Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
"Flood"
I woke to a voice within the room. perhaps.~Eliza Griswold
The room itself: "You're wasting this life
expecting disappointment."
I packed my bag in the night
and peered in its leather belly
to count the essentials.
Nothing is essential.
To the east, the flood has begun.
Men call to each other on the water
for the comfort of voices.
Love surprises us.
It ends.
"How Am I Doing, Really?"
You do not want me to answer that,~Jane Yolen
for it would mean peeling back my skin
splitting open my chest bones,
revealing a heart that still beats
though it is half the size it once was.
It would mean sawing off the top of my skull
and shaking out pieces of my brain
which hardly functions right, left
are memories, the latest ones first,
like daguerreotypes nestled in a velvet lining,
you dead on the bed, your head to one side,
mouth open, an image that is with me always.
How am I doing, really? Really well
on the outside, so that everyone seeing me
murmurs, "So brave, so astonishing,"
while inside I am climbing onto that last bed,
spooning my body around yours,
and dying even more slowly than you did.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Friday, January 13, 2012
Thoughts on the Plane from Portugal to the Netherlands
When travelling, you talk about your country a lot. Personally, I´m a bit tired of country talk. I wish I could refer to where I´m from by latitude and longitude, by the position of the sun, moon and stars, by the soil under my feet, the landscape that surrounds me, and the energy that influences me, people and non-people, material and non-material. At every point in time. Explaining where I am from and what I do is tiring me.
But I have realised many things from all the India-talk. The foremost being that India isn´t meant to be a country and it is indeed a sub-continent. My flatmate and close friend Radha is from the Northeast of India (Assam) and she´s brought up the feeling of un-belonging to India several times. When explaining why Hindi isn´t spoken all over India I have realized why Hindi isn´t spoken all over India. When explaining why I speak Native-like English, I´ve understood the extent of British influence. When explaining our education system, I´ve realised that it both is and isn´t our education system. When I saw how similar Goa is to Portugal, I can´t even describe the feeling because I am still feeling it.
All these discussions and many many more have led me to believe that we need to rethink how the government of India operates to be a collaborative, cooperative, and cultural unit. The government of India is also very young. Not even 65 years old. And in the forming-storming-norming-performing cycle, it is only at the beginning of the storm. And I think the youth of India (including me) need to realise this picture quite clearly. Realise who we were, who we are, and who we will become if we continue in a state of apathy and selfishness. And instead of being stuck in the definitions of others, for example democracy, capitalism, economics, the minds of India need to pull their act together and define something that suits our inherent senses and sensibilities, our intuitions and emotions, our peacefulness and vibrancy.
We have such nice hearts and souls and we are so wonderfully flexible. We need to see all that we have instead of continously measuring ourselves by Western standards. We need to see that we are quite good at natural formations and disordered order instead of destroying our flexibility of life through corporatism and capitalism and our fake democracy.
The number of my friends who have left India to go abroad is something that has disturbed me for the last 10 years. I feel if they had this picture of the life cycle of a country, perhaps their reasons would have been different. I´m not sad about globalization and our ability to kind-of choose a lifestyle that we want. I love that so perceived freedom. Diversity and mixing is amazing. Travellers will always travel. Seekers will always seek. Adapters will always adapt. I am sad about those who leave for better opportunities and begin a life of not-so-happiness because they haven´t found it but have made too much of an investment to keep looking. Especially since I know how much opportunity lies within our land itself. I am sad for those who are lost and aren´t moving in the direction of balance and centeredness.
The country of Portugal is in its so-called economic crisis. Isa, a Portuguese friend, had such a great attitude to the gigantic increase in taxes effective a few days ago. She said, our minister said it will only last for 2 years and then it will all be ok. The country of Portugal is quite involved in the welfare of its citizens and Isa trusts her governance system. I have no such trust in the Indian governance system. I don´t trust that they have the best interest of its people in mind and I don´t trust the direction it is taking India in. Modern India is hell bent on forgetting Indian culture, doing more to undermine it than to enrich it. And our people (including me) and government is letting that happen more and more everyday. For what? What is the plan? Is there a plan? Why don´t I know it? How do I find it?
I have often thought that the distance between me and my government is so far that whatever I say or do won´t make a difference. For the first time today I have realised that the distance between me and the policy makers of my country need not be soo far. It need not be impossible. Now I just need to find out about how to make it possible.
