A Brief History of Lies?

Gujjubania:

Fine. Let us see the Tehelka tapes. Who was making money? Politicians and bureaucrats. The Generals were gadhey who were asking for Blue Label and one guy got 1 lakh rupees. Nothing compared to crores made by IAS and politicians. Let us also look at punishment. The Generals were immediately courtmartialled and punished. Pplease tell me how many IAS types get arrested or even dismissed from service.

The crack at your father was in response to you specifically talking about your family income. Bhai, on average a doctor makes $150 K a year. That translates 75 Lakhs a year. Please tell me how your family income is augmented beyong your dads salary? Ofcourse, if this was one of your stupid ass remarks and has no bearing on reality, then maybe your dad specifically is not corrupt. Who the hell am I to know.


As far as glass houses is concerned, no doubt there is corruption in defence forces. But where? In the Ministry of Defense. Who sits there? Civillians of IAS and allied services. The Faujis who take money are few and far between, and what they get is peanuts.

I myself had no idea about the scale of difference till I came here to study. My lifestyle (and the lifestyle of other Faujikids) was one of frugality whereas the IAS types rivalled the progeny of Pakistani Fauji progeny in Thaat Baath and luxury living.

So, nothing personal. But please do not compare Faujis with IAS. There is no glass house to compare.

RE: Post #97 by FarzanaVersey on January 31, 2004 3:50am PT

Farzana:

This is amusing. It’s amusing because every time you have picked up your pen, during the course of this particular discussion, it has screamed chauvinism. Now either you have a fanatic feminist agenda or you may just be unaware of your own biases. I hope it is the latter.

We will get to the chauvinism part in time, but first about your reply:

[Boo-hoo…kyon? Who told you we don’t care? Feeling sorry for yourself again??]

When I typed the words: “Not that u care…” it was not because I was feeling sorry for myself (I have no reason to); it wasn’t either because I cared whether you cared or not (I don’t know you all that well). It was simply because I was afraid. I was afraid of getting a response that can be expected of a 15-year-old. A response of sorts “I don’t care.”

Now true, I shouldn’t be judgmental like that, and I should not assume things. But then people like you spoil me.

What did you do? You did just that.

And what better way to start your reply than to “Boo-hoo…”

Very Cute.


[Chalo aansoon poch do…yeh motee zameen par bikhar jaayenge…]

Baby jaan, jis din yeh motee bikhrey, ird gird Sehra hoga aur chun-ney wala koi nahein hoga.

So moteeyoun ka wait muth karo, it would not be a good investment.

But you do have the right idea. Woh ansoo kia jo sab dekh lein…woh ansoo nahein ‘Tasvey’ heiN. A more common term would be ‘crocodile tears’.

But then again what would you or any other woman know about ‘crocodile tears’. It could just be a term invented by men on purpose; just like they invented penis-shaped weapons of mass destruction.

So tell me, did the nurses see the one crocodile tear that dribbled down Hawkins’ wrinkled cheek while he smiled and maintained that his wife loves him?

No, No, stick that martyr-syndrome-gun back in your belt and give me a factual answer.


And now, how and why do you come across as a chauvinist?

Consider a rape charge where a man is alleged to have raped a woman.

A typical nonchalant male attitude (and we have seen this without failure) is to trivialize the charges by saying something along the lines of,

“So he has been rough with her. Couldn’t she have enjoyed it? Maybe she likes it rough.”

You tell me how that is any different from saying:

[It is said Elaine has been rough with him. Couldn’t Hawking be kinky?]

The only difference I see here is that you are not the nonchalant male, you are the nonchalant female. Now you may or may not believe in gender equity, but allow me to say this: your behavior is equally sad.

And please let’s not shift gears from chauvinism to manipulation now, because you have shown to do that quite beautifully also:

[I have said this several times, I don’t like to talk in terms of equality, but justice. I might consider a woman being kinky too, but am afraid the history of female abuse is too well-entrenched. Besides, women are ‘disabled’ on several levels in different ways in different societies. Male attitudes are more uniform, because most social constructs are patriarchal.]

And this after saying:

[A woman will maintain decorum, and if she cannot she will complain in a straightforward manner. The man will not do that. He will talk about circumstances, about Fate’s twists and turns, about his need to put his life in order. And he will tell all this to every second man he meets. This is part of his PR scheme – how to win friends and influence jerks.]

Circumstances, Fate’s twists and turns and the history of female abuse – is that your excuse for becoming the man you so openly despise.

