Category: Daily Noise
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From the Outside, Looking In
Recently, the crew of a US naval cruiser in the Persian Gulf was alarmed by the actions of some nearby Iranian speedboats, potentially sparking a confrontation. Commenting on the almost-incident, US Presidential hopeful Fred Thompson quipped, “I think one more step and they would have been introduced to those virgins that they’re looking forward to seeing.”
Okay, is there anyone out there who hasn’t seen or heard the stereotype—the caricature—often enough to get his joke? I didn’t think so. In fact, in the past six years, we’ve heard some version of this joke so many times that it’s already come to feel old. There’s a whole battery of these jokes by now, with themes ranging from Islamic terrorism to… um, Islamic terrorism. And while America has a nice little collective chuckle over this, I can’t help but wonder if it would have been quite so funny if Thompson had made an equivalent joke about Jews, Mormons, or Baptists, for instance. I have to wonder why fair-minded, clear-thinking people aren’t up in arms over this.
I remember only two years ago when a politician referred to a young Indian-American as “macaca” and—though it never became entirely clear what the hell he was even talking about—his political career was effectively destroyed by a backlash against that single imprudent utterance. And last year former US President Jimmy Carter was hounded by the American press and accused of anti-Semitism for comparing the condition of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories to life under South African Apartheid.
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Where Do You Stand Relative to the Candidates in Election 2008?
Can’t figure out who to vote for? Never fear: Here’s another one of those political quizes that compares you with the candidates on several current issues. The pencil icon in the accompanying picture indicates where I stand and the circle around it indicates the standard deviation for the test. There’s only one candidate in the race who falls within a standard deviation of me… no surprise.Of course, the quiz isn’t perfect; it doesn’t weigh answers depending on how important the issue is to you, for instance.
Take the quiz at Electoral Compass USA. The quiz is apparently a research project put up by a Dutch group.
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Happy New Year!
From the Big Easy, where jazz is king, hurricanes rule, and the Creoles cook up a storm.
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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.
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Alternative Holiday Shopping
I am the very incarnation of Bah Humbug. I have no particular Christmas spirit and no desire to see the whole business encouraged in any way. And while I realize this attitude doesn’t exactly win friends and influence people, it is sincere.However, I am inspired to participate in this small way this year: A good friend of mine has compiled a list of alternative holiday shopping sources and I feel it’s worth sharing with others who may be more possessed of winter holiday convictions and shopping traditions. Below is her message.
The holidays are coming and thus ushers in the most materialistically driven time of the year in an already materialistic society. Be unconventional and even subversive this year by refusing to buy in to the lie of the status quo and by creating a new type of demand in the global market: a demand for products that are fairly traded and benefit the billions of people in our world that are in poverty. Or, refuse to buy material things at all and give gifts in the form of donations that will change someone’s life.
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A New Void
Almost eight years after inception, I’m pleased to announce a new incarnation of Shunya. The new design modernizes the code base and more attractively presents articles in a range of categories, as well as photos from around the world. Software engineers and graphic designers in the Trivandrum office of Vitalect, Inc. worked hard to accomplish the task. More ambitious plans are in the works. Be sure to check out the new pictures from our recent China trip. Category: Daily Noise -
One Year of Blogging
Well folks, Shunya’s Notes is a year old today! Seems to me that since my inaugural post on Gandhi, it has come a fair distance. It has hosted many good debates and over 130 posts on a wide diversity of topics (most of them original pieces rather than links/excerpts), thanks in good measure to three terrific new bloggers now on board. It got a whole new design midway and its traffic too has steadily risen to average over 350 visitors a day.Yet the blog remains fairly quiet, with only 3.3 comments per post (might it be because we leave our readers stunned and speechless with our stellar prose?). On the other hand, I am not surprised, given how many articles I myself read on the web and never comment on. Yet a part of me longs to know who the quiet regulars are and would welcome and appreciate their thoughts on Shunya’s Notes on this first anniversary.
I’ve certainly enjoyed blogging and have learned from it. My co-bloggers and a few readers have participated with panache and confidence and haven’t shied from strong (yet civil) disagreements. Debating usually involves picking sides; one assumes positions based partly on contingent factors, which may change with time and place, or with audiences and players. Given the time-bound exchanges on a blog, one often chooses words that do not best describe one’s position, or nuances thereof, or follow the full protocols of civility. I hope to get better at this over time.
Category: Daily Noise -
Political Compass
Here is an entertaining little quiz to calibrate your political sensibilities. Besides the traditional economic left/right spectrum, this also includes the dimension of social authoritarian/libertarian. So you get placed on a 2-D graph. I know, I know: we all have other (un)lovely facets of our personalities not captured by this graph, but this seems to me at least a crude indicator of our political bearings as we often articulate them.
