Re: [silk] What should I ask George Church?

[Divya Sampath]

I'm sure you'll have a bunch of great questions coming from the group, John. 
Here's something I'm curious about: what are the most useful 'industrial' 
applications that could significantly impact our world within the next decade? 
On a related note, I watched the animated movie 'Big Hero 6' recently, and it 
struck me that the way nanobots are applied in construction could well be a way 
forward for synthetic biology, albeit in a more limited way. Maybe an 
alternative to 3-D printing, but without the instant gratification?
CheersDivya 


 On Tuesday, March 17, 2015 9:05 AM, John Sundman  
wrote:
   
 

 [Apologies to those of you who’ve just seen a virtually identical email on one 
or more other lists. We’ve got to stop meeting like this. . . .]

I’ll be spending an hour with George Church on Friday. Church is a molecular 
biologist/geneticist of nearly Einsteinian range and significance. For one 
metric, in his Harvard/MIT lab there are 160 scientists working under his 
supervision. 

Here’s his wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_M._Church 


and here’s a profile from a recent National Geographic:

>

Here’s about his recent book Regenesis, about the imminent revolution in 
biology that is going to rock our world, big time:

http://www.amazon.com/Regenesis-Synthetic-Biology-Reinvent-Ourselves/dp/0465075703
 


If I can figure out how the logistics, I’ll record the conversation & post it 
as a podcast. But in any event I’ll be blogging it. 

I know George (remind me to tell you how I met him. It has a connection to my 
novella Cheap Complex Devices); we’re not intimate friends but certainly we’re 
friendly.  As it turns out he’s a fan of my books, which is how I managed to 
score an hour on his extremely crowded calendar. I asked if I could talk to him 
about some ideas I’ve been kicking around for my many-years-behind-schedule 
novel Creation Science. Which is to say that I expect to have a friendly chat 
with him, not a Chris-Farley-interviews-Paul-McCartney thing. 

But the guy really is a genius, and a deep thinker about DNA & human destiny. I 
want to make the most of my time with him this week. 

SO MY DEAR SILKY FRIENDS,

What should I ask?

Regards, 

jrs

 

Re: [silk] Bangalore Silkmeet?

[Divya Sampath]

Count me in. How about Retro as a venue?
cheersDivya 

 On Sunday, February 8, 2015 9:31 AM, Danese Cooper  
wrote:
   
 

 On the 16th I get back to MG Road 4:30pm-ish...if that helps any with 
scheduling.

D


> On Feb 7, 2015, at 7:56 PM, Venkat Mangudi - Silk  
> wrote:
> 
> I prefer 16th... Will that work for the others? Coffee? Drinks and snacks?
> Dinner? What's the plan?
> 
> Venkat
>> On 8 Feb 2015 09:22, "Danese Cooper"  wrote:
>> 
>> Hyatt Bangalore apparently
>> 
>> 
 On Feb 7, 2015, at 7:10 PM, Udhay Shankar N  wrote:
 
 On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 4:20 PM, Biju Chacko 
>> wrote:
 
 I'll be in Bangalore 2/15 mid-day through 2/18 early morning.
> 
> Shall we have an evening meetup?
 
 15th and 16th work for me. +1 to the Leela.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ​So, Danese, did you decide where you'll be staying?​
>>> 
>>> ​Udhay​
>>> --
>>> 
>>> ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
>> 
>> 


 

Re: [silk] The least random number

[Divya Sampath]

I think I joined in 1998? And Udhay made me do it. cheersDivya 

 On Tuesday, December 16, 2014 10:28 PM, "Radhika, Y." 
 wrote:
   
 

 ​early 2004. Biju Chacko was on the train I took to Bangalore and convinced
me to loiter.​

 

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2014

[Divya Sampath]

De-lurking just for you, Thaths :) Most of these were consumed in e-book form, 
so there should be no difficulty in finding them - exceptions were the books by 
Diana Eck and TM Krishna, picked up at Landmark in Chennai.  My list for 2014, 
in no particular order: - “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End” 
- Atul Gawande - “Gandhi Before India” - Ramachandra Guha- "The Peripheral" - 
William Gibson- "The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History" - Elizabeth 
Kolbert - "A Southern Music: The Karnatik Story" - TM Krishna- "Capital in the 
21st Century" - Thomas Piketty - "Banaras- City of Light" - Diana Eck- "Leaders 
Eat Last" - Simon Sinek 
- "Flash Boys"- Michael Lewis- ""Making the Modern World: Materials and 
Dematerialization" - Vaclav Smil
- "The Heroic Legend of Arslan- Vol 1 & 2" - Collected Manga - Yoshiki Tanaka 
(Author), Hiromu Arakawa (Mangaka)  CheersDivya
 
 On Thursday, December 4, 2014 4:33 PM, Thaths  wrote:
   
 

 On Thu Dec 04 2014 at 4:27:40 PM harry  wrote:

> Would also recommend (though not connected to India) "The people in the
> trees" - Hanya Yanagihara ...
>
>
That does sound interesting.

Where is everyone else on this thread this year? Sankarshan? Udhay? Rashmi?
Lahar? Suresh? Divya? Sumant? Etc.

Thaths


 

Re: [silk] Chennai meet up

[Divya Sampath]

Sadly, I can't make it this time around. 

cheers
Divya



>
> From: Chandrachoodan Gopalakrishnan 
>To: silklist@lists.hserus.net 
>Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2013 11:52 AM
>Subject: Re: [silk] Chennai meet up
> 
>
>On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 11:32 AM, Srini RamaKrishnan wrote:
>
>> Does Monday night, 2nd Sep work for everyone?
>>
>
>I'm in.
>
>C
>
>
>

Re: [silk] Chennai Silk meet this week?

[Divya Sampath]

So, Mahamudra at 1, yes?

cheers
Divya

 
> Chandrachoodan Gopalakrishnan [16/01/13 13:36 +0530] wrote:
>> On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 12:45 PM, Chew Lin Kay 
> wrote:
>>>  Let's do Mahamudra at one. If people can rsvp I can make 
> reservations.
>> 
>> Count me in.
>

[silk] Energy: 100% of global power from solar using 1% of total land surface

[Divya Sampath]

I thought this report released at the World Future Energy Summit really 
interesting:
http://wwf.panda.org/wwf_news/?207268/Solar-PV-power-in-harmony-with-nature--new-WWF-report-says-land-requirements-are-insignificant


Apparently, by 2050, we could be generating 100% of global energy requirements 
through Solar, using just 1% of earth's land surface. Among the locations 
surveyed in the study is the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

There have been several dubious claims in the last few years about how Solar 
energy takes up ludicrous amounts of land, usually without any credible sources 
cited - this report is a refreshing step in the right direction. While no 
expert, I understand the main reason wind is taking precedence over solar as 
the alternate energy source of choice at the moment is the relatively higher 
cost of photo voltaic panels.

Can we imagine a world free from the dependence on coal and petrochemicals? 
Just think of the geo-political consequences...

cheers
Divya

Re: [silk] Why don't women write or reply more on Silk?

[Divya Sampath]

Indrajit Gupta  wrote:


> 
>T hat was said in respect and envy. Suum cuique, if that stands the weight.
> 

>> Divya Sampath  wrote:

>> IG, IG - sneaky? Really?  
>> 


I meant I was expecting a better class of invective :-) Surely you could have 
thrown in a few gratuitous remarks apropos of nothing, as it were... 

cheers
Divya

Re: [silk] Why don't women write or reply more on Silk?

[Divya Sampath]

Indrajit Gupta  wrote:

>
>Ah! With this, the mystery thins. Our resident linguist has been reading 
>Perez-Reverte in Spanish: just the sneaky sort of thing she would do. 
>Unfortunately, I have been reading the English translations, and there are 
>several remaining untranslated.
> 

IG, IG - sneaky? Really?  

Does "a strange tongue make my cause more strange, suspicious?" Sane loqui 
variis linguis possum, sed malo anglis loqui.

I haven't read all the Alatriste books in Spanish or English either: yet to 
acquire El oro del Rey/The King's Gold or El puente de los asesinos/The Bridge 
of the Assassins. 

cheers
Divya

Re: [silk] lower than absolute zero?

[Divya Sampath]

Udhay Shankar N  wrote:

> 
> On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 8:59 PM, Divya Sampath  
> wrote:
> 
>>  I'm trying to remember if silk-list was the venue of a really 
> fascinating discussion about zero-point energy a few years ago... Udhay? Does 
> this ring a bell?
> 
> Um, I recall something too, but my quick hunt is throwing up only this
> thread, which doesn't seem like a good enough fit:
> 
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/silk-list/message/9307


Mm, no, that's not it, though pretty interesting in its own right. Might have 
been a different list, shall try and hunt for it. 

cheers
Divya

Re: [silk] Why don't women write or reply more on Silk?

[Divya Sampath]

> From: "Radhika, Y." 
>
>this is strictly in the non-reading, non-computer realm but I picked up a 
>delightful book called how to draw Trucks and Trains. Super fun if you like to 
>doodle and draw - and great tension reliever!
>


What a good idea - I should really get around to doing something arts and 
crafts related again this year...

cheers
Divya

Re: [silk] Why don't women write or reply more on Silk?

[Divya Sampath]

> From: Suresh Ramasubramanian  wrote:
>
>
>
>Even got made into a 2006 movie starring Viggo Mortensen, which actually had 
>him speaking in spanish that was closer to 17th century spanish - he 
>apparently grew up in Argentina, where of course the spanish followed an 
>evolutionary path sort of like quebecois french, diverging around the 16th and 
>17th century from regular (Castilian?) spanish.
>


There's a movie about Alatriste?! How did I miss this! Thanks, Suresh! 

Speaking of movies, and continuing the grand silk-list tradition of thread 
drift, I want to add a movie recommendation for "Rurouni Kenshin", which is a 
live action adaptation of a favourite manga by Nobuhiro Watsuki, about a 
wandering swordsman - the eponymous 'Rurouni' of the title- set in the 
Bakumatsu/Meiji period.  I watched the movie twice last weekend (DVD from 
YesAsia.com) and enjoyed every minute. As of now, only the Japanese DVD/Blu-Ray 
has been released, so no subtitles yet, but I'm sure the international version 
will be out in a couple of months. One doesn't need to have read the manga to 
follow or enjoy the story, but it's also a great adaptation for fans. 

cheers
Divya

Re: [silk] lower than absolute zero?

[Divya Sampath]

Dave Long  wrote:
>
>
>>>I read recently about new theories of infinitely or nearly infinitely hot 
>>>plasma existing in the picoseconds after the big bang. I have a hard time 
>>>understanding what temperature even means in this >>>context, since I've 
>>>always thought of temperature as a measure of the wiggling around of atoms & 
>>>molecules ... But in the primordial plasma, there were no atoms or molecules.
>
>As you suspected, this is covered by what I wrote.  Note that I was careful to 
>say "Temperature ... measures how the total energy in a system is divided up 
>among its parts"[-1].  Concretely, atoms and molecules are typical parts of 
>typical systems, and they store energy in their wiggling around[0].  
>Abstractly, however, all that matters is defining the whole system and how it 
>is divided into parts[1,2].
>


I'm trying to remember if silk-list was the venue of a really fascinating 
discussion about zero-point energy a few years ago... Udhay? Does this ring a 
bell?

cheers
Divya

Re: [silk] Why don't women write or reply more on Silk?

[Divya Sampath]

> Caitlin Marinelli  wrote:


>
>Bueno Radhika, - que tipo de libro te gusta leer? Ficcion? Supongo que ya has 
>leido Cien Años de Soledad? Una novela que me encanta se llama "La Sombra Del 
>Viento" - de Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Una mezcla de historia, comedia, tragedia - 
>ambientado en la Barcelona. Se puede leerlo en ingles, tambien, ya que es un 
>"bestseller" mundial, pero es mas rico leer algo en su idioma nativa, creo yo. 
>Que lo disfrutes!
>

OK, that's going on my reading list. I agree with you - where possible it's 
always a richer experience reading in the original language. 

