Colonization and Post colonization are twin evils in the so called civilized times. During colonization criticizing the Empire was not possible. But in the postcolonial era the colonized is not spared. Personal freedom demands that a human being has the right to follow any religion and faith. According to social rights he has the right to social security, protection and participation in the cultural life of the community. But these fundamental rights were denied to the colonized and the post colonized. The writers in the post colonial period expose the cruelty and dehumanization ruthlessly practised on the colonized. The very means and ways by which the native was discredited become effective weapons to hit back at the colonizer. The native was demeaned as a ‘savage’, his land called ‘a dark continent’, his heart ‘heart of darkness’, his religion ‘barbarous’ and himself ‘a cannibal’. The post colonial writers use their cultural myths to prove the ignorance of the colonizer and his racial prejudice. They prove through their myths the greatness of their religion, the cosmic vision engendered by it, the possibility of rejuvenation inherent in it and the lesson of universal brotherhood advocated by it.

The writers aim at exploiting various techniques as myths, carnival, intertextuality, palimpsest, contrapuntal reading, symbol etc to help the reader see things from a new angle so as to question the official version of history, the so-called authenticity of the canon and the authority of intellectual hegemony exercised. The difference between the post-modern writer and the post colonial writer is that the former does it to promote nihilistic playfulness, whereas the post colonial writer is always conscious of the suffering undergone by the individuals; starting from concrete experience of pain he expresses his characters’ utter disorientation at the psychic level. The post colonial writing aims at rejuvenation of the wronged colonized and restoration of their prestige and identity.

Myths engender ageless wisdom. When a writer uses it creatively and dynamically, he invests them with fresh layers of meaning and interpretation which highlight the contemporary reality. Malinowski’s observation affirms this; “Myth contains germs of the future epic, romance and tragedy” and continues that it “finds itself in certain of its forms of subsequent literary elaboration” Myth and ritual in a primitive society are the sustaining forces both in normal times and crises. No wonder all the African writers seek recourse to myths for restoring the fragmented personality of their fellowmen and reclaiming the distorted faith in their cultural tradition. Soyinka as a great traditionalist uses myths as the core of all his writings whether they are poems, fiction or drama. Even in times of personal crisis during his imprisonment he could survive the “shock –disorientation techniques” of the “mind-butchers”(Mary T. David) only due to his reliance on mythic base, images and symbols. With the help of myth and rituals Soyinka brings to light the post-colonial agony in Nigeria. Soyinka revises the implication of the ancient myth and ritual sacrifices to suit his postcolonial orientation/focus by manipulating the ingrained equivocative power of these cultural specifics, wielding not only his poetic license but also his rights as a native for interpreting them.. In all his plays especially it is Ogun or Ogun surrogates who act out the common human predicament. Ogun is a minor God of the Yoruba pantheon whom Soyinka has elevated to a supremo, fabricating his artistic mythopoesis on and around. One or the other phase of Ogun;s life and his attributes are the seeds from which the play germinates.

Soyinka’s belief in the cosmic theatre, involving the mortal, the immortal and the unborn participants, separated just by the transitional abyss in between: their plights involving alienation, fragmentation, lack of being, and reassembling –all these and much more, find vent through his dramas. All these stages in the process of transformation are equated by Soyinka with the postcolonial struggle in Nigeria. The dissolution of sensibility due to displacement and the disruption of the sense of time led to the disenfranchisement of the “self” of the native resulting in the formation of the “other” which was an alien to him form the crux of his works. The task before him was to reclaim his “self”, the unmutilated part of it and arrive at a workable compromise with his “other”, to form a “realized self”. This is the only way out of the tight corner; the only way for survival. In almost all his plays, Ogun is the core of Soyinka’s mythopoesis. To augment this he uses specific myths and rituals in each play to suit the context of the play. The imagery and stage property too fortify this. In The Road, the time is the celebration of the Ogun festival; the Alegamo ritual is also going on. The Alegamo is the cult of flesh dissolution which ends up in earthing of energy. Ogun too is a blood – thirsty god, if not offered dog-meat he mould demand a heavier sacrifice. In the end, at the insistence of Professor, the main character in The Road, the “egungun”(a mask, worn by a dancer, strictly during a ritual performance) starts dancing; any casual or out of place performance was a sacrilege and a taboo. It is the dance of death which would end up with “earthing of energy” that is with death. The natives do their best to dissuade “Professor” from insisting on that; but he is adamant. The dance goes on and many die in the end as feared; surprisingly there is no trace of the “egungun” dancer; only his “raffia” is left on stage; he has been buried under ground as expected. The ritual is over; only then life can go on as usual. Till then there would be death – death by accidents. The road is a death trap, lying silent like a snake, killing the unwary. The unwary are the victims of the post-colonial era who get obliterated because of their naiveté.

The play is laid out at the transition phase of Nigeria. Death stalks the play; still it is not the end of life. Life springs anew from death, which is the post colonial solution to the upheavals caused by colonization and post colonization. Even the stage-properties are agents of death. The stage properties are the “bolekaja” (mammy wagon) turned “Aksident Store”, the spider reigning supreme in his web, with its predatoriness highlighted, as the post colonial monsters; the shack and the road all have suffered a displacement from useful and harmless to the sinister and evil. “Bolekaja” is for shifting the dead; it has become the cause of death, as accidents have been manouvered only to replenish it. Accidents before colonization were far and few between; transportation and transports (lorries and tankers) are the banes of colonization plaguing the lives of the colonized, pilfering their country’s wealth. The system that has been originated during the colonial days is given a run in the post-colonial days too; crushing down of the common man and exporting of natural resources, adding to the maladies of the people. Bad roads and tankers not in good condition complicate the problem. The spider is likened to the road awaiting the victims; the road is then equated to the snake that kills the unguarded. Professor is another post-colonial spill over; he is both the agent and victim of post colonial predicament. Professor and his quest share the inscrutability of Ogun and his search, sharing with the God his mysterious mythic quality. There crop some pertinent doubts in the readers’ minds, such as: What is Professor’s “real-self”? What is the “Word” he is searching for? Is it for “self-realization” or rejuvenation? Whatever the answer is Professor has searched for “Word” in all odd places yet fails to find it anywhere. The inherent ambiguity in the character of Professor and the object of his quest partake of the metaphysical ambience of myth itself which both represent.

Interrupted ritual captures exactly the condition of the paralyzed society. In Dance of the Forest and Strong Breed it is myth and ritual of the carrier chosen for annual cleansing; the hero is the carrier; in both he is forced to become the carrier, though they fall into their roles unwillingly, only by the end they reconcile to their lot. In Kongi’s Harvest it is the festival of the New Yam to be presented to the spiritual chief of the tribe done every year. In Death and King’s Horseman it is the ritual death of the Horseman of the community as demanded by the tribal custom for assuring the continuity of the race. In the Play of Giants there is no such replay of ancient myth; but the myth of the modern Governments run by the post-colonial monsters is exposed. In these plays there is an interruption in the process of the rituals; this bodes no good to the community; life can go on only after the successful completion of the ritual. Though there is no explicit interrupted ritual, as such in The Play of Giants, there is the carving of the stone going on similar to the carving of a totem during any traditional celebration of a festival. This does not get completed and the war breaks out interrupting its completion.

The locations too are restrictive and ominous helping one visualize the post colonial scenario only too powerfully. It is a claustrophobic atmosphere — the house on stilts or a closed room, the night club, the prison when it comes to buildings and when dealing with places it is the forest which is usually reserved for the non-humans. All these signify restriction of movement. No positive sign is indicated through these stage properties and symbols; they correspond to the arrest and cessation of activity corresponding to the stopped ritual

The plays have the myth of regeneration at the centre of their scheme. In all the plays the heroes are sons of the soil, remaining very close to the earth and pursuing the native tradition. Ms. Mary T. David affirms, that for Soyinka being earthed is the most important mode of being and his reiterated preference to be closed to the earth is the result of his belief is nature’s ‘life sustaining draughts’. (24)

In a few plays there is the replay of the vegetative myth which insists on the renewal of the lost vigour of the Earth through sacrifice. The Yoruba belief implicit in both the plays, namely Madmen and Specialist and Bacchae of Euripides is that, the Earth goddess, is polluted by shedding of blood; unnecessary shedding of blood (due to the civil war) is a sacrilege demanding costly rites of purification and atonement. Atonement in the real sense could never stop with the superficialities but should be accompanied with the change of heart. For a true post colonial individual this is very important and merits serving as the message of Soyinka. At the centre of Madman and Specialist is the violation of this taboo and earth demands expiation. One of those is purification through fire preformed by the Earth Mothers. The other is the sacrifice which the Old Man gratifies by getting killed in his son’s hands. Old Man played many roles; he is likened to Socrates; he is a healer by profession; he is a scape-goat. He remarks: “A part of me identifies with every human being” (M & S, 234). This is humanism preached by the so-called heathen religion. This is the real awakening that is expected of a native, post colonial individual, as against the materialistic and exploitating culture as propounded by the colonizer and his coteries. The return to the roots and the mythic tradition holds the promise of renewal. In Bacchae of Euripides, the need for the renewal of the earth is hinted at needed for the rejuvenation of the afflicted. Tiresias observes:” Perhaps ……Our life sustaining earth Demands ………a little more ……Sometimes a more than token offering for her own needful renewal.(BOE . 306).

At the centre of the play lies the kernel of regeneration and sacrifice reminding one about Soyinka’s Ogunian experience and exploits, the paradigm of post colonial rejuvenation both communal and aesthetic. Myth offers an understanding of time as continuous present, undermining linearity. Mythical time implies a recycling, a repetition and the possibility of rejuvenation, ushering in a cyclical scheme of time. Mircea Eliade points to the mythical and cyclical dimension of time by attributing archetypal meaning to worldly events (20); whereas the modern cultures prefer a linear view of time. By the ingenious use of myths not only the autonomy of the colonized culture is established but their freedom of expression is asserted.

Works Cited:

Soyinka Wole. Collected Plays: Vol.1, London, O.U.P., 1973. Collected Plays: Vol. 2, London, O.U.P., 1974.

Eliade, Mircea. The Myths of the Eternal Return. Trans. Williard R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974.

Ed.Gilbert, Helen, et al . “The Language of Resistance”; Post-Colonial Drama: Theory and Practice. Routledge, London 1966 (P 190)

Malinowski, “Myth in Primitive Mythology”, Magic, Science, Religion and Other Essays 1948. London: The Souvenir Press ,1982 .

Mary T. David, “Plinths ………… Against Unreason, Myth and Ritual in Soyinka’s Post Biafran Writings”, Indian Response to Africa Writing.

Poker Stars

WHAT IS MOBILE ELBOW?

The mobile elbow results from using the mobile for long hours. Called the ‘cubital tunnel syndrome’, it is also called cell phone elbow’. The problem occurs when the ulnar nerve, which runs across the elbow, down to the ring and little fingers, gets over-stretched and blood supply is restricted, sparked by holding a phone to the ear for long periods.

WHY DOES STEEL GLOW WHEN IT’S HOT?

Hot steel glows red when hot because its atoms vibrate with a lot of energy. The amount of energy varies in atoms re- sulting in a range of colours.

WHAT DOES JANUARY MEAN?

The original Roman calendar had 10 named months from March to December and two unnamed months during winter. These two months were named January and February by Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome circa 700 BC. January is named after Janus, the Roman ‘god of gates, doors and the beginnings’.

WHAT’S THE AAFBAU PRINCIPLE?

The physical and chemical properties of elements are determined by the atomic structure. This, in turn, is determined by electrons and the shells, sub-shells and orbitals they reside in. The rules of placing electrons within shells is known as the Aafbau principle, which originally means ‘building up’.

WHAT IS CHAPTER 11 BANKRUPTCIES IN THE US?

A case filed under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection is commonly referred to as a ‘reorganization or restructuring bankruptcy’. Chapter 11 is a part of the US Bankruptcy Code under which an insolvent company is allowed to reorganize and is not liquidated. It is not shut down and sold off.

WHY DOES THE JASMINE BLOOM ONLY AT NIGHT?

Like all other flowering plants, jasmine also produces a flower inducing hormone in its leaves when exposed to bright sunlight. This hormone is called florigen (flower-generating hormone) and it migrates from the leaves to flowering shoots during the day. It accumulates in the flowering shoots of the jasmine plant and induces flowering during the night.

WHAT IS A ROMAN CIRCUS?

It was an open air stadium used for public events in the Roman empire, empire. The events usually held in such a circus were chariot and horse races and performances commemorating historical events. The performance space would be rectangular or oval surrounded by several tiers of seats for spectators. The circus would be decorated with ornate columns, obelisks and statues. The first circus built in Rome was the Circus Maximus which also happened to be its largest.

WHAT DOES THE PHRASE ‘CHICKEN OUT’ MEAN?

To chicken out is to stop doing something because of fear or lose courage while doing something. Sometimes, it is also used to ask a person, “Are you chicken?” or even as “Jack chickened out…” The chicken is a timid bird, which also gave rise to ‘chicken-hearted’.

WHAT IS CONTACT SCRAPING?

Social networking has brought about a new trend called contact scraping, where an online company with access to a person’s mail account goes through the contact list and sends out an invitation to all to join the site. Once a person enters his/her credentials, like user name or password, the company sweeps through the contact list. The company gets free publicity and widens its user base, but could put the person concerned in an embarrassing and annoying situation, especially when there are friendly mails from strangers in return.

HOW ARE DEEMED UNIVERSITIES DIFFERENT FROM OTHERS?

Ordinary universities are officially approved by the University Grants Commission (UGC) of India as per the latter’s guidelines for the universities’ overall supervision and administration. ‘Deemed university’ is a term indicative of status of autonomy granted to high performing institutes and departments of various universities. Such status enables deemed universities not only full autonomy in setting course work, syllabus and research centres, but also allows it to set it’s own guidelines for admission, fee and instructions to students. Parent universities have no control over deemed universities in matters of overall administration.

WHY IS SEA WATER VERY HIGH IN SALT CONTENT?

The average salinity of sea water is about 3.5%. One cubic mile of sea water contains 166 million tonne of salt. The salts of the sea come from the breaking up of rocks and gradual wearing away of mountains releasing salts that are washed down by rainwater. It is estimated that more than 400 million tonne of dissolved salts are brought to the sea every year by 27,000 cubic km of water. The second source of salt is rocks beneath the ocean bed. There has been a constant slow addition of sea salinity due to evaporation from the ocean surface, combined by discharge from land.

WHAT IS A CHEMICAL BOND? HOW IS IT FORMED?

A chemical bond is one in which atoms of different or same elements combine to become stable. There are two types of chemical bonds —electro-valent bond and covalent bond. In an electrovalent bond, a metal donates an electron to a non-metal and forms the bond. Such bonds are very strong. A covalent bond is formed between non-metals only. These are easy to break.

IS RAIN WATER COMPLETELY PURE?

Rain water is considered the purest form of water. Impurities and salts present in water on earth are left behind during vaporisation by the sun. However, the rain water we receive on earth is not necessarily pure, as it brings down impurities and particles present in the atmosphere along with it.

WHAT IS ‘THE MAGIC OF SCHEHERAZADE’?

The Magic of Scheherazade is a game for the Nintendo Entertainment System released by Culture Brain in 1989. It is the translation of the 1987 Famicom game Arabian Dream Scheherazade. The game was innovative for its time, incorporating elements of adventure and RPG styles.

