Note, the word is homeland. Not home-state, not home-nation. Homeland. Our homes are specific, physical places on Earth, not mental constructs. Which of course makes a lot of sense, because our bonds are attachments are born of concrete memories, of specific places and people and occasions. Not, in the first instance, of some abstract notion of loyalty or duty to the abstract institution of the state or the abstract community of the nation.
Following similar logic, the word country originally referred merely to a piece of land, and only afterwards developed its political meanings. Maybe it's not such a bad placeholder word for places where neither 'nation' nor 'state' seems to fit very well.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Flâneur
What an interesting concept, don't you think? 'A flâneur is thus a person who walks the city in order to experience it', and, by extension, a complex composite of observer and participant. Or maybe Skinner put it better by describing him as a 'deliberately aimless pedestrian, unencumbered by any obligation or sense of urgency'. Wouldn't it be nice to live life as a flâneur?
三百六十行，行行出状元
' ‘I do what I do because it is the one and only thing that I can do at all well. ... ’
I am not suggesting that this is a defence which can be made by most people, since most people can do nothing at all well ... It is a tiny minority who can do something really well, and the number of men who can do two things well is negligible. If a man has any genuine talent he should be ready to make almost any sacrifice in order to cultivate it to the full.
This view was endorsed by Dr Johnson --
I am not suggesting that this is a defence which can be made by most people, since most people can do nothing at all well ... It is a tiny minority who can do something really well, and the number of men who can do two things well is negligible. If a man has any genuine talent he should be ready to make almost any sacrifice in order to cultivate it to the full.
This view was endorsed by Dr Johnson --
When I told him that I had been to see [his namesake] Johnson ride upon threeand similarly he would have applauded mountain climbers, channel swimmers, and blindfold chess-players. For my own part, I am entirely in sympathy with all such attempts at remarkable achievement. I feel some sympathy even with conjurors and ventriloquists and when Alekhine and Bradman set out to beat records, I am quite bitterly disappointed if they fail. And here both Dr Johnson and I find ourselves in agreement with the public. As W. J. Turner has said so truly, it is only the ‘highbrows’ (in the unpleasant sense) who do not admire the ‘real swells’. ' (GHH 67-9)
horses, he said ‘Such a man, sir, should be encouraged, for his performances
show the extent of the human powers ...’—
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Nexus
a) A link or tie, or b) a centre or core. See how important connections are in the grand scheme of things?
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Transition into new job
Not altogether smooth, really. But I think it's easing up now. Spots of the past week, recorded as handphone memos at odd times:
Not sure what to do, sense of uselessness
Just don't want to book in, wake up early, have to face the platoon and section the whole day. And my colleagues and the PC and the OC.
Damnit the highbeams are blinding me.
It's only as stressful as you make it out to be, really.
But it's a bit easier to work now that the recruits aren't so stunned and actually respond a bit. Discipline is still a problem though. Need to learn to start scolding and punishing soon ... unfortunately.
And yes, your voice is incredibly flat. After talking to the whole platoon for a while it becomes a downer even to yourself. Work on it, please.
Not sure what to do, sense of uselessness
Just don't want to book in, wake up early, have to face the platoon and section the whole day. And my colleagues and the PC and the OC.
Damnit the highbeams are blinding me.
It's only as stressful as you make it out to be, really.
But it's a bit easier to work now that the recruits aren't so stunned and actually respond a bit. Discipline is still a problem though. Need to learn to start scolding and punishing soon ... unfortunately.
And yes, your voice is incredibly flat. After talking to the whole platoon for a while it becomes a downer even to yourself. Work on it, please.
What actually happens during regimental duties.
I typed this out as a memo in my handphone while doing guard duty at Rocky Hill Camp on the seventh of this month:
One o'clock at training shed next to Zulu coy sitting and staring at a whiteboard in the darkness, waiting for the shift to end at two.
[My buddy was playing his PSP]
We were just observing the norm. Really.
One o'clock at training shed next to Zulu coy sitting and staring at a whiteboard in the darkness, waiting for the shift to end at two.
[My buddy was playing his PSP]
We were just observing the norm. Really.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Even if you don't like the System
'This appointment [at the composers' union, given by Stalin], coinciding with Stalin's campaign against “formalism” and “rootless cosmopolitans” proved as much a curse as a reward. Mr Khrennikov was only 35; his career was young. “I want to write music. What am I to do?” he asked Alexander Fadeev, the head of the writers' union, as both men waited for their special food parcels. "Connive,” replied Fadeev.
