than half Americans now support it. What does that say to you and how do you answer the Vietnam comparison?

THE PRESIDENT: I think the analogy is false. I also happen to think that analogy sends the wrong message to our troops, and sends the wrong message to the enemy. Look, this is hard work. It’s hard to advance freedom in a country that has been strangled by tyranny. And, yet, we must stay the course, because the end result is in our nation’s interest. ……..

But this month in his address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention, Bush’s comparison of Iraq to Vietnam stands in stark contrast to the above statement in his 2004 press conference. In his speech he drew parallels between leaving Vietnam more than thirty years ago with withdrawing from Iraq today. Actually, he spoke at length first about Japan, Pearl Harbor (comparing it to 9/11) and South Korea before he touched on Vietnam.

Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left. There’s no debate in my mind that the veterans from Vietnam deserve the high praise of the United States of America. (Applause.) Whatever your position is on that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like "boat people," "re-education camps," and "killing fields."

But all this is already happening. 2 million Iraqi boat people have left their homes and crossed the desert to live as refugees in neighboring countries. Re-education began with American de-Baathification of the Iraqi political machinery and continues now across the Shia-Sunni divide. And the killing fields? Well…

So why is Bush intent on staying on in Iraq? He routinely labels those who advocate ending the occupation of Iraq as betrayers and defeatists. He warns that they should be held responsible for any chaos that may ensue once the U.S. leaves Iraq now or several years down the road. Is he fighting two wars then? Retroactively redeeming America’s honor in Vietnam which many right wingers believe was lost because Americans gave up their resolve. By invoking Vietnam now, is he betting that the comparison (and the memory of American defeat) will make politicians of both parties nervous about withdrawing their support for his "surge?" Or is he preparing us and future politicians for the day when he goes the way of Lyndon Johnson, handing an inflamed foreign policy mess to his successor?

There are indeed similarities between Iraq and Vietnam, most important being that they are both immoral and unnecessary wars – US interventions based on overarching ambition and hubris. Both are swamps – one was in the torrid and tropical jungles of the far east and the other in the dusty deserts of the middle east. But there are many differences too. Vietnam was divided over political ideology, not religion. North Vietnam had a government in place which was able to assume political power over the whole country once the US left. Also, the Vietnamese battle fields were not the training ground for foreign fighters whose aim was the destruction of America. So what should the US do? Pour money and lives into a lost cause or cut the losses now? There are no easy answers and either way, Iraq is going to go through hell.

Two views on Bush’s mess.

(more…)
A Crisis of Faith

August 24, 2007

She never told us, did she? The piety that Mother Teresa publicly professed, apparently did not touch her heart. She passionately asked others to believe the "truth" that she herself did not recognize. She served her church and followed her mission under the banner of a divine message that she was agnostic about. Does that tarnish or enhance the sainthood that may be bestowed upon her? Her all encompassing compassion notwithstanding, with her wobbly faith, could she have achieved what she did if she hadn’t ridden the borrowed chariot of unwavering belief, the only vehicle we imbue with unquestionable goodness, humanity and spirituality? What I found remarkable and very sad is not that Mother Teresa struggled with a spiritual vacuum and search for a moral anchor, but that we, the observers and recipients of her mercy would probably not have accorded her an "earthly" venue to express and spread her compassion – forcing her therefore to adopt a painful subterfuge. Is it time we learnt to value humanity, compassion and morality as human qualities rather than gilding the lily with divine inspiration?

I am not going to debate the issue here because we have gone over this territory before. Do read the article.
Story Wallah

August 23, 2007

Story Wallah, edited by Shyam Selvadurai is the most comprehensive collection of south Asian diasporic writing that I have encountered. All the authors included in this anthology were either born outside the Indian subcontinent or emigrated out of there. Many of the contributors were new to me and others are old hands. The book is a collection of short fiction – short stories and excerpts from novels. Difficult as it is to cogently review the literary merits of a collection featuring twenty six writers with eclectic styles, I will refrain from doing so. Instead, let me quote a portion of the excellent introduction by Selvadurai, describing the inspiration behind the publication. As with any diaspora tale, it is largely about identity and finding one’s voice within the tug of war between more than one "native" culture.

I am often invited to read from my novels in public, and, if there is a question period aftenvards, someone inevitably stands up to ask the following: “What kind of a writer do you consider yourself to be? Are you a Canadian writer or a Sri Lankan writer?”

