There is more than one person who might murder Lord Edgeware, but one has a watertight alibi - the wife, an actress of yore famed for beauty and style, who was at a very well attended dinner - and the other, a young man, was at late night show of film which no one can corroborate. Both had entered the house at the relevant time, and either could be the murderer.
Then there is another actress, a minor one who resembles the Lady Edgeware, found dead. Did she do it, using the name of the better known actress, and if so why?
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Mrs. Dalloway: by Virginia Woolf.
Given a choice, the young woman - or man for that matter - of average sort will choose a safe everyday continuance of routine than choose life and love with all its turmoil, and prefer a safe facsimile rather than the raw truth. For growth is painful and while children can face it fearlessly, even eagerly, age for love brings fear of losing the cocoon one has grown up in - neighbourhood, people one knows, routines, familiar rituals whether parties or church or afternoon coffee sessions with neighbours - and the real risk is a loss of ego on realising one's own self. Most people would rather lose love.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Capitalism: by Ayn Rand.
Expanded version of John Galt Speech from Atlas Shrugged, with the philosophy Ayn Rand expounds generally through her works. While her thinking is not complete, and does reflect partial nature of her knowledge and thought, it nevertheless is good at exposing altruism the veil over would be slavers' face and heart.
To begin with she goes into the question of what precisely is money, and how it is seen, in her work here as well as in Atlas Shrugged; how it is seen, and what is the real reason it was needed, what is its real nature. When seen so at a level exposed of all veils much becomes clear.
When you envision a society without money, any form of money, it is impossible to work out an exchange of worth, of work and of value, unless you are in a family situation where there is a parent or two providing everything and solving all disputes - and this can only be extended to a community larger than a family if such community consist of completely achieved spiritual mendicants with no concern about whether or not needs are provided for and whether or not there is an equal or even just distribution.
Money is that which represents the worth of work and value, it is value of one's work represented in coin or paper or promissory note. Whatever the representation, and however badly it is used or stolen, the best way still is to leave everyone to bargain freely and fearlessly for worth of one's work in market.
Thus far Rand, and it is undeniable. However -
The gaps in her logic and thought are not covered by her opposite but by a complementing of her gaps. Mothers, nurses, teachers are not paid well as are artists, scientists, and inventors generally, or great writers often enough. Sales and money earned during life of such a person does not in any way reflect their true worth as is equally true of great many of corporate overpaid darks suits.
There are many such anomalies, greatest ones being a comparison of Africa and Asia with their losses - former far more than latter, since the latter has to some extent recovered - and the western societies on the other hand that benefited from physically overpowering the people of other continents and robbing them, calling it taxation but in reality a loot since the tax brought no benefits to the people in general. Think diamonds, think coffee, think chocolates. Think how much royalty ought to be paid for them their real worth, and what the natives lose when land is used for western luxury rather than natives needs of food.
Capitalism leaves much unanswered, unless one believes in physical power and threat as justification for wealth, which Ayn Rand does not. She however prefers to keep it simple, complexity defies her and she ignores it.
To begin with she goes into the question of what precisely is money, and how it is seen, in her work here as well as in Atlas Shrugged; how it is seen, and what is the real reason it was needed, what is its real nature. When seen so at a level exposed of all veils much becomes clear.
When you envision a society without money, any form of money, it is impossible to work out an exchange of worth, of work and of value, unless you are in a family situation where there is a parent or two providing everything and solving all disputes - and this can only be extended to a community larger than a family if such community consist of completely achieved spiritual mendicants with no concern about whether or not needs are provided for and whether or not there is an equal or even just distribution.
Money is that which represents the worth of work and value, it is value of one's work represented in coin or paper or promissory note. Whatever the representation, and however badly it is used or stolen, the best way still is to leave everyone to bargain freely and fearlessly for worth of one's work in market.
Thus far Rand, and it is undeniable. However -
The gaps in her logic and thought are not covered by her opposite but by a complementing of her gaps. Mothers, nurses, teachers are not paid well as are artists, scientists, and inventors generally, or great writers often enough. Sales and money earned during life of such a person does not in any way reflect their true worth as is equally true of great many of corporate overpaid darks suits.
There are many such anomalies, greatest ones being a comparison of Africa and Asia with their losses - former far more than latter, since the latter has to some extent recovered - and the western societies on the other hand that benefited from physically overpowering the people of other continents and robbing them, calling it taxation but in reality a loot since the tax brought no benefits to the people in general. Think diamonds, think coffee, think chocolates. Think how much royalty ought to be paid for them their real worth, and what the natives lose when land is used for western luxury rather than natives needs of food.
Capitalism leaves much unanswered, unless one believes in physical power and threat as justification for wealth, which Ayn Rand does not. She however prefers to keep it simple, complexity defies her and she ignores it.
Anthem: by Ayn Rand.
Reminiscent of George Orwell's 1984, with an Ayn Rand twist - the hero is a hero justifying his stature due to his discovery of the singular first person pronoun.
Pride And Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park, Sense And Sensibility: by Jane Austen
Every time one reads Austen, it is a different experience.
Of course, few read a book repeatedly around the same time unless one is either studying it for an exam or one is really bored and has little other recourse to a life of mind. But a good book entices one to repeat it aftere a while, when one thinks one knows all about it and yet is not quite sure of some small details, or one wishes to refresh the joy the book gave. Some are of course repeated for the reason that one realises one did not quite understand it completely, and then again when one repeats a book one loves one may realise one had not understood it quite, or this time one might see yet another perspective and understand it at another level. In Austen's case many of the above happens - one loves her books, thinks one understood them - there is really not much there, is there, it is all about country life in England and a love story or two, some misunderstandings and resolutions one way or other.
One reads a favourite, then, a few years later, and then realises there is a whole level one had missed. One is surprised one understands a little or a lot more this time, and one gets back to life. Until one picks it up yet again a few years later, and there is a lot more. Jane Austen is deceptively simple in her style of writing - something Agatha Christie did later, in another genre - and goes about describing a little town in countryside in England and its characters, all seemingly as normal and common as everyone else's neighbours, and their concerns just as universal across time and boundaries of geography, of nations and cultures.
A volume like this, with four of her best in one, is a find one cannot pass and that was the reason to buy it - and read it with a desultory beginning, and some revelations along the time I read them through finally. The first growing revelation was an obvious one, that Austen's writing was not about amusing oneself or her reader although she did that plenty all along, what with caricatures and strongly sketched portrayals in few short strokes, with all too human follies and habits of vanity of various characters. And of course English countryside is no longer a stranger once one has read Austen, or of course Agatha Christie or P.G.Wodehouse for that matter. Austen's beautiful descriptions make it come alive in all ut soft gentle beauty. But her real objective is to give a discourse on values, as little or as successfully hidden as a quinine bottle with a clear label and yet no discernible taste when one does have to swallow one, the sugarcoating so successful. In case of Austen, moreover, no one has to prescribe that quinine either, it is so sweet to the last a child could chew a whole bottle full (I know of one naughty, very loved one who did just that) - the Austen readers seldom realise they are getting a discourse on values and cautioned about common follies leading to risking misery for life.
And then, halfway through, one begins to see her world as one, with her people living in towns near or far but her characters with startling similarities and yet with no mass produced push button delivery of justice - instead, they are indeed individuals, and their separate actions bring them their deserts, their follies bring their risks and their virtues earn their rewards. Austen does have mery as well and often rewards the deserving or sometimes even the less deserving but not evil often, still, her rewards and schemes of luck smiling are never without reasonable possibility of events.
A Wickham is not punished only because a young, innocent, spirited Lydia ought not to suffer as well, she is not that guilty - quite guileless, actually - and in the event his punishment is having to put up with himself with no fortune brought by a wife found in an heiress snared for the purpose, while her reward is her ever stout and completely unsuspecting belief that she is the luckiest of women, with a handsome and loving husband. That he is no good nor loves her she will - did, Austen assures us - never see.
A Marianne on the other hand, along with another shadow of a young girl mentioned but never actually brought up to readers' sight, suffers and how horribly, only because of a lack of prudence in allowing - in fact, positively jumping into - an attachment without any knowledge of the character of the person, going by an attractive visage and a charming persona. This is not justice, after all Marianne does not deserve it nor does the girl Elizabeth any more than the mother of the girl (also named Elizabeth) - but it is lifelike in that often innocent suffer due to the faults of others who play with them for pleasure of the moment thoughtlessly, and Austen portrays the risks in all their possible horror. Marianne is not eventually punished but recovers due to her friends and is then rewarded with a life of love and security and happiness, with the ever consistent Colonel Brandon who takes care of Elizabeth (as promised to her mother) too, and deserves to find some happiness and love in his life as well. The character with a severe fault, Willoughby who is neither willing to do justice to the woman he brought into trouble - not so trivial in those days as it might be today in another land, another culture - nor strong enough to then stand by his love and strive for a life with her and instead is cad enough to marry an heiress, for only her money, is merely awarded his life as a punishment - he chose it, after all, and has lost the love and friends he knew for a short time. He has society, but knows the heaven he lost all too well, and must live with the life he chose.