The quiz should take 10-15 minutes. Many questions require careful
thought, so don’t be in a rush to finish. Be sure to check out the
company of luminaries you find yourself in (including music composers, famous leaders, and 2008 presidential candidates)! I have taken the quiz thrice over the last four years (first brought to my attention by VP), and I have hovered near the same spot — from (-5.7, -5) four years ago, I landed at (-5.3, -5.6) today. How did you score and were you surprised? -
Inspired Imagery
The last two times I put up some of my original paintings (Family Pictures) and some faithful copies (Second Hand Art). Today I have picked two paintings which are somewhere in between. These paintings are based on photographs I found in magazines. But they were painted from memory – I did not have the originals before me when I executed the paintings. As the originals were photographs and mine are paint and brush versions of the same and because I added and subtracted from the original compositions, the end products are not really copies. However, since I borrowed the basic idea, I hesitate to call them true originals.
(As usual, please click on the pictures for a larger image.)
One bleak February in Nebraska, I was struggling with a painting that was going nowhere. Both the weather and the creative mind block were cause for some frustratration. I wanted to put the work aside and start something fresh but couldn’t come up with a good idea. Then during a trip to the local library while browsing through an issue of National Geographic, I fell upon an article on Rajasthan, the colorful desert state in central India. Rajasthan is not far from Delhi and the photographs in the article made me painfully nostalgic for the hot, arid summers of northern India in the surrounding gloom of a midwestern winter. I could not check out the magazine. I made a quick sketch of the picture on a piece of paper and later transferred the image on canvas. What transpired was a very satisfying piece of art work that progressed with speed and enthusiasm. I finished the painting in high gloss varnish which lent it a luminous overtone. It is framed in antique gold frame and hangs in a room that gets the afternoon sun – resulting in an attractive glow. It always pleases me to look at this painting because I remember how happily I worked on it. -
Quotable Quotes – I
Here are ten quotes I have found repeatedly profitable, from authors or books I have enjoyed reading. I might post more such periodically. They appear in chronological order of the author’s year of birth:JM Coetzee:
“Life, says Erasmus’s Folly, is theater: we each have lines to say and a part to play. One kind of actor, recognizing that he is in a play, will go on playing nevertheless; another kind of actor, shocked to find he is participating in an illusion, will try to step off the stage and out of the play. The second actor is mistaken. For there is nothing outside the theater, no alternative life one can join instead. The show is, so to speak, the only show in town. All one can do is to go on playing one’s part, though perhaps with a new awareness, a comic awareness.”VS Naipaul:
“Literature is not like music; it isn’t for the young; there are no prodigies in writing. The knowledge or experience a writer seeks to transmit is social or sentimental; it takes time, it can take much of a man’s life, to process that experience, to understand what he has been through; and it takes great care and tact, then, for the nature of the experience not to be lost, not to be diluted by the wrong forms. The other man’s forms served the other man’s thoughts.” -
End of Summer Slowdown
Many bloggers at Shunya’s Notes will be traveling over the next few weeks; so there might be fewer updates. But this break will hopefully inspire many future posts on China, where two of us are headed (my second vacation in the PRC). We plan to visit Shanghai, Xian, Luoyang, Pingyao, Datong, Beijing, and the Great Wall. Enjoy the rest of your summer!Category: Daily Noise -
Second Hand Art
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. -
Eggcornucopia
An idiom by definition is idiosyncratic – it conveys a meaning that is not always obvious or predictable from its construction. No wonder then, people tend to mangle and modify old fashioned idioms containing quaint expressions and words of foreign or antique origin to suit their own understanding of the language. A bit of logic too enters the modification according to our perceptions of the world around us. For example: - Damp Squib (squib = an obscure name for a small explosive device) sometimes becomes Damp Squid for obvious reasons
- Vocal Cords (cord = thin rope or cable) is changed to Vocal Chords associated with sound (but why does the misspelling also extend to the spinal cord which is not involved with tonal function?)
- Fount (a gushing source) of Knowledge appears more impressive to some as the Font (receptacle) of Knowledge.
- Chaise Longue (pronounced shayz longg, meaning long chair in French) is languidly called the Chaise Lounge, the latter associated with relaxation.
- Just Deserts (from deservir in French meaning deserve) may have transformed to Just Desserts due to simple misspelling.
