Archive: 2009 September / Headspace

Archive for September, 2009

Anecdote: Alexander von Humboldt

September 28th, 2009 elsewhere

[W]hen the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt told a friend, a Parisian doctor, that he wanted to meet a certifiable lunatic, he was invited to the doctor’s home for supper. A few days later, Humboldt found himself placed at the dinner table between two men. One was polite, somewhat reserved, and didn’t go in for small talk. The other, dressed in ill-matched clothes, chattered away on every subject under the sun, gesticulating wildly, while making horrible faces. When the meal was over, Humboldt turned to his host. “I like your lunatic,” he whispered, indicating the talkative man. The host frowned. “But it’s the other one who’s the lunatic. The man you’re pointing to is Monsieur Honoré de Balzac.”

From “When Writers Speak“

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

September 22nd, 2009 books

It amused me to think that Anna Wulf’s notebooks are born out of the desire not to exclude. It reminded me of a journal article I read a long time ago, written by an accountant, asserting that accounting systems are designed by men. She explains that by virtue of the shape of their reproductive systems, a man classifies by defining what belongs to his body, what is excluded from his body, whereas a woman would find a way to include everything. I wonder if a ordinary women reader might have an easier time ‘getting’ the book. The book is not an easy read for me mainly because it is too brilliant. Every other page, I was stopping to admire how brilliant it is and it can be distracting. I think an attempt to read it all in one go, would result in whatever is the book-reading equivalent of throwing up after having pigged out at a buffet. While reading the book, I toyed with the idea of reading the discussions on the online book reading project at goldennotebook.org/blog and goldennotebook.org/forum. I’m glad I didn’t do it. The blog talked about the book whether or not it is feminist, which I didn’t quite understand. She’s a single woman having some particular challenges and viewpoints doesn’t mean she’s representative of the challenges or viewpoints of women in general.

It’s not just the internal conflict I enjoy. The book draws the reader intimately into the conversations between Anna and everyone else around her – Tommy, Molly, Michael, Saul, Richard, Marion. The conversation were analytical, illuminating, hurtful but did not cleave apart their affections for each other. The frankness impressed me and I’m fascinated because all honest conversations I’ve heard inevitability result in an apology and/or awkwardness. Anna, an intelligent woman, the most analytical, most sensitive character I’ve met, thinks through every thought, every encounter and tries to compartmentalise each thought, every experience and achieves this without falling into melancholy. Anna Wulf (Lessing) considers her behaviour schizophrenic, and presents an illusion of her schizophrenia at the end of the book where she covers an entire wall with newspaper cutouts. Perhaps that I live in times when every article is tagged, clipped/quoted or linked, I think she’s too hard on herself.

While I cannot identify with the character, nor do I particularly want to be her, I am marking every other page on the book, thinking “how true” or “brilliant”. Reading Lessing is like going to Redang for the first time. Everything is beautiful – even the scary/nasty parts – because you can see how very clear everything is. Only at the end of the book that I realise the book was written in the 60s. I came to this book only because the reprint was placed prominently (cover facing out) and I was looking for a new author to follow. I have never before heard of Doris Lessing – well, other than reading on BBG Muse, while waiting for data, she had won something a prize. Knowing it was written 40 yrs ago was surreal. I could not believe she could, in the heat of the events, consider these matters so clearly. The only rational explanation is this: Lessing lived in a parallel universe where everything is terrible and nasty so she’s come to warn us about it. She has access to a time machine which has a paradox resolving device to compute the right moment to insert her presence without creating problems. Lessing having observed everything, took her knowledge of the world she came from and inserted herself in the 60s to publish this book and lived on in our world since then.

Emotional Eating

September 22nd, 2009 popscience

A conversation this morning amongst colleagues on a newspaper became quite interesting as the debate went on. A young journo had approached some doctors for weight loss pills. A female doctor told the journo to skip one meal and have a daily coffee instead. I saw nothing wrong said that skipping a meal isn’t bad advice. I had heard on one of the science podcasts (Groks? In Conversation?) that calorie restriction (such as fasting) slows aging but colleagues were adamant that traditional advice such as exercise, eating better food ought to be dispensed. “But no one would die from skipping a meal,” I said. Yes, but as a doctor, this is not something that
should be said – it is not good advice. I tried to clarify, “So, the doctor’s advice to eat a meal lesser – is it wrong?”
It seemed that being a licensed doctor meant that advice such as skipping a meal is irresponsible because it is not traditional – what if something happened to the patient? At this point of the conversation, I was starting to find it humourous that there was general agreement that having one meal lesser doesn’t hurt anyone but it was still bad advice. It struck me that my colleague had earlier said eating better food (ie, not dieting). Perhaps hearing about calorie restriction was upsetting. This was getting quite interesting. I tried to push the conversation further. “I still don’t get it,” I said. “Nothing would happen if you skip a meal.” My colleague exasperated, said I had been brained washed, that it was unprofessional for a doctor to give such advice. (”What if the person fainted from following such advice?”) Unfortunately it was lunch and the conversation ended as we all separately rush to feed ourselves.

