Nancy Griffin writes in the AARP magazine*

You heard it here first: 2008 is the year that will forever change the image of 50. Consider the bumper crop of rock stars and sex symbols who will hit the half-century mark—including Sharon Stone, Madonna, Viggo Mortensen, Ellen DeGeneres, Prince, and Michelle Pfeiffer, just to name a few.

Does that mean 50 is the new 30? Not really. Most of us, at 50 and beyond, are happy with the lines we’ve earned and the lives we’ve led. Still, nobody can deny that being a quinquagenarian today is a whole new ball game. Fifty can mean starting a brand-new career or soaring to new heights in an old one (before Lord of the Rings, few would have recognized the accomplished indie actor Viggo Mortensen). It can mean having young children (Stone has three kids under age seven). Or it can mean the freedom and confidence to do whatever the heck you want—whether it’s to spend time with family, write children’s books, take to the stage in a corset, or, like Madonna, do all three.

So in honor of AARP’s 50th anniversary we hereby proclaim: “50 is the new 50.”

* Don't ask me why I am reading an article for retired people (AARP) - its just one of he wonders of the internet and my desultory mind. :) Actually, I happened to land there somehow after reading Garrison Keillor's Writers Almanac for Jan 9th, which tells us that Krantz, "was a fashion editor for Good Housekeeping magazine, then a freelance journalist. It wasn't until she was 51, and her children were grown, that she wrote her first book. She began working on a novel, writing six and a half hours a day, five days a week. After nine months, her book, Scruples, was completed. It was published in March of 1978. Four months later it became number one on The New York Times best-seller list and remained there for almost one year."

Judith Tarcher Krantz said at her 40th Reunion at Wellesley some years back:

"Just in time for my 50th birthday, I discovered that I could write fiction. My husband had urged me to try fiction for 15 years before I did. . . . I believed that if I couldn't write 'literature,' I shouldn't write at all. . . . Now, I would say to young women, do something you have a true feeling for, no matter how little talent you may believe you have. Let no masterwork be your goal—a modest goal may lead you further than you dream."

Those words are inspiring to me, though I am not a "young woman"....but will I act?

David Foster Wallace's short story "Good Old Neon" (from his book of short stories, Oblivion) begins:

"My whole life I've been a fraud. I'm not exaggerating. Pretty much all I've ever done all the time is try to create a certain impression of me in other people. Mostly to be liked or admired. It's a little more complicated than that, maybe. But when you come right down to it it's to be liked, loved. Admired, approved of, applauded, whatever. You get the idea."

Beautiful lines, excerpted from Argentinian writer, Marcela Sola's novel, El Silencio de Kind (Kind's Silence), which is included in Words without borders - The world through the eyes of writers.

The world cannot be seen. A glance does not necessarily mean the truth. The world came to me through imagination, a certain internal touch, large fingers that reach from inside, that brush across the surface of things, people, and colors, feeling their inner workings, without ever looking at them, those things and people that are so desired, so distant, so inaccessible. You can be blind and mute but not deaf. Blind, one cannot capture the meaning of words, what humans exchange through them, how they complete and embroider them. What bodies scream at the top of their voices, what glances say, the brume emitted by words. That world that never manages to be complete.

and later..

Experience is different: sealed inside a glass ball you can perceive everything that was ever spoken, everything that words don't say, for the same reason that you never hear them. Beneath the outer layers of human skin, there are underground streams that run through us, imperceptible, delicate strings like those of a spiderweb that unite more inexorably than voices and oaths...

It is actually a very beautiful story... the above excerpts giving nothing away about it. What a treasure this collection of translations is -- we would never read these gems otherwise!

Walter Benjamin: "I learned to wrap myself in words that were, in fact, clouds."

"..on ordinary days that we didn't know
until we looked back across a distance
of forty years would glow and shimmer
in memory's flickering light. "
- from "After School on Ordinary Days" by Maria Mazziotti Gillan, from Italian Women In Black Dresses.
http://www.publicradio.org/tools/media/player/almanac/2008/01/08_wa

"I have only one reader — me. I'm the average reader. If I like it, that's all I worry about." - Judith Krantz

This is why I love to read (and I also love movies for the same reason) books much more than following politics or sports (even cricket!):

..to go more deeply into the experience of the other -- no matter how "foreign" -- is to go more deeply into our own experience as well. Leo Tolstoy wrote: "Art is transferring feeling from one heart to another." .......