It is perplexing, this matter of cultural identity, and I am tempted, like some other writers of multiple identities, to reply grumpily, “I’m just a bloody writer Period.”

Yet this response would be disingenuous. I suppose I could answer, “Sri Lankan-Canadian writer,” or “Canadian-Sri Lankan writer.” But this also does not get to the heart of what I consider my identity to be as a writer (and we are talking of my writing identity here). For, in terms of being a writer, my creativity comes not from “Sri Lankan” or “Canadian” but precisely from the space between, that marvellous open space represented by the hyphen, in which the two parts of my identity jostle and rub up against each other like tectonic plates, pushing upwards the eruption that is my work. It is from this space between that the novels come. From a double-visionness, a bicultutalism.

For the majority of people, a dual identity is a burden forced on them by the fact that their bodies, or their skins to be precise, do not represent the nation-state they are in, thus compelling them to constantly wear their difference on their sleeve and carry it around on their back. In my day-to-day interactions with the world outside, I share the irritation, the burden, the occasional danger of this visible otherness. But when I close the door to my study and sit at my computer, that biculturalism becomes the site of great excitement, of great marvel, the very source of my creativity. It is from’ this space in- between, represented by the hyphen, that I have written what I consider Canadian novels set exclusively in Sri Lanka. For though the material may be Sri Lankan, the shaping of that material and the inclusion, for example, of themes of gay liberation or feminism ate drawn from the life I have lived in Canada. Homosexuality is illegal in Sri Lanka and the very real threat of physical violence and intimidation might have stopped me from exploring this theme had I lived there (being not of a particularly brave disposition). My thoughts and attitudes, indeed my craft as a writer, have been shaped by my life here in Canada. It is from the clash of these cultures, which occurs in the space between, that the conflicts in my plot lines arise. Without them my novels would be deathly boring to read.

I enjoyed Story Wallah for the most part. Featured are many fresh faces (pens?) across the map. Besides the US, Canada and Great Britain, it was interesting to encounter south Asian voices out of Australia, Malaysia, Fiji, Singapore, the Caribbeans and Africa. In the end though, the familiar voices of the big boys and girls rang out above others . Salman Rushdie (The Courter), Rohinton Mistry (The Collectors), Anita Desai (Winterscape) and Hanif Kureishi (We’re Not Jews) tell the liveliest tales of the anthology, in my opinion. Selvadurai’s own contribution is an excerpt from his very commendable novel, "Funny Boy." One other story worth mentioning is "Just Between Indians" by Ginu Kamani. It is about an arranged marriage – only, there is no marriage but rather a creepy attempt at arranging one. This one left me feeling slightly jolted. As I said, Story Wallah is a good enough collection – a perfect read on a long plane ride or a relaxing vacation.
Reading Prufrock over “Sour Times”

August 22, 2007

Reader John Selogy wrote:

"I work in software marketing which can be maddening but creative at the same time. I live in San Jose and produce abstract, completely unsaleable electronic music when I’m not working.

The other day I was editing a copy of T.S. Eliot reading Prufrock in a track of Adobe audition which also had the Portishead loop in the track below (previously unrelated). But then I just kept looping the Portishead loop and it seemed to fit together so naturally. I simply looped a very tiny piece of "Sour Times" by Portishead and let T.S. Eliot find the tempo and rhythm. I just wanted to share it with others online. It seems like Eliot is aware of the tempo and rhythms at times – creepy."

Check out John’s poetry / music synthesis here.

(Note to John: Please read A.B. right here and not through the Google Reader :-)
Beloit College Mindset List – Class of 2011

August 21, 2007
Last year just around this time, I lamented the fall of Pluto from its planetary pedestal. In that context, I mused over the oddity of a future generation of children growing up with eight planets in their solar system, unlike their parents who counted nine in their sky. I wrote the following comments regarding the loss of Pluto and the generational paradigm shift:

