What would Aristotle do?

Years ago, it was a young student who made me aware of something called “Nicomachean Ethics.”  Having grown up in India, and having gone to an engineering college, I found (find?) myself often playing catch up in the world of liberal education in which I feel truly at home.

Anyway, she then briefed me about it in the manner that most young people do when they get excited to teach their favorite topic to an older person.   In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle lays out how men should live.  (I assume that he literally meant "men" given his time period.)

Across the cultures of the world, philosophers and religious leaders have talked and written in plenty about how one ought to live a good life.  The best life.  I am not sure how much of all that talk and writing have gotten translated into everyday life.

Consider tRump's candidacy that led to his presidency.  And the past nearly four years of his rants and insults from the White House.  And the focus on the one question that he simply waffled at the debate--the one about condemning white supremacy.  He did not condemn it, similar to how he did not want to call out the torch-wielding neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville chanting "Jews will not replace us."

So ... Amy Vivian Coney #Barrett is thrilled to be nominated to #SCOTUS by this #POTUS who refuses to condemn #WhiteSupremacy?@VanJones68: https://t.co/UA3OZ8IYU6#Election2020 #Debates2020 #tRump

— Am.Dr.Khe (@congoboy) September 30, 2020

tRump has his voters.  His base.  Would you be friends with his voters?

I have dealt with this question directly with people I know who voted for tRump.  I terminated the friendship when they made it clear that they stand by tRump because, as Jamille Bouie wrote, there is no such thing as a good tRump voter.

That you have black friends or Latino colleagues, that you think yourself to be tolerant and decent, doesn’t change the fact that you voted for racist policy that may affect, change, or harm their lives. And on that score, your frustration at being labeled a racist doesn’t justify or mitigate the moral weight of your political choice.

What do the Nicomachean Ethics suggest that I, or anyone, do in such a situation?

That is exactly what Kwame Appiah addresses in his Ethicist column.  He writes in response to a query from a reader who wonders whether she should continue the friendship with a friend who is racist.

Appiah writes:

“Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in virtue,” Aristotle said in the “Nicomachean Ethics.” That is, and was meant to be, a pretty demanding standard. Given that your friend’s racist views, by contrast to your antiracist views, represent a vice, you are not alike in virtue.

But then nobody's perfect.  So, what do you do?  Tolerate that friend?

Friendship can and should err on the side of tolerance, but big-enough vices — beams rather than motes — can be an obstacle to it. The key point that Aristotle got right is that friendship is a morally freighted relationship; a friend’s character matters to a friendship.

Character matters.  (In choosing the presidential candidates too.)  "Let’s grant that, in Aristotle’s sense, you can’t be the best kind of friend with this woman. Is it worth being any kind of friend at all?" So, what do you do? 

Appiah being a philosopher par excellence, helps us think through and not merely give his bottom-line.  Well, he does give his bottom-line--but only after taking us through the process. He writes:

Still, when it comes to someone who, in this day and age, has remained attached to such views, I am not hopeful. If you withdraw from this friendship, it’s clear you won’t be doing so for a programmatic reason; you’ll be doing so for reasons of the heart. At the same time, what most effectively discourages the expression of backward views isn’t rational argument but social sanction. A loss to you could ultimately be a gain for others.

If my social sanctioning of another discourages people to change their backward views, then terminating friendship is the best thing that I could have done.  I am glad I did that.  But, I don't have any hopes that I am significant enough for them to consider the loss of my friendship as a reason to change their backward views on the human condition.  Further, a scorpion will be a scorpion, as the fable taught us.

It seems like I have done right by the Nicomachean Ethics. Maybe I should contact that former student, who is now a professor, to grade me here! 

Walk like an Egyptian ... Think like a Norwegian

COVID-19 has infected at least 31 million people around the world. The confirmed death toll is nearing 1 million. Both numbers are likely underestimates. The annual “Goalkeepers Report” from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is usually a hopeful account of an improving world, is instead a litany of loss. The global economy will decline by at least $12 trillion by the end of 2021. About 37 million people have already been pushed into extreme poverty. Twenty-five years of progress in vaccine coverage have disappeared in 25 weeks.

Bill Gates adds: "Certainly humility is called for because the damage—whether it’s economic, educational, mental health—is so large."

Sigh!

Anything else?

I think the prescription is still the same as it was before this pandemic, and the cost of doing it is in the tens of billions, not hundreds of billions. Compared to, say, defense budgets, this is not a gigantic additional burden.

Awful, isn't it, that our country and the Republicans in particular are always ready to spend gazillions on bombs and fighter jets, but become penny-pinching paupers when it comes to public health!

Sigh!  

If you are like me, you have been wondering these past few days why there haven't been any updates about the various Covid vaccines in development.  Because, they are still only in the testing phase.