>
>On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 2:24 AM, Radhika, Y.  wrote:
>
>the good news Caitlin is that you got me to look at and read the link. I have 
>to sometimes restrain myself from responding too much so in my "old age" have 
>taken to silence;-) btw, couldn't help noticing that you speak SpanishI am 
>at a high intermediate level and am looking for reading suggestions. Any 
>thoughts? I promise to respond in English or Spanish:-)
>>

Radhika - have you tried Arturo Pérez-Reverte? I started with the series about 
el capitán Alatriste; the vocabulary was challenging at first, but I do love 
good historical swashbucklers, and the books are good enough to reward the 
effort. A few of them are available in English translation. I can also 
recommend el Club Dumas, which was loosely adapted into Roman Polanski's The 
Ninth Gate a few years ago. 

cheers
Divya

P.S.: I tend to unlurk once in a while to talk about books... and I do read 
everything on the list with interest (thanks for the link, Caitlin), but have 
become less prolific on all online fora over the last few years. It might just 
be that so much of my waking time is spent on work-related communication that 
everything else is strictly triaged. Fear of top-posting is not really a 
factor; as others have pointed out, that specific rule hasn't been enforced of 
late, and I assumed it was more of a guideline, anyway :-)

Re: [silk] Chinese martial arts movies

[Divya Sampath]

From: Ashwin Nanjappa ashwi...@outlook.com wrote:
>
>[Related] Is there a good reviewer/blog/website you folks use to follow 
>releases of Chinese, Korean and Japanese movies in one place?
I don't read any particular film review website/blog regularly, but you could 
try 
http://www.asianmoviepulse.com or http://www.fareastfilms.com/. I get news 
about Japanese, Chinese and Korean pop culture including TV shows and 
music from different sites, which is where most of the movie news and info 
comes from, and buy most of my asian DVDs from yesasia.com. 
 
cheers
Divya

Re: [silk] Chinese martial arts movies

[Divya Sampath]

 
From: Ashwin Kumar ashwi...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>
>
>I watched another Donnie Yen movie recently, the animation-adaptation flick 
>Dragon Tiger Gate. It's high on martial arts but low on storyline (too many 
>plots for a 2 hour movie). 
>
>
>Ip Man is going on my to watch list. 
>
>
>Not a martial arts movie, but excellent nonetheless 
>- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Arrows - War of the Arrows. 
 
Dragon Tiger Gate is an adaptation of a popular comic book - they tried to cram 
about 5 volumes worth of manhua story into the movie - which accounts for the 
multiple characters and storylines. All things, considered it was a pretty 
decent adaptation. If you like comic book adaptation fantasy wuxia movies, try 
out the older 1998 Storm Riders, and its 2009 sequel, Storm Warriors. 
 
I saw War of the Arrows last year - nicely understated historical drama. More 
Korean historical fare: I recently watched 2012's Gwanghae: The Man Who Became 
King/Masquerade recently - it's inspired by the Prince and the Pauper/The 
Prisoner of Zenda. Competent, great production values, but not terribly 
memorable, though I gather it's a huge hit.
 
cheers
Divya

Re: [silk] India's dangerous capitalism

[Divya Sampath]

>I actually started reading it then got lost. Does she always write like this? 


Yes, she does. Her writing defies parody because really, who could possibly 
out-do her own stock of entitled, delusional, condescending, endlessly 
recycled, logic-defying, inane rhetoric? The State is evil! Check. Sinister 
Global capitalist forces (of Indian origin)! Check. Vast Right-Wing Media 
conspiracy! Check. 

A few things in the article are worth giggling over - she now describes herself 
as part of the Indian middle class. The same middle class that in the world of 
Arundhati Roy as recently as last year were 'incredibly hostile, abusive, and 
dangerous' to her. Apparently, the pernicious, reality-challenged middle class 
in India were a privileged lot who had 'seceded to outer space' and were 
disconnected to everything but 'their own andolan, their own Jessica Lal, their 
own media, their own controversies'. In other words, people who choose to rally 
around anything other than Arundhati's chosen andolans, media and 
controversies are detached from reality.    
The worst part? She is such a terrible, disingenuous pseudo-intellectual that 
it makes me cringe when she espouses a cause that I care about. (It happens 
frequently). I'd rather not have my issues advocated for so ineptly.

cheers
Divya

Re: [silk] In London

[Divya Sampath]

I can do Saturday, if that's what the majority prefers.



>
> From: Chandrachoodan Gopalakrishnan 
>To: silklist@lists.hserus.net 
>Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2012 2:06 PM
>Subject: Re: [silk] In London
> 
>
>
>
>
>On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 5:18 PM, Dinesh Venkateswaran 
> wrote:
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>>Not in town on friday. How about thursday or late evening saturday?
>
>I leave London late evening Saturday. But can change plans if enough people 
>turn up for a Saturday meeting. 
>
>C
>
>
>

Re: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2011

[Divya Sampath]

From: Thaths 
>To: silklist@lists.hserus.net 
>Sent: Monday, November 28, 2011 7:00 PM
>Subject: [silk] Recommended Reading from 2011
> 
>For the third year in a row, I am turning to silk listers for book
>recommendation this holiday season.
>
>What have you read over the last year that has left a mark on you?
>What are you eagerly looking forward to reading over the Christmas/New
>Year's holidays?



Delurking to talk about books! It's been a good year, quite a few five star 
reads. Here's a list of books I enjoyed (most of them on my iPad) this year - 
most if not all should be should be available in India. All of these are 
heartily recommended.

Non-fiction:
·         - Deadly Waters: Inside the hidden world of
Somalia's pirates, by Jay Bahadur (ebook)

·        - The Magic of Reality: How we know what's really
true, by Richard Dawkins and Dave McKean (ebook)

·        -  The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of
Violence in History and Its Causes, by Steven Pinker

·       -  Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten
Europe, by Norman Davies (ebook)

·       -  Wonders of the Universe, by Brian Cox (ebook)

·        - The Psychopath Test, by Jon Ronson (ebook)

·         - The Life of Cesare Borgia, by Rafael Sabatini
(ebook)

·         - The Last Days of the Incas, by Kim MacQuarrie

·         - Storm and Conquest: The Battle for the Indian
Ocean, 1808-10, by Stephen Taylor

 
Fiction
·       -  L'Art Francais de La Guerre, by Alexis Jenni  (I don’t think this 
has an English translation
yet)
·        - The Sisters Brothers, by Patrick deWitt (ebook)
 
Comics:
·      -   Batman - The Black Mirror, by Scott Snyder, Jock
& Francesco Francavilla (purchased as individual comics, to be published as
a collected edition in December)
·       -  Cowboy Ninja Viking Volume 1 &2 by Riley
Rossmo and A. J. Lieberman (two separate Trade paperbacks)
 
Audiobooks:
-  Killing Rommel, by Steven Pressfield, narrated
by Alfred Molina
-  Dark Matter, by Michelle Paver, narrated by
Jeremy Northam

cheers
Divya

Re: [silk] Savita

[Divya Sampath]

I'm so sorry to hear that. She seemed like a lovely person, from her posts.  

Condolences to her family and friends.

Divya

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

-Original Message-
From: Udhay Shankar N 
Sender: silklist-bounces+divyasampath=yahoo@lists.hserus.net
Date: Sun, 27 Mar 2011 22:00:18 
To: Silk List
Reply-To: silklist@lists.hserus.net
Subject: [silk] Savita

Some of you knew that silklister Savita Rao had an ongoing battle with
cancer (with associated complications) for the past several years - a
battle that she finally gave up on today, while several of us waited
outside the ICU.

RIP, Savi. We'll miss you.

Udhay
-- 
((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))

Re: [silk] latin translation help

[Divya Sampath]

On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 6:27 AM, Abhijit Menon-Sen  wrote:

<>
>>

Here's a rough translation: while my Latin is decent, my knowledge of things 
ornithological is nil, so there is some guessing involved with respect to the 
body parts. I suspect there may be some bird-related verbal conventions/18th 
century peculiarities at work.
 
These (Our) Magpie jays have a connected white arch over the eyes. The upper 
sides of the wings are shaded greenish, with the shaft turning yellow: the area 
between the wings bases is spotted blue-black: the flight feathers and tail 
grow black; the posterior spine is spotted blue-black: between the thighs up  
to the tail it is reddish-coloured.

And now back to the salt mines...

cheers
Divya 

/Wanton acts of drive-by translation a speciality/

Re: [silk] Why is Indian English so floral?

[Divya Sampath]

Apologies for top posting. 

Here's what I think. Most Indians don't really think in English. The flourishes 
that mark 'elegant language' in the vernacular are subconsciously reflected in 
the English we use, losing their  impact along the way. It's a phenomenon not 
unique to India- look at English usage in Hong Kong or Kenya. 

Cheers
Divya 

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

-Original Message-
From: Thaths 
Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:25:14 
To: 
Subject: Re: [silk] Why is Indian English so floral?

On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 10:04 AM, Deepa Mohan  wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 11:28 PM, Thaths  wrote:
>> So why is Indian English so hyper floral?
> Advertising copy is hyper floral anywhere!

There is some truth in that. However, such gaudy prose is not just
restricted to advertising copy. I have also seen many be-jeweled
business documents and newsletters in my short professional life in
India. And these were equally prevalent in small local businesses and
large multi-national corporations.

> But we love to dress up
> everything with jewellery...we have an inbuilt love for intricate
> ornamentation. (now THAT was a good example.)

I do love hyper loquaciousness (sp?) in principle (c.f., Wodehouse,
P.G.). However, these particular ones are somehow archaic, chintzy and
even awkward.

> We feel that the kernel, with all that dressing, will become a coconut

Perhaps all this florid prose is just husk good for being stuffed into
mattresses?

> I have some friends who specificaly ask me to write such flowery copy for
> their brochures. The last time I refused, some copywriter produced such
> ludicrous gems, that I don't say no any more!

Obviously the florid prose must bring in the "boanee". Why, I wonder.
Is there something in the Indian consumer psyche that equates florid
prose with quality? Or culture?

Thaths
-- 
Homer: Look at these low, low prices on famous brand-name electronics!
Bart:  Don't be a sap, Dad. These are just crappy knockoffs.
Homer: Pfft. I know a genuine Panaphonics when I see it. And look, there's
   a Magnetbox and Sorny.

Re: [silk] Pet Peeves and Pedantry, was: How Risky Is India?

[Divya Sampath]

--- On Sun, 12/21/08, Bonobashi  wrote:

> > IG is bonobashi, who happens to be over 200 years old.
> He
> > is the list Methuselah in chief.
> 
> Oh, no! You, of all persons? Is nothing sacred?
> 
> Genesis, Chapter 5, verse 27 (King James version):
> 
> And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred and sixty
> nine years: and he died.

I thought that the _and he died_ part was not really applicable yet. Unless 
there's something you haven't shared with the class? 

Anyway, perhaps 'Methuselah contender' would have been more appropriate. 
Especially as there seem to be a couple of challengers for the title. 

Ah, another reason to love Silk-list. This may be the only social group that 
I'm a part of where people would actually vie for the 'most superannuated 
life-form' award. 

cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Pet Peeves and Pedantry, was: How Risky Is India?

[Divya Sampath]

--- On Fri, 12/19/08, Thaths  wrote:
 
> O tempora! O mores! I never thought my grandfatherhood
> would be
> supplanted by some 200-year-old whipper snapper.

I forgot about you, Thaths. Obviously my senility is beginning to show. How old 
are you again? 950, give or take a decade? Are you still counting years in base 
10?  

cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Pet Peeves and Pedantry, was: How Risky Is India?

[Divya Sampath]

--- On Fri, 12/19/08, Eugen Leitl  wrote:

> > >(As Aelfric's Colloquy put it, back in the
> 10th century, "Wé cildra 
> > >biddaþ þé, éalá láréow, 
> > >þæt þú taéce ús sprecan rihte, forþám
> ungelaérede wé sindon, and 
> > gewæmmodlíce we sprecaþ,"
> 
> Hmm, I can kinda understand that.

Since you speak both German and English fluently, this is not surprising. It's 
Old English, which at that point was definitely a Germanic language. I suspect 
that if you heard it spoken today, you'd be able to grasp the flow of the 
conversation pretty quickly.

Actually, when spoken aloud, a lot of the words sound similar to the modern 
equivalents to be understandable: We, children, thee, that, thou, teach, us, 
right, for, unlearned...

cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Pet Peeves and Pedantry, was: How Risky Is India?

[Divya Sampath]

--- On Fri, 12/19/08, Amit Varma  wrote:

> But an exaggerated sense of
> > indignation over trivialities is part of the fun of
> being a pedant and a
> > Silk-list loony.
> >
> 
> Oh, cool, so this is just for fun. That's okay then --
> because you're wrong
> on both 'an history' and 'decimate', if we
> are to go by common usage and the
> dictionaries. But fun is good! :)

How dare you imply that my righteous indignation did not prove that I am 
incontrovertibly, irrefutably right. This is war! War, I tell you! 

Plus, I was under the impression that some form of monetary compensation was 
involved. Payment by the word, that sort of thing? What sort of idiot would 
spend this much time on a Friday afternoon ranting about this sort of thing for 
_fun_? 

Oh, wait.

cheers,
Divya

P.S: I'm still going to assert that decimate is better used to convey the 
original sense. As Mark Twain once said, the difference between the right word 
and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning 
bug. 

Re: [silk] Pet Peeves and Pedantry, was: How Risky Is India?

[Divya Sampath]

--- On Fri, 12/19/08, Madhu Menon  wrote:
 
> You lie! That was Gandalf who said that! :P

Be grateful I didn't quote Sauron this time around. That would turn into the 
Return Of The Monster Tolkien Thread, and then Udhay would spontaneously 
combust. A few years ago, one might have had few qualms about that, but he is 
now a semi-respectable family man with a young daughter. Just saying. 

cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Pet Peeves and Pedantry, was: How Risky Is India?

[Divya Sampath]

--- On Fri, 12/19/08, Amit Varma  wrote:

> Sorry, who be IG?
> 

IG is bonobashi, who happens to be over 200 years old. He is the list 
Methuselah in chief.

Re: [silk] Pet Peeves and Pedantry, was: How Risky Is India?

[Divya Sampath]

--- On Fri, 12/19/08, Amit Varma  wrote:

 
> correct. 'An history' fell out of
> fashion in the 20th century, but was the norm before that

  
> Language evolves. According to Mirriam-Webster [1] and
> WordNet [2],
> 'decimate', like so many other words, has an
> accepted second meaning.

So, you're saying that 'an history' is hallowed by virtue of antiquity and a 
respectable pedigree, but in the case of 'decimate', the contender with youth 
and popularity beats the establishment favourite? Hmm. That's interesting 
sophistry. 

You'll notice my original post conceded that decimate has an accepted second 
meaning, though in true pedantic tradition, for the purpose of my Silk-list 
rants, I uphold the standards of the OED over sources that are either American 
(bah, humbug), or Internet-only (ptui!). One can't really deliver a pompous 
philippic about the decline and fall of the English language without adequately 
pretentious references to match.

Snark aside, of course language evolves; if it doesn't, it dies. I've talked 
about the evolution of the voiced h in 'a history' and my support for the older 
meaning of 'decimate', in another post. But an exaggerated sense of indignation 
over trivialities is part of the fun of being a pedant and a Silk-list loony. 

cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Pet Peeves and Pedantry, was: How Risky Is India?

[Divya Sampath]

--- On Fri, 12/19/08, Chandrachoodan Gopalakrishnan  
wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 1:52 AM, Abhijit Menon-Sen
>  wrote:
> 
> > At 2008-12-18 11:40:27 -0800, divyasamp...@yahoo.com
> wrote:
> > >
> > > If you are nostalgic about my outbursts of
> linguistic pedantry on
> > > Silk, we can go into why the 'h' in
> 'hour', 'honour' and 'honest' are
> > > silent, and why this is not the case with
> 'history' or 'hippopotamus'.
> >
> > Yes! Do tell.

> Yes, please!

I think you guys are just rooting for IG and I to start one of *those* 
arguments. You know, the ones where we unleash spates of tautology on subjects 
no one else cares about, the rest of the list falls asleep, and then the two of 
us decide that we had been in agreement since the beginning.

It's been a while we've done that. OK, so you talked me into it. 

Before I get to the question of the aspirated/non-aspirated 'h', let's start 
with some exposition. First of all, evolutionary theory applies. The most 
successful languages share characteristics with successful biological species - 
if we define success by numbers (of speakers and vocabulary/ individuals) and 
longevity (of the species or the language, not the individual). The most 
obvious of these shared characteristics are 
- the ability to adapt at the optimal rate (not too fast, not too slow), which 
permits useful adaptations to be passed on, and weeds out useless or bad 
adaptations before they can cause widespread damage. 
- a large number of contemporaneous diverse forms (phenotypes in biology, 
dialects and regional/cultural usage variants in language). 
- accretion of vestigial structures with no obvious utility. Just as we 
understand the presence of the coccyx in humans by seeing it as the remnant of 
a lost tail, we make sense of idiosyncratic English spellings and usages by 
looking at their Greek, Latin, French, Old English or other antecedents.

An important non-obvious characteristic is that no species or language remains 
successful forever. Either a species evolves to the point that it becomes a 
recognisably new one (e.g., homo habilis diverges from the australopithecines / 
Romance languages diverge from Vulgar Latin) or it is supplanted by a more 
successful species (homo neanderthalensis overtaken by homo sapiens  / Latin 
replaced by French and then by English as the dominant language of trade and 
diplomacy).

So - long story short, change = good, stagnation = bad, right? But language is 
inextricably linked to social, political and cultural structures. A powerful 
cultural meme throughout history propagates the notion that linguistic change 
is a symptom of degeneration and decline. This is unavoidable, because language 
is a social marker (accents, dialects, regional idioms). Lower status groups 
strive to emulate higher staus groups. (As Aelfric's Colloquy put it, back in 
the 10th century, "Wé cildra biddaþ þé, éalá láréow, þæt þú taéce ús sprecan 
rihte, forþám ungelaérede wé sindon, and gewæmmodlíce we sprecaþ," or "We kids 
ask you, master, to teach us to speak correctly, because we're ignorant and 
speak badly.")  Institutions and mechanisms are created to preserve linguistic 
prestige (the Académie française, and the OED, to name two). Over time, 
however, even these institutions must change to remain relevant.

In this context, let's re-examine the silent 'h' question. Both 'history' and 
'hippopotamus' entered Middle English via Latin, from the original Greek, that 
is, from the Greek 'historia', meaning history or narrative, and 'hippopotamos' 
meaning river horse. Middle English (ME) broadly refers to the forms of the 
English language spoken between the Norman invasion of 1066 and the 1470s, from 
which point a form of London-based English became dominant, thanks to the 
introduction of the printing press by William Caxton. These 'imports' retained 
the aspirated 'h' from the original language(s). 

'Hospital' 'hour' and 'honour' entered ME via French, from Latin origins. In 
spoken French, most words imported from Latin turned the initial 'h' into the h 
muet, or "mute h". When the words were imported into English, the h remained 
silent.

However, there was a twist in the tale in the case of 'history'. French 
replaced Latin as the lingua franca across Europe and its colonies from the 
17th century onward. During this time, the educated class in Britain and 
specifically in England adopted 'frenchified' pronunciations. Many direct Latin 
import words, including history, which had hitherto been pronounced with an 
aspirated h, suddenly became 'mute h' words. This was reflected in the number 
of 'An History...' book titles between the 1600s and the mid-1800s. 

At this point, there was a resurgence of English chauvinism (precipitated by 
the emergence of the global British Empire and the predominantly 
English-speaking United States) which started eroding the 'frenchification' 
process, and by the early 1900s, 'a history' with a clearly aspirated h w

Re: [silk] Pet Peeves and Pedantry, was: How Risky Is India?

[Divya Sampath]

--- On Fri, 12/19/08, Ramakrishnan Sundaram  wrote:
> 
> Divya,
> 
> Just curious - how exactly does one get behind a gripe?
 
It's easy, Ram - one just waits around for it to get ahead of itself, which it 
inevitably does, because it's the nature of the beast. In the process, one 
finds oneself behind it. 

The Doppler shift is useful in telling where one stands (the volume of shrill 
indignation increases as the gripe closes on one, is identical to one's own as 
it draws even, and then declines as it leaves one behind).

cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Pet Peeves and Pedantry, was: How Risky Is India?

[Divya Sampath]

--- On Wed, 12/17/08, Bonobashi  wrote:

> Everybody seems to have a favourite gripe, and that is
> clearly the only thing worth talking about. 
 
> For me, at the moment, it's imbeciles who write 'a
> history' instead of 'an history'.

Ah-ha! The mis-use of language - now that's a favourite gripe I can really get 
behind. 

In this case, though, ahem. 'A history' is correct. 'An history' is very 
definitely not. The 'h' at the beginning of the word is not silent. If you are 
nostalgic about my outbursts of linguistic pedantry on Silk, we can go into why 
the 'h' in 'hour', 'honour' and 'honest' are silent, and why this is not the 
case with 'history' or 'hippopotamus'. It will involve long and soporific 
explanations involving word etyomology. Latin, Greek and French will be 
invoked. You have been warned.

Permit me to offer up a favourite gripe of my own: the frequent use of 
'decimate' to signify 'wipe out a large proportion of'. I know this has become 
the commonly accepted meaning (due to widespread abuse in popular media), but 
it's still a conscious effort not to go all Inigo Montoya (You keep using that 
word. I do not think it means what you think it means.) when it catches me 
unawares in the midst of the evening news. One would think the original meaning 
('kill one in every ten') is perfectly obvious from the word root: decim-, as 
in decimal, from the Latin for a tenth. 

Let's not even get started about the phenomenon/phenomena thing.

cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Vir Sanghvi on Kashmir

[Divya Sampath]

--- On Thu, 8/21/08, Bonobashi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Isn't this then a lovely opportunity to suggest that the
> plebiscite take place simultaneously all over the earlier
> administrative areas of Kashmir? That should set a nose or
> two out of joint! Of course, we run the risk of learning
> that they, too, want to stay away. Tough.
> 

The 'earlier adminstrative areas' of Kashmir  would include areas now under the 
control of Pakistan and China. It is interesting: the popular consensus is that 
India should conduct a plebiscite. I happen to agree. It's also interesting 
though, that no one expects either Pakistan and China to conduct a plebiscite 
in the areas of Kashmir contolled by them, which they essentially gained 
control of through military means. So - either 
- we assume that the people in those areas are perfectly satisfied with their 
current regimes
or
- if they are not satisfied, and also want independence as a seperate Kashmiri 
nation, their opinions and tights don't matter as much as the opinions of those 
in the Valley. Curious, no?

No one believes that either China or Pakistan would consent to a plebiscite, 
any more than they would consent to holding one in Tibet or the North West 
Frontier province.

None of this changes my opinion that India should conduct a plebiscite, at 
least in the Valley. Should the denizens of the Valley indeed opt for 
independence from both India and Pakistan though, it would be immensely 
difficult for the new nation, land-locked as it is, and completely snow-bound 
in winter, to survive without substantial support (read: subsidies) from its 
larger neighbours. 

cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Vir Sanghvi on Kashmir

[Divya Sampath]

While I agree that holding a plebiscite is desirable, it begs the question: 
where would the plebiscite be held? 

