We have always wondered how we could find budding new artistes in any new field and follow their growth and trajectory towards greatness. In this short talk, Ravin Agarwal introduces us to 10 new young Indian artists. It is worth a look...
The first is Bharti Kher. The central motif of Bharti's practice is the ready-made store-bought bindi that untold millions of Indian women apply to their foreheads, every day, in an act closely associated with the institution of marriage. But originally the significance of the bindi is to symbolize the third eye between the spiritual world and the religious world. She says she first got started with 10 packets of bindis, and then wondered what she could do with 10 thousand.
Balasubramaniam, really stands at the crossroads of sculpture, painting and installation, working wonders with fiberglass.
Brooklyn-based Chitra Ganesh is known for her digital collages, using Indian comic books called amar chitra kathas as her primary source material.
Jitish Kallat successfully practices across photography, sculpture, painting and installation.
N.S. Harsha is putting a contemporary spin on the miniature tradition.
Dhruvi Acharya builds on her love of comic books and street art to comment on the roles and expectations of modern Indian women.
Rakib Shah too is reinventing the miniature tradition.
Raqs Media Collective are really three artists working together and are probably the foremost practitioners of multimedia art in India today, working across photography, video and installation.
Subodh Gupta celebrates local and mundane objects globally, and on a grander and grander scale, by incorporating them into ever more colossal sculptures and installations.
Ranjani Shettar creates ethereal sculptures and installations that really marry the organic to the industrial.
All in all new and exciting artistes to look forward to.
anil
Monday, January 25, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Yawning and sex
Just when you thought that scientific research could not get any weirder, comes this latest claim that yawing is an invitation to – yes, you guessed it-- sex! Of course, why we yawn has prompted speculation among scientists for a long time, but this latest research promises a new line of thinking altogether.
After all why do we yawn? Dogs do it, lions do it, and even babies in the womb do it – how come nobody really knows why. Of course, theories regarding why we yawn have been around for a while.
We open wide when we are tired, bored, or hungry. Some have suggested that a sudden drop in blood oxygen or a surge of carbon dioxide pumped out by a tired body, sparks it off but actual measurements do not bolster this claim.
It happens on hot days more than on cold, which leads to speculation that the action cools the brain. On the other hand, someone running a fever indulges in such acts less than normal.
Involuntary gaping peaks just before bed-time when we are tired but, oddly enough, disappears when we are lying, still awake, between the sheets. But it is also common just after we get up – when, presumably, we are not tired at all.
Yawning is catching, too, but as anyone who has sat through a lengthy boring movie can attest, so is laughter, vomiting, or (for men at least) having a pee if in company with other gents so occupied. A yawn, however, is more contagious than any of these. That may be a hint that the action evolved as a social cue – "time for us all to go to bed" – although as usual when evolution and human behavior meet, the tie is speculative at best.
However yawns arise, and whatever they signify, such a spontaneous copying response to a second person's signal of mood is an unmistakable sign of empathy; of an ability to understand and to react to someone else's state of mind. Empathy is what makes us into social and cooperative beings, and the speed and extent with which a person yawns in response to another's involuntary gape may be a quick and objective measure of to what degree he or she might be blessed with those useful talents.
Going beyond these speculations, perhaps it may be time to reflect that an open mouth may be more a sign of some impending change of state rather than a statement of tiredness itself; awake to asleep or vice versa. It may even be a general preparation for some new mental or physical experience. Certainly people expecting something novel to happen indulge in yawning quite frequently; parachutists about to jump tend do it, as did (allegedly) Neville Chamberlain in the moment when the disastrous failure of his Munich discussions with Hitler became clear and war seemed inevitable
As a result some scientists now are claiming to find a tie between sex and yawning, and not just as a "time for bed" hint. They point out that a really deep and lengthy gape is often accompanied by throwing out the chest and putting one's hands behind one's head. That, they suggest, is an erotic posture.
