If only I could write like this...

Alone, perhaps, they each could have explored the city with pleasure, followed whims, dispensed with destinations and so enjoyed or ignored being lost. There was much to wonder at here, one needed only to be alert and attend. But they knew each other much as they knew themselves, and their intimacy, rather like too many suitcases, was a matter of perpetual concern; together they moved slowly, clumsily, effecting lugubrious compromises, attending to delicate shifts of mood, repairing breaches. As individuals they did not easily take offense; but together they managed to offend each other in surprising, unexpected ways; then the offender -- it had happened twice since their arrival-- became irritated by the cloying susceptibilities of the other, and they would continue to explore the twisting alleyways and sudden squares in silence, and with each step the city would recede as they locked tighter into each other's presence.

-- Excerpt from Ian McEwan's The Comfort of Strangers.

On March 6-8, 2007

Where I want to be:

The Malian minstry of culture has recently announced that a homage will be paid to Ali Farka Touré in Bamako and Niafunke on March 6, 7 and 8 2007. Activities include conferences, debates and a mega concert in a football stadium attended by the likes of Toumani Diabate, Oumou Sangare, Manu Dibango, Youssou N'dour, Alpha Blondy, Bembeya Jazz, Ry Cooder, Marcus James, Bonnie Raitt, Peter Gabriel, Ramata Diakité, Boubacar Traoré(Kar Kar), Habib Koité, Salif Keita, Baaba Maal, Tiken Jah Fakoly, Carlos Santana, Tracy Chapman [ref].

Where I most likely will be:

At work!

Update: Turns out, I was working on these days but not at work. I was in dismal Lehigh at a conference - though the conference itself was enjoyable and productive, the place was really depressing!

After the passing of Ali Farka Toure, the future is in good hands... heady stuff here from his son, Vieux Farka Toure

Just listen to him casually strum the guitar sitting in his backyard in Bamako, Mali.Genius..I tell you, the kid's got the dad's genes, no doubt!

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Welcome to Pandora.com, a great internet resource to listen to new music. Take a musical journey and develop your own playlists, which evolve over time (with your feedback) to suit your tastes, while simultaneously exposing you to new groups and music.

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Wikipedia enlightens me that Pandora's box opened and released evil and misfortune into the world and in "modern times, Pandora's Box has become a metaphor for the unanticipated consequences of technical and scientific development."....so, the title doesn't really work - unless you did not expect the bountiful new amazing world opened up and made available to everyone by the internet or if you think the devil has the best tunes :). To my ears (and soul), music can be a soothing balm, a refuge, a life-sustaining force...

In any case, even as you listen to music - in my case, first Ry Cooder and then Stevie Ray Vaughn strumming - go enlighten yourself some more about the legend of Prometheus & Pandora's box or her jar, if you will!

James Brown died Xmas day...Tributes pour in as fans and fellow artists celebrate the life of 'Godfather of Soul'..

Enjoy these videos of him in performance, via Boingboing:

Eyesight, Super Bad, I Feel Good, It's A Man's World, Please Please, Sex Machine, at the Olympia, Soul Power, on the Ed Sullivan show, and an unusual TV interview he did when he was in a chemically altered state of consciousness after having been released from jail.

Incidentally, James Brown holds the record for the artist who has charted the most singles on the Billboard Hot 100 without ever hitting number one on that chart.^[ref]

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Charlie Gillett bids farewell to other artists who died over the last 12 months on his great show on BBC Radio.

Country: Mali
Title: Gambari Didi
Artist: Ali Farka Toure
CD Title: Savane
Label: World Circuit
Cat. Number: WCD075

Country: Jamaica
Title: Israelites
Artist: Desmond Dekker
CD Title: Desmond Dekker: Definitive
Label: Trojan
Cat. Number: TJDDD239

Country: USA
Title: Tequila
Artist: The Champs
CD Title: Teen Beat
Label: Ace
Cat. Number: CDCHD 406

Country: USA
Title: El Watusi
Artist: Ray Barretto
CD Title: Rock Instrumental Classics Vol 4: Soul
Label: Rhino
Cat. Number: E2 71604

Country: USA
Title: Viejos Amigos
Artist: Freddie Fender
CD Title: Canciones di mi Barrio
Label: Arhoolie
Cat. Number: CD 366

Country: Algeria
Title: Hak Hak
Artist: Cheikha Rimitti
CD Title: Nouar
Label: Sono
Cat. Number: CDS 7396

