Lupine Introspection

You will be my ain true love - Sting

2011-03-23T08:39:00.000-07:00

You'll walk unscathed through musket fire,
No ploughman's blade will cut thee down,
No cutless wound will mark thy face

And you will be my ain true love,
And you will be my ain true love

And as you walk through death's dark veil,
The cannon's thunder can't prevail,
And those who hunt thee down will fail,

And you will be my ain true love,
And you will be my ain true love.

Asleep inside the cannon's mouth,
The captain cries, "Here comes the rout,"
They'll seek to find me north and south,

I've gone to find my ain true love.

The field is cut and bleeds to red.
The cannon balls fly round my head,
The infirmary man may count me dead,

When I've gone to find my ain true love,
I've gone to find my ain true love.

"Will" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

2011-03-06T07:10:00.001-08:00

There is no chance, no destiny, no fate,
Can circumvent or hinder or control
The firm resolve of a determined soul.
Gifts count for nothing; will alone is great;
All things give way before it, soon or late.
What obstacle can stay the mighty force
Of the sea-seeking river in its course,
Or cause the ascending orb of day to wait?
Each well-born soul must win what it deserves.
Let the fool prate of luck. The fortunate
Is he whose earnest purpose never swerves,
Whose slightest action or inaction serves
The one great aim. Why, even Death stands still,
And waits an hour sometimes for such a will.

2010-12-01T09:56:00.000-08:00

“I look at what I write so that I can see what I think.” - W.H. Auden

2010-11-17T05:45:00.001-08:00

“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” - Mark Twain

2010-06-21T16:12:00.000-07:00

We recall that blood was shed, first on one side, then the other, and that all sides make up the blood that flows in our veins. We, the inheritors of this city, are the descendants of Christians and Moors, of blacks and Jews, of Indians and Orientals, in short, of all races and creeds considered good, along with those that have been called bad. We shall leave to the ironic peace of their tombs those disturbed minds that not so long ago invented a Day of the Race for the Portuguese, and instead reclaim the magnificent mixing, not only of bloods but above all of cultures, that gave Portugal its foundation and has made it last to this day. -- Jose Saramago

"Good for the Poet Who ..." - Aleksandr Pushkin

2010-06-03T07:31:00.000-07:00

Good for the poet who applies
His art in royal chambers’ splendor.
Of tears and laughter crafty vendor
Adding some truth to many lies,
He tickles the sated taste of lords
For more greatness and awards.
And decorates all their feasts,
Receiving clever praise as fees ...
But, by the doors, so tall and stout —
On sides of stables and backyards —
The people, haunted by the guards,
Hark to this poet in a crowd.

2010-04-15T08:18:00.001-07:00

''The short story is a minor art form that in the hands of a very few practitioners becomes major art." - Joyce Carol Oates

2010-04-13T08:36:00.000-07:00

"History counts its skeletons in round numbers." - Wislawa Szymborska

2010-02-08T16:43:00.000-08:00

“You don’t ever have to say anything,” he says. “Always remember that. Many’s the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing.”
- Foster by Claire Keegan

2010-01-26T15:18:00.000-08:00

"She poured all the force of her eyes into his, and he came back to her. The magic held." - The Enchantress of Florence, Salman Rushdie

2010-01-12T15:03:00.001-08:00

"Kindness lifts a person up from the ground."
- Ethiopian proverb

2010-01-12T13:14:00.000-08:00

“[Mr. X] will never understand what women want. What do they want? They eat green salad and drink human blood.”
- Saul Bellow

2009-12-29T10:24:00.001-08:00

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair

Fire & Ice - Robert Frost

2009-12-29T10:23:00.000-08:00

Some say the world will end in fire;
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

"Invictus" - William Ernest Henley

2009-12-29T10:22:00.000-08:00

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

modelling clothes made by trafficking survivors at ABC Nepal, Katmandu

2009-09-17T11:45:00.000-07:00

kandy, sri lanka

2009-09-17T11:42:00.000-07:00

wailua falls, kauai, HI

2009-09-17T11:39:00.000-07:00

Attendance at Iraqi Classroom...

2007-05-23T15:19:00.000-07:00

2007-05-23T15:12:00.000-07:00

2006-12-12T08:59:00.000-08:00

Ian Botham: "Where were you last night?"
David Lloyd: "An oyster bar....apparently it puts lead in your pencil. I don't know about that. I think it only matters if you have got someone to write to."
Discussion held between David Lloyd and Ian Botham during the morning session of day two in the Adelaide Test.

