On Lying: We are part truth and part deception, like Ardhanareeswara.

How do you know that I am not a woman?

And if I am a woman, would anything change in the way you relate to me?

I got asked this question, and I immediately responded, "Not in the least; man, woman, either or neither- it doesn't matter, especially in the web, where you can cut and run".

How do you feel about it? If I put up a photo of a woman, how would you react to me?

Actually I don't like to be asked questions of this kind- don't want to look behind appearances. Afraid of what will be revealed.

I like to put things upfront, I say as much as I want to- and that is it, I believe it is honest. And when someone comes and suggests that there could be deception, it disturbs me, because I think deep underneath we all deceive, whether through untruth or misdirection.

There was a wonderful article by Errol Morris that I recently read, Seven Lies about Lying (Part 1), and Seven Lies about Lying (Part 2), I hope you read it because it is readable- entertaining and informative.

"Tell all the Truth but tell it slant –", Morris quotes Emily Dickinson.

That is what we all do, don't we!

But there is nothing to feel guilty about that-

• because a lie is not the opposite of truth (it could be that you are misinformed- and who is to say you are not?);
• a lie is not a falsehood (it could be that you really believe it- and who is to say whether your belief is justified by fact or not?);
• you cannot consistently lie without contradicting yourself (not so- it is truth that perplexes us with its paradoxes);
• a lie cannot be justified, ever ("There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible"- Thomas Jefferson. But who is to sit in judgment of our justifications- you cannot outlaw all justification and rationalisation, can you?);
• lying is avoidable ("“No high-minded man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so prostituted.”"- Mark Twain. Lying is in fact an art, an embellishment of truth we cannot do without)
• a lie is a threat to truth (a lie has nothing to do with truth- you cannot lie about what I know, your lies can may be mislead my beliefs, but that is about it).

And Errol Morris indicates at an amazing truth: people lie and get away with it only because we are not sure of our beliefs, and cannot trust our own common sense. Sometimes it happens that we want to hear what they are saying to us, so it is lack of faith and greed that does us in.

I don't know whether you will agree with all this, but may be you should go and read the two articles, then you won't be worried about truth and deception.

We are part truth and part deception, like Ardhanareeswara.

We should revel in this, if possible, or at least, not make too much of a song and dance about it.

Where does India Stand?

Global_geographicSpreadH1N1A_week30.png (PNG Image, 2027x1358 pixels) - Scaled (49%) via kwout

via http://www.who.int/csr/don/Global_geographicSpreadH1N1A_week30.png

Swine flu- why you should not panic

Okay,  here are some links to get a grip on the general panic that is inundating us in a scary information tsunami...

First of all, "Closing schools, stopping large gatherings and other such measures are unlikely to do much to prevent the spread of the H1N1 swine flu pandemic" Reuters reports.

I went to Wolfram Alpha and got this:

Though swine flu is on the march,
date | cases | deaths
Friday, July 24, 2009 : 104089 - 561
Friday, July 17, 2009 : 100934 - 522
Friday, July 10, 2009 : 97572 - 470
Tuesday, July 7, 2009 : 97572 - 470
Monday, June 29, 2009 : 77159 - 354

it is not as lethal as could be:

cases | deaths
world : 104089 - 561
India : 129 - 0 (not updated, - this data is up to July 17 of this year.



As you can see, 561 cases out of 104089 is not so lethal, though it is a source of anxiety, of course.

And why are we scared?

When you don't know the outcome of some issue, you get creative- and people who can't think cool, they get anxious. It is a valid emotional reaction, but it does not mean it is right. It is just the way we are, and sometimes, anxiety does help you do the right thing.

