the questions to ask every day

lovely quote on the net. I am sure the book of the dead will have more to say about this, but...

You know, the ancient Egyptians had a beautiful belief about death. When their souls got to the entrance to heaven, the guards asked two questions.  Their answers determined whether they were able to enter or not.  
‘Have you found joy in your life?’ 
‘Has your life brought joy to others?’

once you boil it down to this formulation, then life is good. And why wait for the end of your life? just think of this at the end of every day...if not, why not? 

Birth of Politics: Eight Greek and Roman Political Ideas and Why They Matter

Kannu

I'm sure you would now be quite familiar with these concepts and wouldn't want to dwell much on that. But as I was reading this, I was reminded of a conversation I had with a friend of mine yesterday who pointed out that Iraqis are now talking about having a secular form of government, not one which is Shia or Sunni based. I'm afraid I cavilled, son. Not that confident that Iraq can become a liberal secular state anytime soon or even in the next few decades. 

History provides us with proof that ideas have extraordinary power and longevity. Take a look at the concepts mentioned on this book, these Greco Roman concepts have been identified, evolved, adopted and have become self evident truths in vast swathes of the world. But think about it. When these were adopted in so many third world countries and in the OIC countries, they didn't take root. Or find it very difficult. Forget Iraq. Think of Russia. Ostensibly part of Europe and therefore an almost equal inheritor of the Greco Roman philosophical framework is a weirdass basket case. 

Virtue, justice, citizenship, democracy, etc concepts that we take for self evidentiary truths are only self evidentiary if you buy into the corresponding worldview. If your worldview is based on religion like Iraq or on autocracy like Russia, then these concepts are foreign and cannot be implemented easily. The Middle East gives so many historical examples of well meaning rulers who tried to impose liberal ideas and constitutions, socialism and secularism. Heck, the Ba'ath party in Syria and Iraq had secularism as one of its primary tenets. Look how that turned out. 

Anyway, looks like a good book son. Check it out at the bodlian or college library and if you think it's good for us to have in the home library for Diya. 

Also can you bring the hammock inside and place it in the utility room? 

Love

Baba

Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2015.08.12
http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2015/2015-08-12.html
(via Instapaper)

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BMCR 2015.08.12 on the BMCR blog
Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2015.08.12

Melissa Lane, Birth of Politics: Eight Greek and Roman Political Ideas and Why They Matter.   Princeton; Oxford:  Princeton University Press,2015.  Pp. x, 382.  ISBN 9780691166476.  $26.95.   

Reviewed by Joanna Kenty, University of New Hampshire (joanna.kenty@unh.edu)

Preview
The Birth of Politics is the latest of Melissa Lane’s books introducing ancient ideas to modern audiences.1 Each of the book’s eight chapters focuses on a central theme: Justice, Constitution, Democracy, Virtue, Citizenship, Cosmopolitanism, Republic, and Sovereignty. In each case, Lane’s aim is to choose concepts that may or may not have originated in classical antiquity but that took on a form in that period that informs our modern understanding of politics. Lane is the 1943 Professor of Politics at Princeton University and approaches classical antiquity from the perspective of a political theorist and historian. She also sought to choose concepts that would resonate most strongly with modern political life, the ones which would strike general readers as immediately relevant and thought-provoking, although she limits her discussion almost entirely to antiquity. Greek terms are transliterated. She also promises to (and does) present diverse and conflicting ancient perspectives on these ideas, “on the grounds that what makes Greek and Roman ideas such good resources for thinking is the remarkably wide spectrum of possibilities of power they covered. …Rather than confine the value of the Greeks and Romans to just one position on the spectrum of politics –as either proudly committed to popular self-rule or philosophical critics of it, for example – we can learn most by exploring the whole range of ideas that they generated” (p. 4). Throughout the book, her emphasis is on critiques, preoccupations, questions, and problems rather than on answers or solutions, and on the ancient sources themselves. The result is engaging for the general reader, and the chapters might also offer useful introductions for undergraduates to major figures and eras of classical political philosophy.

Fwd: Should vegans eat meat to be ethically consistent?

Kannu

This was an interesting argument from one of your oxford uni mates. Do you know this fellow?

I am conflicted about vegetarianism and non-vegetariansm. If you had asked me few years back, I would have been a strict non-veg, if you take my bacon away, there will be blood on the floor, and no pun intended. But I am starting to wonder now, from a medical perspective as well as an ethical perspective. And then there is the joke, I eat meat not because i love meat but because I hate animals. My work with the animal charity also is making me question non-vegetarianism. Finally, I go see the zoo's and feel really bad about the animals, specially after seeing them out in the wild, magnificent creatures and we pen them into tiny cages. Sad.

You may want to give this prize a shot..what do you think?

