Bear Hug

This week I got good news. I am officially a member of an elite club comprising of one million four hundred thousand Canadians.

We are The Insomniacs.

I am wondering, though, why I should suffer from sleep deprivation. Macbeth admitted that he had sleep issues. But then it probably was his conscience telling him that sleep deprivation is the direct result of murdering innocent people. I have not murdered anyone, though often I had been tempted to do so, especially Deans and Directors—and a few actors too.

In any event, the fact of the matter is that I suffer from lack of sleep. The body produces what is called serotonin, a neurotransmitter that creates a feeling of calm and converts into melatonin, a hormone that helps regulate sleep. Obviously I am not getting enough serotonin.

One of the time honored ways of combating insomnia is that you count sheep. The logic, perhaps, is that if you engage in a meaningless activity, it might induce sleep.

Being desperate I tried this remedy until I ran out of numbers. Then I thought that Eastern medicos might have a solution. And they did. In addition to recommending various concoctions (valerian drops, for example) the most practical suggestion was to get some coconut oil, warm it and rub if on the soles of the feet and the top of the head. Messed up the pillow slips and bed sheets, that was all. Made the floors slippery too.

I wondered if celebrities had the same problem. Research showed that a lot of them do or did. Margaret Thatcher, Marilyn Monroe and George Clooney, for example. Napoleon also could not get a decent night’s sleep. That was probably because he had chronic dyspepsia. However, he could sleep while on horseback. But history is silent on whether he slept while the horse was tethered or was galloping.

I would have tried it, but I don’t own a horse.

Anyway, I did what all people do: seek medical help. But I am afraid the medications have not helped me very much.  I almost gave up. I say ‘almost’ because quite accidentally I found out that there is help for insomniacs.

If Maclean’s (February 1, 2016) is to be believed, all one needs is a weighted blanket. It is a kind of quilt filled with plastic pellets, weighing anywhere from 4 to 40 pounds and priced from $ 40 to $ 400.

Sleeping with a weighted blanket. This blanket is made by Hippo Hug, a Calgary based company. (Photograph by Kayla Chobotiuk)

Being a pensioner and having to be wary of where the cash goes, I wondered if I could save 400 dollars by getting someone to give me a hug every night around 11.30 or so. Sadly, I can’t get any volunteers. The only person available at that time of the night is the concierge, but he is a skinny fellow, and what I need is a person with a lot of poundage. Interestingly the company that makes these blankets in Canada is a Calgary based outfit called Hippo Hug Inc.

The challenge is to determine the weight of the ‘hippo’. I have a suspicion that in my physical condition I would not be able to wriggle out of a 40 pound blanket to answer calls of nature at night, assuming I have the strength to pull it over me in the first place.

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In 1990, I was a student at NYU, and one day, I was having a quiet cup of coffee in the cafeteria in the main library. I was alone. A few minutes later a pleasant faced man in rolled up shirt sleeves came by with a cup of coffee in his hand and asked if he could join me. He was in his early sixties, I thought.

He sat down, put his hand out and said, “John Brademas. I am the President of the university.”

For a moment I was quite flustered. I am not quite sure why he picked me among the few dozen people in the cafeteria. Possibly he thought that I was a novelty. There were many blacks and Chinese at the U, but I had not seen too many South Asians.

We had a long conversation. Among other things he said that he had visited India as a member of a Congressional delegation. He especially remembered Kerala, my home state. In response to my surprised look he said that he was a democratic congressman from Indiana for 21 years or so. When he was swept out of office during the Reagan landslide, he lobbied hard for the NYU job.

He was the President from 1981 to 1992.

Robert McFadden wrote in the New York Times, “ Looking collegiate in tweeds and sweaters, displaying boundless energy, Mr Brademas plunged into meetings with deans, trustees, faculty members and students to learn NYU’s strengths and weaknesses……By the end of his tenure he had raised $800 million for NYU and nearly doubled its endowment to $540 million. He had recruited top scholars from around the country to join the faculty, added new fields of study, like the Onassis Center for Hellenic Studies, enlarged the campus and added 11 resident halls. He had also established NYU study programs in Cyprus, Egypt, France, Israel and Japan.”