Superman & Spiderman having an animated conversation on a quiet morn at the docks

2006-12-08T09:36:00.000-08:00

2006-10-27T22:06:00.000-07:00

Folie à deux (literally, "a madness shared by two") is a rare psychiatric syndrome in which a symptom of psychosis (particularly a paranoid or delusional belief) is transmitted from one individual to another. The same syndrome shared by more that one person may be called folie à trois, folie à quatre, folie à famille or even folie à plusieurs (madness of many). Recent psychiatric classifications refer to the syndrome as shared psychotic disorder (DSM-IV) (297.3) and induced delusional disorder (folie à deux) (F.24) in the ICD-10, although the research literature largely uses the original name.

2006-10-26T23:33:00.000-07:00

"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." - Diderot (1713- 1784)

comfortably comatose

2006-10-09T23:06:00.000-07:00

rich warm mocha swirling down my throat,
soft purr of cellphone in my pocket-
(excuse me, i have to take this one),

feel-good coldplay tunes playing
along the twinkling corridors of an airport,

pot pourri of chanel & dior smells downtown,
people saying "please" & "excuse me"
& no one bumps into you - they carefully circumnavigate,

warm, clean linen fresh out of the dryer,
hot showers in a steam of herbal essences,
wow! this new shaving cream does smell better!

an iraqi woman in black is wailing for her dead kid
in a prize-winning photo in my time magazine,
& i brush the milano cookie crumbs off the glossy page
to better see the lines on her careworn face

that starbucks girl is grinning again
with the trademark feverish hospitality,
yes, that's all for today, thank you,

no more of this please.

a couple of 24 hours ago- a lifetime ago-
i stepped in some human feces,
& smeared it off my sneaker on the edge of the pavement
on a street in calcutta,
as a naked kid & a dog with three legs
quietly watched my elaborate prudishness.

From "Emergency Sex (& Other Desperate Measures)" by Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait, and Andrew Thomson

2005-08-16T12:27:00.000-07:00

COMMENTARY BY A HARVARD LAW STUDENT ON HIS COLLEAGUES:
The downside is you have to spend thirteen hours a day for the rest of your life trapped in an office with a lawyer-man in a yellow polka dotted tie telling you what to do, then itemize what you did ....but its worth it for 90% of my class mates because it provides shelter for all that mirthless self-confidence. They know which firms are suitably elite, which pedigrees are appropriate to marry, which suburbs are worthy of their presence, which schools are deserving of their kids.

Israelis are a mix of North African, Levantine, and Eastern European, which inflames the politics but does amazing things for the women.

from "the Rubaiyyat" by Omar Khayyam

2005-07-06T12:50:00.000-07:00

7.
Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly- and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.

20.
Ah, my beloved, fill the Cup that clears
Today of past Regrets and future fears-
Tomorrow?- Why Tomorrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n Thousand Years.

23.
Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust descend;
Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,
Sans wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and - sans End!

24.
Alike for those who for Today prepare,
And those that after a Tomorrow stare,
A Muezzin from the Tower of Darkness cries
'Fools! your Reward is neither Here nor There!'

26.
Oh, come with old Khayyam, and leave the Wise
To talk; one thing is for certain, that Life flies;
One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.

27.
Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
About it and about ; but evermore
Came out by the same Door as in I went.

