Radio 2: Making life a little more surreal

• In the 8 o'clock hour, I heard a "While my guitar gently weeps," followed by a classical guitar version of "Stairway to Heaven" followed by a Django Reinhardt track. Cool! The "dj" also sounded ancient, so it was a special thrill hearing him extol the virtues of Clapton's solo (I expected him to quote some bon mot from the Churchill-Disraeli rivalry).

• In the 9 o'clock hour, I heard Finlandia played on an organ. Cool! As it turned out, the whole show was organ music. Me being me, I enjoyed it more than not.
  

• At 9:30--a documentary about Barry Manilow. Part 2 of 2. I am not making this up!!!! It wasn't even a joke! They delivered the lines "To speak of Manilow's rejuvenation suggests he went away at some point. He never went away." Like the boogeyman! And "In summary, Manilow's career has been marked by a series of musical compromises leading to success." With a straight face they said this!
  

When you're publicly funded by the government, you don't have to worry about coolness, I guess.
- posted by k @ 1:24 PM

 
The world's most perfect food?




I put it on my tomato-cucumber-lemon salad, which was usual enough, but then I put it on my pasta, too. That was fun! Then I put some tomato sauce on top of that. Still good!

It's salty, sour, and yet has a certain unalarming muskiness without the after-effects of garlic. When combined with a sauce that has a balance of sweet-sour, new complimentary effects can be noted. Be afraid, because I am now thinking about what other unorthodox applications might be feasible...

(I think I did once use it in a waldorf salad because I didn't have any curry powder, because of course that doesn't exist)
- posted by k @ 11:56 AM

 
Rain that's not kidding

Yesterday when I was tutoring it started to come down very hard, and there was a bit of thunder and lightning. It sounded like a bucket of ping-pong balls on the roof of the solarium where the older kids were doing A-level biology. At times it was so heavy that we could only laugh in amazement, but to the kids' credit they mostly stayed focused. And lucky for me, somehow it had all stopped and started to clear by the time I had to go out and catch the bus.

This morning when I first got up it was dark like the evening because of the clouds, though it's gotten lighter. There was much rolling (rather than booming) thunder in the early hours. And just buckets and buckets of rain: fascinating to watch as long as you don't have to go out in it. and of course now it's slowed and stopped. After I finish the last of last week's reading I will probably head to the gym, then figure out what I need to do for this coming week and get started on that. The nice thing about GRE reports is that you can order them by phone 7 days/week (though not 24 hrs).

The painting above is another reason to love the BBC website; I went there to check the weather to see if I could find stats about e.g. inches of rain, and they had a link to "painting the weather," where they have visual art depicting different kinds of weather. This one is Boar Lane, Leeds by John Atkinson Grimshaw (click the link to see it bigger).
- posted by k @ 4:39 AM

 
Thankfuls
Yeah, I couldn't read through all of that, either. It seems like a good message; just goes on for a bit. Still, I think his emails are better since he hired an assistant.

At our customary post-lecture pub lunch yesterday I bullied my coursemates into sharing their thankfuls under the guise of cultural something-or-other. They were good sports about it. The pub had some cranberry condiment in a jar, so I put it 0n my mash to observe the holiday. Later, Phil and Aidan helped me pick out crackers at Woolie's, and Aidan bought "Cranium" because it was on sale, and we ended up playing it at another pub. Good times.

Here are my thankfuls this year, as I shared them at the pub:

• I'm thankful to be doing my course, and that it's so interesting, and to have the opportunity to do it in the first place.

• For classmates I consider friends and colleagues.

• For the health and safety of my family and partner, even though I couldn't be with them today.

We did also toast Norah Jones, but that's kind of a long story.

And the following, of course, was understood:

• For the beauty of the earth,
   for the glory of the skies,
   for the love which from our birth
   over and around us lies;
   
  2. For the beauty of each hour
   of the day and of the night,
   hill and vale, and tree and flower,
   sun and moon, and stars of light;
   
  
  3. For the joy of ear and eye,
   for the heart and mind's delight,
   for the mystic harmony,
   linking sense to sound and sight;
   
  
  4. For the joy of human love,
   brother, sister, parent, child,
   friends on earth and friends above,
   for all gentle thoughts and mild;
  

Whatever there is or might be, to you we raise
This our hymn of grateful praise.
- posted by k @ 1:16 AM

 
A dish best served cold

Well, tomorrow when you all are eating things you like with people you care about, I am going to be in lectures and then meeting with my research advisor. It is entirely possible that my big meal of the day will be in a pub; guess I'll have the mash in that case.