As an aside, though, I wonder how he could ever find a particular file or paper from the mess on his desk!

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Did You Know?

China has the prototype of a bus that will drive over cars on the road?  Go to the link below and watch the 1 minute video….it is well worth watching!

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-36390419

This is yet another attempt to reduce horrendous traffic jams.

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NUMBERS.

$5 billion. The amount Verizon paid Yahoo for buying the web pioneer. Yahoo has one billion active users every month. The sale is an ignominious end to CEO Marissa Mayer who will lose her job, but not before collecting a severance pay of $137 million! Her net worth is $500 million. Not bad for a 41 year old, is it?

Whatchamacallit

In Greek mythology, the underworld may be the land of the dead, but it has living botanical items like meadows with asphodel flowers (see picture below) and geographical features. I don’t know why this particular flower was picked instead of, say, roses or marigolds. Probably because the leaves are grey and, perhaps, blend in with the general atmosphere which has necessarily to be glum and drab.

There are also five rivers: Styx, Lethe, Acheron, Phlegethon and Cocytus. Of the five, Lethe is the river of oblivion. The dead would drink the waters of Lethe to forget their earthly existence.

I have a strong feeling that some of the waters of Lethe have seeped into the water system of our apartment because these days it seems as though I can’t find the right word when writing the weekly blog. The word is always “at the tip of my tongue” (or the finger) as I understand the term is. The problem is that it remains at the tip and does not go anywhere.

This condition is known as Lethologica derived from the Greek words Lethe (forgetfulness) and logos (word). I believe that the coinage of this term is attributed to psychologist Carl Jung, but the earliest clear record is in the edition of Dorland’s American Illustrated Medical Dictionary, where Lethologica is defined as the ‘inability to remember the proper word’.

I guess you are going to dismiss this as, “It is not a big deal; it happens to everyone”. Perhaps. “And we do find ways of dealing with the issue”, you might continue. Perhaps.

I recall when we first arrived in Canada in 1965, one of our friends (let us call him George) used to employ the word ‘whatchamacallit’ often. Coming straight from an environment where British English was employed, I was a bit puzzled by this word, which did not appear to be included in any dictionary—British or American. He would say something like, ‘I was looking for the whatchamacallit, but it was not available in the local stores, and so I had to go to Edmonton’. He also would use another strange word ‘thingamajig’. ‘I think you need to change the thingamajig for the lawn mower to start’. I believe he meant the sparkplug.

I have experienced others resorting to nonverbal tactics when the words adamantly remain at ‘the tip of the tongue’. For instance, a lot of people cannot remember my name. After all who can blame them? The name in the Federal and Provincial records is Parameswaran Sukumaran Nayar!!! How I have wished that my name was Jack Rogers or David Amies! (The name ‘Amies’, however, does have a problem. When I type the word, the autocorrect suggests the word ‘Amish’. In my case it is even more hilarious. Autocorrect has recommended ‘surrender’ or ‘cucumber’ whenever I type my name–the name that many people know me by).

But I digress.

When it is difficult to recall the name of a person, the speaker says something like, ‘What’s his name, you know, er, er’?” and snaps the fingers at the listener’s face several times as though to enjoin or encourage her/him to come up with the name.

Others use ‘you know what’. Friends used to say things like, “What you really need is one of those, the, er, er, you know what if you are on vacation in Cuba. No, pal, I don’t know what.

The brain does not function like a computer, where data is neatly stored away and retrieved at the press of a button. Recalling every word in our vocabulary is tough. There are over a million words (and counting) in the English language, but the active vocabulary used by an adult in speech and writing is much less than that, perhaps 50,000. There are many thousands buried in our passive vocabulary, words that we don’t use often. Such words are usually harder to recall at short notice because we have not formed the necessary links to other important bits of information that makes memories easily retrievable.