WHAT IS FUNEMPLOYMENT?

‘Funemployment’ came into being with the recession, when people began losing jobs. It means unemployed individuals making use of the break to enjoy their free time — travel, take up physical activity and have a good time but at little cost. They may not have been able to do this earlier. The funemployed are young people who have few responsibilities and commitments and can afford a break. They also use the time to find another job, but don’t spend time worrying about it.                

WHAT IS MEDIAWIKI?

A wiki is a web application that allows users to create and edit web page content using a web browser. The term wiki also refers to the collaborative software used to create such a website. Mediawiki is a wiki software package licensed under the GNU General Public License, making it free and open source software. This Mediawiki software is used to run the popular web encyclopaedia Wikipedia, besides all projects of Wikimedia, wikis hosted by Wikia, and many other wikis.

WHY DON’T THE TEETH OF ANIMALS DECAY THOUGH THEY NEVER BRUSH THEIR TEETH?

According to WHO, decaying of teeth is a localized, post-eruptive pathologic external process, involving hard tooth tissue and formation of cavities. There is demineralization of teeth by acids produced in the oral environment, due to action of oral acidogenic bacteria on carbohydrates found in cooked food and drinks. Animals are either herbivorous or carnivorous or both, and survive on uncooked, raw food, rich in fibre, which needs a lot of chewing to digest, thereby cleansing the teeth naturally It is like brushing teeth and massaging gums the natural way But tooth decay is common in pets like dogs, which eat cooked food and junk food like biscuits etc.

WHICH IS THE BIGGEST STAR?

The biggest star found till date is Vy Canis Majoris, in the constellation of Canis Major. It is a red supergiant and one of the most luminous stars, 5,000 light years away from the earth with a radius of 1,800-2,100 times that of the sun. It is so large that its surface extends beyond the orbit of Saturn, were it placed in our solar system. Even light would take eight hours to complete its circumference. Though it is great, it is relatively cool, with a surface temperature of 3500 Kelvin.

WHICH IS THE WORLD’S SLEEPIEST ANIMAL?

The sleepiest animal, considered by the average number of hours of sleep a day is the koala, an arboreal animal with the scientific name Phascclarctos Cinerus, found only in Australia. Though it resembles a teddy bear, scientifically it is close to kangaroos, because it carries its young in a pouch. It lives mostly on eucalyptus trees, sleeping in the fork for 19-22 hours a day

WHAT IS THE GOLDEN ANGLE?

The golden angle separates the florets of a sunflower. Ills an approximation, since three golden arcs add up to slightly more than enough to make a circle. One of the old leaves overlaps and is pushed out in a radial line. This makes space in the inner system for a new leaf to form. New leaves move into the spaces opened as old leaves diverge.

WHO IS CALLED A DIGITAL NOMAD?

A person who works on the move is called a digital nomad. Such a worker may or may not be on the rolls of a company, and could he a consultant/freelancer/a writer on the move. They are persons with a free spirit who like a remote lifestyle and earn as they move, and believe that with discipline and the correct technology, they can be as productive as a person sitting in office. This is new tribe of people and for them, the economic downturn has brought little distress as companies turn to part-timers to save on costs.

WHAT IS A BLACK BLIZZARD?

During the drought of the 1930s in America, with no natural anchors in place, the soil dried, turned to dust and blew eastward and southward in large dark clouds. They blackened the sky and reached all the way to East Coast cities such as New York and Washington DC. Much of the soil ended up as deposits in the Atlantic Ocean, and were called ‘Black Blizzards’ and ‘Black Rollers’, and reduced visibility to a few feet. The Dust Bowl or Dirty Thirties —1930-36 and even up till 1940 — were caused by drought and decades of extensive farming without crop rotation.

WHY DO NEWSPAPERS PRINT A COMBINATION OF FOUR DOTS —BLUE, PINK, YELLOW, BLACK— AT THE BOTTOM OF EACH PAGE

The four dots — blue (cyan), pink (magenta), yellow and black are registration marks used during printing to help ensure the print is aligned properly In offset printing technology which newspapers use, the inked image is transferred from a plate to a rubber blanket, then to the printing surface. These primary colours go into printing a multi-coloured image and have separate plates. Each plate has its individual mark, like the colour dot.

ON WHAT BASIS ARE PINCODES DISTRIBUTED?

A Postal Index Number or PIN or Pincode is the post office numbering or postal code system used by India Post. It’s sixdigits long, and was introduced on August 15,1972. There are nine PIN zones in India. The first digit of the PIN code indicates the region in which a given post office falls, the second digit the sub-region, the third the sorting district. The final three digits are assigned to individual post offices.

WHO FOUNDED YOUTUBE?

Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, all early employees of PayPal, founded YouTube. Hurley studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, while Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. It was founded on February 15,2005. In Sfovember 2006, YouTube, LLC, was bought by Google me. for $1.65 billion, and is now operated as a subsidiary of Google.

WHAT IS DERVISH MUSIC?

Dervish word originates from the Turkish word ‘darvis’, meaning poor or mendicant. Dervish music began among Muslim religious groups, known for their practice of energetic dancing, whirling, chanting or singing.

WHAT IS A BOOMBURB?

Aboomburb is a booming suburb or satellite townships dreamt up by developers. It gives an idea of wealth, a boom. Boomburg is a similar term. These suburbs are usually not complete towns — though they are self-sufficient.

HOW ARE ELECTRIC PYLONS PLACED ACROSS MOUNTAINS TO TRANSMIT ELECTRICITY?

Electric pylons are tall supports— made of galvanized steel lattice, steel tube or wood — used for power line construction. In normal terrain, they are assembled on the site. In mountainous regions, helicopters are used for power line construction, which are efficient but expensive. In the aerial construction method, the entire structure is pre-assembled and shifted in helicopters.

WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF THE TERM ‘CASH COW’?

Management guru Peter F Drucker coined the term in the mid-1960s to describe a business or product line with a large market share in a stagnant or declining market. It can yield profits reliably for some years without further investment and little maintenance. The term also has its origin in a matrix developed by Boston Consulting Group, in which enterprises have po sitions in either a growing or shrinking market, and either a growing or shrinking total market share.

WHAT ARE PERSEIDES?

The word Perseides is found in Greek mythology and refers to the descendants of Perseus — the name of a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Swift-Tuttie. They are so called because they appear to come from the constellation Perseus. This shower is visible from midJuly each year, with peak activity between August 9 and 14, and is sometimes referred to as the “tears of St Lawrence”, as August 10 is the saint’s martyrdom.

WHAT ARE JACK-O-LANTERNS?

They are carved pumpkins with lights inside commonly seen on Halloween night. The top of the pumpkin is cut off, the inside flesh scooped out and a face carved on its surface. These are used partly for fun and partly believing that they represent the souls of departed elders who protect houses from evil spirits. Ac cording to an Irish folk tale, the soul of a dishonest farmer called Jack wanders the earth burning amber inside a vegetable. The Jack-o-lantern is supposed to have been named after him.

WHAT IS QUASI-RESONANCE?

A ‘quasi-resonant’ DC to DC converter with zero-current and zero-voltage switching includes a transformer with primary and secondary windings, and periodic switching means connected in series with the primary winding. The topology of the converter is determined by selecting an input capacitor with a capacitance much lower than the output capacitor.

WHO IS AN EXCEPTOR?

An exceptor is a person who chooses to eat meat on special occasions. A vegetarian by habit, the exceptor makes exceptions for days like weddings, festivals and celebrations. After the vegan,eggetarian and flexitarian, it is the exceptor who is basically vegetarian, but makes changes in diet to suit the occasion.

WHAT IS THIGMOTROPISM?

Thigmotropism is the growth of a plant around a support. Tropism is a phenomena by which a plant, usually climber like money plant and ivy, responds to a stimulus. Stems of the pea plant, for instance, are weak and have coil-like structures called tendrils. When tendrils approach a support (stick), a phytohormone called auxin is released in the side of the tendril away from the support. Auxin, a growth hormone, elongates the cells of that portion and makes it strong. The other portion, devoid of auxin, becomes weak and coils around the support.

WHY DO THE EYES OF SOME ANIMALS GLOW IN THE DARK?

Some animals have a special, reflective surface right behind their retinas, called the tapeturn lucidum, which helps animals see better in the dark. When light enters the eye, it hits a photoreceptor that transmits the information to the brain. But sometimes light doesn’t hit the photoreceptor, so the tapetum lucidum acts as a mirror to bounce it back for a second chance.

WHY DON’T WE FEEL THE TONES OF ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE? 

Atmospheric pressure, which is about 1 kg per’sqcm of area, presses down on our body from all sides, but we don’t feel it as it is balanced by fluid pressure from inside our body We can feel the difference during rainy season or when we go. to places where atmospheric pressure is less, like hill stations, where due to higher fluid pressure, blood oozes out in blood vessels, making the skin over those pink. The reverse happens under water.

WHY DO FOOD PACKAGES CARRY KCAL WHEN THEY ACTUALLY SPECIFY CALORIES AND NOT KILO-CALORIES?

Kilocalories are commonly known as calories and abbreviated as kcal. One calorie (Kcal) has the same energy value as 4.186 kilojpules-(kJ), while one kilojoule is equivalent to 0.24 calories. One calorie contains the amount of energy that raises the temperature of one litre of water by 1 degree Celsius.

WHAT IS SPIDER SILK?

Spider silk, also known as gossamer, is a protein fibre spun by spiders. Spiders use their silk to make webs. They can also suspend themselves using it. Many small spiders use silk threads for ballooning, the scientific term for the dynamic kiting spiderlings (mostly) used for dispersal. They extrude several threads into the air and let themselves get carried away with upward winds.

WHAT IS A SICK-OUT?

A sick-out is concerted action by a group of employees, who call in sick to protest against the company and its policies. It is meant to hold the company to ransom. In ordinary language, it is a strike to show the power they hold over the company’s working. It is a slightly more devious method than taking to the streets openly and raising slogans. Employees hope to put pressure on the company and force it to meet their demands.

WHAT IS UNBREAKABLE GLASS MADE OF, AND IS IT REALLY UNBREAKABLE?

The presence of micro cracks on the glass surface (called Griffith’s micro cracks) makes glass breakable under tension or impact. Such micro cracks are unavoidable as the glass surface comes under tension while cooling from a high temperature into various shapes. However, one can increase its impact resistance by various methods, so it can withstand even the impact of a bullet. The idea is to remove the surface micro cracks by chemical etching, or putting the glass surface under compression by physical or chemical toughening. One can even laminate two such toughened glass plates with resin in-between. These glasses are unbreakable, but when the threshold value is very high, it eventually breaks or cracks.

WHAT IS UNIVERSAL TIME COORDINATED?

Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) is a time standard based on International Atomic Time with leap seconds added at irregular intervals to compensate for the Earth’s slowing rotation. A leap second is a positive or negative one-second adjustment to the UTC scale that keeps it close to Mean Solar Time at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. The difference between UTC and Mean Solar Time is not allowed to exceed 0.9 seconds, so if high precision is not required, the general term Universal Time may be used. Time zones are expressed as positive or negative offsets from UTC. While each day contains 24 hours and each hour 60 minutes, the number of seconds in a minute can be 60,61 or 59.

HOW DO SENSOR DOORS WORK?

Sensor doors use motion sensors or presence sensors. The first are used to activate the door when it detects a moving object, such as a pedestrian or shopping cart. Motion sensors can distinguish between objects moving toward the door or away from it. They use microwave technology and utilize the Doppler Effect principle. The sensors emit a high frequency microwave signal — when the wave encounters a moving object, it bounces back and its frequency changes in proportion to the object’s speed; Presence sensors detect both moving and non-moving objects in the path of the door. Presence sensors use infrared technology — they emit an invisible pulsed light signal. The receiver looks for the reflected signal and reacts.

WHAT IS WEISURE?

Weisure time is when work is done during leisure time. With the line between work and leisure blurring thanks to online work and smartphones, a new work-life culture has been created. Sociologist Dalton Conley coined this word, having observed that 9-5 jobs are giving way to this new lifestyle.

WHO DISCOVERED COMETS? HOW IS THE TAIL FORMED?

Comets have been known to mankind since eons, hence it cannot be said that comets were discovered by any single individual. A comet, like planets and asteroids, orbits around the sun — with fee orbital period varying from a few years to thousands of years. A comet is formed of rock, ice, dust and a few frozen gases like carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane. When a comet is close to the sun, the radiation from the sun causes the volatile matter in the comet to vaporize and spread out into space in the form of its tail, its dust particles and ions glowing due to sunlight falling on it.

WHAT IS HAY FEVER AND WHY IS IT SO CALLED?

Hay fever is a form of allergy belonging to a group of maladies including hives, asthma and skin problems caused by protein sensitization.During certain seasons, many plants, grasses release their pollens into the air in large quantities. A person is said to have hay fever when he/she is sensitive to these pollens and other substances present in the air. It is called hay fever because the symptoms of the disease appear during spring and fall in England.

HOW IS THE HEIGHT OF WATER TIDES PREDICTED?

As astronomical data is not sufficient to calculate tides, predictions are also based on actual tidal measurements in many areas, over ah extended period. A network of tide stations is equipped to take the following measurements every six minutes: tide levels, wind speed and direction, water current speeds, directions, air and water temperatures and barometric pressure. Stations that provide these daily predictions are called reference stations. Other stations are subordinate stations, which obtain predictions by applying a specific formula to this data. The formula is derived by observing how tides at the two stations related to one another in the past.

HOW DO SOLAR CELLS CONVERT SUNLIGHT INTO ELECTRICITY?

Solar cells use photovoltaic cells to convert sunlight directly into electricity by converting photons (light particles) into electrons (negatively charged particles). Photovoltaic cells are made of semiconductors and silicon, mixed with other material.

WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF THE WORD COCKTAIL?

The word cocktail was used in 1806 and is of American origin. Bartenders would drain the dregs of all the barrels and mix them together, serving the resultant muddle at a reduced price. Cock was another name for spigot, and tailings is the last bit of alcohol, so this drink was called cock-tailings, quickly shortened to “cocktail”.

WHAT IS A CUSHION ACCOUNT?

It is an account a person sets aside which has no demands of monthly expenses on it, and is used as an emergency or luxury fund. A few business people set aside cushion funds to help their business grow, and for stability. The word ‘cushion’ is used as it gives a certain level of comfort to the person.

WHAT IS MAGIC SAND?

Magic sand is water-repellent sand available in blue, green and red colours. When this sand in powder form is sprinkled on water, it sinks and forms a solid substance. This property is used to separate oil floating in the oceans — it can be sprayed on oil spills to enable it to mix with oil and take solid form. It is also used by utility companies in Arctic areas as it never freezes.

IF LEAVES GET THEIR COLOUR FROM CHLOROPHYLL, WHAT GIVES FLOWERS THEIR COLOUR?

Plant cells have cell organelles known as plastids, which are colouring agents. There are three types of plastids — chloroplasts (contain green pigment chlorophyll), leucoplasts (white or colourless plastids) and chromoplasts (contain other pigments). All cells have varying proportions of these. Flowers have a majority of the third type and get their colours from these.

HOW IS A MOCKTAIL DIFFERENT FROM A COCKTAIL?

Cocktail is a style of mixed drinks, and usually contains one or more types of liquor and mixers, such as bitters, fruit juice or herbs. Mocktail is a non-alcoholic cocktail. Mocktail is also know as ‘virgin cocktail’.

