Douglas Adams

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (Restaurant at the end of the universe)

50th anniversary of the Doctor

I was terribly excited that I was going to watch the special episode of Doctor Who at Dendy cinemas. 3D and all. This was an episode to mark the 50th anniversary of the BBC show that I have grown to love in the last couple of years (I came to the party late). I consider myself a Whovian and though that gets a snicker from some people (I am looking at you J), I am not ashamed of it.

Dendys was packed in a way that I didn't think possible. I didn't have any idea that the good Doctor had such a following in sleepy Canberra. I kind of guessed it when the tickets were soldout within hours of being released (I got the last 5 tickets available) but still it was so amazing to see Whovians young and old, dress up in Fezzes and bowties, TARDIS dresses and even an Amy Pond kiss-o-gram to watch the special screening on a Sunday morning.

Sunday morning with friends and fellow Whovians to watch Dr. Who on the big screen. The day couldn't get any better. I mean it could have... if the episode was any good. Sadly it wasn't.

*Spoiler Alert*

Firstly, the alien antagonists of the episode were something called the Zygon. I had never heard of them before. They didn't have any historical significance (they weren't the first alien species from the first episode or any such thing). An epic show requires epic villains. What happened to the Daleks? To the Cybermen? To the Weeping Angels? To VashtaNerada? To Great Intelligence? Zygons that could take the shape of any human???? Darnit! You are only as good as your enemy and an enemy who is easily fooled by a cloyingly naive and big breasted Queen Elizabeth is far from the enemy that only 3 Doctors can defeat. 

And if that sounds like a quibble, the other problems with the episode sure aren't.

The Doctor had killed off his own people (and the Daleks) to end the Timewar. Everything that comes after, the entire series, is because of that. The last of the timelords; a God with immense power to destroy everything but still cares deeply and protects the universe. The episode takes this pivotal moment in the personal history of the Doctor, and makes a cheap play to say... oh! he didn't really kill those people. He saved them. But he won't remember. So his personal history is still intact.

How can one go back and watch the episodes with Christopher Eccleston and care about the deeply haunted Doctor? How many times in the show have we heard, 'Last of his kind' to explain some crucial aspect of the Doctor? It is very hard to accept that Rose, the companion that changes the ruthless warrior to the sensitive Tenth doctor, was a lie. 

Nah! I am not buying it. No amount of 3d boob/chin is good enough to buy this load of horsepoo.

Typically, the different versions of the Doctor in the same room will blow up the universe. But once you reverse the polarity of the thingamacallit, oh! now it is alright. But not always. Just this one instance. The next time the Doctor is facing an impossible foe, he can't get the 13 other versions of him. 

Still, seeing Tennant's Doctor was wonderful. I really don't know why they had to get John Hurt to play the Doctor. He added nothing to the show. Now are we supposed to call Matt the Twelfth Doctor. Since Paul McGann does play the Doctor in the web-only minisode ahead of this episode, they could have just used him and not created an anomalous Doctor (who doesn't fit in with the rest of the show). Ok you have the Doctor who is not the Doctor in John Hurt and they are about to use the Moment to blow up Gallifrey and end the Timewar because there really really isn't any other choice. The hand is on the big red button. They are about to press it. Here we go. Almost pressed. Oh! what is that. Clara doesn't like it. OK then. We won't blow it up. Fuck that! 

Saving Gallifrey is a total cop-out. One doesn't go... the Doctor's deepest darkest secret is... that he is a saintly amnesiac. The whole episode lacked gravitas. It was a farcical take on Doctor. Almost a parody. It would have been nice for a Children in Need special. Like that one time when Peter Davison meets David Tennant's Doctor. Something gimmicky that is not part of the overall storyline. 

It may sound harsh but I have been spoilt to demand big things of the Doctor Who writers. I have sat through the heart-wrenching moment of Rose's departure in Doomsday. I was made to chew through my nails for the Stolen Earth. I have wept and laughed at The Wedding of River Song. In the pantheon of epic Doctor Who episodes, there is absolutely no room for The day of the Doctor. And that is just sad.

In defense of Bollywood

Indian cinema, particularly Bollywood cinema has a (bad) reputation as colourful musical extravaganzas that have no resemblance whatsoever to anything remotely real. It is no surprise then that a lot of people from outside India cannot really get into it. I am not a big fan of Bollywood school of cinema myself but I understand where it is coming from. 