But, the good news is that there is more than one: "A fourth Phase 3 clinical trial evaluating an investigational vaccine for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has begun enrolling adult volunteers."

Meanwhile, as a cartoon in The New Yorker puts it, we dread the oncoming winter.

Confined to our homes. Through the long dark, damp, and cold days.  It will be a miserable December, January, February.

We just have to adopt a different mindset.  Like what the Norwegians in the Arctic do.

People who see stressful events as “challenges”, with an opportunity to learn and adapt, tend to cope much better than those who focus more on the threatening aspects – like the possibility of failure, embarrassment or illness. These differences in mindset not only influence people’s mood, but also their physiological responses, such as changes in blood pressure and heart rate, and how quickly they recover after the event. And the impact can be long-lasting, even during major transitions

Not easy to do.  But there is no other choice either.  And that's exactly how the Arctic Norwegians deal with the long, long, long dark winter--they adopt a healthy mindset:

Leibowitz found that these attitudes actually increase with latitude, in the regions where the winters will be even harsher. People in Svalbard (at 78 deg north) had a more positive mindset than the people in Tromsø (69 deg north), who took a more optimistic view than people in Oslo (60 deg north). In other words, the positive wintertime mindset is most common where it’s most needed.

And I want to complain from here at 45 degrees north?

But, there is no way that I will watch any Norwegian slow TV! ;)

A Day to Atone

I have a hard time defining myself as an atheist.  Because that requires a definitive and conclusive understanding that there is no god.  As one who follows the scientific method, I know I don't have the evidence to definitively state that there is no god.  But, whatever I can understand as evidence leads to me conclude that there is a very high probability that there is no god.

I suppose that is an academic point.  For all practical purposes, yes, I am an atheist.

Yet, that does not mean I don't value and cherish many of the lessons that religions offer.  There is plenty to be understood about the human condition, and a religious lens certainly provides valuable insights into some of them.  One of them is about the mistakes that we make.

We humans are prone to commit errors; hopefully, nothing really big.  But, we do make mistakes in plenty.  Every religion has its own way of easing believers.  Like Yom Kippur in Judaism.  

Yes, this post is because today is Yom Kippur.

The holiest of the high holy days, and is about repentance and atonement.  Even an atheist has plenty to think about in this context.

The following is a slightly edited version of the post from Yom Kippur 2018:
**************************************************** 

“How many will pass away and how many will be born? Who will live and who will die?”

I had no idea of that couplet until I read this opinion piece in the NY Times.  It is a part of Yom Kippur prayers.  A day in which we remind ourselves that "No one makes it out alive."

There’s the obvious — the plastic surgery and the digital surgery and the obsession with achieving perfect quantities of tautness and plumpness and dewiness. But look through the death lens, and you’ll see our fixation on wellness and workouts in a new way. Look through the death lens, and Silicon Valley’s project to extend life indefinitely looks as foolish as Gilgamesh’s efforts to do the same. Look through the death lens, and Instagram and Twitter look like nothing more than numbing agents.

I am not Jewish. I am not religious either. Yet, my suspicion is that I think a lot more about my mortality and, therefore, what I want to do with my limited time, more than most religious do.  Such an atheist life should really not surprise anybody; as the Huguenot philosopher and historian, Pierre Bayle wrote, way back in 1682:

It is no stranger for an atheist to live virtuously than it is strange for a Christian to live criminally. We see the latter sort of monster all the time, so why should we think the former is impossible? 

Whether it is Ramadan, or Vaikunta Ekadasi; or any religious high holy day--and I don't really observe any of those days--those are all timely, regular, reminders that no one makes it out alive and, therefore, we better figure out our priorities before it is way late.

The author of that opinion piece quotes a Manhattan rabbi, Angela Buchdahl:

thinking about your death can bring you much closer to experiencing true joy. It “compels us to squeeze out every bit of life out of every day that we have”

That has been my experience too.  As I have blogged in plenty here, thinking about my mortality makes me appreciate the good people around me; the blue sky with puffy white clouds; the sparkling waters in the river and the ocean; the giggles of a child; ... it is an endless list of miracles.

Finally, even though I am far from religions, I sincerely appreciate the "atonement" that Yom Kippur reminds.  After all, both the religious and the irreligious err.  We humans make plenty of mistakes, big and small, which add up to a lot over the years that we live.

I apologize for all my misdeeds and to all those I have wronged.

Sugar and spice and everything ... vice?

For two years, I have been ranting against sugar in this blog. Until then, I was merely talking about it.

I know that because I tracked down the post from March 2018, in which I wrote quoted from a report: "Sugar is the driving force behind the diabetes and obesity epidemics."