Just to put things in perspective, I went to Wolfram Alpha again, and tried what happens when you get malnutrition:

In India alone,

number of deaths | 129074 deaths per year
cause of death probability : 1 in 80 ~~ 1.2%
rate of death : 12 deaths per 100000 persons per year
DALY ; 8.12 million life years lost per year (2002 estimates; DALY: Disability-Adjusted Life Years)

And all over the world,

number of deaths : 484143 deaths per year
cause of death probability : 1 in 118 ~~ 0.85%
rate of death ; 2132 deaths per 100000 persons per year
DALY : 34.33 million life years lost per year (2002 estimates; DALY: Disability-Adjusted Life Years)

Now, swine flu has killed 561 out of 104089, and malnutrition kills 129074 deaths per year in India alone, and the chances you will die if you 'get' malnutrition is 1 in 80, that 1.2 percent, and in case of swine flu it is .00538962, I think one man out of two hundred that get swine flu will get killed.

now why are we making such a big song and dance about swine flu?

To put it brutally, you and me, and the ruling class, they won't get malnutrition, it is the poor that do- but swine flu, anyone can get.

And then there is no medicine- even the Tamiflu the most prominent medicine for Swine Flu, is not so good: Times of India reports,

"While the drug provided a small benefit by shortening the duration of illness in children with seasonal influenza and reducing household transmission, it was found to have little effect on asthma flare-ups, says the study published in British Medical Journal."

and,

Researchers have clearly said that the harmful effects of Tamiflu and Relenza — another commonly used anti-viral drug — far outweigh their benefits and the results found for seasonal flu would apply for H1N1 too. The way out, they say, is to limit Tamiflu use, especially in children, to serious cases.

"Indian doctors say this is the latest in a long series of questions raised about the H1N1 ‘‘wonder drug’’. Earlier, another study had reported that Tamiflu caused nausea and nightmares in children.

"Said AIIMS professor of medicine Dr Randeep Guleria: ‘‘There have been other reports. In Japan, it was found to cause neuro-psychiatric manifestations like suicidal tendencies in patients. The drug’s literature, I believe, mentions this. That’s why we have been constantly warning against indiscriminate use.”"

You see where it takes us?

This is all about uncertainty and fear- don't panic.

That will solve half your problems.

And by the way, Kapil Sibal would be a great person to have at the health ministry right now- Ghulam Nabi Azad seems to suffer from foot-in-the-mouth disease and the sooner he is shifted somewhere else, it is better for us (of course bloggers like us will miss some potential bloopers, and easy posts).

Raksha Bandhan- token of love, or security against grief?

Kartikey Sehgal has a post at Young India, "Raksha Bandhan: When Sisters Steal Your Money", that was as amusing as it was a whimsical. 

Thinking about the tradition here in Tamil Nadu, I could not find anything that is like Raksha Bandhan. After stressing and straining my mind, I gave up and thought I should philosophize a bit about it instead.

Come to think of it, who are the greatest oppressors of a married woman? Her mother in law and sister in law, of course, not counting the husband. This may not be true in every family, but mostly this is the case.

And yet, in our mythology of ancient times and the recent- cinemas,  it is the mother and sister that are revered more holy than God Himself. If Ramayana is about devotion to mother, it can also alternately be read as a story of devotion to sister. After all, it is to avenge Surpanaka that Ravana came to where the exiled trio had camped, and it is because he fell for a beautiful woman- Sita- that Ravana met his end.

Now, this is a cautionary tale, right? It is Dharma to obey your mother, it is Dharma to avenge your sister, but don't fall in love with a woman, you will come to grief- is that what the psyche of the India male makes of it? I don't know. But I do.

Seriously speaking, I am aware of two beliefs about the brother-sister relationship.

The first is that, when a girl is dead, God will let her see everyone that she loved, but He does not let her see her brothers (and vice versa, of course). I don't know why there is no place in heaven for brothers and sisters together -may be Kartikey does :) -, but as we all know by now, His ways are mysterious and inscrutable- and in the words of Wendell Berry in another context, 

"Explain it how you will, the only

 thing explainable will be

your explanation".