Basically, there are two schools of thought about film-making. One philosophy is that cinema should portray reality. The film acts as a window into the lives of people that we relate to at some level. Granted that nothing important or interesting ever happens in most of our lives but the characters in the realist film are archetypes of people we know or of ourselves, slightly exaggerated or dramatised. So one can handle topics such as ennui, existential despair, love (in its stripped down unromantic version), dilemmas about life, the universe and everything. So one could watch a movie, go home and think what would I have done if I was the guy in the Nazi camp or the girl with terminal cancer. What insight do I get about how to lead my life from the trials and tribulations of the life of others shown in the big screen?

But this philosophy is completely shunned by the second group. For them, cinema is about escape. It is about wish fulfillment. People don't want to spend good money to watch a movie about poverty and despair. They have enough of it in real life. They don't want existential angst. They want catharsis. Simple themes. Good vs. evil. Triumph against odds. Superheroes. Miracles. Disasters. Gooey love. Dance. Music. Popcorn.

IMO, the more difficult 'real' life is, the more one is interested in escapists fantasies more than anything else.

On the other hand, my problem with Bollywood (and I use the term loosely) is not that they make escapist capers,  it is that they make really bad escapist capers.

Election reform

It all started when one of my friends called Right to negative vote, i.e. Vote "None of the above" as a landmark Judgement that would make democracy true, fair and some other things that I can't recall. This allows common man the right to reject, he said. And someone else added that in a multi party democracy, whoever enjoys the confidence of the majority wins. If vote for none is the majority, we should have a re-election. Perhaps they misunderstood the whole election thing but it drives me nuts when people throw around words like confidence of majority. The candidate with the plurality of votes wins the election.

My opinion was that in a country with compulsory voting, it'd be interesting to cast a 'None of the above' vote. It makes absolutely no difference in India. Not even a symbolic one.

In my view it would be worthwhile to have a 2-tier election. First round everybody competes. The top 2 vote-getters go to the second round. Whoever gets 50% + 1 vote wins. This avoids someone with say 30% total vote winning the seat in a crowded electorate. Another promising option is Preferential voting. Where you don't just vote for one person, you list your preferences. So the truly abominable candidates can be filtered out. These are meaningful electoral reforms. And they have been tried in other countries with various levels of success. The right to negative vote is just theatre. Damn good theatre for sure but still theatre.

Zero

I recently came across this interesting article on the invention of zero. This is one of the things that I was told (as are most Indian children) as one of the hallmarks of Indian contribution to modern society and example of our greatness. But the story as it happens is more complex than "we invented zero and therefore we rock". From Babylonia to the Mayans, there have been independent discoveries of zero either as placeholders or as numerals. I discussed this article with a friend about how this was such an enlightening idea about different civilisations. My point was, and I don't think I made it well, that there were many ancient civilisations and they all made important contributions. I say that I don't think I made myself clear, because she took that to mean that I was demeaning India's contributions. To say that Mayans used zero too was by no means to discredit Indian civilisation as useless.

There are many biases and beliefs that we hold; one of the ones that I heard growing up was that Indian civilisation was so advanced compared to the rest of the world - to paraphrase something a family member used to say, Europeans were jumping around half-naked up and down trees when Indians were writing treatises on governance. This idea, however pleasant and awesome to hold, is far from truth. Exceptionalism is infantile. We recognise it in others; America for instance with their chest-thumping rhetoric of being the greatest nation in the history of the world and we rightly make fun of them for it. But it is harder to see it in ourselves. The Lascaux caves in France for example show evidence of paintings from the paleolithic period (about 17300 years before). Venus of Hohle Fels is about 35000 years to 40000 years old. The Cuneiform tablets displayed in the Louvre show some of earliest known written language from 4th century BC (Code of Hammurabi was around 1785 BC). Egyptian Dynastic period dates back to 4th century BC (this Duck and Swimmer spoon is one of those mindblowing artifacts from antiquity).

Again, my point was not that Indians suck but that other civilisations did some good things as well. And maybe, just maybe it is not so good to judge others as somehow less "civilised". As hard as it may be to accept, we are not special.

IMHO the part of growing up is to be able to challenge our dearly held beliefs and learning of our place in the history of mankind goes a long way to update our beliefs.

Paris impressions

Paris is like any other city - people are rude and always in a hurry to get somewhere, motorists can't drive and pedestrians can't stop talking on their phones while crossing roads, garbage bins are full, the streets are full, the metro is full, the cafes are full, you get the idea. There are homeless on the streets and police sirens pierce the air in frequent bursts.  Overworked fast-food workers struggle to mime the menu to the bazillion tourists who can't speak the language.There are tourists everywhere and when they are not taking pictures they are annoying the locals by asking directions to the place they are already at. People avoid eye contact with strangers on the metro, preferring instead to pretend to enjoy music. A common big-city stench seeps through the air. McDonalds or Starbucks are always just around the corner. On the plus side, you can find a restaurant from any region of the world. There is decent beer. You can also manage alright with whatever language. If you can read a map, you can get around with much difficulty. Blah blah blah.