Love

Baba

Practical Ethics Ethics in the News

Should vegans eat meat to be ethically consistent? And other moral puzzles from the latest issue of the Journal of Practical Ethics Dec 24th 2015, 05:32, by Brian D. Earp Should vegans eat meat to be ethically consistent? And other moral puzzles from the latest issue of the Journal of Practical Ethics By Brian D. Earp (@briandavidearp) The latest issue of The Journal of Practical Ethics has just been published online, and it includes several fascinating essays (see the abstracts below). In this blog post, I'd like to draw attention to one of them in particular, because it seemed to me to be especially creative and because it was written by an undergraduate student! The essay – "How Should Vegans Live?" – is by Oxford student Xavier Cohen. I had the pleasure of meeting Xavier several months ago when he presented an earlier draft of his essay at a lively competition in Oxford: he and several others were finalists for the Oxford Uehiro Prize in Practical Ethics, for which I was honored to serve as one of the judges. In a nutshell, Xavier argues that ethical vegans – that is, vegans who refrain from eating animal products specifically because they wish to reduce harm to animals – may actually be undermining their own aims. This is because, he argues, many vegans are so strict about the lifestyle they adopt (and often advocate) that they end up alienating people who might otherwise be willing to make less-drastic changes to their behavior that would promote animal welfare overall. Moreover, by focusing too narrowly on the issue of directly refraining from consuming animal products, vegans may fail to realize how other actions they take may be indirectly harming animals, perhaps even to a greater degree.

15 Most Amazing Predictions for Kali Yuga from the Bhagavata Purana

Kannu

I've been reading and blogging about the bhagwat Purana now for some years. Need to pick that up. It's the fattest single book in our library. That's the other claim to fame. Puranas are collection of stories about Hindu deities. Remember when I did the laxmi puja? And we acted out the laxmi story? I got that from the laxmi Purana. There are about 40 of these Puranas. Written from about 1500 down to the 18th century. These aren't single stories. They overlap. They don't have a coherent theme. Will be written by multiple authors. They will be written and overwritten over hundreds of years. Their character changes due to political changes. Changes in language. One scribe could have written one in bhrami which got translated into Tamil and back into Marathi or Sanskrit and and and. A veritable palmiset. 

But they are fascinating documents son. If you ever want to explore hinduism, start with the Puranas. Or even the Upanishads. In my experience, they are the most powerful and evocative philosophical tracts ever written compared to pretty much every other religion or ideology or philosophical school of thought. The ancient upanishad authors were grappling with esoteric concepts such as happiness, love, worship, life, universe much before the aristotles or socrates or platos of this world were even twinkles in their parental eyes. 

Still this article is interesting. The date of the bhagwat Purana given is rubbish. This was written around 1200 years back. And you can also quibble about the Sanskrit translation son. But it's good enough to think about. 

We are missing you :) 

Hope you're having a great time son. And tasting Spanish food and wine. Don't eat rotgut burgers and drink crappy beer. Drink the wine and taste the glorious food there :) search out the smaller hostelieries. Watch where the locals go to eat. Not the tourist traps. That's the key. Ask the waiter or concierge about which restaurant did he take his girlfriend or family to last month :) 

Love

Baba

15 Most Amazing Predictions for Kali Yuga from the Bhagavata Purana
http://www.indiadivine.org/news/articles-on-hinduism/15-most-amazing-predictions-for-kali-yuga-from-r711
(via Instapaper)

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Please help spread hinduism by sharing these articles on facebook:

In the last canto of the Bhagavata Purana there is a list of predictions and prophecies about the dark times for the present age of Kali Yuga. The following 15 predictions, written 5,000 years ago by sage Vedavyasa, are amazing because they appear so accurate. Despite the negative tone of these prophecies, there is still one bright spot for all of us, which is mentioned at the end.

Prediction 1:

Religion, truthfulness, cleanliness, tolerance, mercy, duration of life, physical strength and memory will all diminish day by day because of the powerful influence of the age of Kali.

Philosophy in Early Modern India

Kannu

One of the challenges in studying in a European centric education system, which holds for you and I is that we don't get exposure to other schools of thought. Whether it be Indian or Islamic or meso American or what have you, it's challenging. 

I am still almost zero in the philosophical perspectives of the sinic or Japanese thinkers of yore. Sitting in Asia at the moment and I can literally feel the difference in thinking of the people around me. Despite the outward western trappings, the way people think is different. 

Very important to learn these things. If you wanted to make money or deal with these people, then it's good to learn :)

Love

Baba
Begin forwarded message:

varnam | In Pragati: The Lost Age of Reason: Philosophy in Early Modern India by Jonardon Ganeri

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In Pragati: The Lost Age of Reason: Philosophy in Early Modern India by Jonardon Ganeri

Posted: 25 Apr 2014 10:30 AM PDT

Recently the Society of Biblical Literature published the bookNeo-Babylonian Trial Records (Writings from the Ancient World) by Shalom E Holtz. According to the description of the book, “this collection of sixth-century B.C.E. Mesopotamian texts provides a close-up, often dramatic, view of ancient courtroom encounters shedding light on Neo-Babylonian legal culture and daily life” and 50 cases are documented. Going even back in time, in 2062 BCE, an Indus colony existed in Mesopotamia and we have detailed documentation from that period mentioning the names of the colonists along with grain delivery records and debt notes. When it comes to India during that period, such detailed records are lacking.

Due to this, daily life in the Indus-Saraswati period is documented not from written records, but from archaeological evidence. As scholars get into the history of Indian philosophy, they run into new issues; there is not much biographical detail of the philosophers. In fact a common trend among Indian philosophers was to avoid writing personal details, and not have any mention of the social and political context, as they would be just distractions. While we know about Machiavelli’s childhood from his father’s documents and his personality based on the chronicles from his contemporaries, all we know about the Varanasi philosopher Raghudeva Bhattacharya that he was a student of Harirama, lived in Varanasi and had his work translated by Mahadeva.

