M. S. Gopalakrishnan 1931 - 2013

I've written at length on this site both about the typical atheism/skepticism topics, but I've also written quite a bit about music, mainly Indian classical music, of course.  Once upon a time, I made feeble effort at Carnatic violin, though now I'm far better a singer than a violinist -- though I should punctuate that point by making it clear that I'm not much of a singer, either.  But there was a reason I was originally interested in the violin to begin with.

Today -- Jan 3, 2013 -- that reason passed away at 2:00 AM in Chennai of what was apparently respiratory failure.

Parur Sri M.S. Gopalakrishnan was and still is my favorite violinist ever.  Here was a guy who could emulate vocal intonations to the finest detail...  maintain laser-precise pitch and rhythm at any speed...  imitate the sounds of other instruments...  and practically pronounce the lyrics of every song he played, whether he used all the strings and all his fingers, or he played on one string using only one finger.  Of the Carnatic violin "trinity", he is actually the youngest (by a margin of 1 year), and the first to go at the age of 81.

In the Name of Balance...

You are currently watching a news program.  The anchor is talking to a scientist about how positively absurd the whole end-of-the-world bullcrap.  The scientist's counterpart in the discussion is one of the Doomsday believers who argues that the Mayan long count calendar ends on December 21, 2012.  Did you also know that the Gregorian calendar comes to an "end" on December 31, 2012?  Of course, there's also the talk about how the sun, the Earth, and the center of the Milky Way all come into alignment on December 21, 2012.  Of course, the scientist points out that also happened on Dec. 21, 2011, and in 2010, 2009, 2008 and so on...  because that happens every year on the Winter Solstice (and the "perfect" alignment people talk about happened in the '90s).  Moreover, there's nothing anywhere in cosmology that indicates that anything could ever possibly happen simply because of that.  Then the doomsday believer points out that it fits with the Bible and the return of Jesus...  which of course, it doesn't, since the Bible says it should have already happened within the lifetimes of the apostles.  Then of course, the nutbar doomsday freak alludes to the idea that "Hinduism" predicts the end of Kali Yuga in 2012...  uuuhhhh...  no, it doesn't.  Where the hell did anybody get the idea that there is such specificity in any Hindu text?  If anything, dates are the sort of thing Hindu texts are least specific about.  In any case, the scientist, who can't really be expected to be an expert in every culture on earth can at least offer the most obvious objection that those are unfounded claims -- most likely fabrications simply to ride the popularity wave of the 2012 bullshit-mania, and not even a real genuine coincidence.  But even if they were, that would have no impact on the fact that the evidence shows nothing.  In the end, no one really listened to anyone, and the show ran out of time for the segment leaving the whole issue "unresolved" as it were, and simply moves on to something else.

Does anything about this strike you as wrong?  The description probably sounded plausible for a news program, but that's not quite where the problem lies...

How about the fact that there is even a dialogue on the topic in the first place?

Non Sequiturs as a Cultural Rule

I'm sure, if any of you follow any of the other atheist blogs, you've probably seen by now the recent furor over a textbook being sold in Indian schools which attempts to espouse the virtues of vegetarianism.  The grounds for their advocacy are mostly religious, and among the awesomely hilarious arguments they use include that God did not include meat among Adam & Eve's diet (because death didn't exist until after the fall, this apparently includes the death of animals).  Among other things, the book claims that the Japanese live very long because they're largely vegetarian...  Huh??  That claim, of course, is patently false, as Japanese eat more fish per capita than any other culture.  Hell, I've been to Osaka, and I was at my wit's ends trying to find any real substantial -- read : "meals", and not snacks/desserts -- items that were really vegetarian (shojin-ryori) to eat half the time.

The one really bizarre claim that stood out was the claim that people who eat meat are more likely to curse, lie, cheat, steal, commit violent crimes, rape, you name it.  In other words, eating meat apparently causes you to be a bad person....  or so the writers are brazenly willing to insinuate.

Now to anyone who reads that sort of claim, they're sure to scratch their heads and wonder how on Earth one follows from the other.  That's because it doesn't.  It never possibly could.  But then, this sort of non sequitur is nothing new.

Proof of Hopeless Idiocy

I'm rarely ever shocked by anything Pat Robertson says.  I mean, the guy has a long history of being a delusional idiot, misogynistic, anti-gay, anti-science, anti-reality living monument of utterly criminal disgrace to all of humanity.  So when he comes out and claims that Haitians made a pact with the devil which caused their Mega-earthquake, or secular ideals caused Sandy and so on...  it's pretty much on par with all he ever says.

Then he floored me with this one. 

Why is Science Hard to Learn?

One of the movies I'm working on happens to contain a wide variety of the sorts of caricatures of evolution that one would expect from the likes of Kirk Cameron.  From the trailer alone, you can see things like 4-winged flying turtles with sauropod-esque necks, giant ursine carnivores with owl-like heads, gourd-shaped marsupial primates, and a brightly-colored sabre-toothed feliforme that also has tusks.  Compared to this, the infamous crocoduck seems to barely scratch the surface.  But of course, the key difference is that nobody is purporting that The Croods is a documentary anymore than anyone telling a joke sincerely believes that a horse will enter a pub and order a drink.  The main reason such absurdities are even put forth is for sheer entertainment value, and I would hope that much is at least obvious.

Nonetheless, while I think many people would recognize that this is merely entertainment, it's interesting nonetheless that these types of wacky chimeras fall in line with the sort of picture that a lot of people have about evolution.  You have people like Deepak Chopra who can distort quantum mechanics to pretend it has something to do with the soul, and nobody can realize he's full of crap.  You have products out there which claim to emit frequencies in line with the nonexistent ones your body produces, and people swallow this crap.  Why is that?

Oh, if only I could count the ways...