Dieters know from experience that it is impossible to diet with people knowing you’re dieting. Everyone would always encourage eating more, rather than eating less. (”Don’t be silly, you’re fine.”) Some time ago, I came across an article suggesting that calorie loading induces brain happiness (this is in mice for now but I’m positive it applies to humans too). What if, this knowledge of calorie loading = happiness is ingrained in our minds since way back? This would explain why the idea of calorie restriction produces the empathy similar to letting a child crawling towards an open road. That is, all eating is emotional and thinking about not eating makes the brain think of torture.

Overheard

September 17th, 2009 Uncategorized

A Caucasian shouted back at a skinny chinese motorist in a quarrel: “I’m more Singaporean than you are!” I suppose it dumbfounded the motorist because he went on to make impolite inquiries after the man’s mother. The Caucasian was huge and looked like he could push off the motorist easy in an act of aggression. I was relieved that the light turned green and the motorist drove away shouting, at random, names of male and female genitalia in Hokkien.

‘Life Reeked With Joy’

September 15th, 2009 elsewhere

This is a brilliantly funny essay by Anders Henriksson compiled using decades of freshman history papers. I’m weeping with laughter putting together my favourite lines:

It is unfortunate that we do not have a medivel European laid out on a table before us, ready for dissection.
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Victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks.
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Italy, of course, was much closer to the rest of the world, thanks to northern Europe.
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Renaissance merchants were beautiful and almost lifelike.
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The Popes, of course, were usually Catholic. Monks went right on seeing themselves as worms.
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The German Emperor’s lower passage was blocked by the French for years and years.
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If [Louis XIV] didn’t like someone, he sent them to the gallows to row for the rest of their lives.
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Vauban was the royal minister of flirtation.
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Russian nobles wore clothes only to humour Peter the Great.
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Napoleon was ill with bladder problems and was very tense and unrestrained.
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History, a record of things left behind by past generations, started in 1815.
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The middle class was tired and needed a rest.
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Nationalism aided Itally because nationalism is the growth of an army. We can see that nationalism succeeded for Itally because of France’s big army.
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Wagner was master of music, and people did not forget his contribution. When he died they labled his seat “historical.” Other countries had their own artists. France had Chekhov.
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In 1937 Lenin revolted Russia.

RASHOMON (Theatre Practice)

September 13th, 2009 theatre

Rashomon is my favourite movie of all times. I was incredibly excited to learn Theatre Practice was going to put it up. When the weekend came around, the excitement had gone away and I was hoping for something light hearted. It had been a solemn week, brought about by watching District 9, which was very very good but disturbing, and finishing Diamond Age (the book made me pensive).

The play kept to the way it was presented in the movie but reduced dialogue to the barest minimum, using light, sound, and the actors’ bodies to express emotions. In that regard, it was extremely interesting theatre, extremely well executed. There were a lot of looks exchanged between the actors and I’m not sure if the body language would be too subtle for a person really far from the stage but I, three rows from the stage smack center – the best seats IMO – caught most of the glances and liked it.

As a performance it didn’t quite entertain. It is too slow paced and and the restrained dialogue made it difficult to show the different versions of the events. That gave it a pretentious arty flavour because it assumes everyone knows the story well enough to seek an alternate presentation of the story.

Although suspense died quite early on from the slowness, the light and sound were used to good effect to retain interest in the scenes. In particular, I thought the first telling of the killing of the samurai presented as a series of stills captured in light ingenious. The actors are a joy to watch – they are just bloody good at their job. I hope they win some theatre prize money to do more work. It is quite a pity it wasn’t played to a full house.

Almost Project 365

September 8th, 2009 PicturesTags: Project 365

20090908 Contentment

20090904 Rush Hour

Morality Play

September 8th, 2009 popscience

I like this article on the development of moral reasoning in children but I don’t know what to make of it. Surely, culture would shape the patterns rather than not?

“It’s remarkable how little cultural variation we have found in developmental patterns of moral reasoning,” says Helwig, who presented his results in Park City, Utah, at the recent annual meeting of the Jean Piaget Society.
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“Chinese adolescents showed desires for freedom, independence and individuality, much like teenagers of diverse ethnicities in the United States,” Chen says.
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Preferences for democratic rule develop everywhere, even if they are most obvious in Western societies, Helwig proposes. “Adolescents reflect on and evaluate forms of political organization in ways that go beyond official cultural ideologies,” he says.