Sudhu Kalu

2005-07-06T12:40:00.000-07:00

Recently I met a lady at a dinner in Kandy who decided to describe to me the plethora of potential suitors for her precious daughter. Sipping daintily from a glass of mixed fruit juice she informed me of the criteria she used to dismiss her daughter’s various wooers. Being a woman who considered herself a Kandyan of good caste (or as my cousin says “a K.G.B. [Kandy Govi Buddhist] Agent”) she declared that Tamils, Muslims and Sinhalese of the non-Kandyan variant were out of the equation and had no chance of snagging her wonderful daughter.
Being a Kandyan myself I am well aware of the superiority complex that Kandyans suffer from when it comes to important matters such as marriage. So this lady’s prejudicial logic came as no surprise to me. However, what struck me the most was the story of how she dismissed one particular suitor who apparently did meet her prerequisites of class-caste-creed-etc., etc.
After she gave me a detailed description of the kind of high born family this strong candidate comes from, his educational credentials, the Intercooler that he drives and his house in Cinnamon Gardens, she leaned towards me with an inscrutable expression and said, “But we had to say no to the fellow.”
Bemused, I asked her what could possibly be wrong with him?
“Aiyo! Ei miniha kalui nei!”
I stared dumbfounded as the lady settled back in her chair with the satisfied demeanor of someone who had just made a crucial point that clinched a heated political debate. She slurped the last of her mixed fruit drink as I floundered for something intelligent to say.
This view of a hierarchy of desirability based on skin color, like the other prejudices in my society, is not a strange concept to me. However, in light of my recent exposure to American society where skin color is a very touchy subject in the prevalent movement of political correctness, this lady’s comment took an additional meaning. It made me question why the Kandyan Sinhalese, after sifting out the rest of the world based on race, ethnicity, caste and geographic location (“he’s a good person, habai down-south nei!”), also make the additional, more subtle discrimination between the sudhu and kalu Sinhalaya.
Indeed this preference for the pale skin is not an issue that is limited to the situation of marriage among Kandyans but is a topic that crops up in many instances in the everyday life of the Sri Lankan. For instance, when the birth of a child is announced, one of the first questions asked by those who have not yet seen the child is: “Baba sudhuidha?” No one would dare to ask “Baba kaluidha?” That would be too crass and a surefire recipe for a family feud.
The hegemonic image articulated by popular culture in this country also indicates that the pale skin is the more acceptable physical form. Often the movie/teledrama heroes and heroines are fair skinned- invariably fairer than the villain. The popularity of the Indian lotion “Fair & Lovely” is another indication of the attempts at attaining this seemingly pre-eminent look. It was both an amusing and sad day for me when I caught one of my classmates at Trinity applying this cream with the hope that the miraculous transformation that the product promises will bring him better fortunes with the girls.
So what is it about the pale skin that makes it so desirable? Why has the image of the “maha kalu Sinhalaya” fallen out of fashion?
Is it our habit of aping the Hindi movie culture that extols the virtue of the fair skinned North Indian image? Indeed it is inconceivable that Shah Rukh Khan would be so successful had he the complexion of MP John Amaratunga. Or do the roots of this social phenomenon run deeper into history-is it possibly a vestige of our colonial and neo-colonial mindsets that lauded the white man’s way of life? Or is it merely the universal human view that associates white with purity and black with the opposite. The pursuit of the answers to these questions promises a very interesting and revealing anthropological study.
Whatever the root causes of this mentality of the relative desirability of the fair skin maybe it is clear that it is a prominent feature in our culture. Indeed, even the language lends to this discrimination! Note the alliterative quality of the following phrases: “lassana sudhu”, “ketha kalu.” Each pair of adjectives seems to be in comfortable congruence when expressed in the vernacular. Thus, lexically, the descriptive words sudhu and kalu take on meanings that go beyond a mere description of color but also signify degrees of quality and goodness.
What is particularly troubling is the racial overtone that this color based discrimination sometimes takes. Once upon returning home from playing outside in the midday sun, a visiting relative commented on my appearance with great consternation thus: “Aiyo! Dhemala kollek wagei hondatama kalu wela!” While it is true that Tamils are generally darker skinned than the Sinhalese, to me, her comment connected the undesirability of being dark with being Tamil. Thus, this discriminatory practice of favoring the fairer skinned has implications that reach beyond the seemingly innocuous and laughable situation of a Kandyan woman rejecting her daughter’s Kandyan suitor because he is kalui. Indeed, it is a social outlook that is woven into the complex latticework of our society’s greater prejudices based on ethnicity, religion, caste etc.
Thus, this preference towards fair skin functions as just another factor that creates hierarchy and sustains separation in an already fractured society. The wide spectrum of complexion seen in Sri Lankans is a silent testimony to the rich, diverse ethnic histories that pervade this tiny island nation. It is a visual aspect of this country and its people that speaks of the harmonious multiculturalism that we yearn and pray for. For after all, we are all Sri Lankans and these sudhu-kalu differences are but skin deep.

from "Snow Falling on Cedars" by David Guterson

2005-05-10T11:49:00.000-07:00

She learned that her hair was utsukushii and that to cut it would be a form of heresy. It was a river of iridescent onyx- Mrs Shigemura described it in Japanese- the salient feature of her physical being, as prominent and extraordinary as baldness might have been in another girl of the same age. She had to learn that there were many ways to wear it- that she might tame it with pins or weave it in a thick plait hanging over one breast or knot it intricately at the nape of her neck or sweep it back in such a manner that the broad, smooth planes of her cheeks declared themselves. Mrs S. lifted Hatsue's hair in her palms and said its consistency reminded her of mercury and that Hatsue should learn how to play her hair lovingly, like a stringed musical instrument or a flute. Then she combed it down Hatsue's back until it lay opened like a fan and shimmered in unearthly black waves.