What sets Paris apart are the little things. Like when I bumped into a guy reading Derrida in the metro. That too a book book... paper and ink kind. OK! I thought one person reading Margins of Philosophy does not a pattern make. Another day, another metro, this one completely different line and how do I meet but Mr. Heidegger and his Contributions to Philosophy. And so you meet Kafka and Rimbaud, Hemingway in French and Joyce on a graffiti. Maybe there are Kafkans everywhere but Paris to me will always be the city of Sartre to me.

The King is so not pale

A really short excerpt from David Foster Wallace's The Pale King. Just to show what a bleeping genius we have lost.

Our house was outside of the city, off one of the blacktop roads. We had us a big dog that my daddy would keep on a chain in the front yard. A big part German shepherd. I hated the chain but we didn't have a fence, we were right off the road there. The dog hated that chain. But he had dignity. What he'd do, he'd never go out to the length of the chain. He'd never even go out to where the chain got tight. Even if the mailman pulled up,  or a salesman. Out of dignity, this dog pretended like he chose this one area to stay in that just happened to be inside the length of the chain. Nothing outside of that area right there interested him. He just had zero interest. So he never noticed the chain. He didn't hate it. The chain. He just up and made it not relevant. Maybe he wasn't pretending- maybe he really up and chose that little circle for his own world. He had a power to him. All of his life on that chain. I loved that damn dog.

Horseracing

My view of arranged marriage is that you pick a horse and then you show it to me and say "Is this one ok?". My problem with this arrangement is that I have no context to evaluate if it is. I have never ever been to a race and no clue about horses. I just don't know. One says yes because you like the colour of the horse or it has a funny name or it doesn't snort and balk when you go near it. It is based on intuition more than anything else.

Of course with a love marriage (I am not a big fan of this terminology because the opposite of a love marriage is then a love-less marriage) the choosing is not restrictive to a yes or no. The beauty of this analogy is that at the end of the day, no matter how you choose, it is still a gamble. You win some, you lose some. And you can never be 100% certain of your choice.

Extending the analogy, one of the reasons "western" marriages seem such a failure is because they don't think that it is necessary to bet everything you own to play the race. Some relationships are built for the long haul and some aren't. Changing horses mid-race is bad but gambling everything on one race is a bit reckless, don't u think? You don't want your life completely ruined if you lose a race.

One is absolutely free to believe in arranged marriages. Sure, let's say that it is the greatest bestest system. Or at least no worse than any other system. But please let's not pretend that someone is going to make an informed choice based on a few email exchanges. A trained psychologist wouldn't know anything about a person from these initial emails. Do you agree? So, let's just call the game what it is - it is a gamble. You are betting on a horse. And as a player, given the high stakes, all you can do is take as many variables as possible in to consideration.

Character assassination, Times style

Are you the kind of person who wonders what would a "hit-piece" on someone a.k.a "hatchet-job" look like? Well! wonder no more. I present to you the best of the best - the equivalent of a Gayle century and Mishra hat-trick and Dhoni captaincy (gratuitous cricket reference) rolled in to a single 1084 word article. Really read it and savour the subtle flavours of the Merlot and the scents of peach and plum with its earthy texture and hint of vanilla.

First some background. Glenn Greenwald is a Guardian columnist who broke the story on massive NSA surveillance of electronic communications of American citizens. The surveillance is more or less completely illegal, except that the government has its interpretations of some laws (like Patriot act and FISA amendments act) that allow it to circumvent pesky limits on its powers. The Obama administration claims a. That it is legal, limited and has sufficient congressional oversight and b. It is necessary to keep Americans safe. Because 9/11. There is also c. This program is classified and how did you find out about it and I am going to put you in prison, but that part is classified.

Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley have been warning for some time that there has not been significant congressional oversight and that the program is not a targeted-surveillance (and the head of NSA testified in front of the Intelligence subcommittee that they have not wittingly collected data on millions of American citizens, as if one could slip on a banana and end up with a database of all phone and electronic communications of millions).  Notwithstanding that and the fact that President Bush got into a lot of trouble for a similar warrantless wiretapping program way back when that was evil and even assuming that this program is necessary and the only thing standing between terrorists and Americans, one would suppose that it is still not out of line for journalists to shed some light on government policies that impacts the lives of so many citizens. How can democracy be democracy without an informed citizenry?