Anyway, as my revenge, I present to you Rabbi Michael Lerner's Thanksgiving Message in its entirety (except about 5 words I took out). Bwah ha ha ha. Ha.

Maybe tomorrow if I have time I will post my thankful.s

--------------------------------------

Dear Priya,

I want to share with you a Thanksgiving meditation. I invite you
to use it and share it with others—as a prayer, a meditation or simply a stimulus to
discussion at your Thanksgiving table. Or to take a private
moment to reflect on these ideas. Or use this as a stimulus to
write your own version, deleting whatever part doesn't work for
you and adding whatever is more appropriate to your real feelings
and experiences (and if you wish, please share that version with me—
I learn an immense amount from the people who write to me).

Thanksgiving Meditation 2006

Thanksgiving Meditation 2006
To the Force of Life and Love in the Universe:

Thank you for all the goodness in my life. How amazing it is to be blessed with the
ability to see and take in the magnificence of the universe.

In my daily life, I'm often distracted from noticing the marvels and miracles that
surround me. There is so much to accomplish, so many hurdles to jump, so much
that I feel needs attending. I sometimes get so involved in the immediate tasks that
I lose sight of the larger amazing realities that abound in my life.

That danger lurks for this Thanksgiving-that I'll become immersed in the details,
the event of it, the sharing of it, and the loneliness of it, the disappointments at
moments of potential closeness not fully actualized, as well as in the moments of
joyous connection to my immediate friends and family, and that I'll not take the
time for real celebration.

So I want to take this moment to more fully acknowledge what I know but rarely say to myself:

The universe did not have to evolve in the direction of creating conscious creatures who
could yearn for love and could appreciate complexity and could rejoice in the abundance
and manifest kindness. Thank you universe, thank you the consciousness of the universe,
thank you the evolutionary force of the universe, thank you God, thank you the Force of
Life and Healing and Transformation, thank you however inadequate my formulation of
your name and your being, for having evolved in this particular direction so that life
would emerge from the elements, so that consciousness would emerge from life, so
that kindness and love and attraction to peace and justice would emerge from consciousness.

This country in which I reside has so much beauty in its hills and mountains, its rivers and
streams, its forests and marshes, its oceans and lakes. How amazing to be able to be in the
presence of all this beauty. I am in awe of the grandeur of this universe with all its complexity
and beauty.

I celebrate this particular body which I at once am and inhabit, this blend of consciousness
and part unconsciousness, at every moment operating on multiple levels, tapping in to the
larger pool of consciousness of the universe in the ways that I can with all the limitations
that are part of my consciousness receptors (and all the levels of consciousness that are
available to me but which I have not yet fully explored), breathing and being breathed by
the universe, pumping blood, taking in and expelling parts of the world, listening, smelling,
tasting, seeing, hearing, and perceiving, forming plans and assessing information and
dreaming dreams, connecting me to others in emotional and physical ways that are
pleasurable-making me an ongoing miracle of life.

I rejoice in all that I am and all that I have been and all that I will become, knowing that this
too will pass, and that this miracle of embodied being will someday be merged back into
other forms of being from which I am made and from which I emerged, the matter and
consciousness of the universe, the Spirit that some people call God, and others, because
of the way that word has been appropriated by many religions to justify hurtful messages,
no longer call God..


I am thankful for my own personal life, for this particular set of dramas that I am part of
and which surround me at this moment of history.

I rejoice in the opportunities I have been given to play some role in advancing the
consciousness of the universe.

I stand on the platform of a thousand generations who developed agriculture and
food and recipes to cook or prepare, who developed technologies and medicines
that would make it possible for me to live a relatively gentle and easy life, who
developed language and the refinements of thought that were passed on to me by
parents and teachers and friends and books and movies so that I can now advance
and create new thoughts that are only possible because of all that has gone before
me and because I can draw upon their creativity which has become the common
property of the human race. I am grateful to the generations of humanity that
developed science, mathematics, experimental interactions with the universe,
and rational thought, and affirm all the goodness that has come from that powerful
enterprise, as well as affirming the need to develop ways for science to be expanded
or reconceived so that it can be more fully harnessed to the enterprise of building
a world of love, justice, generosity, awe, ecological sustainability and peace.

I have been given the knowledge of mystics and prophets and artists and poets from
which I can draw inspiration and sustenance when things look momentarily difficult.
I can learn the stories of the past, the history of others who similarly faced difficult
moments, moments in which it looked like the forces of darkness were triumphing,
and see that they too, like me, could not fully see how the darkness would be overcome,
and yet, learn also how it was overcome, time and time and time again.