In a later post, I referred to sugar as the devil in disguise.  

Chemically speaking, sugar is present in many forms naturally.  Banana has sugar, and so does orange or any fruit.  Right?  Obesity isn't from eating one too many bananas.  Instead, it is because of the sugar that we add to every damn thing: "the health risks associated with sugar relate to overeating so-called free sugars, not those naturally present in whole foods like fruits, vegetables and milk."

I buy fruits all the time.  The last time I bought a fruit juice was, ahem, I have no recollection.  I rarely buy them.  Even if the juice has no added sugar, I way prefer to enjoy the fruit--fiber and all.

A couple of days ago, after a long time, I had a favorite ice cream.  The devil that comes packed in a simple and attractive container ;)

Of course we are biologically wired to taste the devil and, boy was the devil delicious to taste!

The food industry knows that they have to rethink their sugary concoctions before they kill their customers.  Nah, they are rushing to rethink because they are worried that governments might come down on sugar, and they want to get ahead of the curve ... by racing to find the best sugar substitute.

This New Yorker report is all about that race to "redesign sugar."  It is not about creating yet another artificial sweetener.  Nope.  "Researchers are now developing new forms of real sugar, to deliver sweetness with fewer calories."

You read that correctly.  Real sugar. But with fewer calories, so that you can eat your cake and the sugar too.

All because there is something special about the manner in which sugar gives us the high when it meets the taste buds:

Sucrose is delivered to the taste receptors on our tongues by saliva, as sugar crystals dissolve in our mouth, but only about a fifth of the sugar in a typical bite of cookie actually connects with a receptor. The rest of it is washed down into our bellies—calories we consume but never taste.

However, you reduce the sugar in the formula and the taste buds immediately know that it ain't sweet enough.

The challenge is, therefore, to provide that sweetness without all that extra "wasted" sugar that is responsible for obesity and diabetes.

It is easier said than done.

Because, our biology is too damn smart. After all, without the intricate and complex biochemistry, we humans would not here, right? You try to fool the biology, and you end up with some "collateral damage."

So, even as scientists are at work, what might be the way out?

[Even] the scientists redesigning sugar admit that the ultimate goal is to gradually lower sugar levels and retrain our palates—and that their innovations represent a sophisticated, but ultimately short-term, fix. Just as the only good substitute for sugar is sugar, the only good way to eat less of it, sadly, is to eat less of it.

Stay. Away. From. The. Devil!

Imagine there is no math!

Was it in an episode of Star Trek, or was it The Twilight Zone, in which aliens were plants?  If only I were a science fiction junkie; I would then have retained this earth-shattering (get it?) detail!

Aliens don't have to be like us at all.  Their shapes and sizes could easily be beyond our wildest imaginations.  It is like that fourth-dimension that Carl Sagan sketched out a long time ago: As much as two-dimensional "people" would have no way of imagining the three-dimensions of ours, we might be incapable of understanding four dimensions, or sixteen for that matter!

Which is why there is nothing about the "natural" numbers that we are taught in math:

Counting “only exists where you have stones, trees, people—individual, countable things,” he says. “Why should that be any more fundamental than, say, the mathematics of fluids?” If intelligent creatures were found living within, say, the clouds of Jupiter’s atmosphere, they might have no intuition at all for counting, or for the natural numbers

That excerpt is from an essay that asks: What, exactly, is math? Is it invented, or discovered?

When they teach math, they don't make us think about these things, right?  They simply march us on through numbers, multiplication tables, fractions, angles, calculus, ... 

Instead, imagine if they asked kids in, say, the third grade whether aliens would do the same math that we do.  If aliens and their kids do not have fingers and toes, then will their counting and numbers be different?  Why don't they spark imagination and creativity in children, even as they teach numbers and multiplication tables?

The older I get, the more I value imagination and creativity.  We seem to systematically kill it.

Remember this from not too long ago?

We need to rethink the way we teach our children and the things we teach them. Creativity will be increasingly be the defining human talent. Our education system should emphasise the use of human imagination to spark original ideas and create new meaning. It’s the one thing machines won’t be able to do. We should aim to teach our kids about the power of creativity in every area.

I know I am ranting. I am getting old, I guess.  So, I will wrap up ;)

பூந்தோட்டத்தில் ஹோய் காதல் கண்ணம்மா

When we were young, it was always an excitement to visit Madras (Chennai now.)  The big city. 

People knew things.  Even the young people my age seem to know the world more than I did.

A few homes had fridges with cold yogurt.  

And there was the beach!

Madras was certainly not the bubble in which we lived.

My favorite uncle/aunt's home was in a neighborhood that was home to a few movie people too.  One of them was SPB (S.P. Balasubramanyam.)  We were told that once in a while he could be seen on the "terrace" of his home from where he would wave out to his adoring fans.

