Shunya's Notes

Where the Hell in KGP?

As many readers of this blog know, I went to the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (IIT, KGP) in West Bengal. Years later I visited my alma mater again and wrote about it here. Guess what I found today? Those familiar with Matt Harding's heartwarming dance videos from around the world (Where the Hell is Matt?) will likely relate to what it has inspired the students of IIT KGP to do. (via Pran)

The soundtrack is the same as in Matt's video — a Bengali poem written by Tagore (Praan, or "Stream of Life") and turned into song by composer Garry Schyman and Bangladeshi-American Palbasha Siddique.

The Modern Stop Sign

Imagine the STOP sign didn't exist and a major corporation tried to create one today. Here is what the creative process might look like:

http://view.break.com/542649 - Watch more free videos

On Corporate Art

Corporations are like wild beasts. Both are driven by blind, unthinking appetites. The only authentic instinct of a corporation is to sustain itself; its drive and creativity have one objective: shareholder return. All its talk about serving the community, building dreams, and saving lives is propaganda for its employees and customers. That said, corporations can be downright amusing, especially when they collide with the world of art. I've identified three kinds of art that corporations display in their offices and which never fail to amuse me:

(1) Abstract art: This is all the brain-dead stuff that cannot possibly offend anyone, such as bright geometric patterns, twisted metal, funky designs, etc.

( 2) Faux Rebel art: Former anti-establishment art—long defanged, decontextualized, made chic—is now the art of the "edgy" establishment. For example, a large woodcarving of Ché Guevara’s shaggy face in the board room (yes, I saw one in downtown San Francisco); a copy of a Diego Rivera mural in the lobby, etc.

(3) Motivational art: the most common kind, with framed posters of, say, a lone bald eagle in flight, muscular rowers in a longboat, lean people scaling mountain peaks. "Inspirational" words appear beneath: only those who see the invisible can do the impossible; true leaders don’t strive to be first but are the first to strive; dream more than others think is practical, expect more than others think is possible.

At last, a fitting response to (3) has emerged with Despair, Inc., a company built on selling demotivating art!

"AT DESPAIR, INC., we believe motivational products create unrealistic expectations, raising hopes only to dash them. That's why we created our soul-crushingly depressing Demotivators® designs, so you can skip the delusions that motivational products induce and head straight for the disappointments that follow!"

Check out some of their framed posters and the messages on them. My favorites include:

- Goals: It's best to avoid standing directly between a competitive jerk and his goals.
- Challenges: I expected times like this - but I never thought they'd be so bad, so long, and so frequent.
- Consulting: If you're not a part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem.
- Defeat: For every winner, there are dozens of losers. Odds are you're one of them.
- Adversity: That which does not kill me postpones the inevitable.
- Apathy: If we don't take care of the customer, maybe they'll stop bugging us.
- Leaders: Leaders are like eagles. We don't have either of them here.
- Mistakes: It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.
- Risks: If you never try anything new, you'll miss out on many of life's great disappointments.
- Teamwork: A few harmless flakes working together can unleash an avalanche of destruction.

Meat Porn

Does it get any more human-headed than this?

Of Monks and Ferraris

A couple years ago, a childhood friend who lives in New Delhi, handed me The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma—a self-help book on spirituality and "eastern wisdom", which, curiously, was all the rage in Indian yuppie circles. At first, I attributed this to pride in the author's Indian roots and his huge (financial) success in America.

Readers of this blog will know that I'm deeply suspicious of this genre, replete as it is with New Age charlatans preying on people's angst and insecurities. Still, due to my friend's gushing praise and insistence, I began reading the book. I recall it now as a struggle on every page and often thinking of Dorothy Parker's words from long ago: this is not a book to be tossed aside lightly; it should be thrown with great force. I finally caved in midway, putting her words into action. It dawned on me that the book's transnational appeal lay in its very fatuousness (it has been published in 30+ countries, becoming a huge seller in the US, Israel, India, Mexico, and Canada, but apparently not in Europe).

I then read its customer reviews on Amazon (I often scan the lowest ratings first for critiques that might disqualify a book from my reading list). Mine was of course the minority reaction, but it was there alright. One person couldn't even get past the title—what's so great about selling one's Ferrari, he asked? Why did the monk not give it away? But it was the hilariously scathing review below that most delighted me.

I was recommended this book because I work too much. Every page that I managed to get through was painful. This book is the saddest and most excruciating way to introduce Buddhist philosophy. It is a "Fable" with a capital "F". Nothing in the book is true. If something in the book has been based on a true concept it has been so badly distorted by this text that it is no longer even close. To summarize for those that don't need the rest of the review to know that this is a book to skip, here is a banal platitude from the book that forced me to emit an audible groan while I was reading it: "Your `I can' is greater than your IQ"

It starts out with this absolute fat jackass womanizing alcoholic unscrupulous lawyer, that would essentially be better off dead, and that I personally hated to read about, and would hate to know, and wouldn't talk to except to make rude noises at if I did know him because I was related to him or something. You are then told that he is basically a good person but unless your "I can" is greater than your "IQ" you aren't fooled even for a second. Then he has a heart attack and goes to India and meets a guru, and turns into this soft and supple bi-curious sounding freak that wears long red robes and pours tea all over a former colleagues wife's Persian rug to illustrate concepts that aren't really true. In essence he's an even bigger jerk that is now ultra self-important because he's this transformed guru come back to bring enlightenment to all the normal people that weren't alcoholic womanizing hoodlums to begin with.