Country: Romania
Title: Caravan
Artist: Fanfare Ciocarflia [Ioan Ivancea]
CD Title: Gili Garabdi
Label: Asphalt Tango
Cat. Number: CD-ATR 0605

Country: Egypt
Title: Nabra
Artist: Hamza El Din
CD Title: Rough Guide to the Music of Egypt
Label: World Music Network
Cat. Number: RGNET 1114 CD

“People who live the most fulfilling lives are the ones who are always rejoicing at what they have.” - Richard Carlson

True.. that quote rings very true to me as it reflects my philosophy in life. But sometimes I wonder if it is crap like this that keeps me from getting somewhere. Perhaps, I rejoice too prematurely in what I have or rather I am satisfied and content with what I have and in doing so get too complacent, thereby lacking the drive, the attitude, the chutzpah to go get something tougher to attain.

Update: Damn... I tried to find who Richard Carlson is... if I have the right guy, it turns out he died on December 13, 2006 - the day after I posted the above quote here. Richard, age 45, died of a cardiac arrest while enroute from California to a television appearance in New York. Richard Carlson was an author of the "Don't Sweat" series of motivational/self-help book, which included the bestseller, Don't Sweat the Small Stuff--and it's all small stuff, which I remember seeing in a bookstore or at the library some time back and still remember the title of that book as a quotable quote. By the way, the above quote is from his book, Shortcut through Therapy.

Also, I learned that there was an actor called Richard Carlson, that I had never heard of.

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Festering in bad moods is a bad habit of mine...and so comes obvious advice from someone called Brenda Anderson:

“Bad moods become bad days, which become bad weeks, which become bad months and years. Before you know it, you’re living an unhappy life and you probably think this is ‘normal’. It’s a shame, because life can and should be wonderful. You can transcend the circumstances that are pulling you down … you need only to learn how.”

How... indeed...How....that is the million $ question.

Oh.. Ms. Moneypenny!

Elizabeth "Lizzie" Bolden, the world's oldest woman dies at age 116.... Everyone wishes for a long and happy life. Hopefully hers was a happy life. One thing is for sure - she will be missed by many. She had "40 grandchildren, 75 great-grandchildren, 150 great-great-grandchildren, 220 great-great-great grandchildren and 75 great-great-great-great grandchildren." She was born on August 15, 1890. Incidentally, she became the world's oldest person earlier this year after Maria Ester de Capovilla of Ecuador, the last documented person to be born in the 1880s (born in 1889), died. Imagine that... Nehru or Charlie Chaplin or Hitler could have been still alive!

Also, after Bolden's death, a man, Emiliano Mercado del Toro of Puerto Rico, born August 21, 1891, is the world's oldest person. This ends a streak of 16 women in a row holding the title of the oldest person, with the last male to hold the title being Shigechiyo Izumi in 1986, although his longevity has long been disputed. In fact, nine of the top ten oldest persons are female, with the grand-mommy of all...er...the oldest of all being Jeanne Louise Calment of France, who lived from Feb 21, 1875 to August 4, 1997, with the longest confirmed lifespan in history of 122 years and 164 days. According to wikipedia, 'her lifespan has been thoroughly documented by scientific study; more records have been produced to verify her age than for any other case.' The wiki entry also has this interesting tidbit about her life...

In 1965, aged 90, with no living heirs, Jeanne Calment signed a deal, common in France, to sell her condominium apartment en viager to lawyer François Raffray. Raffray, then aged 47, agreed to pay a monthly sum until she died, an agreement sometimes called a "reverse mortgage". At the time of the deal the value of the apartment was equal to ten years of payments. Unfortunately for Raffray, not only did she survive more than thirty years, but he died first, in December 1995, of cancer, at the age of 77. His widow had to continue the payments.

Talk about an unexpected turn of events! :)

Hot peppers and spider bites cause similar pain

New research suggests that tarantula venom and capsaicin, the stuff that makes hot peppers hot, both fire up the same pain receptor on nerve cells. The particular cell-surface receptor is triggered by chemicals and also temperature. The research, conducted at the University of California, San Francisco, and published in the scientific journal Nature, could someday inform the development of better pain killers. Meanwhile, I expect to see a new brand of Spider Venom Hot Sauce in a matter of moments. From Science News:

(Molecular biologist David) Julius notes that because triggering the receptor produces such strong pain sensations, it's not surprising that organisms as distantly related as pepper plants and tarantulas use the same defensive mechanism.