Science Is Not Your Enemy

Kannu

This is a fascinating article on how science is perceived by many specially the religious sort. 

I do think that the author protests too much as broadly in developed countries and many other countries who aren't, science has won. If you want proof, compare the various human development indices and whether their constitutions have something religious in them. If they do like Nepal did, Poland and Saudi Arabia do, you know immediately that that is a place to be laughed at. Or pitied. Anybody who believes without evidence should be mocked hard and frequently because their beliefs can also be dismissed without evidence. 

Anyhow. Interesting reading also from an English logographic perspective son. Many words are technical. Pretty heavy duty writing. Test your understanding of the words. Also check your power of concentration. When faced with heavy writing, the tendency is to skip. But that's the key to mental discipline son. Force yourself to read and comprehend. It trains your mind to overcome higher and higher barriers. And then think, have I understood this good enough to make Diya understand? 

Love

Baba

Science Is Not Your Enemy
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114127/science-not-enemy-humanities

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Science Is Not Your Enemy An impassioned plea to neglected novelists, embattled professors, and tenure-less historians

BY STEVEN PINKER

The great thinkers of the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment were scientists. Not only did many of them contribute to mathematics, physics, and physiology, but all of them were avid theorists in the sciences of human nature. They were cognitive neuroscientists, who tried to explain thought and emotion in terms of physical mechanisms of the nervous system. They were evolutionary psychologists, who speculated on life in a state of nature and on animal instincts that are “infused into our bosoms.” And they were social psychologists, who wrote of the moral sentiments that draw us together, the selfish passions that inflame us, and the foibles of shortsightedness that frustrate our best-laid plans.

These thinkers—Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Leibniz, Kant, Smith—are all the more remarkable for having crafted their ideas in the absence of formal theory and empirical data. The mathematical theories of information, computation, and games had yet to be invented. The words “neuron,” “hormone,” and “gene” meant nothing to them. When reading these thinkers, I often long to travel back in time and offer them some bit of twenty-first-century freshman science that would fill a gap in their arguments or guide them around a stumbling block. What would these Fausts have given for such knowledge? What could they have done with it?

WATCH: Leon Wieseltier’s rejoinder: Science doesn’t have all the answers

We don’t have to fantasize about this scenario, because we are living it. We have the works of the great thinkers and their heirs, and we have scientific knowledge they could not have dreamed of. This is an extraordinary time for the understanding of the human condition. Intellectual problems from antiquity are being illuminated by insights from the sciences of mind, brain, genes, and evolution. Powerful tools have been developed to explore them, from genetically engineered neurons that can be controlled with pinpoints of light to the mining of “big data” as a means of understanding how ideas propagate.

Lunch with the FT: Mary Midgley

Son
Here are two oxford graduates, coincidentally who both studied one of the topics you are going to read, philosophy, talking about philosophy.
It's an interesting topic. At one end, it can termed as meaningless mental masturbation, full of arcane meanderings in obtuse corners of the human experience, using convoluted language which bears no resemblance to reality.
On the other hand son, philosophy underpins and originates all human knowledge. Studying physics or economics or chemistry or astronomy hard enough and you end up in philosophy land.
Have a good grounding in it son. If nothing else it will help you keep questioning yourself and challenging yourself. Search for the truth always.
Love
Baba

I saw this article when using the Financial Times app and thought you might be interested:
Financial Times,
Lunch with the FT: Mary Midgley
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By Peter Aspden
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The moral philosopher who was labelled a ‘heretic’ for championing common sense talks about scientific arrogance, macho philosophers and impending ‘catastrophe’
Read the full article at: http://on.ft.com/1hK1A2D

One of my heroines–Hypatia

Is Hypatia of Alexandria. An amazing lady who was a Greek Philosopher in Roman Egypt, one of the first guruines in Mathematics, she also was amazing in philosophy and astronomy. A contemporary Christian described her as

There was a woman at Alexandria named Hypatia, daughter of the philosopher Theon, who made such attainments in literature and science, as to far surpass all the philosophers of her own time. Having succeeded to the school of Plato and Plotinus, she explained the principles of philosophy to her auditors, many of whom came from a distance to receive her instructions. On account of the self-possession and ease of manner which she had acquired in consequence of the cultivation of her mind, she not infrequently appeared in public in the presence of the magistrates. Neither did she feel abashed in going to an assembly of men. For all men on account of her extraordinary dignity and virtue admired her the more

Can you fall in love with a woman from history? Yes, I can. What a woman. Here is a painting of her by Charles William Mitchell. Before you think it was prurient, remember this is showing her state after  a rabid Christian mob tore off her clothes and just few moments before tore her to pieces.

And guess who killed her? a howling mob of Christians who said that she was a blasphemer, she corrupted young ones and and and.

Yet even she fell a victim to the political jealousy which at that time prevailed. For as she had frequent interviews with Orestes, it was calumniously reported among the Christian populace, that it was she who prevented Orestes from being reconciled to the bishop. Some of them therefore, hurried away by a fierce and bigoted zeal, whose ringleader was a reader named Peter, waylaid her returning home, and dragging her from her carriage, they took her to the church called Caesareum, where they completely stripped her, and then murdered her with tiles. After tearing her body in pieces, they took her mangled limbs to a place called Cinaron, and there burnt them.

