Via: "V NR"
There is no biological argument in the first place; it is a place
holder for all pet hypotheses one want to defend: it is a sign of
intellectual dishonesty. Just a presence of some or another heuristic
is not an explanation either. What is needed: not say-so
explanations, but an explanation that uses some concrete genetic
mechanism, etc. Otherwise, we can answer in similar fashion the
question why we, not others, are on this list: oh, some genes!
Best,
Reddy, V.
On 2/28/06, Aarti wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> I am unclear on the "biological" aspects of sexual preference and so
> will not comment. Generally I am uncomfortable with biologically
> deterministic arguments because even when they are framed in this way,
> which is to use biology to support a mode of being, they seek to defend
> or counter based some idea of what is "natural". [So to those who say
> one kind of desire is "unnatural" (summed up succintly in 377 as sexual
> acts "against the order of nature", we say its genes.] Framed in this
> way it leaves little room for personal choice, agency, or even a
> consideration of how modes of being are socio-historically produced.
>
> Warmly
> Aarti
>
> Shah Jahan Bhatti wrote:
>
> > Some people are born gay and others are not, it all depends on the
> > genetical code we recieve from our parents. Who is good and who is bad
> > is a personal preference.
> >
Via: Sandipto Dasgupta
This is a follow up on my earier posting on the DaVinci trial.. this is a blog from the Guardian Culture Blog by sarah Crown... if anyone wants to post comments on this they can go to http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/culturevulture/archives/2006/02/28/originality_sins.html
Before I go any further, I should probably admit that I've lifted this blog post wholesale from a Peruvian literary website. OK, I haven't really. But I have trawled around the internet looking for examples of what other people have written on the subject of plagiarism. Who can say where reference stops and theft begins?
If I were to write a piece on whether it is in fact reasonable to accuse an author of plagiarism on the basis of his or her regurgitation of another person's ideas, I would undoubtedly end up substantially echoing the thoughts someone else has already expressed on the subject. It's hardly groundbreaking stuff, after all. But would that person - or persons - be justified in hauling me up in court for breach of copyright?
All of this unoriginal rambling is of course prompted by the literary story of the moment: the claim by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, that Dan Brown lifted "the central theme" of their book for his uber-bestselling novel, The Da Vinci Code.
Although Baigent and Leigh are officially suing Brown's publishers for breach of copyright, if the court finds in favour of them, it's Brown himself who would be humiliated. There is still something deeply sordid about plagiarism: defined as the act of presenting someone else's work as your own, it necessarily involves subterfuge and the dishonourable desire to take credit for something for which you're not responsible. As far as transgressions go, it's a singularly shameful one.
And yet, according to famousplagiarists.com, the threat of potential public humiliation was not enough to stop some of our finest authors from indulging in the practice. TS Eliot, Jack London and Coleridge were all apparently at it; in an excellent post on the literary blog The Valve, Miriam Burstein points out that Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray "includes a chapter distilled from JK Huysmans' A Rebours". More recently, JK Rowling's Harry Potter oeuvre was called into dispute when another children's author, Nancy Stouffer, accused the Potter author of lifting key details from Stouffer's own books. The court found in favour of Rowling and even went so far as to accuse Stouffer of lying and doctoring evidence to support her claims. It's also impossible to get more than five minutes into a conversation on Shakespeare without someone trotting out the oft-repeated (and well-documented) accusation that the Bard borrowed plots from all over the place.
But, unlike today's authors, Shakespeare kept the whole issue of 'borrowing' in perspective. Not only did he make no attempt to conceal the sources of his plays, he even went so far as to write about his activities. Take Sonnet 76, which begins "Why is my verse so barren of new pride / So far from variation or quick change?".
As all good postmodernists know, there is no such thing as an original idea. There is, technically, nothing stopping two people having precisely the same thought, especially on such a well-trodden subject as religion. As somebody somewhere once said, originality is the art of remembering what you heard but forgetting where you heard it.
So let's forget about all this plagiarism nonsense. The far more interesting aspect of the Dan Brown case, in my opinion, is the Da Vinci-lite conspiracy theory I came up with all by myself, way back in 2005. The Da Vinci Code and The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail are both, thanks to a series of industry takeovers, published by Random House. Surely this entire farrago is nothing more than a huge sales-driving stunt, carefully orchestrated by Random House to manipulate us poor, impressionable readers? The court case will no doubt generate fantastic pre-publicity for the Da Vinci Code film; meanwhile, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail has shot up the Amazon bestseller charts from number 173 yesterday lunchtime to number 10 at the time of writing. I suspect marketing management on the grandest scale.
