In a recent TED talk, Dan Ariely, author of the recent book, Predictably Irrational (which I partly read in December 2008) explores the hidden reasons behind why humans think it's OK to cheat or steal only a "little" -- It's all about feeling good about oneself and our impressions about ourselves.



He also explains some of the decisions that went into the "cheating" in the stock market that has led us to the current mess. You can read more about his studies on how our intuitions are wrong in an interview with him at this Wired blog post and also this article at the Harvard business blog. Also this review of Dan's book.

P.S. Line from the talk that elicited the most laughs from the audience: "MITdoesn't have an honor code." :-)

I am not an avid listener of Indian classical music but do enjoy the occasional Hindustani and Carnatic music (mostly instrumental; rarely vocal).

So, 3 videos today from Carnatic music instrumentalists who I have enjoyed in the recent past.

First up, U. Shrinivas on what is not a traditional Indian musical instrument - the mandolin.



Next a performance by Lalgudi Jayaraman on the violin, which also is not innately an Indian instrument but has been adopted by Carnatic musicians for quite a long time now.






and last but not least, a mridgangam solo -- shout out to my childhood friend, Rama, who used to play this instrument quite well.



A post with some of my favorite Hindustani instrumentalists next week...

"In the end, you'll remember only good things. Don't waste time with nonsense, there's plenty of it. And go and find what makes you happy while you can, since time slips away very quickly."

From this Coca Cola Ad



On that note, I better stop this blogging "nonsense" and go find what will make me happy.....or at least do something more constructive and useful!

Gretchen Rubin at Slate has this series of articles:

• Happiness Myth No. 5: A “Treat” Will Cheer You Up
• Happiness Myth No. 4: You’ll Be Happier if You Insist on "The Best"
• Happiness Myth No. 3: Venting Anger Relieves It
• Happiness Myth No. 2: Nothing Changes a Person's Happiness Level Much
• Happiness Myth No. 1: Happy People Are Annoying and Stupid

Gretchen is actually working on a book, THE HAPPINESS PROJECT, which will hit the shelves in late 2009. On her blog, she recounts some of her adventures and insights as she grapple with the challenge of being happier. According to the above link, her upcoming book is a "memoir about the year she spent test-driving every principle, tip, theory, and scientific study she could find, whether from Aristotle or St. Therese or Martin Seligman or Oprah. THE HAPPINESS PROJECT will gather these rules for living and report on what works and what doesn’t."

I only briefly perused through a book about happiness myself recently --  The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky. This one is not by someone who test-drove theories herself but by a psychologist involved for many years in scientific studies of what factors contribute to human happiness. I found it quite useful though I did not read more than 40-50 pages and hope to get back to it sometime this year.

The book was one of 5 that was reviewed in the New York Review of Books last year.

• The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want by Sonja Lyubomirsky 
• Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment by Tal Ben-Shahar 
• Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert 
• Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy by Eric G. Wilson 
• What Is Emotion?: History, Measures, and Meanings by Jerome Kagan
  

Given the general state of the world, it is not surprising that there are so many books about happiness. Lots of people, like me, wonder about what it takes to be happy in life, I suppose!

Previous posts about happiness: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

Microsoft should buy this building!

A new office block being built in China is believed to have the most windows of any building of its size in the world.

The nine-storey building, designed by Japanese architect Sako Keiichiro, has close to a 1,000 windows. None of the rooms in the building are completely square or rectangular, corridors wind around and between rooms, and each floor features a mini garden. "It's like a maze inside," said one construction worker, who added that it was the most difficult and time-consuming project he had ever worked on.

P.S. I wondered what labels to give this post. Oddball, I thought. Then, I figured this kind of architecture is in fact art! :)

Heard somewhere that 'the problem with being best man at a wedding is that you never get a chance to prove it' (that you are the best). So, you go and do something like this! :)



This is one wedding everyone - esp the bride & the best man - will remember!   
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“Gravity is a contributing factor in nearly 73 percent of all accidents involving falling objects.”