Some PR scheme, I must say. I don’t know if it has won friends but it sure has influenced Samina.


Rest assured we hope it’s just a temporary case of pipe-vision that is preventing you from seeing the big picture. It usually helps if you put the pipe aside and open up your other eye.

And you are right; chivalry did not die with feminism. Some want to have their cake and eat it too.

Cheers,

Karim

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

Liberal Arts is very important, specially from the point of view of being able to communicate efficiently, entertainment, and all other tings etc... no one is denying that..scientists will be the last to argue against the role of LA in education.

My only b!tch is that the LAphiles always seem to indulge in name-dropping in any argument. It sounds very strange and tribal.

Saminasha

You are funny. I expected that response from you, clueless philistine that you are. Why should I find another nick or bugger off, just because you say so? Your pomposity and arrogance knows no bounds. Stop squealing, I have done you a service by making you think about the arbitrary manner in which you ascribe motives and ideological cant to the lives of suffering individuals and their art. Now go and play with your Sylvia Suicide Doll, and fit it into some of your idiots theory.

regards

re:#119 by stuka
The guy (Gujjubania) is beyond redemption. I pity this guy.
Sridhar

Sadna,

I was excluding your and macgupta`s points from one of my less reverent posts, which I find interesting. Will maybe address them in the future.

Farzana,

Lots of interesting ideas here. My apologies if I`ve taken up too much space.

PZ,

Now, do you need an explanation of post 126?

1. Saminasha does NOT offer biographical insights into Sylvia Plath`s life, because she i-s n-o-t interested.

2. Saminasha D-O-E-S find the well quoted fact that Plath bit Hughes` lip during their first kiss interesting in the way it symbolises human interaction. Saminasha is n-o-t interested really, in Plath and Hughes relationship. However, Saminasha realises that other people a-r-e. In fact, Saminasha thinks that couples enact these kinds of gestures e-v-e-r-y day, even if they are not Sylvia and Ted, Angelina and Billy Bob, etc.

3. When Saminasha teaches Plath, she does n-o-t speculate on Plath`s personal life. If students are interested in Plath`s personal life, they are guided to critically lauded biographies.

Now, I`m afraid I wont be answering your posts anymore. You clearly do not deserve my time, esp. if you cant be bothered to properly read what interactors have written in the first place.

I`d suggest you either find a new nick or bugger off.

PZ,

Sylvia`s daughter description...hhmmm...considering I know little about Syl`s life, but do appreciate and assign some of her poems, I dont know what that excerpt says about me, half wit.

gujju,
Lemme guess..code coolie like U is 1 of those brainy engineers..

Saminasha

The last time I checked this was on open forum for passing time and saying what you want to whom you want. Stop squealing when you dont like what is being said. I thought you were a liberal etc etc and believed in freedom of speech.

Like I said, curb your pedagogic instict, it makes you look really stupid when you try to patronise people. You are not in a kindergarten class conducting a dialogue with a child, ``Which is your favorurite Neruda poem and why?`` indeed. What is your point? What is YOUR favourite Celan poem and why? You start off the dialogue on that particular issue. Why are you so pompous? What do you think of Sylvia Plaths daughter`s description of you?

And why are you such a philistine?

Plats, Aleph Null,

``The Education of Thomas Edison

by Jim Powell

In 1854, Reverend G. B. Engle belittled one of his students, seven-year-old Thomas Alva Edison, as ``addled.`` This out-raged the youngster, and he stormed out of the Port Huron, Michigan school, the first formal school he had ever attended. His mother, Nancy Edison, brought him back the next day to discuss the situation with Reverend Engle, but she became angry at his rigid ways. Everything was forced on the kids. She withdrew her son from the school where he had been for only three months and resolved to educate him at home. Al though he seems to have briefly attended two more schools, nearly all his childhood learning took place at home.

Thus arose the legend that Thomas Alva Edison (born February 11, 1847) became America`s most prolific inventor-1,093 patents for such wonders as the microphone, telephone receiver, stock ticker, phonograph, movies, office copiers, and incandescent electric light-despite his lack of schooling.

For years, he looked the part of the improbable, homespun genius: five feet, 10 inches tall, gray eyes, long hair that looked as if he cut it himself, baggy acid-stained pants, scruffy shoes, and hands discolored by chemicals. Later he took to wearing city clothes-black. On more than one occasion passers-by mistook him for a priest and respectfully tipped their hats.