 

Did You Know?

That the tennis ball is more lethal than an assault rifle. At least it appeared so in Cleveland where the Republican convention concluded on Thursday. The police department had announced a list of 72 items that attendees were prohibited from bringing into the convention centre or indeed, in the environs of the Quicken Loans Arena. But one could carry an assault rifle (see picture). But air pistols were banned.

I can’t fathom this. I would have thought that a baseball could hurt if someone like Aroldis Chapman threw it at someone. I suppose a tennis ball could be a dangerous missile if a Raonic or an Isner hit it with a racket. A tennis racket is not in the list of prohibited items.

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$14.7 billion. The amount Volkswagen has agreed to pay to settle claims stemming from its diesel emissions cheating scandal in what would be the largest consumer class action settlements ever in the United States. Figures for other countries were not available at press.

60,000. The number of soldiers, policemen, judges, civil servants, teachers and academics who have been suspended, detained or placed under investigation since the coup d’état in Turkey. The President has also closed 1043 private schools, 1229 foundations and associations, 35 medical institutions, 19 unions and 15 universities. Their assets will be seized by the Treasury.

Demagoguery

dem·a·gogue
ˈdeməˌɡäɡ/
noun
A political leader who seeks support by appealing to popular desires and prejudices rather than by using rational argument.

On Monday the 11^th, President Obama went to Dallas to speak to a community that had been gripped by tragedy: a massacre by a black man of five white police officers. That was the eleventh time during his presidency that he had taken the role of ‘consoler- in- chief’.

Over the past few weeks gun violence in the US had escalated and people are asking, inter alia, why this is happening. When no satisfactory answer was forthcoming a man called Rudi Giuliani has come up with one. He said, “Black parents should teach children to be respectful of the police”. In other words black parents have to accept responsibility for the mass shootings. He also said that “Black lives matter” is a blatant racist slogan.

You did not know that, did you?

For those of you who don’t know this human being (?), Rudi (who has been married three times) was once the Mayor of New York.

Rudi fits the definition of ‘demagogue’ perfectly.

It appears that this past month there has been an epidemic of demagogues. I will skip the continuing saga involving the ultimate demagogue of this century, the orange haired wannabee President Donny Trump.

Across the pond, now retired Prime Minister David Cameron, succumbed to a self-inflicted wound, and that was to hold a referendum in Great Britain. The issue was, as you know, whether Britain should stay in the European Union or not. Three guys campaigned for what was called Brexit– the leader of the UKIP party, Nigel Farage, Lord Chancellor Michael Gove and Boris Johnson, ex-Mayor of London. Unashamedly they told a spate of lies to the people, the crassest one being that the EU takes away 350 million pounds every week and that money will be given to the National Health Service.

This was hogwash and the statement was later withdrawn.

The populace went to the polls and Brexit won by 52 per cent. Not a resounding victory by any means.

Farage and Johnson declared that Britain has become “independent”. It was only the day after that people got up to find that an enormous blunder had been committed; 4 million people signed a petition asking the government to hold another referendum. Meanwhile Gove did a Brutus routine and announced that he was going to compete with Boris for the leadership of the party to become the next Prime Minister.  Hurt by Gove’s treachery he withdrew his name from the leadership campaign. But Gove was not picked by the party. Farage found the heat in the kitchen too much to bear and being an intelligent man resigned as the leader of the UKIP.

In short, the rabble rousers, after bringing the referendum to fever pitch levels just quit. But the damage of their demagoguery had been done.

In The Atlantic of December 10, 2015, Megan Garber wrote in an article “What we talk about when we talk about demagogues”, “As an insult, certainly,–as an implicit invalidation of one’s political rhetoric, ‘demagogue’ is a very good word. It’s slightly gentler than “fascist” and slightly more dignified than “buffoon”; it’s extremely opinionated, and yet carries itself with the gravitas of informed objectivity. Uttered aloud, it forces one’s mouth to gape appropriately.”