But I have realised many things from all the India-talk. The foremost being that India isn´t meant to be a country and it is indeed a sub-continent. My flatmate and close friend Radha is from the Northeast of India (Assam) and she´s brought up the feeling of un-belonging to India several times. When explaining why Hindi isn´t spoken all over India I have realized why Hindi isn´t spoken all over India. When explaining why I speak Native-like English, I´ve understood the extent of British influence. When explaining our education system, I´ve realised that it both is and isn´t our education system. When I saw how similar Goa is to Portugal, I can´t even describe the feeling because I am still feeling it.
All these discussions and many many more have led me to believe that we need to rethink how the government of India operates to be a collaborative, cooperative, and cultural unit. The government of India is also very young. Not even 65 years old. And in the forming-storming-norming-performing cycle, it is only at the beginning of the storm. And I think the youth of India (including me) need to realise this picture quite clearly. Realise who we were, who we are, and who we will become if we continue in a state of apathy and selfishness. And instead of being stuck in the definitions of others, for example democracy, capitalism, economics, the minds of India need to pull their act together and define something that suits our inherent senses and sensibilities, our intuitions and emotions, our peacefulness and vibrancy.
We have such nice hearts and souls and we are so wonderfully flexible. We need to see all that we have instead of continously measuring ourselves by Western standards. We need to see that we are quite good at natural formations and disordered order instead of destroying our flexibility of life through corporatism and capitalism and our fake democracy.
The number of my friends who have left India to go abroad is something that has disturbed me for the last 10 years. I feel if they had this picture of the life cycle of a country, perhaps their reasons would have been different. I´m not sad about globalization and our ability to kind-of choose a lifestyle that we want. I love that so perceived freedom. Diversity and mixing is amazing. Travellers will always travel. Seekers will always seek. Adapters will always adapt. I am sad about those who leave for better opportunities and begin a life of not-so-happiness because they haven´t found it but have made too much of an investment to keep looking. Especially since I know how much opportunity lies within our land itself. I am sad for those who are lost and aren´t moving in the direction of balance and centeredness.
The country of Portugal is in its so-called economic crisis. Isa, a Portuguese friend, had such a great attitude to the gigantic increase in taxes effective a few days ago. She said, our minister said it will only last for 2 years and then it will all be ok. The country of Portugal is quite involved in the welfare of its citizens and Isa trusts her governance system. I have no such trust in the Indian governance system. I don´t trust that they have the best interest of its people in mind and I don´t trust the direction it is taking India in. Modern India is hell bent on forgetting Indian culture, doing more to undermine it than to enrich it. And our people (including me) and government is letting that happen more and more everyday. For what? What is the plan? Is there a plan? Why don´t I know it? How do I find it?
I have often thought that the distance between me and my government is so far that whatever I say or do won´t make a difference. For the first time today I have realised that the distance between me and the policy makers of my country need not be soo far. It need not be impossible. Now I just need to find out about how to make it possible.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Friday, December 30, 2011
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Nassim Haramein on Sacred Geometry & Unified Fields
Last night, I watched this documentary, which talks of a geometry/pattern as a unified field. Nassim brings up a lot of topics that I've wondered about: role of assumptions in science equations (the build up that's been neglected), the observation/derivation of constants, the hidden patterns, and the mystery of the big and small looking much the same. I need to look into the physics more deeply for comparisons, but I did notice that some of his facts were off by some orders of magnitude. What I'm really interested to know is how different is this from what physics is already chasing. In this particular talk, he too limits himself to the how rather than the why.
This talk gives a great idea for journals like Science and Nature or perhaps publishers like Elsevier to start "Science Talks" at a generalist audience where they feature the breakthrough science discoveries as explained by the discoverers. The talk then can be recorded and put online for the world. It would make a big difference in closing this gap between science and the public.
A major obstacle right now in informal learning is the language and format of scientific literature. To reach a wider audience, and for the wider audience to see the novelty and spark further creation given their own limitations of time, videos and talks have shown to be successful in transmitting complex information in an engaging format. So it could be a start.
A lot of scientists are invited to TED Talks and even Google Talks, but this concept should be tied into the authors more deeply, a step towards bringing Science Shows back into fashion. We may not have the 3D theatrics of the 1800s, but our computers can do a lot :)
This talk gives a great idea for journals like Science and Nature or perhaps publishers like Elsevier to start "Science Talks" at a generalist audience where they feature the breakthrough science discoveries as explained by the discoverers. The talk then can be recorded and put online for the world. It would make a big difference in closing this gap between science and the public.