Yet Edison probably gained a far better education than most children of his time or ours. This wasn`t because his mother had official credentials. She had taught school, but only a little. Nor was it because his parents had money. They were poor and lived on the outskirts of a declining town. Nancy Edison`s secret: she was more dedicated than any teacher was likely to be, and she had the flexibility to experiment with various ways of nurturing her son`s love for learning.

``She avoided forcing or prodding,`` wrote Edison biographer Matthew Josephson, ``and made an effort to engage his interest by reading him works of good literature and history that she had learned to love-and she was said to have been a fine reader. ``

Thomas Edison plunged into great books. Before he was 12, he had read works by Shakespeare and Dickens, Edward Gibbon`s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, David Hume`s History of England, and more.

Because Nancy Edison was devoted and observant, she discovered simple ways to nurture her son`s enthusiasm. She brought him a book on the physical sciences- R. G. Parker`s School of Natural Philosophy, which explained how to perform chemistry experiments at home. Edison recalled this was ``the first book in science I read when a boy.`` It made learning fun, and he performed every experiment in the book. Then Nancy Edison brought him The Dictionary of Science which further spurred his interest. He became passionate about chemistry, spending all his spare money buying chemicals from a local pharmacist, collecting bottles, wires, and other items for experiments. He built his first laboratory in the cellar of the family`s Port Huron house.

``Thus,`` Josephson noted, ``his mother had accomplished that which all truly great teachers do for their pupils, she brought him to the stage of learning things for himself, learning that which most amused and interested him, and she encouraged him to go on in that path. It was the very best thing she could have done for this singular boy.`` As Edison himself put it: ``My mother was the making of me. She understood me; she let me follow my bent.``

Sam Edison disapproved of all the time his son spent in the cellar. Sometimes he offered the boy a penny to resume reading literature. At 12, for example, Thomas read Thomas Paine`s Age of Reason. ``I can still remember the flash of enlightenment that shone from his pages,`` he recalled. Typically, though, he used his pennies to buy more chemicals for experiments in the cellar.

But Thomas Edison had discovered intellectual play. He wanted to learn everything he could about steam engines, electricity, battery power, electromagnetism, and especially the telegraph. Samuel F. B. Morse had attracted tremendous crowds when he demonstrated the telegraph back in 1838, and telegraph lines were extended across the country by the time Thomas Edison was conducting his experiments. The idea of transmitting information over a wire utterly fascinated him. He used scrap metal to build a telegraph set and practiced the Morse code. Through his experiments, he learned more and more about electricity which was to revolutionize the world.

When the Grand Trunk Railroad was extended to Port Huron in 1859, he got a job as newsboy for the day-long run to Detroit and back. After about a year, he looked for ways to make better use of the five-hour layover in Detroit before the train made its return trip. He got permission to move his cellar laboratory equipment aboard the baggage car, so he could continue his experiments. This worked well for a while until the train lurched, spilled some chemicals, and the laboratory caught on fire.

In 1862, a train accident injured his ears, and the 15-year-old began to lose much of his hearing. Apparently, he realized that as a handicapped boy without any credentials, he must learn everything he needed to know on his own. He dramatically intensified his self-education.

``Deafness probably drove me to reading,`` he reflected later. He was among the first people to use the Detroit Free Library-with card number 33-and he systematically read through it shelf by shelf. He read literature. He was thrilled by Victor Hugo`s new romantic epic, Les Miserables, especially the stories of lost children. He talked so much about the book that his friends called him ``Victor Hugo`` Edison.

Of course, what fascinated Edison most was science. He devoured books on electricity, mechanics, chemical analysis, manufacturing technology and more. He struggled with Isaac Newton`s Principles, which made him realize his future would be with practical matters, not theorizing.

The Joy of Learning
As a home-schooled, self-educated youth, Edison learned lessons that were to serve him all his life. He learned education was his own responsibility. He learned to take initiative. He learned to be persistent. He learned he could gain practical knowledge, inspiration and wisdom by reading books. He learned to discover all kinds of things from methodical observation. He learned education is a continuing, joyful process.
At 2O, Edison got a job as itinerant Western Union telegraph operator and became remarkably proficient. He worked in Cincinnati, Louisville, Indianapolis, Memphis, Boston, and New York. The more he learned about telegraphy, the more he wanted to learn. He took apart equipment and reassembled it until he understood how it worked. He experimented with ways to make it better. He decided that greater knowledge of chemistry would help him, so he haunted used bookstores and ordered chemistry books from London and Paris. He filled his rented rooms with chemicals and junk metal for his experiments. One associate observed: ``He spent his money buying apparatus and books, and wouldn`t buy clothing. That winter he went without an overcoat and nearly froze.``

