break

Points of departure will be taking a break for two weeks because i'm going to a conference in St Petersburg.

camel minders

This one is for Nancy, who had a post recently about elephant minders in Delhi. Ironically enough, I found the picture in an Indian magazine that a friend of mine brought back for me from India. While I have seen the caracases of camels lying by the road after an accident, I'm yet to see a camel thus decorated. The photograph was taken in the Negev Desert. They say that as many as 1000 camels will be equipped with the new phosphorescent strips in an effort to cutdown camel-vehicle collisions.

The Grand List of Overused Science Fiction Cliches (via SciScoop)

two days in telegraphese.
flea hunting in semi-abandoned rodent burrows
in the zin wadi. the hunters return emptyhanded, no food tonight, but the data sheet piles on numbers anyhow
a volleyball match
a party by the pool that suddenly turns into a kids session
a trip to ber sheva, to celeberate the Peruvian National Day

Adam's Bridge or Rama's Bridge. According to the Hindu epic Ramayana, Rama, an incarnation of Vishnu built a bridge to Lanka (~Sri Lanka) to rescue his wife Sita from the demon ruler Ravana. Now NASA images seem to have detected a bridge like structure between India and Sri Lanka. (via Laputan Logic)
UPDATE: i'm glad i wrote "seem" in the above sentence, see the comments.

Names for the Wind
see also They Call the Wind Maria
and the desert as setting in The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

A ha'aretz review of a book (Across the Sabbath River: In Search of a Lost Tribe of Israel" by Hillel Halkin) on the discovery of one of the lost tribes of Israel ending up in India led me to the Bnei menashe website.

peru

One of the nicest advantages of being in an international school is that I get to meet people from all over the world and experience a micro version of cross cultural chaos. Different foods, different music, different attitudes -everything is out here for me to experience. I tend to hang around with the latino community and can say that a lot of my attitudes today are being shaped by interaction with this community. And when I know people personally, it's easier to take an interest in their respective countries and whenever I'm just randomly browsing, sites about these countries catch my attention more than others. I've been feeding links to the peruvians about their country from time to time. I think most of them are from the wonderfully prolific plep, but I am not sure. Here are some links about peru:

some typical music of peru

Quecha names of towns and cities

an article on Lima in 1870

photographs by Martin Chambi (article in spanish)

Martin Gray's piligrimage through Latin America

panoramic view of Machu Picchu

the spirit of ancient peru

in the desert

I Walked In A Desert

I walked in a desert.
And I cried,
"Ah, God, take me from this place!"
A voice said, "It is no desert."
I cried, "Well, but--
The sand, the heat, the vacant horizon."
A voice said, "It is no desert."
Stephen Crane


Giant Namibian Dune, via Kesher Talk

swimming in a sea of cotton...plants

The new grasshopper apprentice reneged on his deal to accompany Efrat to her field site and it was up to me to fill the gap. Saw the dawn, after such a long time- I'm almost nocturnal by now. First time this summer that I was actually waiting for the sun to rise so it could heat me up- because the cotton crop was just soaked with the irrigation water and every step through the abstract jungle drenched me more. Efrat claimed the crop wasn't so high the last week, but I find it hard to believe they grow so fast; the plants were as high as my head. It's quite pretty and all, when you look at it from a vantage point, and you can see occasional spouts of water pipes, looking all the world like land whales about to surface from the endless green. Walking along the rows to the traps is fine, but when you have to cut across the rows, it's not so simple. Cotton is not like wheat, which bends easily to let you pass, cotton demands a password before grudgingly moving out of the way. I was irresistably reminded of the time I spent studying Lantana in the forests of South India. Lantana is a vile plant, evil incarnate, a weed that has not only established itself in almost all the remaining forest areas in India, but also is a driving force of ecosystem change. It was brought to India by the British, in their infinite wisdom, in order to grow it as an ornamental plant. Its flowers are quite pretty, if you like that sort of thing. So then naturally it escaped into the wild and now its everywhere. It's found in Israel as well, but people here were amused when I recoiled in horror on seeing it. Here it looks tame enough, lacking the thorns and the aggressive nature of the Indian version, but you can never tell. Anyway, my job involved estimating the impact of Lantana on the forset, and it basically meant trying to hack through dense thorny undergrowth trying to follow a path through the forest. Many days have passed since I had to struggle through bush, and now the brief walk foray in to the cotton reminded me of all that. In the middle of the cotton field, when you can no longer make out the rows or the direction, and if it wasn't for the sun you would spend frantic minutes trying to figure out where you came from and you're totally dependent on your native guide for direction, in my case Efrat, who's worked in these field for around two years, enough time to recognize every bump in the landscape.

Jews street in Cochin (from 1888)

from rubylanes's collection of Judaica.

new cafe

Finally a respite from the so-called sabbath trap (a situation wherein an individual living or staying in a remote desert area, for example, is forced to rely on his/her own resources for entertainment/shopping/travelling/whatever during the weekend because of lack of access to say, for example, Tel Aviv, especially if the aforementioned individual doesn't own an alternative mode of transportation, not even a bike, and even if he/she did have a bike, where would he/she go?)!A new cafe has opened in Sde Boqer, just to fill this niche. It is called 'R cafe' but I'm suspicious - its Hebrew name must be different. Anyway, it's run by one of the people staying here in the campus, and it's located at The Ben Gurion Research Center, which exists just to pay homage to the first prime minister of Israel-David Ben Gurion. The Cafe, well, the room, is located in a basement like area of the center, but it leads off into a shaded walkway overlooking some lawns so somehow the outside is better than the inside. The cafe works only on weekends, and it feels like it's still experimental. Last weekend, they organised a Jazz concert in a building next to the grave of Ben Gurion, and though the music didn't appeal to me personally, it felt nice to sit under the stars and hear soft music being carried by the breeze, bouncing off distant buildings in strange ways. As I walked back, I could still hear snatches of song suddenly creeping up on me.

In other music news, Daniela Mercury is coming to Israel!!

bookshops

Finding english books in Israel is not as easy as I naively expected. Most of the bookshops are overwhelmingly hebrew and it's only the Steimatzky chain that has a small section of english books, usually restricted to bestsellers. And the situation is even worse in Ber Sheva, where it's easier to find Russian bookstores than english ones. And also, bookstores with new books are nowhere as charismatic as second hand booksores, which have a character of their own. In bangalore, one of my favourite past times was to spend an entire evening slowly wandering from bookstore to bookstore, just browsing, occasionally buying, but mostly a way of meeting old friends in new covers, or new friends in brilliant leatherbound gear, all by accident. And a way to erase the cares and worries of the day. For a rabidly fanatic reader like me, staying in the middle of the desert simply means ransacking the libraries of all the people around here and occasional forays to the BGU library as well. So when I had a few hours to kill in Tel Aviv last week, I bravely spurned all the pleasures of city life- the pubs and the concerts- in order to take a look at the small bookstores that dot Allenby Street. It was great to see piles of books reaching from floor to ceiling selling at absurdly low prices (a poor student cannot afford new books, you see) and greater delight in recognizing titles of old favourites. I was like a kid in a candy store. Finally, I had to leave...reluctant but content with my best purchase: Louis de Bernieres' Captain Corelli's Mandolin, which, I am happy to report, managed to erase the film from my mind. Books good. Movie adaptations. BAD.
Update: looks like Jerusalem is THE place to go for books! (see comments). I'm ashamed to say that I've been there only once (hangs head) all this while. Now I have an added reason to get there. soon.

Vanity check: Here I am, throwing words out into the khamseen, lost in the negev and suddenly I am heard! Thank you Allison and The Head Heeb

Search Results Clogged by Blogs: Commercial websites believe scoring high placements in search-engine results is so crucial for generating traffic that many are willing to pay top dollar to sponsor keywords or hire 'positioning' consultants to secure a good ranking. Then there are bloggers. With no deliberate effort, many dedicated weblog publishers are finding their blogs rank high on search results for topics that, oftentimes, they claim to know practically nothing about.

an exercise in chutzpah

Chutzpah is the first hebrew/yiddish word I recognized in Israel. It's one of the many words that has made its way into the english language. But somehow it sounds much more effective in hebrew, especially when somebody says 'eyzey khutspah', meaning what gall or what nerve. Chutzpah is derived from the late Hebrew usage by way of Yiddish. I frequently encounter it here, usually said in a tone of disbelief. I indulged in an exercise in chutzpah with surprising results at the Russian embassy a couple of days back. I previously wrote about my efforts in trying to get a visa to Russia over here, and this is the follow-up. I went to the embassy in Tel-Aviv on wednesday. I knew I had to get a number to take my place in the eternel line the next day. So I walk up to the door of the building. There's this huge crowd waiting for something, most of them look like they are of Russian origin. I walk up to the security guard in order to ask him where to get the number, but he's busy talking to someone, and presumably because I'm speaking in English, he doesn't pay any attention to me. I try a couple of times, but simply cannot get his attention. So i just walk past him, but surprisingly he doesn't make any effort to stop me. Well. So far so good. So I climb the stairs to the embassy. The door is closed, and ther's no crowd waiting there. I try to attract the attention of another security guard who's hanging about there, a guy I recognize from the last round, but he doesn't even look at me. So I wait till the door opens, letting somebody out and I slip inside. Then I look for somebody to ask if I can get a number, and one guy-an embassy employee who speaks only russian- finally caught on that something was odd. Since I can't communicate to him, I just wave the official invitation (that I have) in front of his eyes, and suddenly he points me to the line I have to stand in to apply for the visa. He doesn't realise that I don't have an all powerful number. Amazing. It should have taken me two days and thousands of hours of waiting if I had played by the rules but it went so fast thanks to chutzpah. I couldn't believe my luck. I finally succeeded in submitting the form, and now have to pick up the visa in a week.