I saw this recent article on her and was prompted to blog about this amazing woman. I quote: This is what she was faced with

In Politics, Aristotle tells us, “silence is a woman‟s glory.”  St. Paul wrote, “women should keep silent . . . they have no permission to talk, but should keep their place as the law directs” (1 Corinthians 33-34).  In 1 Timothy (2:12) St. Paul stated he did not “permit women to teach or dictate to the men”  In Moralia Plutarch states the Roman position on women clearly, “the two great duties of a virtuous woman . . . are to keep at home and be silent. For she is only to speak to her husband, as by her husband.  Nor is she to take amiss the uttering of her mind . . .”  By adopting Platonic/Aristotelian ideologies of women we have, in many ways, reconstructed the universal woman and the universal woman‟s condition in the ancient world as unvaried and universally oppressed.

One good point that the author says is worthy of reiteration:

 It is true that many women were probably prohibited from leading lives similar to Hypatia, however, there have been times and places like Alexandria that were less restricted and may have served to empower women.  Nor do misogynistic ideologies alleviate the responsibility of contemporary feminist scholars to contest the historical canon of ancient rhetoric.  Since traditional history has avoided or suppressed women in history, the trick for feminist scholars is to search for women everywhere, and to recreate historical periods and women‟s lifetimes as fully as possible.  With attention to race, class, orientation in addition to gender, we may be able to uncover likely pockets of women‟s empowerment and subsequent  activity.  I assure you, women like Hypatia of Alexandria were active in a variety of ways in the ancient world, of that there is little doubt.  It seems likely that then, as now, they performed work to serve their families, to earn wages, or to serve other interests and, in some places and times like ancient Greece and Alexandria, they participated in scholarly and public life. 

If one looks around, the situation is much much better (although its really shameful that the number of women in banking, technology, mathematics, physics and and and are so few and far between compared to men). But we still have problems, the state and men still decide your reproductive rights, women are still told that their virtue is based upon them hiding away behind a ghunghat or a veil, they are still aborted much more than boys. Women should fight, its not a fight that will end soon, remember Hypatia lived between 350-415AD, she faced these problems and she was a brave wonderful girl. Anybody who wears a ghunghat or a veil to me is betraying women down the ages and frankly is a bit of a muppet. Stand up, fight, be a woman, your face, body and mind are yours. And don't give me the answer that its your choice. Its your choice to be hidden away based upon what a man told you? bah.

But on to better things, she has been well documented in video as well.

Here is her death in a film, Agora 2009

A trailer from this film.

And the first of five segments on Hypatia.

I have not been to Alexandria yet, but one day I will go there to say hello to one of my mental goddess (as opposed to my domestic goddess, heh).

What a woman.

The Public Philosopher - Should a banker be paid more than a nurse?

I was invited to this lecture by Professor Michael Sandel who is a professor of political philosophy at Harvard. Unfortunately I cannot make this lecture as I have to go to a charity fund raising dinner where we are trying to raise some dosh for one of my charities. So I figured, why dont I pen down my thoughts here specially I belong to one side of the argument. Bit disjointed but here we go.

• I look forward to the next lecture where we will be debating “Should a nurse be paid more than a street cleaner”. A street cleaner seems to earn £6-8/hour which roughly equates to £14,000 per year on the higher rate of £8/hour. A nurse on an average band 5 makes about £24,000 per year. So this argument should be interesting indeed.
• Now for some theory. We are all basically adding value of some kind or other. Whether I am a prostitute, an engineer, a pilot, farmer, parent, a hair dresser, politician, banker, or what have you, we are all adding some value of some kind.
• We take something, plonk in something additional, create a slightly different thing, and then pass it on. In return, we get some dosh. This argument holds true for all human economic activity.
• So then the question comes, what is this value? So what are the numbers we are talking about? The UK’s official graduate careers website says that a typical salary after 10-15 years for a banker is about £50000-100,000. Assuming the top number, a banker gets about 4 times a nurse’s salary. So does a banker add four times the value of a nurse?
• To answer that question, we need to know how do we ascribe a value to this value addition. Again, very simplistically, we first find out what is the value of the inputs. Then we try to find how many and what kind of “stuff” you will require to add value for a range of outputs with different values. Take a simple example. I have some sand and some more chemical stuff. These are my inputs to make glass. Its cheap as sand, yes? Then we have to figure out what outputs we need? Glass can be used to make different bits and stuff. For example, this LEICA APO TELYT-R 1:5.6/1600mm lens is worth about 2.02 million dollars. Its glass. A glass tumbler of this kind will cost you £7. Now both of these were made by glass makers. But as you can appreciate, the outputs can vary tremendously. So lets ask a blunt question. Will you pay the same amount for the LEICA technician as for the tumbler glassmaker ? If you do, I have a great bridge for sale for you.
• Now the above glass example was very simplistic, but there was a reason for this. I showed that despite the inputs and outputs being comprised of the same, the value added by the intervening labourer (LEICA technician versus tumbler glassmaker) is seriously different. Also you need to figure out how many LEICA technicians are available versus glass makers. How long it takes to train them, etc. etc. as the laws of demand and supply comes into the picture as well to do the valuation.
• And before you think this is a new debate as this blog post seems to think, the question of a just price has a very old pedigree including people like Thomas Aquinas who talked about usury. Fascinating, how these new arguments just are rehashing of old ones. Btw, I dont think these new chaps would appreciate that they are simply following some very dodgy religious teachings which you can see in Islam and Christianity and Judaism and and and.
• So lets get a bit more complicated. How do we compare the salaries of a banker with a nurse? Based upon how we are calculating it, we should compare the inputs, the outputs and the intervening value added, eh?
• So who wants to take a shot at trying to figure out how to compare the inputs to the banking industry versus the inputs into the healthcare industry? Does the phrase “comparing apples and oranges” come to mind? In this particular case, we seem to be comparing apples (nurses) with a black scholes equation (bankers).
• You can quibble about the differences in value of the outputs (a banking system versus a nursing system, a loan versus a healthy patient) or what have you, but then that argument very soon descends reductio ad absurdum to whether we need to have a capitalist system which measures value by money. Wake me up when you have decided to measure value with cowrie shells.
• In my view, therefore, I have better things to do than to sit there listening to silly arguments. If I had time to do that, i will sit and listen to my daughter tell me how I should cook brownies every day.