Mr Khrennikov did so. ... For all his rhetoric, he attended Prokofiev's funeral in 1953 and helped his first wife when she came out of prison. Though he publicly disliked the avant-garde music of Alfred Schnittke, he was among the first to help Schnittke when he suffered a stroke in 1985. And he was instrumental in inviting Igor Stravinsky to Russia in 1962.
He was part of a ruthless system; but he did not deliver up Jewish composers to Stalin's goons, and did not write negative references when the party demanded them. (Instead, he would say that the composer had been warned of the dangers of modernism, as if the lesson was already safely learned.) None of the composers he had charge of was killed; very few were arrested. Many, however, reported on him—for being influenced by his Jewish wife, Klara Vaks, and for sheltering Jews. But Stalin's approval gave him a certain freedom. Instead of writing hymns to his boss, like many of his peers, he made songs about the soft light in Moscow windows.
Having made himself comfortable within the regime, he extended these comforts to others. The Soviet Union looked after its artists well. Mr Khrennikov had a huge budget which was spent on building special apartments and dacha compounds for composers. The world he created behind the gates of the Ruza compound by the Moscow river, where among small lanes and woods “his” composers could find a strange, beguiling privacy, was much more tolerant than the country. The Western press called him a lackey and dictator when he died, but Russians, who knew him, did not.'
From the obituary of Soviet composer Tikhon Khrennikov in The Economist, August 30, 2007. The full text is available online (not entirely legally) in a forum here.
Mr Khrennikov did so. ... For all his rhetoric, he attended Prokofiev's funeral in 1953 and helped his first wife when she came out of prison. Though he publicly disliked the avant-garde music of Alfred Schnittke, he was among the first to help Schnittke when he suffered a stroke in 1985. And he was instrumental in inviting Igor Stravinsky to Russia in 1962.
He was part of a ruthless system; but he did not deliver up Jewish composers to Stalin's goons, and did not write negative references when the party demanded them. (Instead, he would say that the composer had been warned of the dangers of modernism, as if the lesson was already safely learned.) None of the composers he had charge of was killed; very few were arrested. Many, however, reported on him—for being influenced by his Jewish wife, Klara Vaks, and for sheltering Jews. But Stalin's approval gave him a certain freedom. Instead of writing hymns to his boss, like many of his peers, he made songs about the soft light in Moscow windows.
Having made himself comfortable within the regime, he extended these comforts to others. The Soviet Union looked after its artists well. Mr Khrennikov had a huge budget which was spent on building special apartments and dacha compounds for composers. The world he created behind the gates of the Ruza compound by the Moscow river, where among small lanes and woods “his” composers could find a strange, beguiling privacy, was much more tolerant than the country. The Western press called him a lackey and dictator when he died, but Russians, who knew him, did not.'
From the obituary of Soviet composer Tikhon Khrennikov in The Economist, August 30, 2007. The full text is available online (not entirely legally) in a forum here.
Petty motvations ...
... may well lead to something else.
Remember the case of the fugitive police sergeant? (The first item in this post) Now he's no longer a fugitive.
Now the whole thing seems to be less dramatic than it was first made out to be. Or actually, no, that's not too true. Only now the picture is more complete, and we are made aware of the possible role of the personal, more banal, motivations of the main characters involved. Thus Yang may have been encouraged to report the misdeeds of his superior as much to gain an one-up on him as to uphold justice, and his superior to retaliate more in response in this game of one-upsmanship than for motives dark and sinister.
Of course, in the final analysis, the misdeeds perpetuated by the superior might well lead to misery and suffering -- or less dramatically more petty lawlessness. And the public controversy over the Diary published online may, hopefully, lead to increased scrutiny of and transparency in the workings of the Chinese police. If the current outcry over melamine-tainted milk powder does not compeltely eclipse the subject, that is. Doesn't the whole episode remind you of Thomas Carlyle's dictum that history is mostly driven by individual actions? Or Hannah Arendt's banality of evil? Petty motivations drive individual actions which interact to produce significant social consequences and phenomena.
(Admission: both ideas got slightly twisted in the last sentence)
Remember the case of the fugitive police sergeant? (The first item in this post) Now he's no longer a fugitive.
Now the whole thing seems to be less dramatic than it was first made out to be. Or actually, no, that's not too true. Only now the picture is more complete, and we are made aware of the possible role of the personal, more banal, motivations of the main characters involved. Thus Yang may have been encouraged to report the misdeeds of his superior as much to gain an one-up on him as to uphold justice, and his superior to retaliate more in response in this game of one-upsmanship than for motives dark and sinister.