Rare footage of a young Vikku Vinayakram and Zakir Hussain .. must-see!



and this live performance from 1974 in Copenhagan featuring the group, Shakti, featuring John McLaughlin on guitar, L. Shankar on violin, Vikku Vinayakram on the ghatam, and Zakir Hussein on the tabla.


And one last video of Shakti from 1974..



















 
Thank you, Youtube and all those who upload these wonderful treasures for free viewing online!

Slumdog Millionaire and the Oscars for AR Rahman seem to have sparked an interest for Indian music in the West again!

This post at Boing-Boing informs us that last week Putumayo has released a compilation of music by various Indian musicians ...

Putumayo Presents India compilation

... And while it does feature two tracks from Bollywood star composer AR Rahman (Slumdog's Oscar-winning musical director), the collection also includes lounge music, folk, classical, and of course high-energy Indian indie pop.

Btw, the video at the link above features Kiran Ahluwalia, who is one of the singers featured in this album. I have not heard of Kiran Ahluwalia before. (In fact, I am kinda surprised she's the face of this India music compilation ad (video at the link below). It just may be that she's the most easily accessible artist for the ad, being based in Canada.)

Anyways, this seems like a collection worth buying! Has an interesting array ofmusics:

Track Listings

1. Zara Zara - Bombay Jayshree
2. Khwaab - Niraj Chag featuring Swati Natekar
3. Naino Sey - Sanjay Divecha featuring Kailash Kher
4. Shiva Panchakshara Stotram/Shiva Shadakshara Stotram - Uma Mohan
5. Homeward Journey - Satish Vyas
6. Tere Bina - A.R. Rahman & Chinmayee
7. Nagumomo - Susheela Raman
8. Ganesha - Deepak Ram
9. Vo Kuch - Kiran Ahluwalia
10. Maavan Te Tiyan - Rajeshwari Sachdev

Btw, I have heard Susheela Raman before ... the first time being on PRI's The World on NPR some years back. I thought she was pretty good....that dusky voice somehow haunting and alluring, despite the Western accented lyrics in some pieces distracting from the music itself. For example, hear this song - Salt Rain 'Maya':



Lots of other videos on youtube, including this one with Cheb Mami... one of my favorite raï singers.



You may recall Cheb Mami from his haunting voice in Sting's Desert Rose... but the stuff from Cheb Mami that I like includes: Neli Neli, Le Rai Cest Chic, etc. [I have a tape somewhere of his music that I used to listen to all the time in the 1998-2002 period.]

btw, just FYI... in case you are not familiar with him or his music - his name is not Cheb! Singers of raï are called cheb (shabb, young) as opposed to sheikh (shaykh, old). In fact, Khaled (who had become quite famous in India in the 90s with his song Didi is also actually called Cheb Khalid.

Aah... BBC updates about a new album, Seya by Oumou Sangare, the Malian "song bird"

It's been too long since any album proper from the ‘songbird of Wassoulou’. Although the compilation Oumou (2004) included previously unreleased material, (mostly cherry-picked from her Mali-only 2001 release Laban, and reworked), her last internationally promoted record was Worotan in 1996. Thankfully Seya doesn't disappoint – it's the best thing since her marvellous 1991 debut Moussoulou, which is one of the all time great treasures of Malian music. Seya traverses a wide range of moods, from confident and celebratory to more austere, stripped down meditations. And while few artists give as good a groove as Oumou, the latter are often the best settings to appreciate her extraordinary voice; if Aretha Franklin had grown up in Bamako, she might have sounded something like this.

Here's a taste of the music...

 

Now go buy the album, Seya by Oumou Sangare [World Circuit /Released: 23 February 2009 / Catalogue number: WCD 081]

Previous post about Oumou here + a video here of her with the legendary Ali Farka Toure @ the Festival of Deserts in Essakane

Interesting!

The oldest human footprints – left more than 1.5 million years ago – have been discovered in northern Kenya.

