stuff i have no answers to …

a) what is it about the male of the species and their fascination for nose snort, ear wax and other assorted stuff … a few days ago i overheard two building boys having an animated conversation about how much goo they sneezed out… JD tells me that it tastes salty …SR pointed me out a kid in a rick who was eating the damn thing .. i sometimes have very suzy like reactions to some very calvin like behavior from the men in my life!

b) are there less people in restaurants because of the smoking ban or because of the recession?

c) when will the market realise that credit card companies have too many ‘sub prime’ outstandings ?

d) if people vote for a famous name, is it still dynasty ?

e) are Hindi news channels, regional news channels ?

f) Is Hindi a regional language ?

g) Do Libertarians grow up to live in a Positive world? or would they be for ever stuck in their Normative universe.

h) If Communists took themselves less seriously, would they get more work done ? Starting point, sirs, the 1800’s are over, please move to the 1900’s. the next step would be to slowly move you to the current period 🙂

i) Is the Pakistani Government Retarded ? someone needs to tell them about letting out a rabid viper into their midst. We will survive him, will they ?

if you know the answers to this, do reply. would love a civil conversation about these and other mysteries in my universe 🙂

And Finally, if you are going to write in to tell me that the headline should read inexplicable 🙂 don’t bother 🙂 i changed it to unexplained for ease of understanding:)

16 thoughts on “Unexplained Stuff

  1. gajaja, v.nice, i like such posts. here are my answers:

    a. dunno 😀
    b. id say recession. they can always step out for a smoke, no?
    c. when there really are ‘too many’
    d. no. dynasty is when the reason for fame is name.
    e. depends on who they broadcast to and what topics they cover.
    f. no, after hinglish, it is the most widely understood language in india, that would make it national… thanks to bollywood imho.
    g. why only libertarians. ask that question of any school of thought.
    h. hehe, methinks the Commies took themselves a little tooo seriously.
    i. the courts let him out, no? anyway, they barely have civilian rule there, so pakistani government is an oxymoron. and their PM is a moron.

  2. 🙂 thank you

    e) by and large, region specific and sensational stuff. each linguistic channel caters to a specific TG. But, to be fair, even the English news channels are very myopic. There is Dehi, there is Bollywood and there is cricket and there is the BSE. the rest of India doesn’t exist. DD news on the other hand is fairly representative and not bad

    f) the reason i ask is that watching Hindi and using Hindi are very different things. With education, my prediction is that it will be used less and less. English, Indian English, is creeping into everyone’s vocabulary – from Ministers to drivers …..

    g) coz they are usually brighter than normal, and it seems such a waste of talent :), The state shouldn’t exist. I agree. but it does. so get a grip of it, and move on :). All thesis and hypothesis cannot be based on an impractical concept. It’s as weird, for me, as someone quoting a religious text to defend any of their arguments. And, it is kind of embarrassing too – coz i flirted with the philosophy for a brief period of my misspent infancy 🙂

  3. my answers to select questions:

    a. no idea, but watching my sons at play, i am inclined to think that the y chromosome does carry certain suilline behavioural tendencies. (this is a corroboration, not an explanation.)

    d. yes – if it is the dynasty that made them famous, as opposed to their own merit. (this is usually the case, with perhaps a few exceptions though i can’t think of any off-hand.)

    f. yes – it is spoken in only some regions of the world, notably the northern and central parts of India. it is definitely not a global language, and tries hard to be a national language in india on account of the large number of indians (i.e. in highly populous states) speaking it.

    g. did you mean “do idealists grow up to live in a realistic world? … etc”? i am not sure i follow how libertarianism fits in with normative vs positive. imho, there is as much about libertarianism that makes it normative, as there is about authoritarianism that makes it so (think hitler, who had a normative vision of the world). also, there is as much about libertarianism that makes it positivistic, as there is about authoritarianism that makes it so.

    h. as i have been saying for quite a while now, we need a ‘real’ left. not because i want to vote for them, but only because they help in keeping the balance, by playing their role of off-setting the right and the centre. when our comrades – the current thought leaders of the so-called left – upgrade themselves intellectually and ideologically, we will have a real left. the entire leftist philosophy has been rendered obsolete, world-wide, since they became ideologically stagnant after the collapse of the soviet union. in fact, ideological stagnation and obsolescence probably caused the collapse in the first place.

    i. the pakistani govt. is very shrewd, very clever, very smart. its just that their motives and m.o. are not entirely visible, and are not what we might think they are. we should learn not to be fooled by them. they are far from dumb!

