Accidental Blogger

Chasing the Paliban (Sujatha)

Sarah Palin made it to my corner of the woods, this Saturday afternoon. "Thousands" lined up to meet her, per the gushing report from the Washington PA Observer-Reporter

(Note, the website page had been read 297 times by the time I saw it. Are there thousands of people in Washington PA, or was the true number of gawkers and admirers just barely over 2000, which would have qualified for the use of the plural?)

"Thousands of people stood in a queue outside Sam’s Club at Trinity Point Saturday morning, many standing in line overnight, for a chance to see Sarah Palin and have her autograph a copy of her new book.

...

Sharon Jacobs of Greer, S.C., along with her sister, Amy Gerwing of Venetia, got into line about 8:30 p.m. Friday outside the store. For Gerwing, it was not only an opportunity to have her books signed but to thank Palin for the note she sent to the Peters Township woman when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Palin sent her a note offering words of encouragement from herself and her husband, Todd Palin. Gerwing said a friend of hers sent Palin an e-mail about her diagnosis. Palin sent the note a few weeks later.

Jacobs said while her sister is a big Palin supporter, she was ambivalent about the former Republican vice presidential nominee who may be pointing for her own run to the White House.

“I am trying to educate myself and learn more about her,” Jacobs said. 

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Why didn't the folksy note translate into unquestioning adoration for Palin, I wonder. Maybe Palin's early departure leaving 400-odd unsigned books at Noblesville, Indiana yesterday had them wondering about the wisdom of relying on Palin.

Also, some camped there overnight in their enthusiasm - at least 40 people were in line at 8:30 pm on Friday, as they formed new friendships over mutual admiration of Palin. "He said Palin is likable because she is a down-to-earth conservative woman. "She hunts," he added."

For this area,  like many others, is Hunter's Paradise, the land of the brave, the free, the 'bitter who cling to their guns and religion'.

Hiroshima - Nagasaki: Places to Avoid

No sitting US president has ever visited the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only major urban centers on earth that bear testimony to the effects of nuclear warfare. President Jimmy Carter went to Hiroshima as an ex-president. Nancy Pelosi is the highest ranking US official to have paid a visit to Hiroshima while in office. 

President Obama will visit Japan during his Asian trip. Obama is hugely popular there and his winning the Nobel Peace Prize had raised the hopes of Japanese citizens that he might become the first US president to set foot in one of the two cities that the Japanese consider the strongest case against future nuclear proliferation and for banning nuclear weapons altogether. But Obama's tight schedule includes only a brief stop in Tokyo with no time left to go to either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Obama did assure the Japanese press in an interview that he will one day visit both places during his presidency. Incidentally, no sitting Japanese prime minister has ever visited Pearl Harbor.

Two reports here and here.

The Light Bulb Factory in Hiroshima - Ground Zero on August 6, 1945

Maddy wants patient choice!

Babies and cute animals sell products. Congressman John Shadegg of Arizona set out to take that marketing ploy a bit too far, in fact nauseatingly so.  During last Saturday's debate on health care reform, he used an infant like a ventriloquist's dummy to make his case against publicly funded medical insurance. Even by the low standards of honesty and decency set by the Republicans, Rep Shadegg's exploitative grandstanding was cringeworthy. 

Meanwhile, the number of uninsured Arizonans is depressingly high and rising. 

 

 

"Nobel" does not always equal "Noble"

The Nobel Prize is awarded for extraordinary achievement, not for special wisdom or emotional maturity. One of this year's three Nobel laureates in chemistry is Venkatraman Ramakrishnan. Ramakrishnan is the seventh Indian born person to win this honor. Although he was born in India and received his early education there, he did his graduate studies and the subsequent research that led to the prize, in the US. The scientist is currently working in Cambridge, UK. Indians are understandably thrilled that a desi born scientist has been awarded the world's most famous prize. Congratulations have been pouring in from all over India, including a message from the country's president.

But instead of being pleased,the neo-Nobelist has complained bitterly about the outpouring of good wishes emanating from the country of his birth. Ramakrishnan is particularly miffed that the valedictory messages have "clogged up" his email account and that people he doesn't ever remember knowing are making up fictitious personal connections with his early life. The scientist is very annoyed that winning the Nobel Prize has opened the door for Indians to claim him as their native son, based just on the "accident of birth."

NEW DELHI: Nobel laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan has expressed disenchantment with people from India "bothering" him "clogging" up his email box and dubbed as "strange" their sudden urge to reach out to him.

"All sorts of people from India have been writing to me, clogging up my email box. It takes me an hour or two to just remove their mails," he said. He said the deluge of emails had buried important communications from colleagues or from journals concerning papers we have in press.

"Do these people have no consideration? It is OK to take pride in the event, but why bother me?" the 57-year-old Indian-American scientist wondered in an email interview said.

"There are also people who have never bothered to be in touch with me for decades who suddenly feel the urge to connect. I find this strange," said Ramakrishnan, who shared this year's Nobel Prize for Chemistry with two others.

He expressed anguish over "all sorts of lies" published about him in a section of the media that he went to school and pre-Science in Chidambaram, the Tamil Nadu temple town where he was born in 1952.

 "People I don't know, for example a Mr Govindrajan, claim that they were my teachers at Annamalai University which I never attended, since I left Chidambaram at the age of three," Ramakrishnan clarified.

Ramakrishnan said that it was a good thing if his winning the Nobel Prize encouraged people to read about the work, read books and take interest in science.

"But I, personally, am not important. The fact that I am of Indian origin is even less important. We are all human beings, and our nationality is simply an accident of birth," he said.

Ouch! Yeah Venky, pretty pathetic, those hero worshiping Indians. I am not a great fan of chest thumping patriotism and nationalistic pride myself and I admire you for rising above a narrow ethnic identity. But come on, haven't you seen any other group of people seeking allegiances with successful stars? Kenya (sometimes all of Africa) calls President Obama its own. Colin Powell's relatives in Jamaica proudly pointed out his ancestry when he became Secretary of State. And those two were born in the US. Isn't a celebration due when a native son or daughter does well on the world stage? Or is that too gauche a sentiment? Anyway, not to worry. The excitable Indians will soon forget you and your achievement in due time and latch on to some other celebrity. Fame is an ephemeral commodity. Too bad, you could not be gracious enough to enjoy it while it lasts.