The themes, the characters, the faults and the virtues, the natures and the circumstances keep changing across the world of Austen like patters of a kaleidoscope, every changing and yet with a few pieces of coloured glass to form them - the one constant is the values. Decency, propriety, prudence, due respect and courtesy, integrity, love and friendship, and discerning the truth of what is really love from what is an attachment that might be unwise, or in fact untrue but a mere pretense for sake of a goal completely different - marrying an heiress, playing for amusement for the time - very necessary now as it was then.
One might wonder endlessly what would have happened if only the Crawfords had been brought up more properly, or one can read Emma and find out - Henry Crawford loses Fanny Price, while Frank Churchill gets to marry his love Jane Fairfax since his faults of character, and his actions therefore, are not so disastrous. Emma delights one more than any other young woman with her follies and faults one can shake one's head at, while Jane Bingley and Jane Fairfax suffer travails of love to emerge victorious. Edward Ferrer is rescued by the truely low character of the fiancée he was unwisely attached to when too young and is too noble to break up with no matter if threatened with loss of all his heritance, since the fiancée suddenly marries his brother the heir. Darcy's redemption is his character, which helps him to see his own faults and the truth of the accusations and make up for the consequences of his actions and rescue the innocent. Mary Crawford plays with her own love, and loses him by her assumption that his preference for his values can be turned around by her charms and his attraction for her. Lady Bertram accepts an offer of marriage from a suitable wealthy gentleman and lives her life almost as if she were watching a film, while her sister Frances marries a poor sailor for love and has nine or ten children at the last count, with little thought for those she lost to either benevolence of Bertrams or to death. Mrs. Norris wishes to manage everyone's affairs and is finally only good enought to stand by the foolish Mariah she pampered and encouraged to marry a rich man without love when Mariah is foolish enough to go away with Henry Crawford believing this will force Crawford to marry her.
On and on go the kaleidoscopic patterns, with a little tweak here and there making differences in destiny, and Austen provides as much of a complete world as anyone could - and yet, she wrote less than a dozen books overall, with beautifully simple storytelling about simple English country life.
Just wonder - did anyone else realise Austen carries the seed for Agatha Christie to grow so beautifully into her own genre? Reading Emma again, it was wonderful to see how many gentle clues were strewn about, how deceptively blended into the general pattern of almost old women's gossip structure so one missed them unless one was totally vigilant, something very difficult when reading either Austen or Christie.
Of course, few read a book repeatedly around the same time unless one is either studying it for an exam or one is really bored and has little other recourse to a life of mind. But a good book entices one to repeat it aftere a while, when one thinks one knows all about it and yet is not quite sure of some small details, or one wishes to refresh the joy the book gave. Some are of course repeated for the reason that one realises one did not quite understand it completely, and then again when one repeats a book one loves one may realise one had not understood it quite, or this time one might see yet another perspective and understand it at another level. In Austen's case many of the above happens - one loves her books, thinks one understood them - there is really not much there, is there, it is all about country life in England and a love story or two, some misunderstandings and resolutions one way or other.
One reads a favourite, then, a few years later, and then realises there is a whole level one had missed. One is surprised one understands a little or a lot more this time, and one gets back to life. Until one picks it up yet again a few years later, and there is a lot more. Jane Austen is deceptively simple in her style of writing - something Agatha Christie did later, in another genre - and goes about describing a little town in countryside in England and its characters, all seemingly as normal and common as everyone else's neighbours, and their concerns just as universal across time and boundaries of geography, of nations and cultures.
A volume like this, with four of her best in one, is a find one cannot pass and that was the reason to buy it - and read it with a desultory beginning, and some revelations along the time I read them through finally. The first growing revelation was an obvious one, that Austen's writing was not about amusing oneself or her reader although she did that plenty all along, what with caricatures and strongly sketched portrayals in few short strokes, with all too human follies and habits of vanity of various characters. And of course English countryside is no longer a stranger once one has read Austen, or of course Agatha Christie or P.G.Wodehouse for that matter. Austen's beautiful descriptions make it come alive in all ut soft gentle beauty. But her real objective is to give a discourse on values, as little or as successfully hidden as a quinine bottle with a clear label and yet no discernible taste when one does have to swallow one, the sugarcoating so successful. In case of Austen, moreover, no one has to prescribe that quinine either, it is so sweet to the last a child could chew a whole bottle full (I know of one naughty, very loved one who did just that) - the Austen readers seldom realise they are getting a discourse on values and cautioned about common follies leading to risking misery for life.
And then, halfway through, one begins to see her world as one, with her people living in towns near or far but her characters with startling similarities and yet with no mass produced push button delivery of justice - instead, they are indeed individuals, and their separate actions bring them their deserts, their follies bring their risks and their virtues earn their rewards. Austen does have mery as well and often rewards the deserving or sometimes even the less deserving but not evil often, still, her rewards and schemes of luck smiling are never without reasonable possibility of events.
A Wickham is not punished only because a young, innocent, spirited Lydia ought not to suffer as well, she is not that guilty - quite guileless, actually - and in the event his punishment is having to put up with himself with no fortune brought by a wife found in an heiress snared for the purpose, while her reward is her ever stout and completely unsuspecting belief that she is the luckiest of women, with a handsome and loving husband. That he is no good nor loves her she will - did, Austen assures us - never see.
A Marianne on the other hand, along with another shadow of a young girl mentioned but never actually brought up to readers' sight, suffers and how horribly, only because of a lack of prudence in allowing - in fact, positively jumping into - an attachment without any knowledge of the character of the person, going by an attractive visage and a charming persona. This is not justice, after all Marianne does not deserve it nor does the girl Elizabeth any more than the mother of the girl (also named Elizabeth) - but it is lifelike in that often innocent suffer due to the faults of others who play with them for pleasure of the moment thoughtlessly, and Austen portrays the risks in all their possible horror. Marianne is not eventually punished but recovers due to her friends and is then rewarded with a life of love and security and happiness, with the ever consistent Colonel Brandon who takes care of Elizabeth (as promised to her mother) too, and deserves to find some happiness and love in his life as well. The character with a severe fault, Willoughby who is neither willing to do justice to the woman he brought into trouble - not so trivial in those days as it might be today in another land, another culture - nor strong enough to then stand by his love and strive for a life with her and instead is cad enough to marry an heiress, for only her money, is merely awarded his life as a punishment - he chose it, after all, and has lost the love and friends he knew for a short time. He has society, but knows the heaven he lost all too well, and must live with the life he chose.
The themes, the characters, the faults and the virtues, the natures and the circumstances keep changing across the world of Austen like patters of a kaleidoscope, every changing and yet with a few pieces of coloured glass to form them - the one constant is the values. Decency, propriety, prudence, due respect and courtesy, integrity, love and friendship, and discerning the truth of what is really love from what is an attachment that might be unwise, or in fact untrue but a mere pretense for sake of a goal completely different - marrying an heiress, playing for amusement for the time - very necessary now as it was then.
One might wonder endlessly what would have happened if only the Crawfords had been brought up more properly, or one can read Emma and find out - Henry Crawford loses Fanny Price, while Frank Churchill gets to marry his love Jane Fairfax since his faults of character, and his actions therefore, are not so disastrous. Emma delights one more than any other young woman with her follies and faults one can shake one's head at, while Jane Bingley and Jane Fairfax suffer travails of love to emerge victorious. Edward Ferrer is rescued by the truely low character of the fiancée he was unwisely attached to when too young and is too noble to break up with no matter if threatened with loss of all his heritance, since the fiancée suddenly marries his brother the heir. Darcy's redemption is his character, which helps him to see his own faults and the truth of the accusations and make up for the consequences of his actions and rescue the innocent. Mary Crawford plays with her own love, and loses him by her assumption that his preference for his values can be turned around by her charms and his attraction for her. Lady Bertram accepts an offer of marriage from a suitable wealthy gentleman and lives her life almost as if she were watching a film, while her sister Frances marries a poor sailor for love and has nine or ten children at the last count, with little thought for those she lost to either benevolence of Bertrams or to death. Mrs. Norris wishes to manage everyone's affairs and is finally only good enought to stand by the foolish Mariah she pampered and encouraged to marry a rich man without love when Mariah is foolish enough to go away with Henry Crawford believing this will force Crawford to marry her.
On and on go the kaleidoscopic patterns, with a little tweak here and there making differences in destiny, and Austen provides as much of a complete world as anyone could - and yet, she wrote less than a dozen books overall, with beautifully simple storytelling about simple English country life.