WHAT IS A MINSKIAN PONZI DEAL?

The Minskian Ponzi deal was a theory propounded by American economist Minsky, in 1986. Such deals are both unsustainable and hazardous. In Minsky’s view, periods of economic and financial stability lead to a lowering of investors’ risk aversion and a process of releveraging. Investors borrow excessively and push asset prices excessively high. In this process, there are three types of investors/borrowers. First, sound or hedge borrowers who can afford to pay on their own. Second, speculative borrowers who can only service interest payments out of their cash flows. Finally, there are Ponzi borrowers who can service neither interest nor principal payments, and need to keep on refinancing their debts.

WHAT DOES THE MONTH OF RAMZAN SIGNIFY?

Ramzan is the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar. Muslims fast for the entire month. They are obliged to abstain from all food, drink, tobacco and conjugal relations from dawn till sunset. The spiritual aspects include refraining from gossiping, lying, slandering and all such traits of bad character. The month of Ramzan is a time for spiritual reflection, prayer, recitation of the Quran, doing ‘Zikr’, endurance and selfdiscipline, to train the soul and body to be able to exercise self-restraint.

WHO IS A SEXER?

A sexer is a professional in a hatchery who can tell a male chick from a female. Also known as chick sexers, they are employed to separate the genders as hatcheries have different feeding programmes for them: females are reared to lay eggs and males are bred for their meat. Big hatcheries sex chickens as they have no use for male birds who are killed almost immediately. A sexer is trained to tell the chicks apart by their physical appearance and vents.

WHAT IS A SINKING FUND?

It is a fund set aside as a means to repay funds borrowed through a bond issue. The issuer makes periodic payments to a trustee who retires part of the issue by purchasing the bonds in the open market. Rather than the issuer repaying the entire principal of a bond issue on the maturity date, another company buys back a portion of the issue annually, and usually at fixed par value or at the current market value of the bonds, whichever is less. From the investor’s point of view, a sinking fund adds safety to a corporate bond issue: with it, the issuing company is less likely to default on repayment.

WHY IS A SWINE FLU MASK CALLED N95?
Respirators or N95 masks can block 95% small particles that contain the H1N1 virus, which causes swine flu. These are expensive and can be used only for a single day. These masks are made of three layers of electrostaticallycharged microfibres, that block 95% particles, thus the name N95.
WHAT IS CLAYTRONICS?

Claytronics is an emerging field of engineering, drawing on nano technology and computer engineering. Claytronics or programmable matter refers to an assemblage of tiny components called claytronic atoms or catoms, which could assume the form of any object, depending on the programmes controlling the claytronics. This term also refers to the art of making clay caricatures of public figures, begun in 1996 by an Indian, Charuvi Agrawal.

WHAT DOES ‘TROPICALIZED’ ON A RADIO SET SIGNIFY?

Heat and humidity are the greatest enemies of any electrical equipment, so in tropical countries, such equipment is manufactured to withstand those climatic conditions. In a radio set, tropicalized means coating the electrical windings with resin, sealing the speaker hole with acoustically transparent cloth, installing” felt washers on the control knobs, and sealing openings for the antenna and earth connections.

WHAT IS A GRASS SKIRT?

A grass skirt, also called a hula skirt, is a traditional part of the dress worn by hula dancers on tropical islands. It is made of long blades of grass, most popularly seen on  the island of Hawaii. Grass skirts are also worn in many cultures and tribes in Africa, like the Zulu tribals.

WHAT IS WHITE NOISE?

Noise that is produced by combining sounds of different frequencies together is called white noise. Since it contains all frequencies, white noise is used to mask other sounds. When two or three people talk, our brain can distinguish the sound of a particular person. But if a crowd cheers in a stadium, no individual voice can be identified. That’s white noise and is most effectively used in the emergency siren.

WHAT IS INDUSTRIAL MELANISM?

It is caused when the natural environment of an organism is disturbed due to industrial pollution. As pollutants like soot and smoke darken the landscape, they disturb the environment of many organisms that rely on camouflage to avoid predation. This change makes them vulnerable to predators and creates a strong selective pressure due to which an organism with a darker colour is more likely to survive.

WHAT ARE BATHOLITHS?

Batholiths are enormous masses of igneous rock made up of once-molten material solidified below the earth’s surface. These are usually made of granite and extend over thousands of miles. A well known batholith is located in the Sierra Nevada range of California, across 40,000 sqkm.

WHAT IS THE TATE?

The Tate is an art gallery originally titled the National Gallery of British Art. It is situated on Millbank in Pimlico, London. It was founded in 1897 by Henry Tafe with money earned from his sugar refineries. It was initially a collection of British art, concentrating on the works of Victorian painters. It later expanded to include foreign art and in the 20th century became principally a gallery devoted to Modernism. There are several other recently-opened Tate Galleries’ in England, but the original gallery is now called Tate Britain.

WHO ARE STAGS IN THE STOCK MARKET?

An investor or speculator who subscribes to a new issue, expecting the price of the stock to rise immediately. upon the start of trading is known as a stag. The sole aim of a stag is to sell the shares soon after allotment to realize a quick profit.

WHAT IS A GREEN COLLAR JOB?

A green collar job involves working to better the environment, and is created by firms and organizations whose mission is to improve environmental quality. Work could include policies related to waste, energy and water conservation, solar energy, whole home performance and strengthening local food systems. These jobs are generated by sectors that produce goods which may need a green angle, like energy retrofits to improve conservation, constructing green buildings, composting, landscaping etc.

WHAT IS RASTAFARIANISM?

The Rastafarian movement originated in Jamaica in 1930s, based on the philosophies of Marcus Mosiah Garvey. Today, it has branched out, including groups that still hold Garvey’s beliefs and groups that have disavowed his more controversial stances. His organization’s aim was to unite black people (Negroes) with their rightful homeland, Africa. He prophesied about his people being redeemed by a future Black African king. This  prediction was fulfilled in November 2, 1930, when Ras Tafari Makonnen was crowned King of Ethiopia.

WHAT ARE WIDGETS?

Widget, literally, is a blend of window and gadget, coined by George S Kaufman in his play ‘Beggar on Horseback’. It is a hypothetical manufactured good or product. In computing, the term has become frequently used to refer to objects on a computer screen the user interacts with. A widget is anything that can be embedded within a HTML page. Widgets often take the form of on-screen tools like clocks, event countdowns etc.

WHY DON’T TWO-WHEELERS HAVE A REVERSE GEAR?

A regular motorcycle has a ’sequential’ manual transmission, meaning you can only shift up or down one gear at a time. It is also designed to spin one way only. Adding reverse would require the crankshaft to spin backwards, or a much larger, heavier, expensive transmission. So it is easiest to dismount and push the bike backwards.

WHAT IS A DUM DUM BULLET?

It is an expanding bullet designed to grow on impact, increasing in diameter to limit penetration and/or produce a larger diameter wound. There are many expanding bullet designs though the most commonly encountered are hollow-point bullet and the soft-point bullet. Such bullets are Sometimes known as ‘dum dum’ bullets. After an early British example pro- duced in the Dum Dum arsenal, near Kolkata, India, there were several expanding bullets produced by this arsenal for the .303 British cartridge.

WHO ARE STILT FISHERMEN?

Stilt fishing is an old tradition practised by around 500 fishing families in Galle, in southwestern-most Sri Lanka. These fishermen usually fish at sunset, noon and sunrise, with each one taking an elevated position and balancing about 2 metres above the wa- ter. The stilts are dug into the coral and bed of the sea. Stilt fishing started after the Second World War.

WHAT ARE SIN STOCKS?

They are stocks of companies which manufacture or deal with cigarettes, alcohol, weapons and sex-related products. They could be directly involved in the business or associated with such activities. Such companies are also called sin businesses.

WHY DOES SNOW LOOK WHITE BUT WATER IS COLOURLESS?

Snow is a block of individual ice crystals arranged together. When a light photon enters a layer of snow, it goes through an ice crystal on the top, which changes its direction slightly and sends it on to a new ice crystal, which does the same thing. Basically, all the crystals bounce the light all around, so that it comes right back out of the snow pile. It does the same thing to all the different light frequencies, so all colours of light are bounced back out. The ‘colour’ of all the frequencies in the visible spectrum combined in equal measure is white, so this is the colour we see in snow.

WHAT IS THE FULL FORM OF AK-47 AND WHAT DOES 47 REFER TO?

AK-47 stands for Russian Avtomat Kalashnikova 1947 (Automatic Kalashnikov 1947). Designed by Russian Mikhail Kalashnikov, it was the assault rifle used by most Eastern Bloc countries during the Cold War. The rifle was adopted and standardized in 1947, thus the name.

HOW IS THE TIME DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TWO COUNTRIES CALCULATED?

The earth has 360 imaginary lines called longitudes or meridians running vertically between the poles. Each of these longitudes is called a degree. The 0 degree longitude passing through Greenwich, near London, is considered as standard and the time of all other time zones are calculated accordingly. The time difference between each longitude (each degree) is 4 minutes. So if it is 12 noon at Greenwich (0 degree), it would be 12:04 pm at 1 degree meridian and so on. In India, the standard meridian is 82-and-half degree. So the time difference between Greenwich and India is 82.5 x 4, which is 330 minutes (5 hours 30 minutes).

WHAT IS LAISSEZ FAIRE?

Laissez faire is a French phrase and means to let things pass. The term is used to describe an economic system where the government intervenes as little as possible and leaves the private sector to organize most economic activity through markets. Classical economists were great advocates of a laissez faire system.

WHAT IS THE FREIMARKT?

Freimarkt means free fair. It was first held on October 16, 1035, in Bremen, Germany. It is the biggest festival in Northern Germany, with more than four million visitors each year. It is celebrated for 17 days in the last two weeks of October. The area covers approximately 100,000 sqm on two areas: the ‘Kleiner Freimarkt’ (Small Free Fair) on the market square. It is famous for its beer tents and amusement rides. An annual highlight is the ‘Freimarktsumzug’ (Free Fair Procession).

HOW ARE ULTRA-VIOLET RAYS BLOCKED BY THE OZONE LAYER?

The ozone layer contains ozone molecules — 03 molecules — which are formed by the action of ultra-violet rays on atmospheric oxygen. This oxygen, which is 02, converts into 03 when UV rays fall on it. When these rays fall on the surface of the atmosphere, they are absorbed in the conversion of oxygen into ozone. As a result, ultra-violet rays are blocked by this ozone layer.

HOW IS THE TEMPERATURE OF A STAR MEASURED?

As stars are very far away, their temperatuce cannot be measured directly. Fortunately, the light coming from stars can be analyzed through several scientific instruments. Although all stars appear white, they have different colours when carefully viewed. The variations are a result of their temperature — cold stars appear red, and hot ones blue or white. The colour of a star is measured by an instrument called photoelectric photometer, which involves passing the light through different filters and finding the amount that passes through each filter. The measures from the photometer are converted to temperature, using standard scales.

WHICH IS THE WORLD’S LONGEST STORYBOOK?

Marcel Proust’s  A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu’ (translated as In Search of Past) is the world’s longest novel, according to the Guinness World Records. The influential 13-volume work contains 9,609,000 characters, with each letter and space counting as one character.

WHY DOES A FALLING OBJECT HAVE NO WEIGHT?

Every body on this earth is attracted by the gravitational pull of the earth. A freely falling object has weight W=mg, where W-weight, m-mass of the object and g-acceleration produced due to the earth’s gravity An object kept in a lift which falls freely, weighs zero on the weighing machine, but its actual weight is still mg. This happens because the normal reaction force exerted on the object in the lift is equal to zero, and normal force equals to mg, which in turn equals the weight of the object.

WHAT IS THE REOG DANCE?

It is a spectacular dance with several dancers wearing bright, colourful costumes, accompanied by merry music. It is always held in open terrain, such as a square, street etc. This dance is a traditional art form combined with a magical show or trance dance. The Reog dates back to the Hindu period in East Java in Indonesia.

WHAT IS CROWD MINING?

Crowd mining is a new business concept where solutions can come from crowds, and marketers are turning to them as a database. The changing economy brought in this concept to tap expensive or even unavailable information and it goes beyond surveys and crowd sourcing.

WHAT IS OCTOBER HEAT?

The weather in the month of October in the Indian sub-continent is called ‘October heat’. By the beginning of October, the monsoon withdraws from the northern plains. October and November form the period of transition from the hot rainy season to dry winter conditions.

WHAT IS AWACS?

AWACS stands for Airborne Warning And Control System that helps the Air Force detect incoming missiles and enemy aircraft from across the country’s border. AWACS is described as an ‘Eye in the Sky’ as it can carry out surveillance at about 400-km range under all-weather situations, and to lock on to 60 targets at a time simultaneously.

WHAT IS THE SCHWARZSCHILD RADIUS?

It is a characteristic radius associated with every quantity of mass. This term is used in physics and astronomy, especially in the theory of gravitation and general relativity. m 1916, Karl Schwarzschild obtained an exact solution to Einstein’s field equations for gravitational field outside a nonrating, spherically symmetric body. The solution contained a formula, where one of the values came to be known as Schwarzschild Radius.

WHO  WERE  THE  IRON CHANCELLORS?

A hundred years ago, Germany was divided into many small states. In one of these states, Prussia, the chancellor or chief minister to the king, was Otto Von Bismarck. A strong and ruthless man, Bismarck built Prussia into the strongest of all German states. He got his nickname of ‘The Iron Chancellor’ when he said Germany could become a great power “through blood and iron”.

HOW IS THE HEIGHT OF DIFFERENT PLACES ON EARTH MEASURED FROM THE SEA LEVEL?

The height of different places on earth is measured with the help of the ‘altimeter’. It is basically a barometer without the mercury, and instead of instead of the pressure graduating in a barometer, the corresponding height graduates.

WHAT IS CRAB FOOTBALL?

Crab soccer (American English) or crab football (British English) is an informal sport for two teams. Unlike soccer, players support themselves on their hands and feet and face up, in motions that make them look like crabs, a method known as crab walking. This sport involves kicking, so safety is at the root of many rules. Like soccer, players other than the goalkeeper must not touch the ball with their hands.

HOW DOES A MOBILE VIBRATE?

There is a little motor fitted in a cell phone. This motor is unevenly weighted on its output shaft. When this motor rotates, the rotating uneven weight causes the mobile to vibrate.

WHAT IS TELEPRESENCE?

Telepresence is the next-gen videoconferencing technology, which provides superior images. The demand for telepresence solutions has grown, with companies seeing it as an alternative to send executives for meetings. It also reduces a company’s carbon footprint by cutting down frequent flying. Setting up a telepresence suite can be very expensive, though.

HOW IS THE MASS OF HEAVENLY BODIES MEASURED?

The mass of a heavenly body can be measured by knowing the orbital period (time it takes to complete one orbit around the other body), the distance between two bodies and gravitational constant. The orbital time is inversely proportionate to the square root of the sum of the masses of two bodies and directly proportion distance raised to power three by two.

WHAT IS AN ELECTRON GUN?

It is a device in the back of a “cathode ray tube” television or computer monitor (pre-plasma or LCD flat-panel). The electron gun fires a stream of electrons from the back of the TV onto the inside face of the screen, which is coated with a material that glows when hit by electrons. By using powerful magnets to direct the stream across the screen, a series of dots (‘pixels’) is built over the screen which appears as an image.