And I can see how the best ventures of the human race were at times undermined when
people moved from hope to fear, but I can also learn how, even in the midst of fear, there
were prophets and poets who kept hope alive, even while being scorned themselves,
ridiculed, attacked verbally or physically, jailed or sometimes killed, yet they persisted,
and their hopefulness eventually was vindicated, sometimes hundreds or thousands of
years later. I am thankful for those who fought for democracy, human rights, civil liberties,
equality, and freedom so that in the moments when people come to awareness of the need
for fundamental changes, they have some political institutions like the vote, like separation
of church and state, like freedom of speech and assembly, like a jury system, to allow them
to in some limited ways put some constraints on the power of the arrogant elites of wealth
and power, on the energies that believe peace comes through domination of others, on the
fantasy that safety will be won through police and surveillance and limits on personal privacy.
And, yes, in 2006, I felt a little bit more hopeful because Americans rose up against the war
in Iraq and used these institutions with all their known limitations to express themselves and
call for an end to the war. So I know that the hopeful energies can return and become the
dominant reality, and I rejoice in the opportunity given to me to participate in the process of
nurturing those energies in the darkness and contributing to their return and renewal.

I have been given the joy to know others, to have contact with other people who are similarly
blessed with the gifts of life and who are similarly embodiments of the sacred energies of
the universe. Their very existence gives me hope. And, I've been able to connect with the
hopeful energies of Tikkun and The Network of Spiritual Progressives and its message that
the world can be healed and transformed, and that has become yet one more source to
reconfirm me in radical hope that the forces of love will eventually triumph. I can see the
amazing possibilities of the Network of Spiritual Progressives’ vision of a New Bottom Line in
which love and kindness and generosity is given as much public attention and taken as seriously
as the accumulation of money or power, and its attempt, already partially manifested in the
results of the 2006 election, to build a movement that unites progressive and liberal secular
people with progressive spiritual and religious people in a way that is mutually respectful. And
as I look carefully and examine my life, I can see that there are many other aspects of my life from
which I can also draw hope.

In this next month, I will commit myself to doing more to preserve the planet by reducing my
resisting the pressure to join the orgy of consumption that leads to the misuse of the earth’s
resources in the production of holiday gifts that are often quite unnecessary. I will spread its message that Christmas,
Chanukah, Kwanza, and other December holidays should not be about giving gifts of
“things”—which in a class society always leads people to feel inadequate for not having bought
enough or received enough of the expensive items that are being promoted for sale. Instead, I
will to the greatest extent possible give gifts of my time (e.g. some amount of hours to provide
something my friends or neighbors actually want—to this one, child care, to that one, help in
food shopping, to another, help with an elderly parent, to yet another, help in painting part of
their house or helping with their garden or teaching their children some skill or sport, or in some
other way sharing one’s time in a way that the particular person receiving the gift would actually
need and benefit from), and I will let others know that it is that kind of gift that I most wish to receive.

I rejoice in the goodness of all that I am, of all that I have been able to experience, of the
goodness of my family and friends, of all the amazing and wonderful people I have been
blessed to meet or to encounter through their writing, art, and music. I’ve been blessed
in all the bounty, wisdom, pleasure and joy, and even from the painful lessons and
disappointments, that I have inherited from the universe and from my family and from
all that I have come to experience and know. I am grateful for the generosity of the universe.
And I renew my commitment to bring more love, more kindness, more open-heartedness,
more non-violence, more peace, more social justice, more environmental sensitivity, and
more gratitude into the life that I live, into my encounters with others, and into the world
that I am helping to shape, and into the consciousness that I bring to each aspect of my life.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all this and for much more beyond all that I can put
into words.

With warm wishes for a meaningful Thanksgiving experience.


Michael

Rabbi Michael Lerner
Editor, Tikkun www.tikkun.org
- posted by k @ 5:09 PM

 

• Last night I slept very deeply. Because I was exhausted. This morning I hit snooze. Because I could. It was a good thing.

• I have new ear plugs now. They were $5 for 3 pair, but they're the kind I like.

• The gym is open. I am going tomorrow morning! Unless I need to hit snooze because the earplugs didn't do the trick.
  

- posted by k @ 4:12 PM

 
Winter

• Wait a minute...what's all this getting dark at 4:30 business? Eh?