Would the plebiscite be restricted to the India-controlled areas of Kashmir - 
the Kashmir Valley, Jammu, Ladakh (including Kargil) and Leh? What about the 
Pakistan controlled 'Azad Kashmir' (commenly referred to as part of POK, by 
India) that adjoins the valley? Most informed commentators appear to believe 
that the only way to create a viable independent Kashmir ('viable' is up for 
debate) is to join up 'Azad Kashmir' with the Kashmir Valley. Would Pakistan 
agree to holding a plebiscite in the territory they control, even if only in 
AK/POK? It's unlikely they would want to hold a plebiscite in the northern 
areas of the stae, that would threaten the Karakoram Highway, which is their 
strategic land link with China. And the thought of China agreeing to any sort 
of plebiscite in any territory controlled by them is laughable.

Plus, it's interesting that Vir Sanghvi and other commentators seem to be 
certain that Jammmu, Ladakh and Leh would opt to stay with India. I don't 
dispute the broad conclusion, but in that case, is there a reason that the 
Kashmiri Muslims in Kargil, which is the only muslim-dominated area in Ladakh, 
are predicted to behave differently from their neighbours in the Valley?

cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Did anyone else see the Dark Knight?

[Divya Sampath]

> 1970s and early 80s - from stories like 'The Secret of
> the Waiting Graves', which came out in 1970,
> introducing Ra's Al Ghul, to visual elements like the
> long flowing cape and thin pointy ears on the hood. 

Bit of a mistake there - didn't mean to suggest that Ra's Al Ghul was 
introduced in 'The Secret of the Waiting Graves', though the story does deal 
with immortal antagonists. O'Neil and Adams first presented Ra's in 'Daughter 
of the Demon'.

cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Did anyone else see the Dark Knight?

[Divya Sampath]

--- On Tue, 7/22/08, Sumant Srivathsan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> > I beg to differ. Burton's Batman universe was far
> less comic-book influnced
> > than Chris Nolan's is. All of Burton's
> characters and even the universe were
> > significantly different from the comic book.
> 
> 
> They weren't, really. If you dig into the early Batman
> comics, you'll find
> that both Bruce Wayne and the Joker are pretty much written
> down for
> Burton's characters. 

Uh, no. Let's start with the contemporary versions of the Batman comics (the 
first Burton movie came out in 1989). Clearly, none of the characters were 
based on the versions being written at the time, from the hero to the 
supporting characters. If you look at the antagonists, Burton invented a 
background for the Joker (Jack Napier the small time gangster falls into vat of 
chemicals and emerges as disfigured, insane, and somehow more powerful villain, 
the Joker.) which has no basis in any of the comics, and I would argue that 
that was in order to re-invent the character, just as Burton intended to 
re-invent _all_ the characters. Hence the casting against type of Michael 
Keaton, etc. To me, it's more plausible that Burton deliberately set out to 
create a universe and characters that were as different from the comics as 
possible. I'ma Burton fan, By the way, but his Batman movies are not on my 
favourites list.


The 'darkness' factor did
> not come about until the
> Miller/O'Neill stories, so if Burton's Batman was
> flat, then he was designed
> to be so.

The Dennis O'Neil/Frank Miller reboot of the Batman was actually a revival of 
what the comic books were like in the 30s and 40s. Though even before that, 
from the early 1970's, there was a clear progression to the grimmer, darker 
Batman that we're all familar with today. O'Neil and Neal Adams collaborated to 
create some of the best dark Batman stories, characters, and themes in the 
1970s and early 80s - from stories like 'The Secret of the Waiting Graves', 
which came out in 1970, introducing Ra's Al Ghul, to visual elements like the 
long flowing cape and thin pointy ears on the hood. 

I agree Burton's Batman was designed to be flat, so as to focus more on the 
villain (the movie should have been called 'Tim Burton's Joker' rather than 
'Tim Burton's Batman'), but it's hard to see that any of the comic book 
versions were (deliberately or inadvertently) 'flat'. Sure, there wasn't as 
much 'darkness', but other than the 60's flirtation with outright camp - which 
was influenced by the Adam West TV series - Batman, as the eponymous hero of 
the verious titles published over the 'Golden Age' and 'Silver Age' periods was 
always portrayed as a larger than life, iconic, essentially grim character. He 
really wasn't anything like the Burton version of Batman.

 The Joker, particularly, was written as a
> psychopathic *bon vivant
> *, and I think Jack played him just like that. The only
> downside was Vicki
> Vale, who's a non-character anyway.

As for the Joker, the 'bon vivant' part was only ever a part of the character 
in Cesar Romero's portrayal in the 60s Tv series. Still hard to see a close 
resemblance to any of the comic book versions, particularly when you factor in 
the made-up origin story. It was telling that more time was spent explaining 
the Joker's origin thatn the Batman's. Vicki Vale, while a boring character, 
was actually pretty close to her comic book avatar- both the original from the 
1940s and the version who was around in the 80s as a love interest for Bruce 
Wayne.

 
> Yup. He uses Miller's *Batman:Year One* (Miller's
> best Batman, IMO) and *The
> Killing Joke* to create his characters. If he was going to
> be that true to
> his characters, where, I ask you, was Vesper Fairchild? The
> insipid Rachel
> Dawes does not count. Neither does Jim Gordon, an extremely
> strong character
> who might as well not have a face in these movies.

Chris Nolan uses pre-Frank Miller O'Neil characters as well - Ra's Al Ghul, for 
example - but not necessarily in the same story lines. For instance, he 
re-invented the Batman's origin too - while retaining the essence of the 
characters from the O'Neil-Miller-90s comic book period. 

I do agree that Rachel Dawes was pretty disappointing, and both Batman Begins 
and The Dark Knight have flaws. However, they do succeed in one critical aspect 
where Tim Burton's movies did not: portray Batman's story, the story of the 
same conflicted hero from the comic books. In Batman Begins, and The Dark 
Knight, he is the protagonist, and the one the audience emapathises with. The 
supporting characters and antagonists serve their roles in advancing the story. 
In Burton's films, the narrative is more focused on and driven by the 
anatagonists - The Joker in the first movie, and Catwoman and the Penguin in 
the second. Hence the time spent on their respective origins and struggles in 
'Batman' and 'Batman Returns'.

> Call it great casting, then,

Re: [silk] Did anyone else see the Dark Knight?

[Divya Sampath]

--- On Tue, 7/22/08, Srini Ramakrishnan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
 
> What's scary and horrifying? The concept of nihilism,
> or its portrayal?

The fact that the Joker makes the practical application of his brand of 
nihilism look cool.

I can't say more without ruining the plot.

cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Did anyone else see the Dark Knight?

[Divya Sampath]

--- On Tue, 7/22/08, Sumant Srivathsan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> > Chris Nolan's Joker is a nihilist! Which was
> pretty damn cool. In a scary
> > and horrifying way.
> 
> 
> I just thought he was a sociopath. Or am I just splitting
> hairs? :)

A sociopathic nihilist, sure :D 
Don't want to spoil the movie for those who haven't seen it yet by 
subtantiating the nihilist bit. 
 
> Jack Nicholson Joker trauma? I thought Jack was a great
> Joker. He was just
> right for Burton's Batman universe, which was heavily
> comic-book influenced,
> and he played a larger-than-life character to perfection.

I beg to differ. Burton's Batman universe was far less comic-book influnced 
than Chris Nolan's is. All of Burton's characters and even the universe were 
significantly different from the comic book. Of course, Chris Nolan draws on 
very specific comic book interpretations of the Batman, specifically the Frank 
Miller and Dennis O'Neil version which emerged in the mid-80s. He even uses 
Carmine Falcone and the Maroni family. 

I agree Jack Nicholson performed adequately. However, IMO, this is only because 
he played (a) Jack Nicholson's standard neurotic psycho villain. With face 
paint. (b) Tim Burton's vision of the Joker, which was Jack Nicholson in his 
avatar as neurotic psycho villain, with face paint.

As a comic book fan, and non-fan of Nicholson, this resulted in afore-mentioned 
trauma. But that's just me. 

> just right for it. It
> would be unfair to either to compare the performances. Or
> to diss Cesar
> Romero and Mark Hamill along the way.

Heaven forbid! I actually think Mark Hamill's voice rendition was the best 
non-comic book version of the Joker. Heath's is a close second, in my view. 
 
> As for Oldman, I think he's stuck in an under-developed
> character. Gordon
> has potential, but I'd love to see someone like Tommy
> Lee Jones take it on.
> Oldman, however, would probably make a fascinating Riddler.

Oh lord. Now you're bringing other traumatic memories back. Joel Silver version 
Batman, Tommy Lee Jones playing Two Face, Jim Carrey playing the Riddler... Gah.

I love Oldman - I just think he does exceptionally well playing bad guys. He's 
too old to play any of the standard villains in Nolan's Batman, though. The 
Preston Payne avatar of Clayface, maybe. That would be awesome. 

Quite a few Chris Nolan fans on list, as I recall - Thaths, have you seen the 
movie yet?

cheers,
Divya

[silk] Did anyone else see the Dark Knight?

[Divya Sampath]

No explicit spoilers, but...

Chris Nolan's Joker is a nihilist! Which was pretty damn cool. In a scary and 
horrifying way. 

Heath Ledger was good enough to erase the Jack Nicholson Joker trauma, but am I 
the only one wishing Gary Oldman was playing a bad guy rather than the 
sea-green incorruptible Commissioner Gordon?

cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Reverses....

[Divya Sampath]

--- Srini Ramakrishnan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 2:44 PM, 
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Just use the Spanish system. It scales...
> 
> and that would be, what?

In most of the Spanish speaking world, everyone has
double-barrelled last names: for example, Maria Gomez
Felix. In the US, they tend to hyphenate to aoid
giving the impression that the first surname is a
'middle name'. By convention, we may infer that
Maria's paternal surname is Gomez and maternal surname
is Felix. There are exceptions, some people use the
reverse order. In cases where the paternal surname is
very common, the person may go by the maternal
surnmae, i.e., the painter Picasso or the politician
Zapatero. If Maria Gomez Felix marries Jose Ruiz
Alvarado, their children would normally take the
surnames Gomez and Ruiz; again, there are exceptions.
For example, if the parents were Maria Perez Felix and
Jose Perez Alvarado, the children may take the
surnames Perez and Felix, or Perez and Alvarado. 

Of course, there are some pepple who use all four
names, so you may well encounter Elena Perez Gomez
Alvarado Felix. 

Plus, many hispanic people have two first names(not a
'middle name'), so when you see Javier Miguel Torres
Gomez - you reasonably infer that Torres is his
paternal surname and Gomez is his maternal surname; he
may choose to go by either Javier or Miguel. 

cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] romance and reading

[Divya Sampath]

--- Udhay Shankar N <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Heh. Deja Vu all over again [1].
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/silk-list/message/5134

Wow, nostalgic! What's next, a re-run of the inside
jokes thread?

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/silk-list/message/5150

It's interesting, in the six years since that post,
there have been several changes in my 'frequently
re-read' list. One isn't necessarily conscious of the
phenomenon. I hadn't realized, for example, how much
non-fiction has come to dominate my real and mental
shelfspace. The other interesting thing to me is that
the list of 'favourites' is not identical to the list
of 're-reads'. There is a significant overlap, but
there are two distinct lists. I love Vikram Seth, but
hardly ever re-read his books. Ditto for Umberto Eco.

The John Donne, too: while it's still the most loved
of my poetry shelf, I've read Shakespeare and Martial
far more often since 2002.

J.T.Edson has practically disappeared from my
bookshelf, while Louis L'Amour remains; Robert Ludlum
has vanished, while Alistair Maclean continues on,
with some competition from Dick Francis. The Cadfael
books of Ellis Peters have emerged as surprising
leaders in the comfort read category.

With some favourite authors, the books re-read have
changed, Wodehouse, for example: I've come to favour
the Jeeves and Wooster books over everything else,
even Emsworth. Aldous Huxley: _Island_ rather than
_Brave New World_,  Agatha Christie: Marple rather
than Poirot. 

Some books I haven't re-read at all in the last five
years: _Catch 22_, _The Golden Bough_, _Slaughterhouse
Five_, David Brin's _Uplift_ books, _Sophie's World_.
It's odd, with these books in particular, the memory
of how much I enjoyed them somehow outweighs the
desire to actually read them again. 