"Different organisms have figured out how to tap this site as a way of telling predators, 'You won't be comfortable if you mess with me,'" he says.

I accidentally ran into a list of unusual deaths on wikipedia today ..

Disclaimer: Everything in brown is directly cut-n-pasted from the wikipedia entry and has not been verified or even re-worded by me.

1. These entries about some really famous people caught my eye.. I did not know this!!

a) 1983 - Tennessee Williams died choking on a bottle cap.--and am surprised this tradition still continues after this..

b) 1849: Edgar Allan Poe, famous American writer and poet, was found on October 7, 1849, at a Baltimore tavern in a state of delirium and wearing clothes he didn't own. He died in a Washington, D.C. hospital early the next morning, his last words being "Lord, help my poor soul." While the official cause of death was listed as "congestion of the brain", the actual cause for his death has been a matter of debate ever since. The current prevailing theory is that he was a victim of rabies.

c) And this is big news to me....
1893: Tchaikovsky, the famous Russian composer, apparently committed suicide after being exposed in a homosexuality scandal. The means of his death is in dispute as to whether he took arsenic or drank cholera-infected water.

d) 1884: Allan Pinkerton, detective, died of gangrene resulting from having bitten his tongue after stumbling on the sidewalk.

e) 1916 : The English satirist, novelist and wit Saki was killed in France, during World War I by a sniper's bullet, having reportedly cried "Put that damned cigarette out!" to a fellow officer in his trench lest the glowing embers reveal their whereabouts.

(Another similar one, which I find both funny and sad at the same time is this one...

1915: François Faber, Luxembourgean Tour de France winner, died in a trench on the western front of World War I. He received a telegram saying his wife had given birth to a daughter. He cheered, giving away his position, and was shot by a German sniper. )

f) 1940: Leon Trotsky, the Soviet revolutionary leader in exile, was assassinated with an ice axe in his Mexico home. His killer, Spanish-born Soviet agent Ramon Mercader, acquired the ice axe in Trotsky's own office after being invited in. After receiving a brutal blow to the head, Trotsky fought and literally took a bite out of his murderer.

g) 1911: Jack Daniel, founder of the famous Tennessee whiskey distillery, died of blood poisoning from a toe injury he received after kicking his safe in anger when he could not remember its combination code. (By the way, did u know the Jack Daniel distillery in TN is in a dry county :))

2. I am going to use those last words when confronted by smart-alecs who think they know it all :)
1864: John Sedgwick, Union general in the American Civil War, was killed by a distant Confederate sniper at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House. Among his last words to his men were "They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance!"

3. Talk about going away in glory:

a) 1927: J.G. Parry-Thomas, a British racing driver, was decapitated by his car's drive chain which, under duress, snapped and whipped into the cockpit. He was attempting to break his own Land speed record which he had set the previous year. Despite being killed in the attempt, he succeeded in setting a new record of 171 mph.
b) 1953: Frank Hayes, jockey, suffered a heart attack during a horse race. The horse, Sweet Kiss, went on to finish first, making Hayes the only deceased jockey to win a race.

4. There are a few odd-ball entries like

1834: David Douglas, Scottish botanist, who fell in a pit trap, was crushed by a bull that fell in the same pit.

1845: Josiah P. Wilbarger, a Texan pioneer, was scalped by Comanches in 1833 but survived, leaving his skull exposed. He lived 11 years until fatally striking his head against a low beam in his cotton gin....

5. 1990: George Allen, an American football coach, died a month after some of his players dumped a Gatorade bucket on him following a victory (as it is tradition in American Football), resulting in pneumonia.

6. And last but not least... this one has to be the most gruesome on the list. I had kinda read about this somewhere but had not read the details! Uggh....this will revulse you!

2001: Bernd-Jürgen Brandes was stabbed repeatedly in the neck and then eaten by Armin Meiwes. Before the killing, both men dined on Brandes' severed penis. Brandes had answered an internet advertisement by Meiwes looking for someone for this purpose. Brandes explicitly stated in his will that he wished to be killed and eaten.

I took Dante's Inferno Test. Here are the results...



The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!

Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	High
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Moderate
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Moderate
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	Moderate
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Moderate

Go ahead... you take the Test and see how you do!!