If you think Garber was writing about Trump, you would be right.

She continues. “But what, actually, are people accusing Trump of when they accuse him of demagoguery? It is not simply biffery or buffoonery; it’s something more contextualized. More systemic. More dangerous. To call trump a “demagogue’ is to do two things at once: to dismiss him as a political candidate and amplify him as a political threat. This is appropriate; because the key thing about demagogues, historically, is that they have been people who, by the way of their very popularity, threaten the populace. They undermine the stability of “by the people” form of government particularly by turning “the people” against each other. They represent a danger not just to the electoral outcomes or political parties, but to democracy itself.”

There was a kind of gallows humor when Boris Johnson announced after Brexit that Britain has become independent. 52/48 is not an overwhelming voice of the voters. Scotland en bloc voted against. So did the borough of London. So did Northern Island. If these entities hold another referendum to separate from what is left of Great Britain because the future is more stable by being part of the EU, the demagogues would have done irreparable damage. If Trump, the latest star in the pantheon of demagogues is elected, the people who vote for him  would be the same kind in Britain who voted against being in the EU—those who are middle aged and older, afraid of strangers and believing that the British lion hasn’t lost its fangs, and that Britannia still rules the waves.  Those who elect Trump to power also would be middle aged and older white people afraid of immigrants. In a country where the wealthiest and most influential citizens are mostly white, Trump is voicing the bewilderment and anger of whites who do not feel at all powerful or privileged.

A moment of brief introspection would or should prove that the “beautiful” wall is not going to be built, 11 million immigrant workers are not going to be deported, a 45 per cent tariff is not going to be imposed on Chinese goods, people of the Muslim faith are not going to be stopped from entering the country, ISIS would never be defeated, Iran is not going to be subject to sanctions and the nuclear treaty, such as it is, is going to stay. Law and order are not going to be restored the day after inauguration.

But that is what the rabble wants to hear, and that is what they get from demagogues.

I started this with a demagogue. I will bookend the blog with another—Newt Gingrich.

On Monday he was one of the three on the shortlist for the position of VP. So he told one of the national TV stations that every single Muslim in the country should be interrogated and those who profess the Sharia law should be deported. On Thursday he learnt that he did not get picked after all, and so promptly retracted the statement and said that such an exercise might be impractical. His was a last minute desperate account to please Trump.

But I would not despair if I were Newt. I am quite sure he would find a place in the cabinet, most likely in charge of space exploration. During the last Presidential election he said that if he were elected, he would within four years colonize the moon.  This would be welcome news for the President because in one fell swoop he can get rid of 11 million Mexicans and save the effort of building the wall. And save billions of dollars.

Newt n(y)o͞ot
noun
A small, slender-bodied amphibian with lungs and a well-developed tail, typically spending its adult life on land and returning to water to breed.

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$61.2 billion. The approximate value of the worldwide market for Pokemon related products, including video games, trading cards, animated movies, television shows and licensed products as of May, 2016.

A Concert Among the Ruins of Palmyra?

Yes.

Last month the world famous Russian group, the Marlinsky Theater Orchestra played Bach among other works at Palmyra, Syria.

TOPSHOT – Russian conductor Valery Gergiev leads a concert in the amphitheatre of the ancient city of Palmyra on May 5, 2016. / AFP PHOTO / VASILY MAXIMOVVASILY MAXIMOV/AFP/Getty Images

Palmyra, if you recall, is an ancient Syrian city in ruins, which had been recently further destroyed by ISIS (Subtext August 29, 2015). In addition to dynamiting structures that have withstood the ravages of time, the terrorist thugs destroyed many iconic images and statues.

The picture above shows the ‘before and after’ views of couple of the landmarks, just to give you an example of the destruction unleashed by the ISIS soldiers. Sledge hammers were used to smash up sculptures.