I will leave you with this great little clip about glass.

Attractions: U.s. Journal: Pinellas County, Florida

My dear Kannu
here is something that is an interesting read about how two adults take their young child to Disneyland. As you remember, we have been to Eurodisney twice, once with you and once with you and Diya. I have to admit that I loved both the visits, even though at the second one, we had to sit and watch ManUtd lose to Barcelona which took some of the shine off. It was fun and games, i really enjoyed the time with you kids and loved seeing how you kids enjoyed yourself.
Disneyland makes people happy and as the old quote goes, Walt Disney has been responsible for more of human happiness than all the religious leaders of the world combined. Which is true. Disney cartoons, the amusement parks, the movies, they make people happy. And that's a very good life aim to go for, be happy.
As you read this article, you will see that both the parents are dripping with cynicism. I suggest you be careful of this feeling, son. People who are cynical are basically miserable people. You will notice that their cynicism is soul destroying and screws up everything else.
Look at the parents below. Their little child is having oodles of fun, playing with Mickey Mouse and having fun with eating ice cream or going on the merry go round. What is the predominant feeling of the parents? They are busy worrying about economics, about racism, about demographics, about liberalism and so on and so forth. They see every interaction with suspicion, every cheery wave with doubt and every smile as a hidden mechanism to exhort money. So instead of enjoying with their child, instead of looking at mickey mouse with the same wide eyed amazement like their child does, or running through the fountain of water or imagining the castle as a real one and telling their little girl that she is a princess and you are an ogre, they are miserable characters.
Try not to be cynical, son. While there is something in the philosophical school of Cynicism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynicism), this cynicism is different, it involves going around assuming the worst in everything and not having fun and not being happy.
Be happy son, life is fun and good, being cynical and constantly being miserable is best left to others, at end of the day, you want to be happy in your life. Cynical people make a hell out of a heaven.
Anyway, be happy son.
Love
Baba

Attractions: U.s. Journal: Pinellas County, Florida Attractions : The New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1971/01/02/1971_01_02_052_TNY_CARDS_000299445?currentPage=all

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The first thing I did at Walt Disney World was to take an oath not to make any smart-aleck remarks. A Disney public-relations man had told me that attitude was everything. So I placed my left hand on a seven-Adventure book of tickets to the Magic Kingdom and raised my right hand and promised that there would be no sarcasm on my lips or in my heart.

“And do you further swear or affirm,” I asked myself, “that you will not concoct any of those theories about how Disney World may reflect the escape fantasies of American Society or about how Disney World may be the symbol of the Final Plasticization of All Life, or any of that kind of thing?”

“I do,” I replied. “I certainly do. We’re just going to have a good time.”

I mention this ceremony in order to make it clear that I was committed to taking Disney World on its own terms even before my three-year-old daughter, Abigail, became a personal friend of Mickey Mouse—the two of them having become acquainted while posing together for a Paris-Match photographer and then, a day or two later, Abigail having been snatched by Mickey from a gaggle of children and taken on a private parade around the lobby of the Polynesian Village, one of the two resort hotels already built right on the grounds of the Vacation Kingdom of the World. My wife, who had not taken the oath, reacted to the picture-taking by expressing concern for whoever it was who had to earn his living by walking around inside a Mickey Mouse suit in eighty-five-degree weather making cute gestures.

“He’s a very nice mouse,” Abigail said when the posing was over.

We agreed that he seemed nice, but once Abigail had run ahead to investigate more of what she insists on calling Dizalee World, my wife was whispering about Mickey behind his back—pointing out that his face was a lot flatter than the faces of real mice, which can be taken as a corroboration of the flat-face explanation of Disney’s cartoon method. (“The human face is flattened, compared with most animals, and any species that resemble man in this way are at an advantage,” Ramona and Desmond Morris wrote in their book “Men and Pandas.” “Walt Disney has always made use of this fact when creating animal heroes. They are given exaggeratedly flattened faces, whereas the animal villains are given dramatically elongated snouts.”)