The personality disorder test sayeth:

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid Personality Disorder:	Moderate
Schizoid Personality Disorder:	Low
Schizotypal Personality Disorder:	Low
Antisocial Personality Disorder:	Low
Borderline Personality Disorder:	Low
Histrionic Personality Disorder:	Moderate
Narcissistic Personality Disorder:	Moderate
Avoidant Personality Disorder:	High
Dependent Personality Disorder:	Moderate
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder:	Low
-- Take the Personality Disorder Test --

Proof that the human mind is f-ed up...

1. A Denver woman was ruled criminally insane for stabbing her 21-month-old granddaughter 62 times with a butcher knife after she received “spiritual messages from the geese flying overhead.”

2. German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday called photos of German soldiers in Afghanistan playing with a skull "shocking and disgusting," and Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung said those involved will be dealt with harshly.

One image was published on the cover of the national tabloid Bild, under the words "Schock Fotos." In the picture, a soldier seems to be slightly smirking as he poses with the skull in his raised right hand. Other images show the skull displayed like an off-center hood ornament on the front of a jeep. Another picture shows a soldier holding the skull near his exposed penis.

3. Necrophiliac bestiality - wtf..!!! - A 44-year-old Saginaw man remains jailed today on charges of bestiality after he was seen engaged in sexual acts with a dead dog

4. Disturbing images from China show a distressed woman attempting suicide on the street. The woman tried to slash her wrists with a razor sharp blade, before slashing her throat.

5. Fighting the myth that "sex with a virgin can cure Aids"! Reminds me of the pod I saw on current.tv where an African orphan, who lost both his parents to AIDS, gives us his understanding of the disease - that the condom manufacturers put this disease into the condoms....sadly, ignorance rules!

1) Amitava Kumar v Salman Rushdie : A literary spat - via
It seems that Rushdie was due to visit Vassar College, where Amitava teaches, and, offended by pieces such as this (Is Salman Rushdie God?), "made it clear to the organizers that he would cancel if [Amitava] was involved in his visit.". The sixth comment at the post is by Salman Rushdie himself, who writes that he did not threaten to cancel his visit to Vassar, and merely refused to be on the same stage as him.

2) Salman Rushdie: His life, his work and his religion

In the 17 years since Ayatollah Khomeini passed a death sentence on Salman Rushdie, the writer's unflinching criticism of the religion into which he was born has never been stifled. Now, as the force of Islamist fury reverberates around the world, the acclaimed Anglo-Asian novelist tells Johann Hari why we're all living under a fatwa now.

3) Since his move to the US and especially since 9-11, Rushdie has taken up the role of being a social commentator* rather than being a novelist (and a sucky one at that for the past decade, me thinks**, despite what he himself thinks (first link is a PTI copy of second link, which is an AP article. Shame!!) --

"Salman Rushdie said Tuesday that he has to struggle more to find the energy to write as he gets older, but he has developed greater control over his writing."

Just last week, he got into trouble by saying this..

In defense of a comment made by the British Leader of the Commons, Jack Straw, who suggested that Muslim women should be forced to remove their veils in his presence, Rushdie said: “[Straw] was expressing an important opinion, which is that veils suck, which they do. I think the veil is a way of taking power away from women.”

Also read more on the veil debate:
So what is your problem, then, Rushdie?
Freedom dressed up

I can see why Blair backs Straw's comments but why did Rushdie have to offer any opinion? I suppose with his writing going down the tube, he still wants to continue to be in the limelight and so wants to continue to create sparks on both sides of the Atlantic. Thanks to the fatwa, people keep asking him for his opinion in today's day and age of intolerance & fight-back against the fundamentalist Islamists.

Little mercies - good to know he still supports Indian Muslims 'because they are not as radicalized'. (Sarcasm)

* some examples:
Rushdie urges Muslim engagement with West
Rushdie says terror is glamour
Rushdie 'feels sorry' for Pope
Intimidating the West, From Rushdie to Benedict

**I had written this elsewhere ..

Rushdie has failed to capture his magic from the 80s in the 90s! Padmalaxmi as his Muse, seems to have only made it worse - I found 'The Fury' to be unreadable! 'Ground beneath her feet' was enjoyable initially but I didn't finish it - probably should give it a second try! This year, Rushdie will come out with his latest novel, Shalimar the Clown

4) For the time being, it looks like he has taken up the position of professor at Emory University in Atlanta and has sold his personal archive, including two unpublished novels, to the University.