So what was the Russian orchestra doing there? Putin, in an effort to prove that he was on the side of anti-terrorists, commissioned the orchestra in a military operation cloaked in secrecy.  First several helicopters emptied solders in full combat uniform. More helicopters brought nearly a hundred Moscow based foreign reporters. A few selected diplomats, Russian officials and UNESCO dignitaries were also shipped to the site. Andrew Kramer of the New York Times was not taking any risks; he wore a bullet proof vest!

The program included  Prokofiev’s Symphony # 1 and Bach’s Chaconne for solo violin.

Valery Gergiev said that he chose the pieces for their optimistic emotions to be played on the same stage where Islamic State militants last summer had filmed a video of a mass execution.

It is curiously percipient that the conductor would choose Bach because religious music and the glory of God were at the centre of his output. And he was conducting his orchestra where the destruction was perpetrated in God’s name!

Also the very same day Russian planes bombed a refugee camp killing 28 people.

In a video link from his vacation home, Putin thanked the musicians saying that the performance gave “hope for Palmyra’s revival as the heritage of the whole community,” whatever that means.

During the period of destruction, Professor Khaled al-Assad a renowned antiquities scholar in Syria and Director of Palmyra’s History Museum, secretly removed several priceless items to different safe locations. Since he refused to divulge the information, he was arrested. After three grueling three months in which the terrorist group kept the professor in their captivity for the alleged crimes of “ attending infidel conferences”, “worshipping idols”, “visiting Iran”, “having a brother in the Syrian Security Services” etc. The Shari’ah Courts found him guilty of treason and publicly executed him and his mutilated body was hung in the main square of the historic site.

In the picture above you see the Director beside a rare sarcophagus. All three faces were mutilated by the militants.

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Saudi Arabia’s top cleric has declared the playing of chess ‘forbidden’ calling it a waste of time and money and because it creates hatred between players.

In a fatwa issued in response to a question from a caller to a Saudi television show, Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Sheikh said that the game was “the work of Satan”, like alcohol, gambling, despite its long history in the Middle East. Chess is played across the Arab world.

Saudi Arabia follows an austere interpretation of Islam, prohibiting socializing between men and women who are not related and banning most forms of music. Though Saudis generally follow such rules in public, many do as they wish in their own homes or when travelling abroad.

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$206,307. Cost per hour of flying Obama’s Air Force One.

$ 400 million. Cost of the first Littoral Combat Ship delivered to the U S Navy, even though the Pentagon did not want it. In third world and developing countries that kind of pressure would be called ‘corruption’.Viva la pression (Long live lobbying)!

 

The Mystery of Master versus Mistress

In the history of the spoken word, it is not clear when man (includes woman) decided that two different words are necessary to distinguish the sexes while communicating. Personally I have failed to find any logic in this. If someone told me that a horse has given birth to a baby horse, it is unlikely that I surmise that a male horse did it.

But unfortunately we have separate words to define the sexes among human beings. In fact the traditional usage is downright insulting—politically incorrect, as the modern terminology goes. A bachelor was a term used in the medieval times to identify a young knight, a novice still under training for jousting and rescuing damsels in distress. But how a person who slogs through four years of university, putting up with inconsequential lectures and boring professors who induce sleep would be saddled with the appellation “bachelor of ———” is beyond comprehension. In this effort the sexes do not come into play. The title is the same for men and women. But move away from the halls of learning into the real world, the unmarried women became ‘spinsters’. I believe it was only a decade ago we chose to call them ‘bachelorettes’.

Another word that is causing a lot of trouble is ‘master’…derived from the Latin ‘magister’, it means chief, head, director or teacher. And if this person of authority happened to be a woman, she was conveniently called ‘mistress. I recall having a drawing master and a sewing mistress on staff when I was in the middle school. It was in the 1960’s that the term came to be applied to concubines.

In an interesting, albeit poorly written article called “Why do people still use the word mistress?” Jessica Bennett writes about the irrelevance of the word in the context in which we use the word these days.

Times Insider delivers behind-the-scenes insights from The New York Times. In this article, Jessica Bennett, who writes for The Times’s Style Section, provides a behind-the-scenes look at her experience writing a profile about Paula Broadwell, David Petraeus and the afterlife of a scandal, and about questions over language.