Until not long ago the evidence for any link between a yawn and sex was weak, but a paper at a recent meeting on sexual medicine reported a remarkable effect of a certain mood-altering drug given to women with depression. Several immediately went into uncontrollable bouts of yawning, accompanied by repeated orgasms over many hours.
But if you really want to find out the detailed research behind this claim, you will need to attend the International Congress of Chasmology which will take place in June, 2010 in Paris. The topic to be discussed at this conference is not diving but yawning. And of course, yawning and sex!
I dont know about you but I am not standing in line buying my air ticket for this conference.
After all why do we yawn? Dogs do it, lions do it, and even babies in the womb do it – how come nobody really knows why. Of course, theories regarding why we yawn have been around for a while.
We open wide when we are tired, bored, or hungry. Some have suggested that a sudden drop in blood oxygen or a surge of carbon dioxide pumped out by a tired body, sparks it off but actual measurements do not bolster this claim.
It happens on hot days more than on cold, which leads to speculation that the action cools the brain. On the other hand, someone running a fever indulges in such acts less than normal.
Involuntary gaping peaks just before bed-time when we are tired but, oddly enough, disappears when we are lying, still awake, between the sheets. But it is also common just after we get up – when, presumably, we are not tired at all.
Yawning is catching, too, but as anyone who has sat through a lengthy boring movie can attest, so is laughter, vomiting, or (for men at least) having a pee if in company with other gents so occupied. A yawn, however, is more contagious than any of these. That may be a hint that the action evolved as a social cue – "time for us all to go to bed" – although as usual when evolution and human behavior meet, the tie is speculative at best.
However yawns arise, and whatever they signify, such a spontaneous copying response to a second person's signal of mood is an unmistakable sign of empathy; of an ability to understand and to react to someone else's state of mind. Empathy is what makes us into social and cooperative beings, and the speed and extent with which a person yawns in response to another's involuntary gape may be a quick and objective measure of to what degree he or she might be blessed with those useful talents.
Going beyond these speculations, perhaps it may be time to reflect that an open mouth may be more a sign of some impending change of state rather than a statement of tiredness itself; awake to asleep or vice versa. It may even be a general preparation for some new mental or physical experience. Certainly people expecting something novel to happen indulge in yawning quite frequently; parachutists about to jump tend do it, as did (allegedly) Neville Chamberlain in the moment when the disastrous failure of his Munich discussions with Hitler became clear and war seemed inevitable
As a result some scientists now are claiming to find a tie between sex and yawning, and not just as a "time for bed" hint. They point out that a really deep and lengthy gape is often accompanied by throwing out the chest and putting one's hands behind one's head. That, they suggest, is an erotic posture.
Until not long ago the evidence for any link between a yawn and sex was weak, but a paper at a recent meeting on sexual medicine reported a remarkable effect of a certain mood-altering drug given to women with depression. Several immediately went into uncontrollable bouts of yawning, accompanied by repeated orgasms over many hours.
But if you really want to find out the detailed research behind this claim, you will need to attend the International Congress of Chasmology which will take place in June, 2010 in Paris. The topic to be discussed at this conference is not diving but yawning. And of course, yawning and sex!
I dont know about you but I am not standing in line buying my air ticket for this conference.
A New Recipe for Aging Brains
I have been travelling recently – New Zealand, Goa, Delhi—and one of the interesting surprises has been the increasing emphasis that the old people are placing on their physical conditioning nowadays. Wherever I went, I saw old men – and women- out jogging in their jumpsuits, lugging bottles of water, and talking breathlessly of other physical pursuits they were pursuing or intended to pursue. Even in staid India, it was a shock to see old men in shorts—and not all of them belonged to the RSS- out for a stroll or a run early in the morning. In my own neighborhood, groups of men in shorts and the latest Nike shoes now often gathered in the nearby lawns for a brisk walk or “laughing therapy” and then long desultory gossip sessions.
It was clear that older people in India at least were paying a great deal more attention to their physical condition than their parents ever did. And this was also reflected in the statistics. The average life expectancy in India has gone up from 49 years in 1950 to 69 years in 2000.
