(via What Is The Morally Appropriate Language In Which To Think And Write?)

नवज्योति की नव-मीमांसा

नवज्योति की नव-मीमांसा हिन्दुत्व का दार्शनिक विमर्श प्रसन्न कुमार चौधरी 1. परम्परा और आधुनिकता युरोपीय आधुनिकता और गैर-युरोपीय परम्पराओं के बीच सम्बन्ध, उनके बीच टकराव और उनकी अन्तःक्रियाएँ पिछली दो शताब्दियों में बौद्धिक विमर्श का अत्यन्त महत्वपूर्ण विषय रही हैं । दुनिया भर के सर्वश्रेष्ठ मस्तिष्कों ने इस विषय पर समग्रता में, और अपने-अपने देशों के संदर्भ में, गहन मंथन किया है और इस विषय पर…

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“Atomization is advancing not only between men, but within each individual, between the spheres of his life. No fulfilment may be attached to work, which would otherwise lose its functional modesty in the totality of purposes, no spark of reflection is allowed to fall into leisure time, since it might otherwise leap across to the workaday world and set it on fire. While in their structure work and amusement are becoming increasingly alike, they are at the same time being divided ever more rigorously by invisible demarcation lines. Joy and mind have been expelled equally from both. In each, blank-faced seriousness and pseudo-activity hold sway.”

— Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 84

Dr B R Ambedkar (14.04.1891 - 06.12.1956)

Great social reformer, philosopher, jurist, political leader, historian and economist. Independent India's first Law Minister and Chairperson of the Constitution's Drafting Committee (29.08.1947 - 24.01.1950).

A few quotes from his writings:

"Every act of independent thinking puts some portion of apparently stable world in peril."

"For a successful revolution, it is not enough that there is discontent. What is required is a profound and thorough conviction of justice, necessity and importance of political and social rights."

"What are we having this liberty for? We are having this liberty in order to reform our social system, which is full of inequality, discrimination and other things, which conflict with our fundamental rights."

"Political tyranny is nothing compared to the social tyranny and a reformer who defies society is a more courageous man than a politician who defies government."

"I measure the progress of a community by the degree of progress which women have achieved."

"Cultivation of mind should be the ultimate aim of human existence."

Today is his 123rd birth anniversary.

Virtual Guantanamo (by Draxtor Despres)

nonnydlp.com | nonnydelapena.com | pyedogproductions.com

Fast Company’s Co-Create Magazine called Nonny de la Peña one of the 13 People Who Made the World More Creative. She is the pioneer of Immersive Journalism, a groundbreaking brand of nonfiction that offers fully immersive experiences of the news using virtual reality gaming platforms. Combining her communication and technology skills with her lengthy career as a reporter, de la Peña believes newsgames can deepen the understanding of complex stories. Her most recent project Hunger in Los Angeles creates the feeling of ‘being there’ as a real crisis unfolds on a food-bank line at the First Unitarian Church. Hunger was called ‘one of the most talked-about’ pieces at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Her other projects include the MacArthur funded Gone Gitmo, a virtual Guantanamo Bay Prison; Cap & Trade, an interactive exploration of the carbon markets built with Frontline World and CIR; Ipsress which investigates detainees held in stress positions; and Three Generations, a newsgame on the California eugenics movement that premiered at 2011 Games For Change. She also co-founded the Knight News Challenge winner Stroome.com, an online collaborative video editing platform that hosted users from 126 different countries. A graduate of Harvard University, she is a award-winning documentary filmmaker with twenty years of journalism experience including as a correspondent for Newsweek Magazine and as a writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times Magazine, Premiere Magazine, and others. Her films have screened on national television and at theatres in more than fifty cities around the globe, garnering praise from critics like A.O. Scott who called her work ‘a brave and necessary act of truth-telling.”

CELLINI, Benvenuto

Perseus

1545-54

Bronze, height 320 cm

Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence

The Nightmare (alternate version) by Fussli, 1802.

“Incantation. A prayer for apps and the latest whatever, sung by “the witch”. New things to try, a desperation, an automation to it. A heaviness, as if being joined by a yoke to our technology, it’s dragging us, making us pay per download. We’re it’s slave.”

Leah Kardos’s album “Machines”, a song cycle based on themes of technology, loneliness and the human condition, with lyrics derived from spam emails. (via Tom A.)

The Empire of ancient Ghana The empire of ancient Ghana created by the Mende (Soninke) with human habitation dating back to at least around 4,000 BC.

Ancient Ghana was located in what is now southeastern Mauritania and western Mali. Today the area around Dar Tichitt in southern Mauritania has been the subject of much archaeological attention, revealing successive layers of settlement near what still were small lakes as late as 1200 BCE. At this time people there built circular compounds, 60-100 feet in diameter, near the beaches of the lakes. (‘Compound’ is the name given to a housing type, still common today, in which several members of related families share space within a wall.) These compounds were arranged into large villages located about 12 miles from each other. Inhabitants fished, herded cattle and planted some millet, which they stored in pottery vessels. This was the last era of reasonable moisture in this part of the Sahara. By 1000 BCE the villages, still made up of compounds, had been relocated to hilltop positions, and were walled. Cattle were still herded, more millet was grown, but there were no more lakes for fishing. From 700-300 BCE the villages decreased in size and farming was reduced at the expense of pastoralism.

Architecturally, the villages of Dar Tichitt resemble those of the modern northern Mande (Soninke), who live in the savanna 300-400 miles to the south. These ancient villagers were not only farmers, but were engaged in trade connected with the salt and copper mines which developed to the north. Horse drawn vehicles passed through the Tichitt valley, bringing trading opportunities, ideas, and opening up the inhabitants to raids from their more nomadic northern neighbors. Development of the social and political organization necessary to handle commerce and defense must have been a factor in the subsequent development of Ghana, the first great Sudanic empire, in this part of West Africa.

It is very plausible to think that the people of antiquity in Ancient Ghana may be connected to the Ancient peoples who lived in the Sahara before it turned into dessert. Additionally Habitation of the region where the Ghana empire existed is much older than Western academics are aware of.

Happy Birthday, Rousseau

For Rousseau’s birthday, 21 essential reads on education – Bertrand Russell, Susan Sontag, Noam Chomsky, Isaac Asimov, Kio Stark, Richard Feynman, and more: