On The Ning Nang Nong

Refute or Ridicule

Often, I am sent a scare-mongering forward and I have two choices: refute or ridicule. I also have a third choice to retreat and ignore the forward. What is the prudent methodology to combat such conspiracy theories? For now, I still feel it is wise to retreat and ignore and pretend you have never read that forward and slough off those neurons.

Refute:

Bill Nye, the Science Guy, has a compassionate approach. What are you dealing with here? In a science hoax, the pseud has to reprogramme their worldview or dismiss the evidence during cognitive dissonance. The pseud/theorist invariably dismisses the evidence because reprogramming demands effort and strangeness. The theorist thereby is unwilling to drop their preconceived notions even when flashed with incontrovertible evidence. Our man Nye advises, 'tell them that you are uncomfortable with their talk and you are equally uncomfortable for having to correct them. But we are all in it together. We are all learning hence you have transcended that uneasiness in having to correct them because we are all in it together.' Will it work? I don't know.



Ridicule:

Few days ago I was reading "The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art" by Roger Kimball. I came across,

"As Nietzsche once observed, one does not “refute a sickness,” one resists it. In the face of blatant absurdity, ridicule is generally a more effective specific than argument. Condign ridicule can have a two-fold salubrious effect, chastening the object of ridicule while offering a gratifying catharsis for those who enjoy the spectacle. Similarly, common sense often provides more relief than a patient marshalling of reasons. When someone tells you that the moon is made of green cheese, you don’t argue about it, you just put the chap down as a crackpot and move on."

Should I tell them that I am uncomfortable to demonstrate to them that there is no loony green cheese or put the chap down as crack pot and move on? Refute or Ridicule? Again, I stack retreat and ignore very high as the best tactic among online demographics.

 

Wings of the Dove

At times, you come across formidable gents. People who scare you with their English and literary tropes and reasoning skills and trenchant analysis on general topics. You are intimidated by them. I am. I wonder, what would it take for me to scribble or even think or analyse an argument in the manner they do. I observe them. I follow them. But then these men seem to be inherently sharp. They are products of the best B-schools. They tolerate no trash and pretension.

Can I cultivate such grasp and interconnectedness they possess to splice together R Tressell ("The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists") and Roussel ("Locus Solus") and make sense and not sophistry in my talk. I don't know.

Once a while when someone recognises me and taps me as "hello, you are that girl", I am startled that they know me. They know me! I still cringe at the thought of my sustained ignorance for years, and for not having come across this reformative coven before or aspired something larger than my measly upbringing and indulgence in tawdry fiction.

Where were these people? Why did I meet them so late? I rue. But opportunities arise when we are ready for them. I forgive myself ...I try to strive again ...OK ...tell me what's that Rashomon not about Kurosawa but about Ryunosuke.

 

Little Gidding

A preference for what American linguists call “right-branching” sentences eases the cognitive load. Standard-issue sentences, in English, have subject-verb-object order: dog (subject) bites (verb) man (object). There are any number of elaborations on this, but the spine of your sentence, no matter how many limbs it grows, consists of those three things. (Or two if your verb, like “sleep” or “disappear”, doesn’t take an object.) Don’t lose sight of it.

If you have a huge series of modifying clauses before you reach the subject of the sentence, the reader’s brain is working harder; likewise, if you have a vast parenthesis between subject and verb or even verb and object. The reader’s brain has registered the subject (dog) and it is waiting for a verb so it can make sense of the sentence. Meanwhile, you’re distracting it by cramming ever more material into its working memory. “My dog, which I got last week because I’ve always wanted a dog and I heard from Fred – you know, Fred who works in the chip shop and had that injury last year three days after coming home from his holidays – that he was getting rid of his because his hours had changed and he couldn’t walk it as much as it wanted (very thoughtful, is Fred), bit me ...”

As often, TS Eliot shows us how not to do it: “In the uncertain hour before the morning/ Near the ending of interminable night/ At the recurrent end of the unending/ After the dark dove with the flickering tongue/ Had passed below the horizon of his homing/ While the dead leaves still rattled on like tin/ Over the asphalt where no other sound was/ Between three districts whence the smoke arose ...”