Just wonder - did anyone else realise Austen carries the seed for Agatha Christie to grow so beautifully into her own genre? Reading Emma again, it was wonderful to see how many gentle clues were strewn about, how deceptively blended into the general pattern of almost old women's gossip structure so one missed them unless one was totally vigilant, something very difficult when reading either Austen or Christie.
Sleeping Murder: by Agatha Christie.
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Sleeping Murder (Miss Marple, #13)
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Sleeping Murder (Miss Marple, #13)
by Agatha Christie.
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A young woman is in England in a small town for the first time, after her marriage, and taken a house and is busy redecorating it, only she seems to know the house in a way that is not possible (giving me goosebumps as I write!) - nothing spectacular, only little things that add up and are uncanny. Then she visits a friend in London and goes out to theatre with the couple, only to run out screaming at a murder scene, claiming she was there, she had seen it ...
The friend has an aunt visiting, elderly, frail, soothing and caring, woolly white haired, twinkly eyes the only sign of any intelligence - Miss Marple. She takes the young traumatised visitor totally seriously and treats her as normal, and in fact has an explanation that needs to be supported by facts. So they set out to find the truth of the matter .......
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September 08, 2010.
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Feb 05, 2016.
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The Philadelphian: by Richard Powell.
This book is about a young lawyer whose boss's daughter falls in love with him, and the young one is persuaded by his boss to postpone the marriage a few years, thus winning - the daughter wanted to marry now! Sure enough she marries someone a couple of years later, and the young man has learned a lesson about how the old one played him.
He gets his own back, incidentally and inadvertently, when he informs an old woman and her granddaughter that they could save money in taxes if the firm informed them of one particular point, and the old lawyer's firm is up in arms against him accusing him of stealing a client and challenging him to show another point or lose his license - and he wins that one, after a couple of nights or so of poring over the accounts. The old girlfriend, now a mother of two, sends him her congratulations.
The young lawyer goes on to marry the young heiress, with the blessings of her grandmother who with her estate is now his client, and goes on to achieve more success in life and career, trumping the old fox who had prevented him marrying his daughter, trumping him more than once.
He gets his own back, incidentally and inadvertently, when he informs an old woman and her granddaughter that they could save money in taxes if the firm informed them of one particular point, and the old lawyer's firm is up in arms against him accusing him of stealing a client and challenging him to show another point or lose his license - and he wins that one, after a couple of nights or so of poring over the accounts. The old girlfriend, now a mother of two, sends him her congratulations.
The young lawyer goes on to marry the young heiress, with the blessings of her grandmother who with her estate is now his client, and goes on to achieve more success in life and career, trumping the old fox who had prevented him marrying his daughter, trumping him more than once.
Ganga Descends: by Ruskin Bond.
A collection of real life stories and pictures of the region, especially Gangaa river (known with its deformed name Ganges in the west), from Himaalayan region around the Gangaa valley where Ruskin Bond has made his home in Mussoorie situated between the Gangaa and the Yamunaa valleys.
This book is the coffee table edition with hard cover and pictures galore, while another edition has a paperback small size and more stories than photographs. This one is a pleasure to reminisce over when one is just back from a trip and would like to have stayed there forever.
And the pictures don't cover all of one's memories, of course, but add to them as well on the other hand.
This book is the coffee table edition with hard cover and pictures galore, while another edition has a paperback small size and more stories than photographs. This one is a pleasure to reminisce over when one is just back from a trip and would like to have stayed there forever.
And the pictures don't cover all of one's memories, of course, but add to them as well on the other hand.
Flight of Pidgeons and other stories: by Ruskin Bond
Flight of Pigeons is about the time of first war of independence of India - naturally termed mutiny by British, which is as false as it gets since the British rule was far from established or even ubiquitous, at that time.
This was when East India company had established offices through India, brought in soldiers supposedly to protect its own property with local rulers' permissions, and then gone about playing machiavellian political games and browbeating and dominating various rulers, of which many were far from happy or submissive.
When the war erupted with soldiers working for the British refusing to use the cartridges - the cartridges needed to be used in mouth before loading and had grease from animals that various religions in India forbade their followers from being used this way - various rulers and so forth joined hands and fought. British were able to recruit poor mainly from southern region of Madras, especially those of low castes, for little money to fight the wars in north for them and thus win a war where they had a superiority of weapons.
Subsequently Queen Victoria and the British government took over from East India company and proceeded to follow policies that would help them stay longer, of which the chief weapon was the usual British "divide and rule". A second one was to badmouth and malign the local culture, achievements, knowledge, and so forth at every turn, even falsely - just to break spirit of the ruled, a typical tactic of those who would enslave others.
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This story, from which the book takes its name, uses a flight of pigeons as an analogy for the British during the 1857 war when they might fly away - as eventually they did inf act less than a century later - having eaten their fill and having no bond of heart or otherwise to the land itself or people therein.
The story deals with various angles of the people and their relationship - there is the honest Hindu trader attempting to help the women of the slain British man's family, which consists of his half Indian wife (her mother was from family of Nawab of Rampur) with her mother and her daughter. The daughter Ruth has attracted due to her sheer beauty a Pathan who would rather marry her (needless to say, having converted her first) than give up the women to those only too happy to slaughter them. The various complications in this, and their resolution and the war raging without, is the story.
The characters are sketched well with the wife of the pathan unhappy about a new young girl - just about sixteen or so - that her husband is crazy about, the mother of the girl attempting to keep the marriage question at bay and unwilling to give up her three quarters British daughter to an Indian husband, the grandmother of the girl counseling her daughter to think it over since he is a good guy and the grandmother sees no reduction of value in such a marriage - (until then cross marriages were common, mostly with local women being married to British males who could not after all persuade their own countrywomen to come over to settle so far away, and thus grew a whole new community of Anglo Indians who were held at mid level by British subsequently, lower than themselves and higher than Indians) - and then there are those fighting the war that have contempt for this pathan raging with love for a foreigner, a girl with a British father.
The girl's mother cleverly tied up the question with the victory of the war, and for a while it looked as if she would marry him after all, but then the tide turned and they were able to get away and join the British.
This happens to be a true story, and realising this gives one goosebumps - because the fact is Ruth lived to be old enough, lived in UK, and never married. She never forgot the pathan with his ardent but distant courting.
This was when East India company had established offices through India, brought in soldiers supposedly to protect its own property with local rulers' permissions, and then gone about playing machiavellian political games and browbeating and dominating various rulers, of which many were far from happy or submissive.
When the war erupted with soldiers working for the British refusing to use the cartridges - the cartridges needed to be used in mouth before loading and had grease from animals that various religions in India forbade their followers from being used this way - various rulers and so forth joined hands and fought. British were able to recruit poor mainly from southern region of Madras, especially those of low castes, for little money to fight the wars in north for them and thus win a war where they had a superiority of weapons.
Subsequently Queen Victoria and the British government took over from East India company and proceeded to follow policies that would help them stay longer, of which the chief weapon was the usual British "divide and rule". A second one was to badmouth and malign the local culture, achievements, knowledge, and so forth at every turn, even falsely - just to break spirit of the ruled, a typical tactic of those who would enslave others.
.............................................................
This story, from which the book takes its name, uses a flight of pigeons as an analogy for the British during the 1857 war when they might fly away - as eventually they did inf act less than a century later - having eaten their fill and having no bond of heart or otherwise to the land itself or people therein.
The story deals with various angles of the people and their relationship - there is the honest Hindu trader attempting to help the women of the slain British man's family, which consists of his half Indian wife (her mother was from family of Nawab of Rampur) with her mother and her daughter. The daughter Ruth has attracted due to her sheer beauty a Pathan who would rather marry her (needless to say, having converted her first) than give up the women to those only too happy to slaughter them. The various complications in this, and their resolution and the war raging without, is the story.
The characters are sketched well with the wife of the pathan unhappy about a new young girl - just about sixteen or so - that her husband is crazy about, the mother of the girl attempting to keep the marriage question at bay and unwilling to give up her three quarters British daughter to an Indian husband, the grandmother of the girl counseling her daughter to think it over since he is a good guy and the grandmother sees no reduction of value in such a marriage - (until then cross marriages were common, mostly with local women being married to British males who could not after all persuade their own countrywomen to come over to settle so far away, and thus grew a whole new community of Anglo Indians who were held at mid level by British subsequently, lower than themselves and higher than Indians) - and then there are those fighting the war that have contempt for this pathan raging with love for a foreigner, a girl with a British father.
The girl's mother cleverly tied up the question with the victory of the war, and for a while it looked as if she would marry him after all, but then the tide turned and they were able to get away and join the British.
This happens to be a true story, and realising this gives one goosebumps - because the fact is Ruth lived to be old enough, lived in UK, and never married. She never forgot the pathan with his ardent but distant courting.
False Impression: by Jeffrey Archer.
Another intriguing mystery thriller from Archer, with murders and art works, precious masters and corrupt stock market players, WTC and heiresses, US and England and more.
