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A Little History Of Discovery

Discussion in 'Book Lovers' started by Ouroboros, Sep 24, 2018.

  1. Amulet

    Amulet IL Hall of Fame

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    Here is a sonnet from Vikram Seth's novel in verse, "The Golden Gate"
    Very likely this is about a Hardware Engineer in silicon valley, whose (unauthorised) "profile" had been posted on a desi matrimony site.

    He tuned his thoughts to electronic
    Circuitry. This soothed his mind.
    He left irregular (moronic)
    Sentimentality behind.
    He thought of or-gates and of and-gates,
    Of ROMs, of nor-gates, and of nand-gates,
    Of nanoseconds, megabytes,
    And bits and nibbles… but as flights
    Of silhouetted birds move cawing
    Across the pine-serrated sky,
    Dragged from his cove, not knowing why,
    He feels an urgent riptide drawing
    Him far out, where, caught in the kelp
    Of loneliness, he cries for help.
     
  2. Novalis

    Novalis Gold IL'ite

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    Silentio Dilemma

    "Have you noticed that I haven't spoken to you for three hours?" Emma inquired.

    "Have you not? Well, what's it about then ..." Knightley languidly replied without lifting his droopy eye off the book he has been reading.

    "Do you realize that I haven't spoken to you for a while?"

    "For a while as in three swift hours. You could be busy watching your netflix thingy or chewing off the swollen ear of a friend or doing one of your yoga thingy or composing random musing online, anything you can excite away in ..." he flipped the book page.

    "Do you sense any other reason why I am ex silentio ?"

    "Hmm.. no ..nothing out of ordinary ..you could have burnt your tongue on a hot cup."

    "Does it not vaguely strike you that I am silent because I am ANGRY with you. I am upset about something that should concern you. Therefore, I am silent."

    "Are you? Well ...well ...how am I to sense that such imperceptible silence of yours is my wretched doing. Could you not have announced of your silentio withdrawal. Why don't you beep beep me hourly so that a skipped beep will prompt me to suspect the staging of your silentio sulk ...hey do you want me to design a monitoring app for you to punch hourly to signify your mood beep beep, no beep (please attend to her). Technology is marvelous, don't you agree?"

    "I am still ex silentio."

    "No, you are not."

    "Yes, I am" She clamped her mouth.

    "You cannot be ex silentio but you can be sub silentio. Even in silence I would appreciate if you get your syntax correct."

    "Why are you not like normal men with normal problems with ordinary curiosity and lowly recrimination and mean spirit and react to me in that normal inquiry about my silence."

    "That's fanciful to strive for a behavioral overhaul in me. But baby, my app proposal is better than your ..."

    "I HAVE BEEN SILENT! I AM UPSET! I AM SULKING!" she shrieked.

    "Yet it's sub silentio and not ex silentio ..go go ..dumpling look it up..go ..go I will finish the book and attend to you."

    "Does the silent treatment ever work on you? How can it work on you when you don't even realize you are traumatized by me with this unbidden silence. I am in a major dilemma."

    "The only dilemma for you is to duly organize your weaponry into 'sub' and not 'ex'. Next time inform of your methodology of silent vow in advance for me to pretend to be affected. Gosh! What kind of a woman are you who does not even know how to exert herself to make the best of her silentio motive."

    "I JUST GIVE UP. Sometimes I wish I was in a normal relationship with a normal man in a normal and regular silent tiff."

    "For a woman who wants to observe silence to slight her man don't you think you are miserably talky. Go go ..practise your silence thingy ..go sweets..I will get into my shattered part of a traumatized partner and repent and gratify you ...go go ...look all teary when I enter ..." He nudged her out of the room and continued with his book.
     
    Last edited: Jan 24, 2019
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  3. Amulet

    Amulet IL Hall of Fame

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    Hahaha... @Rihana wanted to know what tricks are practiced in lieu of a "silent treatment" when one is annoyed at one's partner.... because silent treatment would fail when unrecognized by the treated.