Of course, in the final analysis, the misdeeds perpetuated by the superior might well lead to misery and suffering -- or less dramatically more petty lawlessness. And the public controversy over the Diary published online may, hopefully, lead to increased scrutiny of and transparency in the workings of the Chinese police. If the current outcry over melamine-tainted milk powder does not compeltely eclipse the subject, that is. Doesn't the whole episode remind you of Thomas Carlyle's dictum that history is mostly driven by individual actions? Or Hannah Arendt's banality of evil? Petty motivations drive individual actions which interact to produce significant social consequences and phenomena.
(Admission: both ideas got slightly twisted in the last sentence)
Saturday, September 06, 2008
It ain't over until it's over.
The parents were wondering over the dinner-table the other day, 'What's wrong with Thailand again?' Well, nothing is wrong there again. Only that General Sonthi's coup did nothing to fix or alleviate the underlying structural tensions which created the first round of huge protests which ousted Thaksin. So now we have a second round of huge protests ... or rather, a continuation of the first round after the slight hiatus effected by the coup.
It must be painful for the country. To spend so long engaged in a heated argument within itself. Come on. Stop stalling and move forward already.
It must be painful for the country. To spend so long engaged in a heated argument within itself. Come on. Stop stalling and move forward already.
There are more things in Heaven and Earth ...
And today we bring you three of them, courtesy of Global Voices Online.
1. A fugitive sergeant's diary
(No, not referring to yours truly in anyway.)
Exciting. And a little unreal.
More later.
2. Can you believe that these things were built in the 1970s?
1. A fugitive sergeant's diary
(No, not referring to yours truly in anyway.)
Exciting. And a little unreal.
More later.
2. Can you believe that these things were built in the 1970s?
3. Are you addicted to instant noodles?
Then consider visiting the instant noodle museum in Osaka.
Sapir, Whorf, Chomsky and Bach
Messeiurs Sapir and Whorf gave us the thesis that language shapes our thinking. That thesis is often associated with, or forms the base for, the postulate that thinking is dependent on natural language, or that the brain actually does its thinking in English, or Chinese, or Arabic, and the scope of its thought is limited by the scope of the language.
Chomsky disagreed and posited that thought is not conducted in natural language, but in a sort of universal 'mentalese', an innate language of the brain. This would imply, inter alia, that thought is not restricted by language, but expands beyond it.
Now, listen to Bach's Goldberg Variations.
Don't you get the feeling that the music is speaking to you the listener, and clearly describing a state of mind or atmosphere, but that it is not quite possible, or at least very difficult, to nail down precisely what it is describing in words alone? As though it formed a description of the world that could communicate itself to the conscious mind without using language. It would seem to support Chomsky's opinion. Or maybe it's just me.
Chomsky disagreed and posited that thought is not conducted in natural language, but in a sort of universal 'mentalese', an innate language of the brain. This would imply, inter alia, that thought is not restricted by language, but expands beyond it.
Now, listen to Bach's Goldberg Variations.
Don't you get the feeling that the music is speaking to you the listener, and clearly describing a state of mind or atmosphere, but that it is not quite possible, or at least very difficult, to nail down precisely what it is describing in words alone? As though it formed a description of the world that could communicate itself to the conscious mind without using language. It would seem to support Chomsky's opinion. Or maybe it's just me.
A fortnight spent listening to Senior Personnel
Some of whom, of course, were better speakers than the others. The parts I remembered most vividly, nonetheless, were not necessarily presented by the best speakers. They were the real-life anecdotes which some of them sprinkled to underline their point. Some of them were really inspiring, even if they were not particularly well presented. Such as the Commando Encik who insisted on running a 100km ultramarathon despite suffering from food poisoning, and who eventually helped his team clinch second overall. They were all the more inspiring for having been real, for having the added dimension of sincerity as compared to all the dry and 'airy' theory that formed the bulk of the presentations.
The other strong impression I got was that all the theory and skills we were being taught were no more than common sense, only now put into a framework, given some structure. Neuro-Linguistic Programming, in particular, although that might have been because we were taught a simplified and somewhat bowdlerised version of that. Maybe that is what knowledge and wisdom are after all: only the conscious, systematic organisation of what we naturally know as common sense into frameworks and structures. Or maybe common sense is just a chimera. As Voltaire put it, 'On dit quelquefois: "Le sens commun est fort rare."' : 'Common sense is not so common'.
The other strong impression I got was that all the theory and skills we were being taught were no more than common sense, only now put into a framework, given some structure. Neuro-Linguistic Programming, in particular, although that might have been because we were taught a simplified and somewhat bowdlerised version of that. Maybe that is what knowledge and wisdom are after all: only the conscious, systematic organisation of what we naturally know as common sense into frameworks and structures. Or maybe common sense is just a chimera. As Voltaire put it, 'On dit quelquefois: "Le sens commun est fort rare."' : 'Common sense is not so common'.
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