The sum involved is likely to match or exceed similar deals. In 2003 Emory bought the archive of Ted Hughes, the previous poet laureate, for a reported 600,000 dollars. Julian Barnes, the author of Flaubert's Parrot, is said to have sold his papers to the University of Texas at Austin for 200,000 dollars. The two unpublished novels - The Antagonist, influenced by Thomas Pynchon, the American writer, and The Book of Peer - were written by Rushdie in the 1970s. 59-year-old Rushdie said his priority had been to "find a good home" for his papers, but admitted that money had also been a factor. "I don't see why I should give them away," he said. "It seemed to me quite reasonable that one should be paid."

Apparently, the Brits have got their panties in a bunch about losing their heritage to foreign universities...since when did Salman become British heritage! ;)

(I wonder if the decision to leave NYC is related to the rumored split with Padmalakshmi. Guess not - seems, no 'splitsville' though she does find him 'complicated' and praises Sean Bean's kissing. Ok..this is not a tabloid. I'd better stop because he supposedly will come after you with a baseball bat if you ever write mean things about his wife :))

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Not Rushdie-related but kinda related links
Faith, riots and (un)reason
Fatwa on freedom

Daily Show host Jon Stewart dispelled rumors of a Presidential run as "a real sign of how sad people are" with the state of affairs in the country. Nothing says 'I am ashamed of you my government' more than 'Stewart/Colbert '08.

Anna Politkovskaya, courageous journalist and critic of the Putin administration's brutal war of crimes in Chechnya, was shot dead at her apartment building earlier this week.

Vilhelm Konnander writes about Anna Politkovskaya murder and Vladimir Putin’s silence:

“The fact remains: When Russia’s “first journalist” is silenced, Russia’s “first person” stays silent. No word from Putin, no word from the Kremlin when the freedom of the press is trampled on by brutal suppression. The tacit message thus sent, resounds with piercing echo: Freedom of speech has no place in Putin’s Russia.”

White Sun of the Desert writes that Politkovskaya’s “death is a tragedy for Russia. If somehow the government was involved, it represents a disaster.”

Analysis: The assassination of Anna Politkovskaya is designed to warn others against exposing the abuses of Moscow's authoritarian nationalist drift

Chechnya: Articles by Anna Politkovskaya

"Russia's Secret Heroes", an excerpt from A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya.

Red October:Killing the Truth in Moscow

Edward Lucas posts the Economist’s obituary.

A Step At A Time translates an earlier interview with Anna Politkovskaya’s editor, Dmitry Muratov.

The Accidental Russophile compiles links on the tragic event; La Russophobe accuses him of “an early attack” on the murdered journalist.

A quick history recap perhaps is appropriate here:

First Chechen War (1994-96)
Second Chechen War (1999- present)

And earlier in September, Andrey Kozlov, the top deputy chairman of Russia's Central Bank was shot dead, allegedly because of his efforts to clean up the country's banking system by closing banks that were involved in money laundering. Kozlov, in the late 90s, was responsible for saving Russia from financial ruin.

Meanwhile, a report says that there have been 655,000 deaths in Iraq since the US invasion of the country...all I can say is..

"O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" - 1 Corinthians 15:55

Earlier this week, the 2006 Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded to Andrew Fire of Stanford University and Craig Mello at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, for groundbreaking discovery in silencing genes. Called RNA interference, it occurs in plants, animals and people and is important for regulating gene activity and helping defend against viruses. In RNA interference, certain molecules trigger the destruction or inactivation of the messenger RNA from a particular gene, so that no protein is produced. Thus the gene is effectively silenced.

Amazing that the prize has been awarded to researchers just 8-9 years after their discovery!

But it's appropriate, said Bruce Stillman, president of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., because the work ''is recognized now as one of the really revolutionary changes in the way we think about how genes are controlled.''

Apparently, this discovery has spawned a niche biotechnology industry almost immediately after its discovery in 1997. And earlier this week, I also read about a related research study

Scientists stop colon cancer growth in mice by blocking just one enzyme
Texas researchers have discovered what may become a potent new weapon in the fight against colon cancer. In cell culture experiments, scientists from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) and the University of Texas at Arlington determined that stopping the activity of a single enzyme called aldose reductase could shut down the toxic network of biochemical signals that promotes inflammation and colon cancer cell growth.

And today the Nobel Prize for Chemistry is awarded to Roger Kornberg, the son of a Nobel laureate, for describing gene copying in cells, which can give insight into illnesses such as cancer and heart disease. The process of gene copying, known as "genetic transcription" is central to life.