WHO INVENTED THE SPEECH BUBBLE AND WHEN WAS IT FIRST USED?

One of the earliest antecedents to the modern speech bubble was the speech scroll — wispy lines that connected first person speech to the mouths of ’speakers in Meso-American art. In Western graphic art, labels that reveal what a figure is saying have appeared even in the 13th century Word balloons began appearing in 18th century printed broadsides and political cartoons from the American Revolution often used them.

WHY   ARE   CELLPHONES SWITCHED OFF WHILE FLYING?

Mobile phones are radio transmitters and as such, were banned from use in civilian airplanes, for fear they could interfere with airplane avionics. There was also concern that a cellular phone would cause disruption to the cell systems’ towers, and distract passengers during take-off and landing.

WHAT IS A DIRTY BOMB?

A dirty bomb is a simple explosive device used not so much to produce extensive damage but to contaminate a designated spot with radioactive material. It’s primary role is to spread fear.

WHAT IS THE PEKING OPERA?

The Peking Opera, which originated in the late 18th century, is a synthesis of music, dance, art and acrobatics. It is the most influential of all operas in  China, and can be divided into ‘civil’ pieces characterized by singing, and ‘martial’ ones featuring acrobatics and stunts. Some operas are a combination of both. The operatic dialogues and monologues are recited in the Beijing dialect.

WHAT IS A PINK ELEPHANT?

The term ‘pink elephant’ is used to describe something obvious and uncomfortable, but which obody wants to talk about. At the workplace or in business communications, it is something that is buried under the carpet when things go wrong. It refers especially to a situation of unhealthy relationships between women colleagues — one woman may try to bully the other women out of rivalry to stay in control. Broaching such a topic may be embarrassing to all, so it is called a “pink elephant in the room”.

WHY IS AN ATOM SPHERICAL IN SHAPE?

The shape of an atom refers to the shape of the imaginary volume in which its electrons orbit. Different electrons orbit at different levels. The shape of the atom depends on several factors, including the angular momentum of electrons. Only the simplest atoms have a spherical shape. Heavy atoms have a more complex shape.

WHAT IS INCOGNITO BROWSING?

It is used for browsing in stealth mode, for a situation when we don’t want our history to be tracked. Web pages that are opened and files downloaded while browsing incognito are not logged in the browser.

WHAT IS MICRO-PROPAGATION?

Micro-propagation is the technique of multiple production of plants in-vitro. It is used for plants that do not produce seeds or respond to normal vegetable reproduction. Micro propagation’s main advantage is to produce disease-free plants in multiple numbers and cloning of plants.

WHAT IS THE ROLE OF H2O2 IN THE GREY-HAIR PUZZLE?

New research shows that hair turns grey as a result of a chemical reaction that causes it to bleach itself inside out. When there is a dip in levels of an enzyme called catalase, hydrogen peroxide (H202) that naturally occurs in hair can’t be broken down. As H202 builds up, the hair becomes grey.

WHO MADE THE FIRST ICE CREAM IN THE WORLD?

The origin of ice cream can be traced to the 4th century BC. Early references include Roman emperor Nero who ordered ice to be brought from the mountains and combined with fruit toppings, and King Tang (AD 618-97) of Shang, China, who had a method of creating ice and milk concoctions. Ice cream was brought from China back to Europe.

WHAT IS ‘SMART ANTENNA’ TECHNOLOGY?

This is a new technology in the field of wireless and mobile communications in which capacity and performance are usually limited by two major impairments — multipath and co-channel interference. A smart antenna enables a higher capacity by reducing multipath and co-channel interference. This is achieved by focusing the radiation in the desired direction and adjusting to changing traffic conditions.

WHAT IS THE GOLLIWOG ACT?

The golliwog act is a flexible contortion of the body in a dance form to create an impression that the contortionist is a doll. The name is taken from a literary character created by Florence Kate in her novel The Adventures of two Dutch Dolls and a Golliwog’.

WHAT IS A ‘CASH AND CARRY STORE’ AND WHY IS IT SO CALLED?

A cash and carry store is different from regular retail chains which target professional customers rather than end-consumers. This concept is based around self-service and bulk buying arid serves registered customers only. The core customer groups are hotels, caterers, traders and other business professionals. Such stores aim to prevent any intervention by middlemen and requires buyers to make their own arrangements and assume all risk.

HOW DOES HAIR GEL WORK?

The main ingredient in hair gels is a plastic called PVP, which is a polymer sealer. The polymers in PVP are dissolved in water or alcohol and form a clear film between each hair strand, attaching them to one another. Chemical experts call this “capillary power” because it’s similar to how blood capillaries work. When gel is applied to wet hair, the PVP or similar ingredient absorbs water quickly. When the gel dries completely, it forms a fixed connection between hair strands.

WHAT IS A WORMHOLE?

A wormhole is a theoretical entity allowed by Einstein’s theory of general relativity in which spacetime curvature connects two distant locations (or times). The term ‘wormhole’ was coined by American theoretical physicist John A Wheeler in 1957, based on an analogy of how a worm could chew a hole from one end of an apple through the centre to the other, thus creating a shortcut through the intervening space.

WHAT DOES MIRROR IMAGE MEAN IN BIOLOGICAL TERMINOLOGY?

Mirror image is a concept from chemistry applied to organic materials. An example of this is glucose arid fructose. These molecules are mirror images of each other. Although it is possible to flip glucose and superimpose it over a fructose molecule, only in 2D (flat viewing) are they similar.

WHAT IS A 3-D FILM?

A 3-D film is any visual presentation system that attempts to maintain or recreate moving images of the third dimension, the illusion of depth as seen by the viewer. It involves filming two images simultaneously, with two cameras, filming at 90 degree angle via mirrors. When viewed in such a way that each eye sees its photographed counterpart, the viewer’s visual cortex will interpret the pair of images as a single three-dimensional image. Modern computer technology also allows for the production of pseudo-SD films using CGI and without the need for dual cameras.

WHAT IS SWEETHEARTING?

Sweet hearting is a method cashiers use to pass on goods to friends by failing to bill one. They do so by passing two items, and obscuring the barcode of one, so it goes unnoticed. Now, there are machines to pick out sweet hearting.

WHAT ARE MANGO SHOWERS?

Mango showers are those experienced prior to the arrival of the monsoon. These showers arrive generally in late April and May and are said to aid in the ripening of mangoes and from dropping prematurely from trees.

WHAT IS TERMINATOR GENE TECHNOLOGY?

The terminator gene is a specific genetic sequence inserted by scientists into a seed’s DNA that renders the seed and the crop it produces sterile. Patented by the USDA and Delta and Pine Land Co., now owned by Monsanto, this terminator technology has no agricultural or economic benefits for farmers or consumers.

WHY IS THE FLAME OF A CANDLE POINTED?

The flame of a candle is produced when the wax of the candle melts due to heat and the molten wax rises in the wick. As the heated gas rises above from the base of the flame, it moves faster as the pressure decreases from the base to the top. As the rate at which the gas is released from the base is more or less constant, the flame becomes thinner and thinner from its base to the end, assuming a pointed tip.

HOW DID THE ABBREVIATION DR FOR DOCTORS ORIGINATE, AND WHY DO ENGINEERS NOT USE ER?
The abbreviation originated to separate people qualified to practice medicine from those holding the highest academic degree i.e. doctorate in nonmedical subjects. In USA, only dentists and vets are called doctors. Physicians and surgeons do not put ‘Dr’ before their names. Engineers, at least in India, put ‘Er’.
WHAT IS A FLIPBOOK?

A flipbook is a small book with a series of printed images that create the illusion of motion when its pages are rapidly flipped. Typically, a flipbook is held in one hand while the thumb of the other flicks the pages and the user concentrates on the middle of each page. It relies on a basic optical principle known as persistence of vision. In India, flip books were popular in the seventies, when cola majors brought out flip books of cricketers in action.

WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF FORMULA I?

Formula One, also known as Formula 1 or Fl, and currently officially referred to as FIA Formula One World Championship, is the highest class of auto racing sanctioned by the Fidiration Internationale de 1′Automobile (FIA). The ‘formula’ in the name refers to a set of rules that all participants and cars must comply with.

WHAT ARE GTOR-MA CAKES?

Gtor-ma cakes are sacrificial cakes used in Tibetan Buddhist ceremonies as offerings to deities. The unbaked cakes are prepared by kneading parched barley flour and butter into cones. The cakes form part of the phyi-mchod, or eight offerings of external worship.

WHAT IS DIGITAL CLEANSE?

Digital cleanse is a term mooted by John Mayor, musician and avid blogger and tweeter, as a resolution and challenge for the first week of 2010. It means keeping off all digital contraptions — a stop to emailing, texting, social networking, blogging and surfing sites. It is seen as a new health craze, considered good for the body and mind. The basic idea is to unplug and meet people.

HOW DOES THE HYBRID ENGINE WORK?

Hybrid engines use two or more power sources. They consist of a usual fuel engine, complemented by a pollution-free engine, an electric engine for example. The fuel engine and brakes are used to recharge the batteries for the electric engine, eliminating the need to plug in while unused. When brakes are applied, some of the energy being used to stop the vehicle is collected by the regenerative brakes of the electrical engine. Hence, the electrical engine takes control when cruising, stopping or slowly acclerating, reducing the use of fuel.

WHAT IS THE AURORA PHENOMENON?

Charged particles ejected at great speeds from the sun ionise the air molecules resulting in spectacular colour display. These are seen from polar regions and are called aurora or polar lights. It is the luminous phenomenon of earth’s upper atmosphere that occurs primarily in high latitudes of both hemispheres; aurorae in the northern hemisphere are called aurora borealis, or northern lights; aurora australis, or southern lights in the southern hemisphere.

WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF THE TERM ‘SLAP-STICK COMEDY’?

The term ’slapstick comedy’ is given to comedy characterized by broad humour, absurd situations and vigorous chases, often violent in action. The phrase comes from the term battacchio called the ’slap stick’ in English. It is a club-like object composed of two wooden slats, and produces a loud smacking noise when struck, though little force is transferred to the person being struck. Slapstick comedy became popular in 19th-century music halls and Vaudeville theatres.

HOW AND WHEN DID THE TERM ‘SIZE ZERO’ COME INTO USE?

‘Size zero’ was first used in 1966 for British supermodel Twiggy, who had a fragile figure. Now, ’size zero’ is a women’s clothing size in the US system, equivalent to a UK size 4, with a waist measurement of 23 inches, the average girth of an 8-year-old girl. It is a petite size for women with a 32-inch bust, 23-inch waist and 32-inch hips, and is often linked to anorexia nervosa and bulimia.

HOW DOES THE ‘MADRAS EYE’ SPREAD?

Madras eye is the inflammation of the outermost covering of the eyeball and inner layer of eyelid. Medically, it is known as ‘conjunctivitis’. It can be caused by various agents like bacteria, virus, wind, smoke, pollen, radiation or chemical agents. If a person comes in close physical contact of the infected person or his infected belongings, the bacteria or virus gets transmitted and thus, causes infection from person to person.

WHY DOES THE ORTHODOX CHURCH CELEBRATE CHRISTINAS ON JANUARY 7?

The Orthodox Church uses the old Julian calender which is 13 days behind the Gregorian calender. In the former Soviet Republic, the Bolsheviks adopted the Gregorian calender at the end of 1917, which put them in line with the rest of the Western world. However, the Orthodox Church, opposed to the Bolsheviks trying to suppress religion, kept the Julian calender.

WHAT IS COSMOPHOBIA?

Cosmophobia is an irrational fear that the world is about to end, and is sparked off by a belief among people that a cosmic end is near. The fear is ancient, and people have been readying for doom on and off — expecting floods, earthquakes, epidemics, drought, or even a collision with another planet. The latest bout was set off by the movie 2012, where the Mayan calendar counts December 21, 2012 as the last day Earlier, the 2000 millennium frenzy had everyone believe that the end was near. For ages now, there have been apocalyptic predictions which have fuelled cosmophobia, but until now, they have all come to nought.

WHAT IS AN ELEPHANT PEARL?

Elephant pearls are not really pearls, however, they are categorised as one of the nine pearls. These are produced in the heads and the sockets of the tusks of some elephants. It was believed that when worn by kings, they proved highly sanctifying and bestowed children, victory and sound health. Even now, they are considered to bring good luck.

WHAT IS A ‘BANANA KICK’ IN FOOT-BALL?

Banana kick is a checkside punt — a kicking style used in Australian Rules and rugby league football. When kicked, the ball bends away from the body and is usually used when a set shot for goal is lined up on a narrow angle. The banana kick comes off more from the inside of the boot, with the ball spinning in the same direction as the leg swings naturally.

WHAT IS THE ORACLE OF DELPHI?

The Oracle of Delphi was the most important oracle in the classical Greek World, and a major site for the worship of the god Apollo. Built around a sacred spring, Delphi was considered to be the omphalos — the centre of the world. Scholars congregated at Delphi, and it became a focal point for intellectual enquiry Delphi lies on the slopes of Mount Parnassus in Greece.

HOW MANY FLOWERS MUST A BEE TAP TO MAKE A POUND OF HONEY?

A bee taps 2 million flowers and flies 50,000 miles (80,000 kms) to make one pound (454 gm) of honey — traveling more than twice around the world to gather it. The basis of calculation is done after taking many facts for granted and the proof is often lost in the mists of time. C R Ribbands (1949) determined that one bee can visit several hundred of flowers for a load of sweet clover, and up to 1,100-1,446 flowers for a load of limantnes nectar.

WHAT IS THE SPHINX AWARD?

There are several types of Sphinx awards. The most popular one is given by Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity forcontribution to social service. President Stephen C Ainlay of Union College recently received the Sphinx Award from the brothers of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity for his contributions to the Union community. Another Sphinx Award is given in Coventry for outstanding performance in the local soccer league.

WHAT IS A GRAMMY SALUTE?

Grammy awards are presented annually for outstanding achievements in music. There is a week-long function called the Grammy Week, culminating in the Annual Grammy Awards. The rest of the week is marked by several connected events, of which the Salute To series is a part. Each of the Salute To events features a reception, presentation of a special merit certificate and guest performances.

WHEN DID THE PRACTICE OF THE HANDSHAKE BEGIN?

The origin of the handshake goes back to primitive eras: the physical contact of the hand symbolized peace and friendship. Later symbolism of the gesture, apart from a greeting, was the ratification of a contract or pledge. Even today, we clinch a contract or business deal by ’shaking hands on it.’ Archaeological ruins and texts show the handshake was in use as a means of greeting as far back as the 2nd century BC.

WHAT IS THE BOXING DAY MATCH AND WHAT IS ITS ORIGIN?

The Boxing Day match is a cricket match hosted in Melbourne, Australia, and Victoria, involving the Australian cricket team and the opposition national team touring Australia at that time. It begins on Boxing Day (Dec 26) and is played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Boxing Day is so called as traditionally, it was the day when people would give a present or Christmas ‘box’ to those who worked for them throughout the year. These days, the ‘box’ is usually given before Christmas.

WHAT IS BAS-RELIEF?

Bas-relief is a French term meaning ‘low-raised work.’ A relief is a sculptured artwork where a modelled form is raised. There are three types of reliefs — ‘bas-relief or low relief, ‘high relief and ’sunken relief.’ Bas-relief is suitable for scenes with many figures and other elements such as a landscape    or    architectural background. Stone carving and metal casting is traditionally done in bas-relief.

