Re: [silk] Charlie Stross internet puppy tshirt
On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 5:48 AM, Udhay Shankar N ud...@pobox.com wrote: On 30-Mar-12 7:37 AM, Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote: Really? De gustibus and so on, because I don't feel that way. And on the topic of Priest, I thought _The Affirmation_ was awe-inspiringly good, but haven't been able to finish anything else of his. His most recent one The Islanders is excellent. Though his most weird book is the one called Inverted World . ashok
Re: [silk] Fwd: Life and Love in Bangalore
ss [30/03/12 09:07 +0530]: Srini there are thousands upon thousands of records. The internet is nowadays bursting with them. Many are oral but an increasing number are documented. Many are now being documented as family narratives, and some of those are I will agree with Shiv on this.
Re: [silk] Charlie Stross internet puppy tshirt
Thejaswi Udupa [30/03/12 09:45 +0530]: Here's hundred rupees that says Priest hates the Baen school of SF. Have we lived and fought in vain, and so on. Most Baen books are ordinary hackneyed pulp fiction cliches, but SET IN SPACE!![more exclamation marks] Eh dude, that's way too much of a generalization of baen. Poul Anderson CJ Cherryh L Sprague deCamp John Ringo Niven and Pournelle add those to the usual lois mcmaster bujold, keith laumer (who was genuinely readable) srs
Re: [silk] Fwd: Life and Love in Bangalore
On Thursday 29 Mar 2012 8:44:13 pm Srini RamaKrishnan wrote: The new way of the individual is new to humanity - it's never been attempted at this scale heretofore. Barring the mendicants and eccentrics, the way of society has almost always revolved around the family and the tribe. Speaking of scales, humans have never existed in the numbers that they do so the scales will be bigger for that reason alone. But that apart, I find it instructive that Hindu, Christian and Islamic tradition individually and specifically frown upon the new way of the individual. That gives me the sense that the new way is not just new, but well known and recognized as a problem and has been that way for over 2000 years. shiv
[silk] Aakar Patel's throwing Shuriken again
Udhay has a pet phrase, throwing Shuriken in all directions, that reflects both his conversational gambit and his love of cheesy Hong Kong flicks. Nothing exemplies this better than Aakar Patel's latest column in livemint, http://www.livemint.com/Articles/2012/03/29200444/Why-it-is-better-to-live-in-th.html Udhay, shouldn't we have Aakar here? Would be a good counterpoint to our resident master troll. Ram -- Why it is better to live in the south The south’s urban culture is more intellectual. My hypothesis is that this is so because its culture is dominated by the Brahmin I prefer south India to north India. I also prefer south Indians to north Indians. I wish Mehmood had defeated Kishore Kumar in Padosan’s singing contest. The audience thinks Kishore’s Vidyapati trounces Mehmood’s Master Pillai. But Vidyapati is on home ground singing in Khamaj to a tabla playing Keherva and Teen Taal. Pillai is singing the other man’s music. What if it had been the other way around? The south Indian can access the north Indian’s music easily. Often he even masters it. Witness Kannadigas Kumar Gandharva and Mallikarjun Mansur in Hindustani music. Or Tamilians A.R. Rahman and Shankar Mahadevan in Bollywood. Classics: It takes merit to understand the true greatness of Subbulakshmi (centre). Photo by Hindustan Times. The reverse isn’t true. North Indians have little access to Carnatic, being able to neither penetrate its rhythm nor absorb its melody. Few can even bear listening to it because it is so foreign. Historian Ramachandra Guha once described reading an editorial on M.S. Subbulakshmi in a Hindi newspaper, I think it was Dainik Bhaskar. He reported that the writer accurately and knowledgeably illustrated the difference between the two music systems, and was able to locate the Carnatic singer’s greatness. This is exceptional and it is the rare north Indian writer who has interest in, let alone knowledge of, the south’s music. On the other hand, the best writer on Hindustani music I have read is a south Indian, Raghava R. Menon. The north Indian caricatures the south Indian in his popular culture, his movies. This caricature is an accurate reflection of his own crudeness and lack of subtlety. The south Indian has no such caricature for the north. In fact, he is inclusive, and Bollywood movies are shown in Chennai, to say nothing of Bangalore and Hyderabad. I don’t think it is only the northern expatriate who watches these, but again we cannot say the same of southern movies in the north. Clearly, the two cultures are different. Let’s look at some of the substantive ways in which they differ. The first thing that strikes us is that south Indians have a written classical music. This has enormous implications. It separates them from north Indians who have no canon of music. The average southerner can assess a performance of his classical