A question to the linguists: Is it appropriate to call the good scientist a curmudgeon? Or at least a surl or a churl?  (Narayan indicated that the last two may be acceptable words)   

The Love of an Old Book (Sujatha)

It was a small volume tossed carelessly in with the rest of the frayed spines on the Public Library bookshelf :  "Love of Seven Dolls" by Paul Gallico.
He was one of my favorite authors as a teen, and this was one book that intrigued me, with a faded rendition of a full-skirted girl looking at what appeared to be a puppet show on the cover.
I borrowed it frequently, whenever I felt the urge, over the next several years. I must have been the only person in the city who took out that particular book, judging from my ability to always locate it on the shelf, whenever I wanted it.
The years passed, but it remained one of the books seared in my memory, even though the story, in retrospect, doesn't seem that remarkable now. On a rereading, some of the story seems rather dated, but the charm of the main plot still shines through.
After much deliberation, I decided to see if I could locate a new copy of it for my home library. It was out of print, only available through second-hand book sellers. So I turned to the likes of abebooks.com and alibris.com and placed an order for the least expensive hard-bound edition I could find.
The book arrived, among others that I had ordered at the same time. This had a faux leather cover, with the name of the book and the mysterious legend ALYCE PEKORS at the bottom right.
I couldn't resist checking for the name on Google. And, the history of this particular carefully-preserved copy fell in place.
The original owner of this book was Miss Alyce Pekors, the longest serving US civil servant in Singapore, who died in Michigan last November.
From a newsletter with a memorial article:
"Of course, much of the details of her “working” life prior to taking the administrative role with the Navy in Singapore were never discussed among her many friends. She brushed off enquiries with Lauren Bacall like aplomb. By her very nature, she was reminiscent of an interesting earlier era.
Whether it was her Isadora Duncan impersonation as she drove her vintage MG around town (of course, it wasn’t vintage when she first bought it), or her Givenchy and pearls Audrey Hepburn look when she entertained, Alyce was always one classy lady."
She must have loved the book very much to have taken pains to have the original paperback replaced by a custom hard-binding.
Now the book sits on my shelf, bringing with it a whiff of the chequered life of the one who owned it before me. We are strangely bound across space and time, through this slim black volume with gold lettering.

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Note:Cross-posted from Fluff'n'Stuff.

Addendum from the comments:
 I found the details about the particular copy of the book fascinating,
"Even more than the original book that led to this unexpected discovery of Alyce Pekors.
Here's what I pieced out from what I read about her. She was a huge fan of Hepburn and Leslie Caron (the latter acted in a 1953 movie called Lili, loosely based on the Gallico novelette.) In her career, she may in fact have been a precursor of sorts to the Valerie Plames, a hidden asset whose role can be never be revealed except in private. She was a bowling champion in S'pore long before I was even born, earning mention in the newspapers of the day.
It might have been wonderful to have known her in person, but I now have to settle for making a picture of her in my mind based on the obituaries."

Golconda (Sujatha)

The taxi winds around the narrow maze of roads leading up to the fort. It's a very democratic cross-section of the population that lines up to enter the grounds: at Rs.10 per ticket, this is a poor man's park, not just the haunt of the well-heeled. The lawns near the entrance are surprisingly green, well-watered even as an extended dry spell has been hovering over the city and suburbs. But further inside, the parterres look parched and dusty red.

(The photo above is by A.Gopalratnam)

As we climb the steps, we dip off to the side, under the erstwhile stables/bodyguard barracks. At the far end, a couple of cauldrons are cooking and a largish group of picnickers are seated in a row, partaking of the feast. (Is that the famed Hyderabadi biryani that I smell?)
We pass on, further up the steps to the main fort. A couple are marked with what I suspect to be red and yellow paint- it's too bright to be kumkum and turmeric. I wonder why, until a few steps later we are treated to the unexpected spectacle of a man cutting the head off a white rooster in front of a small make-shift altar at the step. Maybe a sacrifice to the goddess Jagadamba, who has a temple, even in this fort which was last controlled by the Muslim Qutb Shahi dynasty.
My kids and friends are shocked by the blood spilling out onto the step, and walk gingerly around the altar and rooster head, bemoaning the barbarianism. The man carefully washes the blood from the steps, and walks quickly away, clutching the rooster's body, that likely will be cooked as part of the Bonalu festival.
We stop the walk to the top of the hill, and retrace our steps towards another area where a Light and Sound show will be held. This is for the bonafide wealthier tourists, cost Rs.100 for an ordinary ticket and double that for the VIP Executive class ticket, which comes with free soft drinks. The path to the seats is fraught with the perils of Bat-smell and Bat-droppings, echoes from the cliff-swallows swooping around the cavernous ceilings, as we wait in line for the security queue. A uniformed policewoman diligently peeks into our handbags before nodding us in.
As we swelter in the last rays of the setting sun, batting mosquitoes and ticks away in vain, a couple of scrawny cats rush towards the nearby garbage can, disappearing almost entirely inside as they rummage for leftovers.
A squeal from the loudspeakers, and then a booming voice announces the start of the show. It is a well-written and re-enacted history of the occupants of the fort, starting with the Kakatiya kings who built it, to the Qutb Shahi rulers who maintained the longest control over it, tales of kings and singers and lovers and saints, all wiped away in the final blast of war for control of the fabled fort. The Golconda is impregnable to all onslaughts but that of treachery. The lighting is wonderfully synced with the stirring narration and dialogues.
The audience is alternately captivated by the narration, or nodding off when the too-long musical interludes commence.(I'm sure they must have paid the singers handsomely for their efforts, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the whole songs be played in their 6 -or-8-stanza entirety!)
We escape during the final soulful paean to the glories of the Telugu people, just minutes before the remaining mass of the audience tries to ooze through the narrow pathway back, through the Bat-zone.
Walking outside the fort towards the taxi, squeals of horror from the kids punctuate our path: We have just managed to step on masses of teeming cockroaches that are out for the evening's dinner, congregating in the manholes.
The verdict from the kids: Unmitigated disaster of an excursion, since they didn't like the sacrificial rooster, or the bat-smells or the cockroaches.
My verdict: A reminder that beyond all the tourist trappings, there is still an underlying India that is worth seeing in all its glory and squalor.
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Cross-posted from Fluff 'n' Stuff