Edison`s knowledge and enterprise led to a dramatic series of inventions. On January 25, 1869, ho applied for a patent on a telegraphic stock ticker which, after he filed patents for dozens of successive improvements, became standard office equipment in America and Europe. Edison invented a printing telegraph for gold bullion and foreign exchange dealers. Western Union and its rivals battled to gain control of Edison`s patents which revolutionized the telegraph business. For example, he figured out how a central telegraph office could control the performance of telegraph equipment at remote locations. He developed a method for transmitting four messages simultaneously over the same wire. Intense curiosity, nourished by his home education, drove him to become perhaps America`s best technician on telegraphy.

From his practical experience, Edison learned to make the most of unexpected opportunities. For example, on July 18, 1877, he was testing an automatic telegraph which had a stylus to read coded indentations on strips of paper. For some reason, perhaps excessive voltage, the stylus suddenly began moving so fast through the indentations that the friction resulted in a sound. It might have been only a hum, but it got Edison`s attention. His imagination made a wild leap. Explains archivist Douglas Tarr at the Edison National Historical Site, West Orange, New Jersey: ``Edison seemed to reason that if a stylus going through indentations could produce a sound unintentionally, then it could produce a sound intentionally, in which case he should be able to reproduce the human voice.`` A talking machine!

Edison worked out its fundamental principles in his notebooks, and on December 17, 1877, he filed a patent application for the phonograph (``sound writing``). This was no improvement of existing technology. It was something brand new, Edison`s most original invention. It was also one thing he didn`t seek to invent, unlike the light bulb, power generation systems, and other famous inventions which he deliberately pursued. Having developed the idea, Edison followed up, working on and off for more than two decades to produce recorded sound quality which would thrill millions.

With a flexible and open mind, Edison enjoyed an important advantage in the race for electric light. Other inventors were committed to refining low-resistance arc lights (then used in light houses) which required large amounts of electrical power and copper wire-the most costly part of their lighting systems. In September 1878, Edison cheerfully began considering the opposite: a high resistance system which would require far less electrical power and copper wire. This could mean small electric lights suitable for home use. By January 1879, at the laboratory he established in Menlo Park, New Jersey, Edison had built his first high resistance, incandescent electric light. It worked by passing electricity through a thin platinum filament in a glass vacuum bulb to delay the filament from melting.

But the lamp worked for only an hour or two. Improving performance required all the persistence Edison had learned as a child. He tested many other metals. He thought about tungsten, the metal in light bulb filaments now, but he couldn`t work with it using tools available in his day. He tried carbon. He tested carbonized filaments of every imaginable plant material, including baywood, boxwood, hickory, cedar, flax, and bamboo. He contacted biologists who could send him plant fibers from the tropics. ``Before I got through,`` he recalled, ``I tested no fewer than 6,000 vegetable growths, and ransacked the world for the most suitable filament material.`` Best performer for many years: carbonized filaments from cotton thread.

This proved to be one of Edison`s most perplexing inventions. ``The electric light has caused me the greatest amount of study and has required the most elaborate experiments,`` he wrote. ``I was never myself discouraged, or inclined to be hopeless of success. I cannot say the same for all my associates.`` Edison at the peak of his inventive powers drew inspiration, as he did in his youth, from Victor Hugo`s novel Toilers of the Sea. The hero, Gilliatt, struggled against the waves, the tides and a storm to save a steamship from destruction on a reef.

Hailed as ``The Wizard of Menlo Park,`` Edison was often able to see possibilities others missed because he continuously educated himself about different technologies. For example, during the late 1880s and early 1890s, he read widely about the latest developments in photographic optics. He investigated the potential of tough, flexible celluloid as motion picture film and had George Eastman make 50-foot-long, 35mm wide test strips. Edison worked out the mechanical problems of advancing film steadily across a photographic lens without tearing. He linked his new motion picture camera to an improved phonograph, capturing sound synchronized with motion pictures. Then Edison developed what he called the Kinetoscope to project these ``talking`` images on a screen.

In 1887, Edison built a magnificent laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey. It was 10 times larger than his first, fabled facility in Menlo Park. The main building alone contained some 60,000 square feet of floor space for machine shops, glass-blowing operations, electrical testing rooms, chemical stockrooms, electrical power generation, and other functions.