“Whence the smoke arose WHAT, already?” the reader wants to shout in his best Larry David voice. This sentence (it continues: “I met ...”) is a whole lot of gong and no dinner. Continued here.

Whence the smoke arose
I met one walking, loitering and hurried

 

People are confused with books. But I am paralysed when it comes to books. I mean, selection of books. After much groan and shuffle, I finalize two books: "Magic Of Reality" by Richard Dawkins and "I Contain Multitudes" by Ed Yong. I download from Amazon Kindle the samples of both these short-listed books to vet them and finally purchase just one book. I have three pages to decide the book to purchase. Richie usually drawls and Yongie is a new voice. So based on the index, I was about to download Yong's first book (mind you: he is a cool science writer at the Nat Geo having recently folded up his Not Exactly Rocket Science blog)

I said, I was about to and then I was distracted and landed at "Life of Insects" by Victor Pelevine.



"Set in a crumbling Soviet Black Sea resort, The Life of Insects with its motley cast of characters who exist simultaneously as human beings (racketeers, mystics, drug addicts and prostitutes) and as insects, extended the surreal comic range for which Pelevin's first novel Omon Ra was acclaimed by critics.!" -- Amazon Book Description

LoI is not a book on insects but a book about insects who are also humans. If that is not enticing, you need a good dose of imagination in your doped-up dreams. So, I jump-shiped from Ed Yong's to Victor Pelevin's boat. Alas! There is no ebook. I am weaned off from physical books. I earmark the book for future read when I fancy physical books again. Where was I? I am still left with no book in a welter of ambitions. You said, insects? A friend comes up with Jean-Henri Casimir Fabre. No, no Pelevine is not a entomologist. Wait, who is this Fabre? I look up him here.



In one of Fabre's most famous experiments, he arranged Pine Processionary caterpillars to form a continuous loop around the edge of a pot. As each caterpillar instinctively followed the silken trail of the caterpillars in front of it, the group moved around in a circle for seven days.

What happened after seven days? Did they jump off the pot or fell inside the pot or Fabre got tired of their disciplinary marvel. I proceed to his essays section. Interesting! Essays on bees, caterpillars, wasps and spiders.

I am still stricken with laboured confusion which now telegraphed into what essay to read. I chose "Spiders".

Finally, I have no book to read but pot-walking caterpillars and Thomisus the crab spider which walks sideways. I slash my fickleness and download Ed Yong's "I contain multitudes" as the weekend read.



Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

- Song of Myself By Walt Whitman

 

Zither and Third Man



When I watched the movie "Third Man", I was bitten by the zither music. Until then, I never paid much attention to the looks of a zither and only vaguely recalled its stringed sound. But the theme music of the film riffed on a zither captivated me. I looked up a zither.



Still, I was puzzled, how did a zither and the movie "Third Man" and the player Anton Karas all come together.

Reed, desperately searching for a theme tune ... chanced on the tavern in Vienna's Grinzing wine-growing district. Struck by the simple zither melodies, Reed asked a stunned Karas if he would compose the music for the film. Karas protested, saying he had never actually written music. As Karas later told the story, the director insisted and invited Karas to England. The Austrian became homesick and asked to be allowed to return. Reed told him he could—as soon as he had written the music. Under this pressure Karas wrote his Harry Lime theme.

This morning when the music auto-played on my personal playlist, I decided, if I ever learn music, no guitar but only its progenitor zither. Tang ta teen ta teen ta teen!

 

The Iyer Sisters

Vidya and Vandana! Pretty names! Prettier voices! I found out about them only this morning. They sing! She smashes up and sings! She blends English and Indian and sings! She braids two tunes into one and sings! But they sing animated and bracing.



I love their urban voice and their fluttery music. Here's one of my fav smash-up in the three hours that I have known them.

 

Vedic Philosophy

Few weeks back, I embarked on a "Vedic Philosophy" course to teach myself the basic precepts in the vedic works. I was stunned! Since a kid I resisted the idea of spirituality and sublime teachings of pious demagogues. To my surprise, vedic philosophy isn't any of the commonly peddled wisdom. In fact the vedic terms like "chakra" and "pramana" have been so much abused that it is difficult to even source genuine material that imparts analytical study of vedic literature. I wish there was a book that synthesizes and correlates Vedic philosophy with its Western counterparts for simpler grasp of such integrated knowledge.