Norman Borlaug: Scientist, Visionary, Humanitarian (1914 - 2009)

Norman Borlaug died of cancer last Saturday. Despite being the recipient of numerous national and international honors, the Nobel Prize, Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal among them, through his long and productive life Borlaug remained quiet, unassuming and mostly unknown to the public.  But the impact of his life's mission on the world is extraordinary. A tireless crusader against world hunger, he was better known in some developing countries whose agricultural methods he helped revolutionize, than in his own homeland. An excerpt from an obituary - a brief account of Borlaug's life, his achievements and the Green Revolution:

Norman Borlaug has, in the opinion of many experts, saved more human lives than any other individual in history. He was the grandfather of the “Green Revolution” in which, between 1961 and 1980, wheat crop yields doubled, tripled and sometimes quadrupled around the world. His experiments with hybrid wheat strains and nitrogenous fertiliser created strains of the staple food impervious to pests, bad weather and poor soil, enabling the world to support a far greater human population than many thought possible after the Second World War. Yet his methods and message fell out of favour, to the detriment of millions — especially in Africa.

In the mid-1950s Malthusian doomsayers saw the contrary trajectories of population growth and food production in South-East Asia and the Indian sub-continent and predicted catastrophic worldwide starvation, the denudation of forests and seas followed by an inevitable population crash. The reversal in the Third World’s agronomic fortunes was so sudden and so miraculous that many have since forgotten the holocaust forestalled — especially, in Borlaug’s view, the trendier sections of the green lobby which seek to impose organic food and “natural” production methods on the world’s poorest countries.

Norman Borlaug was born in 1914, the grandson of Norwegian immigrants, in Saude, near Cresco, Iowa. He worked on the family farm until 19, when he signed up for the National Youth Administration, one of Franklin Roosevelt’s “alphabet agencies” set up to combat poverty and despair during the Great Depression. His commitment secured him a place at the University of Minnesota in 1933, but he ran out of money. He transferred to the College of Agriculture’s forestry service and then joined the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the US Forestry Service. As a group leader with the CCC he was in charge of many recruits who were emaciated and starving; refugees from the great Dust Bowl that had laid waste to the plains of America from Texas to South Dakota. He said: “I saw how food changed them, and this left scars on me.” 

....

In April 2002 Borlaug signed a declaration with several environmental experts, including Patrick Moore, the co-founder of Greenpeace, in favour of “high-yield conservation”. The movement against trendy agricultural primitivism has since gained pace, yet the lack of respect paid to Borlaug’s teachings in recent years is astonishing in relation to his impact on human society. Many of those who rubbished his acheivements as a “brown revolution”, he said, were Utopians and elitists who had “never experienced the physical sensation of hunger”.

He won many international awards, but his own country was slow to give him credit. In July 2007 he was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, although the wording of the law by which it was awarded sought political mileage from his acheivements: “Dr Borlaug has saved more lives than any other person who has ever lived,” it stated. “And likely has saved more lives in the Islamic world than any other human being in history.”  

Here is the long list of honors and awards bestowed upon Norman Borlaug from all around the world. 

(Blogger's note: The posting here has been infrequent of late.  I have some ideas brewing but haven't had the time to flesh them out in blog posts due to travel and other pressing tasks. I have another trip coming up next week. Will try to get something out before that. Hopefully, other authors will find the time to write also in the midst of their busy schedules. Thanks for your patience.)

Racing through the Louvre (Sujatha)

From the New York Times a few weeks ago:

"Spending an idle morning watching people look at art is hardly a scientific experiment, but it rekindles a perennial question: What exactly are we looking for when we roam as tourists around museums? As with so many things right in front of us, the answer may be no less useful for being familiar."

Why indeed do we wander around museums? Is it the age-old quest for finding ourselves in our past, the thirst for knowledge? Or the window-shopper and street-gawker's instinct? Is it less about stopping and staring and more about bragging rights as in "I visited the Louvre, when we were last in Paris." Or maybe a combination of 'All of the Above"?
As a kid in Paris, I had been on school field trips to various sections of the Louvre, spending a few hours once in the Egyptian section, and another visit in the Greek section, but remember very little of what are considered to be its main attractions. My recent visit was an all new-experience,  reminding me that it was perhaps at the Louvre that I acquired my taste for museum-hopping no matter where in the world we went.

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Ah, the Louvre! The perfect place to loiter leisurely, gazing at John the Baptist's all-knowing smile, or perchance the mysterious magnificence of the Mona Lisa.That is, until the hordes of tourists and tour guides waving flags, assorted brochures and even umbrellas to keep their groups together, all trample over you in their eagerness to see the next item on the 'Da Vinci Code' tour.

The Monna Lisa was unreachable. A special line of the devoted faithful had to be stood in and endured, before you were able to partake of her timeless gaze at closer quarters. We settled for the distant view. Even hoisting my daughter onto her father's shoulders and placing a camera in her tiny fingers elicited an indignant "Not allowed" from a museum security official doing due diligence.

Never mind the barely visible main attraction- the huge painting of the Wedding Feast at Cana (Veronese) on the opposite side was quite a show-stopper, though precious few of the crowds milling around the Gioconda paid any attention to it.

With over 35,000 paintings and antiquities, we could have spent an entire month in the museum, but having only a day, we could only spend a paltry few minutes in each section, catching the 'highlighted items' suggested in the museum's brochure.
Then, we decided to linger in certain places, not quite the stuff of tourist lore, but quite fantastic nevertheless. The Persian section was eye-popping, with its huge capitals that took up so much room that one could barely imagine the size of the pillar that supported it.

A small crowd was milling around a rock edict which bore the Code of Hammurabi, with a prominently displayed French translation nearby- 'for X, off with the hand... for Y, off with the leg... for Z, off with the head..."- I provided a quick translation for my son: "...It's the Off-with-his-head school of justice",as an eavesdropping tourist nearby snickered in agreement.