Once a day, Edison toured this vast facility to see what was going on, but he did most work in the library. It had a great hall, a 30-foot-high ceiling and two galleries. Right in the center, Edison sat at a desk with three dozen pigeonholes, surrounded by some 10,000 books. Here he would ponder new ideas and hear his associates report on their progress.

As Edison grew older, he became stouter and harder of hearing, but he remained as enthusiastic as ever about the free-wheeling pursuit of practical knowledge. In 1903, he hired Martin Andre Rosanoff, a Russian born, Paris-trained chemist who asked about laboratory rules. ``Hell,`` Edison snorted, ``there ain`t no rules around here! We`re tryin` to accomplish somep`n.``

After Edison died on Sunday, October 18, 1931, his coffin was placed in his beloved West Orange library for mourners to pay their respects. Rosanoff identified a key to the Old Man`s enduring fame: ``Had Edison been formally schooled, he might not have had the audacity to create such impossible things.``

---

Mr. Powell is editor of Laissez-Faire Books. He has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Barron`s, American Heritage, and more than three dozen other publications.

What do these celebrities have in common?

Find out.

The Freeman is the monthly publication of The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., Invington-on-Hudson, NY 10533. Phone (914)591-7230. FAX (914)591-8910. E-mail: freeman@fee.org. FEE, established in 1946 by Leonard E. Read, is a non-political, educational champion of private property, the free market, and limited government. FEE is classified as a 26 USC 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization.
This article appeared in the February 1995 issue of The Freeman. Copyright © 1995 by The Foundation for Economic Education. Permission to reprint this article is granted provided appropriate credit is given and two copies of the reprinted material are sent to The Foundation. ``

Aleph Null,

See my post to MacGupta.

MacGupta,

Thanks for explicating where I`m coming from.

Right now, I `m looking at some Composition Theory essays in which hard science profs describe how they use creative writing in assigning papers that will determine whether their students are really understanding their course work or merely parroting the text book. These kinds of intersections serve to clear up these field elitisms-the really innovative theorists/scientists/writers are those who extend themselves into many spheres of knowledge making.

Plats:

1. “FAILING HIS COLLEGE ENTRANCE EXAMS
True, Einstein did not pass the college exam the first time he took it. However, aside from being only sixteen, two years below the usual age, the plain fact was he did not study for it. His father wanted his son to follow a technical occupation, a decision Einstein found difficult to confront directly. Consequently, as he later admitted, he avoided following the “unbearable” path of a “practical profession” by not preparing himself for the test.
It is also true that, after graduating from the university, Einstein had difficulty finding a post. This was mainly because his independent, intellectually rebellious nature made him, in his own words, “a pariah” in the academic community. One professor told him, “You have one fault; one can`t tell you anything.”

Also true is that Einstein went through three jobs in a short time, but not because of a learning disability. His first job was as a temporary research assistant, the second as temporary replacement for a professor who had to serve a two-month term in the army. Clark remarks that it is “difficult to discover but easy to imagine” why Einstein held his third job, as a teacher in a boarding school, for only a few months: “Einstein`s ideas of minimum routine and minimum discipline were very different from those of his employer.”

2. The concentric part was a bit of leg pulling. I believe you are now a few inches taller.

PZ,

Good for you…”self referential”…a term used to define several literary genres. But really, my question is why do you bother posting me? No matter what the topic is, or my opinion is, there you are with the briefest of red undies shrilling “Toro!”. As usual, the usual “liberal arts” field is coming in for its share of bashing from the hard science folk….but not only that, some hard schienshe folks who ridicule the role of literary theory in society….and how can I blame them? They heal us and then charge is exorbitant amounts of dollars…we propose that society is organized in many different ways and lets look at them…I was teasing the Usual Suspects….but how it applies to you….?

Which Neruda or Celan poem is your fav and why? If you don’t have an answer to this, stick to your sideline boo-ing. I’ve got a busy week coming up.

Nb,

My point in the Plath example was precisely, as Robert Hayden writes, how are we to know about love’s austere offices? Plath has to a large extent looked at as victim/demon/whatever. That movie with Gywneth has an interesting scene where she and Hughes after meeting share a kiss in which she bites his lip bloody…interesting. Who cant relate to this? And if you cant, are you going to tell everyone there is no point trying?

Sridhar:

``If I start boasting about my family income saale income tax wale aah jayenge.``

Dude, this may be quite true. He claims his dad is in the IAS, and if he is as corrupt as the average IAS bureaucrat, he must be leaving American doctors far behind. :)