This, in summary is the playground in which the match will be played. Greenwald is a lawyer and writer on civil liberty issues. He is an author of several books including 'How would a Patriot act?'. He has been a columnist for The Guardian for almost a year and before that, he was a columnist with Salon.com. He is involved with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and has been a supporter of both Wikileaks and Bradley Manning. Like him or not, there was a national conversation about the power of government agencies to data-mine the shit out of everything after he broke the news on NSA surveillance. Also about how maybe, just maybe it was a bad thing to live in an Orwellian dystopia (Yes, the usage of 'Orwellian' went over the roof and search for 'Big brother' hit the biggest comeback since the infamous nipslip in Season 3).

And enter, NewYork Times. Noam Cohen and Leslie Kaufman wrote the brilliantest blatantest hit-piece since Pete Clemenza took care of Paulie. First, the Hors d'oeuvre. The title of the article is "Blogger, With Focus on Surveillance, Is at Center of a Debate" which appears to be an edit since the link to the article is the more spicy, "anti-surveillance-activist-is-at-center-of-new-leak". Remember it is not "Guardian columnist blows the lid on surveillance". No sire. That would make it a legitimate act of you-know scare quotes journalism. Activist sounds bad but it seems to be the flavour of the season. Better to call him "blogger". Doesn't the term immediately conjure the image of a Cheetos-eating slacker who lives in his mother's basement? You can almost visualise it, can't you? That is how good writing works. So, Thomas Friedman who can charitably be described a clown is a NYTimes columnist but Greenwald is a blogger. His work with The Guardian is for the fine-print, an afterthought. And that ladies and gentlemen, is how one discredits a person. As if painting GG as an un-serious blogger wasn't enough, the writers would like to help you with a ladle of  'He obsesses over government surveillance' in the very first line. Now, GG is a Cheetos-eating basement dwelling nutcase with a tinfoil hat.

Don't fill yourself on the appetizers. There is more. The main course include, 'He is gay', 'He lives in Brazil', 'He is a diva - didn't have an editor', 'He supports Manning' and finally for dessert 'He is an apologist for anti-Americanism', 'He is naive and couldn't run the country'. Muuuuah! That is some serious Crème brûlée of anti-Americanism. And because this is the liberal rag (allegedly), throw in 'worked for corporate clients' in the list of Greenwald's yuckiness. Call it the salad siding for that one vegan person who crashed your party.

To anyone who claims that the article was balanced, contrast this. The person quoted as calling him an apologist for anti-Americanism is Gabriel Schoenfeld. We are assured that this guy knows what it is all about. He is a national security expert and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. The person speaking for Greenwald is Ms. Jennifer Bailey. She shared a tiny apartment with him when they were students. Who are you going to believe - national security expert or Will and Grace.

The only thing missing from the article is that that he is a leper with AIDS and a plague-ridden rat for a pet and he smells funny and did you see the shoes he was wearing. NewYork Times, you have done it again. Plumbed depths deeper than James Cameron's submersible. 

Belief - God, astrology

It is fine to believe in God because by design it is an unverifiable hypothesis. Science has given us an account of cosmology (that does not depend on a divine creator). Anthropology has given us a credible account of the birth and value of organised religion. Modern neuroscience has illuminated us on scientific basis for the origin of faith. But they don't offer proof that God doesn't exist (or for that matter that he does). One could always say that it is what I believe in and that is that. 

All science can offer is an understanding of where we are and how we got to be. And in our understanding, which by no measure is complete, it is not certain that a God has to exist to create the Big Bang, to create life on earth or to create intelligence.  A universe created without a God would be indistinguishable with a universe with one. No self respecting scientist says that we know everything about everything. But to say that we don't know 'x', therefore God must exist is not a sound argument. It is exactly the same thing as saying we don't know what causes epilepsy, therefore the devil is causing it. (Now, I assume you don't believe that epilepsy is caused by demonic possession... but who knows you might have a theory that epilepsy may be caused by a brain anomaly but what caused the brain anomaly - demon)

Be that as it may, you are free to believe in a celestial teapot. I am not going to convert you, no matter how cogent my arguments. Faith by definition is the belief in something beyond reason. If there was irrefutable proof for the existence of something, then one wouldn't be asked to "believe" in it. Nobody says do you believe in gravity.

But astrology is a whole other thing. It is not based on faith. In theory, it should be verifiable. And I don't mean conduct a double-blind study and give astrologers horoscope charts and personality test results and ask them to pick which chart belongs to which person. Oh no! they did that and published it in Nature too. (It didn't show that astrologers had better than random chance). And it can also be shown that people "want to believe" especially when it comes to personality profiles based on astrology or daily predictions (Forer effect).