A Matter of Honour: by Jeffrey Archer.
This story mesmerised me for more than one good reason, every time I read it - there is the young innocent Englishman who has been left a letter by his father that he reads after the will is read and the bequests are finished with, which takes one to the history of the father as a jailer at Nuremberg who suffered subsequent to the suicide of his most ill famed jailbird; the son is innocent and moreover has complete faith, unlike the British authorities, in his father's innocence, and goes about opening the letter left him by the prisoner before he committed suicide. The letter is in German, and he gets help from a German au pair working her way in England in student days, after some mistrials (he knows enough to know he has to be careful about not letting anyone know the contents), and implusively invites her to fly with him to Switzerland to get the gift left in a Bank for his father that is now passed on to him.
And this is only the beginning of the practically jewel studded story with its jewels in Swiss banks and other treasures, art icons and Russian revolution, theft of art of private German owners by authorities in '30s, and more. There is the chase across Switzerland, the murders and the close escapes, the brilliant schoolmate who has been surprisingly a low level bank clerk and transforms into a crisp man of command and ability when the flatmate in trouble calls him for help with escape from the murderers chasing him in Switzerland, and then there is more - the murderers themselves.
The other side is about just as much glamour and history, what with history of the Russian revolution and prior era, bankers who know secrets of various past and present people of high up, young men and women of whom much is expected in future, discoveries of past and planning for future, ...
And there is more, much, much more! It involves Russia, Soviets, Tsar Nicholas during revolution, precious secrets, German aristocracy and principalities, accidents of airplanes, US interests and involvements, MI6 or is it another number?
And an icon precious for originality and more.
And this is only the beginning of the practically jewel studded story with its jewels in Swiss banks and other treasures, art icons and Russian revolution, theft of art of private German owners by authorities in '30s, and more. There is the chase across Switzerland, the murders and the close escapes, the brilliant schoolmate who has been surprisingly a low level bank clerk and transforms into a crisp man of command and ability when the flatmate in trouble calls him for help with escape from the murderers chasing him in Switzerland, and then there is more - the murderers themselves.
The other side is about just as much glamour and history, what with history of the Russian revolution and prior era, bankers who know secrets of various past and present people of high up, young men and women of whom much is expected in future, discoveries of past and planning for future, ...
And there is more, much, much more! It involves Russia, Soviets, Tsar Nicholas during revolution, precious secrets, German aristocracy and principalities, accidents of airplanes, US interests and involvements, MI6 or is it another number?
And an icon precious for originality and more.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Ford County: by John Grisham.
The collection of stories begins with a couple of tales about people all too human, the sort no one thinks about much less write, but finds them familiar when reading as the ones one generally would like to avert eyes from and forget. Most people in the first two stories do that as well, even though in the first one it looks like it is about their neighbours caring.
Grisham comes into his own in the rest, with quiet vengeance of Sidney against casinos in one and a carefully planned exit of a lawyer from his hometown in another. One cheers with the two protagonists, never mind the overall aspects of strict ethics - they have after all been good and been dealt a not too good hand. The lawyer's disenchantment is all too justified post his decision to leave, what with his wife and daughters being more than willing, eager in case of the wife, to get rid of him. Sidney is positively a hero, and there is a danger of a stray reader or so attempting the feat. It takes far too much mental discipline though, at least.
The last one is touching, all too familiar story of a man arriving home to die and the town behaving as if he were worse than the gun toting gangsters most people in US are romanticised by even now, never mind the massacres in schools. The man so shunned has AIDS, and that is merely the topping on a series of crimes that include leaving home - backwater Mississippi - for a big town and living an alternate lifestyle, which most people still consider a choice, never mind the discoveries of science saying otherwise.
All in all a good collection, but not the more usual Grisham thrilling roller-coaster ride from a victim to a justice with vengeance - this is a more quieter journey. It fits rather somewhere between the Painted House and The Firm.
Grisham comes into his own in the rest, with quiet vengeance of Sidney against casinos in one and a carefully planned exit of a lawyer from his hometown in another. One cheers with the two protagonists, never mind the overall aspects of strict ethics - they have after all been good and been dealt a not too good hand. The lawyer's disenchantment is all too justified post his decision to leave, what with his wife and daughters being more than willing, eager in case of the wife, to get rid of him. Sidney is positively a hero, and there is a danger of a stray reader or so attempting the feat. It takes far too much mental discipline though, at least.
The last one is touching, all too familiar story of a man arriving home to die and the town behaving as if he were worse than the gun toting gangsters most people in US are romanticised by even now, never mind the massacres in schools. The man so shunned has AIDS, and that is merely the topping on a series of crimes that include leaving home - backwater Mississippi - for a big town and living an alternate lifestyle, which most people still consider a choice, never mind the discoveries of science saying otherwise.
All in all a good collection, but not the more usual Grisham thrilling roller-coaster ride from a victim to a justice with vengeance - this is a more quieter journey. It fits rather somewhere between the Painted House and The Firm.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Love Is Eternal: by Irving Stone.
He was from a family in log cabin and educated due to his mother's concern and care, she from a wealthy family with relatives in Illinois and Kentucky both, and they met when she was being courted by the man who would be his rival in politics as well, a man of her class and far more acceptable to her family on the whole. But Mary Todd found Abraham Lincoln far more intriguing and challenging, and in spite of his lack of social skills (recall the famous true story about her telling him that he had said he wanted to dance with her in the worst possible way) she accepted his proposal.
He went on to make history, and was assassinated soon; she did not remarry, even though it would be not merely possible but desirable to her relatives, and lived with the legacy.
He went on to make history, and was assassinated soon; she did not remarry, even though it would be not merely possible but desirable to her relatives, and lived with the legacy.
The Greek Treasures: by Irving Stone.
This is an astounding story of one man with comparatively little education but tremendous determination and perseverance, proving history scholars of his day wrong with sheer evidence of archeological finds. Everyone else was agreed upon Homer's work being myth; Schliemann forced them to reconsider this.
Schliemann family was of German origin as the name indicates, and not very well to do; Heinrich Schliemann had been in US since a tender age, mostly fending for himself, and the era was good to those with initiative and force and self reliance, with some sharpness and business acumen.
Not very much educated, he did very well in business on his own, but had deep interests in some matters of literature and history, one of them being Troy. He was convinced unlike the scholars of his day that Homer's work was based on history, and was determined to fond Troy.
To this end he in his middle age went to Greece, and since he was an outsider who would find it difficult to get permissions for excavation from the government, arranged through middlemen to find a Greek wife for himself so he could carry out his mission. Fortunately he found a young woman who understood and was as interested when she heard his purpose.
Sophia was from a not very well to do family, as Heinrich had been, but that does not necessarily amount to lack of higher interests and aspirations, as commonly thought in west (or pretended, at least). She cared about various aspects of the issue, and the turning point of conviction in marrying him was the fact that he intended to restore the glory of Greece to the Greek nation by turning over his finds to Greece, which he was convinced of successfully finding.
After some unsuccessful attempts he realised he needed to excavate in a region that was now in Turkey, since the boundaries of culture and state are fluid over the millennia and what was once all Greece was now divided in Greece, Turkey and other nations. (Alexander was Greek, for example, but he was from a region that is now the nation of Macedonia, independent of Greece.) So they moved to Trukey with their teams, obtained the necessary permissions - which included working with supervision of the Turkish government and promise not taking out any significant findings.
But of course no western nation or person ever intended honouring any such promises made to any eastern country (think Elgin marbles named after the man who took away inestimable treasures of Greece to be housed in British museum and referred to diminutively as marbles, as if it were playing marbles which are little glass ball toys for little boys, rather than beautiful marble statues, works of art and of inestimable significance to history, and a Greek national treasure as well) - and nor was Schliemann an exception.
When the find did happen finally against all hopes dimmed by the time, he took care to dismiss all workers for the day and for next day, and the trusted part of his contingent ran with the treasure from the country. The workers did suspect and inform and they were pursued, but escaped with most of the finds, including the treasure of gold of Troy they had found.
With this success though Heinrich was encouraged subconsciously to change his mind about restoring the treasure to Greece, which broke his young Greek wife's heart. Nevertheless he deliberated, and perhaps she might have agreed it was a safer choice to leave it to US for sake of safety of the treasure, except his final choice rested on the nation of his origin, Germany. The treasure was exhibited with great pride in Berlin before wwii.
Post wwii which followed soon enough, the treasure was missing, and there was no telling where it had gone. The government and high officials had taken away treasures of all sort including art works from private owners, especially those sent to concentration camps to be murdered, and a good deal of it was missing as well, then and now. There were guesses that alpine tunnels were used for the storage of this stolen property and were sealed, and it was impossible to go about finding them without a clue as to where, since arbitrary dynamiting of suspicious locations would destroy the very treasures that were being attempted to be located whereabouts of by any authority.