What I was curious about was what they did to keep their minds similarly invigorated. I had noticed an increase of interest in crosswords and sudoko in my contemporaries. The new word among them was “a crossword a day keeps Alzheimer’s away”. But really besides the obligatory morning crossword session in the bathroom, what else could one do to keep the aging brain muscles alive and well, if not bursting with creativity.
With age, it seems that most people accept a slowing down and lack of memory as a given and do little to stimulate its activities. Also brains in middle age also get more easily distracted. Start searching for your reading glasses to read a headline go answer the doorbell and — whoosh — not only do all thoughts of glasses search disappear but also why you were searching for them in the firs place. Indeed, aging brains, even in the middle years, very often falls into what’s called the default mode, during which the mind wanders off and begins daydreaming.
Given all this, the question arises, can an old brain learn, and then remember what it learns? Put another way; is this a brain that should be in school?
The latest research says that it is not necessary to give up and even an aging brain can be made to learn new things. While it’s tempting to focus on the flaws in older brains, that observation unfortunately overlooks how capable they’ve become. Over the past several years, scientists have looked deeper into how brains age and confirmed that they continue to develop through and beyond middle age. Many long held views, including the one that 40 percent of brain cells are lost in the aged, have been overturned. What is stuffed into your head may not have vanished but has simply been squirreled away in the folds of your neurons. And it is possible to find and to revive them.
Recently, researchers have found that the brain, as it traverses middle age, gets better at recognizing the central idea, the big picture. If kept in good shape, the brain can continue to build pathways that help its owner recognize patterns and, as a consequence, see significance and even solutions much faster than a young person can. The trick is finding ways to keep brain connections in good condition and to grow more of them.
“The brain is plastic and continues to change, not in getting bigger but allowing for greater complexity and deeper understanding,” says Kathleen Taylor, a professor at St. Mary’s College of California, who has studied ways to teach adults effectively. “As adults we may not always learn quite as fast, but we are set up for this next developmental step.”
It seems that one way to nudge neurons in the right direction in aging brains is to challenge the very assumptions they have worked so hard to accumulate while young. With a brain already full of well-connected pathways, adult learners should “jiggle their synapses a bit” by confronting thoughts that are contrary to their own. Continued brain development and a richer form of learning, according to these researchers, require that you “bump up against people and ideas” that are different. If you always hang around with those you agree with and read things that agree with what you already know, you’re not going to wrestle with your established brain connections. It is such stretching that will best keep a brain in tune: get out of the comfort zone to push and nourish your brain. Do anything from learning a foreign language to taking a different route to work, from arguing with young people with different ideas to reading columnist you vehemently disagree with!
So there you have the latest scientific research telling you that the way to remain young in mind is to well become young in mind, questioning all that wisdom you have patiently accumulated over a lifetime and arguing once again with unformed and young minds! And just when you thought you had laid to rest all those pesky questions from your children, researchers are telling you to once again encourage them to question all your authority and hard earned sagacity if you want to remain young in mind and keep your brain muscles in trim.
It was clear that older people in India at least were paying a great deal more attention to their physical condition than their parents ever did. And this was also reflected in the statistics. The average life expectancy in India has gone up from 49 years in 1950 to 69 years in 2000.
What I was curious about was what they did to keep their minds similarly invigorated. I had noticed an increase of interest in crosswords and sudoko in my contemporaries. The new word among them was “a crossword a day keeps Alzheimer’s away”. But really besides the obligatory morning crossword session in the bathroom, what else could one do to keep the aging brain muscles alive and well, if not bursting with creativity.
With age, it seems that most people accept a slowing down and lack of memory as a given and do little to stimulate its activities. Also brains in middle age also get more easily distracted. Start searching for your reading glasses to read a headline go answer the doorbell and — whoosh — not only do all thoughts of glasses search disappear but also why you were searching for them in the firs place. Indeed, aging brains, even in the middle years, very often falls into what’s called the default mode, during which the mind wanders off and begins daydreaming.
Given all this, the question arises, can an old brain learn, and then remember what it learns? Put another way; is this a brain that should be in school?