"If transcription stops, genetic information is no longer transferred into the
different parts of the body. Since these are then no longer renewed, the
organism dies within a few days," the Academy said. Disturbances in
transcription contribute to many human illnesses, such as cancer, heart disease
and various kinds of inflammation, it added. Poisonous toadstools kill by
interrupting the process. Understanding transcription is also important for the
development of various therapeutic applications of stem cells, the Academy said.
Kornberg was the first to create pictures showing transcription in action. His
depictions were so detailed that separate atoms could be distinguished.

I have writen on the topic of happiness some time back, but this week I picked up a really interesting book at the library - Happiness - A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill by Matthieu Ricard. I'll read the book soon but reading the book flap and praise for the book by others made me want to blog about it.

Matthieu Ricard, is son of the famous French philosopher, Jean-François Revel (who died earlier this year) & Yahne Le Toumelin, a contemparary French painter and later Buddhist nun herself. After or while completing his Ph.D. at the Institut Pasteur under the Nobel laureate, Francois Jacob, in the then upcoming field of molecular genetics, Matthieu undertooktook a trip to India in 1967, which changed the course of his life, leading him to "a future in which seeking inner happiness took precedence over all other pursuits." Since then, for the past 35 years, he has spent his life residing at the Shechen monastery near Kathmandu in Nepal as a Buddhist monk, working on various humanitarian projects in Tibet and Nepal.

Here is an excerpt from the book flap:

"In the book, 'he makes a passionate case for happiness as a goal that deserves at least as much energy as any other in our lives. Wealth? Fitness? Career success? How can we possibly place these above true and last well-being? Drawing from works of fiction and poetry, contemporary Western philosophy, Buddhist thought, current psychological and scientific research, and personal experience, Ricard weaves an inspirational and forward-looking account of how we can begin to rethink our realities in a fast-moving modern world."

A chapter excerpt can be read here. And here are some gems from blurbs with praise for the book!

"Happiness is to be found in controlling the mind, not circumstances." - Daniel Kahneman, Princeton University, winner of Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002 for "having integrated insights from psychological research into economic science, especially concerning human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty." (Aside: read this interview with Kahneman)

"You may not find happiness in a book, but if reading a book can precipitate a tectonic shift in your life and mind toward robust, genuine, deeply rooted happiness, this would be the book." - Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Coming to our senses

"..how preoccupation with the self leads to the detrimental urges, thoughts, and feelings that present barriers to genuine liberation." - Aaron Beck, MD, author of Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders, 1976.

"...to change the individual is also, ultimately, to change the world." - George Soros

Wow.. me thinks much happiness may come by reading the book! I hope to update with a review of book after I read it... (Disclaimer: I've promised book reviews before and not delivered!)... but in the meantime read this review and reader's responses at the amazon.com link to the book. Better still - read the book itself! ;)

Note: Per Wired magazine, in 2002 "Dr. Richard Davidson, director of the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin and a conference presenter, used an fMRI machine to map the brain of monk Matthieu Ricard. While Ricard, a monk with over 30 years' experience in contemplative practice, engaged in what Buddhists call compassion meditation, Davidson measured the activity in his brain. The pictures showed excessive activity in the left prefrontal cortex (just inside the forehead) of Ricard's brain."

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Related Links:

1. A blog post on The Art of Happiness by Vikram Karve
2. Columns and articles by Matthieu Ricard via Beliefnet.com
3. Mind Over Matter: At the Eighth Mind and Life Conference, the Dalai Lama and Western scientists debate the true nature of negative emotions
4. State of Disunion: China's stranglehold onTibet tightens, even as dissenters in Beijing call for negotiation.
5. Pilgrimage to the Diamond Throne: Tens of thousands of Buddhists recently traveled to Bodhgaya to hear the Dalai Lama speak on compassion.
6. This book by Ricard's philosopher father may also make for interesting reading: The Monk and the Philosopher: A Father and Son Discuss the Meaning of Life by Jean-Francois Revel
   

Look who has weaseled his way onto the New York's Post's famous gossip column Page 6 today (hmm...gossip-time... he and RM dont get along, huh!) .... - via

Unbelievable... A Belgian embassy official in Delhi allegedly got involved in an affair with her driver - who later killed her!! Even a Bollywood movie director couldn’t have thought of this... Life is stranger than art!