Irving Stone tells this story with his usual good way of writing historical novels, wholesome and informative.
(Troy treasure including gold was fortunately another story, as came to light post fall of Berlin wall etcetera - Russian government admitted to having taken it to Russia.)
Schliemann family was of German origin as the name indicates, and not very well to do; Heinrich Schliemann had been in US since a tender age, mostly fending for himself, and the era was good to those with initiative and force and self reliance, with some sharpness and business acumen.
Not very much educated, he did very well in business on his own, but had deep interests in some matters of literature and history, one of them being Troy. He was convinced unlike the scholars of his day that Homer's work was based on history, and was determined to fond Troy.
To this end he in his middle age went to Greece, and since he was an outsider who would find it difficult to get permissions for excavation from the government, arranged through middlemen to find a Greek wife for himself so he could carry out his mission. Fortunately he found a young woman who understood and was as interested when she heard his purpose.
Sophia was from a not very well to do family, as Heinrich had been, but that does not necessarily amount to lack of higher interests and aspirations, as commonly thought in west (or pretended, at least). She cared about various aspects of the issue, and the turning point of conviction in marrying him was the fact that he intended to restore the glory of Greece to the Greek nation by turning over his finds to Greece, which he was convinced of successfully finding.
After some unsuccessful attempts he realised he needed to excavate in a region that was now in Turkey, since the boundaries of culture and state are fluid over the millennia and what was once all Greece was now divided in Greece, Turkey and other nations. (Alexander was Greek, for example, but he was from a region that is now the nation of Macedonia, independent of Greece.) So they moved to Trukey with their teams, obtained the necessary permissions - which included working with supervision of the Turkish government and promise not taking out any significant findings.
But of course no western nation or person ever intended honouring any such promises made to any eastern country (think Elgin marbles named after the man who took away inestimable treasures of Greece to be housed in British museum and referred to diminutively as marbles, as if it were playing marbles which are little glass ball toys for little boys, rather than beautiful marble statues, works of art and of inestimable significance to history, and a Greek national treasure as well) - and nor was Schliemann an exception.
When the find did happen finally against all hopes dimmed by the time, he took care to dismiss all workers for the day and for next day, and the trusted part of his contingent ran with the treasure from the country. The workers did suspect and inform and they were pursued, but escaped with most of the finds, including the treasure of gold of Troy they had found.
With this success though Heinrich was encouraged subconsciously to change his mind about restoring the treasure to Greece, which broke his young Greek wife's heart. Nevertheless he deliberated, and perhaps she might have agreed it was a safer choice to leave it to US for sake of safety of the treasure, except his final choice rested on the nation of his origin, Germany. The treasure was exhibited with great pride in Berlin before wwii.
Post wwii which followed soon enough, the treasure was missing, and there was no telling where it had gone. The government and high officials had taken away treasures of all sort including art works from private owners, especially those sent to concentration camps to be murdered, and a good deal of it was missing as well, then and now. There were guesses that alpine tunnels were used for the storage of this stolen property and were sealed, and it was impossible to go about finding them without a clue as to where, since arbitrary dynamiting of suspicious locations would destroy the very treasures that were being attempted to be located whereabouts of by any authority.
Irving Stone tells this story with his usual good way of writing historical novels, wholesome and informative.
(Troy treasure including gold was fortunately another story, as came to light post fall of Berlin wall etcetera - Russian government admitted to having taken it to Russia.)
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the World: by Jack McIver Weatherford
The title of the book has two inaccuracies amounting to lies, to begin with.
First and foremost, they are NOT Indian. The European migrants knew this, Columbus knew this, and for sake of keeping a falsehood so Columbus would not risk his reputation or lose his head the sailors working with him who all knew this were sworn to say the opposite. Everyone knew Columbus had not reached India, and everyone nevertheless insists on calling the natives of western continent "Indian", perpetrating a lie, not merely an inaccuracy.
This is doubly racist, since it deprives the said natives of their own identity to begin with, and also no one has asked India if there is any connection whatsoever between the people that lived in a land across the world and India (yes, of ancient trade and exchange of skills, but not populations or identity). The falsehood dumps all non European non African non Oriental non Islamic people into one basket, a huge racism of an assumed hierarchy and separating the high and the low and the others nowhere. It is stupid, racist, ignorant, false, and high time it stopped. High time the natives of the western continent were able to assume their own identity. Unless they wished to claim Indian ancestry and to return to India, that is. Unlikely, since if anything they are connected to Siberia and Mongolia and Pacific islands, which makes far more sense.
Which brings one to another racist imposition of a name, that of the continent. Vespucci Amerigo was one of the sailors who supposedly discovered the continent, and to impose his name on the continent, not even asking a native what they called their land, is supreme racism. America is a racist term by definition.
And then, to belatedly allow that the natives "contributed" to US and "transformed the world" - hellow, they did not massacre all newly arriving migrants, in fact they helped the migrants settle like all good neighbours do, and so they in fact are the founding stone of the edifice in every way! That is only in the north, while in the southern and central parts the migrants were plundering marauders who destroyed everything precious in name of faith. "They had astronomy, architecture, arts, crafts; European migrants had guns and gunpowder" is perhaps a rephrasing of the famous assessing of the encounter, but pretty good to give the idea.
Of course they were givers! They had a superior system in terms of environment as well, which is only recognised now that the fear of global warming and fear about a lack of future for humanity has made some - not all - people do a double take! In addition to what others failed to recognise, they also had potato and tomato and chillies and chocolate, and where in the world can people do without every one of these indeed! Germans post wwi survived on potato as do poor in many a societies even now.
For that matter, the huge (and mostly unnecessary - who ever died or fell sick for lack of face paint?) cosmetic industry of west derived its origin and ideology from an oriental culture of China and Japan where faces of Geishas and upper class women were painted masks, which got copied to Europe for fashion, while the system of administrative examinations and system generally was copied by British and integrated into their own structure of governance.
A good amount of vocabulary in English is borrowed from Arabic, Persian and India, while Latin and Greek are younger siblings if not daughters of Sanskrt (and therefore the ease of India in European languages beginning with English), realised and perforce admitted by Europe long before the present era of denial.
And of course Africa, with her stolen raw materials (like other colonised lands) and
kidnapped men and women (unlike other lands) that made US prosper before the civil war dismantled the slavery and dislocated the now free ex-slaves once again, with equality still a faraway goal and animosity of ex-slavers growing to high pitch. Solution? Liberia? Workers work for food and return, much like Germans would like Turks and others to do, is the pleasure of pale colour races?
Gratitude at the very least is way past due. Acknowledgement likewise.
Yes, the world gave and Europe received and forgot to say thank you. These belated acknowledgements are better than never, and what next? An equal status? For the givers who received only victimisation in return?
First and foremost, they are NOT Indian. The European migrants knew this, Columbus knew this, and for sake of keeping a falsehood so Columbus would not risk his reputation or lose his head the sailors working with him who all knew this were sworn to say the opposite. Everyone knew Columbus had not reached India, and everyone nevertheless insists on calling the natives of western continent "Indian", perpetrating a lie, not merely an inaccuracy.
This is doubly racist, since it deprives the said natives of their own identity to begin with, and also no one has asked India if there is any connection whatsoever between the people that lived in a land across the world and India (yes, of ancient trade and exchange of skills, but not populations or identity). The falsehood dumps all non European non African non Oriental non Islamic people into one basket, a huge racism of an assumed hierarchy and separating the high and the low and the others nowhere. It is stupid, racist, ignorant, false, and high time it stopped. High time the natives of the western continent were able to assume their own identity. Unless they wished to claim Indian ancestry and to return to India, that is. Unlikely, since if anything they are connected to Siberia and Mongolia and Pacific islands, which makes far more sense.
Which brings one to another racist imposition of a name, that of the continent. Vespucci Amerigo was one of the sailors who supposedly discovered the continent, and to impose his name on the continent, not even asking a native what they called their land, is supreme racism. America is a racist term by definition.
And then, to belatedly allow that the natives "contributed" to US and "transformed the world" - hellow, they did not massacre all newly arriving migrants, in fact they helped the migrants settle like all good neighbours do, and so they in fact are the founding stone of the edifice in every way! That is only in the north, while in the southern and central parts the migrants were plundering marauders who destroyed everything precious in name of faith. "They had astronomy, architecture, arts, crafts; European migrants had guns and gunpowder" is perhaps a rephrasing of the famous assessing of the encounter, but pretty good to give the idea.
Of course they were givers! They had a superior system in terms of environment as well, which is only recognised now that the fear of global warming and fear about a lack of future for humanity has made some - not all - people do a double take! In addition to what others failed to recognise, they also had potato and tomato and chillies and chocolate, and where in the world can people do without every one of these indeed! Germans post wwi survived on potato as do poor in many a societies even now.