This is from the Introduction by Andre Dubus III to the book "Words without borders - The world through the eyes of writers". The post title also is from the same paragraph...as a trait that, Dubus writes, each story in the collection has.

The collection is a truly wonderful one and expect more excerpts from the various short pieces in thebook in the days to come. (Some time this year, I also need to find wordswithoutborders's other book on Literature from the "Axis of Evil", in which the editor, Alane Mason writes in the introduction, "Not knowing what the rest of the world is thinking and writing is both dangerous and boring."

Premise of a new book by David Levy, Love and Sex with Robots

“The first half sets out to prove that human beings can indeed love robots, and the second, spicier, section is given over to showing that we will, and in fact already do, have sex with robots.” - via Boldtype

And why not...they're already fantasizing about a virtual woman, obsessing over pillows, falling in love with dolls (there's a word for it - agalmatophilia!), then why not a mechanized one! This one is even better because plausibly the robot gets some joy out of the fingering..er...feeling too!*

Just beware of a Pygmalion twist to the tale -- she may say: "If you really love me, you'd bring me to life." And that, as the scientists who want to be God would agree is yet not in the hands of humans. Not yet, at least!

On a more serious note, I do NOT want to live in this new world but it is fascinating stuff, nonetheless. I am not going to be a nay-sayer and say this won't happen either. Nothing against the tech-savvy Japanese but expect this dehumanization to happen first in the nation that thought of the digital pet, followed quickly by the country that brought us the Furby, and to be adopted quickly by people who get a kick living their lives in Second Life!

Like a reviewer of David Levy's book writes at amazon.com: "The lost self thus luxuriates in a technopology of polymorphic perversity." (Say what again!)


Related Links:
NY Times review
Fox News report
LA Times review
MSNBC report
Wired feature

Related books: The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence by Ray Kurzweil and The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology also by Ray Kurzweil

And lastly, if this is your kind of thing, you may also enjoy reading Warren Ellis's Second Life sketches. Like me, even if you are not a fan of these 'role playing' games people play... go read the sketches. If nothing else, its good for shock value of where the world is going + Ellis, author of futuristic graphic novels like Transmetropolitan does write well.)

Also see an old post of mine about 'ambient intimacy'.


* Two snippets from last year come to mind.

NRI scientists help robots feel

Today's robots can understand human speech, but are unable to feel human touch. But all that may be a thing of the past with two Indian-born scientists at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln having developed what they claim is a small film that can mimic the sensitivity of a human finger. This they say will become useful in the next generation of robots and in automated tools used for microsurgery.

Emotion robots learn from people
Making robots that interact with people emotionally is the goal of a European project led by British scientists. Co-ordinator Dr Lola Canamero said the aim was to build robots that "learn from humans and respond in a socially and emotionally appropriate manner".

I guess the goal of the second study may be easier to achieve than trying to get humans to respond to each other in a "socially and emotionally appropriate manner"!

The prostitute has come to symbolize for me the ultimate liberated woman, who lives on the edge and whose sexuality belongs to no one. - Camille Paglia

French actress Catherine Deneuve, who made her international reputation in Belle de Jour,
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20070413/ai_n19015314

Man spots his wife during visit to brothel

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22571847/

An old quote perhaps but new to me:

Serial or sex murder, like fetishism, is a perversion of male intelligence. It is a criminal abstraction, masculine in its deranged egotism and orderliness. It is the asocial equivalent of philosophy, mathematics, and music. There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper. - Camille Paglia

The above and other quotes by Paglia can be found here.

I was trying to find a good coffee table book - likely going to be something related to travel (i.e. something with wonderful pictures from around the globe) - but in doing the search, I ran into a couple interesting links.

The latter had this interesting book in their list..

Unmentionables: A Brief History of Underwear by Elaine Benson and John Esten (Simon & Schuster) dives right to the heart of the matter with the book flap: "Garters. Bras. Briefs. Corselettes. Underpants. We know what these sexy items are, but how much do we really know about them?" How much do you want to know? This book takes you from strategically placed fig leafs on Adam and Eve to "fetishistic paraphernalia, intrinsic elements of sadomasochistic fantasy."

Apparently, "this thoroughly illustrated volume covers all, from the first fig leaf to the newest Fruit of the Looms and from bloomers to panties, revealing a side of humanity not often seen in public."

Or as Judith Newman wrote in the NYT more than a decade back when the book was first published in 1996:

Smart and sprightly, the lavishly illustrated UNMENTIONABLES is a literary rummage through lingerie drawers past and present.