I knew, though, that she was still more concerned with who was inside Mickey than with how flat Mickey’s face was. All of the employees we had encountered at Disney World—the Lodging Hostesses, the desk clerks, the Serving Hostesses (my wife persisted in calling them waitresses), the newsstand cashiers, the street cleaners (I believe my wife wanted to call them Litter Hosts)—had been the kind of well-scrubbed, wholesome, eternally smiling young Americans whose reaction to being within fifty yards of any other human being is to shout a cheery hello and ask him if he’s having fun. Into the spirit of things from the start, I smiled whenever they smiled, and I said I was having lots of fun whenever I was asked. But my wife insisted on analyzing the hiring policy. She wanted to know, for instance, why an enterprise that had seven thousand new jobs available in central Florida hadn’t tried to retrain some underemployed black migrant workers instead of soaking up every clean-cut middle-class kid between Key West and Philadelphia. As she went on about how hot it must be inside a Mickey Mouse suit, I suddenly realized what she was thinking. Knowing that Disney would have to hire a certain percentage of blacks to avoid trouble, and being acquainted with the theory that too many black faces would spoil the fantasy of escape into the safe old days, she had figured out the logical place to put any black migrant worker who actually was hired: in the Mickey Mouse suit. My wife had probably been thinking that the Mickey Mouse who roamed the Magic Kingdom, waving and bowing and shaking hands, always remained silent not because speech would have broken the mood (the supposition of most of the people who feel compelled to analyze) or because mice can’t talk (my belief, under oath) but because visitors to Disney World would have been shocked to discover that Mickey Mouse had a heavy Southern Negro accent. Attitude is everything.

• from the issue
• cartoon bank
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A lot of the customers at Disney World seemed too attraction-wise to have the proper attitude for enjoying Disney World. On our first day, we went to see the Mickey Mouse Revue, which turned out to be Abigail’s second-favorite Adventure in the Magic Kingdom—partly, I suspect, because of her personal contact with the star. After we had watched an introductory film about the history of Mickey Mouse animation—my wife poking me all the while to remind me about the flatness of the faces—some doors on our right opened automatically and a voice with what I can only describe as a Kappa Kappa Gamma accent came over the public-address system instructing us to move into the main theatre for the revue. Walking parallel to the stage, we stopped at seats directly in the center, but then the voice came again, asking that everyone fill up the seats as far to the right as possible. A woman sitting next to us started to rise, but her husband put his hand on her arm and said, “Don’t move. It’s only a tape.” A few minutes later, as we were all enjoying the overture led by a magically mechanized Mickey Mouse, who looked almost as realistic as he had with an alleged migrant worker inside of him, someone behind us said, “I bet Disney’s got five hundred grand tied up in the technology of this one alone.” What kind of talk is that for the Magic Kingdom?

From then on, I tried to keep Abigail away from strangers, afraid that one of them would try to persuade her that her favorite Adventure, It’s a Small World, was not nearly as impressive as the Hall of Presidents, since making automated figures that seem like dolls is not nearly as much of a technical triumph as making automated figures that seem like Presidents. (Abigail happens to prefer dolls to Presidents.) I tried to insulate Abigail from that kind of thinking—I avoided the temptation to refer to Cinderella’s Golden Carrousel as a merry-go-round, and I shouted “Hiya, Donald!” every time we got anywhere near Donald Duck—but my wife was a consistently non-magical influence. Although I had been able to assure her, after making inquiries, that the man in the Mickey Mouse suit was a white ex-jockey rather than a migrant worker whose growth had been stunted from too much bending in the fields, and that the people wandering the grounds inside the skins of hairier Disney characters were cooled by a form of dry-ice air-conditioning, she persisted in viewing Disney World as if it were an enterprise constructed by a corporation rather than the magically ordained Vacation Kingdom of the World. As the sun grew hotter every day, she suggested that a truly forward-looking firm would have thought of doming Orange County. She constantly pointed out that the cars of the futuristic monorail system that was available to whisk us from the Adventures of the Magic Kingdom back to the Polynesian Village hotel were not as modern as those in the shuttle trains of the new Tampa airport. When we were entertained by a fine banjo group during a twenty- or thirty-minute wait for the monorail train one day, she did not attempt to lead everyone in a sing-along—as I had seen a woman do in a similarly entertained line in front of the Country Bear Jamboree, my own favorite Adventure in the Magic Kingdom—but merely sighed occasionally and mumbled something about the wait for the downtown I.R.T. local. I said, “Nice of them to entertain us while we’re waiting to be whisked,” but it sounded lame.

She did not seem to react well to the ferocious friendliness of the young Disney World employees, particularly when it came in conjunction with the service problems that any tourist operation is bound to have in its first few weeks—problems complicated by the fact that the young people manning, say, the Polynesian Village seemed to owe their cheerfulness partly to not having had enough experience in hotel work to have been turned sullen.

“But attitude is everything,” I tried to explain to my wife one morning as we had breakfast at one of the restaurants on the old-fashioned Main Street of the Magic Kingdom. “For them and for us. The next time our Serving Hostess asks me if I’m having fun, I’m not just going to say yes—I’m going to say, ‘I sure am, Serving Hostess! It’s real great to be here in the Magic Kingdom!’ ”

My wife stared at her plate. “If one more of those cute little girls smiles at me and asks me if I’m having fun as she serves me cold eggs, I’m leaving,” she said.

