[spoiler alert] the manchurian candidate is not about what I expected..... don't watch it

 reading the calcutta chromosome

had read about amitav ghosh and had shortlisted the sea of poppies trilogy but didn't find it in om books and so chickened out. buying from amazon doesn't seem to be a real thing. neither does buying a new book from a name brand store... (my jack reacher book is coming via amazon... don't judge me... )

amitav ghosh is a history man first. a bengali before that. i love my history, only not... like .. my favorites are flashman, the tintins, the mummy, master li, interesting times, judge dee , noble house, shogun; hence my interest in ag

fate moved things so that i landed at a cousin's place by an unexpected twist - a derelict bank account had cash in it ,so after unnerving depressing scenarios of imagining the bank denying me access to it, i snuck into the bank one day,  on a tangent ( the normal NEVE works for me) - and learned with the greatest of joy and relief that it had an aunt's name on it - and part of getting the documentation to her via another uncle, i landed up at their house. i could've used any of the courier services of the day, masquerading behind taxi service and instant grocery deliveries, but i decided to drop in myself. and my cousin lent me calcutta chromosome

ag doing sf

calcutta chromosome has the feel of cory doctorow's toaster story... the same detached narration of the rapture of nerds ...

like slices of onion that one keeps eating, even though you know they are not chips, and only because you ate the previous one, ( i can do this with thin slices of garlic also. the tongue is insatiable for masala)  , i kept reading line after page after chapter

 i realised this book is a sandwich, the science , while superb, forms only the top one of dreary dry  bread slices.the history forms the bottom slice.  the mayonnaise, or the chipotle sauce, is the premise of the plot ( always a sucker for british bungalow life i am). the tomato the onion the lettuce the cheese slice -  are the people and streets of calcutta where the story flows into and eventually settles down into, and the meat (or veggie patty) of the sandwich is human nature. we read to read about ourselves, to meet ourselves, rest is all delivery mechanism and garnishing

like i said - bengali and history buff first

ps : murugan seems like the last name one would have , for a person who talks like that ( antar and the thai cafe )

did i mention how reading a book is helping rehabilitate my mobile-screen-worn eyes ?

pps : [spoiler] the ending doesn't weave together 

i don't like china mieville - his writing puts a dark desolate deserted feeling inside me - like a usual hanging place on small town on sunday - full of memories but foreboding and forbidding

 what do the messages of  Ajahn Brahm and Tony Robbins have in common ?

what  does the teachings of  Ajahn Brahm have in common with the forest of forgetfulness in Alice in Wonderland ?

 a man had a problem

he sat down with this wife to talk about it

now he had two problems

i wish there was 

a small part of this mess that i can call my own

real for me me yesterday, today, and tomorrow

noises, voices, nudges knocking me off the path

scaffolding for help when foundations totter

wishes, horses,  beggars riding out

still center dancing leaves swirling currents

no ice cream

ever

ride the li

 

 nature is fractal, so it follows the basic building block of intelligence is intelligence

this doesn't make sense, but the inverse explains some things

the difference in the corpus callosum structure across the sexes makes for some interesting hypothesis

first, the shorter, broader, fibre-optic speed one makes signals travel faster across the halves. so for the one group, signals are processsed and consumed, for the other , they are consumed then processed. let me explain -

when a signal jumps faster, it reaches the sense of self part of the brain at the same time as it does the mechanical physical part of it. so the social significance of the event is computed at the same time as the physical chronological import. hence, every event either adds or detracts from social status or not. and since this functions this way from ... i don't know when - probably teenage ? the amount of scientific content proportionally is less , compounding all the way to adulthood where it plays close to zero significance

hence each woman is the president of the world women's association. their weapons are long sharp needles which can be thrust in the back during a social hug, or poisons, or needles delivering poison, so that social persona is unchanged. this is also why you can lie to them and get a way, mostly, as long as social status is restored/boosted. memory of past events, chronology, is a lower priority, along with facts

when a signal jumps slower across the gap, it doesn't  reach the sense of self part of the brain first, it spends time at the physical chronological part of the brain first, calculations are completed, events are assimilated, models updated by the time it jumps across and reaches the I part. accumulating from ..? teenage-hood, this builds up a large store of fact before which the I has to submit.  

think of two organisations, in the first, external events are fed to the CEO first, in the other, they are fed to the CTO first. the other CXO gets to know of it only after a day 

 I carry with me a will so soft

As though wrought of dew and shade

And the passing fragrance of a hedge bloom

Tender intent, like a tendril green

Dies a million amidst hurry 

 men have become tools of their tools

- Thoreau

this helps me bridge Thoreau and McLuhan

tools change social patterns, and shift the status quo, and then the status quo settles around a new set of social patterns, except now, the liberating joy of using the tool is replaced by tedium drudgery and soullessness

the explorer who broke out and went into the wilderness and lived in a tent, now finds his tent overtaken by the edge of civilisation, and is no longer wilderness, and has to pay for living there and pay for food and water and electricity even if he doesn't wants to, so he now goes into debt and has to work long hours on high doses of caffeine

there is no escape. however, good news is, the birth rates are plumetting

Anyone feel that Brad Warner's Zen is closer in spirit to Thoreau than any other Zennist out there ? that the entire latching on to Dogen and using that to kill all talk that arises,  is coincidentally both Zen and Thoreau-ic ?