A literary rummage through lingerie drawers. Nicely put! :)

Related books: How Underwear Got Under There by Kathy Shaskan & Regan Dunnick and Inside Out: A Brief History of Underwear by Shelley Tobin.

(I really should have a tag called 'Books'. This is NOT Literature!)

Unlocking the Benefits of Garlic

'Generation Next' in the Slow Lane to Adulthood

Six Techniques to Get More from the Web than Google Will Tell You

Kosher cell phones!!

Unlocking the Benefits of Garlic

Super-Repellent Plastic

With GE's new plastic, self-washing buildings, cheap diagnostic chips, and free-flowing honey jars are possible.

23/02/2006

GE Finds Its Inner Edison
10/01/2003

Plastic under Pressure
04/01/2004

Why Big Companies Can't Invent
05/01/2004

I had seen the book On Bullshit by Harry Frankfurt couple years ago when it was first published but had not read it. Today, while at the public library, I saw that the author has a new book, On Truth.

I have picked up both books -- both are small (four by six inches) and short (~ 65 and 100 pages, respectively) and hope to read both this month.

This excerpt from a short review of On Bullshit should convey the essence of what the author has to say about the omni-present bullshitting* we have to endure in our lives.

"One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. ... In consequence, we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, we have no theory." (p. 1)

In Frankfurt's analysis, "bullshit" is speech whose truth the speaker considers unimportant; that is, the speaker does not care if he or she is lying or telling the truth, only whether the statement advances a particular objective. In Frankfurt's view this is worse than lying, as liars consider the truth to be important even as they avoid it.

* Like Laura Penny, author of Your Call Is Important to Us: The Truth About Bullshit observed: "We live in an era of unprecedented bullshit production."

More...through Frankfurt's words, excerpted from the book itself:

It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth—this indifference to how things really are—that I regard as the essence of bullshit.

...

Both in lying and in telling the truth people are guided by their beliefs concerning the way things are. These guide them as they endeavor either to describe the world correctly or to describe it deceitfully. For this reason, telling lies does not tend to unfit a person for telling the truth in the same way that bullshitting tends to. ...The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

To quote Frankfurt again, this time from the Introduction to his recent book, On Truth: "Bullshitting constitutes a more insidious threat than lying does to the conduct of civilized life." (After his nice expostulation of how bullshitting works, why it is omni-present in today's world, and its insidiousness, he elucidates in this recent book on what makes truth so important.)

Timothy Noah at Slate in a review of On Bullshit explains further:

Frankfurt's conclusion [..] is that bullshit is defined not so much by the end product as by the process by which it is created. Bullshit, Frankfurt notes, is an inevitable byproduct of public life, "where people are frequently impelled—whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others—to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant."

Noah goes on to discuss this in the context of the bullshit on television (Faux News is the leader but they are all guilty at some level or other!) and also that put forth by the Bush administration on a regular basis.

Cable television and the Internet have created an unending demand for information, and there simply isn't enough truth to go around. So, we get bullshit instead. Indeed, there are some troubling signs that the consumer has come to prefer bullshit. In choosing guests to appear on cable news, bookers will almost always choose a glib ignoramus over an expert who can't talk in clipped sentences.

The Bush administration is clearly more bullshit-heavy than its predecessors. Slate's founding editor, Michael Kinsley, put his finger on the Bush administration's particular style of lying three years ago:

If the truth was too precious to waste on politics for Bush I and a challenge to overcome for Clinton, for our current George Bush it is simply boring and uncool. Bush II administration lies are often so laughably obvious that you wonder why they bother. Until you realize: They haven't bothered.

But by Frankfurt's lights, what Bush does isn't lying at all. It's bullshitting. Whatever you choose to call it, Bush's indifference to the truth is indeed more troubling, in many ways, than what Frankfurt calls "lying" would be. Richard Nixon knew he was bombing Cambodia. Does George W. Bush have a clue that his Social Security arithmetic fails to add up? How can he know if he doesn't care?

Indeed!! Assaulted by bullshitters every day in all spheres of life, aren't we?


Note:

1. According to wikipedia, the essay was originally published in the journal Raritan in 1986 before being published as a book in 2005. Actually, I find that wikipedia has a link under References to the entire text of the essay!

2. I changed the post title after reading this sentence from the aforementioned review by Timoth Noah

How does bullshit differ from such precursors as humbug, poppycock, tommyrot, hooey, twaddle, balderdash, claptrap, palaver, hogwash, buncombe (or "bunk"), hokum, drivel, flapdoodle, bullpucky, and all the other pejoratives favored by H.L. Mencken and his many imitators?