HOW DO ODI TEAMS CHOOSE THEIR COLOURS?

There is no hard and fast rule about choosing cricket colours. In most cases, the country adopts colours from their nationa

Poker Stars

Seasoned shoppers in Cape Town will tip you to buy diamonds. This is diamond country if you do not know it yet, and the biggest diamond of 7,000 carats was found in South Africa. But well, you can dream on. But for diamonds, South Africa is the place for you, and the diamonds have wound their way to Cape Town. So get your share when you do the shopping rounds.

Diamonds and Then Some

Hard-nosed shoppers know where to do their Cape Town shopping. They know where to get handcrafted jewelry, masks, wines, intricate beadwork, precious stones and diamonds. Well, the place is teeming with shops, trendy malls, flea markets, souvenir shops, and streetside stalls open from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.

If shopping is your pleasure, there are Cape Town hotels within walking distance to the shops and specialty stores for great finds. Staying near the shopping district will save you time and avert the stress that comes with shopping.

Here are the top shopping places in the city:

Malls

• Canal Walk. This is a large shopping mall, which houses hundreds of stores and restaurants. You can find designer labels here and all the stuff the fashionable you’d like to strut back home. If you want a break from window-shopping and comparing prices, you can drop in at the skate park or take a spin in the indoor karting track. Want something less physical? Go to the gaming arcade.

• Cavendish Square. This is the hippest mall that carries world-renowned goods and fashion items. Walk the sky bridges that connect Cavendish Square to Cavendish Connect. With hundreds of stores to choose from, it will literally take you days to finish your shopping. The mall is right smack in the heart of the Southern suburbs.

• TygerValley. If you are looking for musical instruments, visit this place in the Bellville area, and do not forget to drop in the food court area where you can get a sampling of international or local cuisines.

Markets

• Pan African Market on Long Street first started out as a crafts store and grew to what it is today—a three-story market. It is always a tourist stop for tribal craft such as masks, swords, ostrich feathers and eggs, drums, headdresses, African art, curio, textile, and pottery. The latest hot item in the market is the exquisite wirework.

• Greenmarket Square is the oldest market in Cape Town. Just look at the cobbled square. You can find everything here. Curios, sandals, fabrics, jewelry, and antiques. Surrounded by restaurants, you can always sample the local dishes and a glass of red Cape Town wine.

• Neighborgoods Market is Cape Towns premiere gourmet market where you can feast on organic soups, local cheeses, warm gluhwein, fresh citrus fruits, and organic avocados. Stock up on spices, and winter herbs, wine and fresh winter veggies. The market is open rain or shine. 

Don’t forget to ask for sales invoices from the shops. You can still claim back the VAT you paid on items you are taking back home. If the value of the goods you bought exceeds R250, you get 1.5 percent of the VAT deducted.

 

 

senuke

Okay, let’s grant this at the outset: no one needs me to tell them about the – let’s face it – unparalleled excellence of HBO’s The Wire, given that we’re dealing, after all, with a truth acknowledged by everyone who’s ever sat in front of a cathode ray tube in the hope of filling up the silence of the infinite spaces that surround them…

So, if any of you heart-wrenchingly attractive people still need my testimony to be convinced of the greatness of this show, then you are not only a friendless (if lovably eccentric) technophobic anchorite who’s spent far too much time with no-one to talk to but the tins of “Chunky Irish stew” that line your fallout shelter, but you’re also someone who needs to hear the following harsh truth the way you need a tin-opener and maybe some kind of gaming console:

YOUR FRIENDS ARE DELIBERATELY CONCEALING THINGS FROM YOU IN ORDER TO LAUGH AT YOUR CONFUSION.

Yes, the Illuminati are running this caper, ladies and gentleman, which is why your life is now, and forever shall be, one part The Truman Show, one part Emir Kusturica’s Underground.  (Not a bad film concept, incidentally, as long as all the hierarchies of angels can somehow conspire to make the likes of James Cameron stay away from the thing….)

But, anyway.

The Wire is one of those shows, that despite being (at least now in its resurrected ‘DVD boxed set’ days) so popular that, if you’re a 20 to 50-ish vaguely middle-class person of the kind who’s seen at least one HBO drama, than you can safely bet your last marketable organ that at least two-thirds of your friends are, on any given night, sedulously watching the latest episode instead of attending your birthday party/wedding/stupefying Houellebecqian orgy as they mumblingly promised they would while drunk and/or attempting to seduce you with their endearing sensitivity.  Believe me, then, when I say that even as you read this, people you know are already thinking of how they can bestpretend to be deadin order not only to escape your Friday night drinks, but to indulge in the kind of Wire marathons that would make the Bayreuth festival look like the punch-line to a pun.

And don’t misunderstand me: I’m not just saying that your shy, housebound, irredeemably uncool friends are abandoning you in favour of watching the show, I’m saying that this is true even of the resolutely sociable and earnestly self-improving ones – the ones who purposely don’t own televisions.    Trust me when I say that – all hyperbole aside –these people, are, even as we speak, finding the flimsiest of pretexts to drop in on your mutual friends (“Hi Hailey, Hi Amanda…just thought we’d stop by and see the new baby…ooh..how excit-ing…” in the hope of getting  even a whiff of Omar Little and his merry band of social-realist-story-telling uplifted and transformed-by-a-panoramic-perspective, acute insights into systematic injustice and -larger-than-life character archetypes who, as in Dickens, play the role of putting flesh on structures that do, at least in a certain sense, and contra a famous May ‘68 slogan: walk the streets.  (Anyone who doubts me on that last point should read Joan Copjec’s book Read my Desire >until they…y’know…submit).

The Wire, at its heart is so vast, so baroque, so generally magnificent and has also had so many gazillions of words put forward attesting to its vastness and baroqueness, that it’s hard to know where to start.  In deference to this, I’ve decided to try introducing my own commentary by means of one gratuitously over-extended  knock-knock joke.

(As I believe Lao Tzu said: have blog, need gimmick: otherwise how else will I ever get to do that hipster froideur thing via which the more important doyens-of-the-blogosphere manage to patronise all the non-entities in their comment boxes?  So, here we go:

Knock, knock.   

“Who’s there…?”  

“That was…”  

“‘That was’ who…?”

“That was the American Dream abandoning this city like it was post-Katrina New Orleans on the day that it was announced that the city was being turned into a nuclear test-site which was to be entirely populated by the post-Apocalyptic  (i.e. zombie) progeny of Glenn Beck and the Beckhams.   As it drove off into the sunset (listen to those tyres screech, people) the Dream, of course, took with it the standard obscene CEO payout, a couple of the more attractive secretaries – that was the horn of the getaway car proposing to raise the dead of another city less lost than this one — and all the amusing stickers from the receptionist’s desk.  Oh, and the ‘knocking’, sound? That was the Dream announcing that it had left a calling card on your doorstep whose glossy promise of secular transcendence will undoubtedly haunt (and in a strange way even edify) your short and brutish (if not always nasty) life, like the vengeful ghost of every promise of liberty, equality and fraternity once made by the founders of the Republic that now lies ostentatiously bleeding to death on an unregarded housing project corner.  But, you know, take heart: the little calling card is still enough to tie some kind of subjectivity together into a mish-mash of affects sutured to actions by fantasies resilient enough to live as if it were not inevitable that the former should be distorted into psychosis and the latter crushed under the heels of the city of Baltimore like another of those ubiquitous discarded drug drug-vials that cake the shoes of anyone who visits the many depressed and posthumous parts of the city  (East or West).   And, I mean sure, you can even feel, on the odd night, your possibility of redemption, that you might be getting closer to the goal, that the cash, the girls, the house, and even the rap star ‘lifestyle’ isn’t far behind you::  you’re part of a good crew now after all, your star’s rising, people treat you with respect/ Bang/Huh? What was that?/Nothing.  Just your pointless death.  You’re a statistic now.  It’s like fame only crunchy.  And don’t worry it’s bad for “5-0″ (as in “Hawaii” or what the show’s characters call  ‘po-lice’) as well – they’re ruled by numbers and quotas and corruption so all-pervasive that it’s as if the vestiges of civic virtue and government ‘by the people, for the people’ seem like the irritating parasite on the host organism of the corruption.”

Alternatively, I could have just summarised the above by taking a line from the first season:

Drug dealer (being dragged away in a police van and beaten en route) “You can’t f*!#ing do this, man: this is America!”

Random Police Officer:  [laughing] “This is.West.Baltimore.”

But, as I say, you don’t need me to tell you that The Wire is to television what a cigar-chomping, gun-toting, Hegel-reading reincarnation of H.W. Fowler would be to the obscenely self-regarding Australian Press — no matter how much I just did this.  

Also, given that I do agree with the prevailing excited consensus on the greatness of the show,  I can’t attempt to offer you any shiny faux-contrarianism to take away the bad taste that’s left by so great an oxymoron as a “critical consensus.

So, instead of talking about the sheer ambition and daring of The Wire, its extraordinary writing, its frequently hilarious, frequently poignant vignettes coloured by those almost constant “I can’t believe this is happening” moments that will make you cover your eyes, and groan out loud to the gods even after you’ve watched seasons of the stuff and mistakenly think you’ve become desensitized to the show’s implacable “corruption squashes virtue” logic (a kind of scissors, paper, rock, without the paper and in which one side always uses the rock.)  

And yet, if you’re a natural sceptic, you might still think that all of this nicely-packaged excellence is basically the familiar stock-standard “quality television” that can be found in almost any HBO show and that The Wire might be nothing more than The Sopranos with a little more incomprehensible Baltimore street argot thrown in to fulfill its ‘life on the streets’ authenticity quotient.

But, no.  

Let me explain this by way of a remark that will also allow me to opportunistically explain something that I said in a previous post:

I recently made a video that went by the name, the Australian Middle Class Saves the World”.  After I posted this video on Youtube and elsewhere, I started to squirm guiltily at the number of times the word ‘racism’ came out of the mouth of my idiot-hipster character  ‘Maddie’ (who says this word — as she says everything — as if it meant ‘general badness which I oppose every time I go into a trendy bar as opposed to somewhere less hip.’)

Now, this squirming on my part, was and is, of course, stupid and pathetic, not to mention revelatory of any number of equally pathetic neuroses of the “oh, maybe I’ve said something that will lead to my beautiful soul being tragically misrepresented, thus leading to situation where I won’t get invited to all those parties that… I…er…don’t go to.”  (Hmm.  So, everbody wins after all…)

At any rate, at the time, I was worried that by making Maddie constantly invoke  the term in her stilted, Xtranormal  (and indeed “extranormal”) speech,  some censorious and easily offended mythical reader of mine might somehow break through the  ‘why would she give a shit?’ barrier and publically censure me for implying that racism exists only as a chimera in the mind of self-important morons.   Now, of course: a) I never meant to say anything of the kind and b) no-one’s actually made such an accusation because well, you know, www.whywoudlanyonecare.com.  But, to clarify this anyway, for narcissistic reasons: I wasn’t making light of racism, as much as I was attempting to satirise what I think is the prevalent ideological illusion that good and bad (and even the task of combatting present present social injustices stemming from historical ones) is in the end a matter of making sure the right people have the right attitude, that everything will be all right as long as the privileged groups have the right (“Aw…we like those people…they make nice food…”) aesthetic outlook on the victims of the injustice.

Now, what I’m worried about here is the potential for a kind of ‘consumerist’ distortion of what it means to hold ethical and political positions.   The distortion operates like this: under the perpetual “Web 2.0″,  “find celebrity or die” imperatives of the present, potentially any and all decisions (always conceived as choices from life’s extensive menu) can be perverted such that they are principally a means of ‘expressing ourselves’ through our consumer choices.

In an environment governed by the imperative to ‘make sure you show what kind of person you are at all times because this is somehow terribly important’ the danger is that even our most passionately proclaimed ethical and political can take on the appearance of (even if they don’t actually become this) nothing more than tribal tattoos which we desperately try to make intricate or distinctive enough to not be mistaken for everyone else’s (crappier, duller, less “edgy”) attempts to have their selfhood recognized and thus given substance.

I think you know the kind of thing that I’m talking about: the weird contexts in which even perfectly honourable moral and political positions that are supposed to be about solidarity, equality, justice and which are supposed to give rise to what Badiou calls the ‘tent-words’ under which an elusive ‘we’ might shelter together, and work together for a better world, suddenly becomes instead less about ending oppression or actually achieving certain goals than a convenient way for me to show the (apparently perpetually watching) world my latest kung fu move in the endless game of (to quote Fight Club) “which colour scheme best expresses who I am as a person: the fuchsia, the cobalt or the cafe latte creme caramel?”

Now, I’m not saying that I think that politics needs to be like this or even that it is like this most of the time: but I am saying that there’s at least a marked tendency given the way selfhood in our epoch is thought of (as a function of shopping and other gestures of self-display) that we will turn our political “alignments” as well as our attested to (as opposed to acted upon) moral principles into just another way of selling ourselves.   

As an example, of this, I’d point to the Australian columinist Catherine Deveney, who is familiar to me chiefly for what seems to be her horrifying genius for spouting deceptively progressive sounding rhetoric in a way that must be incredibly comforting for the political right that she thinks of herself as opposing.

This is because, in her amazingly self-regarding discourse, ‘politics’ is persistently portrayed as if its main purpose was to provide an outlet for the smug self-assertion practiced by the inhabitants of the hipper suburbs, a self-assertion that consists in finding any opportunity to imply one’s both moral and aesthetic superiority to all of those  crass, ignorant unenlightened types who don’t share Our Way of Life [sic] and who will thus be deservedly Passed Over when the revolution finally acknowledges that the aforementioned  ‘let’s live in the interesting parts of the city with access to real life types’ are the saviours of muddled humanity….

Now, I won’t surprise anyone when I say that the ideology of “it’s all about your attitudes and choices” is particularly common to  Hollywood and even more so to American television.

To explain: how many films have you seen where a problem of “race”, poverty and Imperialism” is portrayed largely as a consequence of the subjective nastiness or prejudice of individual imperialists/capitalists?

The recent apotheosis (or perhaps Apocolocyntosis) of this sort of thing is  James Cameron’s Avatar, a film which though it does feature an undeniably pretty and pleasingly blue CGI jungle for its puppy-dog eyed, noble savages with sexy feline noses to frolic in, is,  despite this saving grace, unbearably, pompously earnest in its constant, humourless attempts to portray the evils of Imperialist exploitation as ultimately the handiwork of psychopathic crew-cutted military fucknuts doing the bidding of smarmy, slump-shouldered, cynical corporate half-humans, who together constitute an alliance so evil  that it wears a death’s head mask on either nipple  and has a smiling corporate logo that says “we’re the bad guys” and goes on to explain how said alliance is dedicated to stomping on every flower that ever made an innocent child smile, even and especially when those flowers grow in magical, extra-terrestrial forests full of shiny blue indigenous people with carefully constructed super-sensual Angelina Jolie lips. 

The unbelievable superficiality and childishness of Avatar’s moral outlook derives mainly from its cartoonish portrayal of oppression and exploitation as principally deriving from a lack of sensitivity and wonder, and thus as something that couldn’t possibly be abetted or perpetuated by normal, sensitive, beauty-loving people who don’t actively relish the sight of Arcadian innocence being summarily cluster-bombed by steroid-abusing thugs.