(Dean Keller's Twitwall)

That is a good enough source of anxiety ( and here I would like to contrast the Hindu and Christian visions of afterlife- when a Hindu dies, he gets to take a look at the people he had loved, and then it is off to a new life in a new age; and for a Christian, it is an eternal outing in a garden in eternal sunshine with your eternal loved ones- I don't know which is good, depends on the people that you have loved, I suppose)- I am digressing, and digressing away from my digression, so I will come to the point.

The second source of anxiety is that, should your sister cry, you will come to grief. And again, no questions, as Wendell Berry said,

"A tree forms itself in answer

 to its place and to the light,"

when something as dynamic as a belief grows, it grows like it should, and people who ask questions are the ones that should supply the answers.

Where was I? Lost the point, totally.

What I mean is, what with our anxiety about the fate of our sisters, the love we have for them, the loss that we will suffer without them, and the grief their tears will cause us, I mean what is a gift or two to purchase some peace of mind?

Again, in the words of Wendell Berry  in a totally unrelated context,

What a consolation it is, after

the explanations and the predictions

of further explanations still

to come, to return unpersuaded

to the woods, entering again

the presence of the blessed trees.

Anyone out there grudge such small token of love in the face of such a gift?

The eccentric man

 Mind Hacks,  The Story of Man, The daily irrelevant, Futility Closet, 

Man gets a chopstick. ball-point pen, flying wire fragment, plastic stick,  snooker cue, miniature fencing foil, and a  gear stick into his brain through the nose; charged with taking pictures up woman's skirt, is arrested in for foot-fetish assault, is asked (EU regulation) not to eat his horse, keeps a journal of his conversations with a  79-year-old talking mongoose.

The Bookish Man

 Pulling Teeth in Eighteenth-Century Paris-  Improbable Research 

The Lure of the Decimal- "The precision fetishism cropped up recently when the Environmental Protection Agency changed the list of cars eligible to be junked for bucks in the cash-for-clunkers program. The agency said “more precise” data calculated “to four decimal places” caused the revisions. But how accurate can fuel-economy calculations be? Not that precise: 0.0001 miles is about six inches."- WSJ.com: The Numbers Guy 

Ringxiety:- Ringxiety is described as the sensation and the false belief that one can hear his or her mobile phone ringing or feel it vibrating, when in fact the telephone is not doing so.-   Best of Wikipedia

Haptic reader helps the blind read- 

"The Haptic Reader looks like a flatbed scanner, in this case users place their typed text on the scanner and it’s converted into Braille by raising the surface of the device on the opposite side of the paper.

The reader is also capable of producing text to voice files for those cases in which braille isn’t convenient or for non-blind readers looking to create a voice file from their typed text"- from The Inquisitr » Technology (Shared by David Kordalewski)


Shapes and tools designed to order ("The ability to engineer complex shapes to custom specification...) with DNA 


Nanotechnology-  Next Big Future  (Shared by Kaoru Shimitsu)




Teaching children how to be more resilient along with regular classroom instruction can improve children's outlook on life, curb depression and boost grades- EurekAlert!  



Escherization- via Trivium 

The Discovery Man

Read this- "Cry": your facial muscles tighten. Read this- "Smile"- your facial muscles relax. Merely seeing a smile or frown activates the muscles in our face that make that expression-  ScienceDaily  

An orchid fools its hornet pollinator by issuing a chemical that honeybees, its prey,  use to send an alarm.-  EurekAlert 

Squirrels learn to steal food-  ScienceDaily

Micro flying robots use up even less energy than flies-  ScienceDaily 

Bug plays dead, sacrifices neighbour- Live Science

Cicadas survive on meager nutrition thanks to bacteria inside their cells.-  Livescience

T Rex was a chicken and a baby-killer- Live Science 

Rasberry crazy ants have it in for honey-bees - Scientific American  

The candiru- a parasitic freshwater catfish known for an alleged tendency to invade and parasitize the human urethra. Did you hear the one about the Amazonian fish who swam up a penis, took up residence in said penis owner’s bladder, and could not be extracted due to its umbrella-like spines? It ate away at the man until he hemorrhaged- The Candiru Song.