• The good news is that my heater does work, and it worked all along. It just doesn't have a setting between very hot and off.
  

- posted by k @ 3:13 PM

 

• Speaking of Beethoven, I might need a haircut soon.

• Jon Carroll (yes, again): An aside to atheists.
  

  I'm all for equality of discourse, and I have been annoyed beyond reason by the faith-based everything of the Bush administration. The endgame of this particular belief system seems to involve heavily armed bigots destroying the world, and I still haven't been to Italy, so if Richard Dawkins has got my back on that one, God bless him. I mean, may he enjoy prosperity.

  But there's one idea that comes up in these discussions that I want to talk about; it's the notion that "religion is responsible for most of the war and suffering in the world," or however it's phrased. You know, the Crusades, the Inquisition, colonialism cloaked in Christianity, bigotry against women cloaked in Islam or Hinduism -- the list is pretty long.

  I don't believe that it's religion's fault. I believe that human nature is responsible for war and torture and intolerance. I believe that we are beasts, and that every institution we set up reflects our bestial nature. If we drag God into it, it's because we feel shame for our actions. "Sure, seems bad to kill babies, but God told me to do it, so it must be OK."

  But we are also more than beasts. At the core of every religion are notions of peace and grace and understanding. Is there hypocrisy? Sure -- hypocrisy is as human as love or murder. But hypocrisy is not all there is. There are good works, plenty of them -- selfless behavior, charity, devotion. Of course you don't need to believe in God to have those virtues, but religion can serve as an organizing principle to make these virtues manifest on Earth. [emphasis added]

  Religion also provides rituals, and humans find solace in ritual. Maybe it's all a lie, blah blah blah, but how can solace be bad? How can comfort be evil? Man, shut up and listen to the music; be still and smell the flowers. There's room here for all of us; atheists, of all people, should understand that point.

The kind of people I think he is addressing is who I would call "nihilist-atheists" or "cynico-atheists," who not only don't believe in a god, but they don't believe in anything at all. I just don't think that's practical. You can believe in peace and grace and understanding without believing in god (in fact I think I have a quote from Jon Carroll on this very blog saying so a while back).
- posted by k @ 3:08 PM

 
Today I...

• Went to the 1pm concert at the Royal Academy. And here's the shocking part--are you ready? I left enough time so that even when I was running late I got there 15-20mins before it started--so I had my choice of seats, and I had time to go to the bathroom and peruse my program at leisure. It was like the twilight zone. The program was De Falla's "El Amor Brujo*" (with vocalists) and Britten's Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes or something. I think the acoustics in the hall weren't great, or at least I picked a seat that had a better view than it had acoustical properties. Still, the music was good, and the oboe player on "El Amor Brujo" should have had her own bow like the vocalists, because she carried a lot of it. I felt almost embarrassed for the vocalists because they were emoting so much, so close to the audience, and everyone was staring at them! And then I realized that was the point, so I stared, too. The libretto and translation in the program were neither complete nor completely helpful, but I was able to pick out a few words of Spanish in the untranslated parts so I had an idea of what was up.

• I don't find Britten immediately accessible, but the interludes were...interesting, not bad. Mood pieces, I guess. In the last few bars of the final movement, the "storm," the orchestra totally rocked out, so the ovation was very enthusiastic. I actually liked the music better with my eyes closed, FWIW.

• The Symphonic Brass of the Royal Academy are doing Pictures at an Exhibition and two Bernstein pieces on the 29th! Hmmm. We'll see. It's not free; it costs 5 pounds.

• Anyway, after the concert I treated myself to an overpriced meal at a fancyish vegetarian restaurant. In retrospect, I should have gone to the unpretentious cafe across the street. Oh well.

• Then I wandered over to Euston Square, where University College (now part of University of London) is. I was originally intending to just pass it on my way, but I decided to have a good ol' ramble in and around it. Plenty of old world charm, but also some striking juxtapositions in terms of architecture. For example, you might have a very modern glass-and-steel structure in the middle of--or as part of--a 19th century brick building. I think at one point I saw two 5-story libraries directly across from each other. As you can imagine, I became a little weak in the knees at that point and had to steady myself.
  
• In my rambles through UCL I did even eventually manage to find Queen's Square, which is said to have the world's greatest concentration of MRI machines, because not only is it home to the Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience, but it is adjacent to the Institute of Neurology and also a 3rd thing, I forget what.