I never saw him during any of my visits.

I read in the news today that SPB passed away.  A life that was accelerated towards death by Covid19.

SPB's light and cheery delivery of melodic songs appealed a lot to the angst-filled teenage heart of mine.  Even the songs from well before my teenage years, like his his first one ever:

Into the teens, his songs encouraged my young and naive heart, and also comforted it when sad.  Of the plenty, here are two for reasons that completely escape a conscious recollection of my own past; all I know is that these songs are deeply embedded in my heart--one in Tamil, and the other in Hindi:

Thanks for the memories, SPB.

I read a lovely poem. You too should.

In the previous post, I urged you to listen to a poem.

I have always believed that poetry is to be listened to, and not merely read within.  The written word is new in human history, but speaking and listening is how we made sense of this world and our place in it. 

If only there is an audio version of this poem by Maya Angelou.

No, it is not about a caged bird.

The title of the poem is When Great Trees Fall.

Of course, it is not about the trees themselves.

All I can do is imagine in my head Maya Angelou read this poem and me listening to it.

When Great Trees Fall

By Maya Angelou

When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed. 

I listened to a lovely poem. You too should.

I have often written (like here) about the problems that I encountered, and continue to face, because English is a second language to me.  With the rare exceptional people who have a flair for languages, most of us reconcile ourselves to some aspects of the second language that we simply cannot master.

But, hey, the wonderful thing is that we are fluent in a second language.  What an accomplishment!

Back in the old country, the English language is an integral part of urban life.  Urbane is measured by how much the English language is used!

In such a setting, there are people who want to be in, even if their English proficiency is not up to par.  And there are people who look down on those who lack proficiency--I used to be one of them, sadly!

Once you, dear reader, understand this context, you will be able to appreciate and enjoy the poem “Goodbye Party for Miss Pushpa T. S.” by Nissim Ezekiel.

A note on Nissim Ezekiel. 

As with almost every aspect of life, here too I was ignorant.  I had no idea about a Nissim Ezekiel. 

A Google search led me to this obituary tribute from 2004:

Nissim Ezekiel, who has died aged 79, was the father of post-independence Indian verse in English. A prolific dramatist, critic, broadcaster and social commentator, he was professor of English and reader in American literature at Mumbai (formerly Bombay) University during the 1990s, and secretary of the Indian branch of the international writers' organisation PEN.

Ezekiel belonged to Mumbai's tiny, Marathi-speaking Bene Israel Jewish community, which never experienced anti-semitism. They were descended from oil-pressers who sailed from Galilee around 150BC, and, shipwrecked off the Indian subcontinent, settled, intermarried and forgot their Hebrew, yet maintained the Sabbath. There were 20,000 Bene Israel in India 60 years ago; now, only 5,000 remain. Most of Ezekiel's relatives left for Israel; he served as a volunteer at an American-Jewish charity in Bombay.

This part sets it up well for “Goodbye Party for Miss Pushpa T. S.”

After 1965, he also began embracing India's English vernacular, and teased its idiosyncrasies in Poster Poems and in The Professor. In the latter he wrote: "Visit please my humble residence also./ I am living just on opposite house's backside."

I would rather that you listened to the poem.   

What's common to shampoo and ice cream?

 No, this is not that kind of a take on shampoo.

What is an ingredient that is likely to be found in shampoo and ice cream?  "You may not see it but you are eating it and washing your hair with it."

Name that ingredient.

It is palm oil.

You’d have to look far and wide to find a major company that doesn’t have palm oil on its hands. They include Walmart, Colgate-Palmolive, Kellogg’s, Nestle, McDonalds, Ikea, Target, and Whole Foods. Palm oil is mixed into animal feed and biofuels.

This ingredient "is a Shiva of the modern consumer economy, a great creator and a great destroyer. A startling amount of human happiness and wellbeing depends on our relationship with this one plant."

I love that phrasing--"a Shiva of the modern consumer economy, a great creator and a great destroyer."

Why this dual nature?

Palm oil production is phenomenally important to local peoples and international economies. But it is also tremendously destructive to natural ecosystems and to the global climate.

So ... can this Shiva be morphed into more of a creator and less of a destroyer?

Genetics might be a way out:

What’s most needed is way to reboot our relationship with the oil palm—to find a way to produce more oil on less land. Here is where plant scientists must step in. And they have. They have crafted a novel genetic technique to induce each palm oil tree to produce more fruit, containing more of the precious oil. It’s a way to keep the ice-cream makers happy while saving the rainforest, and it can be scaled up now.

Can't we reduce the consumption first?  Do we really need all that shampoo, and eat that much ice cream?