The sculpture courtyard adjoining the Persian section was a relatively quiet place to recuperate from the milling crowds jostling to pose with the Winged Victory. I sat behind a statue of Hercules battling a gigantic snake , though not at a good vantage point (read, treated to a prominent view of the Derriere). I was reduced to sneaking peeks at the red charcoal drawing of the statue, which an art student was working on, right next to me. She had time to spare, tracing every contour with careful concentration, but tiring presently of her drawing, whipped out a cellphone and started a quiet conversation with a friend. So much for the slow version of museum enjoyment in the era of the cellphone.

My daughter wanted a drink of water, and the quest for a water fountain began in earnest. But the Louvre, being a palace more than a few centuries old, didn't have the requisite plumbing to handle the thirst of the trampling hordes, unlike the new-fangled shiny rest-roomed and water-fountained American museums. We waited in line desperately at the entrance to a crowded café in the museum, and 15 minutes after we made it in, a bored-looking waiter finally brought us a tiny cup of cappucino (10 Euros! Eeek!) and a bottle of Evian (3 Euros! Eeek-squared!). Next time we visited a Musée, we resolved to carry our own water, even if it was in a distinctly unfashionable recycled Fanta bottle.

The famed glass Pyramid was but a snatched glimpse through the windows of various wings, as we gaped our way through the luxurious apartments of Napoleon III. Then we redoubled our walk through the section of European painters, catching a few famous Rembrandt self-portraits in the process.

How did we manage to spend the better part of a day in a museum with my children who are notoriously allergic to museums? My teenager didn't complain much, having succumbed quite happily to the touristy notion of 'catching all the highlights' in the brochures. My 8-year old daughter was anointed the official photographer and religiously clicking away at everything in sight. Unfortunately, we only have a handful of usable pictures from her collection, but the camera was worth its price in gold, for the peace of mind and the Prime Whiner's busyness that it brought us.

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Cross-posted from Fluff-n-Stuff

The Ice House That Was'nt

I present here a longish excerpt from an essay by guest author Narayan Acharya (who goes by the name "narayan" in his writings). On a visit to India Narayan learnt about Elihu Yale's connections to the south Indian city of Madras (currently Chennai). He later traced Yale's footsteps from England to India and back in a book by Yale professor, Hiram Bingham. (Narayan's complete article can be found at Amardeep Singh's blog)

I, Eli & Hi

      - narayan

Madraspatnam / Medras / Chennai

Phonetics and orthography were at odds when the British named the city lately called Chennai. In 1639, factors of the Honourable East India Company (HEIC) trying to get a foothold on the South-Eastern coast of India, the Coromandel, leased land from the local Nayaks at Madraspatnam, a name of dubious origins. S. Muthiah, the popular-historian of Chennai, in his admirable and informative book "Madras Rediscovered”, says that it was by all accounts "a God forsaken place … a narrow protected peninsula [sic], but a site without a safe landing place". Francis Day, the junior factor, who was "a hard-drinking, enthusiastic gambler and lusty womaniser", finalized the deal, justifying his choice with the report that the hinterland offered "excellent long Cloath and better cheape by 20 percent than anywhere else”. Plus ça change! Muthiah credits the senior factor, Andrew Cogan, with "encouraging the boisterous Day, making the first official landing, building the first fortified factory which was to grow into Fort St. George, and colonizing the place – the result of which industry is Madras today". Neither Cogan and Day, nor their Indian aides, Thimmappa and Nagabattan, are memorialized anywhere in the city.

My 1980 trip to Medras (which native ever pronounced it otherwise?) was doomed from the start, a favor to a well-meaning uncle. I spent the morning on the verandah of a mansion, stretching out polite conversation with a taciturn woman, a scientist with a PhD from Europe, past marriageable age like myself. She too had a well-meaning uncle as I soon surmised. I had to catch a bus to Pondy in four hours and was determined to wait it out. Watching the sly antics of a chhipkali in the bushes outside helped. There was a brief interview with the ageing father, then the special lunch for the prospective son-in-law. She insisted on accompanying me to the bus station in their chauffeured Ambassador with cloth covered seats. In her relief at my departure she became voluble, pointing out landmarks to me as we skirted Marina Beach, the one place I remembered from occasional family trips in childhood. At one point she pointed to a large brick structure and said, "And that’s Yale’s Ice House". Seconds later I reacted, "What do you mean – Yale?" "You know, Yale – from the university. He was Governor here."

Kafka would have wept at the struggle at the bus station just to buy a ticket; he would have soiled his pants on the bus ride back from Pondy. Understandably, I forgot all about the Medras fiasco until I was safely back in Boston. Months later, while browsing through the stacks at the public library, I came upon Hiram Bingham’s 1939 book "Elihu Yale - The American Nabob of Queen Square". Excuse me? Shouldn’t that be "Welsh Nabob of Medras"? After a prefatory nod to Kipling, a man who had never ventured south of the Vindhyas, Bingham begins : "Before the War it was exciting to go and find behind the ranges of the Andes the white temples of Machu Picchu and the palace of the last of the Incas." More about this later.

Yale

Elihu Yale’s father David, unmarried at twenty-three, emigrated from Wales to Boston, with his mother Anne, two siblings, his stepfather Theophilus Eaton, and two Eaton children. Shortly after, they moved to the new settlement of New Haven, then back to Boston after six years of domestic and social instability. David married at thirty and engaged in trade, but chafing at the theocratic rule of the Massachusetts Bay Colony decided to try his luck in Cromwell’s England. Elihu, David’s second child, was three in 1652 when he left Boston; he never set foot in America again. David succeeded in trade and became a man of property. He used his influence to get Elihu a berth in the HEIC as a Writer, paying a bond of £500 for the privilege.

When he set foot in Fort St. George in June 1672 after a six month voyage from England, Elihu was twenty three and at the bottom rung of the company. By the time he left India in February 1699 he had become Governor of the colony, only to be recalled under a cloud of suspicion. The story of the intervening years is Bingham’s to tell; it would be foolish of me to attempt a précis here. Rushdie and Swift together could not have conjured up the Munchausenesque events, intrigue, and personalities that inhabit the two hundred pages of Bingham’s book that detail Elihu’s twenty-seven year tenure in India.