Say,

Term/concept: XYZ
Commonly misunderstood: This is XYZ
But: XYZ means

One can draw many parallels between Vedic and Greek philosophies. It is a pitiful dereliction that one rejects learning such fecund subject analytically but wants to get carried away by fluffy and baseless conjectures. Vedic philosophy is insightful with its rational and empirical arguments on the ontological exploration of reality. I am only a fledgling but from what little I know I have sensed that Vedic philosophy is misconstrued even by the steadfast practitioners of this ancient reasoning. I wish there were better and accessible books on this moribund philosophy for the urban generation.

 

Marit Ayin

From the Vedic Chant let's jump to Jewish Halakha.

Marit ayin (or maris ayin, "appearance to the eye"), is a concept in halakha (Jewish law) which states that certain actions which might seem to other surrounding people as to be in violation with Jewish law, when in reality they are fully permissible, are themselves not allowed due to rabbinic enactments that were put into place to prevent surrounding onlookers from arriving at a false conclusion. For example, according to the Torah law, the blood of an animal is forbidden to eat, but the blood of a fish is permissible. However, according to the principle of marit ayin, it is forbidden to eat the blood of fish as an onlooker may believe the blood being eaten is from an animal and is thus allowed to be eaten.

There are subtle distinctions in the interpretation of this law. Is misleading food prohibited only in public or partaking in something in private also forbidden? There is no observer in private space, so no reproachful looks, so you can eat blood of fish. No? Then comes the modern conciliation.

According to the Shulchan Aruch, if something which was prohibited in the times of the Talmud because of marit ayin is no longer a concern due to modern day circumstances, the prohibition is cancelled. For example, in the times of the Talmud having soy milk, or non-dairy creamer, during the same meal as meat would have been prohibited because it was likely to think that the person was in violation of the laws of kosher. However, since it is well known today that people use non-dairy creamer, there is no issue of marit ayin, and the prohibition is cancelled.

First, they write up Marit Ayin ambiguously, then wrestle with its forked interpretations, then finally absolve the censure induced by such inconsistent dictum with modern improvisations on dietary regimen. If you ever catch a Jew eating meat, then don't read the Marit Ayin riot to him but be forgiving of his obsolete lapse as he could be eating soya chunks which resembled meat.

 

I Contain Multitudes

Enough waffle for today. Time to sweep my fridge and knock up some food. Before that, let me tie this post back to "multitudes". If you had assumed that I finished reading Ed Yong's Multitudes book and ready with my review, nah, I have been languishing in my room thinking about the polarity of water molecule. But why? Another day.

So, coming back to multitudes, last night I watched "The Marriage of Maria Braun" (German: Die Ehe der Maria Braun). In that movie (alert: spoilers) Maria knocks out her lover Bill, an American, with a bottle. She thwacks Bill on his head with a bottle when he assaults her estranged husband. This missing husband returns home from war to find her cavorting with another man. The scene is locked in with a dead American officer, a distraught wife, and a confused husband.

In the next court scene, Maria pleads to the judge that she is fond of her lover, Bill, but loves her husband, Hermann. As I watched the German movie with English subtitles, I don't know the original distinction she made in the native German dialogue. In English, it is "fond" and "love".

A decade ago this would have flustered me also as it did to the judge. How can a woman be besotted by two men? But I realized we contain multitudes.

One can love. One can be fond of. One can have affection for. One can be attached to. One can admire, and then adore, and then be enamoured of different people. Yes, it is possible! If I were to adjudge the case, I would have grasped her plight and told Maria: Sweets, it is ok. We contain multitudes. I get it when you say that you love one and then fond of another. Go, you are set free. Not guilty.

 

Dude, I have not overlooked your finding. But there's no moderator for E & G forum. Once the re-org is all sorted out and as soon as a mod is assigned, I will request the amendment.

One more reason for you to step up and grudgingly accept the moderatorship so that when you spot such delinquency you can straightaway amend and leave a note to reprobates.