A major obstacle right now in informal learning is the language and format of scientific literature. To reach a wider audience, and for the wider audience to see the novelty and spark further creation given their own limitations of time, videos and talks have shown to be successful in transmitting complex information in an engaging format. So it could be a start.
A lot of scientists are invited to TED Talks and even Google Talks, but this concept should be tied into the authors more deeply, a step towards bringing Science Shows back into fashion. We may not have the 3D theatrics of the 1800s, but our computers can do a lot :)
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Why is Using Others' Work so Problematic in the Western Academic World?
I've been wondering about this obsession of attribution of ideas (in particular, those of scientific value rather than economic value). I see most pros, especially those related to communication/collaboration on future work, any monetary gains due, validity of the idea in the first place, and so on. However, what are the cons to this system and have we made provisions for minimizing them?
Considering that most humans are so little self and so much influence, more so in today's law-based society, the extent of emphasis paid to individual contributions particularly in science is something non-intuitive to me. On the one hand, science goes out of its way to talk about the science and not the "person/people" behind the science in the publications themselves, and on the other, scientists are always in a race to be acknowledged as the first. Just to clarify, I'm a fan of the individual (to a certain extent) but I fail to fully understand why this attribution is important on a historical timescale (say 100 years) if we aren't going to draw hypotheses or conclusions on the person/people behind the science to advance the process of scientific thought (which we don't really do). For example, the scientific method, "a method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses," (Wiki) is still the only method of science. My problem would be the word "systematic" because a lot of the reading that I've been doing on these so-called geniuses in science seem far from systematic in their approach to life.
Today, I came across this super clear explanation, which kind of puts things into perspective for me. But this thought is definitely something I would like to revisit, evaluating if and what you are losing because of this obsession (time, progress?), and what are you gaining from it?
---------------------
Source: http://www.umass.edu/cie/Themes/APARules-3rd%20ed.pdf
There are widely varying cultural assumptions about how knowledge is created and legitimated, and varying norms about the treatment of existing writings by subsequent authors. The Western academic world is highly individualistic and places emphasis on being able to judge and give credit for the work of each student or researcher. "World majority" students from collectivist societies come from nations where one's experiences, thoughts and ideas are interwoven with those of others, both living and dead (Fox, 1994, p. 37). For them, the idea that one must sort out which individual is associated with each idea is both novel and incomprehensible.
Some of you may have been taught that your own words are not important, that scholarship consists of knowing and using the words of well-respected authorities. Others of you may come from cultures where claiming individual credit is inappropriate, where such behavior is seen as putting yourself forward in undesirable ways. For some, writing has always meant finding and using the writings of others. Being a student in a U.S. university may require that you make adjustments in your assumptions about knowledge, ownership and individual work because these may differ from the academic rules for scholarship in U.S. institutions.
Because Western culture is individualistic, it places value on being clear about which individuals created an idea or wrote about it. Similarly, written words are viewed in some sense as belonging to the individual who wrote them.
---------------------
(and I'm from the latter school of thought)
Considering that most humans are so little self and so much influence, more so in today's law-based society, the extent of emphasis paid to individual contributions particularly in science is something non-intuitive to me. On the one hand, science goes out of its way to talk about the science and not the "person/people" behind the science in the publications themselves, and on the other, scientists are always in a race to be acknowledged as the first. Just to clarify, I'm a fan of the individual (to a certain extent) but I fail to fully understand why this attribution is important on a historical timescale (say 100 years) if we aren't going to draw hypotheses or conclusions on the person/people behind the science to advance the process of scientific thought (which we don't really do). For example, the scientific method, "a method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses," (Wiki) is still the only method of science. My problem would be the word "systematic" because a lot of the reading that I've been doing on these so-called geniuses in science seem far from systematic in their approach to life.
Today, I came across this super clear explanation, which kind of puts things into perspective for me. But this thought is definitely something I would like to revisit, evaluating if and what you are losing because of this obsession (time, progress?), and what are you gaining from it?