But, of course, the problem with this portrayal of capitalist Imperialism is it implicitly identifies the standard cinema-going audience’s rudimentary capacity to be moved by drama (“I’d be all like ‘Go blue cat people, I’ll> endure a cosmopolitan inter-species shag with Cat Woman Pocahontas if it stops those nasty U.S. marines from their ogre-like brutality”) as the key to solving the planet’s plunge into ecological degradation as well and at the same time as the best way to improve the condition of that inconveniently poor and dying billion people currently living who so recalicitrantly refuse to be ‘uplifted’ by what economists have long been telling us is the inevitable downward trickle of global wealth. 

By doing this, i.e. by portraying exploitation as a reality that is in no way compatible with the existence of the average movie goer and his feelings, the film completely negates what is nonetheless its enormously inflated moral-political pretensions to ‘communicate’ an important message to the people via the multiplex.   In the end, Avatar and its filmic fraternity will never be a call to arms for anyone to anything simply because (like Cameron’s much less watchable, and indeed execrable ) it feeds and flatters pervasive ideological illusions rather than dispelling them in the name of truths that might re-orient the field of what we think we know.

To make the more general point:  there’s a certain way that people in general and Hollywood films in particular have with dealing with “Imperialism” (say, the British Raj) as if it were mainly the consequence of “Whig notions of the upward march of progress and civilisation”, as if racism, class-distinctions,Titanic and exploitation all comes down to someone saying explicitly “screw these savages/poor people/they’re not civilized so we can do what we want to them.”  

Now, while of course, this was (and is) undoubtedly an element of the colonial mindset, the illusion here is that Colonialism would never have happened (or would have taken another rosier road) if only the Colonial Offices of say, the East India Company, were filled with the standard movie-going public of our time, i.e. with people who defined themselves by what is mistakenly believed to be the opposite of the “Whig” attitude: i.e.  a capacity for wonder at the beauty at “difference” – at the cultural wealth and depth of ‘other cultures’.

The problem with this argument is that it is, of course, super-sized nonsense.   In a bag.   Where the bag has a full-body shot of James Cameron’s’ gripping his Academy Award and calling for a minute’s silence for the victims of the Titanic. (Yes, he really did that.)

Thus, I’m continually surprised and shocked by how many post-colonial studies types [yes, I just crossed myself ostentatiously] types who are supposed — surely — to take Edward Said’s Orientalism as their bible – seem entirely unaware that Orientalist attitudes (“ah, these blue cat-people have a spirituality and contact with nature that our grey ugly civilization has tragically left behind, but perhaps can regain if only it opens its heart to the mysteries of the East) goes perfectly well if not better with imperialist domination than a Whiggish sense of one’s own cultural superiority: in fact it’s the ultimate (not-so-dangerous) supplement to Imperialist ideology that makes the system function all the more smoothly: allowing the Company to sell the odd sari, and copy of the Vedas back in London along with the tea.  Two words for you people who don’t get this: Lord.Curzon.

Along these lines, one of the really great things about The Wire is how utterly un-Cameronesque it is.  

This is principally because more than any American television show that I’ve seen (even The Sopranos this a program that shows poverty and even a certain ‘not-what-is-usually-meant-by-the-term’ racism in a way that makes everything else I’ve seen from the U.S. look as sanitized as Tom Sawyer’s fence after his inaugural scam.   Best of all, The Wire manages to achieve this without either sentimentality of the ‘every drug dealer in the projects is a hero in their own special way if he’d only discover the power inside himself to attract money with happy thoughts” kind or pandering to the inveterate belief of the well-meaning liberal audience of  HBO programming that the main reason that bad things happen is that there are unenlightened, insensitive people in the world and that everything would be okay, as long as People Like Us could rule the world from our living rooms.

Of course, I’m not saying that outright bigots don’t exist; they obviously do, and  (much worse) they’re seemingly self-consciously summoned into existence with alarming frequency by the prestidigitations of unscrupulous right-wing demagogues of the kind who seem to have unleashed the tea party on Obama’s America, Le Pen on France to start what would have to be a very long list.   But a remarkable thing about The Wire, is how rarely individual sentiments  (as opposed to individual actions) are portrayed as being in the least bit important to the on-going functions of the system.  It’s not that the world is portrayed, as an arch-cynic might, as being totally devoid of individual virtue  — we’re not talking about Mad Men after all   — it’s just that the show continually reinforces the fact that if individuals really have to struggle in the face of an utterly corrupt system (to the point that the fates of certain of the more well-intentioned characters throughout the show frequently recall the plot of de Sade’s Misfortunes of Virtue”and Voltaire’s Candide): i.e. no good intention (let alone deed) goes unpunished in a world where having a good attitude  (“I can speak to people of all creeds and colours without any screaming ‘kill the interloper’ prejudices”) means precisely what Kurt Vonnegut would call “doodly-squat” in the face of the deeply embedded social inequalities that are all geared up to perpetuate themselves into the next century.

(For, any Lacan lovers among you, out there, I’ll just quickly say that The Wireconstantly shows the destitution of the imaginary – the sphere of ego and alter  –  in the symbolic, while at the same time showing the terrible actions of those who will not admit the existence of a ‘hole in the Real’: i.e. the properly capitalist-bureaucratic psychosis that equates what can be counted with what ‘is’.  But, to spare the rest of you, that’s all I’ll say on the matter, for now.)

To put this another way, in The Wire, racism is not so much an attitude, as an organizing principle: it’s autopoietic, self-perpetuating, built into the heart of things like an inherited disease that is now encoded in every cell of the body, it’s like the information contained in every cell that dictates the direction in which the social body will grow.  

Now, you might object here, that racism is, by definition, a subjective disposition/attitude that we usually infer from certain forms of speech and action.   And you’d be right.  However, it’s precisely these kinds of subjective dispositions  that, in the world of The Wire seem, if not exactly irrelevant to the way “Baltimore” operates than something very close to this.  It’s as if the series at once suggests that, yes, “life in the city” is, as neo-liberal economic theory would have it, simply the aggregate of all those atoms bumping into each other a la Democritus (or, in a different sense, Friedrich Hayek’s) binding together to handle a complexity beyond that which could be ‘managed’ by any government.  And yet the show continually shows us how illusory is the neo-liberal notion that this social reality can ‘be anything at all’ in a way that would suggest these individual encounters and reactions are not already structured by the whole of which they form parts.  Instead, what we see in The Wire is the tendency for an already existing pattern (of social injustice, inequality et cetera) gets perpetuated through, by, and very occasionally despite the seemingly isolated and autonomous actions of these same individuals.  The point is not to suggest skepticism about the possibilities of human autonomy, but rather skepticism about ‘atomic’ social theory: as the  philosophically inclined, among you, will already know, society may be made up of monads, but monads are most definitely not atoms.

Put differently, the fact that Baltimore is, as they tell us somewhere in The Wire’s third season, 65 per cent “African American” added to the fact the show’s universe has a black mayor, police commissioner, senators and generally no lack of prominent black, Hispanic, Polish and Irish citizens and that WASPS of any kind seem conspicuous only in their absence, doesn’t change the fact that Baltimore’s indigent and incarcerated populations are disproportionately African-American.

The show manages — without needing to invent a single easily despised, pot-bellied bigot to fuel audience indignation by coming over all Ku Klux Klan — to show that whatever the attitudes of individuals the fact stilll remains that the poorest districts on either side of the city are all occupied by people who are  of the same colour, who speak the same language, and who are so used to and unlikely to escape the housing Project world into which they are born, that they even grow up amidst an urban lore which passes down legends of the great drug KingPins of yore down the generations.  It is a fact that, as I like to say, is obscured by its very obviousness.

Thus, racism is here objective rather than subjective, such that although there are indeed many horrendous characters (and there are many of these in the show, most of them concentrated in the higher ranks of the Baltimore PD) this  is peripheral to the fact that if you’re black you have a far greater (disporportionate) chance of being born in one of the “Towers” in which the show spends so much time, i.e. of  coming from one of the many places where people are – to quote Charles Bukowski:

‘born like this/into this/as the chalk faces smile/…. As political landscapes dissolve/as the supermarket bag boy holds a  college  degree/as the oily fish spit out their oily prey/as the sun is masked/ Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness/Into bars where people no longer speak to each other/Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings/ Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die/Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty/Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed/into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes…”

Also, in the name of chasing this elusive, frighteningly mobile, all-pervasive corruption, the narrative of The Wire across its seasons, operates by a device of continually pulling back the camera to encompass an ever more sweeping vision of the city, itself a microcosm of America: Baltimore is a teeming, thirivng thing: with its alleyways, and its corners (the sites where dealers hang out from dawn ‘til dusk) , its civic centres designed for clandestine political horse-trading, and its abandoned office buildings where the police use type-writers and old SLR cameras in a way that made me think, until half-way through the first episode that the show might be set during the 1980s (we hardly ever see a computer on any desk of the Baltimore PD.)

The fact that the shows narrative becomes increasingly panoramic as the seasons wear on is a feature that several commentators have rightly identified as the show’s curiously (especially for U.S. television) “Dickensian” quality.    Like in Our Mutual Friend and Bleak House (the latter of which, I  – admit to not having actually read) there’s a dust-heap (or a last will and testament) at the centre of everything: a money if not a paper trail that connects an endless panoply of colourful characters: police, gangsters, drug dealers, users, the frighteningly efficient members of one or more international crime syndicates with local dock-workers (“stevedores”)and their union, schoolteachers, politicians: an endless cavalcade of humanity that, for all the colour of the parade never verges on caricature: you never doubt that you’re witnessing characters drawn from life who echo and express the real life from which they came.

Most remarkably, when in later series the show achieves the remarkable feat of showing the interconnection of all aspects of life in the city via the vast self-propelling system of graft, crime, dodgy deals, and facts that are quickly obscured when they don’t fit with the various ‘target numbers’ of management-marketing bureaucrats it manages to do this without having to resort to any of the gimmicky jump-cut techniques of films like Syriana or Traffic, films which, as Fred Jameson once pointed out, tend to lose the very ‘globalisation’ they are attempting to portray in the manner of an elusive “something that has ‘had a trace put on it’ as we find in a certain kind of Hollywood action film, where the audience sees a map of the world with a light that bounces from LA to New York, to Paris, to Moscow, but then dissipates into the the aether like the argument of an ill-thought out thesis. [Actually, come to think of it, I think Jameson meant that, the vanishing from the map might be a better representation of the reality of globalisation then the attempts to ‘show the connections' a la Syriana.  But let's save that for another girl, another planet.]

The first season of The Wire, then, tells what initially looks like the story of cops attempting to catch drug dealers and drug dealers attempting to evade cops: if you didn’t look closely enough, you’d be (as Brooker says) forgiven for thinking that this is “just another cop show”, albeit one with a strong cast and and the standard absence of Manichean distinctions which tends to graitfy all those nice, liberal-in-the-American sense,  well-heeled and well-educated HBO watching types.  But by the second and third seasons (and I’ve spent several months getting to this point in the show), there’s no question that you’re seeing something that goes beyond drugs, that becomes something like a biography, or better, an ethnography of a city.

The show’s quietly devastating second season, is, in the words of the show’s creator David Simon about the “decline of work”, (a theme which, incidentally, it shares with the excellent Australian movie The Boys).

The second season follows the characters from the first series through a series of complex plots that revolve around a dock workers’ (stevedores’) union whose charismatic Polish-American shop steward (is the term used in America? What’s its local equivalent?)  Frank Sabotka (below) is desperately struggling to keep his union alive, while facing among other things, a vendetta stemming from a high-ranking police officer who will even allow a prohibited murder investigation to continue (oh, the irony) if it might humiliate Sabotka in revenge for some past slight.

Sabotka’s job is, as he, but also many of his fellow dockers see it, to keep his struggling men (and their families) waving, rather than drowning in an increasingly desperate economic situation in which the work which has for generations has kept these people alive is turning from a daily reality into a distant memory.  In post-Fordist (but remember pre-financial crisis) Baltimore:  the men (Polish, Irish and African-American) of the stevedores union are guys who would have grown up expecting to spend and even end their lives doing the kind of difficult, physical, full-time work that their fathers and grandfathers did.  But now, they’re struggling.  It’s hard to get more than a few hours a work a week, even with the help of the union (which everyone has joined because it’s a community, a multi-generational family, the only point of resistance against the brutal imperatives of capital).  Thus we are introduced to a number of characters who, unable to pay their bills, and completely unaware of how they might go about getting any other kind of work thus find themselves in a situation very like that of the kids from the Projects, except for dock-workers lacking the dubious “advantage” of their contemporaries in not having been ‘born into’  a world on the fringes of the criminal shadowlands, and who thus are at once less resigned to this world as a condition of existence, but also less capable of surviving in it.

Of course whenever we see poverty attached to ever-present hopes of fulfilling the American dream (even in the relatively sober version of a small (possibly rented) house, a car, some medical insurance, some vestiges of dignity in regular work) the temptation that the dock-workers face is naturally that of finding an easier road than the hard week’s work that is, at any rate, becoming increasingly unavailable to them.  Thus, the second season heads towards a devastating final act that will show us the consequences of these essentially decent (but, again, unsentimentally portrayed) being increasingly by crime and thus embroiled with criminals whose ruthlessness far surpasseswhat these characters are capable of imagining.

This allows the viewer to see even more of the vast networks that  circulate money and influence (and ultimately drugs) through the Byzantine channels that  connect “City Hall”, with the dealers on the corners of the previous season, to the young dock workers and their families,  to our familiar “point of identification” characters who make up the few well-meaning ” po-lice”; to their obstructive, malicious, and vindictive superiors of the former group.   In the second season all of this is also shown to connect with what also seems to be something like a pan-European crime syndicate that is not above the kind of casual murder that would make the druglords of the first season shudder.

The third season is (again I here quote from the show’s creators) about attempts at “reform”.  Thus, it is also, given from the outset that it is a season that will show the kind of rocks upon which both the well- and not-so-well-meaning attempts to ‘clean up the system’ flounder: thus whether it is gangsters trying to convert their operation into a ‘legitimate business’ (a theme of course which recalls The Godfather), to various characters making quixotic attempts to clean up corruption everywhere from the police department to the mayoral office, or even just the admirable attempts of one tired, soon-to-be-retired senior cop who tries to come up with a strategy of simply containing (rather than eliminating) the everyday catastrophe that is the is the total, dismal failure of Baltimore’s (and everywhere else’s) “war on drugs” by coming to an accommodation with the dealers; the third season continually rubs in its audience’s face a stark, wince-inducing portrayal of an all-too-familiar aspect of modern life that was already burned through the audiences’ eyeballs in scene after scene of the previous two seasons: I’m talking here about the soul-destroying, ruthless, reign of numbers (not only money, but of particular pre-delineated ways of counting what is and isn’t reality)  to which the show continually testifies.  By the reign of number, I’m talking about the classic bureaucratic ‘if it’s on the page it’s fine, if it’s not on the page it doesn’t exist’ (No hole in the symbolic, in other words,: reality is what can be measured/counted accoridng to the ways we’ve counted, c.f. my Middlesex post).  This, we all know is how institutions work whose bureaucracies have been infected with  management and marketing principles that now serve as the only legitimation discourse of the instiutiton.