some links

World mobile phone throwing championship. (via mefi)

A perfect introduction to the I Ching. Never leave home without one.

A panorama of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem (needs QuickTime plugin). From the inside.

Pretend, just for a second, that you're standing on Mt. Everest. (via plep)

Light of other days.This story by Bob Shaw is the example I always give when asked about science fiction that's not all robots and spaceships. This site has quite a good collection of science fiction short stories as well.

desert riff

flood water in the Makhtesh Gadol

The desert here is mostly rocky, and scarcely knows water, but the effects of water are seen everywhere and sometimes during winter, you can even see floods transform the landscape for a few days. Enormous gullies, canyons and erosion craters carved out of the earth - all these point to the fact that water even in its absence has made a tremendous impact on the landscape. The patterns one sees here are fascinating. I always try to capture these on camera, but there is something in me, a subconscious self, that states that images should be free (this is just a fancy way of saying that I take bad photographs). I have many rolls of film all containing various shades of brown, which were so beautiful in the desert, but is just so boring when reduced to the dimensions of a postcard. But here is one photographer, Guy Shachar, who is devoting his time to show the desert as one who really loves it can. His site also has powerpoint presentations about israel for download.

michal's wedding

Michal, a girl who works in my lab got married to Moran a couple of days back. This was the first time I was attending a typical Israeli wedding, as the previous one turned out to be religious. This post is about that experience; it’s actually the post that started this blog. I enquired around and found out that Israeli weddings can be of three types: secular, religious and orthodox. A good index is the separation factor. If men and women are separate only during the dancing- its religious; if they are separate throughout the ceremony -its orthodox; and if they are not separated at all- its secular.
A secular wedding apparently consists of the following steps: a small ceremony which involves the bride and groom reading something from the bible; an exchanging of the marriage contract; some blessings and prayers by the Rabbi, some songs sung by the audience along with the Rabbi, and the breaking of a glass cup, to symbolize the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.
So this was my first secular wedding here in Israel, and though they tell me it was more or less typical, it was very nice for several reasons. First, the location. The wedding was held in the ancient Nabatean city of Avdat, among the ruins. If my memory serves me right, the actual ceremony was in the roman villa. The roman built on the same site as the Nabateans. Avdat was one of the last halts for the Nabateans on the spice route to Europe, the next two being Elusa and Gaza. The wedding took place exactly at sunset, cutting a bit too close, because the Rabbi was late and since the Jewish day begins at sunset, the wedding would have been on another day leading to untold bureaucratic complications. It was very casual. Michal was wearing an Indianish costume, and later it turned out that she did buy it in India. And Moran was in white completely. The ceremony itself was on the balcony in the Roman villa, and it was very quick. It was really nice and a bit surreal to see people wander out of the desert in to the ceremony, or to see the ancient city of Avdat peopled again, if only for a little while.
After the ceremony, we all headed down to the restaurant and guide center that just next to the main road. They had arranged tables and there was a small place for dancing, and the music had already begun. It was only then I noticed that the entire wedding had a Nabatean theme, of sorts. Large beautiful terracotta amphoras stood amidst the tables, filled with dried flowers. The path was marked by hanging oil lamps that swayed in the breeze. The tables were decorated with miniature amphora and pieces of mosaic stones. I was seated along with the lab people. The food was remarkable in that everything was vegetarian. For the first time in Israel, I did not have to ask people if the dish was safe to eat (I'm vegetarian). The food was excellent, and I did not even feel the need to put salt on everything, as is usual over here. The dancing started as soon as people started arriving to the tables, and since we stayed till the end I can say that it did not stop till around half past one. And then a brief dark journey back to Sede Boqer, with the desert receding into the night. Photos will be posted when I get them.

caddis worm art

A caddis fly larvae makes a pupa out of any debris it finds. So what happens when you put a larvae in a container with access some different stuff, say like gold and pearls? Weird bio-art. Here is an account of the entire process and some more surreal pupa cases.

