We Are On Top of The Food Chain

October 1 2015 is World Vegetarian Day


 
Artist:  Steve Cutts

"स चाशीर्वादमर्हति":महंमद सर्वांचा आशीर्वाद इच्छितात...Love of QUR’AN- Jefferson & Vinoba

Today September 24 2015 is Eid al-Adha / Bakr-Eid
 
विनोबा भावे:

"स चाशीर्वादमर्हति-  महंमद सर्वांचा आशीर्वाद इच्छितात. म्हणतात की श्रद्धावंत हो, महंमदाला शांती आणि शरणता प्राप्त होण्यासाठी आशीर्वाद द्या. ही नम्रता आहे. ज्यांच्यापाशी लोक आशीर्वादासाठी जातात तेच सर्वांच्या  आशीर्वादाची  याचना करीत आहेत. ही फार मोठी गोष्ट आहे."
(कुराण-सार, c 1962) 

Denise A. Spellberg:

"At a time when most Americans were uninformed, misinformed, or simply afraid of Islam, Thomas Jefferson imagined Muslims as future citizens of his new nation. His engagement with the faith began with the purchase of a Qur’an eleven years before he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson’s Qur’an survives still in the Library of Congress, serving as a symbol of his and early America’s complex relationship with Islam and its adherents. That relationship remains of signal importance to this day..."

The title page of Jefferson’s Qur’an, now in the Library of Congress

courtesy: 'Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an: Islam and the Founders' by Denise A. Spellberg, 2013

Putting Living Organism in Two Places at Once...Schrödinger's Affair with Twin Young Women

The Guardian reported on September 16 2015: 

"Schrödinger's microbe: physicists plan to put living organism in two places at once- A radical demonstration of quantum theory could see a bacterium suspended in an uncertain state similar to that famously endured by Schrödinger’s cat...

Erwin Schrödinger, one of the founding fathers of quantum theory, proposed his thought experiment in 1935. In it, a cat found itself in a closed box with a small radioactive source, a Geiger counter, a hammer and a small bottle of poison.

Schrodinger explained that if an atom of the radioactive source decayed, the Geiger counter would trigger a device to release the poison. In quantum mechanics, the state of the cat would then be “entangled” with the state of the radioactive material. In due course, the cat would be in a superposition of both alive and dead states.."
Stephen G. Brush, 'Should the History of Science Be Rated X?':

" My concern in this article is with the possible dangers of using the history of science in science education. I will examine arguments that young and impressionable students at the start of a
scientific career should be shielded from the writings of contemporary science historians for reasons similar to the one mentioned above-namely, that these writings do violence to the professional ideal and public image of scientists as rational, open-minded investigators,
proceeding methodically, grounded incontrovertibly in the outcome of controlled experiments, and
seeking objectively for the truth, let the chips fall where they may..."


John Gray:

"Science can advance human knowledge, it cannot make humanity cherish truth. Like the Christians of former times, scientists are caught up in the web of power; they struggle for survival and success; their view of the world is a patchwork of conventional beliefs. Science cannot bring ‘miracle, mystery and authority’ to humankind, if only because – like those who served the Church in the past – its servants are all too human."



Neil Gussman with Sarah Reisert:

"...Of course there has been a trend recently in scientific biographies to talk about lust in the lives of their subjects. We all know now that Einstein would not be named husband of the century. Erwin Schrödinger, known for the thought experiment "Schrödinger's Cat," created the Schrödinger equation, central to quantum mechanics, on a winter semester break. At the time he was having an affair with twin young women in one of his classes. He took one twin to the Alps and came back with the equation..."


...He took twin to the Alps.....

now my caption to the cartoon below would be:

"oh! Like in the previous room, he too is Erwin Schrödinger...One of them got the Nobel prize..."
 

Artist: Michael Ffolkes (1925-1988), The New Yorker, June 9 1980

जी ए कुलकर्णी...Did GA know Ingrid Bergman's Admiration of Eugene O’Neill?

As I have said on this blog earlier, G A Kulkarni (जी ए कुलकर्णी) was an admirer of Eugene O’Neill. In the only letter he sent to me, he prods 22-year-old me to read Dostoyevsky and O’Neill.

Robert Dowling has written a book 'Eugene O’Neill: A Life in Four Acts', 2014. It has been much reviewed.

In February 2015, John Lahr- author of much lauded 'Tennessee Williams', 2014- has reviewed it for London Review of Books.

Mr. Lahr writes:

"...O’Neill was a rangy handsome man who looked out at his bleak world with large haunted eyes. ‘They were the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen in my whole life. They were like wells; you fell into them,’ the 26-year-old Ingrid Bergman said, who had had a success in a San Francisco production of Anna Christie but wouldn’t let O’Neill lure her away from her film ambitions..."

Now, by some coincidence, GA too was an admirer of Ms. Bergman! GA mentions her a few times in his  letters.

In a letter dated April 12 1980 to Ms. Sunita Deshpande (सुनिता देशपांडे ),  he writes:

"...मी Garboचा एकच, 'Ninotechka' हा  चित्रपट पाहिला, पण अनेक stills पाहिले आहेत. Ingrid Bergman देखील अविस्मरणीय आहे…."

[...I have see just one feature of (Greta) Garbo- Ninotechka (1939) but have seen her many snaps. Ingrid Bergman too is unforgettable...]

Elsewhere he recalls a Marathi article (by Mr. Deshpande?), on Ms. Bergman, he had loved. 

Did GA know this Bergman's admiration of O’Neill? Would he have felt jealous of O’Neill if he knew it?

I Will Not Fight the Future, the Offspring of Accident and Wilfulness

Tom Stoppard:

"....What he (Alexander Herzen) detested above all was the conceit that future bliss justified present sacrifice and bloodshed. The future, said Herzen, was the offspring of accident and wilfulness. There was no libretto or destination, and there was always as much in front as behind..."

courtesy: The Simpsons

Ogg Invents Fire...From Cave to Conference Room

If you haven't seen the post on this blog dated December 11 2006, here is the wonderful cartoon in there:

Artist: Robert Kraus, The New Yorker, July 30 1960

And now enjoy this cartoon on the same theme from 2014:

“Before we begin, I’d like to thank Ogg for making this wonderful fire, which, up until now, I had not thought him capable of.”

Artist: P C Vey, The New Yorker, 2014