"Spoonerism"- from dictionary.com

2005-03-22T08:18:00.000-08:00

spoonerism \SPOO-nuh-riz-uhm\, noun: The transposition of usually initial sounds in a pair of words.

Some examples: * We all know what it is to have a half-warmed fish ["half-formed wish"] inside us. * The Lord is a shoving leopard ["loving shepherd"]. * It is kisstomary to cuss ["customary to kiss"] the bride. * Is the bean dizzy ["dean busy"]? * When the boys come back from France, we'll have the hags flung out ["flags hung out"]! * Let me sew you to your sheet ["show you to your seat"].

Spoonerism comes from the name of the Rev. William Archibald Spooner (1844-1930), a kindly but nervous Anglican clergyman and educationalist. All the above examples were committed by (or attributed to) him.

a thought on democracy

2005-03-15T06:57:00.000-08:00

"democracy in essence is a conservative arrangement. If all interests are represented, how can you make rapid and fundamental reforms?"
- Prof Jia Qingguo, Beijing Uni

from The crisis of Islam"- Bernard Lewis

2005-03-10T18:09:00.000-08:00

"The word revolution has been much misused in the modern Middle East, being applied to - or claimed for - many events which would more appropriately be designated by the French coup d'etat, the German Putsch, or the Spanish pronunciamiento. The political experience of the English speaking peoples, interestingly provides no equivalent term."

"Does this mean that Islam is a theocracy? In the sense that god is seen as the supreme sovereign, the answer would have to be yes indeed. In the sense of governement by a priesthood, most definitely not. The emergence of a priestly hierarchy and its assumption of ultimate authority in the state is a modern innovation and is a unique contribution of the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran to Islamic thought and practice."

de "La Civilization"

2005-03-02T18:58:00.000-08:00

tout, oui, tout est annihile par la voix de la mer. Seule subsiste la gigantesque melancolie del'outrefois, quand tout etait a commencer, tout a esperer. Naissance a soi et au monde

Rape Shield Law

2005-03-01T18:49:00.000-08:00

Limits the use of a victim's prior sexual history as an attempt to undermine the credibility of the victim's testimony.
1978- US Congress enacted Rule 412 of the Federal Rules of Evidence which declares that, evidence offered to prove the victim engaged in other sexual behavior, or evidence offered to prove any victim's sexual predisposition is inadmissible in any civil or criminal proceeding involving alleged sexual misconduct.
Argument for- safeguards victims from being humiliated and thus acts as an encouragement to report rapes.
Argument against- norms on sexual behavior more relaxed, therefore, in general, one stands to lose less if one's sexual record is brought up in public than was the case in the 70s. Therefore, this law is somewhat outdated. Also, it may hinder an accused rapist from a fair trial- cases where women have had a history of falsely accusing men of assault and rape- this info cannot be used in court.
The Kobe Bryant case brings to light the practicality of this law when a celebrity is involved. Everything is known about the alleged victim because of all the media coverage- thus, potential jurors are already prejudiced by all the hype in their faces.

from "Satanic Verses" by Rushdie

2005-03-01T18:40:00.000-08:00

He knew that his father had finally run hard enough and long enough to wear down the frontiers between the worlds, he had run clear out of his skin and into the arms of his (dead) wife, to whom he had proved, once and for all, the superiority of his love. Some migrants are happy to depart.

killer memories

2005-03-01T18:08:00.000-08:00

I am creating far too many memories, far too quickly. The nostalgia that will be triggered when I eventually sit down on some verandah and start reminiscing (should I smoke a pipe to complete the picture?) will be crushing, suffocating. I am scared of memory.

So what to do about it?
Avoid all retrospection? Constantly strive to replace the old memories with new, more glamorous ones? To push those ghostly loves and moments that nip and yap at my soul to the farthest corners of my known universe?

Seems like a (pathetic) temporary fix. For there they lie like dormant volcanoes, waiting to be unleashed by a random whiff of cologne or a tune or the slanted handwriting on a letter that I hold in my trembling fingers. Their potency is undiminished in their incognito stage.