Personal and Political, Though Only As A Tourist (Anna)

A photo I took of some Uighur men, at their request, on the Southern Silk Road in Summer 2006. More photos here. Some ruminations after the break.

Moonwalks (Sujatha)

 RIP, Michael Jackson.

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 Buzz Aldrin wanted to be the first Moonwalker, but thwarted, in the final moments, by simple logistics.

"In the end the decision came down to logistics. The lunar landing craft's hatch was located on Armstrong's side. It would have too cumbersome, and perhaps even dangerous, for Aldrin to have climbed over his mission mate, so Armstrong went first."

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Here's a Mr.Bean who is a real artist, as opposed to a mere curator.

 "It has been nearly 40 years since Alan L. Bean walked on the moon as an Apollo astronaut, but he still wrestles with the experience every day, trying to recapture what he and other astronauts saw and felt in the medium of paint."

 

(The original Mr.Bean is of course, the one and only Rowan Atkinson.)

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DIY Electric Car: If you can't buy it, make it (Sujatha)

From the Indychannel:

Patrick Roth uses a fully electric car to take his daughter to school and run errands, 6News' Jennifer Carmack reported.The car may look like any ordinary Ford Escort, but a closer look reveals that it's anything but. Roth didn't buy the car that way. He built it himself

Here's a step by step link to how he did it, all at the cost of about $13,000, including the car.

Now again, why did GM kill the electric car?

Past-Modern Art (Sujatha)

A few weeks ago, I saw the intriguing works of twin painters Amrit and Rabindra, better known as the Singh Twins via Asian Window. They have applied the techniques of Indian miniatures to contemporary Indo-British life, making for an intriguing and what they like to term a 'Past Modern' approach to painting.

They use the same vivid and highly detailed composition and techniques as the Indian miniaturists of yore, examplified here in the Padshahnama pictures of court life in the age of the Mughals.

Travellers (Sujatha)

I had been recently asked to translate the lines from an 18th century Tamil poem, written in the lingo of the Koravas or Narikoravas, an itinerant tribe often termed the 'Gypsies of South India'.As I researched verse after verse, I found some very interesting essays and commentaries about their history and traditions.

Today Kurava people in the area are officially prohibited from even going into the mountains to collect materials for basketry and broom-making, an occupation that provides a large portion of their meager income. Did the differential literary portrayals, in works like Kutrala Kuravanji, of Kurava people and of wealthy, powerful landowners and little kings factor into justifications for dispossessing real people from their ancestral homes? Literature and entertainment styles and forms from other times and places have clearly played such a role in justifying dispossession. Might Kavirayar’s portrayals have served the expansionist needs of little kings and big landowners by painting Kurava people as so markedly different from those powerful people, indeed painting them as untamed, independent, and silly, that they might seem perhaps unworthy of ownership rights?

Here is a more recent article about their current status as a protected tribal group.

Gypsies used to wander from place to place for their livelihood, receiving sustenance from hunting in whichever region they moved to. “Those belonging to the gypsy communities still have no skill but that of hunting, like their forefathers, who lived in forests and had plenty of game to hunt. Now, hunting is illegal. And since development too has passed them by,  the gypsies lead a precarious existence,” Siva says. While some like the sparrow hunters manage to make a living by hunting and selling beads, many of them live on the alms of travellers and passersby.

Many hundreds of years ago, they claimed hunting-gathering rights in the hills of what are now Tamil Nadu,Kerala, and Karnataka states, awarding the rights over the hills to the various clans in their tribes, a fact frequently referred to in the poem, as well.

Now, they have in general, been banned from those very hills, as practitioners of slash-and-burn style agriculture and inveterate hunting, detrimental to the beauty of the forests, never mind that their numbers are too small to cause significant damage.

Many in this group have been cut off from their nomadic ways, and lead more settled lives, but at the cost of taming the wanderlust which still holds a strong sway over them.

I still remember the harshly musical "Kallukothanundo, ammikal kothanundo, aattukal kuthanundo"  (Do you have grinding stones to be resurfaced?)that the korava woman used to call out, walking the streets of the neighborhood in her swinging skirts, baby with sun-browned hair peering out of the sling on her back. Despite the life of dire poverty, there was always a gracious beauty to these women, going house to house selling small trinkets or resurfacing granite grindstones with their little iron awls and mallets, watched over with an eagle eye by the housewives, who mistrusted their reputation for 'light fingers'. Work done, they would haggle over the price, finally settling for whatever they could extract, milking whatever pity they could muster for their runny-nosed little ones.

They were soothsayers too.

I vividly recall the time when I visited Thiruchendur, a seaside temple, with my parents. We were enjoying the bracing sea breeze one evening when a kurathi came up and insisted on reading my mother's palm. I was about 13 years old at the time. She took a look at my mother's palm and had us close to collapsing in laughter when she predicted that my mother would have another child.
"Look at her," my mother said, pointing to me. "That's my child, and my only one." I was taller than her at this age. "Are you saying that I will have another after all these years?" We were incredulous.
"Amma, I have never made false predictions in my life. You will see. You will be back here in two years to look for me and thank me."
Two years later, we were there... for my baby sister's first birthday ritual hair offering. We looked for the kurathi, but never did find her. She must have moved with the wind, in the manner of her people.

Sukrita

My sister-in-law Sukrita Paul Kumar's profile, poems and paintings in the Houston Literary Review.

Math Art

Long time reader and family friend, Jatinder Bhatia has sent me the link to an upcoming Math-Art exhibition in Washington D.C. (Dean, don't throw up your hands yet!)  The interesting thing about the exhibition seems to be that the mathematically inclined artists have deliberately expressed math concepts as "real' art. While most of the pieces are two or three dimensional visual depictions, I also came across at least one poem (see JoAnne Growney). For the list of selected artists and links to their works, see here.