• Then finally, I arrived at the British Museum. The building itself is very interesting. It looks like it used to be a big square building with a courtyard, and a small circular reading room was in the couryard. However, now the courtyard is covered by a dome so the whole thing is indoors. I think I'm glad I didn't know about it before I went because the effect is quite striking and almost surreal. But I would recommend going on a sunny day because I think they depend on light coming in through the dome; today it was cloudy and rainy and I didn't think the lighting was great. The reading room is now a place where you can access the collections and information about them with the online Compass system. However, apart from the indoor/outdoor architecture and the computer thingy, in many ways I found it to be a surprisingly old-fashioned museum. What I mean is, they had a lot of old things, many gotten, let's be honest, in socially irresponsible** ways, and there was not much attempt to apologize or contextualize that, or even to present a non-otherising view of the cultures from which they were taken. And that might have been ok, but what I found more disappointing was that there wasn't much done to help visitors make sense of or relate to the objects being exhibited; some of the plaques, in fact, were downright uninformative or confusing (My expectations have been raised by the Asian Art Museum, which I think has done a wonderful job of organizing its collection thematically and accessibly. Also, great lighting even on a rainy day). Having said all that, they have a tremendous amount of fascinating stuff there--I saw the Rosetta Stone! The actual one! And tablets of cuneiform writing, and 10-foot tall man-headed bulls that guarded that palace of Sargon that give you a chill when you stand in front of them. I had no idea we had so many concrete reminders of these ancient civilizations! I wish I could have taken my 9th-grade history class there. I also saw artifacts from Roman Britain. Amazing! Unfortunately, the main Roman Britain area of the museum was undergoing refurbishment or something, but they had "highlights" on display. One was the shield of a Roman soldier; on the edge, someone, either the soldier or his mother or lover, had punched his name so you'd know who's shield it is. Almost 2000 years ago and you can still see it. Wow. I wanted more information about these things and was not satisfied with the plaques, but I should add that there are many guides you can pay money for and buy in the museum. I guess that's only fair.
  

*Once when I was in HS or Jr. High, I saw a semi-staged production of "El Amor Brujo" on TV (I think it was Live from Lincoln Center) with Denyce Graves doing the singing for Candelas, and a flamenco troupe doing all the dancing. It was cool.
**For example, one sculpture "found its way to the Royal collection" after its original owner was beheaded. Hmm.
- posted by k @ 2:44 PM

 
More Bullet Points

• Undergraduates: Why do they scream so much?

• Beethoven: Life kicked him in the 'nads. Over and over again. That's why, even though he doesn't have a menstrual cycle, he understands.

• Time Out: The nice thing about London is that any day you happen to be free there's plenty to do. I don't have any lectures tomorrow because it's "reading week," and indeed I've been using it to try and get a better handle on the physics bits, but I think I'll go nuts if I don't get out of Uxbridge soon. There are two free concerts tomorrow and I'll go to at least one of them. One is actually in the National Portrait Gallery in the evening and the other is at the Royal Academy in the afternoon.
  

- posted by k @ 3:40 PM

 
Animal News Digest

• It has been discovered that elephants, like only a few other species, can recognize that the reflection they see in a mirror is actually their own. I don't know about you, but I find that to be profoundly cool. I always liked elephants. The full paper was published in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), which is nice because not only is it freely available online, but it's also fun to say.

• A 15-lb lobster, estimated to be 50 years old and bought by a restaurant for $150 was released back to the ocean, partly at the urging of the restaurant owner's young daughter. A point for all the Lisa Simpsons of the world! They actually held a raffle to decide the arthropod's fate, and thereby were able to free it without taking a financial loss. Of course, if the raffle winner had been someone else, the story wouldn't be so happy. Wasn't there a Saturday Night Live sketch like that?
  

- posted by k @ 10:46 AM

 
Bullet points

• Tesco Brand Decaf: Just Don't Do It.

• The concert I played in tonight was called "Music Happens." Um, yeah. A couple of the student performers were excellent and none were awful.

• One of the people where I work had a baby two days ago (well, his wife had a baby) so he (or someone) brought donuts and candy ("sweets") to the office yesterday. There is a lot of chocolate involved, so it's a good thing. There was still a lot of candy left today, and my supervisor encouraged me to take some with me at the end of my shift, so I did. I think she felt bad for jokingly threatening to cancel my lunch break because she "caught" me checking my email at work. I had finished the last thing she gave me to do and it was 10 minutes until lunch, so, in a moment of less-than-ideal judgement, I poked around on the interent. I've been on my best behavior at the office because I'm still new there, and I wasn't sure whether it was ok or not because some places it's ok, and some places it's not. Anyway, my supervisor made it clear that it's not ok and if she wanted to be mean she could have counted that time away from my lunch, which is fine, now I know. I don't think I will have problems working with her in general, as long as I co-operate. But she said I could make changes to the spreadsheet she made so I totally pimped it out, and I stayed an extra 10 minutes to finish putting in the information she gave me (mostly for my own satisfaction of having it done), so I wonder if she didn't feel bad about trying to take me down a notch. Yeah, homey don't play nobody's office hierarchy-punishment-approval games, bee-atches. Those ducks don't fly past these barn doors, yo.

