February 2012
48 posts
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“Is it better to be experiencing the right kind of doubt than the wrong sort of...”
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New York will soon ban the sale of shark fin.
Sale of shark fins is already banned on the West Coast.
Shark fin soup is a delicacy among the Chinese and a shark fin soup, like the wedding cake in the West, is a staple in a Chinese wedding, as it is believed to bring good luck to the wedded couple.
One wonders what doesn’t bring good luck to the Chinese—shark fins, whale tail, crows...
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“India is not a democracy, it is a psephocracy,”
– Social Scientist Asish Nandy. Psephocracy: Isn’t the rule of law but electoral calculation that governs the lives of modern Indians.
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From what I hear, from here and there, the American century did not quite last for more than 5 decades roughly: from 1945-1990s (a quarter of the 20th century).
Some people believe we’ve lived in an American century for 100s of years and it’s only now that the power of America is waning.
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The following is an excerpt from William Carlos Williams’ poem, “To Elsie”.
expressing with broken brain the truth about us… as if the earth under our feet were an excrement of some sky and we degraded prisoners destined to hunger until we eat filth while the imagination strains after deer going by fields of goldenrod…
Elsie was an immigrant who worked as a maid in a household...
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“It is an identifiable thing, and its characteristic, its chief character is that...”
– Poet William Carlos Williams explains his goal as a poet is to capture the “immediacy” of experience, in his Autobiography (1951)
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“[Irony]…is the hardest addiction of all. Forget heroin. Just try giving up...”
– Edward St. Aubyn, At Last (2012), a novel.
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“They are taking faith and crushing it. Why? When you marginalize faith in...”
– The mad “king” (Rick) Santorum’s incredible spin on history has left Robespierre and Danton (two heroes of the French Revolution) turning in their graves.
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“We r both products of god’s breath, and the dust of the earth, and ought...”
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“Man is something more than a neuron net,” […] there is an intelligence, a...”
– William Peter Blatty, celebrating the 40th anniversary of his book The Exorcist.
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“[A world without men would be one of] No crime and lots of happy fat women.”
– Cartoonist Nicole Hollander.
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“The entire world has become this Dickensian series in which you are not visited...”
– Sloane Crosley, author of How Did You Get This Number, ruminating on the trivia of personal lives that are spewed onto virtual space everyday.
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“The truest measure of a man, indeed of a person, is not whom he lies down with...”
– Charles Blow, NYTimes, writing to argue for a broader definition of masculinity. I wanted to add “woman” and “she” to this.
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“In this particular winter of our discontent, the wispiest nostrums and baldest...”
– Howard Kuntsler in a commentary on the state of the (American) union, “Clusterfuck Nation” (this is what he names the energy-guzzling, unsustainable-living suburbs of America).
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“The electric washing machine, which came into use in the early 20th century,...”
– Ha-Joon Chang, a University of Cambridge economist.
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“You want self-knowledge? You should come to America? Just as the Mahatma had to...”
– A.K. Ramanujam (in Annayya’s Anthropology) cited in the Epilogue (“Garb of Modernity”) of Sunil Khilnani’s book The Idea of India.
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Steminism: Is stem-cell feminism, or a political activity of lobbying the government for funding stem-cell research. Steminists are mostly women scientists…
I love these terms!
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“This has nothing to do with context. This has everything to do with a caviar...”
– Charles Blow, NYT, in response to Mitt Romney’s gaffe # 4: The poor have a secure safety net and one needn’t worry about them or the very rich.
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January 2012
57 posts
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These days, trivial developments come disguised as big news.