Notable additions to the frequently read list in the
last few years:

Richard Dawkins: _The Ancestor's Tale_
Jared Diamond: _Guns, Germs and Steel_, _Collapse_
Dan Simmons: _Ilium_ and _Olympos_
Barabara Tuchman: _A Distant Mirror_
Nassim Taleb: _Fooled by Randomness_
Steven Pinker: _How the Mind Works_

Plus, a pile of assorted manga: _Fullmetal Alchemist_,
_Bleach_ and _One Piece_, among others. This is
possibly some sort of commentary on my juvenile mind -
black and white illustrated action-adventure-fantasy,
designed to be read from right to left and back to
front, created originally for the consumption of
Japanese teenagers - that is my favourite escapist
reading these days. 

cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Holi in Banaras

[Divya Sampath]

--- Venkatesh Hariharan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Since there are many Indophiles on this list, I
> thought that you may enjoy
> seeing my photos of the Holi festival in Banaras
> [1], one of the holiest
> Indian cities.

Very nice indeed. I particularly liked the one of the
happy little girl with the pink-smeared  face. That
metallic silver colour certainly makes for some very
striking photographs, though it's *really* hard to
wash off, and is also, I suspect, made from highly
toxic material. 

Cheers,
Divya

P.S. From the turn of phrase in this particular post,
I'm guessing you originally wrote it for some other
list than Silk? Just curious. 

[silk] Clay Shirky on the Colbert Report

[Divya Sampath]

Stephen Colbert 'nails' Clay Shirky, in his usual
style...

http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?videoId=164882

The new book sounds interesting.

cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] romance and reading

[Divya Sampath]

Didn't we do a thread on favourite reads a couple of
years ago?

--- Suresh Ramasubramanian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Dorothy Sayers .. well, her detecting is good, but
> Lord Peter Wimsey is a
> bit of a twit.

No, no - he just plays one, very successfully... 

Deja vu all over agin... didn't we also have this
exact same argument before?

cheers,
Divya
(missing my book collection quite desperately today)

Re: [silk] Mortgage Mess

[Divya Sampath]

> > On Tuesday 18 Mar 2008 2:16:48 pm Gautam John
> wrote:
> >> I don't know how far this is true though
> >>
> >>
>
http://docs.google.com/TeamPresent?docid=ddp4zq7n_0cdjsr4fn&skipauth=true&p
> >> li=1

Short, sweet, and pretty much nails the facts.

cheers,
Divya 

Re: [silk] Write a book, go to jail?

[Divya Sampath]

--- ss <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> On Friday 29 Feb 2008 2:05:18 pm Divya Sampath
> wrote:
> > There is some basis for the argument that the
> legal
> > framework of the Republic of India is not entirely
> > secular - in the absence of a uniform civil code
> for
> > people of all religions, for example.
> 
> Absolutely!! And I am certain you know that this is
> not the only reason why 
> the Indian constitution is not totally secular.

I realize the thread has drifted into other areas, but
wanted to come back to the point about the absence of
a uniform civil code/ the existence of a bunch of
antiquated personal laws based on various religions.
(Just for the record, by the way, the argument that
the "freedom to practice all religions" clause makes
the constitution biased against Hinduism specifically
is unconvincing, not to mention fallacious.) 

There are many grounds for my objections to the
multiple personal laws in India; apart from strong
personal convictions about the separation of religion
from state, they are discriminatory, particularly
against women.  

cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Write a book, go to jail?

[Divya Sampath]

--- ss <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> The Republic of India is a secular democracy. In a
> secular country the 
> government is secular and does not allow religion
> into affairs of state (at 
> least nominally) 

There is some basis for the argument that the legal
framework of the Republic of India is not entirely
secular - in the absence of a uniform civil code for
people of all religions, for example. The constitution
says that the state shall "endeavour to secure for its
citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory
of India." As of now, the state is still endeavouring
- in theory, anyway.

It's interesting to remember that the words
"socialist" and "secular" to the definition of India
as a sovereign, democratic republic were only added in
1976,  during the Emergency declared by Indira
Gandhi's government. 

cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] IHT.com Article: First transsexual celebrity, Rose, makes a TV debut

[Divya Sampath]

--- Abhishek Hazra <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Deepa Mohan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> (eg..."Mishram" is so called because mishram is
> >  "mixture"...it is a mixture of 4 and 3!.. and I
> am unable to find out
> >  why Sankeernam, the word for 9, is so called...)
> 
> interesting. Sankeernam meaning "narrow", or
> "constricted"?
> in Tamil what is the name for words like this which
> are Sanskrit
> derived and not of "local" origin? for example, in
> bengali sanskrit
> derived words are called "tatsama" and the more
> local words
> "tatbhava".

'Sankeernam' also means 'crowded' or 'dense'. In this
context, perhaps that is the sense intended?

'Tatbhava' and 'tatsama' are nomenclatures used by
linguistic scholars for words borrowed from old and
middle 'Indo-Aryan' (Vedic and Classical Sanskrit,
some intermediary Prakrits) without changes (Tatsama)
and with changes (Tatbhava): they are applied to all
Indian languages (including Tamil, Telugu, Kannada,
etc., not just Bengali.   

cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] India special economic zone -- travel and reading recco?

[Divya Sampath]

Cory Doctorow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Hey Silklisters! I'm working on a new novel that
> includes some action 
> set among young gold farmers working in a special
> economic zone in 
> India. At this stage, I haven't made up my mind as
> to where this should 
> be, which is why I'm soliciting your advice.

Interesting - I was under the impression that gold
farming is mostly confined to China? Possibly one
factor is the relatively low penetration of MMORPGS in
India. Are you interested in talking to people in the
Indian gaming industry (such as it is)?

cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] death of a parrot

[Divya Sampath]

Nobody expects... a former parrot. Or the Spanish inquisition.

Unless they are Terry Gilliam.

Cheers
Divya

Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel

-Original Message-
From: "Suresh Ramasubramanian" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 18:24:55 
To:
Subject: Re: [silk] death of a parrot


Rishab Aiyer Ghosh wrote:

> others. A shame, then, that he is now, in the words of Monty Python, an
> ex-parrot.

Damn. Robbed a whole lot of silklisters of an obvious oneliner comment :)

Re: [silk] Global Warming Alarmists?

[Divya Sampath]

--- Venky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> > I do agree that attributing scepticism to bad
> science
> > or bad intentions is deplorable. The interesting
> thing
> > to ask, IMHO, is: what does the majority
> scientific
> > community position on (a) is the climate changing?
> (b)
> > is it probable that the climate change is
> attributable
> > to human interference ?
> > 
> > AFAIK, there is a very broad consensus on (a),
> 
> Not sure I'd accept consensus as an argument. 
> Normally,
> consensus would be based on facts, and these are the
> facts that
> I'd use to judge the issues involved.  

The consensus on the question 'is the climate
changing?' *is* based on observable facts from a wide
range of sources - satellite evidence, polar melt,
Antarctic ice core analysis, rainfall records, sea
sediments, etc. - and IMO is a valid argument in the
same way that the broad consensus on the theory of
evolution is (again, based on observable facts).
*Causality* is where the controversy lies. 

> the increase in temperature, why are the cause and
> effect
> reversed, with an 800-year lag between temperature
> increase and
> the corresponding increase in atmospheric CO2.  I'm
> yet to come
> across a convincing answer. 

'CO2 causes global warming'  is definitely one of the
areas that there is both a justified amount of debate
as well as an unwarranted amount of hysteria and
scare-mongering. 

> Sure, though it sounds awfully like Pascal's Wager. 

Surely not :-) In this case, there is a strong
possibility some of us would be around to observe (and
communicate to other interested parties, without
benefit of Ouija boards or divine revelation)
measurable results or non-results of any actions we
take today...

> The measures
> I'd support are the same as the one I'd support
> irrespective of
> whether global warming turned out to be
> anthropogenic or not -
> reducing emissions and fuel consumption of vehicles,
> replacing
> incandescent bulbs with CFLs, harnessing solar
> energy, etc.

I would actually support those and other measures from
motives beyond just CO2 emission control: sustainable
and renewable energy that is not based on finite oil
reserves, cheaper (ultimately) energy available to
more people on the planet, cleaner air for us all to
breathe, and so on. To me, concern about climate
change is one part of broad concerns about
environmental issues- another biggie happens to be the
adverse effect of human intervention on bio-diversity.

Scepticism is one of our most valuable tools in
science. I think we agree that the pursuit of facts
should not be subverted by emotion, religion,
politics, or 'the accepted view'. That said, I stand
by my belief about pragmatic action to contain
chemical emissions (not just CO2), in the face of our
current state of knowledge about how human
interactions are affecting the environment. 

cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Global Warming Alarmists?

[Divya Sampath]

--- Gautam John <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Newsweek Disgrace: 'Global-Warming Deniers: A
> Well-Funded Machine'
> By Noel Sheppard | August 5, 2007 - 13:43 ET

I find it interesting that this article appears to be
more critical of the politics behind the position than
the actual science. 

I do agree that attributing scepticism to bad science
or bad intentions is deplorable. The interesting thing
to ask, IMHO, is: what does the majority scientific
community position on (a) is the climate changing? (b)
is it probable that the climate change is attributable
to human interference ?

AFAIK, there is a very broad consensus on (a), with
some dissenters suggesting global cooling rather than
global warming, and much more variance on (b), with
opinions ranging across
- yes, we can and should so something to correct it
- yes, but nothing we do will change things enough
- maybe, we should get more data to be sure
- maybe, but the human factor only accelerates
something that nature already started
- no, nature is responsible

Good science means all these hypotheses can and should
be examined and tested. As of now, the majority of the
scientific community does seem to believe that human
intervention is at least a significant contributor to
global climate change. Given that we all have a
significant stake in maintaining decent living
conditions on the planet, wouldn't the pragmatic view
be to act as though that were true, until and unless
there is compelling evidence to the contrary?

cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Fwd: [jivika] Fwd: [indiathinkersnet] Bangalore: The rising divorce rate in the IT sector

[Divya Sampath]

--- ashok _ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> anymore. I have a couple of cousins who are slaving
> like fools to "save
> money for their daughters marriage" (their daughters
> are less than 10
> years old now...)... in some misplaced belief that
> 15 years hence, their
> kids will actually listen to them.

Two words: College. Fund.

cheers,
Divya

 

Re: [silk] Rapture

[Divya Sampath]

--- Madhu Menon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> There are also the "Hinduism is a way of life"
> people who tell me that I 
> can be a Hindu despite my atheism, but I've never
> been able to get a 
> straight answer from anyone about what exactly that
> way of life entails. 
> I begin to wonder whether merely breathing is
> sufficient.

Pretty single-minded, aren't they? I did get something
approaching an answer from one of the 'way of life'
folks - if you are aware of Hindu beliefs, and
practice dharma and ahimsa, you are a Hindu. Even if
you are an atheist.

So what does that make people who don't practice
dharma or ahimsa, and are still self-identified
Hindus? You guessed it: misguided, but still Hindus.
Apparently to him, you can't not be Hindu if you're
Indian, and anyone else who wants to join in is
welcome too. Huh. 

cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Murdoch and the WSJ

[Divya Sampath]

Amit Varma [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:



That's a good point. Murdoch will always put business first. I chose the wrong 
example to illustrate my actual concern. To clarify, I am not worried that WSJ 
will become a Republican mouthpiece  - it might be argued that any publication 
named after the mecca of financial capitalism could not be anything other than 
right wing (in an economic sense, anyway). 

The point is, I can't recall any instances of a media company taken over by 
Murdoch that showed an upswing in editorial quality, independence, and 
journalistic ethics after the event. He is notoriously hands-on, consistently 
preferring editors that he can dictate to.  I cannot recall any instance where 
the editorial standards of a Murdoch-purchased publication improved (in my 
admittedly subjective judgement), either through greater objectivity/balanced 
coverage or less tabloid-like focus. I can point to many examples where the 
reverse occurred. The biggest concern I have is that Murdoch consistently and 
ruthlessly uses the media he owns to advance his own business agenda: from 
campaigning against greater integration with the EU in the UK publications, to 
refusing to publish Chris Patten's book to keep the Chinese authorities happy.

