I read the above off the cover of a book - it sounded interesting. I've been walking around in Landmark book store for two nights now. You can't just walk around for 5 odd hours in a book store without accidentally buying a book. In fact, I bought a couple.
I bought the Seven Deadly Colours (ISBN0743259394) and started reading it on Sunday night. The essential magic number of 7 seems to appear out of nowhere a lot of times. 7 Days in a week, 7 Deadly sins, 7 visible colours and 7 distinct musical notes. Anyway the book is about the way colour works in an evolutionary system - about how the eye is just dazzled and cheated by colors. An evolutionary arms race between the eye and colours in nature - from the camflouage of the tiger, to the mimicry of warning colors of the mayfly moth,. the blue tree frogs illusions versus the development of the kestrel's UV vision or the movement detecting eyes of a bush baby. The essential fact being that colour is as much of an evolutionary weapon as the eye is - it is not always sexual selection (selecting the flamboyant male for the reason that he survived inspite of the flamboyance) that guides colors in nature.
I also bought another scientific book - Lucifer's Legacy. This book deals with the essential assymmetry of nature. Why are people left-handed or right-handed. It is interesting to note that the angel of death is always at the left of God - and the word sinister actually means left handed.
Anyway more interesting are the books I didn't buy (for obvious lack of need and cash). Tom Holt's Paint The Dragon . It reminded me of a simpsons episode All Singing, All Dancing when Homer brings home a Clint Eastwood movie - Paint your Dragon with Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin in a musical comedy !. Anyway, the second book was Snow White and the Seven Samurai - a reference to the classical film Seven Samurai (seven again !) . Anyway it was about human hackers messing with the wicked queen's mirror network (Mirrors 3.1).Thus on the seventh day, he rested. And read a good book.
I visited home (Kerala) last week for about 4 days . I got there by a night bus which takes me into the heart of cochin , cutting via the beautiful nilgiris (in the early hours of morning). After waking up as it neared Cochin,I was surprised to see no buses or road blocks these road hogs cause. The private buses in Cochin were on strike.
'T was a dark and gloomy rainy day in cochin. All my cousins were either falling ill, already sick or recovering from viral fever (otherwise known as asian flu). I tried to use the two wheeler for transport around cochin - an idiot with a cycle made me brake hard. I skid nearly four feet and did a tire burning 180 on the main road.
To get away from all this, I started for Trivandrum - my hometown of sorts. Trivandrum central was a mess - full of slushy mud and dark. But at least it was dark at nine in the night. I did sleep really well that night, what with all the travel. Woke up and realized that my college is barricaded by police with water canons and tear gas shells. There's a student riot about the fees charged by colleges owned by private proprietors. There are good things about kerala model socialism - it just concentrated on food and education. Violent and semi-violent protest is just one of the side effects of a strong college union with connections to those in power. The engineering education costs something around 10,000 INR per year - while 6 years back it had cost just over 2000. Anyway, so I come home and watch TV.
Anyway, all in all that visit was about watching TV , away from my cousins so as to not catch the flu. Sadly rain in kerala is nice when you don't have to go out. It's almost like a kodak moment, watching the drops flow down the roof tiles onto the courtyard in the centre of the house .. with nearly 8 cousins sitting around eating dried mango peel and talking about random stuff , playing board games , just being a kid.I still hope and dream for that nostalgic utopia of childhood.
Let me repeat - that is a work of pure fiction. But it is very scary to imagine the forces in play there. The Lansraad in Dune is a conclave of the great houses - sort of like our UN assemblies. The essential purpose of the Lansraad is to ensure that the emperor cannot cut out a single great house from that herd and hunt them down with his sardaukar. Essentially a bi-polar world of a single mighty emperor versus a bunch of loosely confederated countries.
Now reflect on the current world. Bush is the emperor - with his army. Every world leader must live in fear that any day they can come knocking on his door - to dispose of a dictator, implement democracy or just to free the people. The noble intentions rarely pan out and often come with a hidden agenda (Iraq was about oil and especially it being traded with Euros). The benifits seem almost incidental , even accidental.
As a world citizen, it saddens me to see a country which has always carried the stick for the world use it so mercilessly. Removing a dictator is not always in the best interests of democracy, especially if the army stays back to protect. This ranks of neo-colonialism - after all the British did us Indians a favour by uniting us, but did that mainly by pillaging and ruling justly.
The double standards that current America shows in terms of the rest of the world is amazingly stupid and short sighted. For a country living pretty much completely on a credit economy - it is either planning to go bankrupt or do what all those liberated russian sattelites did (devalue currency, pay back debts and get out). Desperate measures are called for, which seems to be what the leaders are doing. Just like the worksman who has pawned his tools on friday, america is going through the rich for the weekend period of it's life. Come monday, he's starving and worse for the weekend. Like all those wierdos on the street, let me say this - The end is coming. After all you can't bully everyone all the time, they'll just wait till you are down and kick you hard.
The standard reply I get from an american when I express this opinion is :- if everyone hates america so much, why do they queue up for a visa before you could say Apu Nahasapeemapetilon ?. My rhetoric question is - Would you rather be the guy getting beat or the one the one with the big stick ? . Most people I know wouldn't take a chance with the former. The I'm with the winning side attitude is so common with the spineless worker of this world. Add another layer to the foren-returnee wedding cake and you have an answer.
Lastly, let me quote a very notorious person's opinion about mass manipulation."Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger." -- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trialsPlease look around and tell me I'm wrong about all this. I don't want it to be this way - but I'm not good at these self delusions.
C'est la vie *sigh*.