China is always on the news. The country’s influence in our tiny island is not restricted to politics and economics; it’s far reaching and runs deep. Here is my story. “God made heaven and earth; the rest was Made in China”~ Unknown Genius Chinese phones do everything – the basics, web browsing, multimedia, TV, Radio, you-name-it-Chinese-phones-have-it. The phones are rather ...
The national curriculum very strictly – and rightly so – states that alphabets should be taught after the age of six, but most preschools, in their own unique ways, feed alphabets, numbers and everything that goes with it starting from the age of three. Right from day one in grade one there is segregation – to improvise, alphabet-knowers and alphabet-unknowers. ...
What's Read can never be Unread: What have we Accomplished?: tropicaltopix: Stories of the Wind writes, “Tamil Nationalist struggle has brought only pain, agony and losses. There is general agreement among different actors that local Tamils were far better off when the struggle began than now… The plain reality is that Tamils have achieved nothing through their… A response to ...
Much philosophical and scientific thought has been channelled into understanding the relationship between the brain and the mind. Currently, the predominant philosophical view of mind is a physicalist one, which assumes that everything will eventually be covered by a neuroscientific explanation. Before the advancement of science – neuroscience, in particular – however, the predominant philosophical view treated the brain ...
“We live in a world where a death of a favourite character in a TV series generates global outrage while the deaths of thousands of innocents go unnoticed. Killers roam unpunished.”
We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off. ~ Fight Club (1999)
James M Tour Group » Evolution/Creation: “In the last few years I have seen a saddening progression at several institutions. I have witnessed unfair treatment upon scientists that do not accept macroevolutionary arguments and for their having signed the above-referenced statement regarding the examination of Darwinism.” - James M Tour, T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry, Rice ...
““His activities in the union were a stigma, in the eyes of the new authorities. First they watched him, then they hounded him; finally, they fired him. Without a job and without hope of finding another, he began to decline. Pale and wan, he shambled through nights of insomnia and days of humiliation. He had pounded at many doors, suffered ...
“‘Talk to us about reconciliation Only if you first experience the anger of our dying Talk to us of reconciliation If your living is not the cause of our dying Talk to us about reconciliation Only if your words are not the product of your devious scheme to silence our struggle for freedom Talk to us about reconciliation only if ...
| Thanks TropicalTopix for this fascinating response (http://tropicaltopix.tumblr.com/post/47914185160/what-have-we-accomplished) to my post on the need for a reassessment of Tamil nationalist politics. I wish to clarify a few points. The point of my piece was to call for a reassessment of Tamil nationalist politics. The point was not to delegitimise the Tamil struggle. However, I reiterate my claim that the struggle ...
Good evening, London. Allow me first to apologize for this interruption. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of every day routine- the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition. I enjoy them as much as any bloke. But in the spirit of commemoration, thereby those important events of the past usually associated with someone’s death ...
‘Even if you fail son, make sure you get the highest marks in the class.’ ~ Typical Lankan Mother The system is a rat race. One big rat race. And its winners take all. This is dangerous because an overdose of competitiveness can undermine the purpose of studying. The system has defined success in such a manner that everyone just simply ...
“One might say science is the sum total of our knowledge of the universe, the great library of the known, but the practice of science happens at the border between the known and the unknown. Standing on the shoulders of giants, we peer into the darkness with eyes opened not in fear but in wonder.” - Brian Cox (via sciencesoup)
I remember this song. ‘Annan Ennada? Thambi Ennada?’ A song from the black-and-white days – a song that explores relationships in a materialistic world. A song Thilahan, my dear friend, sang for a school assembly, once upon a time. Indeed, so much has happened since then. Here I am an old man of sixty, relaxing under the shades of The ...