Two sets of prints left by Homo ergaster, an early ancestor of modern humans. were found in separate rock layers near Ileret. Laser scanning revealed that feet have stayed much the same over 1.5 million years and the creature walked the same way as people do today.The prints bore all the hallmarks of a modern human stride, including an arched foot, short toes, and a big toe that was parallel to the other toes. As in modern humans, weight was transferred from the heel to the ball of the foot and then to the big toe with each step. The find is the first of its kind since the famous discovery 30 years ago of footprints dating back 3.75 million years at Laetoli, Tanzania. These older prints are thought to have been left by the more primitive and apelike Australopithecus.

 

A fossil footprint left by a human ancestor about 1.5 million years ago in Kenya has been discovered. Photo © REUTERS

The title is is a phrase from an essay Dybek apparently wrote in 4th grade. The piece also has a great anecdote about an experience he had while he was enrolled for his Ph. D. in the esteemed University of Iowa program.

“I had never met a real writer at that point, and it was only after I got there, in the company of people like Richard Yates, Cheever, Don Justice, that I began to realize the enormous commitment writing really demanded.” He surrendered completely to his writing, taking poetry and fiction workshops simultaneously.

His classmates—among them Tracy Kidder, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Denis Johnson, Larry Levis, Laura Jensen, Thom Jones, and Michael Ryan—challenged and inspired Dybek, but he also grew weary of the place on occasion. Dybek recalls: “I was walking across a parking lot in the rain, talking to Jon Jackson, and saying to him, ‘I don’t think I could stand reading another goddamn worksheet this semester’ ”—worksheets were how student work was distributed in those days, on mimeographs—“and suddenly, a wet piece of paper was stuck to my foot, and I pulled it off, and I said, ‘Look, it’s a goddamn worksheet! You can’t even walk without them sticking to you.’ And I looked at it, and I started reading it, and they were these fantastic poems. They were by Tom Lux. So it was that kind of place, where you’d be walking across the parking lot in the rain, and suddenly you’d be reading this wonderful stuff.”

Good writing is of a similar kind...it sticks to you and won't let go long after you are done reading.

Just read about Thierry 'Titi' Robin, who is a multi-instrumentalist from southwestern France, whose music is influenced by the gypsy and North African communities of Angers. So, of course, I had to look up youtube for some videos and share them with you....





And last but not least, an interesting performance in Jaipur, accompanied by a Rajasthani folk dancer, no less!


The dancer is Gulabi Sapera and more about the collaboration with her here.

And speaking of devils, read Salil Tripathi's excellent article in the Mint today: Of Angels and Devils, which talks about two recent incidents in India.

Incidentally, Salil, who mentions Satanic Verses in the above article, also wrote an excellent piece last week on the 20th anniversary of the publication of that controversial novel. Do read -

Disturbing the universe

After two decades, Rushdie’s controversial masterpiece remains a testimony to freedom of expression and the power of imagination

More articles by Salil from the Mint here.

Via an mail from Neel, here's an article by Richard Dawkins on Darwin, which talks about "why we really do need to know the amazing truth about evolution, and the equally amazing intellectual dishonesty of its enemies."

How can you say that evolution is “true”? Isn’t that just your opinion, of no more value than anybody else’s? Isn’t every view entitled to equal “respect”? Maybe so where the issue is one of, say, musical taste or political judgement. But when it is a matter of scientific fact? Unfortunately, scientists do receive such relativistic protests when they dare to claim that something is factually true in the real world. Given the title of Jerry Coyne’s book, this is a distraction that I must deal with.

A scientist arrogantly asserts that thunder is not the triumphal sound of God’s balls banging together, nor is it Thor’s hammer. It is, instead, the reverberating echoes from the electrical discharges that we see as lightning. Poetic (or at least stirring) as those tribal myths may be, they are not actually true.

More at the article. Previous posts on Darwin: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Valentine's Day Chocolates for EVERYONE!

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There's an opportunity in every crisis....or in other words, one man's crisis, is another man's opportunity. :)

(Link via a Twitter post by @prempanicker)