Sometimes when I shut up, I hear them swirl around me, silent hound-like specters. They watch me with big beady eyes from the thick foliage as I bike down the gravel road through the woods in the gathering darkness. Crunch, crunch, creep, creep. They wait patiently for the slightest moment of vulnerability, for the slightest deviation from my purposeful path, to envelop me and cascade gleefully through my whole being. And I will shudder with the painful delight of nostalgia.

de "La Civilisation ma mere"

2005-02-16T19:20:00.000-08:00

"est-il vrai que l'homme parviendra finalement a dominer l'univers entier, a l'exception de lui-meme?"

parvenu- nouveaux riches

Of love and work as obsessions

2005-02-14T20:27:00.000-08:00

A DESCRIPTION OF SILAS MARNER'S WORKAHOLISM:
these too belonged to the past, from which his life had shrunk away, like a rivulet that has sunk far down from the grassy fringe of it s old breadth into a little shivering thread, that cuts a groove for itself in the barren sand-

this description sounds like any obsession- even the obsession of romantic, preferential love. We seem to telescope our universe down that one person for whom we would "move mountains, blah blah..." We forget our friends, our parents- indeed we scorn them now, they are mere hindrances in our desperate and fervid attempts at consuming and being consumed by the lover. While romantic, committed love may liberate us in many other ways, such as teaching us the amazing depths to which our love and desire for another may run, it sure does seem to be a powerful limiting force in other ways. So taking into account its rigid and blind exclusionary and preferential dimensions we need to question whether such a love is moral? Is the world better off because two people decided to minimalize their shared universe and shut out the rest, the suffering, the unloved?

misc

2005-02-14T19:54:00.000-08:00

cloy- satiate or sicken with an excess of richness or sweetness

portend- (v) foreshadow as omen
portent- (n) omen

leitmotif- recurrent theme

gloaming- (poetic) twilight

edema- dropsy

FROM SILAS MARNER: (quotes that reflect Silas' transformation from pious man to a miser)

Every man's work, pursued steadily, tends in this way to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of his life

When all purpose was gone, that habit of looking towards the money and grasping it with a sense of fulfilled effort made a loam that was deep enough for the seeds of desire

But Sally Oates's disease had raised her into a personage of much interest and importance among the neighbors- so sickeing that some derive their social stature from their own misfortunes; is it the pity that others afford them that give them this new found regard; or is it the fact that others can speak of them in hushed, excited tones, a subject of "interest" in an otherwise bored community?

A DESCRIPTION OF SWEATSHOP LABOR IN "SILAS MARNER":
The livelong day he sat in his loom, his ear filled with its monotony, his eyes bent close down on the slow growth of sameness in the brownish web, his muscles moving with such even repetition that their pause seemed almost as much a constraint as the holding of his breath

Our old fashioned country life had many different aspects, as all life must have when it is spread over a various surface, and breathed on variously by multitudinous currents, from the winds of heaven to the thoughts of men, which are for ever moving and crossing each other, with incalculable results.

critique of "The Satanic Verses"

2005-02-14T19:47:00.000-08:00

"For often the result of all this high wire virtuosity is a dulling of affect, much like the blurring created by rapid hopping between channels on television: nothing seems quite real"- NY Times, 1989

Is this symptomatic of third world writers, whose styles marked by magical realism, often suffer from the realism overwhelmed by the magic? Think "100 years of Solitude"...

G-8 Protest in Geneva

2005-02-11T20:35:00.000-08:00

When I first visited Geneva in September 2003 the first thing that struck me about the city was the widespread political graffiti. It was everywhere- office walls, makeshift construction walls, traffic signs, pedestrian crossings, subways...The messages that were expressed ranged from opposition to the G-8, to freeing Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, to bringing down the capitalist machine, to simply fucking Bush. More than an year later I discover that graffiti may not be the norm in this so called "international" city. Based on online news reports I conclude that the graffiti that I found were the telltale signs of huge protests that occured in Geneva several months prior to my arrival. These protests were spurred by the G-8 meeting in Evian, France in June 2003. According to the BBC, the French authorities had imposed air-tight security on the roads to and from Evian and the general region. So one of the closest and most prominent places that protestors could make themselves visible was across the border in Geneva, Suisse. They seemed to have been very well organized and the Swiss police were at a loss at containing them and had to resort to requesting police cadres from Germany. The presence of anarchist groups among the protestors were evident from the looting and vandalism that went on during that period. I saw further evidence of anarchist involvement in the scripts of the graffiti, which were often marked by the symbol of anarchists. The protests were apparently specifically levelled at the plutocrats of the world order, represented by the G-8, who in the protestors' eyes were hurting the developing countries. However, it seems that many more issues were tied in to this particular movement. An interesting comparison would be the events that transpired at the "Battle in Seattle" where save the turtles activists marched alongside Free Tibet activists. I hope to do more research into this phenomenon by maybe taking an infrapolitical approach to the issue.

misc

2005-02-11T20:17:00.000-08:00

"None can make you feel inferior without your consent"- Eleanor Roosevelt

tincture- a quality that pervades, or distinguishes; a trace or vestige eg. a tincture of condescension

Saga Rima won't walk over graves in a skirt ("always wear pants") because she fears the dead would look up it.
This is how she announced that she had a hysterectomy done: "I had my equipment taken out."