"Bummer! I will miss Pluto. But why? I have never visited Pluto and don’t expect to in the future. I haven’ even seen Pluto. My life is not affected by whether Pluto is or is not a planet. I never think about Pluto until the subject of planets comes up, which in my day to day life, is not often. But what I learnt in childhood about the planets is etched in my mind and in that memory, Pluto is the faraway ninth planet in our own celestial neighborhood, the solar system. I feel reluctant to shake off the notion, if for no other reason than dogged sentimentality. It is indeed interesting how casual familiarity with objects and ideas shapes our view of the world … and the universe. New words enter the lexicon every few years. New gadgets enter our homes. New knowledge enters the body of human wisdom. With advancing age, some find the changes unsettling. Most however, adjust to new facts and revise their outlook. But what we learn in our childhood and early youth is our most "natural" knowledge and that is the most enduring yardstick by which we measure the world around us. And that is what in part, gives rise to the generation gap…

Each year in August, since 1998, Beloit College in Wisconsin compiles a list of ideas and objects which the entering class of students has grown up with and which are therefore expected to have shaped their world view and cultural mind set. This list is famously known as The Beloit College Mindset List." (I have updated the link to this year)

School textbooks take a few years to update. Teachers need time to tailor their teaching material to meet the new standards of planetary eligibility. New charts and models of the solar system will have to be constructed. Assuming that school children learn elementary astronomy in the 2nd or 3rd grade, in which year will the Beloit College Mindset list include college students whose view of the universe did not include Pluto as a "real" planet?

Well, Beloit College has just published this year’s Mindset List for the Class of 2011- mostly kids born in 1989. For them, "Alvin Ailey, Andrei Sakharov, Huey Newton, Emperor Hirohito, Ted Bundy, Abbie Hoffman, and Don the Beachcomber have always been dead." Here are a dozen more items that are and will be a part of the Class of 2011’s Zeitgeist:
1. Humvees, minus the artillery, have always been available to the public.
2. They never “rolled down” a car window.
3. They have grown up with bottled water.
4. General Motors has always been working on an electric car.
5. Nelson Mandela has always been free and a force in South Africa.
6. Religious leaders have always been telling politicians what to do, or else!
7. “Off the hook” has never had anything to do with a telephone.
8. Women have always been police chiefs in major cities.
9. Wal-Mart has always been a larger retailer than Sears and has always employed more workers than GM.
10. Time has always worked with Warner.
11. The space program has never really caught their attention except in disasters.
12. Burma has always been Myanmar.
The full list here.
Second Hand Art (Virtual Exhibition #2)

August 20, 2007

In my introductory virtual exhibition I posted some original compositions. This post contains paintings which are copies of other artists’ works. As a student and amateur artist, I have made many copies over the years, true and inspired – of real objects, human beings, photographs and other artists’ works as my model. The exercise is akin to penmanship – for practice and to improve drawing skills and techniques. Occasionally, a copy turns out to be so satisfactory, that happily it becomes a work of art worth preserving . I display them in my home for my own enjoyment and am doing so now on the blog, for yours. These pictures are a testimony to my skills as an illustrator, much like a billboard artist – not my artistic flair. I have spoken with those in the know about the wisdom of putting them out for public consumption. They assure me that as long as I do not offer such art for sale or claim them as my own, I am not violating any ethical boundaries, imitation being the sincerest form of flattery .. etc.

When I started painting at Joan Furrow’s studio in Omaha in late 1992, I was for the first time, working seriously with oil paint. Joanie advised me to start off with a few copies of actual paintings to get a handle on the color, texture and proper brush strokes. All the paintings shown here are from assorted magazines that cluttered Joanie’s library. Unfortunately, I did not make a note of the artists’ names. So I cannot credit any one properly except to say that these are not my own compositions. I selected the pictures for different reasons but each appealed to me on the basis of subject matter, appropriate level of complexity and artistic quality. They are not reproductions in a technical sense because I did not measure out the originals in grids for exact proportions. I drew them from visual perception as closely as possible. But they are all good enough copies that if you saw the originals somewhere, you’d probably recognize them. The paintings are oil on canvas and they hang in my home. So, enjoy some one else’s art vicariously – channeled through me.

Please click on pictures for larger image:

This was the first full painting I made at Joanie’s. I selected it for the depth of the perspective, colors and composition. The impressionistic style of drawing made it easier to avoid making glaring mistakes. I liked the criss-crossing of light and shadow on the dusty street.

I was struck by the two heads against a stark background, warm colors and the mysterious play of shadows on the faces of the women. The painted pots were good practice in drawing perfect 3-D shapes and the intricate designs required control and careful use of brush.