  4. hi Hemant
    A) – 🙂 my brothers used to gross me out by the descriptions. yes, i think that it has to either do with the y chromosome or the double x chromosomes 🙂

    f) there is a post floating in my brain – on how Hindi has to adapt or die. make it simpler – not the highly sanskritised stuff that is taught in schools, but more the spoken language. for a language to be regional, or national or global – it needs to be accessible by all. give you an example, look at how many variations of English – accents, grammar, dialect – sit comfortably, side by side on BBC – and ask if Hindi is flexible enough for that?

    g) All other political philosophies have their roots in the desire for power and the changing of the system to their way. The libertarians, imho, don’t want power. They don’t want the state. They just want to be left alone to do their own thing and everyone else to be accorded the same. Laudable as it is, it is impractical. You can’t implement it. And if you did, there would be chaos – most people want rules 🙁
    normative is what the world ought to be, and positive is what it is .
    I don’t have an issue with Libertarinism, the way i have with some other political philosophies – but, i just find it nicely quaint 🙂

    h) Communism has been stagnant since the Russian Revolution transferred power from one set of oligarchs to another 🙁 .

    i) i disagree. the reason for that is that the Taliban and its variants have terrorised the Pakistani people, more than they have impacted us. the Pak Government would be sensible to reign them in – unless they want to be ruled by them. i agree with the fooling part !
    i am not sure anymore that we should have cultural/sporting ties – and it really breaks my heart to say that – i have friends there ! but, we have reached a stage, where disapproval has to be more than words, and less than war 🙂

  5. I think we could easily converge on most of the point / counter-point we’ve exchanged so far, save for item (g). I have 2 issues with (g) and in my earlier comment I raised only one, which was really splitting hairs on what being libertarian really means. And let me close that before I move on to the other issue which I haven’t yet raised.

    You were a certain kind of libertarian (the kind that is against the very concept of a state, no matter how good or bad the state is). And as you grew up you realized it was pointless to think of how there ought to be no state. You accepted reality i.e. there will always be a state. So now you find that kind of thinking quaint. I happen to be a different kind of libertarian (the kind that accepts a state as long as it is not authoritarian). I differentiate between anarchy (the complete absence of a governing body and of rules) and ‘my’ kind of libertarianism which requires an authority (with democratically defined rules) to govern it, but one which is not authoritarian / fascist in its approach to rules and ruling. I’ve done my growing up, and I continue to be that. Now I am only growing. Among other things, in girth and in age 🙂

    The other issue I had is about ‘growing up’ versus ‘giving up the fight’. Take the same sentence that you composed in item (g) and replace the hyperlinked / underlined words with some others and see what you get (imagine that we’re back in time to about 50-70 years ago):
    Example #1 “Do feminists grow up to live in a male dominated world? or would they be for ever stuck in their gender-equality universe.”
    Example #2 “Do anti-apartheid activists grow up to live in a white-man dominated world? or would they be for ever stuck in their non-racial discriminatory universe.”
    Example #3 “Do Indian freedom fighters grow up to live in a British colony? or would they be for ever stuck in their delusions of independence”
    There could be many more examples, but this is already getting to be a very lengthy comment 🙂

    There are certain things … ideals, if you like … worth fighting for as I’m sure you’d agree. Reconciliation with existing reality is as much ‘growing up’ as it is ‘giving up’ – you choose which way you want to look at it. If it weren’t for the tenacity, resilience and persistence of some great people, the history of the world would’ve been different. Not as many men and women would’ve been as free as they are today. Not that we’re perfect in this regard (let’s say w.r.t. race and gender equality), but we’re better than our previous generations. And we wouldn’t have been here if that someone had said let me grow up and realize that [x] is here to stay.

    I hope that over time, the state (in general, world-wide) becomes less authoritarian (it could for example learn to treat its citizens as customers rather than as subjects) and, yes, I believe it “should” be that, in the normative sense. And I refuse to grow up if it means that I must give up this ideal, quaint as that might sound!

  6. there is one more area of convergence 🙂

    i don’t like an “in your face government” – let alone an authoritarian one.
    i will be happy if they took my taxes (not too much of them) – and did their job – without poking their nose in my personal life and personal freedoms.

    for me it is not an issue of ideals, but the problem that occurs when ideals become dogma ! and, I have hung out with enough socialists, libertarians, feminists, greens, environmentalists – the works. My problem arises when they become absolutists – my way is right, and the rest of the world is stupid types 🙂 .