A few articles from Technology Review that spotlight some of the great research reported in 2007.

1. The Genetics of Language Researchers are beginning to crack the code that gives humans our unique way with words.

2. Carbon-Dioxide Plastic Gets Funding A startup is moving ahead with an efficient method to make biodegradable plastic.

3. The Longevity Pill? Drugs much more powerful than the resveratrol found in red wine will be tested to treat diabetes.

4. The New Hygiene Hypothesis The microbes within us could explain rising allergy rates.

5. Brain Circuitry, Alight Neurons in 100 hues spotlight disease, development.

6. E-Paper, In Living Color Materials advances could bring color, video, and flexibility.

7. IBM Attempts to Reinvent Memory A new type of memory using nanowires could be simpler, cheaper, denser, faster, and more reliable.

8. Extending Moore's Law A faster, more energy-efficient chip by packing in more transistors--without shrinking them. (Also read: Moore’s Law Hangs on – Dec 2007)

9. The Ultrafast Future of Wireless A new metal film could help control terahertz radiation and lead to wireless devices that are thousands of times faster than today's Wi-Fi.

10. A Cheaper Route to Speeding Up the Web A new silicon-based optical device has the potential to improve the speed, cost, and reach of fiber-optic networks.

11. Printing Cheap Chips Kovio's system for printing inorganic transistors could lead to large-area displays and cheap smart cards. (Related: Plastic Electronics Head for Market)

12. Graphene Transistors Electronics made of a single sheet of carbon could be created much smaller than those made with silicon.

And lets make it a baker’s dozen with another interesting application of graphene

13. Ultrastrong Paper from Graphene A new paperlike material could lead to novel types of light and flexible materials.

More about who Guha is and a link to his essays at Outlook (subscription needed).

Also a profile of History's Footman by Anita Nair.

books of the year: http://www.readysteadybook.com/Blog.aspx?permalink=20071222110453 and http://www.readysteadybook.com/BOTY.aspx?page=boty2007

Chandrahas's " informal four-part series on India to mark the 60th anniversary of Indian independence."
http://middlestage.blogspot.com/2007/07/jawaharlal-nehru-as-writer-of-english.html
http://middlestage.blogspot.com/2007/07/on-rajmohan-gandhis-biography-of.html
http://middlestage.blogspot.com/2007/08/art-of-oratory-and-great-speeches-of.html
http://middlestage.blogspot.com/2007/08/mark-tully-and-india.html

One of the books on India that was highlighted in my previous post was Ramachandra Guha’s India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy.

I have not read anything to date by Ramachandra Guha, though I find that he has written quite a few good books on topics that are of interest to me -- Indian history, many books on environmentalism, and has even written and edited books on cricket!

In a recent article in Outlook, Guha compares the triumvirate of Salman Rushdie, Amartya Sen and VS Naipaul to the Hindu holy trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva:

"Analagous to Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, we have Salman the Creator, Amartya the Preserver, and Sir Vidia the Destroyer. Just as Brahma gave birth to the world, Rushdie gave birth, through his magnificent novel Midnight's Children, to an innovative and globally influential school of Indian writing in English. Like the god he resembles he appears to have done little since—but, for that first and fundamental act of creation, we worship him still.

Vishnu the Preserver is supposed to have had 10 avatars. His successor probably exceeds him in this regard. Sometimes he comes to us as a Bangladeshi (by virtue of the fact that he was born in Dhaka), at other times as a Bengali, at still other times as a Global Indian. Other roles he has assumed include economist, philosopher, sociologist, historian, and seer. Like the god he resembles he comes to cheer us, to console us, to chastise us.

Siva could set the world ablaze with a mere blink of the eyelids. His modern successor can destroy a reputation by a word or two said (or unsaid). As with Siva, we fear Sir Vidia, we propitiate him, and we worship him. Who knows, if we are diligent and devoted enough, he may grant us some favours in this world (or the next)."

Beautiful stuff. :)

Note: I found the above excerpt at a post by Hari Jagannathan Balasubramanian, who blogs at the creatively titled blog - Thirty letters in my name. This was my first time at this blog, landing there via a post at India Uncut. The IU post was in itself an interesting history lesson about our biases and prejudices but that’s a topic for another time. For now, you can go read Hari’s post and also Amit’s related article about the ‘Expanding Circle’ for further details.