Again, I chose the picture for its interesting subject (a horse & a rider are never boring), the cyan colors invoking deep twilight shadows and the rocky, stark look. The special challenge was to get the horse right from the front facing, foreshortened angle – always the hardest perspective for drawing four legged animals.

The angry sky, a rocky landscape (yes, I prefer painting rocks to lush greenery), attractive colors and clear lines decided my choice here. I also love lighthouses.

For my next "exhibition," I will post a couple of inspired copies which are based on photographs in magazines like the National Geographic, Life and sometimes even scientific magazines. But in the process of painting, they evolved enough to become distinctly my own. I will end the art series with a few more of my originals. Please don’t hesitate to leave me a comment.

(This post was originally published more than a year ago. I am bringing it to the front for new readers and also because I have no other blogworthy ideas for today.)
Giving Science The Finger

August 19, 2007
A few weeks ago, I linked to Usha Alexander’s account of the birth of a religion on a remote island where the adherents base their faith on the faulty correlation between earthly actions and heavenly rewards. Here is yet another example of an irrelevant and shoddy (IMO) cause and effect reading, this time in the field of science.

I cannot comment on the statistical significance of such studies but I find them quite useless and in some manner, harmful. Given that most people operate around the middle of the bell curve, whatever the pursuit, very few of us are likely to set the world on fire with our brilliance or be abject failures in life. Given a modicum of dedication, most of us are capable of learning math, science, philosophy or the arts without straining our brain beyond repair. Unless universities and research institutions (where the tail end of the higher aptitude of the bell curve is likely to congregate) plan to grant jobs, tenures and scholastic funding based on the relative lengths of their candidates’ fingers (or other physical attributes), I don’t see the utility of such studies. And while they are at it, they may as well consult a palmist, an astrologer and a phrenologist for good measure.
Here we go again.

New scientific “evidence” has been released, bolstering the old claim that women who excel at math and science are less feminine—or at any rate more masculine—than their sisters who can’t balance a checkbook or tell the difference between a phenome and a phoneme, but can talk up a storm.

In the August issue of British Journal of Psychology, a team of researchers led by psychologist Mark Brosnan of the University of Bath, England, have published findings that suggest women who are good at science and math have longer ring fingers than index fingers, which indicates a relatively high level of prenatal exposure to the male hormone testosterone. Conversely, longer index fingers indicate higher levels of the female hormone estrogen, according to the study, and a corresponding aptitude for verbal communication. The study used standardized test scores of 75 British seven-year-old boys and girls and compared them to photocopies of the youngsters’ hands.

The media had a field day: “Study Correlates Finger Length to Performance on SAT,” trumpeted FOX News. The widely-linked LiveScience.com asserted: “A quick look at the lengths of children’s index and ring fingers can be used to predict how well students will perform on SATs, new research claims. Kids with longer ring fingers compared to index fingers are likely to have higher math scores than literacy or verbal scores on the college entrance exam, while children with the reverse finger-length ratio are likely to have higher reading and writing, or verbal, scores versus math scores.”

Many of the news reports didn’t mention that the British SAT—upon which Brosnan’s study was based—refers to the Standardised Assessment Test, which is given to all British schoolchildren at age 7, 11 and 14, and is not the same as the U.S. College Board exam that uses the same acronym.

Still, the idea of using finger length to make predictions and assumptions is not out of keeping with Brosnan’s conclusions. On his website, Brosnan states:

“Digit length is fixed in utero and relative digit lengths remains constant through develoliment and is constant across ethnicities.”

“Digit ratio is an index of exliosure to lirenatal testosterone.”

“Prenatal testosterone slows the growth rate of the left side of the brain while enhancing growth of the right side.”

“The right hemislihere is associated with better visual-sliatial and mathematical abilities.”

“Traditional sex differences in visual-sliatial and mathematical abilities can be attributed to differences in exliosure to lirenatal testosterone, indexed by a sex dimorlihic liattern in digit ratio.”

Brosnan’s is not the first study linking finger length to sex hormones. In March 2000, S. Marc Breedlove, who like Brosnan is a psychologist, and other researchers at University of California at Berkeley, published a study in the journal Nature that ostensibly described the proper “masculine” and “feminine” hand configurations, and claimed that people whose hands deviate from these characteristic shapes are likely to be homosexual.

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