The latest research says that it is not necessary to give up and even an aging brain can be made to learn new things. While it’s tempting to focus on the flaws in older brains, that observation unfortunately overlooks how capable they’ve become. Over the past several years, scientists have looked deeper into how brains age and confirmed that they continue to develop through and beyond middle age. Many long held views, including the one that 40 percent of brain cells are lost in the aged, have been overturned. What is stuffed into your head may not have vanished but has simply been squirreled away in the folds of your neurons. And it is possible to find and to revive them.
Recently, researchers have found that the brain, as it traverses middle age, gets better at recognizing the central idea, the big picture. If kept in good shape, the brain can continue to build pathways that help its owner recognize patterns and, as a consequence, see significance and even solutions much faster than a young person can. The trick is finding ways to keep brain connections in good condition and to grow more of them.
“The brain is plastic and continues to change, not in getting bigger but allowing for greater complexity and deeper understanding,” says Kathleen Taylor, a professor at St. Mary’s College of California, who has studied ways to teach adults effectively. “As adults we may not always learn quite as fast, but we are set up for this next developmental step.”
It seems that one way to nudge neurons in the right direction in aging brains is to challenge the very assumptions they have worked so hard to accumulate while young. With a brain already full of well-connected pathways, adult learners should “jiggle their synapses a bit” by confronting thoughts that are contrary to their own. Continued brain development and a richer form of learning, according to these researchers, require that you “bump up against people and ideas” that are different. If you always hang around with those you agree with and read things that agree with what you already know, you’re not going to wrestle with your established brain connections. It is such stretching that will best keep a brain in tune: get out of the comfort zone to push and nourish your brain. Do anything from learning a foreign language to taking a different route to work, from arguing with young people with different ideas to reading columnist you vehemently disagree with!
So there you have the latest scientific research telling you that the way to remain young in mind is to well become young in mind, questioning all that wisdom you have patiently accumulated over a lifetime and arguing once again with unformed and young minds! And just when you thought you had laid to rest all those pesky questions from your children, researchers are telling you to once again encourage them to question all your authority and hard earned sagacity if you want to remain young in mind and keep your brain muscles in trim.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Mothers and sons - part 2
Responses to my last blog on mother and son were interesting albeit a trifle predictable--after all few mothers of grown sons read blogs! Thus the emerging consensus of these replies was that the only solution was for the " apron strings to be cut" if there was ever to be a healthy relationship between mother, son and his wife. That, however, in many cases, is easier said than done.
Of course if the widowed mother lives some distance from the married son, the inherent tensions are usually muted.Then the only complaint from the mother to the son is " you never call me".
But if the widowed mother is compelled by choice or chance to live with her married son, the apron springs miraculously reappear bringing in its wake all the attendant tensions. She finds it hard to give up her role as the matriarch after a lifetime in that role while the wife seethes since she feels it is her role to be the head of the household. The mother thus alternates between acting as matriarch and becoming a "baglady"/nanny/cook subconsciously seeking to earn her keep. Sadly neither role fits and tensions keep bubbling under the surface. The only successful households that I have seen are where the widowed mother has taken to prayer and worship leaving the household to the daughter in law or where she develops a new life for herself as a worker in a charitable organization or with a new hobby. Then her role is clearly defined as the honored guest in the house and the font of wisdom and advice. However this is difficult to continue and often the old tensions reemerge that the hapless son is unable to mediate.
Paradoxically, it is the entry of another woman in this triangle- one whose writ runs large, who brooks no dissent and who increasingly has the ultimate decision on most matters -- that the issue usually gets resolved.It is no wonder that both wife and mother often repair to her to get him to do what needs to be done-- from " Dad, you are driving too fast" or "Dad, your cigars smell" or " why are you not taking my mother out on your anniversary". For what she says goes. And so many a dispute gets resolved and harmony returns to the household!!
Of course if the widowed mother lives some distance from the married son, the inherent tensions are usually muted.Then the only complaint from the mother to the son is " you never call me".