• I was in town this afternoon, so I went to Sainsbury's and got crumpets. Usually I just get one 8-pack, but today I got two because it's such a pain to go all the way there. The package tells me you can freeze them, so I put one 8-pack in the freezer. The exciting part is that in addition to the 34p "basic" crumpets that I usually buy, the second pack were the usually 48p "premium" crumpets, but they were on sale today for 24p. As far as I can tell the only difference is the packaging, but I haven't tried one yet.

• Maybe I will try one now. I wonder if it's been long enough after eating or too close to bedtime to have tea or if I should brave the awful Tesco decaf. But I did just have two of the sweets. How's about that for a conclusion, fool?
  

- posted by k @ 3:24 PM

 
I listened to the live coverage of Remembrance Day on Radio 4 this morning and it struck me as simple, humble, sincere, moving but not affected, which was surprising. I wondered if it was due to a difference in national character, or changes in myself, or because there is currently a conflict going on.

The BBC then answered my question again with the program "Roots of Remembrance Day," which I highly recommend if you get a chance to listen to it. (For some reason, there is a partial transcript here.) Part of what's interesting in the story is that the man given the job of creating a ceremony at the end of WWI, (first of all, I thought how interesting it was that that could be a job and that someone could be as well-suited for it as this guy was) Curzon* "to his great credit put aside his preference for pomp and aristocracy, aiming instead for “poignant simplicity rather than high-ranking grandeur” and that “widows and ex-servicemen should be given priority”. That's still how it comes across; there's music, but not a lot of speechmaking. The heads of government lay wreaths at the cenotaph, there's a brief ceremony led by the Bishop of London, and then the veterans and their families come forward and lay their own wreaths. That's it. It's neither melodramatic nor pompous.

*no Trill jokes, please

Listening to the Bishop of London, it occurred to me that even though the cenotaph and ceremony are supposedly for the lost servicemen, or that he asked god to watch over them--really there's nothing we can do for them at this point. They're gone. The cenotaph is for the survivors and their grief; and for us so we can remember.

My understanding at this point is that all we can do as a society is to support veterans, service-men and -women and their families, and do what we can to minimize the future need for the type of sacrifices they have made.

There is an argument to be made that we can also honor their memories by preserving the health of civil society, but I think I am ill-equipped to discuss that idea at any length.

And, as individuals, there's this argument to be made:

A Brief for the Defense

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come. 

-Jack Gilbert
- posted by k @ 4:13 AM

 
The BBC Website answers our questions

Why the Poppy?

Scarlet poppies (popaver rhoeas) grow naturally in conditions of disturbed earth throughout Western Europe. The destruction brought by the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th Century transformed bare land into fields of blood red poppies, growing around the bodies of the fallen soldiers.

In late 1914, the fields of Northern France and Flanders were once again ripped open as the First World War raged through Europe's heart.

The significance of the poppy as a lasting memorial symbol to the fallen was realised by the Canadian surgeon John McCrae in his poem In Flanders Fields. The poppy came to represent the immeasurable sacrifice made by his comrades and quickly became a lasting memorial to those who died in the First World War and later conflicts.

The White Poppy

The white poppy was first introduced by the Women's Co-operative Guild in 1933 and was intended as a lasting symbol for peace and an end to all wars.

Worn on Armistice Day, now Remembrance Sunday, the white poppy was produced by the Co-operative Wholesale Society because the Royal British Legion had refused to be associated with its manufacture.

While the white poppy was never intended to offend the memory of those who died in the Great War, many veterans felt that its significance undermined their contribution and the lasting meaning of the red poppy. Such was the seriousness of this issue that some women lost their jobs in the 1930s for wearing white poppies.

- posted by k @ 3:55 AM

 
Oops, did I miss a day?
Well, yesterday was a busy day. I found out that I'll have 4 10-page papers due pretty much on the same day, January 11, so I then I freaked out for a while. I hope I can finish maybe two by Dec. 15th. I don't really want this hanging over my head over xmas.