Baltimore, we see, is run, not only by a modern version of the Benthamite philosophy that forms the basis of Dickens’ Hard Times, but by that familiar-to-everyone-these-days combination of corporate Newspeak acting as the basis for legislation that pays no attention to reality, and that uses  numbers and spreadsheet data (“is the murder rate up or down…if it’s too high we’ll have to pretend that a few of those murders didn’t really happen/or that we solved them, by arresting someone random from the streets who no-one will care about”):  as the only guage for reality.  Everything is subordinated to giving the higher echelons of the bureaucracy the ‘numbers’ they need, given that these numbers have now become the only legitimate way of finding out what counts as reality: all else is subjective psychosis.

Thus, some of what I found to be the hardest scenes to watch in the whole show (thus far) occur in the third season.  These are not brutal gun fights that leave the streets bloodied (although this season in particular certainly has its share of such things).  Instead, the really unwatchable scenes, for me, are the ones that involve smug, smarmy, insouciant, and cautiously corrupt higher-ranking policeman publically humiliating their subordinates for not making their ‘policing data’ turn out the way they’re supposed to and, in the process, being awarded with ever more promotions for their exemplary ‘management’.  The worst thing about this, is that we know, from our own experience in considerably less desperate and tragic worlds than that of The Wire that the same kind of principles run the world at large: the university, the public service, and other once last bastions of a different logic, a different way of counting reality, are of course, no exception to this.

In essence: I’ve never seen anything to match The Wire for portraying corruption as so embedded in the heart of a city (and a social system) so capable of completely resisting the efforts of the few remaining honest men and women.  At the same time, it’s important to note the way that this pervasive, systematic  ‘corruption’ is portrayed.  

Essentially, the show tackles corruption in a way that multiplies moral ambiguities at epidemic speed: it’s not just the usual “oh, we  get to see the light and dark sides of both dealers and of cops thus humanizing them both” blather: instead, the audience is constantly being given unpleasant forced choices between varying degrees of corruption.  Thus a character whom we have seen commit some act of unmitigated bastardry suddenly looks like a crusading hero when he’s moved for complex reasons to oppose the machinations of another character who will himself look like the lesser of two evils in a different situation in which he is not a power-broker.  

This focus on systematic corruption means that there’s no evil in the show in the sense of a metaphysical (or naturalized) property attached to certain individuals: there’s no Joker figure continually motivated only by an obscure desire to cause mayhem.  Instead, everyone is alternately decent and a monster according to the logic of different situations and how these characters perceive the extent to which their interests can be advanced or threatened.   Obviously, the point here is not to deny the existence of human freedom, nor of the mind’s capacity for transcendence: the show -does- portray  characters who nobly sacrifice themselves in adherence to principles and who refrain from letting their principles be dictated by the exigencies of a situation: but although these characters are (for certain obvious reasons) protagonists they are never 1) never portrayed as White Knights and more importantly 2) we get, very often, to see these good-guy through the eyes of their colleagues and superiors: i.e. as  lunatics who are hubristically setting themselves up for disaster.

To give you a sense of how much this theme of all pervasive and yet graded corruption permeates the show, early in the first season we see one of the show’s most consistently sympathetic characters beating an adolescent with a night-stick, for the minor crime of having basically shoved one of her fellow police officers.  It’s a brutal scene, that comes at the climax of an episode, and that places most of the violence off-camera such that we get the disturbing vision of the beating continuing as the credits roll in our living rooms.  We’re just left with the feeling that even the show’s “good po-lice” still have their moments of relishing the violence that, it is, after all, so often part of their de facto if not de jure brief to inflict especially when it comes to one of the show’ frequent, futile  ‘let’s appease the media’ with a few raids on the  housing projects).  Casual police violence to witnesses that would have led to a whole story arc in other shows are mainly shrugged off by even the most sensitive of characters: it’s the way things /‘battles have to be picked’ / and so on.

Last of all I suppose I should attempt some criticism of the show.  The weakest character in the Wire is undoubtedly at least to my mind) its putative protagonist (despite the excellent performance by English actor Dominic West).  

West’s character McNulty, though undoubtedly a likable Irish-American rogue is too much of a cop-show stereotype (hard-drinking, divorced, unable to quite make his alimony payments &c., dedicated to solving the case to the detriment of everything else in his life) to be of comparable interest to some of the other characters, despite the fact that he does have a 3-dimensionality that elevates him above his equivalents in more pedestrian programs.  But even the relative blandness of McNulty is really a small flaw, because the show never seems to make the character more than a lynchpin: a familiar face that we can follow into unfamiliar parts of town with some sympathy, and some recognition.  In this sense, the show is from its beginning, and ever more from its first season onwards, an ensemble piece where the ensemble recalls not only a modern Dickens but his inevitable French “version” (to say a phrase that would have me lynched in Paris) Victor Hugo.

Lastly, I should also say, at the risk of anti-climax that the show has one character, who, I’m tempted to say belongs to the literary-treasure house of the world, despite the fact that his presence in the show marks the intersection of the world of The Wire with something from a completely different genre.  I am talking here about the character of Omar Little (played by Michael K. Williams).  

Omar is a character, who among all of the rhythmic, poetic dialogue, has perhaps the most rhythmical delivery and poetic phrasing of any of the characters: it’s a delight to watch him saunter between one scene and the next, scattering his strange drawling in  the argot of the Baltimore street like a kind of gangster Zen master whose always one step away from turning to the camera for a Shakespearean soliloquy that will have the audience in tears.  Omar’s role is brilliantly, wonderfully preposterous:  a  scarred, openly gay, fearless, muscular, shotgun-carrying lunatic/urban-cum-avenging angel who makes his living (as he happily admits to anyone who asks) stealing drugs from other drug-dealers at shot-gun point, in between sleeping with handsome young men, and (later in the series) keeping together a tight family-like “crew” that includes gun-toting lesbian couples of a kind that might have sprung from a late night drinking session between Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino.

If you think that this seems like a strange carry-over from the  graphic-novel superhero story you’d be right.  And yet (the Dickensian thing again) Omar is, like Estella, or Sidney Carson or Scrooge or Jean Valjean or Eponine or Monsieur Thernadiér  or Claude Frollo is completely believable as much as he is ludicrously extravagant, and present for the purpose of delighting the audience.    In fact, the poignancy of what happens to his character, as the show goes on is all the greater because it’s like seeing an Immortal character from a more comic-book kind of film (Clint Eastwood’s character from a spaghetti Western, or even “Iron Man”) suddenly being forced to realise that not even the man with super-powers is  immune to the toll taken by everyday life on the streets of  Baltimore.  (Oh, and a propos of nothing, Williams should  definitely be cast as ‘Thor’ in the upcoming film of the same name.)

Thus, for all of Omar’s extravagance and charisma, we never doubt that his prototype could have really once walked the streets of the real (as opposed to fictional) Baltimore.  It is interesting on this note that, even the actor who plays Omar apparently has – more than anyone else in the cast — a  background most similar to that of his character.  One example of this is the fact that the enormous scar that marrs Omar’s face is not the result of any labour by  The Wire’s make-up department.

What this demonstrates is the well-known principle that the legend is sometimes closer to the reality – that if you leave out the more extravagant, fanciful parts of reality and only to print what seems to fit the sober law of averages and bell curves, you miss part of realit just as much as if you had told a story that featured nothing but caricatures.  

And no-one, believe me could ever accuse The Wire of “Romanticism” a word which, in the endlessly evocative ‘tattoo-across-the-soul’ Baltimore’ that it presents, probably means something like “hoping that your most diligent works might make even an iota of difference to anything or anyone.”  On this theme, it’s possible that the show will be (or has been) criticized in some quarters for the ostensibly ‘pacifying’ effects of its pessimism.  

But I’m not at all sure that this would be justified.  

While, of course, watching The Wire is, in one sense, as ‘passive’ as watching any other television show (i.e. no-one has yet found, that I know of, a way to storm the Bastille from the couch, )I see no reason to suggest that the show’s attempt to portray systematic injustice unflinchingly (as opposed to the tragedy of this or that individual soul), yet with the dramatic nous that makes it a genuine pleasure to watch should be as a sign that the show contributes to cynicism, and thus to apathy or despair.   This argument would make sense only if you were prepared to argue that any focus on structural problems as opposed to simply enumerating the rich possibilities for collective action inevitably had the lesson that ‘there’s no point in doing anything’: at, any rate, by this logic Das Kapital is ‘pacifying.’

Against this, I”ll suggest that there’s always something at least potentially emancipating in a gaze that is prepared to look for the truth of something.  As long as we don’t make the classic cynical mistake of taking truth for merely the absence of illusions, it’s still possible to find that a gaze that tries to, in journalistic cliché, “stare unflinchingly at reality” may succeed at the important task of making what was previously invisible, visible.  And every change in the distribution of the visibile and the invisible is one more step towards changes in what we take for granted as setting the bounds of the psosible.   Anymore than this, is obviously, up to us, becomes genuinely political:  hard to ask more of entertainmen,  especially of the kind that by its nature tends to be consumed in (at least relative) isolation.

[Original article (includes pictures, parenthetical remarks and links to other websites can be found at http://http://prettycoolforaniconodule.wordpress.com/2010/06/17/born-into-this-in-which-i-review-three-seasons-of-the-wire-and-mention-avatar-with-the-lip-curling-scorn-it-deserves/]

 

 

senuke

Wilton Armetale is a pewter and silver look-alike material developed by the Wilton Brass Company in 1963. The metal was ideal to make cook and serve wares that were inspired by specific themes.

The Artistic Design category is one of the collections created by the company. The emphasis of this collection was on historic reference. It was also more eclectic in applicable environments than categories like Natural, Grand or Classic. The products under this collection interpret historic references in a contemporary manner.

The Artistic Design Collection includes sub-categories like Antiquity, Songs & Sonnets and Visionary. We look at each of these sub-categories in the following sections.

The Antiquity Collection

The products in this collection reference various cultural designs, many of them dating back to antiquity. Ethnic designs of ancient and more recent tribal communities are reflected in this collection.

The tribal motifs include American Indian and African designs used during historical times. Early American folk art designs are also included under the Antiquity category.

The African collection includes pitchers, trivets, bowls, casseroles, chip & dip servers, trays and wine bottle coasters, with rim designs inspired by tribal art displayed on canoes, houses, fabrics, shields and other objects of the tribal communities of Chad, Kenya and several other African countries.

The Doves & Hearts series was based on American folk art motifs, such as the Lovebirds Bread Tray that depicted two lovebirds facing each other with a heart between them. The series seeks to recapture American Colonial, Traditional and Country environments.

Songs & Sonnets Collection

This series celebrates the diversity of the world’s people, as seen through songs, stories, poetry and designs of different communities. We look at a few examples.

The Potlatch series remembered the ceremonial gift-giving festival of American Northwest Coastal Indians. The series included carved Canoe Bowls, Eagle candleholder, a Totem of a Bear and Beaver, a plate with a Raven and Human Face, a tray with layers of masks and faces and a bowl with a Seal design.

The Reggae series employed a festive and whimsical combination of spirals and zig zags to evoke the rhythms of the Caribbean.

The Copacabana series references the deco architecture of South Miami Beach, with stylized palm tree and coconuts along a beach evocative of ocean waves and clouds above.

The Visionary Collection

This collection includes the Scroll, Oasis, Elara, Boston and Free Form series.

The lively scroll designs infuse the symmetry of classical designs with the dynamic movement of the scroll motif.

The flowing lines and sweeping forms of the Oasis series seeks to capture the strength of Italian Futurism and organic flow of Japanese Zen.

Elara is one of Jupiter’s moons, and products in this series have highly polished curvilinear surfaces and sculptured contours, creating a contemporary cosmopolitan ambience.

Free form designs are seen in such collections as those created by Bruce Fox in Free Form Bowls and Banana Leaf Large Servers, and in the Cloud series serving pieces inspired by cumulous clouds.

The Wilton Armetale Artistic collections are indeed eclectic, suitable for varied environments.

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Do you ever worry about what clothing to wear that can make you fell cool, comfortable and fashionable? And do you always feel headache in summer morning about what clothes you should wear for match up? If you say yes, then sarong will be a perfect choice for you! Sarongs, some people call them surong, pareos; others go for kanga, sri, or toga, but sarong is the most popular name to be used worldwide.

A sarong is a large sheet of fabric that can be used in many different ways, such as sexy skirt, beach blanket, shawl or scarf, table cover up, and curtain. Made of 100% rayon and handmade by Bali experts, our sarongs will give you the most comfortable sensation that you never have!

There are as many different types of fabrics as there are hours in the day; and with summer fast approaching, the latest styles and fashions are sure to cause a buzz in the fashion scene all over the country and across the globe.

Apparel and Sarong WholesaleSarong.com owns garment factory in Bali Indonesia and has two wholesale distribution centres in Canada and United States. They export their clothing fashion apparel products to various retailers all over the world. You can also choose to order from them online or by phone. Each Bali item is handmade, something you donâ??t see very often in the clothing industry these days.

In addition to all of the wonderful ethic clothing and sarong pareo lava-lava, donâ??t forget to take a look at their wonderful accessories. You can find matching woven hand bags, make up bags, and beach shoes. There are also some great items for your home including incense holders, candles, figurines, childrenâ??s toys, rainstick, didgeridoo, tribal masks, abstract carvings, Buddha statues, wind chimes, African djembe drums and musical instruments.

Poker Stars

In search of an inexpensive housewarming gift? Are you planning to give home accessories for friends who are about to tie the knot? If youâ??ve begun to realize that the new ceiling fan youâ??ve just bought for your neighbor appears to be a prime candidate for regifting, weâ??re here to provide some cheap home decoration gift ideas which may just be worth your while.

Table Accents

Tables offer great flexibility when it comes to decorating. For dining tables, metal fruit baskets and wicker bread trays are excellent storage accessories that offer great decorative value. Pillar candle holders and cheap glass vases are excellent for coffee tables and consoles in living rooms and lobbies. The list for unique yet inexpensive table accents can go on and on. As with any room interior, the key is to match your décor with current furniture theme.

Wall Decorations

In lieu of expensive paintings, items like wrought iron decorations and full sized mirrors offer practical alternatives for both traditional and contemporary room designs. Sandstone wall decorations make great accents for both modern living room interiors and Asian garden themes. For contemporary walls, you may want to try to infuse a bit of African art by hanging decorative tribal masks.

Storage Accessories

Though your friendsâ?? clutter free home may appear to be wondrous sight at first, they will eventually find the need to organize at one point or another. Every home always has room for a new wall mounted shelf. Chest drawers and metal magazine racks rarely ever outrun their use. Corner racks are cheap home accessories that are often assured of a space in kitchens and living rooms.

Traditional and Antique Décor

Though the terms traditional and antique connote ideas of elegance and luxury, youâ??ll be surprised of the number of ways you help spruce of your friendâ??s Victorian room theme without going beyond your budget. Resin vases and sculptures are steadily gaining popularity because of two key factors, â??beauty and affordabilityâ?. As one of the most versatile synthetic substances today, resin can be fabricated to replicate the texture of wood or metal in any shape or form imaginable. When used as decorative fixtures or furniture, the difference between resin and wood is often hardly discernable.

For more home decoration tips and ideas, please feel free to visit www.homedecorcenter.com.

senuke

The old black and white movies on the silver screen had bedroom furniture all figured out. There, in an oasis in a lonely desert, a single tent stood. Inside, was paradise on earth. Luscious silks, overstuffed pillows, and a bed that would surround you in ecstasy.