But if the widowed mother is compelled by choice or chance to live with her married son, the apron springs miraculously reappear bringing in its wake all the attendant tensions. She finds it hard to give up her role as the matriarch after a lifetime in that role while the wife seethes since she feels it is her role to be the head of the household. The mother thus alternates between acting as matriarch and becoming a "baglady"/nanny/cook subconsciously seeking to earn her keep. Sadly neither role fits and tensions keep bubbling under the surface. The only successful households that I have seen are where the widowed mother has taken to prayer and worship leaving the household to the daughter in law or where she develops a new life for herself as a worker in a charitable organization or with a new hobby. Then her role is clearly defined as the honored guest in the house and the font of wisdom and advice. However this is difficult to continue and often the old tensions reemerge that the hapless son is unable to mediate.
Paradoxically, it is the entry of another woman in this triangle- one whose writ runs large, who brooks no dissent and who increasingly has the ultimate decision on most matters -- that the issue usually gets resolved.It is no wonder that both wife and mother often repair to her to get him to do what needs to be done-- from " Dad, you are driving too fast" or "Dad, your cigars smell" or " why are you not taking my mother out on your anniversary". For what she says goes. And so many a dispute gets resolved and harmony returns to the household!!
The premature verdicts on Obama
With the end of the year, the US papers are filled with punditry pronouncing a range of negative verdicts on Obamas presidency. Some of this was clearly to be expected- it was unlikely that any republican, after the humiliation of 2008 defeat- would rise up to praise Obama. The bigger surprise is the virulence of commentators from the center and left and the almost supine acceptance of these dire- but dare i say completely erroneous verdicts-- by the supporters of Obama. Many of these supporters have withdrawn into a shell and there has been no attempt made to rally them with the truth except for rare attempts by Andrew Sullivan-- who is surprisingly a conservative commentator.
So here goes an effort to redress the balance and to urge a more objective view of what Obama has actually managed to achieve in 11 months of his presidency.
Let us look at the substantive record:
First,the foreign policy issues:
US announced its policy against torture
Gitmo is to be closed as soon as possible
The Cairo speech enunciated a new paradigm in US view of the muslim world that was welcomed around the world
The unitary executive, claiming vast, dictatorial powers over American citizens, has been unwound.
The legal inquiries that may well convict former Bush officials for war crimes are underway, and the trial of KSM will reveal the lawless sadism of the Cheney regime that did so much to sabotage the war on Jihadism.
Military force against al Qaeda in Pakistan has been ratcheted up considerably, even at a civilian cost that remains morally troubling.
There is a clear policy on Afghanistan where the US has given notice that it intends to leave Afghanistan with a big surge, a shift in tactics, and a heavy batch of new troops.
Orders have been issued for withdrawal from Iraq by end of 2010.
Relations with Russia have improved immensely and may yield real gains in non-proliferation;
Netanyahu has moved, however insincerely, toward a two-state solution;
Iran's coup regime remains far more vulnerable than a year ago, paralyzed in its diplomacy, terrified of its own people and constantly shaken by the ongoing revolution;
Pakistan launched a major offensive against al Qaeda and the Taliban in its border area;
global opinion of the US has been transformed
And at least the world finds Obamas approach meriting a Nobel Peace Prize despite domestic carping. the Cairo speech and the Nobel acceptance speech helped explain exactly what Obama's blend of ruthless realism for conflict-management truly means.
Domestically, the achievements have actually been even more impressive:
Obama's team has prevented the collapse of the US and the world economy- a fact that he has not been given enough credit for, in the hoopla of bail outs and bonuses
US economy has shifted from a tailspin to stablilization and some prospect of job growth next year;
the Dow is at 10,500 a level no one would have predicted this time last year when it had plunged to 6000 stunning many a retiree.
Major investments have been made in green technology laying the foundation for the future
The education spending and the ambitious agenda has flown under the radar of the beltway pundits,
The size of Peace Corps has been doubled, Pell grants increased substantially and a major filip given to Volunteerism
A stimulus package has helped undergird infrastructure and will probably do more to advance non-carbon energy than anything that might have emerged from Copenhagen.