For that matter, the huge (and mostly unnecessary - who ever died or fell sick for lack of face paint?) cosmetic industry of west derived its origin and ideology from an oriental culture of China and Japan where faces of Geishas and upper class women were painted masks, which got copied to Europe for fashion, while the system of administrative examinations and system generally was copied by British and integrated into their own structure of governance.
A good amount of vocabulary in English is borrowed from Arabic, Persian and India, while Latin and Greek are younger siblings if not daughters of Sanskrt (and therefore the ease of India in European languages beginning with English), realised and perforce admitted by Europe long before the present era of denial.
And of course Africa, with her stolen raw materials (like other colonised lands) and
kidnapped men and women (unlike other lands) that made US prosper before the civil war dismantled the slavery and dislocated the now free ex-slaves once again, with equality still a faraway goal and animosity of ex-slavers growing to high pitch. Solution? Liberia? Workers work for food and return, much like Germans would like Turks and others to do, is the pleasure of pale colour races?
Gratitude at the very least is way past due. Acknowledgement likewise.
Yes, the world gave and Europe received and forgot to say thank you. These belated acknowledgements are better than never, and what next? An equal status? For the givers who received only victimisation in return?
Race And Culture: by Thomas Sowell.
Prior to the horrors exposed post wwii that were committed in the name of of a superior race and culture, it was not only assumed that the two were inextricably joined at the pale colours level but widely so practiced by the said pale colour populace in the world. Post the exposure of the logically correct (but horror at a humanitarian level of concerns of course) extreme of this practice in the camps run by nazis, this theory of race and culture superiority fell into a ditch of disrepute, where it was taboo to speak of this but only acceptable to attack a practice of this in the world when the practitioners were not actually of the races assumed superior due to the said pale set of colours.
A double standard emerged where a European ancestry was silently assumed to be superior in any case and was given a better treatment of every sort and at every level in the world, but the rest of the world was lumped together and admonished, wherever possible, about such assumptions and practices. Since the phrase "wherever possible" is of key importance here, a hierarchy emerged silently, with pale colours European ancestry at the top; Oriental (Chinese, Japanese chiefly) and Mid-oriental (Mediterraenean, west Asian, Central Asian - mainly Islamic) but also others (southeast Europe was low in world hierarchy, west and north being above) at the undefined middle, Africa excluding Egypt and other north African parts undoubtedly at the lowest rung, regions such as southeast Asia or Pacific islands or Caribbeans or natives of Americas and most Latin Americans either forgotten or used and forgotten - and India of course at the receiving end of an ever battering ram of accusations of inequality in various names, chiefly due a strong resistance to conversion without accompanying violence of the sort that would erupt if a conversionist faith attempts such practices and escalations of conversion in a land where another conversionist faith is the rule with options really not allowed.
During the era that this was happening, much of other parallel theory and practices came up, such as lack of rigour in education in name of liberal freedom with values scrapped in name of ideals of individual but really no real progress for individual student, resulting inevitably in low levels of literacy and accomplishments in public schools through US and a low regard for teachers, which in turn resulted in an exodus of intelligent and well read, well educated men and women from teaching profession unless they could quickly get a tenure in a university - well, who in their right minds would like to be at the receiving end of a battering ram of accusations and disrespect and occasional violence after giving a life to caring for young of other people unless they lacked any opportunity elsewhere!
All this did nothing to improve a racial equality, while the lowering of requirements in schools merely resulted in a bullies rule until it came to job market. Culture became a dubious word best limited to ballet, opera, classical music et al, playground of rich and hobby of intelligentsia, while masses stayed away happily and watched sports on television (tickets were easier for corporates and other rich) while drinking beer and eating chips and ordering more food from the kitchen as wives fumed silently - they were not allowed to join the male buddies on the couch as often as not, since loosening of discipline made a buddy goggling a wife possible without reprimand for him and sometimes a bad end for the wife.
Naturally, obesity followed resulting in a good thing for economy what with dieting industry, pills and so forth, surgery, gyms and spas to make up for the travails, a higher end for the well to do and other facilities for those that could afford that much. Walking to the market to shop has been not merely unfashionable but physically nearly impossible in US and increasingly elsewhere too last half a century or so. Some places have a pharmacy one can walk to, others not even that, so emergencies require driving as well. Unless one is ok with far more expensive alternatives.
While all this proliferated with the world generally aping cultures of races and nations of European ancestry, the politically correct stance was to give a mouthing to environment being all theory of culture and progress and opportunity, while in reality most downtrodden people of whatever race had little access to these vehicles of rising above poverty and other ills of the sort - and no possiblity was envisioned where culture, education, hygiene, knowledge et al were not necessarily associated to an abundance of all latest toys sold for profit, although it was right before everyone's eyes blinkered shut tightly.
..........................................................
Truth is, the two factors of genome and environment do not battle necessarily, they co-operate as well, and affect one another in striving for evolution. Thus children of intelligent parents do inherit intelligence to varying degrees - since genome is complex and a guarantee would require a high level of intelligence in all relatives of ancestors of the baby - but an intelligent and educated mother enhances the level of intelligence of the child of an intelligent and educated father. This inheritance is true of many traits that can be learned in environment as well, such as hygiene practices or aspiration to knowledge.
But a confusion is made when race and culture or other facets of human achievement are linked in that it is assumed that such a link is necessarily racist, and this is due to the fact that an assumption of superiority of pale colouring races persists as much as one of superiority of European ancestry. This assumption is due to the simple fact of everyone being able to see a set of colouring inherited - blue or green eyes, red or yellow hair, pink or sallow or pale cheeks - while a perceived intelligence arouses animosity of the most vicious sort unless accompanied by the right set of colours and gender, preferably accompanied by European ancestry as well.
As a community interacts they swap and share genes, traits, habits, food, hygiene, information, likes and dislikes, knowledge, and more - forming a race simultaneously with an interlinked set of intangibles we name culture, and the two are interlinked. What is not seem immediately is that a visible similarity of two people does not immediately make for a similar level of intelligence or culture, since other factors affect everything as well, and there are different communities within every given race, sometimes stratified by money-defined class as in US, sometimes by social stratification by caste as in Europe (royalty, aristocracy, landed gentry, traders, professionals ...), and sometimes by a multitude of complex factors including a differently defined caste (based on ancestral set of professions and work, rather than monarch bestowed titles and lands as in Europe). And within a community which is usually a part of a race and not whole of it, culture and intelligence and other traits are as similar as they might be within a set of relatives gathered at a wedding.
Yes, there is a link - and yes, it is all affected by environment and vice versa as well, and genome is as affected by learning as vice versa - and it is not about pale colours up, monochrome down, sepia in between, with almond eyes an exotic over the next hill level. It is far more complex than that.
And this is true of gap across gender as well. Mothers affect children positively and daughters specially, and infant daughters of educated mother and an aspiring grandmother are known to be far more attached to books and learning and capable of dealing with electric wires than daughters of conventional mothers, while an ease about gender roles in environment and ancestry (the two are interlinked in a family of course) is known to have produced much beloved sons who are far more interested in playing with dolls than their sisters with storytelling of high complexity, going on to not literature for a career necessarily but to electrical engineering and finance.
Give the children all you can, let them have all you can of the good things others around can provide by example and teaching, and you help cultural evolution of humanity within your own little circle of race, community, family. It is only a little different from money - those that have money may lose it fast but culture slowly, and those that aspire to have either or both can, with generations doing better than ancestors. That is evolution.
......................................................................................................
And while we are at it, poverty has as little to do with lack of culture, hygiene or learning and knowledge, let alone intelligence, as pale colourings do. Millennia of unwed priests has made Europe forget that learning need not be associated with riches, since poor had to toil for living and church personnel was given the leisure and almost monopoly over knowledge (inquisition being very useful in weeding out any counterexamples effectively for present and future by burning and fear respectively) while rich alone could indulge in bathing, clean clothes, and other time consuming activities that needed assurance of not needing to make a living. But then with Anglican church emerged a class that was both poor and educated, namely the Vicar's family, including daughters, who had to be exemplery in every way - hygiene, learning, clean clothes - and cultured as well. This however did not stop from the phrases like "unwashed poor" being exported to colonies, where observed facts might have contradicted the phrase (Braahman are and were always poor - until the opening of migration and subsequent IT revolution that included everybody who could - but nevertheless bound to set examples in learning and knowledge and hygiene by very definition of their status, and others are bound equally to follow within the boundaries of their work needs), if only the need to look down on the ruled never mind how superior they were in any field did not make blinding a need for the rulers.
Poverty is as unrelated to intelligence, culture, learning, hygiene and knowledge as are gender and colour of any body parts. Community one grows up within, including family and neighbourhood and school and relatives and nation, do form an essential part of contributing factors. Then it is up to oneself.