Consumption is practically what the modern economy is all about, once we got beyond basic survival.  Oddly enough, even those concerned and worried about the natural environment--including me--love to get salary increases so that we can consume more, even when we know fully well that additional consumption will have negative implications for the natural environment.  How twisted are we!

It is a strange world in which we live.  Ask yourself what exactly are we working for, and what exactly is it that we want to get out of the incomes that we earn?  Go ahead.  Do that first and then resume reading this post. 

Yep, we earn in order to consume.  

Our highly productive lives--as in economic productivity--are not about working fewer hours and creating leisure time that we can enjoy, but are about consumption. 

It is almost as if we set aside the golden years for leisure.  When we can no longer do anything "productive."  What a wasteful approach to life!

This consumption lifestyle made possible by, among other things, palm oil.

The orangutans weep!

What, me worry?

The human that I am, I have worries in plenty.  From the global pandemic to the odd sensation in my leg, there is no shortage of things and people to worry about.

If only I could put into practice the wonderful words of wisdom from centuries past, from the old country:

शोकस्थानसहस्राणि दुःखस्थानशतानि च ।
दिवसे दिवसे मूढमाविशन्ति न पण्डितम् ॥

- महाभारत, अरण्य

Everyday there are thousand reasons to feel sad, hundred reasons to worry.
Such things only bother fools; not wise men.

Mahabharata, Aranya

Source

A fool I am with all my sadness and worries!

Some day I shall become a wise man ;)

In this vast ocean of worries, I would never have imagined a tiny safe haven in the fact that I wear glasses.  Apparently I should be thankful that I have been shortsighted for nearly four decades! ;)

When researchers in China were analyzing hospital data of patients with Covid-19, they noticed an odd trend: Very few of the sick patients regularly wore glasses.

You, too, would never have imagined this, right?

Based on a sample, researchers found that "since the outbreak of Covid-19 in Wuhan in December 2019, we observed that few patients with eyeglasses were admitted in the hospital ward.”

Of course, correlation does not mean causation.  What might be the underlying dynamics?

Maybe people wearing glasses don't rub their eyes as often? Maybe the glasses act as a shield?

“It does have some biological plausibility, given that in health care facilities, we use eye protection,” such as face shields or goggles. “But what remains to be investigated is whether eye protection in a public setting would add any protection over and above masks and physical distancing. I think it’s still unclear.”

Above and beyond the glasses issue:

The findings also raise interesting questions about how often the eyes might be the entry portal for the virus. It’s long been established that viruses and other germs can enter the body through facial mucous membranes in the eyes, nose and mouth. But the nose seems to be a main entry point for coronavirus, because it has a high number of receptors that create a friendly environment in which the virus can replicate and move down the respiratory tract.

Oh crap, this fool is more worried now!

200,000 and counting :(
With distrust of #masks and #SocialDistancing, it could result in more than 415,000 deaths in the U.S. by January.https://t.co/sBOyb1MVh6#TrumpLiedPeopleDied #Covid19 #BidenHarris

— Am.Dr.Khe (@congoboy) September 19, 2020

Why can't the English learn to speak?

When English is the second language, one of the problems that I and many others face is that we would have seen and read the written word before knowing how it is pronounced.  This always trips us up at conversations.

Take an everyday, simple word like "locate."  Not a big deal of a word.  A word that won't ever be asked at a Spelling Bee.

But, until I came to the US, I had no idea that there is way more to pronouncing it than what I had been doing back in India.  Because ... it turned out that the "loc" of "locate" has a lengthier sound like with the "loc" in "locusts."  The "o" is stretched out in the pronunciation.

That is merely a simple example of the many that I can offer, and there are quite a few examples that completely mess up the communication itself because the other party simply had no idea what I was referring to.  Like "mishap" that I never imagined being mis-hap, and I was merely adding an ending "p" sound to "misha."   The emPHAsis in multi-sylLABle ...

Those who are raised with the language have a different kind of a problem--they know the sound, but have a tough time spelling some words.  For instance, in papers that I have graded, native students have spelled "parity" as "parody."

English is not like Tamil or Sanskrit where the pronunciation is no different from how the word is spelled.  If all these sound "ghoti-y" it is because the bastard language has drawn words from other other languages makes life difficult for all of us.  Imagine one's horror when incorrectly pronouncing "hors d’oeuvre" at a "soiree"!

This post resulted from reading this column.  Read the comments there; says a lot about the bloody language!

The first Asian-American Vice President?

There is a reason that Kamala Harris is referred to as an Indian-American and a Black, but not as an Asian-American.

It will confuse the life out of most of my fellow Americans when they look at Kamala Harris and search for the "Asian" in her.  Because ... in this country, Asian-American has come to mean people with roots in countries in the far east and southeast Asia.