A Belgian embassy official was brutally murdered on Saturday night at Vasant Vihar, part of Delhi's posh diplomatic enclave. The police have now arrested the suspect, the murdered woman's driver – and are hinting that it was a crime of passion. The Belgian embassy already seems to be distancing itself from the incident. Belgian Embassy Spokesperson Jean Lee Villet says, “She had nothing to do with the embassy. She came here on an official passport and not on a diplomatic one."


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And an old fashioned sex scandal from the UK :)

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Today, I heard a song called Amy (hear a 1 minute excerpt here from a previous release) by Kante Manfila, a Guinean born guitarist from Mali, on Andy Kershaw's program on BBC Radio (song was on the Sep 10th playlist.. the link is updated every week and so after next week, you will not see the list I heard today.)

The reason to highlight the song is not because I love music from Africa (read my post about Farka Toure's guitar playing) but because the song is part of a new release, 'Various: West Africa Unwired', which is part of the Think Global label from the World Music Network ..

..that combines the ideals of reducing poverty, defending human rights and protecting the environment with superb collections of cutting edge music from around the world. In partnership with Amnesty International and Oxfam, all Think Global releases will use a novel type of packaging – using only 100% recycled card with no plastic tray or plastic jewel case.

For information on music from West Africa, see the following wikipedia links for music from Benin - Burkina Faso - Chad - Côte d'Ivoire - Gambia - Ghana - Guinea - Guinea-BissauLiberia - Mali - Mauritania - Niger - Nigeria - Senegal - Sierra Leone - Togo and Western Sahara.

You can also read, "West Africa's Musical Powerhouse" by Lucy Duran, in Rough Guide to World Music Volume One (Simon Broughton, Mark Ellingham, James McConnachie, James and Orla Duane (Ed.), pp 539-562, 2000.)

Also see this great video - Gobissa and Child, See the Rider by Markus James.

Enlisting the brilliant support of Hassi Sare (njarka violin, vocals), Solo Sidibe (kamele n'goni, vocals), and Hamma Sankare (calabash, vocals), James creates a beautiful music video about the contrast of life in the dessert and life speeding up in the modern world and how life could be over at anytime. The music video was filmed in the sand dunes and villages in and around Timbuktu, Mali.

Celebrating R. K. Narayan, on the occasion of his 100th anniversary is Jhumpa Lahiri* through this article, Narayan Days.


* Read this Jhumpa Lahiri short story in New Yorker magazine from May 2006. An overview of her literature is here. I have enjoyed Lahiri's short stories far more than anything I have read from other Indian-origin authors who reside in the US...only because she did not make a big deal of mixed culturual identities (she writes equally well about both Indian and American personas and a good short story is exactly that - a good story about people!)...or so I thought until I just researched (or to use the right verb, googled) and found articles in the WSJ and Newsweek where Lahiri talks about her hyphenated existence and about the "intense pressure to be at once 'loyal to the old world and fluent in the new.'" Blaah...wonder if the media makes a big deal out of the author's mixed identities across two nations, two cultures, and worst still...the immigrant experience, every time they encounter an author of Indian origin or whether they do so only because Indian authors (Many thanks, Bharati Mukherjee & Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni!!) have made multi-culturism and the immigrant experience their only selling point over the years. Its probably a little of both - a chicken and egg problem of sorts ...


Anyways, back to RK or Rasipuram Krishnaswami Ayyar Narayanaswami... who was essentially the first Indian writer in English to become famous outside of India* too. Tagore precedes him but I consider him more a poet than a writer and more of his work was in Bengali than in English. Appropriately, RK Narayan is one of the early chapters in a recent book I read (read only about 60% of it) - Modern South Asian Literature in English by Paul Brians, part of the Series Literature as Windows to World Cultures. (Brians is a Professor of English at Washington State University, Pullman. He also maintains a webpage on Common English errors, has a page on Resources for study of World Civilizations, and The Chernobyl Poems of Lyubov Sirota)

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* For example, see:
- Tribute from VS Naipual in Time magazine. (wow..he has a good word to say about someone!!)
- Pankaj Mishra discusses his work in the New York Review of Books.
- The life of RK Narayan in California Literary Review
- Obituary in New York Times
- Paul Brian's World Literature in English list has a study guide to RK's The Guide

but here is someone (Shashi Tharoor) who is not a fan!