A double standard emerged where a European ancestry was silently assumed to be superior in any case and was given a better treatment of every sort and at every level in the world, but the rest of the world was lumped together and admonished, wherever possible, about such assumptions and practices. Since the phrase "wherever possible" is of key importance here, a hierarchy emerged silently, with pale colours European ancestry at the top; Oriental (Chinese, Japanese chiefly) and Mid-oriental (Mediterraenean, west Asian, Central Asian - mainly Islamic) but also others (southeast Europe was low in world hierarchy, west and north being above) at the undefined middle, Africa excluding Egypt and other north African parts undoubtedly at the lowest rung, regions such as southeast Asia or Pacific islands or Caribbeans or natives of Americas and most Latin Americans either forgotten or used and forgotten - and India of course at the receiving end of an ever battering ram of accusations of inequality in various names, chiefly due a strong resistance to conversion without accompanying violence of the sort that would erupt if a conversionist faith attempts such practices and escalations of conversion in a land where another conversionist faith is the rule with options really not allowed.
During the era that this was happening, much of other parallel theory and practices came up, such as lack of rigour in education in name of liberal freedom with values scrapped in name of ideals of individual but really no real progress for individual student, resulting inevitably in low levels of literacy and accomplishments in public schools through US and a low regard for teachers, which in turn resulted in an exodus of intelligent and well read, well educated men and women from teaching profession unless they could quickly get a tenure in a university - well, who in their right minds would like to be at the receiving end of a battering ram of accusations and disrespect and occasional violence after giving a life to caring for young of other people unless they lacked any opportunity elsewhere!
All this did nothing to improve a racial equality, while the lowering of requirements in schools merely resulted in a bullies rule until it came to job market. Culture became a dubious word best limited to ballet, opera, classical music et al, playground of rich and hobby of intelligentsia, while masses stayed away happily and watched sports on television (tickets were easier for corporates and other rich) while drinking beer and eating chips and ordering more food from the kitchen as wives fumed silently - they were not allowed to join the male buddies on the couch as often as not, since loosening of discipline made a buddy goggling a wife possible without reprimand for him and sometimes a bad end for the wife.
Naturally, obesity followed resulting in a good thing for economy what with dieting industry, pills and so forth, surgery, gyms and spas to make up for the travails, a higher end for the well to do and other facilities for those that could afford that much. Walking to the market to shop has been not merely unfashionable but physically nearly impossible in US and increasingly elsewhere too last half a century or so. Some places have a pharmacy one can walk to, others not even that, so emergencies require driving as well. Unless one is ok with far more expensive alternatives.
While all this proliferated with the world generally aping cultures of races and nations of European ancestry, the politically correct stance was to give a mouthing to environment being all theory of culture and progress and opportunity, while in reality most downtrodden people of whatever race had little access to these vehicles of rising above poverty and other ills of the sort - and no possiblity was envisioned where culture, education, hygiene, knowledge et al were not necessarily associated to an abundance of all latest toys sold for profit, although it was right before everyone's eyes blinkered shut tightly.
..........................................................
Truth is, the two factors of genome and environment do not battle necessarily, they co-operate as well, and affect one another in striving for evolution. Thus children of intelligent parents do inherit intelligence to varying degrees - since genome is complex and a guarantee would require a high level of intelligence in all relatives of ancestors of the baby - but an intelligent and educated mother enhances the level of intelligence of the child of an intelligent and educated father. This inheritance is true of many traits that can be learned in environment as well, such as hygiene practices or aspiration to knowledge.
But a confusion is made when race and culture or other facets of human achievement are linked in that it is assumed that such a link is necessarily racist, and this is due to the fact that an assumption of superiority of pale colouring races persists as much as one of superiority of European ancestry. This assumption is due to the simple fact of everyone being able to see a set of colouring inherited - blue or green eyes, red or yellow hair, pink or sallow or pale cheeks - while a perceived intelligence arouses animosity of the most vicious sort unless accompanied by the right set of colours and gender, preferably accompanied by European ancestry as well.
As a community interacts they swap and share genes, traits, habits, food, hygiene, information, likes and dislikes, knowledge, and more - forming a race simultaneously with an interlinked set of intangibles we name culture, and the two are interlinked. What is not seem immediately is that a visible similarity of two people does not immediately make for a similar level of intelligence or culture, since other factors affect everything as well, and there are different communities within every given race, sometimes stratified by money-defined class as in US, sometimes by social stratification by caste as in Europe (royalty, aristocracy, landed gentry, traders, professionals ...), and sometimes by a multitude of complex factors including a differently defined caste (based on ancestral set of professions and work, rather than monarch bestowed titles and lands as in Europe). And within a community which is usually a part of a race and not whole of it, culture and intelligence and other traits are as similar as they might be within a set of relatives gathered at a wedding.
Yes, there is a link - and yes, it is all affected by environment and vice versa as well, and genome is as affected by learning as vice versa - and it is not about pale colours up, monochrome down, sepia in between, with almond eyes an exotic over the next hill level. It is far more complex than that.
And this is true of gap across gender as well. Mothers affect children positively and daughters specially, and infant daughters of educated mother and an aspiring grandmother are known to be far more attached to books and learning and capable of dealing with electric wires than daughters of conventional mothers, while an ease about gender roles in environment and ancestry (the two are interlinked in a family of course) is known to have produced much beloved sons who are far more interested in playing with dolls than their sisters with storytelling of high complexity, going on to not literature for a career necessarily but to electrical engineering and finance.
Give the children all you can, let them have all you can of the good things others around can provide by example and teaching, and you help cultural evolution of humanity within your own little circle of race, community, family. It is only a little different from money - those that have money may lose it fast but culture slowly, and those that aspire to have either or both can, with generations doing better than ancestors. That is evolution.
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And while we are at it, poverty has as little to do with lack of culture, hygiene or learning and knowledge, let alone intelligence, as pale colourings do. Millennia of unwed priests has made Europe forget that learning need not be associated with riches, since poor had to toil for living and church personnel was given the leisure and almost monopoly over knowledge (inquisition being very useful in weeding out any counterexamples effectively for present and future by burning and fear respectively) while rich alone could indulge in bathing, clean clothes, and other time consuming activities that needed assurance of not needing to make a living. But then with Anglican church emerged a class that was both poor and educated, namely the Vicar's family, including daughters, who had to be exemplery in every way - hygiene, learning, clean clothes - and cultured as well. This however did not stop from the phrases like "unwashed poor" being exported to colonies, where observed facts might have contradicted the phrase (Braahman are and were always poor - until the opening of migration and subsequent IT revolution that included everybody who could - but nevertheless bound to set examples in learning and knowledge and hygiene by very definition of their status, and others are bound equally to follow within the boundaries of their work needs), if only the need to look down on the ruled never mind how superior they were in any field did not make blinding a need for the rulers.
Poverty is as unrelated to intelligence, culture, learning, hygiene and knowledge as are gender and colour of any body parts. Community one grows up within, including family and neighbourhood and school and relatives and nation, do form an essential part of contributing factors. Then it is up to oneself.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
The Elixir And The Stone: by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh.
This might partially or more answer the question of what knowledge was taken from Egypt in Judaic tradition. Hermeticism, Roger Bacon, occult, being keywords here, perhaps the knowledge had gone underground for a good reason and any inquiry into it was - is, too - met with diverting attention and query, disrupting dialogue, hostility, attempt to provoke a general furor against anyone who questions into this, direct insults, and more.
The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception: by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh.
"The oldest Biblical manuscripts in existence, the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in caves near Jerusalem in 1947, only to be kept a tightly held secret for nearly fifty more years, until the Huntington Library unleashed a storm of controversy in 1991 by releasing copies of the Scrolls. In this gripping investigation authors Baigent and Leigh set out to discover how a small coterie of orthodox biblical scholars gained control over the Scrolls, allowing access to no outsiders and issuing a strict "consensus" interpretation. "
Well, now, of course! What else would one expect from a throne shaking but to attempt to hold on! Not allowing truth to escape, certainly! It is based on Nicea agreements to keep out anything unsuitable however true, after all. All other writings were destroyed, huge libraries destroyed in the attempt to hide facts, and the throne was safe. So they thought.
Then the manuscripts began surfacing in one place and another, well preserved in deserts! So the manuscripts must be carted off and allowed no access, until a suitable consensus is reached and only a vetted, approved interpretation is outed.
Fortunately for truth there are chinks in the gaol attempted by the power to enclose it, and a ray escapes now and then, with a watchful observer or two to catch it.
Well, now, of course! What else would one expect from a throne shaking but to attempt to hold on! Not allowing truth to escape, certainly! It is based on Nicea agreements to keep out anything unsuitable however true, after all. All other writings were destroyed, huge libraries destroyed in the attempt to hide facts, and the throne was safe. So they thought.
Then the manuscripts began surfacing in one place and another, well preserved in deserts! So the manuscripts must be carted off and allowed no access, until a suitable consensus is reached and only a vetted, approved interpretation is outed.