Jatinder's friend Suman Vaze is one of the featured artists whose acrylic on canvas painting, Monge's Theorem (see image below) will be on display at the Math-Art exhibition. Suman is a high school mathematics teacher in Hong Kong and she describes her love of art and math thus:

  "I seek to depict interesting mathematical truths, curiosities and puzzles in simple, visually descriptive ways. Mathematical amusements inspire the color and form in my paintings, and I try to strike a balance between the simplicity of the concepts and their depiction in art. The logic and balance of the discipline is beautiful, and I like art that both stills and stimulates the mind – these are the qualities I strive to capture in my work."

Congratulations, Suman and thanks, Jatinder!

(Image posted here with the permission of the artist)

I Think I know... (Sujatha)

why Barack Obama decided to announce that his middle name was Steve in the Alfred E. Smith dinner.

Could this be a reason why? Maybe not, but it would be fun if it were.

"NCSE's "Project Steve" is a tongue-in-cheek parody of a long-standing creationist tradition of amassing lists of "scientists who doubt evolution" or "scientists who dissent from Darwinism."

The catch is, that to become an NCSE Steve, you must be a Steve in name with any of its variations.

"Are you tired of being ignored by your colleagues at professional meetings?
Do your students yawn every time you begin a lecture?
Do neighbors not invite you to cocktail parties anymore because you always talk about dermestid beetles?
Well, my friend, you have the power to put a stop to that today simply by becoming an NCSE Steve. Why settle for being just another Jonathan, Michael, or William when you can be what you've always dreamed of being ... an NCSE Steve.
To see if you qualify, just answer these simple questions:

• Are you named Steve, Stephen, Steven, Esteban, Etienne, or Stephanie?
• Do you have a Ph.D. in biology, geology, paleontology, or a related scientific field?
• Do you want the kind of success in life you always thought was reserved for the "other Steves"?

If you answered yes to all three of these questions, then you have what it takes to become an NCSE Steve! "

Among the founders of Project Steve: Steven Chu, the next Secretary of Energy.

Mimi Radhakrishnan: Artist, Story Teller

On my last trip to India, I did not have an opportunity to go to an art gallery or museum but I did have two enjoyable art related encounters. One was the search I undertook for a recently published but hard- to- find book about my first art teacher, the late Abani Sen, which put me in touch with his son whom I had last seen as a school girl. The other was meeting artist Mimi Radhakrishnan who later pleasantly surprised me with a gift of the book I was looking for. 

Mimi is an artist and a published author of fiction. In fact, I had read her book of short stories several years before I met her in person. During a meeting in her home, I had the pleasure of touring Mimi's studio. I saw several finished paintings as well as some works in progress in preparation for an upcoming exhibition in 2009. (An added treat was viewing a few samples of her husband, renowned sculptor Radhakrishnan's superb creations)

Trained in Kalabhavan, the art school at the university founded by Rabindranath Tagore at  Shantiniketan, Mimi began her artistic career as a print maker. Her "crossover" to the realm of painting is thoroughly joyful and well received as attested to by the following profile.

We normally use two categories of artists- one trained in an art school as opposed to the naïve autodidact. But Mimi insists that even an artist, highly skilled in a specific medium, may step into the territory of the latter exemplified by her own transition from printmaking to painting. At the time of deep crisis while wrestling with the intractability of oil painting, she would draw strength from her memory, of what Ramkinker Baij used to tell his students about how he learnt about the technique of painting: it was from a salesman at the G C Laha paint shop in Calcutta that Kinker discovered the joy of oil painting and paints' changing texture and viscosity when mixed with linseed oil and turpentine!

So how would a printmaker handle paint? It is in this crucial question that I locate a contemporary concern in the disjuncture between her technique and her content. The technique of oil painting taken up by her allows direct contact with the surface of the canvas but the form that builds up under the execution of her brush draws from a repertoire of the always and already seen, known and experienced. In the Swirl Called China is a mis-en-scene of images considered Chinese in tourism brochures. No wonder that in the titles of her works, there is a recurring reference to “memory”. At the level of content, she registers the mediatedness, a necessary technical imperative in printmaking but now applied to a mode of representation. This makes her combine the expressionist potential of oil painting, essentially stroke based with a printmaker's obsession with the procedural, working from one palimpsest to another. Again, her writer's acumen of writing page after page translated well into painting layer after layer, as if a long narrative and strings of characters have been telescoped into a painterly spectacle.

Indeed. In executing her paintings, Mimi wears the additional hats of a print maker and story teller. Many of her paintings are framed by a "border" - like a sari or an embroidered shawl. The backgrounds  are textured with print like motifs - fish scales, floral, water lines. The story-like character of the compositions derives from the repetition of a theme over several canvases and titles like "Holding Dodo's Eggs in Despair" and "Masked Men in Conversation."  Characters appear and reappear through series of paintings. Friends meet at the foot of a mountain in one panel. They begin a journey in the next and reach a magical destination in the third. In one painting the bearded sage Chamatkari Baba lands among expectant devotees. Then they gather to celebrate with abandon. In the final canvas one of them receives the Baba's final blessings. There is a dream like quality to the paintings like the tales of a fabulist. In all of them, Mimi pointed out to me what the figures may be "thinking" and where they are "going."  Notice the three portraits I have posted below the fold. They belong to a series representing Muslim women of India with names like Dr. Jahanara Begum, Professor Nusrat Rizvi and Miss Niloufer, B.Sc. III Yr. The portraits are of imaginary women. Mimi gives them names and educational credentials that evoke real personalities and vocations. The two Istanbul pieces illustrate the artist's knack for mural like compositions, juxtaposing related human figures, artifacts and edifices as parts of a larger commentary.

Mimi's artistic eye and training spill over into her surroundings - in her tastefully designed home and the lush garden she has planted in her backyard, an unexpected and pleasing oasis amidst the overdeveloped urban south Delhi neighborhood. She is also an ardent and unapologetic cat lover. Three cats share her home and garden with Mimi. Her husband claims that during the course of the day she has more conversations with her tabby Baichung than she does with him. The title of her last exhibition (all the paintings posted here are from that show) was Twisted Tales - Between Images and Words. My second meeting with Mimi lasted a little over two hours. During that time she and I discussed our cats for nearly forty five minutes. That might strike some who don't understand cats, as a twisted tale of sorts!      

