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Quid Pro Quo With The Gods

Discussion in 'Cheeniya's Senile Ramblings' started by Cheeniya, May 20, 2017.

  1. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

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    Gates and Gallup

    Two men caught my attention last night. Gallup resurfaced because of his claims on humanzee. But Gates beat him to the punch in popularity with his toilet marketing. I always wonder what Billy is doing these days with his opulence. I am happy he is melting his gold to good use.

    Billy is funding a toilet research programme to sponsor plumb-less toilet in the villages in Ghana. On the face of it, the contraption looks suspicious but the video unfolds the engineering marvel. Public toilets are a scare with their foul maintenance. I prefer such innovation in everyday life to creation of super-humans or humanzees as the next warrior race. Toilet is more important for humans!

     
  2. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

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    Actresses ahead of their times

    Dev and Suraiya parted and then Dev and Kalpana subsequently married and remained committed to each other. I like that bounce of Dev. Rather than wallowing for Suraiya, he moved on and found new love. I listened to his interview once. He mentioned that public were confounded by his wife's original name "Mona Singha". She is a Christian but Singha surname was not revealing of the faith. She is devout but never imposed her faith on family. He quoted, she quietly indulged in vestal prayers and was a good wife.

    Love is strange! It does strange things to people. Priya and Chetan formed a bond like K Hepburn and S Tracy. No ostentatious marker of their bond but they were for each other till the end.
     
  3. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

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    Brief Encounter

    Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita is a strange book. Why strange? Because the finesse in his writing makes you sympathise with the indiscretions of Humbert Humbert. Mr Humbert is not portrayed as a monster but as a passionate soul in his transgressions towards Dolores. The incredibility is not in the plot but the voice of that writer to tamper our judgement through this remarkable writing. I had similar deja vu yesterday of acclaiming David Lean on his film "Brief Encounter" which deals with naive adultery. You sympathise with the characters rather than revile their misconduct. These writers and film makers charm you even in their indelicate undertakings.
     
  4. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

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    Liquid Modernity

    I hail from a small town in India with provincial and restricted think-tank. People unreasonably fond or outrageously harsh in temperaments. I grew up in a shallow mindset conditioned in only selective "mental models" of cognition and arbitration. This is bad! This is good! That's it. Why is this bad and why is that good was never introspected let alone impugned.

    Last night, I was reading Zygmunt Bauman's concept of "Liquid Modernity", and that conceptualisation resonated with me. Rather than resist the change, embrace it. Flow with it. Move with it. Be fluid in your perception and don't constrict with identifiable labels. NO fixed - this is bad and that is good. No fixed - this is right and that is wrong. We evolve and so does our sensibility. Another passage I loved on change in life:

    Forms of modern life may differ in quite a few respects – but what unites them all is precisely their fragility, temporariness, vulnerability and inclination to constant change. To ‘be modern’ means to modernize – compulsively, obsessively; not so much just ‘to be’, let alone to keep its identity intact, but forever ‘becoming’, avoiding completion, staying underdefined. Each new structure which replaces the previous one as soon as it is declared old-fashioned and past its use-by date is only another momentary settlement – acknowledged as temporary and ‘until further notice’. What was some time ago dubbed (erroneously) 'post-modernity' and what I've chosen to call, more to the point, 'liquid modernity', is the growing conviction that change is the only permanence, and uncertainty the only certainty. A hundred years ago 'to be modern' meant to chase 'the final state of perfection' -- now it means an infinity of improvement, with no 'final state' in sight and none desired.

    True, to remain undefined and in a constant flux is liberating and NOT unmoored. When people rue about the modern adaptations of technology, work, relationships, romance, I find it very puzzling. I feel we are in the best of the times with a fluid outlook on our existence. We change jobs and cities and hobbies and partners, yet, we manage to build fulfilling and enriching lives despite the impermanence and uncertainty.
     
  5. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

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    How to think

    I mentioned in QPQ here and there that I am part of another close-knit club with funny and nonsensical discussions similar to ours. Mostly men, with three or four women. There was a discussion, on ethics, morality, modernity ....escalated, slightly heated up, then out of the blistering blue a vociferous post by a smartie. I went aww! The post thundering in facts and reason and exquisite language with some vague mentions of Borges and Stanislaw Lem and László Krasznahorkai. It will take me so much education and fraternizing to think like that. But, I was floored. Absolutely stirred by his merited thoughts. Simple in reason yet impressive in style and citations to underline: hey, man, this is what I am saying. Such thoughtful writing lingers in me for a while.
     
  6. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

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    Purple Sweet Potato

    I had only cooked and eaten orange-y sweet potato. For the first time yesterday I made purple sweet potato buttered mash, and fish curry to go with it.

    upload_2018-2-20_12-55-23.png
    (picture from net)

    upload_2018-2-20_12-55-5.png
    (picture at home)
     
  7. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

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    To clarify: Though the language and citations are merit-worthy, the "aww" score was for impressive thinking which reflected in his diction. Clear and reasoned thinking strikes me. Soundness in thinking sets apart the rigour from the usual rhetoric and grandstanding seen in public discourse. Hmm, I don't know how to put it but few people think in ways that make you think about them in a favourable light. How do people think like that untrammelled by smirk from traditional and beat-up approaches to ethics and morality. Think different but think sound! Though I don't indulge in gravid topics, that singular op-ed on ethics stunned me.
     
  8. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

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    Goodfellas

    We might need a spin-off QPQ just to discuss movies. One more movie from last week: Goodfellas of Martin Scorcese. I avoid violence. I am squeamish about blood. This movie had both that too in copious amounts. However, the character of Henry Hill played by Ray Liotta was well-etched. He is a gangster not out of compulsion but out of passion to be the bad guy or a wise guy as he identifies himself and his gang of troublemakers. But the slaughter was jarring for me. The ending scene where Henry looked into the camera and regrets "I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook" defines his creed that of a modern picaresque delinquent who favours adventure to a banal existence.
     
  9. Iravati

    Iravati Platinum IL'ite

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    Convergent Romance

    We discussed the romances of Dev and Chetan. None comes close to the romance of our convergent ladybug ("Hippodamia convergens").

    Why? One, generation after generation the bugs assemble at the same spot to breed, even the never befores of the generation reach the spot through pheromone tracking. I say, dump our GPS trackers in favour of these infallible pheromone trackers. Two, they live for a year and mate only once during this convergence season. Three, that mating is a Valentine orgy in Fall and not in Feb. They are named "convergent" not because of their mating practice to congregate in troops but because of the white streaks on their head that seem to converge. With or without symbolic convergence, these ladybugs are the bright-coloured romance parade.


     
  10. Cheeniya

    Cheeniya Super Moderator Staff Member IL Hall of Fame

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    Gates and Gallup
    Bill is a hardcore businessman basically. I see money in whatever he is doing. The humanzee story appears to be a recreation of The Planet of the Apes where Charlton Heston had to wage a war against the talking and scheming apes.
     

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