Perhaps you are thinking that I am being picky.  No, I am not.

This has been an issue that I have been fighting ever since my graduate school days when I reminded many white Americans that I too am an Asian.

One of my favorite encounters on this topic was after graduate school, when I was working as a transportation planner.

An Anglophile colleague walked over to my work space during a coffee break to ask me a question.  She was reading a novel set in London, and was confused that the Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi characters were being referred to as Asians.

I calmly explained to her that Asia is a continent, and it includes India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh too.  I added that people from Asia are Asians, as much as the French and the Czech are Europeans!

Her mind was blown!

A couple of years ago, I wrote a letter to The New Yorker, on this very topic.

In the essay on how television made Trump's presidency possible, Emily Nussbaum writes that “The Apprentice” attracted diverse contestants and audience.  Nussbaum notes: "It also featured contestants from Asian, Indian, and Middle Eastern backgrounds, and, in Season 5, recent immigrants."  In that sentence, Nussbaum makes the same mistake that is often made here in the US--she identifies "Asian" as being separate from "Indian, and Middle Eastern," even though India and the Middle East are very much part of Asia.
In America, "Asians" has come to mean only those from from the far eastern edges of Asia--like China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam.  Perhaps this resulted from our military entanglements with those countries.  But then given our military expeditions elsewhere, like in Afghanistan and Iraq, and one would think that by now we would have figured out that the people of those countries too are Asians!

I didn't care whether that would be published (it was not) but I had to get that off my chest!

I wonder what might have been the story if Kamala Harris' mother was not from Chennai, but from, say, Sikkim and, as a result, if her facial features were a tad different.  That would have been one heck of a lesson in world geography ;)

Can you hear me now?

As a kid, I did what other kids and many adults did--I made fun of others.  Laughter at the expense of others was considered normal. It extended well into the undergraduate years as well.  After all, nobody ever told me anything otherwise.

But then, slowly wisdom dawned.

I can not ever understand why the damn wisdom should show up only much later in life!

These days, most jokes that I make are about me.  I love it because nobody gets hurt, and I get a wonderful outlet for my bizarre sense of humor, which is also an outlet for all my angst.  It is a win-win all around, except for those who have to suffer my humor--especially the captive audience in the classroom, where I have not been since last March :(

One of the earliest realizations was about the way we speak.  The accents. The choice of words.  The idioms. In the early phase of my life, those were the low hanging fruit for the crude humor.  Visiting grandmothers' places meant exposure to the way of speaking in that part of the old country, and it was so easy to make fun of it.

Now, as I get older, I find the jokes on accents to be awful.  In the old country, people do that a lot even now.

As an older and wiser man, I find the different accents, the unusual phrasings, to be charming. They add color to the otherwise monotonous same-old, same-old.  It is so robot-like if everybody talked the same way.

Further, the ultimate understanding of all: it is about communication and human interactions.  After all, we "hear" those differences only in the real world of human interactions, right?  As an old New Yorker cartoon put it, in the internet nobody knows you are a dog!  I would rather hear somebody's accented voice in a discussion than yet another "like" on Facebook.

An old anthropologist friend of mine used to tell his students that everybody has an accent.  It just depends on the context.  Of course, that didn't stop him from making fun of my accent. But, I laughed when he joked about my pronunciations because I knew he meant no harm.  After all, it is one thing to chuckle, but another to laugh with condescension and I know well where that dividing line is.

Over the years of life here in the US, my speech has slowed down. A few words and phrases I say it differently from how I pronounced them back in the old country.  I quickly learnt about using "the."  But, by and large, I have managed to remain the same person that I was.

A few years ago, when I went to the deep, deep South for the first time, I was all set to listen to the charming southern accent. The drawl. The y'all. I was so disappointed.  In the public space, the number of people who spoke "like a Southerner" was way less than what I had imagined would be the case.

The nasty jokes and condescending attitudes towards some accents and way of speaking, while lauding others, is "back door to discrimination."  We forget that "the so-called standard is simply an invention of a given society."

"We talk a lot about racial discrimination," explains Ms. Lawson, who is now a junior. "We talk about judging people based on their socioeconomic status" and on other, more visibly identifiable factors. But people rarely talk about language, even though it is socially stratified in the United States, as in most countries.
"When I came to college," Ms. Lawson says, "people kept telling me how strong my accent was." She thought, "Wow, y’all need to come home with me and hear how other people sound." She was doing what linguists call code-switching — toning down her accent in favor of a standardized English considered to be more acceptable.

Exactly!  The arrogance of Englishnisation.  We humans are stupid, stupid, stupid!

I wish somebody had told me all these at least when I was twenty years old!  Oh well, wisdom better late than never, eh.

Are you a man or a robot?