    Why did Austen make Emma behave like "that", whereas Knightley comes across as middle-aged ?
    -------------​
    "The only dilemma for you is to duly organize your weaponry into 'sub' and not 'ex'. Next time inform of your methodology of silent vow in advance for me to pretend to be affected. Gosh! What kind of a woman are you who does not even know how to exert herself to make the best of her silentio motive."
    That kind of talk should have the slug tossed out of the flat without a key.
    -------------​
    Talking of "middle-aged" behavior getting the trophy at the end.... that had bothered me a bit in "Sense and Sensibility". Marianne (younger, hotter, and restless) falls for John Willoughby, but eventually ends up marrying an older guy named Brandon. Willoughby, written out of the will of whoever that was going to leave him the lucre to live on, was forced to seek a wealthy connection and give up on Marianne (to marry Miss Gray). I thought Miss Gray was the nastiest that Jane Austen got in her novels -- alluding to how all cats are that particular colour in the dark, and it makes no difference to a man whatsoever. Plenty of stuff for thought there in "S&S": Would guys want a girl who is careful with syntax, or one who is in a high tax bracket ?
     
  4. Novalis

    Novalis Gold IL'ite

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    Don't know efficient in-lieu techniques but even in the classic silent treatment I could never work out how women insinuated their silence. Do men discern whether the woman is less than her usual chirpy because she is deliberately withdrawn or because she is incidentally preoccupied. Men are obtuse when it comes to ST or unawares is their perfected artifice?

    The excommunicated man would want to be notified of the same explicitly or that muted woman should be card-carrying and fridge-magneting (dude, I am not talking to you!) to insinuate her resolve.

    A guy would wish to have a girl in a high tax bracket as that implies she would also be careful with her syntax.

    Men inquire upfront the salary of a woman in dating/matrimonial platform as a friend of mine once revealed that no prudent man has the convenience to be uncritical of exceptions -- a woman out in wild somewhere fabulously intelligent, impressively communicative, hard-hittingly witty yet low on income. How rare! Typically, he anticipates that a woman on high tax bracket in corporate world would have sought better education, graduated from better colleges, and is bright and savvy, and is mindful of her syntax (language!). Fair enough! In dating algo, salary is not only indicative of financial girth of a women but also the proxy for her intellectual mobility. I have known men who swipe right on women with favourable income not from cupidity (pun!) but assurance that she is more cultivated from the rest for vested interest. Reasonable to swipe on 'salary' as indicator for cultivated up-growth.
     
    Last edited: Jan 24, 2019
  5. Amulet

    Amulet IL Hall of Fame

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    This is true; but I would suspect that there'd be a bell curve for that intelligence, communicative, witty sort of character when correlated against money/earnings.
    This is not altogether true in America. Fabulously intelligent, impressively communicative, hard-hittingly witty -- are not necessarily correlated with earnings/wealth.
    The young persons that I know in America are all keen on finding out how much student loan liability the other ones (swipe worthy ?) carry.

    SSLC pass, homely, wheat coloured girls, well versed in domestic duties, are almost like on another planet, aren't they ?
     
  6. Novalis

    Novalis Gold IL'ite

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    Other way round — men presume that women of financial standing correspond with cognitive markup. This is the limitation in the **estwhile dating/matrimonial sites to match off affinity through ulterior factors like skill and smarts. Hence ‘salary’ is the standout proxy given it is featured optionally yet universally — compared to other finer details. How else could a man preempt or defer cognitive compatibility whilst scanning the biographical details like age, weight, height and then profession. The friend in question is exasperatingly geeky and well-placed in corporate leadership but had no better alternative in screening profiles rather than going by this correlation hunch and looking up further in linkedin and social profiles. (Woman of high tax bracket, hmm, shortlisted, further evaluated in social profile for that intelligence, communication and wit.)


    Each of us have such improvised proxy. Ask me, it’s language and not tax bracket. I am deeply prejudiced that a man of reasoned learning would speak in that correlated and impressive twang. This ain’t any bell curve even but our convenient curve!

    **: I am referring to non-competitive era of dating, those pre-league days. The niche ‘League’ dating app tauted as the Harvard of dating shifted the chase with more subtle matching algorithms over the misleading salary.
     
    Last edited: Jan 24, 2019
  7. Novalis

    Novalis Gold IL'ite

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    In classical mechanics, that planetary Lagrangian ask (homely, wheat-coloured domestic diva) is fashioned out of the classic offering in a woman! In a clothes store, the shopper is boggled by the advent of palazzo, patiala, jodhpurs, dhoti, 3-way and 4-way stretch leggings that the plain or classic-styled salwar offering is obscured away though not phased out. (Kya decontexted example: because I had to grope for the vocabulary to insinuate a plain bottom yesterday)

    Such unfussy criteria (h, w-colored) in a domestic partnership is hard to manifest in cosmopolitan matches. Urban suitors are ever finicky about the nuclear earning and cognitive (over cultural and social) compatibility! Hence the foray of these niche dating apps in the market to emphasise on such tally.