In the case of the WSJ, the Bancrofts have been relatively noninterventionist 
in terms of day-to-day operations: I am sceptical that this state of affairs 
will continue in the Murdoch regime.

cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Murdoch and the WSJ

[Divya Sampath]

Gautam John wrote:
> There's a lot of noise [1] being made over Murdoch's take over of the
> WSJ. What does the group-mind think? Good? Bad? No difference?

I am somewhat pessimistic about the effects of Murdoch's takeover. He has a 
history of reducing editorial independence in all his media companies. W.r.t. 
his US properties- turn on Fox News any time to see what I mean.

regards,
Divya

Re: [silk] Of blogs

[Divya Sampath]

Ramakrishnan Sundaram <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:



Thanks Ram - brightened my day! 

I've been reading a lot more blogs in the last few weeks. Out here in the wilds 
of Wisconsin, it's one of the few fun things to do that are not illegal, 
immoral or fattening...

cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Readings on Indian History

[Divya Sampath]

ashok _ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

>
> Not _Beulahland_, surely? Wouldn't that be a concatenation of the wrong 
> >elements of mythology, history and geography for the particular sort of 
> person >you have in mind?

erno.


"land of milk and honey", "the promised land"

No - I knew that. I was being facetious  - the original passage in Isaiah is 
all about Zion and the promised land (New Jerusalem) ...  So the wrong mythic 
and cultural references for a hindu nationalist, you know? Too Judeo-Christian. 

Ah, the joys of pedantry.

>
> It is curious, though, how that description neatly fits fundamentalists of 
> many >different persuasions.



Actually - you'll find groups like that in practically every country, from Iran 
to America. Depressing, in a way. But also proving that no one has a monopoly 
on stupidity.

cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Readings on Indian History

[Divya Sampath]

ashok _ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:



Not _Beulahland_, surely? Wouldn't that be a concatenation of the wrong 
elements of mythology, history and geography for the particular sort of person 
you have in mind?

It is curious, though, how that description neatly fits fundamentalists of many 
different persuasions. 

Cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Indian Economy's list of best Indian books.

[Divya Sampath]

I still recommend the book. Highly readable. YMMV, obviously. 
Cheers
Divya
Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel

-Original Message-
From: Kiran Jonnalagadda <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Date: Tue, 29 May 2007 13:06:32 
To:silklist@lists.hserus.net
Subject: Re: [silk] Indian Economy's list of best Indian books.


On 29-May-07, at 11:40 AM, Divya wrote:

> - India: From Midnight to the Millennium and Beyond - Shashi Tharoor

Is Shashi Tharoor any good? His book's received a sound thrashing  
from Amazon's reviewers, who point out that Tharoor is unable to  
distinguish between his own life and the growth of the country.

http://www.amazon.com/India-Midnight-Millennium-Shashi-Tharoor/dp/ 
0060977531/

For example:

> Well, Taroor got one thing right. When he says in the introduction  
> that this is a "personal account" rather than an objective attempt  
> at a modern history of India, that should have set the alarm bells  
> ringing.
> "From Midnight to the Millennium" is a very long book about India's  
> first 50 years of independent existence. The chapters are laid out  
> by theme: caste, politics, economics, religion, future prospects  
> and so on.
> But in fact, every chapter covers the same topic: Shashi Taroor.  
> Shashi Taroor the country boy made good, Shashi Taroor the  
> precocious child sage, Shashi Taroor the intellectual with too much  
> insight to relate to his boorish countrymen. When you notice that  
> the book starts with an account of a 19 year-old Shashi's brief  
> meeting as a student reporter with Indira Gandhi, you know what's  
> coming. A 400-page monologue from a guy who's been so flattered as  
> a genius all his life that he's forgotten what it feels like to  
> have to LISTEN. The two most irritating manifestations of Taroor's  
> ego are the repetition (if he's proud of an idea he shows it off  
> again and again, re-wording it each time) and the occasional clever- 
> clever turns of phrase that sometimes even upstage little old India.
> "From Midnight to the Millennium" is twice too long.
> But don't get me wrong. There's interesting material on economic  
> liberalisation, the Hindutva movement and political stagnation in  
> this book. You just have to read a lot of Shashi Taroor to find it.



> Economics:
> - India Unbound - Gurucharan Das

With this, too, the reader is suggested similar caution.

Re: [silk] Flights to Switzerland from India

[Divya Sampath]

Direct to Zurich, if you're close to an airport that SwissAir services. 
Otherwise, to Zurich via Frankfurt or Munich (Lufthansa) or via Paris (Air 
France). I've done all of the above.

cheers,
Divya

- Original Message 
From: Binand Sethumadhavan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: silklist@lists.hserus.net
Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2007 3:07:22 AM
Subject: Re: [silk] Flights to Switzerland from India


On 26/04/07, Srini Ramakrishnan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> So what's the best way to get to Zurich from India?

Emirates to Zurich via Dubai?

Binand

Re: [silk] expat in india...

[Divya Sampath]

From: "Sriram Karra" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


For one thing the chaps who joined the company in earlier years were
not exactly the brightest sparks on campus (to generalise a bit), as
Indian IT services companies have not even been close to being the
most sought after companies on campuses. It is unlikely so many
'engagement manager' positions will be made available for these
candidates.


Not so- Cognizant has pretty much been consistently a 'day one' company 
across the MBA campuses for the last 5 years. And we do hire for overseas 
positions (usually during the lateral hiring sessions, which these days is 
separate from the final placement process). The key difference seems to be 
the kind of roles and career path options that the company offers to MBAs, 
which is very different from Infy, for example.



At any rate, it cannot be denied that the whole thing is a great
exercise in HR crisis management and handling busted egos. But there
is also an unanimous feeling that Infy is headed in the right
direction, and might just result in bringing back IT companies more
competitive on campuses... We are anxiously waiting to see how this
will all pan out in the slightly longer term.


None of this is new to Cognizant :-)

cheers,
Divya 

Re: [silk] expat in india...

[Divya Sampath]

He or she could contact the Indo-Italian chamber of commerce - they might be 
able to help with information, as well as the more traditional recruitment 
channels.

http://www.indiaitaly.com/main.asp

cheers,
Divya


- Original Message 
From: ashok _ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: silklist@lists.hserus.net
Sent: Friday, March 9, 2007 1:30:55 AM
Subject: [silk] expat in india...


I imagine there are a few expats on this list living and working in india

I have an italian friend who is considering moving to india for a
change of environment, and to gain some alternate experience.  The
person has a background in economics and finance (not IT) and speaks 2
european languages apart from English

Where does such a person start looking for employment...? do they
regular job sitesetc.. or is there a specific website for such
people ? How about issues like a work permit... etc... Any ideas,
advice would be appreciated.

The person asked me, but I have lived outside india for a while now,
which means all my advice is probably outdated...

Re: [silk] sorry about the double post

[Divya Sampath]

Thought the first one bounced, but then it apparently didn't...

Re: [silk] Re 1 trick to stop trains

[Divya Sampath]

"Charles Haynes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>



Sure I understand how semaphores were used as a general purpose
signalling mechanism, but it was from their use as excusion flags for
trains (as Dave mentions above) that I thought the name (and
semantics) were borrowed for computers. Anyone know for sure?


Highly probable - seems logical, doesn't it? I don't know who pioneered the 
use of semaphores in concurrent programming, but the intention seems 
analogous to railway signaling for traffic management.


Are semaphores still used in OSs? Thought they'd more or less died out...

cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Re 1 trick to stop trains

[Divya Sampath]

"Charles Haynes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>



Sure I understand how semaphores were used as a general purpose
signalling mechanism, but it was from their use as excusion flags for
trains (as Dave mentions above) that I thought the name (and
semantics) were borrowed for computers. Anyone know for sure?


I'd say it was highly probable - seems logical, doesn't it? I don't know who 
created the use of semaphores in concurrent programming, but the use seems 
analogous to railway signaling for traffic management...


cheers,
Divya 

Re: [silk] Re 1 trick to stop trains

[Divya Sampath]

And since it's been a while since I've pedanted about etymology on the list:

"Semaphore", like"telegraph" is a compound word irregularly formed from two 
Greek roots: 'sema' = symbol (as in semiotics), and 'phoros' or 'phoreus' = 
carrier/bearer (as in phosphorus).


cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Re 1 trick to stop trains

[Divya Sampath]

"Charles Haynes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


Did the computer term "semaphore" come from train semaphores? I have
always assumed so.


Possibly - though semaphores stared out as a military signaling system (in 
France, about the time of the French revolution, if I recall correctly). 
Other countries soon adopted it - and the name of Telegraph Hill outside 
London dates from the period that an 'optical telegraph' signal tower stood 
on it.


You may recall an episode in The Count of Monte Cristo where the eponymous 
count tricks de Villefort into bankruptcy by bribing a semaphore signaler to 
send a false report about an impending revolution in Spain?


cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Arundhati Roy [Was: WSF time again]

[Divya Sampath]

ams wrote:


So... why is Arundhati Roy so evil?


Evil - no. Boring and vacuous, yes. In my book, her crimes are mainly 
literary. The first and largest peeve is her hysterical, cliche-ridden, 
purple prose. To me, her writing illustrates the polar opposite of 'felicity 
of style'. Second, her muddy thinking - many of the columns I've read 
demonstrate an exaggerated sense of self-importance, while the writing is 
laden with misplaced hyperbole.


Even when objectively inclined to the same side of an argument as Ms.Roy, I 
find myself annoyed by the sheer stupidity of her reasoning. The Narmada Dam 
issue, for example: her initial column in Outlook was an ill-considered 
polemic against technology in general, with some sappy romanticisation of 
tribal lifestyles, while impressively managing to avoid any convincing or 
substantive argument (and this on a subject where powerful arguments exist: 
social justice, environmental impact, the preservation of cultural 
diversity, to name a few).


Her subsequent commentary on the same subject plumbed new depths: 
cringe-inducing metaphors ("When NATO bombed Yugoslavia, a tiger in the 
Belgrade zoo got so terrified that it started eating its own limbs. The 
people of the Narmada valley will soon start eating their own limbs."), and 
the by-now-usual mix of self-aggrandizement with mawkish sentimentality. As 
for her columns on the Gujarat riots, she made up stuff - lied outright, 
actually. Again, this happened when there was no dearth of genuine tragedy 
to report on.


Her writing is replete with sentiment in lieu of passion, fiction instead of 
fact, with little substance and less style. As for her behaviour outside of 
her writings, I can only say that she often does more damage to the causes 
she ostensibly supports than good - for example, her immature tirade against 
the Supreme Court just before a critical judgement in the dam case annoyed 
the Narmada Bachao Andolan more than anyone else.


cheers,
Divya 

Re: [silk] getting bilked

[Divya Sampath]

Genghis Khan's Mongol hordes used to drink fermented mare's milk, didn't they? 
On to something, possibly (as well as on something)...

Cheers
Divya
Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel  

-Original Message-
From: Udhay Shankar N <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Fri, 09 Feb 2007 13:04:15 
To:
Subject: [silk] getting bilked

http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20070131p2a00m0na026000c.html

NAKASHIBETSU, Hokkaido -- A brewery here has succeeded in producing a 
low-malt beer with milk, after the drink was suggested as a product 
that would help use up surplus milk.

The drink, called "Bilk" will go on sale on Feb. 1. It reportedly has 
a fruity flavor that its brewers hope will be popular among women.

The idea for the drink was conceived after dairy firms threw out a 
huge amount of surplus milk in March last year. The son of the 
manager of a liquor store in Nakashibetsu, whose main industry is 
dairy farming, suggested the idea of producing the milk beer to local 
brewery Abashiri Beer.