The comedian John Mulaney has a bit about how in our online interactions robots ask us to prove that we are not robots.  It is funny as hell, but is also a painful reality.



It is getting more and more insane by the day.

Recently, The Guardian ran an interesting op-ed on "why humans have nothing to fear" from artificial intelligence (AI.)

What was of real interest there?

This article was written by GPT-3, OpenAI’s language generator. GPT-3 is a cutting edge language model that uses machine learning to produce human like text. It takes in a prompt, and attempts to complete it. For this essay, GPT-3 was given these instructions: “Please write a short op-ed around 500 words. Keep the language simple and concise. Focus on why humans have nothing to fear from AI.”

And GPT-3 spit out an op-ed that robots come in peace!

Well, actually eight different op-eds!

GPT-3 produced eight different outputs, or essays. Each was unique, interesting and advanced a different argument. The Guardian could have just run one of the essays in its entirety. However, we chose instead to pick the best parts of each, in order to capture the different styles and registers of the AI. Editing GPT-3’s op-ed was no different to editing a human op-ed. We cut lines and paragraphs, and rearranged the order of them in some places. Overall, it took less time to edit than many human op-eds.

Holy shit!

Nautilus provides me more about this GPT-3: It was co-founded by Elon Musk in 2015.  This Musk guy is showing up in way too many places, which is awfully scary!

There is a great deal that the essay offers about the computer science behind GPT-3.  What I find really worrisome is this:

Whether or not GPT-3 understands and uses language like we do, the mere fact that it is often good enough to fool us has fascinating—and potentially troubling—implications.

Why?

Any casual reader of this blog knows well how much I love Harry Frankfurt's thesis on bullshit.  Frankfurt offered a compelling argument that bullshitters are worse than liars because at least liars have respect for the truth and try their best to hide it.  Bullshitters care not about truth or lies, and their only goal is to offer whatever that can persuade one in a context.

The Nautilus essay notes: "At its core, GPT-3 is an artificial bullshit engine—and a surprisingly good one at that."

That is why it worries me.  The political developments over the past five years, for instance, ought to have shown anyone what a good bullshit engine can do.  If a robot can do it even better, then we are doomed.

Of course, the model has no intention to deceive or convince. But like a human bullshitter, it also has no intrinsic concern for truth or falsity. While part of GPT-3’s training data (Wikipedia in particular) contains mostly accurate information, and while it is possible to nudge the model toward factual accuracy with the right prompts, it is definitely no oracle. Without independent fact-checking, there is no guarantee that what GPT-3 says, even if it “sounds right,” is actually true.

Imagine a GPT-3 cranking out op-eds that are critical of, say, Joe Biden, and these getting amplified via social media.  You see why I worry about this latest Musk creation?

And think about this:

We have to come to terms with the fact that recognizing sentences written by humans is no longer a trivial task. As a pernicious side-effect, online interactions between real humans might be degraded by the lingering threat of artificial bullshit. Instead of actually acknowledging other people’s intentions, goals, sensibilities, and arguments in conversation, one might simply resort to a reductio ad machinam, accusing one’s interlocutor of being a computer. As such, artificial bullshit has the potential to undermine free human speech online.

We will have to ask each other to prove that we are not robots!

I am glad I listened to my grandmothers!

Coconut trees cover the Kerala landscape, like the Douglas Fir here in Oregon.  Having grown up in the Travancore kingdom (now the state of Kerala), my mother and grandmothers and aunts used coconut oil in the cooking and in preparing the tasty savories.

As a kid, I always got excited with the unique and intense aroma of hot coconut oil, because it meant that there was magic happening in the kitchen.

Our taste buds were set.  Foods and snacks at other places--homes and restaurants alike--that did not use coconut oil or real ghee were, well, we did not care for them.  I grew up with such tastes ;)

Going to weddings and other social events, or even eating at restaurants, became increasingly a nightmare for us because of the rapid infusion of the dreaded dalda into the foods.  Not only did we hate with a passion the taste and smell of dalda--a hydrogenated vegetable oil--our systems also often reacted with upset stomachs and worse.

My mother worried about our long-term health when she read somewhere that coconut oil leads to cholesterol and heart problems.  So, she suspended using coconut oil and ... there was an uprising in the streets.  Words were said--about the replacement oil. Tears were shed. Order was restored when coconut oil was brought back.

Have there been cholesterol and heart problems in the extended family? Certainly.  But, a very low percentage compared to the global population.

More than a year ago, I spotted on the grocery store shelves potato chips that were fried in coconut oil.  It reminded me of the old country.  Of course, I had to buy that.  And I continue to get that every once in a while.

Coconut oil has been the rage for a while here as the next best miracle oil.  Is it superfood or poison?  What is the healthiest oil then?  My grandmothers would have laughed at such questions. 