    Glossary:

    In celestial mechanics, the Lagrangian points (also Lagrange points,L-points, or libration points) are the points near two large bodies in orbit where a smaller object will maintain its position relative to the large orbiting bodies. At other locations, a small object would go into its own orbit around one of the large bodies, but at the Lagrangian points the gravitational forces of the two large bodies, the centripetal force of orbital motion, and (for certain points) the Coriolis acceleration all match up in a way that cause the small object to maintain a stable or nearly stable position relative to the large bodies.

    The analogy:

    The two large and influential bodies are husband and mil.

    The smaller object is the wife orbiting them.
     
    Last edited: Jan 25, 2019
  8. Amulet

    Amulet IL Hall of Fame

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    In this season of NY-resolutions, there is the usual déjà vu: She does not need to lose any weight, all she has to do is to make sure that her husband is heavier. And the MIL, the heaviest.

    Mrs. Nora Batty (character from "Last of the Summer Wine") revealed this secret to keep a husband sluggish (cant chase after other women) and fatter: Feed him a lot of starchy food. Desi's had been on this scheme for millennia with their choice diets.
     
  9. Novalis

    Novalis Gold IL'ite

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    Why cultivate an online voice? I often wondered.

    Aren't there enough victimized ears to disfigure with my unceasing excitement. Ears that painfully scream out: 'stop it Novalis, you excite about everything. My ears have slumped from your wild chatter!'

    I still insist ...listen you dunderhead.

    upload_2019-3-18_15-12-13.png


    But then I worry rupturing an affectionate kinship.

    Hence a savage online voice to disgorge that unreasonable excitement onto virtual jungle when friends are exasperated with my grandiloquence. But that "Measure of Things" chapter in 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' by Bill Bryson, did you feel what I just felt? Tragicomic that researchers scatter away on the globe to measure the planetary transit but are mistaken for witchcraft and are walloped. Must have been perilous to study natural causes of cosmic phenomenon in a superstitious era. But the steadfast hazarded their lives and bid their families in pursuit of truth. I waffle!

    George Orwell despaired that at fifty everyone has the face he deserves. I am not anywhere near fifty though my undisciplined ilk might have prematurely claimed off a face by stereotyping ourselves early. I too have a face: agog with nonsensical streak biting off my lips, scratching my cheeks, and twitching away that nose in much excitement each time I stumble on fascinating literature. My Orwellian face is that of imminent excitement ever spiting 'hmm, why didn't I read such books before'.

    I am lovingly bullied and stereotyped for my unabated excitement.

    (She and her wretched discoveries.)

    upload_2019-3-18_15-15-7.png

    Last night I read Harry Potter. Neville Longbottom's grandmother gifted him a REMEMBRALL: a magical ball to remember stuff. I could not recall that charitable scene from my earlier read of the book. Similarly, the trapdoor guarded by Fluffy, the three-headed dog, was further enchanted by fatal hexes to dissuade miscreants plotting to steal the philosopher's stone. It was almost a fresh insight that each hex was conjured up by the respective teacher. Sprout with Devil's snare, Flitwick with charmed keys, McGonagall with tranfigured chessmen and so on. Don't even vaguely remember reading that attribution. I thought Dumbledore singularly hexed the entire chamber under the trapdoor.

    Not just reaching out to new books in a frenzy but even a sober revisit of old books fetch me much joy to spot hitherto lapsed observations. I might read Harry Potter again and discover anew. I might spot a character, a pun, a foreshadow, a reckoning glossed over in the previous read. I might even have relived this particular insight recurrently ....on each read of the same book you still discover fresh. Even that serial observation feels stunning each time you reclaim. How many times I have forgotten even that flash of meta-observation!

    Online holler is to exert the heaped elation in the meanwhile, the irrepressible dopamine and quaking gush in creatures like me who convulse in unimaginable excitement and explosive chatter in their everyday breath. (Pictures: Bingeing on 'Fraggle Rock' in the afternoons till the ears of my friends recover and perk up for my follow-up conversations on the vernalization of wheat used in bread.)

    upload_2019-3-18_15-19-8.png
     
    Last edited: Mar 18, 2019
  10. Amulet

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