My attitude was bound to be affected by that kind of talk. I began to find that when I was dealing with a Walt Disney World employee my cheerfulness varied inversely with his cheerfulness. When I asked a shining young thing outside the Mickey Mouse Revile about the wait inside and was told, with a smile, that the show was continuous—a statement that I knew from a previous visit was somewhere between an evasion and a falsehood—I found myself resenting the smile more than the misinformation. One afternoon, I spent a few hours trying to prevail upon somebody at the Polynesian Village to fix the television set in our room, and I found it more and more difficult to answer that I was having fun as a series of talks with relentlessly friendly young people at the front desk resulted in nobody showing up at our room except a man who said he had been sent to fix the air-conditioning. Returning from one of my negotiating sessions late in the afternoon, I had to admit to my wife that I did not trust myself to return to the front desk. In my final conversation with one of the smiling young clerks, I had caught myself as I was about to pound my fist on the desk and shout, “I demand to see a grownup!”

I had to guard my attitude while standing in line. If we were standing behind a few hundred people who wanted to see the same Adventure, I would try to brighten things up by commenting that it was thoughtful of Disney to provide strolling mariachi bands that were free of those occasional sour trumpet notes and drink-cadging episodes found among mariachi bands in places like Mexico, but secretly I wanted to be in a shorter line to another Adventure—any Adventure. I found myself thinking that if Walt Disney Productions really does take over the country or the world (a possibility my wife kept raising), the way it would solve, say, the welfare problem in New York would be to put a huge line in front of the welfare office and have no waiting at all at the office in which people were signed up as busboys—signed up by smiling young things who assured everyone that busboy jobs almost always lead to middle-management positions. “No theories,” I had to remind myself.

By our second day in Disney World—a Sunday—I had devised a scheme by which we might take Abigail on the Skyway to Tomorrowland, a kind of ski lift across the Magic Kingdom, without having to wait in the line that always seemed to stretch halfway through Fantasyland. The key to my scheme was for us to be at the Fantasyland section of the Magic Kingdom when it opened, at ten o’clock. I knew there were relatively few people actually staying on the grounds at Disney World, since the two resort hotels were still not ready for complete occupancy. Very few people from the outside world could arrive early, I figured, because they all had to drive some distance and then face what I had heard was at least an hour’s wait at the main gate. At exactly ten o’clock, we rushed through Cinderella’s Castle into Fantasyland and headed past Cinderella’s Golden Carrousel toward the entrance of the Skyway to Tomorrowland.

Abigail stopped walking. “I want to ride the merry-go-round,” she said.

“But we can always ride on Cinderella’s Golden Carrousel,” I said. “Now is the best time to go on the Skyway to Tomorrowland, because the Skyway to Tomorrowland is even more fun if you don’t have to stand in line for an hour before you get on it.”

“I love the merry-go-round,” Abigail said.

People were streaming past us. I could feel my entire scheme threatened. “Why aren’t these people in church?” I said to my wife. “What’s this country coming to?”

I turned to Abigail and tried to explain the problem. “Look, Abigail,” I said. “Here’s the plan. We ride the Skyway to Tomorrowland over to Tomorrowland. Then, while we’re in Tomorrowland, we ride the cars on the Grand Prix Raceway before those damned little boys have a chance to line up for eight blocks in front of it. Then we trot over to Adventureland and take the Jungle Cruise—unless it looks very uncrowded, in which case we pop into the Swiss Family Island Treehouse and then take the Jungle Cruise. That still may give us time to hit Peter Pan’s Flight back in Fantasyland if a lot of those people take their time coming up Main Street.”

I looked at Abigail. She was thinking it over. “Then we go on the merry-go-round,” she finally said.

“Exactly,” I said, proud that my daughter understood how a little scheming might be necessary even in the Magic Kingdom. As we hurried off toward the Skyway to Tomorrowland, I looked forward to a cheerful afternoon in the Magic Kingdom—the rest of them lined up at the Skyway or the Grand Prix or someplace while Abigail and I rode the merry-go-round, almost as carefree as we are when we ride the merry-go-round in Central Park and don’t have to worry about how long the lines in front of other Adventures are getting while we’re going round and round.

Early the following morning, I happened to be in the Magic Kingdom without Abigail or my wife. Business hours had been more effective than church in keeping the early-morning quiet, and it was possible to take a peaceful stroll down Main Street. Our no-line sweep the previous morning through what I had dreaded as the most crowded Adventures had been great for my attitude; as I walked toward Fantasyland, I answered a popcorn vender and a street sweeper and the driver of an old-fashioned car by saying I certainly was having a good time. I knew I would soon have to turn more analytical in order to defend Disney against any criticism my wife might have that morning after she and Abigail had been whisked over from the Polynesian Village.

“This reproduction of an old-fashioned Main Street is just a way to get people to buy things,” she would say.

“But that’s what an old-fashioned Main Street was,” I would reply. I stopped in front of the old-fashioned Emporium and wondered if I had enough time to stop in and buy Abigail a Mickey Mouse luggage tag.

“If they want to be so authentically American,” she would say, “why do they have frozen orange juice instead of fresh orange juice in the Florida Citrus Growers’ stand and ‘Indian crafts’ from Hong Kong instead of real Indian crafts at the Frontier Trading Post?”

“Because there’s a bigger profit margin on frozen orange juice and Hong Kong Indian crafts,” I would say. “And a bigger profit margin is authentically American.”