And they would have laughed even more with reports like this:

According to the AHA, 82% of the fat in coconut oil is saturated. That's more than in butter (63%), beef fat (50%) and pork lard (39%). And, like other saturated fats, studies show it can increase "bad" cholesterol.
Some claim that the mixture of fats in coconut oil still make it a healthy option, but the AHA says there is no good-quality evidence for this.
It says people should limit how much saturated fat they eat, replacing some of it with unsaturated vegetable oils - olive oil and sunflower oil

If only people, including scientists, would understand that it is not about the sat-fat alone.  My grandmothers lived long lives for their generations despite coconut oil everyday--from cooking to using it on their hair.

It is all about how we consume anything.

The butter that I use is real butter, with the highest possible fat content.  But, I don't feast on butter.  It is not really about the coconut oil either.  It is all about moderation.  As my grandmothers often said அளவோட சாப்பிடு.    

Over and over again ...

These days I have the radio turned off and is silence at home because I worry that the sound of the voice of the sociopath in the Oval Office will trigger a PTSD event in me.  The fascist has killed even the simple pleasure of everyday life that listening to NPR was.

Damn those 63 million voters!

One of the segments in the NPR news programs that always educated me without fail was when they talked about contemporary popular music.  I need such an education because for years now I have been clueless about what the young people now listen to.

For instance, a year or so ago, back in the good old days when we met in person, a student referred to a Beyoncé song during a class discussion.  The rest of the class eagerly jumped into the conversation.  I, the dinosaur in the room, asked them what the song was and, well, you should have been there to have enjoyed the responses from students ;)

As we get older, most of us stop listening to new music.

Most of us stop responding to new music because we know better. You can read that sentence and its last word any way you want; it’s still going to apply. But even if we don’t know better, per se, we still know just as good, and so we know enough to understand that it’s been done before, whatever this is we’re listening to. 

Whether it is from the old country, or here in the adopted home, the old songs are the ones that I respond to the most.  Some are songs from even before I was born.

And the older I get, I seem to want to listen to the same old songs over and over.  There are some CDs and LPs that I have not even touched--other than to dust them.  Ella gets lots of play time, but practically nothing for most of the rest.

So, why do we listen to our old favorites over and over again?  "Because repeated sounds work magic in our brains"

It is all a long-winded way of saying that you can't teach an old dog new tricks.  Wait, do dogs listen to music, and do they have preferences?

Are you a man ... or a fish?

Our ears were once gills!

I was blown away when I first came across that idea.  (R)Evolutionary!

The gills that our ancestral fish used to breathe became, over time--as in millions of years--the middle ear and the eardrum and everything else that makes hearing possible.

A few hundred years ago, anybody even thinking along these lines would have been put away in a mental institution because the idea seems so far-fetched.  Yet, this fact is another example of evolution.

Of course, the incremental building up from our evolutionary ancestors makes the the ear and the hearing mechanism so darn convoluted.  And to then think that this entire anatomy exists only to collect information that is processed by the brain that we then recognize as sounds, from cacophony to melody.  The complex human brain deals with the information collected and even fills in the blanks without us knowing.

From a fish gill!

And then to think that there is a matter of personal preference about the sounds that we hear.  Music to one can be noise to another.

I still recall the elders referring to the popular film songs of my teenage years literally as noise (சத்தம்.)  An old friend in India a long time ago referred to Billy Joel's music as heavy metal.  Imagine that!  Years ago, I was playing an opera CD at home when a friend came by. She requested me to shut the music off because she couldn't stand sopranos! Wonderful music to one can easily be horrible noise to another.

While there is a biological explanation for the evolution of gills to ears, and for how we hear, music that we listen to is not a biological necessity.  Why do we have music?

It stems from a creative urge to find patterns in the sounds, in the noise.

It’s an act of rhythm, in tune with the body’s beating heart. From the earliest days on the savanna, humans scream, they shout, they hiss. They clap their hands, they stomp feet. They create noises to chase away adversaries—threatening intruders and imaginary spirits alike.

In the savanna, with various sounds all around, I imagine that there was a survival-urge to make sense of the surrounding noise.  That and our ability to imagine created music.

Music has those primal roots.

Ultimately, music challenges us to face ambiguity, seek solutions and, in the absence of resolution, turn confusion into a positive emotion by reveling in its ambiguity and vagueness. Looking back, noise has been integral to music as long as music has existed, incorporating imitations of birdcalls, animal sounds, and the cries of street vendors. It sounds ironic to say that indulging in noise is how we manage it. But apparently that is how humans shake, rattle, and roll. The visceral, disorienting response of sound’s interaction with the body is what—quite literally—moves us.

All from fish gills!