I often misspell the word “deceit” as “deceipt.” Its correlation to “deception” in meaning and the phonetic similarity to “receipt,” leads to this frequent error. My sister’s housekeeper in India who doesn’t speak English, refers to a cell phone as a “celephone.” Serving the same utility, the newer technology is clearly linked in her mind to its traditional land line cousin not just in its purpose but also in a rhyming name. Associative linguistic changes and shifting idioms such as those above have been collectively termed eggcorns in honor of someone misspelling the word “acorn” as “eggcorn” (after all, acorns do look like large egg shaped corns). Spellings of individual words too become altered when we misread the origin of the word. The word minuscule meaning very small, derives its roots from minus. The alternate (but erroneous) spelling miniscule is becoming increasingly common because many now trace the word to mini. For more on eggcornucopia and the frequency of the usage of eggcorns as compared to the original phraseology, see here. (link via 3 QD)
There are other words and expressions, not quite eggcorns, that I have occasionally wondered about. For example, some words exist only in their negative connotation with no corresponding positive term in common usage. A “ruthless” person, we know is particularly unkind. Yet for the merciful among us, we don’t describe them as possessing veins which are overflowing with the milk of human “ruth.” Similarly “uncouth.” We know who they are – the boorish, coarse and the unmannered types. But we never compliment someone’s gracious behavior as being suitably “couth.”
Category: Daily Noise -
Family Pictures
Having conducted an energetic defense of science (and scientists) in a debate over scientific vs artistic creativity at Accidental Blogger, I decided to take an artistic respite at Shunya’s. Namit has given me permission to post virtual exhibitions of my paintings here [editorial note: Namit believes she has earned this right; it’s her blog too]. I will do so from time to time and share my meager body of work with readers.
Although I have loved drawing and painting since childhood, I have pursued this amateur but serious hobby in spurts of a few years at a time only about three or four times since my early teens. The last inspiration lasted between 1992-98. I haven’t picked up a brush in the past nine years. All the paintings are oil on canvas and painted in 1996-97. They are not fine art but done with much enthusiasm and loving care.
I have selected three paintings in this round which represent my impressions of some fond family memories. (Please click on thumbnails for a bigger image)
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Buggering Khushwant
Few Indian writers can match the irreverence, acerbic wit, and bawdy humor of Khushwant Singh. Here is his latest piece at 92. He is not well-known outside India but there is much more to the man than this light-hearted piece conveys. He has secured his place as a major Indian novelist, journalist, and historian of the Sikh experience. Read this article, for instance, to see another side of him. A compelling, if less upbeat, viewpoint on his legacy has been put forward by Amardeep Singh.I crave the forgiveness of my readers for writing on a subject which is taboo in genteel circles. I also apologise in advance for using words which some people may find distasteful. I wouldn’t be doing so if the end of my tale of woe was not so comic.
It all started during my recent summer vacation in Kasauli. I woke up one night with a queasy feeling in my stomach. Half asleep, I tottered to the loo to rid myself of my sleep-breaker. When I got up from the lavatory seat to flush out the contents, I was shocked to see I had passed a lot of blood with my stool. “Shit!” I said to myself, suddenly wide awake. The rest of the night was wasted in contemplation of the end. I had had a reasonable innings, close to scoring a century, so no regrets on that score. Was I creating a self-image of heroism in the face of death? That vanished on the following day as more blood flowed out of my belly.
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Shunya’s Notes is Evolving!
As they say, all good things mutate in the middle.* It gives me great pleasure to announce that after being a solo blog for almost eight months and 72 posts, Shunya’s Notes is mutating into a group blog. Please join me in welcoming four new bloggers to Shunya’s Notes. For more about them, click on their names or contributor links on the left.- VP joins us from Neutral Observer. With Attitude aplenty, this ex-physicist has a penchant for prose brimming with empirical gravity. We’ll be watching vee-pee!
- Usha Alexander was a bass guitarist in a garage band until she met me. She still persists with her interest in anthropology, science, and literature, while singing soprano in a world music choir.
- Ruchira Paul, a talented painter and the founder of Accidental Blogger, has established a high bar for political, social, and literary commentary. Better steer clear of her, you left-wing ideologues and right-wing religious types!
- Dukhiram looks far less dukhi than one might imagine. When not entertaining, educating, and exhorting (as is his custom), he devises better ways of searching for needles in a haystack.
In the spirit of this mutation, I will no longer be using Shunya as my nom de plume on this blog. Happy blogging, new contributors!
* (Ok, I don’t know anyone who says that but it’s true; else we wouldn’t be here.)
Category: Daily Noise -
A New Look!
Here is a new look to Shunya’s Notes, which now resides at “http://blog.shunya.net” — please update your bookmarks. It offers a fluid width and a bigger font (going forward). Moreover, your links, if any, to my previous posts will continue to work (enabled by hours of mucking with DNS name servers, A, mx and cname records, etc.). Enjoy!
Category: Daily Noise -
Wordsmithing Fun
The Washington Post hosts an annual neologism contest in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words. Some of the winners this year are:
Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.
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Blending at Google
Google, with its creative, youthful subculture, is famous as a great place to work and for its lengthy, grueling interview process that involves bizarre puzzles and brainteasers. A typical question is outlined below, followed by some of the responses to it I found on the net. As Google concedes, many of its questions do not have a single right response. They are designed to reveal a candidate’s approach to problem-solving. Feel free to share your own!Category: Daily Noise
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