Other Links:
- Vendor of treats - a tribute to RK Narayan
- A friend remembers RK.
- Another friend reminisces

My Sister, Guard Your Veil; My Brother, Guard Your Eyes by Lila Azam Zanganeh

http://www.thenation.com/directory/bios/lila_azam_zanganeh

http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/iran/zanganla.htm

http://www.pbs.org/kcet/tavissmiley/archive/200604/20060414.html

Lila Azam Zanganeh discusses Giorgio Fabre's new book about the relations between Hitler and Mussolini

Lila Azam Zanganeh, in the NYT (Nov. 7, 2004)

- 7 / 22 / 06

10 years ago, I would be listening to classical music all the time. These days it is jazz (and occasionally blues) .. listening to it incessantly on the internet for the most part - my favorite shows being Jazz with Mell Hill on BBC Radio and WWOZ.org straight from New Orleans.

But driving back from running some errands today, I was taken back to those times remembering a past joy.. (for listening to classical music has now become a past fad, the possesion of 100+ CDs from those days notwithstanding!) ... when I heard two great performances today on WGBH.org public radio

1) Ravel: Tzigane played by Dmitri Torchinsky on violin and Daniel del Pino on piano.

2) Paganini's 'Introduction, theme & variations on Paisiello's "Nel cor più"' played by Romanian violinist Eugen at the Newport Music Festival, which took place this year from July 7–23.

Pakistani cricketer, Wasim Raja dies from a heart attack while playing cricket
Obituary - The good die young Dileep Premachandran - Cross-border hero Gideon Haigh - A breathtaking strokeplayer

Veteran filmmaker Hrishikesh Mukherjee, feted with the Dadasaheb Phalke award and Padma Vibhushan, and director of several Hindi movies that continue to be enjoyed by me time and again, including Anand, Golmaal, Chupke Chupke, and other classics like Abhimaan and Khubsoorat, died at age 84 at the Leelavati hospital in Mumbai after a fight with a series of illnesses recently. His last work was Jhooth Bole Kauwa Kaate starring Anil Kapoor and Juhi Chawla, released in 1998....which I have not seen. Other fans pay tribute here..

Apparently, Geysers spewing sand and dust hundreds of feet into the "air" have been discovered on Mars. Images from a camera orbiting Mars on the Mars Odyssey probe have shown the 100mph jets of carbon dioxide erupt through ice at the planet's south pole.The geyser debris leaves dark spots, fan-like markings and spider-shaped features on the ice cap. The scientists said geysers erupted when sunlight warming the ice turned frozen carbon dioxide underground into high-pressure gas.

(In a bizzare coincidence, I saw a documentary on Science Channel yesterday on the 'killer lakes' of Africa - where a huge cloud of CO2 emanated from the bottom of the lake and killed 1800+ people around Lake Nyos in Cameroon in 1986. Had never heard of this huge tragedy before and moreso also that such a thing was possible on earth! Interesting how scientists went about deciphering what happened and also how to degass the lakes to prevent future disasters - although per this 2005 article, efforts to prevent the release of deadly clouds of toxic gas from two African lakes appear to be failing.)

Perusing through a list of people who died in 2006 on wikipedia (no..no morbid fascination about death - just happened to reach that page after reading the wiki entry on Bismillah Khan)..and read about 3 deaths in the last 4 days of July ...

1. Akbar Mohammadi - 34, Iranian student dissident, heart attack following a hunger strike and torture.
2. Sunil Kumar, 34, Bhopal disaster campaigner against Union Carbide and founder of Children Against Carbide, found hanged.
3. Jessie Gilbert, 19, British chess player, youngest Women's World Amateur Championship winner, fall.

I had not read about their deaths nor even ever heard of these 3 people ever until today and still rue their loss today - perhaps more than I mourn the loss of a maestro like Bismillah Khan.

Update: Confused writes about how life can be a bitch!

David Grossman is one of Israel’s foremost novelists and peace activists.He is perhaps best known for his 1987 novel Yellow Wind. Though, he was initially supportive of the Israel-Lebanon war, recently he came out strongly against the 11th minute expansion of the ground war. Israel has pushed thousands of troops in the last days of war to score some brownie points against the Hezbollah before the ceasefire set in. One of them was Grossman’s 20 year old son Staff Sgt. Uri Grossman. Grossman’s opposition to expansion of the war was prescient. Today, on the last day of war, his son was killed in Lebanon.

Note: "Death be not proud" is a reference to the famous poet, John Donne's poem by the same name.

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

More quotes from his work here.