In other news, I went to Tesco instead of Sainsbury on Wednesday, and it's usually a mistake because Sainsbury's isn't that much more expensive and you can get better quality and more variety there. So besides the general pantsness of Tesco, I also had to experience the specific running-out-of-crumpetsness at Tesco, which was rather upsetting. I'm sure they had some in the back, but just hadn't sent someone to re-stock yet. Some other shoppers looking in the same area shared my disgruntlement.

In the end I got a package of pikelets (pictured above), which are like crumpets, but flatter. If you imagine a crumpet as a cylinder, then you can imagine a pikelet as a cylinder with about the same radius (maybe a slightly larger radius), but only a pancake's height. They taste about the same, maybe a tiny bit saltier.

In other good news, my girlfriend sent me a package full of comforting and useful things, including my wok! Which is good news because I bought a boatload of veg on Tuesday intending to stirfry, but my pan is very thin and not great for stir-frying in. I'm going to try two different kinds: Kung Pao-style with peanuts, garlic, etc. and Hunan???-style with cabbage(well, brussels sprouts), snow peas (which they call mangetout here, bizarrely), carrots, water chestnuts and a lighter sauce. I did also buy some Tesco stir-fry sauce the time before when I was there and it's not bad, actually.


- posted by k @ 7:07 AM

 
The Library Ho-s it up
Woo! My paper is finished and printed and it's only midnight! I realized the reason it took me so long was because I didn't know what I was going to say. Usually if I know what I'm going to say the "how-to-say-it" part works itself out and I can count on about an hour/page. If I felt like overachieving I could go back through and clean up the transitions, and make the whole thing seem like it's arcing inevitably toward the conclusion, but I'm not going to.

Instead I am going to tell you about the part of my day when I wasn't working on this paper. I went up into town in the afternoon, as I had vowed, and I visted the library. In addition to The Colour of Magic, I picked up this little tart.


It totally cracked me up when I saw it. They are selling Jane Austen as chick lit, but why the hell not? It makes perfect sense. More power to 'em as long as they don't change the insides of the book. Actually, I wish I had thought of it first. Damn! Gotta love the little flower splotches.

Actually the way the Uxbridge public library is set up when you walk in reminds me a lot of Mo's idea about making libraries feel more like bookstores. I guess Ms. Bechdel did her research.
- posted by k @ 4:07 PM

 
Yay for Nancy Pelosi!
I haven't actually been happy about any election returns since I first started voting (Prop 22-Knight Initiative in CA).
- posted by k @ 12:47 AM

 
Uh-oh. I don't write any better than I did as un undergrad.
Here's my outline.

1. The parietal lobe and the intraparietal sulcus. It’s weird and funky.
2. Ok, it does all these things and we know the monkey parts that do that. (Grefkes)
3. Oh, and all that stuff about number processing. (Ansari, Dehaene)
4. It does everything! But what exactly does it do? (Kanwisher)
5. Ok, maybe there are different little bits inside it, just like we know there are in the monkey (Choi). Oh look! Corresponding parts in humans (Grefkes) Yeah, maybe things got more scrunched up in humans.
6. Some kind of conclusion.

It's due Thursday, but I wanted to finish it today instead. Now it's after midnight. D'oh.
- posted by k @ 4:10 PM

 
NaBloPoMo Commands Me to Post!
It would take to long to say any of the interesting things, so I'll just tell you this: I haven't been going up to Uxbridge as much the last few weeks because it hasn't seemed time efficient and I have been able to get most necessary groceries on campus (if we didn't have that fruit & veg market in the student union on Tuesdays I'd have more of a problem). I had several letters to post, as well, but I gave them to my friend who works up in town two days a week. But you know what is going to finally compel me to go up there on Wednesday? I need new books. I finished Terry Pratchett's Jingo, and I've already officially given up on Don DeLillo's Americana, and my selection of newspapers/magazines is pretty much pictures of naked gay men and a month-old Time Out. Aaaaagh! What am I going to read for 10 minutes before I go to bed?

So, I am going to the library this week. Then I can get more crumpets and splenda and bread with seeds in it.
- posted by k @ 3:11 PM

 
Study: Any exercise can improve diabetes control

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Combining resistance training, such as weight lifting, with aerobic workouts appears to be the most beneficial for type for long-term control of blood sugar control than either form of exercise alone, New Zealand researchers report. However, the outcomes according to type of exercise weren't very significant.

[...]