Sigh…

The truth of the matter is, you can create your own oasis in the middle of the hubbub of life. All it takes is a little imagination, a bit of elbow grease, some paint and bedroom furniture that matches the theme and you’re all set.

Imagination is an essential ingredient. A bedroom, particularly a master bedroom, should be your escape from the work-all-day world of stress and strain. It should be welcoming. It should be romantic. And it should reflect your unique tastes. It is, after all, your inner sanctum and only the select few are invited to share it. So why shouldn’t it be elegant and comfortable, too.

If your bedroom hasn’t received a facelift in a long time, it’s time to do some cosmetic surgery. Strip the room of all the wall art and bedroom furniture. Now you have a blank canvas to work with. Spackle all the holes and cracks in the wall and give your walls a new coat of paint. Paint is one of the least expensive ways to give a room an entirely new look.

Once you’ve put a little makeup on the walls and ceiling, it’s time for some foundations. Your bedroom furniture should reflect your tastes as well. Thankfully, there’s an endless variety of bedroom furniture to choose from these days, from the traditional to the modern, from Oriental to tropical – the choice is yours.

When selecting your bedroom furniture, keep in mind the theme you’re going for. If you’re looking to make your room look like a page out of Islands magazine, select bedroom furniture that has a Caribbean, plantation or Key West look to it. The same is true of virtually any theme you can come up with. Want to do an African savanna theme? Go with dark wooded bedroom furniture and accent it with mosquito netting, tribal masks and a few primitive statues. Go with jungle greens for the walls, offset with white trim. In no time you’re be sure you’re hearing the trumpeting of elephants and the roar of the king of the beasts.

Accent pillows are another nice touch, as are small knickknacks and photos of family and friends. These soften the space and will add character to the room, the bedroom furniture and the fabrics you have in them. Again, choose colors and textures to add interest without causing distraction.

If your furniture is in relatively good repair, you may want to refinish it in new stains or colors to match the look you’re going for. And while you’re at it, consider rearranging the furniture in the space. It can do wonders for a tired looking room.

Finally, you’ll probably want to redo your linens to match the new décor, the new colors and the ambiance of the space. Consider luxurious looking pillows, comforters and linens that will make your bedroom look like an oasis in the desert of life.

senuke

Complete recovery is a 2-stage process- recovery from addictions and traumatic histories, and recovery of fulfillment, wisdom, serenity, and emotional, spiritual and sexual wholeness.

As we enter the dawn of a new millennium, traditional psychotherapy-and the therapist’s role-appear caught in the sort of crisis described by Denise Breton and Christopher Largent in their book, The Paradigm Conspiracy.1 The detached, analytical approach often practiced by psychotherapists since the days of Freud no longer makes people well. In fact, this strict therapist-patient/ normal-sick paradigm may actually make them worse, contributing to deeper feelings of alienation and frustration. For our own field of addictions therapy as well as other specialties, it is evident that the time has come for a “paradigm shift” toward a more “soul-sensitive” 2 approach to psychotherapy. The need for change was championed in recent statements by Dr. Patrick Carnes at the National Council on Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity conference in St. Louis. Fr. Leo Booth echoed the view that spirituality has become the cornerstone of both our individual and collective healing when he stated that as therapists, “We must open our mind to new ways of seeing our future…and bring to that the energy of creative positivism.”3

Authentic Process Therapy (APT) represents such a paradigm shift in psychotherapy — combining the structure of the healing community found in 12-Step recovery programs with a facilitating therapist, and employing traditional as well as contemporary healing techniques to address the deeper issues that invariably arise in the course of long-term recovery. APT and its core concept of “complete recovery” grew out of my own personal struggle toward wholeness as an AIDS survivor, as a gay man, and as a person in recovery, as well as from my experience with clients from diverse cultural and transpersonal perspectives, and from the maturing recovery movement over the past 20 years. Authentic Process Therapy may offer an important alternative for treating addictions and compulsions. This article provides a summary of APT, its goals, methods, basic philosophy and spirit.
Incorporating Strengths and Acknowledging Limitations of 12-Step Programs

Since 1935, with the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous, tens of thousands of alcohol and drug-addicted men and women have begun the journey to recovery by turning to a compassionate spiritual community embodied in AA and other 12-Step programs. This approach has been unrivaled in its ability to help people stop active addictions. Yet, all too often, the process of recovery is limited in terms of healing the issues that underlie alcoholism, drug dependency or other life-threatening addictions. The realization of one of AA’s Promises, “We will know a new freedom and a new happiness…,”4 eludes many 12-Steppers who struggle between feelings of gratitude (thankful to have their lives back in control) and feelings of frustration and emptiness that something is still missing.

These secondary issues are profoundly important to complete recovery. Even individuals with years of sobriety can experience problems that threaten their continued recovery — among them: codependency and other secondary addictions; depression; self-destructive behavior; underachieving; fear of abandonment; lack of sexual fulfillment; and the array of challenges facing those who are also living with HIV and other serious illnesses. I can attest to the fact that issues regarding sexual orientation can be a particular challenge for recovering gays, lesbians and transgender individuals. All of these, and other manifestations of internalized dilemmas, can keep people in recovery from what we want the most: mutual trust, love, and respect.

To overcome these limitations, notable therapists including John Bradshaw and Earnie Larsen 5, 6 have suggested an expanded model of recovery that goes beyond coping with primary addictions. Authentic Process Therapy is one such approach. APT recognizes that recovery is a two-stage process. Stage One, the healing from a primary addiction to alcohol, drugs, food, sex, gambling or any other dependency, requires a committed, singular focus for at least 1 to 2 years-and more for many individuals. But overcoming an active addiction is only half the battle.

Whereas Stage 1 is “recovery from” addictions, Stage Two-the direct focus of APT-is “recovery of” fulfillment, wisdom, serenity, and emotional, spiritual and sexual wholeness.

The objectives of Authentic Process Therapy in Stage Two recovery are:

To identify and express complex feelings… A tendency to be overwhelmed by mixed feelings-gratitude and joy for one’s freedom from chemical dependency, and sorrow, grief, or even rage at past experiences-typically emerges with time in recovery. APT helps clients develop a vocabulary for talking about these feelings and coping skills to deal with them.

To connect in more meaningful ways with others in a community… APT is based on the healing community model of AA, but encourages those in recovery to create new “facilitated communities” to deal with specific Stage Two issues such as childhood trauma, sexual orientation and how one’s healing impacts and is impacted by culture.

To heal the internalized sexual-spiritual split… A major element of APT is devoted to resolving the conflict between sexuality and spirituality, an overwhelming problem for many individuals in recovery.

To disengage power dynamics… By encouraging clients to examine their own role in power structures of daily life, APT can help to resolve ongoing difficulties with authority figures and intimates, and foster free expression in all relationships.

To achieve a “shame-free” presentation of self… Through APT, recovering individuals no longer feel ashamed or embarrassed by a difficult personal history.

To discover an individual “life purpose”… Clients learn how to contribute more meaningfully to society, to give back to loved ones, and to help establish a better future.

Simply stated, the key to achieving the goals of Authentic Process Therapy is “being real.” The desire to be “authentic”-to present true inner feelings rather than a false front-is a minimum requirement for participation. Certain African tribal ceremonies refer to this as “speaking from the pit of the belly.”7 While it seems easy enough, it means more than merely speaking what is on your mind, because “what is on your mind” usually refers to surface issues that have been filtered through society’s value system. Authentic Process Therapy reaches down past the surface into the deep regions of consciousness to summon feelings that have long been suppressed as the ultimate means of achieving an integration of body, mind and spirit that is often unattainable in conventional 12-step settings, traditional psychotherapy or addiction counseling.

In attaining these goals a helpful device is the use of the The Living Map, in which the healing process is envisioned in the shape of a tree. This bird’s eye view can make the transition into the healing process less frightening by providing an overview of what to expect, and when things get tough, we can return to the bird’s eye view to reassess our position. Most importantly, clients’ trust of their intuition grows during Stage Two recovery, and that it can be increasingly relied on as a compass to guide the individual to wherever he or she needs to be on the tree, and to the people, communities and processes that are necessary for complete recovery.

APT utilizes “Four Powers” that dissolve barriers to complete recovery:

1.The Power of Community-based Healing
2.The Power of Shared Intentionality
3.The Power of Shared Belief
4.The Power of Authentic Process
We use the Four Powers to move through various stations of experience toward fulfilling the constellation of shared desires that are inherent in the human condition. Along the way the Tree of Awareness blossoms, producing wonderful and sometimes totally unexpected fruit.

The Role of the Therapist in Authentic Process:

APT is a psycho spiritual approach, meaning that it integrates varied addiction psychology and psychotherapeutic principles merged with modern day and indigenous applications of spiritual wisdom. In spirit, the role of the therapist in APT is much like a shaman. He or she must act as a facilitator, guide, role model and force for healing in both individual and group settings. As such, the therapist is not a removed, clinical authority figure but a special member of the type of therapeutic community defined by M. Scott Peck in his book, A Different Drum as:

“…a group of individuals who have learned how to communicate honestly with each other, whose relationships go deeper than their masks of composure, and who have developed some significant commitment to rejoice together, mourn together, and to delight in each other, make others’ conditions our own.”8

Authentic Process Therapy has its roots in the power of the healing community described by Peck, embodied in the 12-Step model and further developed in the concept of “wisdom circles” proposed by Charles Garfield, Cindy Spring, and Sedona Cahil.9 In APT, the therapist’s province is defined in large part by the group. A 1993 survey of 130 Stage 2 clients and workshop participants found that the most prominent needs and expectations that recovering people have of their therapists were as follows 10:

•To encourage the client to take healthy risks
•To give feedback, without which therapy would be frustrating
•To provide a role model of what a fuller recovery might look and feel like
•To be interactive and help illuminate dynamics that are debilitating
•To compassionately include and have understanding of the “shadow self”
•To understand that therapy is ineffective if a client is suffering an active substance addiction
•To recognize that a new approach/ strategy is required if the process becomes stagnant
•To be confrontational in a respectful manner and in the spirit of illumination

In contrast to traditional psychoanalysis, the community dynamic requires that the client view the practitioner as an advanced traveler or someone who is specially educated in this adventure of life — never as someone who is “normal” while the client is “sick.” For recovering people, a clinical setting eliminates the spiritual nurturing that leads to healing. Furthermore, the therapist’s removal of the “self,” as practiced in traditional psychotherapy can create a painful re-enactment of dysfunctional childhood deprivation. While this might be a treatment goal in psychoanalysis, it can be counterproductive for people in addictions recovery. Instead, in Authentic Process Therapy, therapists and clients work together without hierarchy towards mutual authenticity and community. Everything is discussed, nothing is hidden. APT is not esoteric in nature and is not elitist. People are simply encouraged to speak from the heart.

The Authentic Process approach also eschews transference, the substitution of the therapist for the object of repressed emotions and impulses, such as a parent or authority figure from childhood. This type of relationship makes recovering people feel manipulated, often clouding their continued growth with confusing power dynamics. In APT, therapists are also participants who are encouraged to share their own experiences and life challenges, when appropriate, in order to promote their clients’ progress, either by creating a natural and real relationship, reducing shame, or creating a larger framework in which to process feelings and ideas.

A Combined Approach

The combined approach offered by Authentic Process Therapy has proven particularly effective in enhancing recovery in three major areas:

Overcoming secondary addictions… In APT we recognize that addictions and compulsions are basically coping mechanisms, self-medications to help deal with and further suppress the deeply repressed effects of early and contemporary traumatic stresses, deprivations and cultural prejudices. Until the underlying chaos is released and cleared up, old addictions will invariably be updated with other primary or secondary addictions, in an effort to maintain a feeling of equilibrium and safety when faced with chaotic, traumatic conflicts beneath the conscious surface. With education and “inner statesmanship,” these underlying conflicts can present themselves for healing. As we are able to make it “okay” for them to come out of hiding, addictions fall away with each exposure.

Addressing Shame… Shame is the nemesis that plagues recovering people in their crusade toward wholeness. To understand the impact of shame-based behavior and ideation on daily life, APT utilizes John Bradshaw’s “Externalization Process” technique 11 to consciously make contact with one’s younger self, and with the shame that impedes its further integration. APT is a highly effective way of releasing toxic shame by exploring unconscious material and making it conscious within the safety of a healing community milieu. Carl Jung called this phenomenon “transcendent function,” explaining that when unconscious content becomes conscious we experience a sense of clarity, a fuller understanding of ourselves, an experience that goes beyond ordinary, everyday consciousness. 12

Expressing joy… The ultimate goal of complete recovery is the transpersonal breakthrough into what I call “holism.” Holism as defined in Authentic Process Therapy encompasses not only the feeling of being whole and complete in oneself, but also of being integrated into the cosmos, one with nature, and connected with all humanity. This holistic experience is accompanied by feelings of great joy, empowerment, creativity and love, from which we can meet future challenges with grace and wisdom. Yet, recovering people are often embarrassed and reluctant to share blissful feelings because they are afraid they will be misunderstood, or that the feelings will not last. Safe friends, communities, or professionals with whom to share these feelings are essential.

Open to All

The freedom to experiment with joy is a giant step beyond traditional definitions of recovery, as well as an issue with which many “normal” people have difficulty. Thus, it is increasingly being recognized that the same techniques which empower former addicts toward states of wholeness and happiness can likewise work wonders for those outside of the recovery community who feel empty and unfulfilled. Authentic Process Therapy shares this view and welcomes all comers who recognize the potential for greater authenticity of expression and interaction in their lives. At the same time, APT, with its emphasis on community, continues to offer an important centering point for individuals in recovery. And, because much of the healing and education can take place in groups, workshops or facilitated wisdom circles, the overall cost is less than that of individual care alone.

In helping to fully respect and appreciate one’s own complex nature, Authentic Process Therapy offers clients the opportunity to embark on a most exciting and meaningful inner journey — a path to wholeness, in which recovering individuals not only learn to chart a more effective course through their inner wilderness but to fully appreciate the unsought gift M. Scott Peck calls “being touched by grace.” 13

References:
1.Breton, Denise and Largent, Christopher. The Paradigm Conspiracy. Garden City, MN: Hazelden, 1996.
2.Journal of Noetic Science
3.Fr. Leo Booth, Keynote Address, 1999 New York Federation of Addictions Counselors Conference, Albany NY
4.Alcoholics Anonymous. New York: AA World Services, 1955.
5.Bradshaw, John. Healing The Shame That Binds You. Florida: Health Communications, Inc. 1988
6.Larsen, Earnie. Stage II Recovery: Life Beyond Addiction. New York: Harper & Row, 1985.
7.African ceremonies
8.Peck, M. Scott. A Different Drum [tbd]
9.Garfield, Charles, Spring, Cindy, and Cahill, Sedona. Wisdom Circles. New York: Hyperion, 1998.
10.Picucci, Michael. The Journey Toward Complete Recovery: Reclaiming Your Emotional, Spiritual & Sexual Wholeness. New York: North Atlantic Books, 1998.
11.Bradshaw, John. Healing the Shame That Binds You. Florida: Health Communications Inc., 1988.
12.Jung, CG. Psychology and Religion. CT: Yale University, 1938.
13.Peck, M Scott. The Road Less Traveled. New York: Touchstone, 1978.

Poker Stars

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