    I admire people who abide by their beliefs, live by their ideals – and still are open about other people’s views . I run from those who want to drown me in a flurry of data, rhetoric and emotion :).

    there are always things worth fighting for. so long as you don’t fight that battle on dogma, but ideals, tolerance and just maybe a sense of humour.

    maybe, i am just a contrarian 🙂
    h

  7. While you were commenting on the last area of convergence, I was away, listening to Obama’s speech in Cairo. He’s made delivering great speeches a habit, so I won’t go on and on about it. Do check it out though. He talked about many things, but among them, he stressed the importance of a government recognising that it is there to serve the people. Talk about great minds thinking alike! 🙂

    I agree with you. Belief becomes dogma quite easily. As I once commented (as my facebook status) faith corrupts, and absolute faith corrupts absolutely. I remain a man of doubt. And as I’d observed in my “25 things”, it is only with the uncertain sceptics that I am comfortable, though I doubt I am one of them. So if I have to say that there’s something that I have ‘grown out’ of, it is the search for an absolute truth to believe absolutely in and then use it to bash all other claims to truth with. I guess that could be called a contrarian, but that has a negative connotation (as in ‘none of the above’), and I prefer to go with eclectic since that has a more inclusive and hence positive connotation (as in ‘all of the above’)

  8. 🙂

    i can live with eclectic, more than contrarian. 🙂

    and, in my first lecture to my students, i tell them – that we, the citizens of the Republic of India, have outsourced our power to the politicians. they aren’t your leaders, they are your representatives :).

  9. 1)making candles of earwax is a speciality.. grunt, grunt…

    2)Because eating in is the new eating out ala – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1189047/Is-sleep-new-sex-Yes-Yes-Yezzzzzz.html
    3) No, really?
    4) If it is only for a name, then yes.
    5) Regional as long as southies reject the (supposed)superiority of hindi
    6) See point 5, but that is slowly changing with immigration into the south
    7) Why would you want us to? Leave us be, go away and mind your own business :p
    8)No commies will never get anything done
    ” The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

    9)No, they aren’t retarded, We Indians are retarded in believing we can somehow get them to behave by giving them dossiers of files that are in triplicate and transcribed in urdu and arabic for their convenience

  10. a) Dunno; we have 2 girls. Though, it must be said the younger one does sometimes exhibit this disgusting behaviour.

    b) Recession

    c) When will the stock market enter into another free fall? Answer me that one 🙂

    d) yes, sure.

    e) Nope; Hindi is now sufficiently mainstream

    f) See above; it is a regional language with central tendencies :-); uniting many of us non-Hindi speakers through Hindi movies, television and so on. Also, I have noticed Hindi and English have begun to share space in most “mixed-marriage” households.

    g) Great exchange above between you and HyperActiveX.

    h) Ideologies need to eveolve with time; those that do, meet our needs a lot better. That goes with Communism as well as Capitalism.. or any ism that you can name.
    i) Pakistan has a government? Last I heard, they had either 1000 governments or none depending on who you believed.

  11. @shrek 🙂

    1) ugh 🙂
    2) 🙂
    3) i am waiting for it. the number of people who are using one card to pay off another, is not even funny.
    4) i agree.
    5) superiority of HIndi 🙂 why !! mr. raj thackeray will have words with you on that :). Regional because of what they cover, and the audience that they cater to!.
    6) it is not about northies and southies, westies and easties. it is about use in all aspects of life – including work. Hindi as we know it is too rigid to be lingua india 🙂 if Hindi was mumbaiyah – it may have been! but, it is going the Urdu way – very formal, very rule bound. if you see hindi films now, they use more english than ever befroe – because it is difficult to communicate to the audience using Hindi.

    7) 🙂 🙂

    8) the communists scare me, more than any other lot except for hard core religious fundamentalists. did you read about how they botched up the relief & rehab in West Bengal

    8) 🙁 . i don’t know what bothered me more – Pakistan releasing that mass murderer or India playing cricket with them on the same day. why are we even bothering ?

    h

  12. @ Anindiya

    a) hopefully she will grow out of it!
    b) what recession 🙂
    c) if 40% of the congress or BJP defect to the Communists. tho’ i expect it to drop after the budget

    f) most mixed marriages i know, use english – with a smattering of their native tongues. … :)but, i guess we know different people 🙂 – and it is the difference between mumbai & delhi
    g) yup it was fun 🙂
    h) yes. true.
    i) if it wasn’t so true, it would be funny. but, that it is, it is scary – given that we are next door !!

  13. @ Harini
    a) We hope so too! Girls, you know 🙂
    c) I just sold a substantial part of my portfolio; I guess I do not have your stomach to hold on till the budget.
    f) difference between Delhi and Mumbai… can I almost hear a sniff 🙂 ?
    Ah well, vive la difference!

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