As I walked through Cinderella’s Castle into Fantasyland, it started to rain. I suddenly realized that I had an extraordinary opportunity. It was a rainy Monday morning, the relatively few people in the Magic Kingdom were seeking shelter, and I was only a couple of hundred yards from the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Submarine Voyage, normally known as the Adventure with the most fantastic line in Fantasyland. There was bound to be practically no line at all. I would be able just to toss an E coupon from my seven-Adventure book at the attendant and walk right aboard. On the other hand, I had been on the Submarine Voyage at Disneyland, in California, and I remembered being so bored that halfway through the voyage I had considered asking the captain if I could possibly be shot to the surface. But could I pass up the opportunity to avoid a two-hour line? I walked slowly over to the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Submarine Voyage. “Sorry, sir,” the cheerful young man at the gate said to me. “We’re closed until noon.” Thank God.

Abigail arrived shortly after that, and, forgoing the opportunity to walk casually into a lot of Adventures we hadn’t seen—Abigail, it turned out, prefers old familiar Adventures—we returned to It’s a Small World and then had some more carefree rides on the merry-go-round. ♦

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(via Instapaper)

No exit for you Voltaire

I love Voltaire, the man with brilliant quips and a great mind. We need more of him, but I think God has a funny sense of humour. Check out the image below :)

 

Some of his more memorable quotes:

A witty saying proves nothing.
All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
All styles are good except the tiresome kind.
All the reasoning's of men are not worth one sentiment of women.
An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.
Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.
Anyone who seeks to destroy the passions instead of controlling them is trying to play the angel.
Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.
Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law.
Better is the enemy of good.
Divorce is probably of nearly the same date as marriage. I believe, however, that marriage is some weeks the more ancient.
Do well and you will have no need for ancestors.
God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.
He is a hard man who is only just, and a sad one who is only wise.
He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.
History should be written as philosophy.
How pleasant it is for a father to sit at his child's board. It is like an aged man reclining under the shadow of an oak which he has planted.
I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.
I hate women because they always know where things are.
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.
I know many books which have bored their readers, but I know of none which has done real evil.
Ice-cream is exquisite - what a pity it isn't illegal.
If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.
In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.
In this country it is a good thing to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others.
It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce.
Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.
Let us read and let us dance - two amusements that will never do any harm to the world.
Never argue at the dinner table, for the one who is not hungry always gets the best of the argument.
Nothing can be more contrary to religion and the clergy than reason and common sense.
Of all religions, the Christian should of course inspire the most tolerance, but until now Christians have been the most intolerant of all men.
Originality is nothing by judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.
Prejudices are what fools use for reason.
The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture, their amphitheatres, for wild beasts to fight in.
The art of government is to make two-thirds of a nation pay all it possibly can pay for the benefit of the other third.
The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.
The Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.
The husband who decides to surprise his wife is often very much surprised himself.
The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
The public is a ferocious beast; one must either chain it or flee from it.
The secret of being a bore... is to tell everything.
To hold a pen is to be at war.
To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.
We are rarely proud when we are alone.
What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly - that is the first law of nature.
When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.
Whoever serves his country well has no need of ancestors.
Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.

Technorati Tags: Philosophy,Humour

Jerry Springer - when philosopher's fight

this made me cry tears. So amusing indeed. Imagine philosophers duking it out on Jerry Springer! I quote:

 

Jerry: (reading from card) So, Todd, you’re here to tell your girlfriend something. What is it?

Todd: Well, Jerry, my girlfriend Ursula and I have been going out for three years now. We did everything together. We were really inseparable. But then she discovered post-Marxist political and literary theory, and it’s been nothing but fighting ever since.

Jerry: Why is that?

Todd: You see, Jerry, I’m a traditional Cartesian rationalist. I believe that the individual self, the “I” or ego is the foundation of all metaphysics. She, on the other hand, believes that the contemporary self is a socially constructed, multi-faceted subjectivity reflecting the political and economic realities of late capitalist consumerist discourse.

Go read the full thing, its violently funny.

Technorati Tags: Philosophy,Humour

Wittgenstein and market forces and universities

I spotted this article and was chuckling away to myself. So Melbourne Business School has appointed a Philosopher in Residence. And he will be "providing an additional set of intellectual survival skills" to business school students. And this is my basic problem with this argument that only Plato or Kant quoting people can be Philosophers. It is the same argument I had with some people who take off on "intellectuals".

To me, an intellectual is a person who uses his intellect. So if one is taking off and abusing somebody by saying that s/he is an intellectual, all it means to me is that the accuser does not use his own intellect and it is clear that he is a complete dope (he is a dope, but that's a different matter). But the same thing applies in the case of Philosophy. Philosophy is in every subject. Do you think there is no philosophy in statistics? Sure there is, there is an entire school of thought which gave rise to statistics, the school of thought which drives the theory and application of this, the school of thought which drives real world decisions, the school of thought which you will use do judge what is a good (based upon ethical, profitable, reputational...reasons) level of defects in your widget, just to take one small example.

There is a whole question of philosophy and thought in managing international teams, or putting in a bid process, or siting a factory, or putting together the company motto. I have studied epistemology (bloody tough, made my hair hurt!) and ruminating over the presence of black swans, empirical positivism and so on and so forth helped but not sure how much.

So, my gut feel is that this is a marketing gimmick rather than something that will really add value. If you do not believe me, go check out what most of the professors's have in terms of their highest qualification, its PhD, or a Doctor of Philosophy. There are already tons of philosophers in there, my friend, a special philosopher is like saying that that electron in that molecule is special...

Technorati Tags: Australia,Philosophy,Universities,Business Schools