---------------------
Source: http://www.umass.edu/cie/Themes/APARules-3rd%20ed.pdf
There are widely varying cultural assumptions about how knowledge is created and legitimated, and varying norms about the treatment of existing writings by subsequent authors. The Western academic world is highly individualistic and places emphasis on being able to judge and give credit for the work of each student or researcher. "World majority" students from collectivist societies come from nations where one's experiences, thoughts and ideas are interwoven with those of others, both living and dead (Fox, 1994, p. 37). For them, the idea that one must sort out which individual is associated with each idea is both novel and incomprehensible.
In contrast to our [U.S.] emphasis on individual effort and personal success, where children learn to think of themselves as "I" instead of "we," where shades of individual opinion are carefully studied and singled out for praise or criticism, collectivist societies teach that in group harmony lie security, contact, comfort, and identity. (Fox, 1994, p. 36)
Some of you may have been taught that your own words are not important, that scholarship consists of knowing and using the words of well-respected authorities. Others of you may come from cultures where claiming individual credit is inappropriate, where such behavior is seen as putting yourself forward in undesirable ways. For some, writing has always meant finding and using the writings of others. Being a student in a U.S. university may require that you make adjustments in your assumptions about knowledge, ownership and individual work because these may differ from the academic rules for scholarship in U.S. institutions.
Because Western culture is individualistic, it places value on being clear about which individuals created an idea or wrote about it. Similarly, written words are viewed in some sense as belonging to the individual who wrote them.
---------------------
(and I'm from the latter school of thought)
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Ahem
So I went for a haircut today and the stylist asked me if I was from India.
So I said yes and was generally chatting. Then she said: Isn't India very poor and dirty? So I clarified the situation of how to imagine India when your world view is that of a typical closed-minded Dutch-e. She went on to ask me bordering-on-racism questions like whether I intend to live in the Netherlands blah blah.
What I would like to say to her:
Netherlands: For a population of 16 million
India: For a population of 1.2 billion
PS: And the hair cut wasn't great either :)
So I said yes and was generally chatting. Then she said: Isn't India very poor and dirty? So I clarified the situation of how to imagine India when your world view is that of a typical closed-minded Dutch-e. She went on to ask me bordering-on-racism questions like whether I intend to live in the Netherlands blah blah.
What I would like to say to her:
Netherlands: For a population of 16 million
| Gross external debt | $373.3 billion (31 December 2009) |
|---|
India: For a population of 1.2 billion
| Gross external debt | $238 billion (31 December 2010 est.) |
|---|
PS: And the hair cut wasn't great either :)
"Mr. Attila"
Source: Haynes: From alchemy to artificial intelligence
Public Understand. Sci. 12 (2003) 243-253
Albert Einstein so successfully cast himself in the role of benign, absent-minded genius that his involvement at a theoretical level in the development of nuclear weapons was glossed over, overshadowed by the one formula that everyone remembers. But the poet Carl Sandburg was not deceived. In his black poem dated, significantly, August 1945 he presented a seemingly harmless, absent-minded atomic physicist, Mr. Attila.
[August, 1945]
Public Understand. Sci. 12 (2003) 243-253
Albert Einstein so successfully cast himself in the role of benign, absent-minded genius that his involvement at a theoretical level in the development of nuclear weapons was glossed over, overshadowed by the one formula that everyone remembers. But the poet Carl Sandburg was not deceived. In his black poem dated, significantly, August 1945 he presented a seemingly harmless, absent-minded atomic physicist, Mr. Attila.
They made a myth of you, professor,Carl Sandburg
you of the gentle voice,
the books, the specs,
the furitive rabbit manners
in the mortar-board cap
and the medieval gown.
They didn’t think it, eh professor?
On account of you’re so absent-minded,
you bumping into the tree and saying,
“Excuse me, I thought you were a tree,”
passing on again black and absent-minded.
Now it’s “Mr. Attila, how do you do?”
Do you pack wallops of wholesale death?
Are you the practical dynamic son-of-a-gun?
Have you come through with a few abstractions?
Is it you Mr. Attila we hear saying,
“I beg your pardon but we believe we have made
some degree of progress on the residual
qualities of the atom”?
[August, 1945]
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Thought of the Day
Science is something special that stems from curiosity. Philosophy is science’s mother. Science was first (and still is) at unrest with religion and now it’s at unrest again, or steered by economics (sort of losing itself in the process). Science should wear a different attitude that’s more “why” seeking and not just “how” seeking.
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