Several PD attorneys had the US constitution framed and mounted on their office walls. I've read a few sample law application statements where these kids apparently "worshipped" the constitution and have every intention of abiding by its tenets blah blah yakkity yak. Do these parties realize that they are celebrating a document that has no recognition or condemnation of slavery by its hallowed draftsmen except by stipulating that a slave is a mere three fifths of a human being? I wonder if an African American could look upon it with the same affection and respect? What other atrocities are legitimized by this document that is supposed to be the backbone of an exemplary American political culture that values liberty and equality?

from Silas Marner

2005-02-10T19:13:00.000-08:00

To them pain and mishap present a far wider range of possibilities than gladness and enjoyment: their imagination is almost barren of the images that feed desire and hope, but is all overgrown by recollections that are a perpetual pasture to fear.

averred- declared

pallid- pale from illness

But there might be such a thing as a man's soul being loose from his body, and going out and in, like a bird out of its nest and back.

But Silas was both sane and honest, though, as with many honest and fervent men, culture had not defined any channels for his sense of mystery, and so it spread itself over the propoer pathway of inquiry and knowledge.

colloquy- conversation

catalepsy- trance or seizure with loss of conciousness and sensation

SILAS' CRITIQUE OF HIS EARLY RELIGIOUS BEILIEFS:

There is no just god that governs the earth righteously, but a god of lies, that bears witness against the innocent.

To people accustomed to reason about the forms in which their religious feeling has incorporated itself, it is difficult to enter into that simple, untaught state of mind in which the form and the feeling have never been severed by an act of reflection

If there is an angel that records the sorrows of men as well as their sins, he knows how many and deep are the sorrows of that spring from false ideas for which no man is culpable.

IMMIGRANT FEELINGS:

Minds that have been unhinged from their old faith and love have perhaps sought this Lethean influence of exile in which the past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no memories.

Lethe- (Greek mythology) the river of forgetfulness, a condtion of forgetfulness, oblivion

Foucault's power/knowledge

2005-02-10T18:49:00.000-08:00

Foucault (writing in the early 70s) sees power (the ability to suppress, dominate) as established through discourse. What is discourse? This is comprised of practices obeying certain rules; the normalized worldview.
F says that human understanding exists in discourse.
Discourse becomes a tactical dimension of how power relations work between institutions, groups, and individuals.
Those who are in power have specialist knowledge – “the production of knowledge and the exercise of administrative power intertwine, and each begins to enhance the other.” Hence the power/knowledge complex- a flux made of power and knowledge that influence each other.
Thus, rules/laws(?) are power laden. There is no objective truth- we just give in to such authoritative concepts to weigh upon us and our actions.
“Disciplinary power” is comprised of the forces that make you buy into the hegemonic discourse. (e.g. the teaching of history in public schools, in a manner that is congruent with the government’s prescriptions)
But, this disciplinary power is not pervasive enough to keep insurrectionary discourse subjugated. Insurrectionary discourse? That which is not the mainstream- “local knowledge,” le savoir des gens, which is on the margin, such as Ayurvedic medicine in relief to the behemoth Western medicine. Gay marriage even. Something that is revolutionary, that challenges the status quo.

Terry Searches

2005-02-10T18:23:00.000-08:00

Terry V Ohio (1968)- A decision by US Supreme Court (8-1) ruling that police officers MAY perform searches WITHOUT probable cause but as long as the officer has a “reasonable suspicion” that the person stopped and searched is committing a crime or is about to. This court ruling means that the Fourth Amendment that guards against unreasonable searches and seizures is not violated by such Terry searches. The court held that “what the constitution forbids is not all searches and seizures, but unreasonable searches and seizures.”
This seems to lower the bar on restraint shown by police officers in making searches. Reasonable suspicion is far, far less than probable cause. According to the ACLU, in practice, “reasonable suspicion” translates into either being black or living in a bad neighborhood.