music better than the average northerner can. This is because he knows how a particular song is to be sung. He understands how long it must be, where and how the thing must be modulated. And he knows how others have sung it, because the works of Purandaradasa, Thyagaraja, Syama Sastri and Muthuswami Dikshitar are standards. To appreciate Hindustani music other than instinctively, a northerner must study the deep form of his music, which few can. Else, he must just nod his head at the mood emoted by the singer, which is what most do, saying: “Wah!” Writer Sheila Dhar observed that even here the southerner was different. On first encountering it, she described the sound of appreciation made by listeners of Carnatic music thus: “Whenever the listener was smitten by something particularly wonderful that the performer was doing, he would raise his chin, bring his lips together in a protruding ‘O’, and make a series of little clicking sounds by striking the tongue against the back of the front teeth, gently shaking his head from side to side in mock helplessness.” Their canon makes south India’s classical tradition like that of Europe’s, where also the music of the classical period is recorded by note and reproduced in exact fashion. The second thing that strikes me as being different is that south India’s high culture has little influence of Islam. It is Hindu culture, not a mix. There is not as much secular music in Carnatic as there is in Hindustani. There’s no equivalent of “Ganga Jamuni”, as the northerner refers to his high culture, a mix of Hindu tradition and the aristocratic Perso-Arabic tradition produced during Muslim rule. This might be seen as a bad thing. But the south Indian is actually quite tolerant. There are five loud mosques around my house in Bangalore, and some robust proselytizing on the billboards surrounding them. However, this carries on without any sense of friction. North India’s high culture is Indo-Persian, whether in music or poetry. Even some of the popular culture is influenced by Islam, such as Amir Khusro. What is the south Indian
[silk] The facebook experiment
As an experiment, I decided to revive the moribund facebook group for silklist. The intent was to see if * one could have a somewhat backchannel method of organising meetups etc * let some of the members get to know who the others are * Provide an subsidiary mode of interaction for those who don't want [some of] their words to be detectable via a search engine (though it means that instead of google, facebook now has your data instead. Those are the breaks.) If you're interested in any combination of the above, check it out (attention conservation notice: facebook account required) https://www.facebook.com/groups/5083012209 I have manually added a number of you and there has been lots of activity over the past few days. :) Udhay -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
Re: [silk] Aakar Patel's throwing Shuriken again
On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 1:51 PM, Ramakrishnan Sundaram r.sunda...@gmail.com wrote: Udhay has a pet phrase, throwing Shuriken in all directions, that reflects both his conversational gambit and his love of cheesy Hong Kong flicks. Nothing exemplies this better than Aakar Patel's latest column in livemint, http://www.livemint.com/Articles/2012/03/29200444/Why-it-is-better-to-live-in-th.html I am disappointed he didn't get around to comparing cuisines - rice against wheat, filter coffee against tea, toddy against bhang, dosai against paratha, there's a whole ocean of difference there. I had a boss once who got away with the oddest behavior. He had a habit of getting impossibly drunk and then singing Britney Spears hits at the top of his voice while shirtless while standing on the dinner table every time there was a company dinner. It was not black mail worthy, or in any way remarkable because he did it so often - everyone came to resent it, but expect it. If this is Aakar Patel's usual behavior then there's nothing remarkable after his first or second column, no?
Re: [silk] Aakar Patel's throwing Shuriken again
Srini RamaKrishnan [30/03/12 14:13 +0200]: I had a boss once who got away with the oddest behavior. He had a habit of getting impossibly drunk and then singing Britney Spears hits at the top of his voice while shirtless while standing on the dinner table every time there was a company dinner. It was not black mail bertie wooster used to get sloshed on bump supper nights and ride a bicycle naked around the quad, throw soft boiled eggs at the electric fan, steal policemen's helmets .. your boss is a mere tyro compared to that original genius.
Re: [silk] Aakar Patel's throwing Shuriken again
Ramakrishnan Sundaram [30/03/12 17:21 +0530]: Nothing exemplies this better than Aakar Patel's latest column in livemint, http://www.livemint.com/Articles/2012/03/29200444/Why-it-is-better-to-live-in-th.html He doesn't like gujjus of the modi loving racist variety too much, does he? :) Well at least we have that in common. Bring him on.
