There is no truth

There is no truth, you know? It's not about locking up all the bad guys. It doesn't work like that. There are no bad guys. There are no good guys. It's not 'grey' either. It's just that the truth shifts according to each person you talk to, and as the truth shifts it gets obscured on another layer of agenda. Intelligence is about being able to see accurately in any one moment why someone is doing something. On either side of that moment in a different circumstance, you may not be able to interpret what you've seen. But if you can get a chance at it just once, then you may have a chance at interpolation. If you never see it, you'll never be able to guess anything.

...

There is no truth because it's lost in the fourth dimension of time, and just when you think you understand it, it's passed. The game's a kaleidoscope.



 - Dan (The Situation, 2006)

Form over Content? Blasphemy! (?)

I followed a friend's link to this page on Blake Andrews' blog and was a little miffed that the winner of the Form vs Content (in a photograph) was, in fact, form. Iconic images of our times immediately jumped to my mind (man blocking tank in Tiananmen, little Vietnamese girl running from her village being napalm'd, the recent picture of a couple kissing during the Vancouver riots, McCurry's Afghan girl, ...), but before I could mentally send a flurry of vile words in some of the choicest language I know to all the voters, my brain hammered sense into me. The above pictures, iconic though they may be, aren't 'great' images. When it comes to the great, the buck stops at Monsieur Cartier-Bresson. Aquila from 1952; Behind St. Lazare station, Paris; Brasserie Lipp 1969; are all 'everyday' images with only the photographer's composition elevating them to greatness. Even many of Ansel Adams' works are these 'everyday' images (Jeffrey's Pine and Church in Mexico come to mind immediately).

Continuing with this train of thought, I realised that painters can get away with getting truly captivating scenes of everyday sights whereas photographers have to work quite hard at finding that something 'extra' that really catapults the image. (Of course, painters do have the harder job in the first place by nature of their work.) I can't find a finer example of this than Johannes Vermeer's "Street in Delft". A true masterpiece which in photograph form would simply be relegated to the 'good' pile. I would put Albrecht Durer's "Large Turf", Vermeer's (again) "View of Delft" and Correggio's "Portrait of a Man" in the same pile as masterpieces with no amazing/awesome/stupendous shit happening in them. I'm sure I could come up with a tonne of other stuff that support the form argument if I cared to run more web searches, but I don't, so there.

Johannes Vermeer Van Delft - Street in Delft

Damn, I wish I could paint like that.

A neutron walks into a bar and orders a beer. He drinks the beer and asks the bartender: "What do I owe you?"

The bartender answers: "For you, no charge."

In vino de veritas

“It is most absurdly said, in popular language, of any man, that he is disguised in liquor; for, on the contrary, most men are disguised by sobriety.”

- Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas de Quincy, 1856.

Knock Knock...

Two knock knock jokes, they must be told together!

Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Trulli.
Trulli who?
Djarno Trulli.


Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Trulli.
Trulli who?
Yours truly.

Ascension

The blunt edge of the axe came swinging right at me

I dodged and I rolled but still it connected

Square on the side of my head, hard it came.

I remember the ground giving way below my feet

And falling without end, faster until I hit the street

I remember thinking everything was OK

I'd pick myself up and make him feel sorry

But soon I realised I could see nothing but black.

I panicked and I felt fear rising up in my chest

I blinked but felt nothing; I couldn't feel my tongue

I tried moving my fingers but they refused to oblige

And I knew I'd be dead soon because I didn't feel the snow

Get colder and colder as the night wore on.

Then I slept. For a night and a day and a night

When I awoke, I was in heaven

Around me was white, warm and quiet

I knew I was dead because I felt no anger

No regrets; no ill will at the person who'd caused this.

I felt a touch, warm and soft

I opened my eyes to an angel's face

She was dressed all in white; a halo around her head

With soft eyes and hair that flowed like water

She smiled and asked how it was that I felt

I nodded and smiled and felt very dumb

She said I was lucky and I couldn't agree more

With all my sins I surely belonged in hell.

She said it was OK, that the Almighty forgave all

All one needed to do was to forgive all too.

I told her she was the most beautiful angel I'd seen

She blushed and grew quiet and then floated away

I tried to get up and follow but I couldn't move a muscle

That's when the man in a white coat and stethoscope walked in.

- Anonymous.

Calculus Made Easy (2nd Edition prologue)

Considering how many fools can calculate, it is surprising that it

should be thought either a difficult or a tedious task for any other fool

to learn how to master the same tricks.

Some calculus-tricks are quite easy. Some are enormously difficult.

The fools who write the textbooks of advanced mathematics--and they

are mostly clever fools--seldom take the trouble to show you how easy

the easy calculations are. On the contrary, they seem to desire to

impress you with their tremendous cleverness by going about it in the

most difficult way.

Being myself a remarkably stupid fellow, I have had to unteach

myself the difficulties, and now beg to present to my fellow fools the

parts that are not hard. Master these thoroughly, and the rest will

follow. What one fool can do, another can.

Love means nothing to the tennis crowd.

The Mower / Philip Larkin

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.
I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:
Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful
Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.

Thanks, Sajithetta! :)

Excerpts from "Predator and Prey - Nature Strikes a Balance" by Ullas Karanth

Primitive human hunter-gatherers, occurring at low densities before they discovered fire, tools, agriculture and animal husbandry were truly a part of natural animal communities. People who now live at high densities in and around forests but depend on agriculture, animal husbandry, the market economy and medical care for their survival are not a part of such natural animal communities anymore, howerver primitive their lifestyles may appear to be to outsiders.

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The puny human hunter who poses grandly with a tiger, which he has shot, is, in fact, exhibiting this deep-rooted sense of inferiority that we all feel in the presence of a mighty predator.

What He Said

What could my mother be

to yours ? What kin is my father

to yours anyway ? And how

did you and I meet ever ?

But in love.

Our hearts have mingled

like red earth and pouring rain. Chempulapeyarinar

["poet of red earth and pouring rain"] Kuruntokai 40