I don't mean that kind of science, valuable as it may be. I mean the basis of astrology. Astrology is built on the notion that the movement of celestial bodies affect the course of human events. That the gravitational pull of the planets has a significant effect on human destiny is scientific nonsense. Why? Because Physics. A nurse standing 1 m from the mother during delivery exerts more gravitational pull than Mars or Saturn. 

Our ancestors believed that stars caused events and it is in no way intriguing that they did so. It is a simple fallacy - Post hoc ergo propter hoc. The star moved and the king died. Therefore the star moving to this "constellation" caused adverse conditions for the king. 

It is intriguing that there is some correlation between predictions and reality. Some of it could be attributed to coincidence but not all. Some of it to confirmation bias but not all. But there isn't anything that I have read or come across that provides convincing proof or even convincing plausibility that astrology is built on anything more than discredited pseudo-scientific concepts, like the moon pulling on brain like on tides.

Now, I'd think the scientific approach would be to say "My null hypothesis is astrology is not true". (as mentioned above for 2 reasons - 1. our ancestors relied on astral movements to "make sense" of the world and 2. the assumption of planets exerting gravitational pull on events has no scientific standing). Now, if CERN released results from supercollider tomorrow that showed that Jupiter is benevolent and moon in  the third house means you will be good with words, the null hypothesis is falsified. I will stand in line with you to get daily horoscope predictions. But until something like that happens, my null hypothesis, as a scientist, is that astrology is hokum and i will not base any of my life decisions on it (entirely or partially or even a teeny tiny little bit).

Btw, I have been told by some to have an open mind. I don't know how to tell them politely that someone believing in something that has been the popular belief for 2000 years does not have a more "open mind" than someone who stops to wonder, "wait a minute, why do we believe this". My point being that one does not need an open mind to follow what has been conventional wisdom; it takes one to question the assumptions and conclusions. 

Hunger strike

There are days when I despair that no matter what one does, nothing is going to change. Manning and Wikileaks threw light on some serious wrongdoing. It got nowhere. Occupy happened. And then was promptly forgotten. Children got mown by gunfire. Did nothing to move the lawmakers. It is so easy to be cynical. What a hopelessly doomed world we live in!

And then hopelessly doomed prisoners remind me that perhaps all is lost but one must still act. Hunger strike by the Guantanamo prisoners brings the most powerful man on earth, the President of the United States to admit that Guantanamo was a "lingering problem that is not going to get better" and "we need to close it".

Now I know, words come cheap. Pres. Obama  hasn't said or done anything about it for 4 years instead choosing to "look forward". Nobody expects him to succeed in closing Guantanamo. Hell! he couldn't pass gun control after New Town.

Still, it moves my heart that these 100 people, held without trial (most of them cleared for release years ago), forgotten by the world, left to die in a no man's land have shown such bravery.They deserve to be heard, to be remembered. We have failed them and we should be sorry. I know I am.

Update: Andrew O'Hehir has a brilliant piece about it in Salon.  As he puts it, "(the hunger strike) has shamed Obama and forced America and the world to face “one of his most glaring failures."

Intelligent cinema

What is an intelligent movie? I had this long discussion with a friend of mine on what I perceived as dearth of intelligent cinema coming out of the Tamil film industry. And how watching a much-touted film like Enthiran or Vishwaroopam is painful. I couldn't quite boil down a definition of what makes a film quote unquote intelligent, because saying something like "the film was so intense that it moves you" is too abstract. Perhaps in the famous words of Supreme Court Justice Stewart, "i know it when i see it".

One of the definitions that I found online is that a movie is considered intelligent, when the idea is new. Another definition was that intelligent cinema is that which entertains and provokes a mature viewer to reflect on what they saw, long after the film ends--extending the entertainment value. Someone else suggested something worthwhile and lasting which will impact the audience and remain with them and form a part of their collective memory.

One could argue that there is no such thing as intelligent cinema but this would probably entail that a Vijay flick is then just as good as a Kamal film. I don't see a lot of people accepting that. Or one could argue that we don't 'need' to have intelligent cinema. That is a whole other argument (that I will deal with separately). Mind you, nobody is arguing that we shouldn't have any escapist entertainment capers. I liked Gilli as much as the other guy. My argument is that we could do with some smart films. Not many. Just a few.

And if there isn't consensus on what intelligence is, let's substitute it with terms like innovativeness, inventiveness.