Over 1,000,000 Iraqis Killed by US-Lead Invasion?

Here's something you're unlikely to see in the US press:

Further survey work undertaken by ORB, in association with its research partner IIACSS, confirms our earlier estimate that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which started in 2003.

This is the conclusion of Opinion Research Business (ORB), an establishmentarian, British polling firm that conducted a study in Iraq in 2007. You can see their results on their website here, with an update here. But apparently, this information isn't newsworthy enough even to warrant discussion in the media.

Meanwhile, the US president is focused on his "legacy." He's aided in the effort by a new Fox documentary eulogizing him and claiming that he's been credited with "some of the most eloquent and visionary speeches ever delivered by an American president." And as the show goes on, with President Bush comparing himself to President Lincoln, it sounds increasingly like a joke. Was this program produced by satirist Stephen Colbert? Unfortunately not. Here's a taste (approx. 10 minutes):

Watch the full documentary here.

Sex in the Park

My previous post (From the Outside, Looking In) sparked a discussion between myself and a friend on the assumptions we make about other people. In this context, something my friend said reminded me of an amusing encounter Namit and I had in India, one which illustrated for me my own simplistic notions about Indian Muslims who wear the burkha.

We were walking along a grassy, boulder-strewn hillside overlooking the city of Bhopal. There's a tiny, rusty old amusement park at the top of this hill, with a miniature ferris wheel and a couple of other whirl-y rides, where families come for picnics. Outside this happening zone, the grounds are like a little wilderness park and there are fewer people, mostly a few adolescents trying to sneak off with their friends, newlyweds wanting to be alone, and a few random walkers like us. Suddenly, far from the small crowd of families on holiday, we heard men shouting behind a stand of trees. This being India, where everything is everybody's business, we wandered over to see what the matter was. We found a man and woman standing with their hands tightly clasped to each others', the man yelling red-faced at another man who was yelling back with equal vehemence. The woman, who stood quietly with her head bent, was covered in a full burkha—not even her eyes were visible behind her veil, which is quite unusual in India.

As soon as we approached, the single man brought Namit into the argument, making his case against the couple. His accusation was that he'd caught them in flagrante delicto out in the open. Having sex in public is illegal (public lewdness), he claimed.

Comedy Break

Intelligent comedy is so rarely found. I consider it a gift when I run across something that moves me and makes me laugh and think, or makes me laugh with respect for the speaker. One occasion to do all of these is in Lilly Tomlin's one-woman show, "The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe" (montage; reviews). I highly recommend it.

Happily, I've just discovered another serious comic, Julia Sweeney, whom some may remember as a regular cast member on Saturday Night Live in the early 1990s. I came across a clip of Sweeney's monologue, "Giving Up God," which she performed during the TED talks in 2006. In this routine, Sweeney talks about the journey she took from being raised as a Catholic, losing her faith, and then finding sense in the idea of understanding the universe without a belief in god. In her blog, she says of this:

One of the astounding results of me losing my faith, (which was a beautiful experience...), was that I suddenly saw how alike we are to our fellow animals. And how different. But different in ways I had not previously considered. I saw my own behavior being influenced by millions of years of evolutionary history, but I also gained a new respect for ethics and the ability of the human race to make informed choices. Much more informed choices than many other animal species. After I lost my faith, I stopped anthropomorphizing in a childlike way and started anthropomorphizing in an informed way.

On Not Reading

A review in the Economist of How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read.

“There is more than one way not to read, the most radical of which is not to open a book at all.” Thus begins Pierre Bayard's witty and provocative meditation on the nature, scale and necessity of non-reading. With thousands of books published every year, it is, he points out, the primary way people relate to books. And even those books they do get round to opening remain in a sense outside their knowledge. “Even as I read”, he observes, “I start to forget what I have read.”

The first section explores the four categories of unread books, into at least one of which Mr Bayard places every book he mentions. These are the “books unknown to me”, the “books I have skimmed”, the “books I have heard about” and the “books I have forgotten”. No exceptions are admitted, even for books he himself wrote. Each category is illustrated with an example from literature.

More here. (Thanks to Dukhiram for the link.)

A Song for America

Here is a seriocomic take on American jingoism. It adapts a beloved '70s tune from Tamilian Sri Lanka ("surangani surangani ..."). The dancer-artist's name is Malavika Tara Mohanan.