helicopters

Frankly, I have seen helicopters before. I used to pass by an army base in Bangalore occasionally, and there were always some perched on the ground. And sometimes, I'd even see a couple winging (uh..rotoring?) their way out. But nothing prepared me for the sheer abundance of helicopters that cover the skies here in Israel. When I first got here and I had no idea what my project would be or where I would work, I started assisting Efrat in her field work, trying to think of a project I could do. She works on spiders in agricultural systems and her site is located somewhere off Ber Sheva, in a place called Sde Teiman ('field of the yemenites'). The farm mainly grows wheat, corn and sunflowers. But the strange thing is that the site is located right next to an army base. This is not so surprising in Israel, because the Negev desert is also known as the IDF's playground. Dozens of bases litter the country, and their policy with respect to nature reserves is curious. You can have firing zones within a nature reserve. One of my friends here, who works on Oryxes lost an animal because it got entangled in parachute debris. That should give you an idea. Anyway, the base next to Efrat's field continuously boasted of activity. Helicopters kept buzzing by, all kinds of helicopters- civilian, attack, god knows what. Some incredibly menacing ones as well. I firmly believe that helicopters can be some of the more terrifying of all aircraft. It was a very strange feeling: standing knee deep in wheat, looking over a sea of green, and the receding desert in the distance, and then suddenly this posse of choppers comes over and slowly the rhythmic thumping takes over the entire sound space available, casually dismissing the birds and the wind. It was like one of those Vietnam movies, peasants working the rice fields juxtaposed with the helicopter.

still from the movie Apocalypse Now
Since I stay in Sde Boqer, which somewhat halfway through the Negev Desert, it's also en route to a lot of army bases. And any helicopter activity doesn't go unnoticed, though one does rather get used to it. Anytime there's an intense activity, it's a fair bet that something is happening somewhere, usually in Gaza, becasue it's rather close to Gaza from here. In the manner of cynical world weary veterans, we desert dwellers note the helicopters and say, fireworks tonight. And sometimes the prediction does hold true, but it's impossible to say if it was by chance or by design.

strange cameras, strange images

I've never even heard of the Gameboy camera, but the images it produces strangely distorts the real world.
(via iconomy)

Jack the Ripper=Loch-Ness monster!:"In a bold attempt to resolve two seemingly unrelated mysteries, the OmniResearch scientists put forward a surprising hypothesis claiming that infamous serial murderer Jack the Ripper and no-less famous and elusive monster of Loch-Ness lake in Scotland are in fact the same person."

science and poetry

Most people see no connection between poetry and science and even go so far as to claim that science destroys poetry. When Newton came up with all his famous laws, especially the experiments he did to prove that light consists of seven colours using a prism, John Keats accused him 'because he destroyed the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to a prism'. Richard Dawkins used the same metaphor- "unweaving the rainbow" to explore the reasons why science is and can be seen as beauty. However, it's not an easy task: speak the word 'science' and one immediately thinks of heavy machinery and lab coats. It is difficult to understand where the beauty comes from. Another scientist who tried to show beauty in science was Nobel prize winning Physicist, Richard Feynman, who in all his books, dramatized the beautiful aspects of science, basically saying that with science one can appreciate nature at an entirely different level.

But science in poetry is not entirely an orphan. Several poets have used scientific metaphors in their work and still continue to do today. Here is a link to an indepth article (pdf) discussing the connection between poetry and science.

The purpose of this mini speech is to introduce a new project that I want to start: a cycle of poems with science as the basic tool. I'm thinking of calling it "Love, Loss and Science" which will basically be an exploration of using science and scientific principles as a metaphor for love and loss.
The following poem is the one that started it all, so please tell me what you think of it.

Perspective

Like the ancient star namers
I too thought
That the brightness of your star
meant that you were
very close to me

But, years later,
After they invented telescopes & such,
I realised, with sorrow,
We are not even
in the same galaxy.

(note: see this for more explanations)

bar code art

This guy's made a collection of images seen in the world that resemble bar codes. Site is in russian, so i don't why or who or whatever, but its fun, anyway. (via amberglow)

memes

Here's a very nice essay taking the concept of memes and applying it to everyday political situations. Of particular interest to me in the essay was the reference to israel and palestine, and why the problem is as intractable as it seems.

The War of the Memes: Many Palestinians, for example, have been running a meme for decades --- and yes, that means some of them have been running it their entire lives. I call it OpposeIsrael. This meme is pretty simple: it says that Israel is evil, and anything they do must be bad and must be combated; violently, if necessary.