It is not controversial to say that nothing in at least the last 25 years in Tamil  cinema has pushed the frontiers of film-making. Not even 'Hey Ram', which is a pretty decent flick. The problem is that directors like Maniratnam, Kamal or Shankar pretend that their movies are somehow 'different', 'historical' or 'profound' or 'pushing boundaries' when they are none of those. They balk at making anything that hasn't been already made a million times.  I'm perfectly happy for them to come out and say that I am not in the business of making intelligent films but let's not pretend that they are making the Metropolis. 

Kamal for instance complained that he won't get an Oscar because there is an Indian sensibility and the West doesn't get it. He won't get an Oscar because he is just not that good. It is like the Olympics. You may be the unrivalled National champion but you don't even get to run in the Olympic finals because you are running a full minute behind the top athletes. (I actually pity Kamal the actor - he just doesn't have a good screenwriter or director to bring the best out of him). It is not just a matter of taste.  I have more respect for a person like Vijay or Vijaykanth who has no pretensions of intellectual fortitude.

And I can't stress this enough - I am not calling people dumb. Quite the opposite, I believe people are not stupid but are treated as such by film-makers who think something is too high-brow or as some idea as too difficult for an average person to understand. It is these so-called 'good directors' that say I could totally make a world-class film if only I didn't have to consider the B and C-centres, that make the argument that people are too dumb for intelligent films. And my beef is with sophisticated film-goers in India who have lowered their expectations so much that even a smattering of 'sense' from a director is lauded as the next best thing since sliced bread. This is what allows film-makers to produce films that are for the lowest common denominator without even having to justify it or pay a price for being so mediocre.

My point is that some film-makers, despite commercial constraints that are just as true everywhere as they are in India, do not shrink from doing the smart thing. I am not talking about the Terrence Malik and Jean-Luc Godard kind of art-house independent films. I am talking multi-million dollar summer blockbusters. I am talking of typically juvenile franchisees like the Batman and James Bond becoming deep and well-rounded films and still earning truckloads of money. Inception is another example of a mainstream blockbuster being incredibly smart. Yes, we want someone to make "American Pie-25" or "Die Hard 18 - This time is the Hardest", but we can also be certain that there is someone out there who will make the next 2001: A space odyssey.

There is literally no Indian Woody Allen. No present Indian director is making films remotely on the same level as Chris Nolan or Aronofsky, no screenwriter is writing as well as Charlie Kauffman. There is nothing written that matches 'Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind'.

Perhaps we have to admit - we are just not capable of it.

Update: While we are at it, can we get a Tina Fey and a Steven Moffat

Subversion

There is a beautiful video on the web of John Cleese and Michael Palin talking to some religious folk who were offended by Life of Brian. The Monty Python of course were considered subversive for mocking Jesus and Cleese points out that they don't mock Christ, or religion in general except to say that people should make up their own mind. Watch it on youtube if you get a chance. It is just brilliant. 

A friend had posted this video on Facebook. And someone had commented that "You seem to dispise (sic) Christians and Christianity. It's kinda like hitting a little kid cause u know they won't hit u back or won't inflict much pain back."

I am surprised by this response for I can't imagine a  universe in which Christianity is a poor little kid who won't hit back.  

My friend pointed me to a lecture of Yuri Bezmenov, a former KGB guy who defected to the west and spoke about KGB subversion tactics. He kinda made the point that the modern faithless culture is a product of these KGB tactics. According to Yuri, religion and other pillars of western civilisation are being discredited and subverted by communist propaganda. Yuri is a clever clever man and yes nations can be brought down by propaganda and disinformation... but man! he is odious. For instance, he argues that equality is un-natural, social security makes the country weak, individuals should be allowed to work for 2 dollars instead of join a union that wants to fight for 3. Why do you need 3 dollars in the first place... learn to be satisfied with 2. Things like that. 

At the least, could it not be argued that Berzmenov is actually doing the KGB subversion when he is in the west giving these lectures. Because now instead of saying Eureka! I have an idea... All men are created equal, you say, Oh wait a second. Am I thinking that or am I made to think that. You are constantly second guessing every thing you think, wondering if this is a judo move of the KGB to subvert your nation. Berzmenov has succeeded then to sow doubt, made you reconsider every thought old and new. It is not a double-cross... it is a triple cross. 