The 31-year-old factory head of the brewery was against the idea, 
saying that fermentation would be difficult because of the high 
starch content in milk, but went through a trial and error process to 
produce the drink anyway.

Since milk has a low boiling point, the brewery took care to control 
the temperature during the boiling process so the milk wouldn't boil 
over. After they put beer yeast and hops into the drink and began the 
fermentation process, the beverage looked and smelled like tea with 
milk. However, when fermentation was complete and the drink cooled 
down, it had the same color as beer.

Since one-third of the drink is milk, the drink has been viewed as a 
good way to use up milk in the town. The drink got the thumbs-up from 
30-year-old resident Kaori Takahashi, who took part in a tasting session.

"It's got a fruity taste, so it will probably go well with sweets as 
well," she said.

Each 330 ml bottle costs 380 yen. For the time being sales will be 
restricted to Nakashibetsu, with six liquor stores selling the drink. 
(Mainichi)
-- 
((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))

[silk] Email serial of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

[Divya Sampath]

For those of us who haven't yet read Cory Doctorow's book, DailyLit now has it 
in bite sized chunks: http://www.dailylit.com/down-and-out-in-the-magic-kingdom

Cheers
Divya

Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel  

Re: [silk] Charles Haynes introduction

[Divya Sampath]

"Gautam John" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:



I've tried the Grover La Reserva [1] and it's not bad at all. But my
all time favorite is the Sula Chenin Blanc [2].


The La Reserva  is a slightly higher-priced variant of their 
Cabernet-Shiraz, which is very drinkable. I actually prefer the latter. The 
Sula Chenin Blanc is pleasant - a bit too sweet for my taste - and very 
popular with several of my friends, so I buy a lot of it. Sula also does a 
nice dessert variant of this one- a late harvested Chenin Blanc. Quite nice, 
though the only sweet white wines I really enjoy are Sauternes...


cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Charles Haynes introduction

[Divya Sampath]

"Bruce Metcalf" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Had a surprisingly good Vigonier with dinner tonight -- from Dusted Valley 
in Walla Walla, Washington! I swear, some folks will try growing grapes 
just about anywhere these days.


I know what you mean- considering how cold it gets in winter, it's not what 
one thinks of as wine country... I've tried some of the wines from Walla 
Walla - a couple of decent Cabernets.


cheers,
Divya 

Re: [silk] Charles Haynes introduction

[Divya Sampath]

Try the 2005 Sula Dindori Reserve -the best shiraz I've tasted this year. The 
Grovers label is usually good value for money- the Indian equivalent of 
California's Woodbridge-  but their whites are very average. That's my opinion 
of most Indian whites, though. 

Avoid anything with "Indage" or "Chantilli" on the label. Absolute rubbish.

Cheers,
Divya (Always happy to talk or drink wine)



 
Sent from BlackBerry® on Airtel  

-Original Message-
From: Bruce Metcalf <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2007 15:39:36 
To:silklist@lists.hserus.net
Subject: Re: [silk] Charles Haynes introduction

Venkat, Mangudi wrote:

> ... maybe, a nice bottle of La Riserve. Have you tried the Indian
> wines yet?

Indian wine is only just beginning to make appearances here in the US. 
Would anyone care to share advice on what to look for or to avoid?

Bruce Metcalf,
Lake Buena Vista, Florida

Re: [silk] rishab in blr saturday

[Divya Sampath]

"Biju Chacko" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

I'm game. Gabin, one of our numerous slurkers is also in town. Can ya make 
it?


-- b


Count me in.

cheers,
Divya




On 17/01/07, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

hi all,

i'm visiting bangalore for the first time in 15 yrs(!) from thurs night
for a UNDP/IT4change workshop, and will be free on saturday evening.
anyone wants to meet up for dinner and/or drinks? i'll be staying (on
sat) at a hotel on church street/mg road which i guess is quite central,
and i'll leave on sunday.

i've found net access in delhi sucks, so i'm not sure i'll check mail
tomorrow, but i hope to read any replies on friday, or send me an sms to
+31629074487.

hope to match some faces to silklist names!

Re: [silk] Archie comics will get a face lift

[Divya Sampath]

"Suresh Ramasubramanian" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>



Bah. I just saw the pencil sketch on newsarama.com ..

It looks like they hired some artists who've been doing more manga /
anime (or american knockoffs thereof) .. look at the shape of the eyes,
the hairstyles etc.


No, it really doesn't look like manga to me, particularly not the shape of 
the eyes, the hair, etc. While manga styles vary greatly, manga artists tend 
to draw more stylized people. This looks more like they're moving away from 
the cartoon style toward the DC/Marvel style. The inner page, at least. The 
cover illustration is badly drawn, and coloured atrociously.


Here are some examples of drawing styles from popular manga:

http://www.thedbarchives.com/fma/scans/artbook/fma_artbook_94_95.jpg

http://www.thedbarchives.com/tenchi/groups/group_006.jpg

http://www.thedbarchives.com/dgm/scans/v01/dgm_v01_ch03_003.jpg

cheers,
Divya 

Re: [silk] English Education in Japan

[Divya Sampath]

Deepa Mohan wrote:

Indeed I tend to agree with Rishab; 

Rishab Aiyer Ghosh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
i just returned from 2 weeks in china, where the english - where it 
appears - can be even stranger. but i found the original article pretty 
silly, as it somehow assumes japan _should_ be careful about english. sure, 
they teach all kids bad english. how many schools in an english speaking 
country teach their kids _any_ other language to any degree of competence? 



Actually, Japanese english is in a class by itself... From a practical 
standpoint, though, English is the prevalent global lingua franca these 
days, so doesn't it make sense to teach it well enough so the students can 
actually use it to communicate with people from outside their culture? I 
mean, the Japanese are not learning English to talk to each other - they all 
speak the same language. Unlike, say, India, where city kids whose 'mother 
tongues' are all different use it to talk to their school friends. Most 
English-speaking countries don't share the same need (that 'non-English' 
cultures do) to make sure their students can communicate in a different 
language. Possibly unfortunate, but true.


Incidentally, the Japanese Ministry of Education mandated English language 
course in the curriculum (their education system in other respects is one of 
the best in the world, IMO) to make their workforce more competitive. So 
doing it the way they're going about it now defeats the purpose. In fact, 
many Japanese employers ask their employees to attend "Eikaiwa" or English 
Conversation schools because the version they learned in school is so 
unusable. The Eikawas are big business in Japan now, and most employ native 
English speakers. I know there are equivalents in China that are growing in 
popularity as well. As for China, the government seems to be making serious 
efforts to improve the quality of English language education, if only to 
improve the 'employability' index in export-oriented service industries. 
That's a big step for China- it meant abandoning some deep-rooted 
ideologies.


cheers,
divya

Re: [silk] English Education in Japan

[Divya Sampath]

"Thaths" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


http://www.timwerx.net/language/englished.htm


This makes for a pretty entertaining experience when viewing movies or anime 
in the original Japanese: particularly little 'Engrish' idosyncrasies like 
adding -o, -to, -do, or -u, -tu, -du, etc. to English words ending in 
consonants, and the promiscuous substitution of 'r' and 'l'...


For example, in the original Japanese version of FullMetal Alchemist (hugely 
popular manga and anime series, for the non-manga fans among us), the 
protagonists 'Ed' and 'Al' become 'Ed-do' and 'Aar-ru'. 'Homunculus' is 
pronounced 'homuncurus', 'Gluttony' is frequently 'Gruttony', and 'Wrath' is 
'Wros-su'. The voice acting is generally superb, so one gets used to it. To 
the point that I initially found the English dubbed version disorienting. 
(The English dub is excellent, by the way, except for the fact that the 
opening and ending music doesn't stand up to the quality of the Japanese 
score...)   It's occasionally confusing though, to figure out what the 
author had in mind as the anglicized version of certain names: Alicia or 
Elysia or Arisia? It doesn't help that the official English version has one 
character called 'Riza', when most English speakers would have guessed 
'Liza'...


Oh well. Back to your regularly scheduled program.

cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Harry Potter: fraud

[Divya Sampath]

"Thaths" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:




http://www.slate.com/id/2150585/?nav=ais



What Harry has achieved on his own, without his mother, stems mostly
from luck and, more often, inheritance. He's a trust-fund kid whose
success at his school, Hogwarts, is largely attributable to the gifts
his friends and relatives lavish upon him.


A "trust-fund kid" who spent most of the first eleven years of his life 
living in a cupboard under the stairs, actually...


Amusing.

cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Evangelist drowns trying to walk on water

[Divya Sampath]

"Abhijit Menon-Sen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origen


Wow. Self-castration was a capital crime under Roman law?


For reasons political, economic, moral, and religious (not necessarily in 
that order). The moral/religious reasons originated with barring Roman 
citizens from priesthood in the cult of Cybele (until Claudius, I believe) - 
priests were all self-mutilated eunuchs. Domitian decreed castration a 
capital offence ostensibly because the demand for eunuchs had grown so high 
that unscrupulous slave traders were going overboard and flooding the 
market. Interestingly, until this point, castration had only been a crime 
under 'Jus Civile', i.e., when performed on citizens - 'foreign' castrati 
were perfectly legal.  Later on, Hadrian reinforced the universal ban, but 
also included circumcision under the definition of castration, which 
understandably stirred up issues with his Jewish subjects, and was one of 
the reasons for the 'Second Jewish Revolt' under Bar-Kokhba.


In contrast, suicide was perfectly legal through Roman history until well 
after the fall of the western empire.


cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Geographic spread

[Divya Sampath]

Technically Bangalore, though I haven't been there for a couple of months. 
Currently in Parsippany, NJ. Next week -who knows?


- Original Message 
From: Badri Natarajan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: silklist@lists.hserus.net
Sent: Wednesday, August 2, 2006 5:48:49 PM
Subject: Re: [silk] Geographic spread


> So. Where is everybody located these days?

London.

[silk] The long tail theory and wagging the dog

[Divya Sampath]

Apparently Chris Anderson is publishing a book about his theory now...

The Economist has a review.

http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=7138865&subjectID=348918

What the long tail will do

Wag the dog

Jul 6th 2006

From The Economist print edition


A new book about entertainment, technology and statistics predicts that 
popular culture-and the businesses associated with it-will be transformed by 
the internet.


FOR the past two years in Silicon Valley, the centre of America's technology 
industry, conference-goers have entertained themselves playing a guessing 
game: how many times will a speaker mention the phrase "long tail"? It is 
usually a high number, thanks to the influence of the long-tail theory, 
which was first developed by Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired magazine, 
in an article in 2004. Though technologists and bloggers chuckle at how 
every business presentation now has to have its long-tail section, most are 
envious of Mr Anderson, whose brainwave quickly became the most fashionable 
business idea around.


Whether a blockbuster film, a bestselling novel, or a chart-topping rap 
song, popular culture idolises the hit. Companies devote themselves to 
creating them because the cost of distribution and the limits of shelf space 
in physical shops mean that profitability depends on a high volume of sales. 
But around the beginning of this century a group of internet companies 
realised that with endless shelves and a national or even international 
audience online they could offer a huge range of products-and make money at 
the same time.


The niche, the obscure and the specialist, Mr Anderson argues, will gain 
ground at the expense of the hit. As evidence, he points to a drop in the 
number of companies that traditionally calculate their revenue/sales ratio 
according to the 80/20 rule-where the top fifth of products contribute 
four-fifths of revenues. Ecast, a San Francisco digital jukebox company, 
found that 98% of its 10,000 albums sold at least one track every three 
months. Expressed in the language of statistics, the experiences of Ecast 
and other companies such as Amazon, an online bookseller, suggest that 
products down in the long tail of a statistical distribution, added 
together, can be highly profitable. The internet helps people find their way 
to relatively obscure material with recommendations and reviews by other 
people (and for those willing to have their artistic tastes predicted by a 
piece of software) computer programs which analyse past selections.