Universal health insurance (with promised deficit reduction!) is imminent - a goal sought by Democrats (and Nixon) for decades.
And all this in just 11 months. Have all these tasks been completed? No. But they are a hell lot closer to achievement than many imagined just an year ago.
As Sullivan wisely notes " Change of this magnitude is extremely hard. That it is also frustrating, inadequate, compromised, flawed, and beset with bribes and trade-offs does not, in my mind, undermine it. Obama told us it would be like this - and it is. And those who backed him last year would do better, to my mind, if they appreciated the difficulty of this task and the diligence and civility that Obama has displayed in executing it."
It is time for all to realize the facts of these achievements and not allow the repubublican PR machine and the Fox networks to obscure these achievements. It is time for objective observers to acknowledge and admit that Obama's first year has done more than we thought possible, period.
So here goes an effort to redress the balance and to urge a more objective view of what Obama has actually managed to achieve in 11 months of his presidency.
Let us look at the substantive record:
First,the foreign policy issues:
US announced its policy against torture
Gitmo is to be closed as soon as possible
The Cairo speech enunciated a new paradigm in US view of the muslim world that was welcomed around the world
The unitary executive, claiming vast, dictatorial powers over American citizens, has been unwound.
The legal inquiries that may well convict former Bush officials for war crimes are underway, and the trial of KSM will reveal the lawless sadism of the Cheney regime that did so much to sabotage the war on Jihadism.
Military force against al Qaeda in Pakistan has been ratcheted up considerably, even at a civilian cost that remains morally troubling.
There is a clear policy on Afghanistan where the US has given notice that it intends to leave Afghanistan with a big surge, a shift in tactics, and a heavy batch of new troops.
Orders have been issued for withdrawal from Iraq by end of 2010.
Relations with Russia have improved immensely and may yield real gains in non-proliferation;
Netanyahu has moved, however insincerely, toward a two-state solution;
Iran's coup regime remains far more vulnerable than a year ago, paralyzed in its diplomacy, terrified of its own people and constantly shaken by the ongoing revolution;
Pakistan launched a major offensive against al Qaeda and the Taliban in its border area;
global opinion of the US has been transformed
And at least the world finds Obamas approach meriting a Nobel Peace Prize despite domestic carping. the Cairo speech and the Nobel acceptance speech helped explain exactly what Obama's blend of ruthless realism for conflict-management truly means.
Domestically, the achievements have actually been even more impressive:
Obama's team has prevented the collapse of the US and the world economy- a fact that he has not been given enough credit for, in the hoopla of bail outs and bonuses
US economy has shifted from a tailspin to stablilization and some prospect of job growth next year;
the Dow is at 10,500 a level no one would have predicted this time last year when it had plunged to 6000 stunning many a retiree.
Major investments have been made in green technology laying the foundation for the future
The education spending and the ambitious agenda has flown under the radar of the beltway pundits,
The size of Peace Corps has been doubled, Pell grants increased substantially and a major filip given to Volunteerism
A stimulus package has helped undergird infrastructure and will probably do more to advance non-carbon energy than anything that might have emerged from Copenhagen.
Universal health insurance (with promised deficit reduction!) is imminent - a goal sought by Democrats (and Nixon) for decades.
And all this in just 11 months. Have all these tasks been completed? No. But they are a hell lot closer to achievement than many imagined just an year ago.
As Sullivan wisely notes " Change of this magnitude is extremely hard. That it is also frustrating, inadequate, compromised, flawed, and beset with bribes and trade-offs does not, in my mind, undermine it. Obama told us it would be like this - and it is. And those who backed him last year would do better, to my mind, if they appreciated the difficulty of this task and the diligence and civility that Obama has displayed in executing it."
It is time for all to realize the facts of these achievements and not allow the repubublican PR machine and the Fox networks to obscure these achievements. It is time for objective observers to acknowledge and admit that Obama's first year has done more than we thought possible, period.
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