NIBBLING NATURE ALMIGHTY

 

          I happened to watch a video on YouTube recently. It is a stand-up comedy by George Carlin in which he digs on environmentalists (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eScDfYzMEEw). There is a part in the video where he raps “Our planet’s been through a lot worse than us. it’s been through Volcanoes, Earthquakes, plate tectonics, continental drifts, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles, hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic waves, recurring ice ages and we think…..some plastic bags” well, sure I was laughing, not at the uncertainty as it is intended but the irony. Plastics can alter our environment in future not far less than the entire geographical and astronomical phenomenon he has mentioned, considering the massive scale it’s been produced.

INDIAN ROLE MODELS - A COMMENT

 Hi Ajithan, 

Very good set of articles. I enjoyed reading them. Lot of original thinking and lucid write-up. 

I especially liked the one of intuition. There is a fair amount of research going on currently in cognitive psychology on this subject. I've done a couple of studies in this area. If you wish to, could send some references about the current thinking in this line of research. I think you would enjoy reading about "dual process" theories of cognition, that tries to link tacit-associative mode of perception and judgement with conscious-analytic mode. Recent studies in this area try to theorize and test on how these two modes are not necessarily at tension with each other, but rather, are constitutive of one another. [Akin to what Poincare once said: logic is the instrument of demonstration; and intuition, the instrument of invention. Demonstration and invention often co-evolve.] 

MYNAHS ON THE PROWL

Ground feeding birds under the realm of opportunists

     

      Woke up in the morning listening to bird chirps, chuckles, gurgles and coos.Lying on the bed I fancied our Hibiscus tree studded with birds of blue, red, yellow, white and so on. After couple of minutes,finally making up my mind,picked myself up to reach the balcony and to my surprise, and slight disappointment, all I could see is a tree of noisy bunch of purplish brown birds, the Common Mynah¹. The incident, though it wasn’t possible then to perceive ample scale of the phenomenon- phenomenon of Common Mynahs taking over other ground feeding birds, stayed on me as an image, a notion.

The Common Mynah 

       

GREYED OUT OF MIND?-AN INTERESTING COMMENT

Rajesh Srivastava,

   I saw this site quite accidentally and exited to read this article. I noticed in your profile that you are still an undergraduate student. The language and presentation shows maturity of a senior research scholar. I wish to appreciate you for your natural brilliance and erudition.

I am not a man of science. My interests are in yoga and mysticism. I don’t know whether you are interested in it or not -probably not, because it needs an age and experience to enter in these kind of thoughts. 

As per our yoga tradition which is an integral part of Eastern mysticism we have four levels of mental existence. Jagrat, svapna,sushubti and durya. I may compare them with the modern psychological terms conscious, subconscious, unconscious and collective unconscious. Well, actually there is sharp difference between these eastern concepts and western terms. Western psychology assumes these states as structures and we think them as functional modes.

DEFENDING DIAMOND-2

\\Kumaarasami perumal

Your arguments and language of expression is really good. You have the skill to narrate things brilliantly. But I want to clear myself. Western academic world is very vibrant one. It is funded by their corporate sector in a grand manner to collect and process various data from all over the world for their trade purpose.This large quantity of data inevitably produces theories. 

You can observe this, at every five year period we can see a new theory emerging and dominating the entire thought in every field of knowledge and people are carried away by it. In the past few years we read a lot about thinkers like Claude levi strauss, Theodor W. Adorno, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida …Their theories were discussed with great enthusiasm for few years all over the world and suddenly they lost their importance. New theories arrived and replaced them. 

DEFENDING DIAMOND-1

 

         I came across a comment recently, by Mr.Kumaarasami Perumal, on my blog, saying that my article on foreign vegetables(What would make Gandhi's salad bowl?) is inspired by Jared Diamond and talks only in geological terms and is least concerned in political issues. I have come across many criticisms with similar views on Jared Diamond's theory and addressing it as simplistic and inadequate to explain what he intends to.

 

WHAT WOULD MAKE GANDHI'S SALAD BOWL?

 

 (Mediterranean and Native American Invasion in our Vegetable Diet)

               

                 I was discussing with a friend of mine on a restaurant, lately. It all started with me picking on him about his food habit. He was having Chinese, I remember, and I was having south Indian. He interestingly hit me back with a question ‘What ingredients my food has that yours doesn’t?’ Ironically, I had no answer to tell him. Not only that we had same vegetables on our plates, but they were all foreign in origin.

                 Having read Jared Diamond’s “Guns, germs and steel” I already had an idea of Native American vegetable species dominating other vegetables all over the world. It was, basically, an European point of view who had been having vegetables originated from Mediterranean and Mesopotamian (Parts of Iran) regions. From an Indian point of view, the domination is adjoined by European vegetables as well.