QOTD

Found in an excerpt by a book by the former wife of Stephen Hawking:

Nor, I have to confess, did the set of scientists with whom Stephen was now associating attract me in the least. On the whole, particle physicists were a dry, obsessive bunch of boffins, little concerned with personal contact but very concerned with their own scientific reputations. They were much more aggressively competitive than the relaxed, friendly relativists with whom we had associated in the past.

This is too good...

Indian police hunt for monkey accused of stealing South Korean tourist's glasses

By AP
Tuesday July 17, 01:32 PM

Police combed the alleys of the Hindu holy city of Varanasi in northern India on Tuesday to search for a monkey accused of stealing reading glasses from a South Korean tourist.

Kim Dang Hoon filed a formal complaint against the primate that he claims broke into his hotel room and pinched his spectacles, according to investigating officer Inspector Govind Singh.

"It is difficult to trace the monkey but I am trying my best to locate the rogue," Singh said from Varanasi, some 300 kilometers (185 miles) southeast of Lucknow.

Thousands of wild monkeys roam Varanasi, dotting the trees on the banks of the Ganges River and scampering through the city's many temples, where they are venerated as manifestations of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman.

In his written complaint, Kim said he opened his hotel room window for fresh air when the monkey made his move. "He headed straight to the table where my glasses were kept and took it away," Kim said in the statement.

Part of the frame later was recovered by hotel staff and Kim said he filed the report so he can make a damages claim on his travel insurance.

Singh said he would be at a loss if his officers caught the culprit because there are no laws under which a wild monkey can be charged.

Problems with monkeys harassing tourists in the city were common, Singh said.

"But we can't do anything. We cannot shoot them or beat them as Hindus worship monkeys," he said.

QOTD

"A university has a lot of weird people. Some of the faculty are weird, some of the grad students are weird." Read more about this here.

Why bulls are better than literary critics

``Bulls don't run reviews. Bulls of 25 don't marry old women of 55 and expect to be invited to dinner. Bulls do not get you cited as a co:respondent in Society divorce trials. Bulls don't borrow money. Bulls are edible after they have been killed."

This according to a letter from Hemmingway to Pound that has been recently found. See here for details.

Rings of Saturn

``That means scientists have underestimated the mass of Saturn's rings. They may be two to three times denser than previous estimates, the researchers said.'' This is an excerpt from this story on Saturn's rings.

Garment city is without clothes

``Women working in the garment industry face untold misery and the roles expected of them at home by society have only increased their woes, says S Senthalir'' in this article in the Deccan Herald.

Most Muslims are moderate, but ...

There is an old joke about the Pope landing in Paris and being asked if he was planning to visit nightclubs by the Press. The Pope responded with ``Are there nightclubs in Paris?", whereupon the next day the newspapers blared, ``Pope asks if there are nightclubs in Paris.'' A somewhat less funny situation has arisen with a so-called study of American Muslims which concludes that 1 in 4 young American Muslims say that suicide bombings are alright under certain circumstances. Here is a link to an odious article on the subject. I would like to know what was the question that was asked from which this conclusion was drawn. In fact the very sentence ``American Muslims are generally moderate and well-assimilated, especially when compared to Muslims in Europe and the Middle East.'' is itself quite odious. What does it mean to be `moderate' and `well-assimilated'? Does it mean that one can bull-shit at parties about music and literature and drink beer and hold a cigarette? As opposed to being pious and restrained and adhere to a dress code that one's culture may dictate. An old friend of mine once said that he has many friends who are `progressive' Muslims, and when I demanded a definition, someone else at the table said that that is one that behaves as Hindu! This is the tyranny of the mainstream discourse. In any case, I direct the interested readerof this blog to several articles at Sujaiblog. Another friend once said that the resistance in Palestine would have been no different if the oppressed there had been Milenisian frog worshippers. In other words, the national question there has nothing to do with Islam.