As for religion being subverted by secularist stooges of the Soviet Union, I would argue that religion is not being subverted so much as being the subverter. Organised religion is and has been the means of subversion. The Roman empire embraced Chistianity as a tool of their designs. Even in modern history, the loss of native culture and religion has been by the subversion orchestrated by colonial powers, oftentimes under the cloak of the church. i am reminded of Achebe's Things fall apart and Arrow of god. Agree with me or not on the subversion, you will have to accede that they are still a very powerful institution. They are neither innocent nor helpless. If anything one could probably compare the Church to  a grumpy 80 yr old with a cane. It would be a more appropriate picture of the church than a runt with a runny nose. And you can honestly say "Don't pick on that poor old man. It is disrespectful"  

Māyā and the theory of radical skepticism

In the classical Hindu schools of thought that deal with epistemology, various sources of knowledge are identified. The primary sources are perception, inference, and testimony. Other processes have also been identified but are either reducible to one or more of the widely accepted sources such as perception and inference or are considered not truth-conducive. The Cārvāka materialist school was one of the proponents of Skepticism. They recognized perception as a knowledge source but not inference nor any other candidate. Inference depends upon generalizations which outstrip perceptual evidence. Cārvāka claims that no one can know that. That which we take to be the result of a genuine inference may turn out to hinge on a fallacy. Similarly, testimony is also no good since it presupposes that any speaker would tell the truth and thus is subject to the same criticism of lack of evidence. For this school, our only channels of knowledge are our sense perceptions. Everything else, they contended, is only inference which is not always reliable. Like Hume, they attacked inductive reasoning, questioning our logical right to extrapolate from what we know to be true, and generalize on the basis of particular observations. A different kind of skepticism that is broader in scope is not restricted to questioning inference alone. Perception, it is pointed out can also mislead us, given that the perceptions are dependent on our senses. It is clear that information acquired through our sense organs is not always a hundred percent reliable since the senses can create illusion, whether optical, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, or tactile. Given that our sensory perceptions are determined by the kind of bodies--cerebral physiology--we happen to possess, all human knowledge is ultimately a function of our brain chemistry. No matter what or how the external world of reality is, the phenomenal world--as Kant was to remind us centuries later--is different from the noumenal world. This leads us to the conclusion that what we call objective knowledge is actually species-subjective.

Radical skepticism is one of the many kinds of philosophical skepticism, which pertains to the idea that knowledge is quite likely impossible. A radical skeptic maintains that all of our beliefs are subject to doubt, the most famous illustration of this being the Brain-in-a-vat hypothesis (BIV). In popular entertainment, the BIV hypothesis is best depicted in the film The Matrix. The film encourages one to imagine that our lives and the reality that we perceive are a computer generated simulation. Since it is impossible to know the difference between a reality that is real and a reality that is “the matrix” with absolute certainty, we can suppose that we cannot really “know” that our reality is in fact real.

This radical skepticism has often been compared to the Hindu and Buddhist philosophical concept of 'māyā '. The concept of māyā , or illusion of knowledge has been variously defined by the different schools. Shankara, for instance, expounded on the idea of māyā as the appearance which veils the true nature of things. In his famous analogy, the ignorant person mistakes a rope for a snake. Gaudapada treats life as a waking dream, and contends that world exists only in the mind of Man. This illusion, called māyā , gives rise to forms which need names, thus offering our minds a semblance of objective reality. Many philosophies and religions seek to "pierce the veil" of māyā in order to glimpse the transcendent truth from which the illusion of a physical reality springs.

While the Advaitin maintains that Māyā is the veiling of the Cosmic Spirit or Brahman, and the epiphany realisation of this fact is the road to nirvana or salvation, I wish to give a slightly different interpretation. I posit that māyā is not a veil to be pierced but the intrinsic impossibility to know anything about the world around us. Radical skepticism seems excessive, and critics are right to point out that we can't live as skeptics in our normal lives. It may well be impossible to ever refute radical skepticism but struggling with the issue helps illuminate the nature of knowledge itself.             

References:

1.                 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-india
2.                 http://www.utm.edu/staff/jfieser/class/120/6-knowledge.htm
3.                 http://www.hinduwebsite.com/maya.asp                      

       p.s.- This is an assignment that I submitted to Coursera for my Introduction to Philosophy

What can fiction do that can’t be achieved by neuroscience?

The texture of consciousness is the language of literature, not the data of science.

Robert Burton

Steinbeck's letter to his lovestuck son

There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you — of kindness and consideration and respect — not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had...

But I don’t think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it — and that I can tell you.

Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.

If you love someone — there is no possible harm in saying so — only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.

It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another — but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good...

And don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens — The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

Steinbeck (Nov. 10  1958)

Source: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/01/12/john-steinbeck-on-love-1958/

Spring is cummings

though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

e.e. cummings

This is why I love you

"Carl and I knew we were the beneficiaries of chance, that pure chance could be so kind that we could find one another in the vastness of space and the immensity of time. We knew that every moment should be cherished as the precious and unlikely coincidence that it was.” ~ Annie Druyan

Nerval and his afternoon stroll with Thibault, his pet lobster

Why should a lobster be any more ridiculous than a dog? Or a cat, or a gazelle, or a lion, or any other animal that one chooses to take for a walk? I have a liking for lobsters. They are peaceful, serious creatures. They know the secrets of the sea, they don't bark, and they don't gobble up your monadic privacy like dogs do. And Goethe had an aversion to dogs, and he wasn't mad!

