Creative commons
thescian | October 27, 2007An appeal from Jimmy Wales, founder of wikipedia.
It'll be a shame if you let that charitable thought pass. Donate now.
thescian | October 25, 2007Let's talk politics. Shall we.
I just watched a video of a passionate young man willing to sponsor a democratic candidate. The video is on youtube, he has started a blog, and the news is out on the internet. No corporation can censure him for standing up to what he believes. It's unfortunate, and in the recent past a grave mistake, to have corporations masquerading as platforms for societal and national debates. Corporations follow the money. The money has turned direction and is heading back to your pocket. The new Network is yours, ours.
thescian | October 24, 2007I have been reading Primo Levi, that man who was sent to to vey core of inhumanity and returned more humane than anyone, that man who I am proud to look up for inspiration. There are only a few who can move us the way Levi does with his prose, his courage and his life. A few links to share.
A story (translated) published recently at New Yorker called A Tranquil Star.
Once upon a time, somewhere in the universe very far from here, lived a peaceful star, which moved peacefully in the immensity of the sky, surrounded by a crowd of peaceful planets about which we have not a thing to report. This…
thescian | October 19, 2007Read three novels in one week. (Why you ask? So I could nod knowingly tomorrow at a one day lecture course on reading modern fiction. See). Haven't done this sort of a thing since I was a wide-eyed teenager from the railway town Jolarpet who walked into his first proper library in the great city of Chennai. The original rush of youth has now been replaced with all the many layers of meaning that age adds to a reading experience. To the novels now.
'Never Let Me Go' by Kazuo Ishiguro
A novel set in an alternate/future world where clones are reared to accept, and in fact, believe, that donating…
thescian | October 17, 2007Go here. A free service that asks companies to stop sending paper catalogs to you. [via Joel On Software]
thescian | October 16, 2007By Ibrahim Lukman, a Syrian artist [via Spiegel]
A video of another installation.
Intense. Like a slap in the face.
thescian | October 12, 2007Advice from a very cool multi-lingual guy.
The first thing I advise people to do when they think they know a language well enough is to shut up. You don't learn a language to tell people what YOU think, you learn it to understand what THEY think. And hopefully what THEY think will change or enhance what I think..
Checkout this video (3rd part).
thescian | October 8, 2007 I've been re-reading JRD Tata's Keynote: Excerpts from his speeches and chairman's statements to shareholders. It's a collection of speeches JRD gave on various occasions that trace his thoughts on India, business and future. In a speech given on November 2, 1943, he spoke to the Bombay Rotary Club marking a decade of airmail service in India. He pioneered airmail service in India, and in fact piloted the first airmail service from Karachi to Bombay in 1932 carring sacks of mails in a tiny Puss Moth airplane (top speed 200 km/hr, woot!). What impressed me was his keen interest in science and…
thescian | October 4, 2007RIAA, the music industry's mouth-piece and hired hand, sends you a message through this case:
Jammie Thomas, a single mother of two, was found liable Thursday for copyright infringement in the nation's first file-sharing case to go before a jury.
Twelve jurors here said the Minnesota woman must pay $9,250 for each of 24 shared songs that were the subject of the lawsuit, amounting to $222,000 in penalties.
It's time for people who make music and buy music to move on. Like what Radiohead have done. Go for indie music. Look at ccMixter. Let the dinosaurs go extinct.
thescian | October 4, 2007 Reading it at the moment. A novel set in a single day of a neurosurgean's life. Brilliant and poetic.
An excerpt from the excerpt at New Yorker.
The culmination of today's list was the removal of a pilocytic astrocytoma from a fourteen-year-old Nigerian girl who lived in Brixton with her aunt and uncle, a Church of England vicar. The tumor was best reached through the back of the head, by an infratentorial supracerebellar route, with the anesthetized patient in a sitting position. This created special problems for Jay Strauss, for there was a possibility of air entering a vein and causing…
thescian | October 3, 2007The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted.
-Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice. Act. v. Sc. 1
"When people hear good music, it makes them homesick for something they never had, and never will have."- Edgar Watson Howe
Andrea Bocelli & Sarah Brightman, Time To Say Goodbye
Andrea Bocelli, "Can't Help Falling In Love"
Russell Watson, Volare
thescian | October 1, 2007After days of agonising over the characters, phrases and storylines, you finally sent in the story for the contest. Phew! Well done. Thanks to the nineteen writers who have taken time to participate.
I will begin reading the stories in a few days. Once the selection of winners is complete, I will email all the authors with my comments. Before publication, I plan to work with the authors of all good stories (not just the winners) on polishing their stories - if they are open to my suggestions, that is. This is the part where I put on my editor's cap, wade in, and muddle the puddle, so to say.…
thescian | September 25, 2007 One of the things that rot any totalitarian regime from within is its inability to keep the route to reform open. The burmese Junta is one such rotting regime. While it's neighbors, which includes India, prefer to sit by the sidelines and watch (the Junta is the gatekeeper and preserver of India energy interests in Burma), burmese monks have been protesting peacefully in the face of certain voilence against them. As a Irrawaddy headline states, the Junta needs a grave warning from the world community.
thescian | September 24, 2007The latest essay is out at TheScian.com. As I've done for the past few essays, this too has been subjected to yours truly's vocal excess. Thanks to Sunil for reading a very early draft and saving me from some glaring mistakes.
Our queue was frozen in time. We seemed to have entered an amnesiac queue that had forgotten its frail human constituents who needed to pee regularly. Cold was diffusing rapidly through my skull suffocating the brain. Ramya needed to revive her brain too; she had been rapturously staring at a road marking for the past five minutes. We were letting entropy win. We were…
thescian | September 20, 2007This is how hassled ground troops working for large corporations cover their rears - they shoot grandpas and babies. Beebs reports that a Supermarket staff refused to sell alcohol to a white-haired 72-year-old man - because he would not confirm he was over 21.
"I felt like saying 'What do I look like? Are you a fool?'
"He picks up the wine and, in the manner of a child taking home his ball, says 'Well, we won't serve you'."
A child taking home his ball! :-)