Please turn the page for the thumbnail images of some of Mimi's paintings - be sure to click for enlargement.
 

A Time to Rally (Sujatha)

(Cross-posted from Fluff' n' Stuff)

I nearly talked myself out of it quite successfully. I hate crowds and queues, I get migraines when I have to be in enclosed spaces for more than a couple of hours, couldn't manage the timing with the kids getting back from school, they were going to cover the event on live television and everyone know that you get a better view on HDTV anyway, so I would be better off watching it at home. And yet, barely four hours later, I was waiting with my son in midst of a crowd of about 13, 000 screaming and adoring fans of ...Barack Obama the political rockstar.

Lipstick on Pigs Part Deux (Sujatha)

With the difficulties Ruchira has been having trying to get out even short posts while in India, she has asked me to post this for her.

Ruchira:

A great illustration of putting lipstick on a pig.

It seems that the RNC spent money to dress up the entire Palin clan. So much for small town values and the maverick point of view.

The Republican National Committee has spent more than $150,000 to clothe and accessorize vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family since her surprise pick by John McCain in late August.

According to financial disclosure records, the accessorizing began in early September and included bills from Saks Fifth Avenue in St. Louis and New York for a combined $49,425.74.

The records also document a couple of big-time shopping trips to Neiman Marcus in Minneapolis, including one $75,062.63 spree in early September.

The RNC also spent $4,716.49 on hair and makeup through September after reporting no such costs in August.

Sujatha:

So, let's get this straight, this cool $150,000 in Palin family clothes funded by the generous donors to the RNC, combined with Senator McCain's $8000 makeup artist and $500 Ferragamo loafers, not to mention the tinfoilly possibility that Palin had some cosmetic surgery done in preparation for her VP bid, they are not Joe Sixpacks, as they like to style themselves, but made-up mavericks.

 

Update(less than 10 minutes later, such is the speed of the Internets!):
Damage Control Time:

McCain-Palin spokesperson Tracey Schmitt's response: "With all of the important issues facing the country right now, it's remarkable that we're spending time talking about pantsuits and blouses. It was always the intent that the clothing go to a charitable purpose after the campaign."

So, the prospective Veep will not need the clothes after the campaign is over ??? Color me puzzled.

And also, doggone it, why is talking about pantsuits and blouses any less important than the Ayers connection, considering the 'important issues facing the country right now' ? Will we talk about it? Yes we will because we can-  You betcha!

 

Paul Krugman wins the 2008 Nobel for Economics (Sujatha)

Paul Krugman has won this year's economics Nobel Prize.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/paul-krugman-wins-economics-nobel/?hp

(Thanks for the link, Ruchira.)

In a charmingly self-deprecating interview on the New York Times:

“For economists, this is a validation but not news. We know what each other have been up to,” Mr. Krugman said. “For readers of the column, maybe they will read a little more carefully when I’m being economistic, or maybe have a little more tolerance when I’m being boring.”

He said that he does not expect his critics to let him off any easier because of his new accolade, though.

“I think we’ve learned this when we see Joe Stiglitz writing,” Mr. Krugman said, referring to the winner of the economics Nobel in 2001. “I haven’t noticed him getting an easy time. People just say, ‘Sure, he’s a great Nobel laureate and he’s very smart, but he still doesn’t know what he’s talking about in this situation.’ I’m sure I’ll get the same thing.”

Update:

Despite Ruchira's and my suspicion that his recent prominence in denouncing the set of events that led to the market meltdown played a decisive role in confirming his win of the Nobel prize, the prize committee indicated otherwise:

Perhaps better known as a columnist than an economist to the public, Krugman has also come out forcefully against John McCain during the economic meltdown, saying the Republican presidential candidate is "more frightening now than he was a few weeks ago." Krugman (pronounced KROOG-man) also has derided the Republicans as becoming "the party of stupid."

Tore Ellingsen, a member of the prize committee, acknowledged that Krugman was an "opinion maker" but added that he was honored on the merits of his economic research, not his political commentary.

"We disregard everything except for the scientific merits," Ellingsen told The Associated Press.

The 55-year-old American economist was the lone winner of the 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) award and the latest in a string of American researchers to be honored. It was only the second time since 2000 that a single laureate won the prize, which is typically shared by two or three researchers.

Nobel Quibbles (Sujatha)

The Nobel prize for medicine this year has been awarded to HIV and HPV pioneers: Luc Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi of France (HIV)  and Harald zur Hausen of Germany (HPV).

"Luc Montagnier, director of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention, and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi of the Institut Pasteur won half the prize of 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.4 million) for discovering the virus that has killed 25 million people since it was identified in the 1980s.

Dr. Harald zur Hausen of the University of Duesseldorf and a former director of the German Cancer Research Center shared the other half of the prize for work that went against the established opinion about the cause of cervical cancer.

"The three laureates have discovered two new viruses of great importance and the result of that has led to an improved global health," said Jan Andersson, a member of the Nobel Assembly at Sweden's Karolinska Institute.

The discoveries made it possible to diagnose both infections, and led to the development of two vaccines that prevent cervical cancer, and more than 20 drugs that can keep HIV patients healthy."

But this isn't without controversy, as US researcher Robert Gallo feels that he should share credit with the French scientists for the discovery of HIV.

"U.S. researcher Dr. Robert Gallo was locked in a dispute with Montagnier in the 1980s over the relative importance of their roles in groundbreaking research into HIV and its role in AIDS. Gallo told The Associated Press that he was disappointed at not being included in the prize.

Montagnier told the AP in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, where he is attending an international AIDS conference, that he was still optimistic about conquering the disease.

The prize, he said, "encourages us all to keep going until we reach the goal at the end of this effort."

Montagnier said he wished the prize had also gone to Gallo.

"It is certain that he deserved this as much as us two," he said."

Nobel prizes cannot be shared by more than three awardees, and in this case, while Gallo's contribution to establishing the connection between HIV and AIDS and the technical advances to isolate the HIV were seminal, the Nobel prize committee decided that the work performed by Montagnier and Barre-Sinoussi in first discovering and characterizing the virus was more deserving.