For any type of exercise training lasting 12 weeks or longer, the researchers found, hemoglobin A1C levels fell by 0.8 percent. There was some evidence that combining aerobic exercise with resistance training had more of an effect than either type of exercise alone. But more intense exercise programs did not appear to be more effective, possibly because they were more difficult for people to stick with, the researchers note.

The researchers also found that exercise had a stronger effect on people with more severe disease, which they call "a reassuring finding for those prescribing exercise to patients."

- posted by k @ 5:35 AM

 
Rose Bowl! Any Bowl!
Cal eyes PAC-10 title. But, of course, we have to keep priorities in mind; the important thing is to beat stanfurd.
- posted by k @ 12:14 PM

 
Better than Sartre's Omelette!
Schadenfreude Pie!

My god, some days it really does pay to be alive.
- posted by k @ 11:59 AM

 
Long Lost Fruits
So, in Southall today I found chiku (aka sapota) in the grocery store. I haven't had one since possibly 1991, but sometimes the seeds of a pear will make me think of them, and certain tree leaf smells will too. I bought four and have eaten one; it was perfectly ripe and just as I expected/remembered/hoped. How often does that ever happen in life? Interestingly, Wikipedia says chiku is native to Mexico but was introduced to the Phillipines via the Spanish, from where it presumably migrated to the subcontinent. Hmm. There are cases of new world crops becoming South Asian staples, such as chile peppers, potatoes, etc. So I suppose it's not impossible. But surprising, yes!

I almost saw "Umrao Jaan" at the cinema there, but I found out it was the re-make, not the original. I mean, $12 and 3 hrs. Naaah. For a classic, sure.
- posted by k @ 10:57 AM

 
New Experiences
Today I de-fragged my laptop. I just wanted everyone to know. That's about my third time, I think. Currently trying to un-install some stupid things and after that I hope to re-install the anti-virus software I got from the University. Then after that I will consider downloading and installing the new version of iTunes.

The Brian Eno lecture on Radio 3 was somewhat interesting, but after that they played random bits of Thai radio. I don't really know what to say about that. It was kind of cool at first, but then there was too much switching-among-stations effect.

Just part of a normal Friday night; also went to a free string quartet concert on campus and ran into my research supervisor and her husband. None of us knew anyone else there, so we spent the whole intermission chatting, and now I'm depilating and (theoretically) writing emails about grad schools.

I'm starting to think maybe I should move this blog to livejournal because then it would be easier to stay in touch with my peeps who are over there, gently increase the readership, and I like LJ features like being able to tag entries. Plus I've never seen a layout problem over there like the one I have here.

More importantly, today I tried Marmite for the first time. I was meeting my classmate for breakfast at the refectory before lecture, and I decided to have toast but I wanted to try something new, so, as it is vegetarian and I have been considering taking the plunge for a couple of weeks now, I picked up a packet of Marmite along with my butter and jam. I have to say, the look and smell are very intimidating. The taste, however, is not that bad. It reminded me a lot of bottled green olives, which I like. Was much better with butter than on its own, and I was pleased to learn that this is the customary way of eating it.

Of course the question remains: Why eat something so intimidating? Apparently it is a good source of B12, Folic Acid, Thiamin, Niacin and Riboflavin (hey, that covers all the coenzymes you need, right?). Well, that's useful! B12 is one of those things they try to scare vegetarians and vegans with, but I have not been frightened, but I have wondered if eating more would do me good. So perhaps I will buy some Marmite of my own and put it into rotation. Hmm, I wonder if there are any recipes for Marmite and kale...then I would be unstoppable! If I could find any kale here, that is.
- posted by k @ 2:58 PM

 
More Disgusting News: British Sausage Week!
They were serving slightly smaller versions of these things, Cumberland rings, in the refectory (=canteen=cafetaria) today. There are posters all over that place reminding us about National Sausage Week. I may have to figure out how to steal one of those posters, because I'm afraid no one will believe me. Anyway, these things look even nastier up close. Aside from the obvious comparisons, they are made disgusting by what seems to be some sort of membrane in between the spirals. I don't even want to think about it. Yes, I am a vegetarian; what's your point?

In other news, I have already blown my chances at NaBloPoMo by not posting yesterday. I turned in my first official paper today, but it doesn't count toward my grade, which is probably a good thing. Today in lecture I finally understood the concept of k-space, which was a thrill. Had a cup of coffee this morning (regular readers know I generally stick to tea or decaf coffee) and I feel extremely wired.
- posted by k @ 6:24 AM