It's a great theory, isn't it? But I bet at least half of you reading this have already come up with it yourselves. And to those of you who not only thought it but actually had the foresight to jot it down somewhere: I'll see you in court.
Via: Aarti
Dear All,
I am unclear on the "biological" aspects of sexual preference and so
will not comment. Generally I am uncomfortable with biologically
deterministic arguments because even when they are framed in this way,
which is to use biology to support a mode of being, they seek to defend
or counter based some idea of what is "natural". [So to those who say
one kind of desire is "unnatural" (summed up succintly in 377 as sexual
acts "against the order of nature", we say its genes.] Framed in this
way it leaves little room for personal choice, agency, or even a
consideration of how modes of being are socio-historically produced.
Warmly
Aarti
Shah Jahan Bhatti wrote:
> Some people are born gay and others are not, it all depends on the
> genetical code we recieve from our parents. Who is good and who is bad
> is a personal preference.
>
> */A Khanna /* wrote:
>
> Voices Against 377 presents
>
> a talk on
>
> LESBIAN AND GAY HUMAN RIGHTS IN INDIA
> International and Comparative Perspectives
>
> by Dr. Robert Wintemute
> Professor of Human Rights Law,
> School of Law, King's College, University of London
>
> followed by a discussion.
>
> Where: Casuarina Hall, India Habitat Centre, Lodi Road, New Delhi.
> When: Thursday, 23rd February 2006, 6.30 PM.
>
> Dr. Robert Wintemute is Professor of Human Rights Law in the
> School of Law,
> King's College, University of London, where he teaches European Union
> Law, Human
> Rights Law, and Anti-Discrimination Law. He is also the director
> in London of
> the four-year LLB in English and French law jointly offered by
> King's College
> and the Universite de Paris (Pantheon-Sorbonne).
>
> He is the author of 'Sexual Orientation and Human Rights: The
> United States
> Constitution, The European Convention and the Canadian Charter' (OUP,
> 1995/1997)
> and the editor (with honorary co-editor Mads Andenaes) of 'Legal
> Recognition of
> Same-Sex Partnerships: A Study of National, International and
> European Law'
> (Oxford, Hart Publishing, 2001).
>
> Voices Against 377 is a coalition of NGOs based in Delhi where a
> united voice
> is being articulated against the Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code
> which has
> been a source of serious human rights violations.
>
> Text of the Indian Penal Code, Section 377 reads as:
> "Unnantural Offences: Whosoever has carnal intercourse against the
> order of
> nature, with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with
> imprisonment for
> life, or with imprisonment with either description for a term, which
> may extend
> to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine."
>
> _________________________________________
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> subscribe in the subject header.
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>
>
>
>
> *M. SHAH JAHAN BHATTI*
>
> *Imamgate Dera Ismail Khan NWFP Pakistan*
>
> *Phone 92-0961-711512*
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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>
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>
>_________________________________________
>reader-list: an open discussion list on media and the city.
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>List archive:
>
Via: "Kaushiki Rao"
Hey all
As many of us probably know, George Bush is coming town. A massive
public rally against Bush's policies will happen in Delhi on Thursday,
the 2nd of March, sometime in the morning. It will begin from
Ramlila Maidan and move onto ITO. I'll send more details as soon as I
get them. Come!
How do Bush's policies affect us? For one perspective, read the
following JNU pamphlet.
Hope to see lots of you there.
Kaushiki
A QUEER PROTEST AGAINST BUSH'S VISIT TO INDIA – II
A CRITIQUE OF BUSH'S DOMESTIC & INTERNATIONAL POLICIES FROM A QUEER PERSPECTIVE
While on the one hand, George W Bush has waged bloody and tortuous
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which has led to much international
condemnation and protest, the more insidious ideology governing his
presidency which has often manifested itself in religious
fundamentalist, patriarchal and homophobic policies in the United
States and the world has received significantly lesser international
attention, let alone condemnation. In 2003, George W Bush signed a law
that put several restrictions on the use of US funds internationally.
Organizations using US funds were made to take a loyalty oath by which
they were not allowed to 'promote' or 'advocate' the practice of
prostitution. The law made HIV/AIDS funding conditional on the equal
promotion of abstinence and faithfulness strategies with condom usage
and promotion, and shifted funding away from condom distribution. It
also instituted a global gag rule by which organizations providing
abortion services or even providing information about abortion
services could not receive US funding.
These rules have had horrifying implications for organizations and
countries working to promote health and human rights worldwide.