Gallo's dispute with Montaigner over who should get credit for the HIV discovery goes back to the late '80's:

His dispute with Montagnier reached such a level in 1987 that then-President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Jacques Chirac of France penned an agreement dividing millions of dollars in royalties from the AIDS blood test. The settlement led to an agreement that officially credited the Gallo and Montagnier labs with co-discovering the virus.

In the 1990s, however, the U.S. government acknowledged that the French deserved a greater share of the royalties. The admission solidified the French position that Montagnier had isolated the virus in 1983, a year before Gallo.

It might be that Eurocentricism played a role in this selection (i.e. in keeping it between the French researchers, rather than splitting between Montagnier and Gallo), but disappointments and surprises aside, it definitely makes an interesting case for how to honor all those who were excluded from these prizes, despite their significant contributions to the various fields that are awarded Nobel prizes.

A little more detail about Harald zur Hausen's discovery that the Human Papilloma Virus is an etiologic agent in a variety of cancers, including cervical cancer, based on which vaccines have been recently developed and approved for use in the general population here in another pre-Nobel article:

In his early work, zur Hausen demonstrated that Burkitt's lymphoma cells contained Epstein-Barr viral DNA, thus proving that viruses can persist in human tumor cells, and are associated with tumor growth. Zur Hausen and his colleagues were also able to demonstrate the association of Epstein-Barr virus in epithelial cells of nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

...

In the 1970s and 1980s, zur Hausen provided the key investigative findings that led to the recognition that certain types of HPV are the etiologic agents of cervical cancer. This observation and the detailed studies that followed provided the basis for the extensive epidemiologic studies that independently validated the importance of these findings worldwide. Zur Hausen's subsequent research on the immunogenicity of this virus set the stage for the development of a vaccine.

"Dr. zur Hausen is responsible for a body of scientific research that laid the foundation for one of the most important events of the past year in cancer research and public health - the approval of an effective vaccine for HPV," said Margaret Foti, Ph.D., M.D. (h.c.), AACR chief executive officer. "We expect this vaccine will lead to a marked decrease in the incidence of cervical cancer and ultimately protect countless young women from this disease."

Zur Hausen's work has also linked HPV to several other cancers including laryngeal carcinoma, penile carcinoma, and epidermal dysplasia.

Gardasil, a controversial vaccine to guard against the HPV strains causing the majority of cervical cancer still hogs the limelight occasionally, more due to the reports of dire adverse reactions (dizziness, neuropathies or worse) which have been reported in a tiny fraction of the several million shots administered so far. Dr.Zur Hausen's work was undoubtedly the precursor which led to this vaccine being developed as a possible way to combat cervical cancer, even as its efficacy as a preventative therapy is still out before the jury.

Note: For those who might not have seen this, Ruchira's husband Dr. Sudhir Paul's research in discovering a possible avenue of attack against the HIV, is highlighted in this post on A.B.

Ike and Ruchira: Update (Sujatha)

I just spoke briefly with Ruchira a short while ago.While they are currently without power, there's no structural damage to the home and the water is still on. It may be a few days  before Ruchira gets back online, though.
She said that it was a very bad storm, the worst that she has ever been through. The power was restored relatively quickly to most of her neighborhood, except for her house and a couple of neighbors, who had downed trees near power lines that caused a blown transformer near them. She is not sure when the utility people will get to them, because other areas are currently higher priority. It could be a few days or even weeks depending on how bad the situation is in the worst affected areas. They may move to a hotel room if any become available, if the power isn't restored soon.

Lipstick Lines (Sujatha)

Too much lipstick on everybody's brains and the airwaves. (Word origin c. 1880,as per Merriam Webster Collegiate dictionary, history going back 5000 years all the way to ancient Egypt)  Whether it's on a pit bull or a pig or a Vice presidential candidate, it has exploded into the news cycle like nothing else, despite the amazing list of alternative stories to focus on. But I'll give in to this temptation and keep the lipstick on the top of the page, at least for today.

From Juan Cole:

"John McCain announced that he was running for president to confront the "transcendent challenge" of the 21st century, "radical Islamic extremism," contrasting it with "stability, tolerance and democracy." But the values of his handpicked running mate, Sarah Palin, more resemble those of Muslim fundamentalists than they do those of the Founding Fathers. On censorship, the teaching of creationism in schools, reproductive rights, attributing government policy to God's will and climate change, Palin agrees with Hamas and Saudi Arabia rather than supporting tolerance and democratic precepts. What is the difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist? Lipstick."

From the New York Times:

"Last week, Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska and vice presidential candidate, introduced herself to the Republican National Convention by asking a question: What’s the difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom, which is how she typically describes herself.

“Lipstick,” she said, in the line of the night.

Here in Lebanon today, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois also made his own lipstick allusion, drawing on a very old aphorism as he belittled attempts by Senator John McCain and Republicans to embrace the change mantle that has been central to his campaign.

“John McCain says he’s about change, too – except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s not change. That’s just calling the same thing something different. You can put lipstick on a pig – it’s still a pig.”"

--snip---

"Palin campaign spokesman Maria Comella: “Barack Obama’s comments today are offensive and disgraceful. He owes Governor Palin an apology “

Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki: “That expression is older than my grandfather’s grandfather and it means that you can dress something up but it doesn’t change what it is. He was talking pretty clearly about the fact that you can’t just call yourself change when you’ve voted with George Bush 90 percent of time.”"

Seriously, is the McCain campaign insulting Sarah Palin by claiming that Obama compared her, rather than the McCain policies, to a pig? I wonder why they would sabotage the perception of their own VP candidate by doing so. I think Sarah Palin ought to castigate her own campaign for being so foolish as to put lipstick on the McCain campaign pig, and point out that she, if anything, is the lipstick on the campaign, not the other way round. Or the pitbull with the lipstick, if she prefers the other mixed metaphor.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I do not use lipstick and have no pitbulls or pigs in this particular race for metaphors.)

Bubble Buster

See our own Andrew's review of economist Robert J. Shiller's new book The Subprime Solution, in The New York Observer.