Re: [silk] Aakar Patel's throwing Shuriken again
On Mar 30, 2012, at 7:51 AM, Ramakrishnan Sundaram wrote: Udhay has a pet phrase, throwing Shuriken in all directions, that reflects both his conversational gambit and his love of cheesy Hong Kong flicks. I'm almost tempted to write something about the differing cultures of the American blue (north, central, west coast) and red states, but (a) that's already been done to death in a million other places and (b) life is too short. What I liked best about Aakar Patel's article, apart from all the stereotyping of people cultures with whom I have absolutely no knowledge whatsoever, was all the Americanisms in the comments, viz, Dude, seriously, grow up. Perhaps all of Indian culture, high culture and low, North and South, Hindu, Punjabi, Tamil, Moslem, etc, etc, etc can be ultimately reduced to the lowest common denominator of Southern California suburbia? Regards, jrs
Re: [silk] The facebook experiment
On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 5:28 PM, Udhay Shankar N ud...@pobox.com wrote: As an experiment, I decided to revive the moribund facebook group for silklist. Is there something significant in the fact that there has been no response to this email in the past four hours? Deepa.
Re: [silk] The facebook experiment
Yes. Sent from my BlackBerry -Original Message- From: Deepa Mohan mohande...@gmail.com Sender: silklist-bounces+r.sundaram=gmail@lists.hserus.net Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2012 22:18:11 To: silklist@lists.hserus.net Reply-To: silklist@lists.hserus.net Subject: Re: [silk] The facebook experiment On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 5:28 PM, Udhay Shankar N ud...@pobox.com wrote: As an experiment, I decided to revive the moribund facebook group for silklist. Is there something significant in the fact that there has been no response to this email in the past four hours? Deepa.
Re: [silk] The facebook experiment
On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 6:48 PM, Deepa Mohan mohande...@gmail.com wrote: Is there something significant in the fact that there has been no response to this email in the past four hours? I wouldn't know, I don't use Facebook, so this email was of no relevance to me.
Re: [silk] The facebook experiment
me too On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 6:11 PM, Srini RamaKrishnan che...@gmail.comwrote: On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 6:48 PM, Deepa Mohan mohande...@gmail.com wrote: Is there something significant in the fact that there has been no response to this email in the past four hours? I wouldn't know, I don't use Facebook, so this email was of no relevance to me.
Re: [silk] The facebook experiment
I use FB to read about friends' activities, rather than narrating my own. So, I did check out the Silk FB page and a profile or two. I would think that there is too much distracting stuff there and would rather stick to the text conversations. Cheers, Nandkumar On 31-Mar-2012, at 1:51 AM, Anish Mohammed anish.moham...@gmail.com wrote: me too On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 6:11 PM, Srini RamaKrishnan che...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 6:48 PM, Deepa Mohan mohande...@gmail.com wrote: Is there something significant in the fact that there has been no response to this email in the past four hours? I wouldn't know, I don't use Facebook, so this email was of no relevance to me.
Re: [silk] Fwd: Life and Love in Bangalore
On 29-03-2012 20:44, Srini RamaKrishnan wrote: Affluence is definitely a prime culprit - during the zenith of the Imperium Romanum there was a similar crisis when free Romans didn't want to marry, because it was a drag, orgies were much fun. Roman society had to introduce a variety of incentives to promote marriage and the family. The tax benefits handed to married couples in modern societies comes directly from those times. Cheeni, do you have a citation for this, please? I was under the impression that income tax (and therefore any benefits or exemptions to it) was a twentieth century invention. -- Regards, Aadisht Mailing address for lists: li...@aadisht.net Personal mailing address: aadi...@aadisht.net Phone: 96000 23067
Re: [silk] Fwd: Life and Love in Bangalore
Aadisht Khanna [31/03/12 09:54 +0530]: On 29-03-2012 20:44, Srini RamaKrishnan wrote: Cheeni, do you have a citation for this, please? I was under the impression that income tax (and therefore any benefits or exemptions to it) was a twentieth century invention. 1799 in england to be specific. by Pitt the Younger There have been other taxes on income such as tithes since ancient times
