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eccentricity Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.
the bombay bombings the audacious bombings in the city of my birth make it all the more obvious how the militant and so called islamic terrorists are seeking out soft targets to make their point. bombay has been subjected to a series of blasts over the past six months and this latest one represents a clear failure of indian intelligence to detect and prevent such attacks. with the ayodhya hearings in progress this is a particularly sensitive time in india, actions like this one can easily spark the fairly volatile sentiments of the hindus as well as the muslims. sectarian violence has plagued my country for a long time and i've personally witnessed its ugly face following the demolition of the babri masjid in 92. with the wounds of what happened in gujrat last year still fresh and hurting it is necessary leaders from both communities tread very very carefully. the law enforcement agencies too better pull up their socks and nip the phenomenon of terrorism under the guise of jihad and islamic justice in the bud, before any more lives are lost and bombs detonated. it is easy for extremists on both sides to claim they have the support of the majority, that claim is not only wrong, it is rather dangerous for it is the tool used to whip up mob frenzy, the precursor to murderous riots. the students' islamic movement of inda, lashkar-e-toiba and jaish-e-mohammad have been named as possible suspects behind the blasts, i'm hoping they are ruthlessly pursued and brought to justice before they get a chance to further disrupt the everyday lives of mumbaikars and indians.
when everything goes wrong two suicide bombings, two major virus outbreaks, the entire east coast hit by a power outage, everything seems to have gone wrong in the past two weeks. the militants in palestine have amply demonstrated their reluctance to accept a peaceful solution to the quagmire that is the israel-palestine problem. the latest suicide bombing kicks the first attempt in months at real peace right in the shin and makes the poor bargaining position of the palestine authorities all the more worse. islamic jehad and hamas obviously are not fighting for a palestinian homeland, they are fighting for the sake of fighting. meanwhile the fiasco that is the american occupation of iraq keeps getting worse everyday, there haven't been too many steps taken by the occupying forces in guiding baghdad toward what has been promised as an 'ideal democracy'.
so big ...a pain in the ass. i've been beseiged, my mailbox has been bombarded with over a hundred mails today carrying the sobig virus, it's exasperating. apparently, i'm not the only one.
point and shoot? mazen dana, a reuters cameraman was shot dead by american troops near a prison in western baghdad reports cnn. the soldiers apparently thought they were being aimed at by an RPG, which sounds a little paranoid to me. the very manner a camera is wielded is different from the way an RPG will be handled, but the troops in baghdad are either too trigger happy these days or they feel so loathed by the iraqis they shoot first and ask questions later.
gay bishops gene robinson, openly gay, was recently appointed bishop by the episcopal church, as was the gay but celibate dr. jeffrey john. my limited understanding tells me the judaistic religions not only disapprove, they explicitly prohibit homosexuality, so these decisions came as a mild surprise to me. apparently the paragraphs in the bible which strongly condemn same sex relationships seem to have alternative interpretations that somehow profess that homosexuality is not really a sin, consider for example, this excerpt, Leviticus 18 ...from the essay entitled homosexuality and the bible, by loren l. johns, an enlightening read. the arguments in the 'for homosexuality' column however seem weak and forced. equating the rejection of homosexuality by the church with the justifications of slavery uptil the nineteenth century seems a bit of a stretch to me. an islamic view of homosexuality is offered here. the insistence of the gay community to pray to and believe in the same god whose scriptures so explicitly denounce their chosen sexual preferences comes across like a desperate attempt to reconcile two very different lifestyles. in keeping with the spirit of separating the church and the state, there seems to be nothing fundamentally wrong with legalizing same sex unions so as to extend tax and social security benefits to same sex couples as are granted to heterosexual couples, the call however, for the church to also sanctify such unions, seems rather unreasonable and unnecessary.
food for thought at what point does inspiration turn to plagiarism? to what extent can an artist use material from an external source to express himself? i hadn't heard of wallace stegner or of mary hallock foote until i read this article in the los angeles times magazine back in march, it was foote's striking prose that made me want to go and get hold of the first book by her i could lay my hands on. stegner, for all his stellar reputation and numerous literary accolades still emerges from the story as someone who far too liberally used the material of a less well known but at least equally talented writer to pen one of his most famous novels. from the los angeles times article, consider this comparison, "And then Helena dawned on my nineteenth year like a rose pink winter sunrise, in the bare halls of Cooper, sweet and cold after her walk up from the ferry. Staten Island was her home; a subsidiary aunt had taken me in that winter who lived on Long Island and I crossed by an uptown ferry and walked down." more recently was the david bowie story which made the wall street journal front page, here's a related article, and an excerpt, In Dylan's song "Floater" from his 2001 album, "Love and Theft," the rock legend sings, "My old man, he's like some feudal lord, got more lives than a cat." Another lyric includes, "I'm not quite as cool or forgiving as I sound" and then, "Sometimes somebody wants you to give something up, and tears or not, it's too much to ask." both stegner and bowie have of course a sufficiently large body of work not to be labeled as plagiarists, indeed, if they used material to create a work of art that reached a larger audience and was much appreciated, they, in a way, did a service to the original work. it is often not possible for an artist to keep track of all the different material he's inspired by but in both of these cases the 'inspired works' involved a sufficient degree of similarity to the original work as to deserve to be acknowledged appropriately.
more tacitus bashing okay i'm getting into overdrive here but tacitus' is one of the better, saner right centric blogs out there and he talks real sensible most of the time, most, not all the time and it is generally difficult to make a point on the comments section there often because there are already good debates in progress and my small voice gets lost in the noise. the magdalene sisters, an indie movie about strict catholic disciplinarians, sexual repression and appalling hypocrisy in what a wsj review calls "Magdalene Asylums-comination reformatories and commercial laundries, run by the Catholic Church, where inmates are forced to work under appalling conditions" is hitting the theatres in a limited release this week. on 16 july, tacitus posted this, Take, for example, the fate of little 9-year old Sanariya at the hands of her own family, and ask yourself how it makes you feel about the culture that produced such fine kin. For my part, my powers of tolerance just went down.a review of the magdalene sisters on sfgate says, among other things, That's the story underneath the story in "The Magdalene Sisters." Through the film, we encounter a culture, circa 1965, that reviles women and is intent on controlling their power by controlling their sexuality. It's a study in dysfunction: The lewd and sexually violent young men, the brutal, unforgiving fathers and the middle-aged women, mothers and nuns, who act as the system's henchwomen, are all children of the same lie -- that women and their bodies are inherently evil.and from a review in the wall street journal, It should be noted that Catholic groups have denounced "The Magdalene Sisters" on the grounds that similar conditions prevailed during the same era at Protestant-run institutions as well"The point of this article, of course, is not to decry the irish or any other cultural/ethnic/religious group, rather it is to remind tacitus and those who agreed with his synthesis that you cannot judge a people or their culture by the most egregious actions of their worst representatives, you marvel at their greatest accomplishments and empathize with their shortcomings for you undoubtedly have your share, you enrich them and yourself with a healthy interaction and you leave the judging to those who will only sit in front of their tv sets and make decisions based on jingoistic news bulletins. |
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