Vishwaroopam - the controversy

There has been considerable drama surrounding the release of "Vishwaroopam" that it piqued my curiosity. I watched the film and while I wouldn't wish to impose another review on the inter-tubes, I wish to talk about the widespread criticism of the film, with regard to its depiction of Muslims.

Right at the outset, let me reiterate that I am not in favour of censorship and the movie should be allowed to be screened. And if the screening engenders an engaged and reasonable debate about the portrayal of race and religion in Indian cinema, it is to be welcomed. However, the protests against the film should not be brushed aside as irrelevant. There is some validity to the argument of the muslim protesters that the film portrayed the entire community as blood thirsty jihadis. One cannot point to other innumerable films that also deal with terrorism, for instance Gaptain Vijaykanth hunting down Bakistan terrorists as an excuse. The difference is between the cartoon violence of Tom and Jerry and the real horror of 6 year old children killed by gunfire on the evening news. The point being that no one takes seriously the comical portrayals of terrorists in a Vijaykanth movie even if the villains are Muslims. The problem with Kamal's portrayal is the "plausibility" of the Muslim terrorists. The viewer is led to believe that the people shown in the movie are not caricatures, this is how it really is.  This poignant hyper-realism, even if it is an cinematic artifice is the main reason that critics of the film like Charu Niveditha object to the 95 crore boondoggle.

The problem is perhaps of Kamal's own making. He has continually portrayed himself as a serious thinker and film-maker, neither of which is in evidence in this film. If one did not expect anything better from the actor, if we went to watch a film that was exactly in the same category as other Batriotic Bakistan Bashing films, then I am certain we wouldn't have any problems with Jerry taking a shotgun to Tom's face.

So, I suppose it is our fault that we wanted an entertaining action film with tact and nuance; something that didn't treat us like we were three year olds being scared in to eating another mouthful.

Haneke On Cinema

“I’m interested in seeing films that confront me with new things, with films that make me question myself, with films that help me to reflect on subjects that I hadn’t thought about before, films that help me progress and advance … For me, personally, I think watching a movie that simply confirms my feelings is a waste of time.”

- Michael Haneke (director of Amour)

Civil disobedience

Dear Mr. Sammut,

I read your comment regarding Civil disobedience at CIS and wished to respond.

For starters, what Assange did was not civil disobedience at all... it was an act of journalism. Perhaps you have heard of it. If Assange is culpable of revealing classified information, should the editors of New York Times and Guardian join him in the cell. Reasonable people can argue that not all classified information is ripe to be released to the public or in public interest to be revealed. But to believe that the mere act of classifying some piece of paper as top secret makes it sacrosanct, I am sure you would agree antithetical to a functioning democracy. The onus is on the government to explain why some information should not be publicly disclosed.

I find your dismissive and taunting tone particularly vulgar. Engage in a reasoned argument if you will but this is weak tea mate.

Yes, Gandhi's civil disobedience was about being willing to get arrested for breaking the law. But remember that his method worked only because the English were concerned enough about the rule of law and an appearance of fairness. And don't forget the many times they released Gandhi because of popular uprising caused by the arrest.

It is not fair to claim that the activists now lack the courage of their convictions. They are rightly afraid that they will not get a fair trial. My point being that Gandhi's civil disobedience in a different setting would have been completely toothless. I am confident that if you lived in his time you would write an impassioned column saying that he did break the law and should spend a lifetime incarcerated. If Gandhi tried satyagraha today, he will be arrested sure but there will be a parallel operation spearheaded by the Murdochs of the world to discredit him as a pedophile. They might stick a bag of heroin in his salt bag too just to make sure.

And this is not hyperbole.... Assange may be the public face of this discussion but there are countless others who did not "steal" classified information from Pentagon who are still harassed and persecuted for opposing the establishment. Laura Poitras for instance. Activists are not a bunch of spoilt-brats who are throwing a tantrum and then want a get out of jail card. How dare you! The same week that Aaron Swartz passed away.

I have a simple question for you - how many martyrs would it take for you to accept as legitimate a cause.

You sit in your plush office and demagogue about civil disobedience. I'll eat my words if you have spent one day in jail.

And don't drag Gandhi for your defence again. You don't own his legacy. And you sound like a damn fool

Best regards,
Ram