Fortunately for truth there are chinks in the gaol attempted by the power to enclose it, and a ray escapes now and then, with a watchful observer or two to catch it.
Inquisition : by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh.
The history of church is replete with murders and massacres, of those that in any way threatened its hold of total power, either with independent will or with knowledge of any realms at all whether intellect or mind or thought or discoveries of the universe, and all the more so about anything spiritual.
Massacres of Cathars and murders of Merovingians, inquisition resulting in burning of people branded merely for the reason of not being completely subservient, including thinkers and those with any knowledge - all that is assumed gone, to be forgotten.
The writers of this work point at the obvious, with the papal infallibility being made into a doctrine in 1870 the whole thing is kept alive at a level where it can be brought to physical tortures and burning of infidels any time and place where the level of power suits such an event from not being rightly interpreted into evil that all this has been.
That all this is no different from the taliban etc. terrorism that they call jihad, or from the KGB era of Siberian gulags for huge numbers of those that were suspected of not being loyal, or from the fascists and nazis and their genocides, can be seen clearly unless one is already blinkered by bringing up or some other reason (personal gain or power is generally a strong motive) blinkered or blinded, or pretending to be so.
Massacres of Cathars and murders of Merovingians, inquisition resulting in burning of people branded merely for the reason of not being completely subservient, including thinkers and those with any knowledge - all that is assumed gone, to be forgotten.
The writers of this work point at the obvious, with the papal infallibility being made into a doctrine in 1870 the whole thing is kept alive at a level where it can be brought to physical tortures and burning of infidels any time and place where the level of power suits such an event from not being rightly interpreted into evil that all this has been.
That all this is no different from the taliban etc. terrorism that they call jihad, or from the KGB era of Siberian gulags for huge numbers of those that were suspected of not being loyal, or from the fascists and nazis and their genocides, can be seen clearly unless one is already blinkered by bringing up or some other reason (personal gain or power is generally a strong motive) blinkered or blinded, or pretending to be so.
Rabbit Proof Fence: The True Story of One of the Greatest Escapes of All Time: by Doris Pilkington.
Europe went on exploration of the world for various gains - spices needed to preserve food for life in Europe before refrigeration, so the traders from China to Arabia that brought the goods need not be paid their due and Europe could have the gold, the spices, the jewels, whatever the lands offered. One perhaps unforeseen gain was discovery of lands unknown to most of Europe - Nordic men, especially fishermen, of course did go west in search of catch and did not tell everyone about their finds since it was a matter of competitive making a living, but not only they had reached Iceland and Greenland, they arrived in continent further west and called it Vinland, and they even had colonised as far south as slightly west of Boston where their proof of being can be seen in the brick tower that remains.
The discovery of new lands was greatest in the sense of giving those nations that were leading in the discovery and settling of the lands a huge lebensraum, since any opposition to their taking over the lands was brutally as well as with use of machiavellian skills and worse - recall the natives given infected blankets around the formation time of US.
Australia, with even the land of the name wiped out and changed to suit Europe just as was done with America, was less of a battle with natives in settling the land
with European, then mostly British, and mostly convicts to begin with. But this did not earn any friendship or gratitude from the settlers for the natives, and they were seen as primitive (they are still called aboriginal rather than native Australians) creatures to be used for European settlers like animals domestic and farm variety are. There is no other way to see the story of this book.
There was no slavery as such, no buying and selling, only a catching and using much like that of wild animals for domestic use. And inevitably part of this usage was that of native women by settler men. It was not marriage, not even love affair, just a use of helpless women by men with power, for convenience. Disgusting behaviour from the said men in power.
The children from this contact were seen to be not quite so dark and that is where the trouble began in Australia for the natives - unlike their counterparts in continent across the Pacific where slavery was the rule and a drop of slave or even emancipated free slave blood still counts to have a person being called black, no matter how white they look - in Australia it was seen that breeding of natives with settlers results in washing colour out, and this was seen as a desirable objective, to be enforced with physical force and legal and more.
So native half blood children were separated from their mothers and their roots, all caring and identity, and put in residential facilities where European nuns and legal authorities replaced their native elders, requiring them to forget their identity and learn to be European. Not that this would give them an equal or half equal status, but that then they were to work for settlers in towns (natives to be shunted off to remote farmlands or out completely) and to be expected to breed with Europeans by choice of latter. The breeding part was intended for half blood girls, work for both genders.
This story is of a tremendous courage of three little girls who escaped such a facility after a short while and tracked back, walking the length of the continent north to south, back to their mothers - only, one got waylaid by the lie of a native greedy man who trapped her into being caught. The other two arrived still alive, walking, and united with their mother and grandmother.
The film is impossible not to be affected by, the visuals bringing it all to one, the grief and helplessness of the mothers and daughters as they are separated, the well meaning nuns who are harsh in imposing a "no native dialects" rule, the legal authority officer who inspects the colour of exposed bodies in public, the punishment shaving of head of a girl that dares to talk to a native boy, the courage and cunning of the three girls in escaping and walking back across the country, the tracker who accompanies the policemen on search and refrains from informing how close they might be, the kind European woman who gives them food and clothes and informs them about the rabbit proof fence that helps them get back and the European man out in the wilderness who sets them straight about there being two fences and the short cut to the right one.
One cannot just see or read this, one travels with the three little girls, the eldest carrying the youngest much of the way, taking initiative and responsibility as befitting the maternal culture she is brought up in, using all that was taught her to find her way and going far beyond the strength of a small girl. She, the eldest, was still only about ten or so, less if anything.
The separation of children from mothers, children born of forced contact with settler males, continued until 1974. Later the government apologised, but it might have helped a bit more if they - the aptly named Stolen Generations - had been reunited with what relatives could be found. If record of those deprived mothers were kept, that is.
The discovery of new lands was greatest in the sense of giving those nations that were leading in the discovery and settling of the lands a huge lebensraum, since any opposition to their taking over the lands was brutally as well as with use of machiavellian skills and worse - recall the natives given infected blankets around the formation time of US.
Australia, with even the land of the name wiped out and changed to suit Europe just as was done with America, was less of a battle with natives in settling the land
with European, then mostly British, and mostly convicts to begin with. But this did not earn any friendship or gratitude from the settlers for the natives, and they were seen as primitive (they are still called aboriginal rather than native Australians) creatures to be used for European settlers like animals domestic and farm variety are. There is no other way to see the story of this book.
There was no slavery as such, no buying and selling, only a catching and using much like that of wild animals for domestic use. And inevitably part of this usage was that of native women by settler men. It was not marriage, not even love affair, just a use of helpless women by men with power, for convenience. Disgusting behaviour from the said men in power.
The children from this contact were seen to be not quite so dark and that is where the trouble began in Australia for the natives - unlike their counterparts in continent across the Pacific where slavery was the rule and a drop of slave or even emancipated free slave blood still counts to have a person being called black, no matter how white they look - in Australia it was seen that breeding of natives with settlers results in washing colour out, and this was seen as a desirable objective, to be enforced with physical force and legal and more.
So native half blood children were separated from their mothers and their roots, all caring and identity, and put in residential facilities where European nuns and legal authorities replaced their native elders, requiring them to forget their identity and learn to be European. Not that this would give them an equal or half equal status, but that then they were to work for settlers in towns (natives to be shunted off to remote farmlands or out completely) and to be expected to breed with Europeans by choice of latter. The breeding part was intended for half blood girls, work for both genders.
This story is of a tremendous courage of three little girls who escaped such a facility after a short while and tracked back, walking the length of the continent north to south, back to their mothers - only, one got waylaid by the lie of a native greedy man who trapped her into being caught. The other two arrived still alive, walking, and united with their mother and grandmother.
The film is impossible not to be affected by, the visuals bringing it all to one, the grief and helplessness of the mothers and daughters as they are separated, the well meaning nuns who are harsh in imposing a "no native dialects" rule, the legal authority officer who inspects the colour of exposed bodies in public, the punishment shaving of head of a girl that dares to talk to a native boy, the courage and cunning of the three girls in escaping and walking back across the country, the tracker who accompanies the policemen on search and refrains from informing how close they might be, the kind European woman who gives them food and clothes and informs them about the rabbit proof fence that helps them get back and the European man out in the wilderness who sets them straight about there being two fences and the short cut to the right one.
One cannot just see or read this, one travels with the three little girls, the eldest carrying the youngest much of the way, taking initiative and responsibility as befitting the maternal culture she is brought up in, using all that was taught her to find her way and going far beyond the strength of a small girl. She, the eldest, was still only about ten or so, less if anything.
The separation of children from mothers, children born of forced contact with settler males, continued until 1974. Later the government apologised, but it might have helped a bit more if they - the aptly named Stolen Generations - had been reunited with what relatives could be found. If record of those deprived mothers were kept, that is.
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