Several organizations that accept sex work as a legitimate form of
work have therefore been denied any US funding, to detrimental
results. Empowering sex workers and helping them organize and form
labour unions often helps ensure the maintenance of their rights. Sex
workers' labour unions in places like Sangli, Maharashtra and
Sonagachi, Kolkata have been more instrumental in preventing the entry
of underage women and men into sex work than the violent and brutal
'rescue' policies promoted by the Indian and US governments.
Organizations promoting the use of condoms to prevent the spread of
HIV/AIDS among sex workers therefore have been doubly hit by the
recent US policy because it makes their work incumbent upon condemning
sex work, and because they then have to promote 'abstinence' from sex
to sex workers, something that they organizationally, ethically and
ideologically cannot stand up for. What such a policy ironically adds
up to is asking sex workers to take a position against themselves.
Brazil in May 2005 chose to turn away $ 40 million in US funding
rather than sign such discriminatory clauses. However, not all
countries have been able to stand up to such adverse US policies.
Uganda, which has the reputation of having some measure of success in
the battle against HIV/AIDS, and which instituted a highly progressive
sex education and HIV/AIDS curriculum which among other things
focussed on condom usage, saying 'no' to sex, avoiding sexual violence
and maintaining sexual hygiene in its primary schools is now promoting
abstinence-only strategies in its primary schools under the weight of
US pressure. Abstinence-only strategies assume that people, and
especially marginalized communities may always have the capacity to
say 'yes' or 'no' to sex, and deny the importance of condoms in
preventing sexually transmitted illnesses. Furthermore they emerge
from a highly moralistic and religious fundamentalist ideology that
uses religion to dictate heteronormative strictures to people. Even
beyond the developing world, in the US itself, school and college
students are being asked to take virginity pledges, often wearing
virginity rings as a sign of their commitment. Problematically, should
the urge to have sex arise among people who have no recourse to
information about safer sex, there is a huge possibility of them
living unhealthy lives with adverse effects for themselves and for
others involved.
Even more ironically, while George W Bush has condemned Iran as being
part of the 'Axis of Evil' and is now preparing to wage war against
it, the US and Iran are firmly united in the promotion of their
patriarchal and homophobic policies. In January this year, the US
voted in favour of an Iranian-backed resolution that sought to prevent
the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) and another queer
organization from participating in the United Nations' Economic and
Social Council. The US thus joined Iran and other overtly homophobic
countries such as Zimbabwe in winning the resolution, even as India
chose to abstain from the vote. In 2004, George W Bush also passed the
Federal Marriage Amendment, an amendment to the US Constitution which
defined marriage only as a union between one man and one woman and
nullified same-sex marriages that had earlier taken place in
Massachusetts. Also the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy of the US Army,
whereby soldiers may be fired from the Army if they reveal that they
are lesbian, gay or bisexual, promotes silence around the sexual abuse
of lesbian, gay and bisexual soldiers in the Army. This policy still
remains on the statute books. George W Bush has through his Christian
fundamentalist, patriarchal and homophobic policies helped in the
spread of HIV/AIDS and wounded heavily the sex workers' movement
across the world, besides denying basic rights to lesbian, gay and
bisexual people. Therefore from a queer perspective which is an
outlook that seeks to question existing norms around gender and
sexuality in society and challenge institutionalized and compulsory
heteronormativity, we stand up strongly against George W Bush's visit
to India.
NO TO BUSH! NO TO US FUNDING! NO TO SILENCE AROUND SEXUALITY!
Via: irfan
Dear all,
If anyone got some reference regarding history and
philosophical aspects of fine arts market in
India,please show me the way.
Irfan
Via: Pankaj kaushal
Dear Anant,
anant m wrote:
> solly,
> i dont know if you wanted this feedback within a
> timeframe. i agree with the overall framework. but we
I was tempted to top post, include the whole 100 people in your "To:"
list and cross-post this to several different news groups, but I'm not
feeling all that well today.
I might have used my favorite cop-out, "I dont' argue with idiots" but,
then again, if I do not do this, who will?
Maybe, you are not aware but, you are breaking a major netiquette by
mentioning all these people in your To: list. Not to mention, infringing
on the privacy of all those who gave their email address to you. You
see, it is highly probable that many of those on your list will not like
their email address available to the rest of the people on your "To:"
plus the entire audience of the reader-list.
The purpose of including a specific person in the To list is to specify
that the mail is addressed to that person (note the To line in this
mail). The Cc list specifies people who need to know what's happening,
but aren't directly addressed in the message (note the Cc line in this
mail). I hope the usage of other mail headers is apparent enough to not
require clarification.
Please do not mass include people in the To: or CC: field it is horribly
rude. If It is required to send mass emails use the BCC: option.
Cheers!
P.