It was another story, about another woman and another label that prompted Paula Broadwell to email me a year ago. I was in Vancouver at the time, finishing up a profile of Monica Lewinsky, who gave a TedTalk about her struggle to overcome her own shame.

When Ms. Broadwell’s email appeared in my inbox, I knew I recognized her name but I couldn’t place it. I typed it into Google and immediately knew why she was emailing. “Ohhhhhhh,” I thought to myself. “That Paula Broadwell.”

Ms. Broadwell is the former lover, and biographer, of Gen. David Petraeus, once the director of the C.I.A. and the commander of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, who resigned in disgrace after it was revealed that he and Ms. Broadwell had had an affair. She is also a Harvard-trained counterterrorism expert, an accomplished athlete and an Army reservist. But most people don’t remember those things. Because, much like Ms. Lewinsky, Ms. Broadwell has been defined by the collection of seemingly scarlet letters that spell out “mistress.”

It’s a word for which there’s no male equivalent — something I hadn’t thought about until Ms. Broadwell pointed it out. When she got in touch, in March 2015, Ms. Broadwell’s name was back in the news: the result of Mr. Petraeus’s sentencing, in her hometown, on a misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified material. In article after article, Mr. Petraeus was called a “general,” a “former commander” and, as The Times put it, “the best-known military commander of his generation.” The same Times article referred to Ms. Broadwell as “the mistress.”

A photo from July 2011 shows Gen. David Petraeus with the author Paula Broadwell in Afghanistan.         (Credit,  International Security Assistance Force)

Ms. Broadwell complained to The Times’s then-public editor, Margaret Sullivan, who wrote a column about the word, and advised The Times to hasten its departure. But Ms. Broadwell’s plight had only begun. She told me she had reached out to Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, Norah O’Donnell and other female journalists she thought might help her expunge the word from their broadcasts. Inspired by her experience, she was working to found a non-profit organization focused on gender bias in the media.

As a student of language, I was sympathetic to her cause. As I am a feminist, the double standard apparent in the way she was characterized was clear: He was the revered general who made a grave mistake; she was a psycho homewrecker who, as many often reminded her, had “brought the general down.” Was her plight honorable or self-serving, or somewhere in between?

Ms. Broadwell and I began corresponding over several months. She forwarded me Google alerts, and updates on her non-profit. We met in New York when she was in town for a West Point reunion. For more than a year, we traded emails and text messages and phone calls: Did she want to speak publicly, would her lawyers allow it, and when? Was she ready to tell her story, and what was the best way for her to do it? Did she trust me to tell it?

Ms. Broadwell’s story had all the elements of a good, newsy profile, but it also highlighted something larger. For many years, I had noticed the way biased language crept into the pages of the publications I wrote for. I noticed it in the physical descriptions of female leaders, the questions asked of female sources (“How do you balance it all?”), in qualifications (“female comic”), or the things a reporter would choose to highlight in the first paragraph of an obituary.

Sometimes it was the tiniest things: the use of a male pronoun to describe a hypothetical involving an entrepreneur or business executive, when we know that women, too, can fill these roles (but too often don’t). Or it is “mistress,” as well as the battery of other words that were used to describe Ms. Broadwell: “shameless,” “self-promoter,” “curvaceous,” a femme fatale “seemingly immune to the notion of modesty” who “got her claws” into the general. (He, by contrast, was “the consummate gentleman and family man,” the “honorable” general who had “let his guard down.”)

Language is a diagnostic, the linguist Robin Lakoff once told me — it reflects the beliefs of a particular moment in time. And yet. As Ms. Sullivan noted, we are long past the era of Anne Boleyns and Cleopatras. Sometimes it takes a story to give outdated language a necessary kick out the door.

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$ 86 million The amount the U S Drug Enforcement Administration spent on a spy plane to be flown in Afghanistan, but it was never used. It remains in storage in the state of Delaware (see picture below).