The problem is that OpposeIsrael crowded out other memes that Palestinians really should be running; memes that might have led --- and could still lead --- to a better life for Palestinians.

the matrix, again

A Reading of The Matrix Reloaded : "Good, but not as good as the first film ...'This is perhaps the typical response to The Matrix Reloaded - after all the hype and expectation we find ourselves saying: 'it is good, but not as good as the first film.' Some people think less of the movie that this ('it is not good, I expected it to be better'). Nobody, to my knowledge, has asserted that the film is better than they expected it to be."

And also, not to be left out of the interpretation game- the hinduism angle.

the secret concert

It was even more silent than normal at Sede Boqer yesterday. The air was still, and birds hung sluggishly in the air. Hot. Like in a certain colombian novel, it was so hot that if they could the birds would have broken through the windows only to die on the caravan floor. And the evening brought no respite. Even the helicopters had fallen silent, now that Israel's pulled out of Gaza, despite the new roadblock. As I was sitting on the steps outside the room, wondering what to do and I heard music. Acoustic music. Russian voices. I realised that the russian community was having a mini party. But somebody was singing, with a guitar. Soon the only sound in the air was this soft guitar. I couldn't resist it, so i shamelessly gatecrashed the russian party. It was a farewell party for one of my neighbours, she's leaving in a week. And the singer was a visitor from New York. He studies piano somewhere, at some school. So I sat with them till way past midnight listening to russian folk songs. Eavesdropping on conversations that I don't understand. Abstract eavesdropping. But the music needed no translation. I remembered suddenly that the very first concert I've been to in India was a Russian one, during the time when the USSR was still on very good terms with India, and the cultural exchange was higher than normal. I must have been as high as my knee, and the concert was opposite my home in Bangalore and so I just wandered over. I can still remember some tunes, but I later figured that it was a strange version of one of Mozart's pieces. Can't remember the guy's name though.

Nancy's (Under the firestar) New Blog Showcase Entry: Chitra Talkies.

a day in the life of...kafka?

We (E and D) reached the Building at 9:30. First the taxi driver told us that the building we wanted was not the Building. He said there are three buildings and he dropped us off at the Building, and we got down relucantly, not wanting to believe him. He was right, though. The Building was supposed to open at 9:00 and we thought we were fairly early, considering that we had to cross almost the whole country to get there.But we were mistaken. Crowds stood at the entrance, and when we heard the clamour of foreign voices, we realised we were already taking the first steps towards a strange land. The Guard told us that we cannot enter without a Number. We asked him- what number? and where do we get it? He said- come the evening before, and only then you will be allowed to enter the Building. All the people standing there laughed at our naiveness. But E told the guard-please we come from very far, a place called SB. Do you know where it is? We cannot afford to come here everyday. The Guard said he did not know, but no matter he would let us in. That was the First Kindness. We entered the Building but the problem increased in scale. There was another huge crowd of people standing at a door with words written in three ancient languages. In front of the Door stood the Selector, a man who's duty was to pick out the Chosen Ones from the crowd. The Chosen Ones were selected in ascending order of the Number. And we didn't have a Number. So E went to him and said- We come from SB, can you let us in? And he said- No way I can let you into the Inner Sanctum. As we stood there among the thronging crowds, the Second Kindness occurred. A soldier who did not need a Number but had mistakenly acquired one gave his Number to E. Now we had a Number, if only one. We had a chance! Seven hours we stood in the Numbered Line (as opposed to the Unnumbered Line, which consisted of people who had incurred Favours from past incarnations or something), a line that magically swelled and diminished, but still the people kept coming. Seven hours we listened to the voices speak strange words, all uncomprehensibly flowing around, mysterious in everything but tone. Which was mainly irritation. We spoke tiny phrases to our accidental comrades on this Journey to enter the Inner Sanctum; all kinds of people making the same trip: a trilingual Heartbreaker, a blonde Moodwrecker, a retiring Visitor, even a New Soldier. Finally the eyes of the Selector fell on us and we were able to enter the Inner Sanctum, just before the Door closed for the day. But further problems awaited us. Or rather me. The Woman in the Glass Cage told me that I need the true Invitation and the one I had was not good enough. Apparently it was okay for E, but because my history was different from hers, I was denied the favours. Fortune shall surely favour me another time.

So I have to go to the Russian Embassy again sometime next week. And this time I hope I will get the VISA without any additional trauma. The only good thing about this trip was the walk along the sea in Tel-Aviv, after we left the embassy. And the best sleep ever, on the way back, out of sheer exhaustion.

Brilliant photographs of the earth from the air by Yann Arthus Bertrand.

Pictures of sede boqer, i.e, the desert institute. Note: the fancy buildings in the first two photographs are still new. Plastic wrapped even.