May 2013
54 posts
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“Fish, I’ll stay with you until I’m dead.”
– Said by the old man, the fisherman, trying to catch the biggest fish of his life, in Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.
It’s a mystery as to why the predator should say such a thing to his prey.
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“I don’t like overrefinement, or to dwell in the heads of vaporous ladies with...”
– Two-time Booker Prize-winning novelist, Hilary Mantel.
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“We must learn to view the past in three dimensions before we can move into the...”
– Historian Stephanie Coontz on the pitfalls of social nostalgia (NYT).
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“I’m concerned about electronic approaches to grading writing, […] I think...”
– Drew Gilpin Faust, the president of Harvard University and a former history professor, on software tools to computer-grade essays.
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“For decades, élite educators were preoccupied with “faculty-to-student ratio”:...”
– Nathan Heller, reflecting on the rising popularity of MOOCS (Massive Open Online Course) in higher Education in the United States. What caught my attention was the likening of Colleges and Universities to “broadcast networks.”
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“I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a...”
– Daisy says this of her daughter, in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (I’m guessing it’s a “fool” capable of falling head over heels in love “foolishly”)
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“One thing more abominable than the soul-killing poverty in India, is the...”
– A reader Sriram from Bangalore responds to a discussion on the Indian middle class in NYT’s India Ink segment.
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Dirty tax secrets
According to the Economist New York, California and Illinois, among other high-tax blue states right now, keep afloat dozens of Republican states. New Yorkers pay far more in federal tax dollars than they get back in federal spending. Between 1990 and 2009, taxpayers in New York State transferred out $950 billion to the rest of the country in federal taxes.
There are several Republican,...
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“The rearview mirror of nostalgia edits out all imperfections of the past....”
– In the course of a conversation named “The Sweet Spot,” between cultural critic, David Carr and film critic, A.O. Scott.
(I got “nostalgic” for the Bengali “Adda,” or informal conversation among intellectuals, as I heard this conversation. But I remembered, the...
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WatchHow to get a sari cleaned.
My mother never had any problems getting her saris dry-cleaned, but then again, she never wore gaudy, glittery one’s like these.
The above saris are pretty to the unpracticed eye, but they smack of bad taste as well.
The tasteful sari is the exquisite dhakai.
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“The Ivy League Industrial Complex, is a scam. The efforts to get accepted into...”
– From the “Reader’s Comments” box in the NYT, in response to a story of how admissions offices in Ivy League institutions are hounded by those on the “Wait List.”
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“We are all furies, except the ones who are too damned foolish.”
– Nora, the angry heroine of Claire Messud’s new novel, The Woman Upstairs.
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India politics
India’s so-called right wing, pro-Hindu, pro-corporation party, the BJP, or, the Bharatiya Janata Party, has yet again played its card wrong.
During the Karnataka Assembly elections, the BJP wooed Bangalore voters by promising to make Bangalore into a more thriving nightlife oriented city.
The results are out and the Congress party, with its more conventional political campaign of...
A Main-Course Salad With Spinach and Chickpeas →
This salad hits all the requisite flavor and textural notes – sweet, salty, tangy, fresh, crisp, soft and rich.
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“Minimalism is a nicer way to say you have nothing.”
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“The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting...”
– Stephen Hawking
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“We live not alone but chained to a creature of a different kingdom: our body.”
– Marcel Proust
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“By now it’s practically conventional wisdom that Fitzgerald’s novel is...”
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