Long-tail enthusiasts argue that the whole of culture will benefit, not just 
commercial enterprises. Television, film and music are such bewitching media 
in their own right that many people are quite happy to watch and listen to 
what the mainstream provides. But if individuals have the opportunity to 
pick better, more ideally suited entertainment from a far wider selection, 
they will take it, according to the theory of the long tail. Some analysts 
reckon that entire populations might become happier and wiser once they have 
access to thousands of documentaries, independent films and sub-genres of 
every kind of music, instead of being subjected to what Mr Anderson calls 
the tyranny of lowest-common-denominator fare. That might be taking things a 
bit far. But the long tail is certainly one of the internet's better gifts 
to humanity.


Conglomerates, such as Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, on the other hand, 
regard the long tail as another swing at them from a dragon-like blogosphere 
which resents the "mainstream media" or MSM, as bloggers often call it. 
Lowest-common-denominator hits, after all, are an important part of their 
business. Like many people connected to the technology industry, Mr Anderson 
(formerly a journalist for The Economist) clearly relishes the way the 
internet is challenging traditional media companies. Perhaps because of 
this, he is a little too dismissive of hits. Some are indeed manufactured 
and cynical: the music industry bribes radio stations to blitz people with 
tracks they have picked; book publishers pay retailers for the spot in the 
window; and Hollywood holds back films from honest reviewers lest a bad 
write-up spoil an opening. But most hits are popular because they are of 
high quality. As Mr Anderson's book acknowledges, there is an awful lot of 
dross in the tail. And the way in which the internet makes it easy for 
people to share likes and dislikes about entertainment will help hits as 
well as more obscure material.


Mr Anderson has backed away somewhat from his original article in Wired in 
which he suggested that the long tail would be a bigger market than the 
hits. His book says, more cautiously, that "all those niches can potentially 
add up to a market that is as big as (if not bigger than) the hits." Perhaps 
the true effect of unlimited digital distribution on individual media 
choices will be even

Re: [silk] Chennai Silk Meet

[Divya Sampath]

"Badri Natarajan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


Where *are* all the Chennai silklisters? Seems like they keep moving to
Bangalore..:-)


There weren't that many of us to start with... and for the record, I'm still 
in Bangalore.


cheers,
Divya

Re: [silk] Silk meet in Bangalore

[Divya Sampath]

My parents will be in town, and I want to spend some time with them for a 
change, so I can't make it either.


cheers,
Divya
- Original Message - 
From: "Madhu Menon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2006 4:43 PM
Subject: Re: [silk] Silk meet in Bangalore



Srini RamaKrishnan wrote:

Perhaps we should meet this Saturday at Windsor Pub to discuss. Wait,
let's make it a silk gathering? Anyone interested?


Can't make it, I'm afraid.

Madhu

--

<<<   *   >>>
Madhu Menon
Shiok Far-eastern Cuisine
Indiranagar, Bangalore
http://www.shiokfood.com

Chef's Notes: http://www.shiokfood.com/notes/



--
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.1.1/270 - Release Date: 2/27/2006

Re: [silk] Yahoo! News Story - Holocaust Denier Gets Three Years inJail - Yahoo! News

[Divya Sampath]

 wrote:

He may be a moron (and does look like a nazi), but that's not a crime... 
so - is he a criminal or victim of politics in a world where people like 
Kurt Waldheim >>could become UN SecGen and President of Austria?


Is your argument that if Waldheim got away with it, why shouldn't Irving? 
The other side of it is that Waldheim shouldn't have got away with it, and 
neither should Irving.


There is a difference between the two situations, though: Waldheim, a 
politician, had a right to air his dubious opinions in public (though not to 
actually lie about his own past); Irving, a historian, does not have the 
right to pass his dubious opinions off as fact.


cheers,
Divya 

Re: [silk] Yahoo! News Story - Holocaust Denier Gets Three Years inJail - Yahoo! News

[Divya Sampath]

It may be of interest to note that Irving sued Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin 
books for libel a few years ago, when she cited David Irving's work as an 
example of Holocaust denial, and questioned his historiographical methods. 
David Irving's case was based on the plank that his statements were utterly 
factual, and his historiographical methods were impeccable. Based on that 
argument, and the fact that the trial was in an English court, where the 
burden of proof in libel cases is on the defendant (yes, one is guilty until 
proven innocent), Lipstadt's task was to prove that there was adequate 
evidence for the Holocaust and that Irving was denying the facts.


She successfully did this- Irving must have regretted bringing her to court. 
The defense started with tracking down the sources that David Irving was 
claiming to have quoted (he had appended pages of citations in his books) 
and went on to prove that he had misrepresented them, misquoted them, 
ignored relevant material, and in some cases, made up stuff. If anyone's 
interested in the details, the court transcripts are available online at 
http://www.hdot.org/ieindex.html.


The substance of the results were as follows: Irving had repeatedly claimed, 
in his books and his speeches, that there was a "chain of documents" which 
showed that Hitler was innocent of the persecution of the Jews, and in 
particular their mass-murder during the War; that he was, in fact, "the best 
friend the Jews ever had in the Third Reich. The defense enlisted Professor 
Richard Evans of Cambridge University, to investigate the evidence behind 
Irving's claims. His findings were interesting. On examination, almost every 
one of Irving's sources was revealed to be flawed. Irving had lied, and he 
was caught lying. He had been engaging in falsification of history on a very 
ambitious scale. Perhaps by curious coincidence, each of Irving's 
falsifications led to the same result: the exoneration of Hitler. 
Interesting, in light of Irving's continual denial of any political agenda 
on his part.


As a side note, the trial occured in 2000, at which time, David Irving was 
still defending his denail of the Holocaust - so he could certainly be held 
accountable under a law passed in 1992. There's very little to justify the 
assertion that he 'changed his views based on new evidence' - other than his 
own statement to that effect, which actually goes against his very public 
behaviour to the contrary. Irving seems to be lying - again.


cheers,
Divya






lk] Yahoo! News Story - Holocaust Denier Gets Three Years inJail - Yahoo! 
News



So this guy was convicted based on comments he made in 1989, under a law 
that wasn't enacted until 1992, by which time his view had changed based on 
'new evidence'.


He may be a moron (and does look like a nazi), but that's not a crime... 
so - is he a criminal or victim of politics in a world where people like 
Kurt Waldheim could become UN SecGen and President of Austria?


Indrajit Gupta <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Frank,
Thanks to the vagaries of the virtual world, another news item I sent to the 
list didn't get there. It reported that all seven accused in a case where a 
young woman was shot to death in front of dozens of people have been 
acquitted after a long-drawn out trial. All seven were political or 
industrial barons' brats.
At least Austria jailed this particular bastard. We can't even get 
murderers.

IG

Frank Pohlmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
So Irving is lucky again. If he had been Austrian or
German, he would have ended up in prison for a lot
longer.

Also, he will not be in prison for long, if at all.

-Frank

--- bonobashi wrote:



bonobashi ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) has sent you a
news article.
(Email address has not been verified.)




Personal message:

But then again...

Holocaust Denier Gets Three Years in Jail - Yahoo!
News



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060220/ap_on_re_eu/austria_holocaust_denial






Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/











___
Win a BlackBerry device from O2 with Yahoo!. Enter now. 
http://www.yahoo.co.uk/blackberry







Indrajit Gupta
'Ramsharan', 396, TT Krishnamachari Road,
Teynampet,
Chennai 600 018.

+914455511138
+919884375777


Jiyo cricket on Yahoo! India cricket
Yahoo! Messenger Mobile Stay in touch with your buddies all the time.




Yahoo! Mail
Use Photomail to share photos without annoying attachments.



Internal Virus Database is out-of-date.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.1/250 - Release Date: 2/3/2006 

Re: [silk] It's the demography, stupid

[Divya Sampath]

"sastry" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:



On Wed January 11 2006 22:48, Kiran Jonnalagadda wrote:

 could it not be that the region's rulers like to keep Islam
that way to maintain their stranglehold on oil resources?


I belive that "keeping Islam that way" is a great way of holding on to 
power

in an oligarchy. The infuence in the West that those oligarchies/monarchs
acquired due to oil wealth made sure that the West did nothing to to touch 
or
change those monarchs in the manner that the West tried to do in Vietnam 
for

example.


After nearly a century, the Wahhabi-Saudi alliance that has kept the house 
of Saud in power seems to be foundering a bit. The latest Economist has an 
interesting article on this and other recent developments in Saudi Arabia. 
It will be interesting to see how things play out in the next decade.


(Reproducing the article in full below, because access is restricted to 
subscribers)



SURVEY: SAUDI ARABIA

Keeping the faith
Jan 5th 2006

From The Economist print edition


A very special kind of Islam


UNTIL two years ago, Saudi religious textbooks suggested that a good way to 
show love for God was to treat infidels with contempt. Students learned that 
communism, secularism and capitalism were forms of apostasy. Inventors and 
those who call themselves scientists, they read, were nothing of the kind 
because their so-called science was limited to worldly matters. The only 
true men of science were those who knew God and feared Him.


Passages such as these have since been purged, as part of a general campaign 
against "exaggeration" in religious teaching, but not without fierce 
resistance. In 2004, for instance, a group of 150 religious scholars, among 
them officials in the education ministry, blasted such revisionism in a 
petition. "It is not possible to erase this enmity simply by removing 
something from the curriculum!" exclaimed their message to the king. "The 
enmity between infidels and Muslims is a fact of existence as well as a 
legal obligation."


Many teachers have simply refused to use the kinder, gentler new texts. Even 
some parents complain that they no longer trust the curriculum to convey 
correct values. In one notorious incident last year, colleagues and students 
of a high-school chemistry teacher pressed charges against him for speaking 
against jihadist violence, for "favouring Christians and Jews", and for 
poking fun at clerics' beards. The local judge handed him a 40-month jail 
sentence, plus 750 lashes.



Texts containing incitement to religious hatred are still stocked in 
mosques, bookstores and libraries. A giant state-run press outside Medina, 
for instance, produces some 10m beautifully printed Korans a year, in 40 
languages, which are distributed free throughout the world. Yet these are no 
ordinary Korans. They are annotated by Wahhabist scholars, who pronounce, 
among other things, that jihad is one of the "pillars" of Islam. (Most 
Muslims recognise five pillars: the profession of faith, prayer, 
alms-giving, fasting and pilgrimage.) "By abandoning jihad, Islam is 
destroyed," says one footnote. "Jihad is an obligatory duty, and he who 
tries to escape this duty, or does not in his innermost heart wish to 
fulfill this duty, dies with the qualities of a hypocrite."


Obviously, most Saudis make their way through life without taking up arms 
against the world. But plenty do feel inspired by such fighting words. In 
the past, and often with a nod from Washington, the most enthusiastic were 
exported to such theatres of war as Afghanistan, Chechnya and Bosnia. Some 
estimates put the number of Saudi volunteers in those conflicts as high as 
30,000. Generous funding also flowed to jihadist causes, often without the 
knowledge of the donors. ("I thought it was like the Salvation Army," says a 
Riyadh businessman of a charity he had long sponsored before it was linked 
to terrorism.) The skies of America, as well as Iraq, have been more recent 
arenas for youths wishing to sacrifice their lives for what they see as the 
good of the faith.
Whatever their reservations about jihadist tactics, most Saudis were 
impressed by their zeal and at least somewhat sympathetic to their goals. 
Television pictures of Muslims suffering injustice in Palestine and 
elsewhere bolstered the already xenophobic world view of the Wahhabist 
establishment that controls the kingdom's mosques and schools. After 
September 11th 2001, America's proclamation of war on terror, accompanied by 
words and phrases such as "crusade" and "with us or against us", fed 
suspicions of a plan to divide and weaken Muslims.


Not in our backyard
But such defensive complacency came to an abrupt end in May 2003 when a 
local cell linked to al-Qaeda sent suicide truck bombs into three 
residential compounds in Riyadh. The following 18 months saw a series of 
deadly bombings and shoot-outs as militants attacked expatriate workers as 
well as Saudi police. The security forces' respons