Thursday 22 November 2018

New English fiction recommendation lists

Commonwealth and US
————————————————
Man Booker Prize

International
————————
Man Booker International Prize

India
————
DSC Prize for South Asian Literature
JCB Prize for Literature
The Hindu Literary Prize

USA
———
US National Book Award for Fiction
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Edgar Allan Poe Award

Wednesday 3 October 2018

My favourite classical Greek tragedies

Aeschylus
Agamemnon

Sophocles
Ajax
Antigone
Philoctetes
Oedipus the King

Euripides
Trojan Women
Medea
Iphigenia at Aulis
Iphigenia in Tauris

Saturday 15 September 2018

Penguin Classics editions of Euripides

19 plays by Euripides are extant today. They are published by Penguin Classics in various anthologised volumes.


Heracles and other plays, translated by John Davie (5 plays)
Heracles
Iphigenia among the Taurians
Helen
Ion
Cyclops

Medea and other plays, translated by John Davie (4 plays)
Medea
Alcestis
Children of Heracles
Hippolytus

Electra and other plays, translated by John Davie (5 plays)
Electra
Suppliant Women
Andromache
Hecabe
Trojan Women

The Bachhae and other plays, translated by John Davie (5 plays)
Phoenician Women
Orestes
Bachhae
Iphigenia at Aulis
Rhesus

Orestes and other plays, translated by Philip Vellacott (6 plays)
The Children of Heracles
Andromache
The Suppliant Women
Phoenician Women
Orestes
Iphigenia at Aulis


Alcestis and other plays, translated by Philip Vellacott (3 plays)
Alcestis
Iphigenia in Tauris
Hippolytus


Medea and other plays, translated by Philip Vellacott (4 plays)
Medea
Hecabe
Electra
Heracles


The Bachhae and other plays, translated by Philip Vellacott (4 plays)
Ion
The Women of Troy
Helen
The Bachhae

Philip Vellacott did not translate Cyclops and Rhesus.

Friday 24 August 2018

Things good about India

1. Vegetarianism (though there is a lack of veganism, so it’s not too much of a good)
2. Low amount of per capita consumption of alcohol
3. Poverty = less carbon foot print

Can’t think of much else right now.

Saturday 23 June 2018

Maximising the benefits of Aadhaar

While concerns about data protection are valid, I am a believer in the benefits of Aadhaar. There are two suggestions I have regarding better utilisation of Aadhaar. One is doing away with all sorts of roll numbers from high school till college and replacing them with Aadhaar. The other is since several school leaving boards/ class 12 boards/ higher secondary boards are also integrated with the DigiLocker system, in addition to pushing the digital marksheets through to DigiLocker, if the marks and the subject names in machine readable forms are sent to DigiLocker, and if it can be accessed through an API, then colleges which use an online system to admit students can pull the data from DigiLocker when the student enters the Aadhaar number in the college's admission portal. This mechanism will eliminate the need for verification of physical marksheets, thereby saving lots of human hours for college authorities.

Thursday 10 May 2018

Aardvark to Zyzzyva or Zyzzyzus

It is interesting that the first and the last noun in an English language dictionary can both be names of non-human living creatures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aardvark

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zyzzyva

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zyzzyzus



Wednesday 2 May 2018

Law enforcement and crime

    Human beings have a combination of goodness and evil proclivities in them. External stimuli and environment elicit certain kind of reactions. Without fear of punishment, we would give free rein to our evil inclinations. Law-enforcing authorities exist to mete out punishment and keep our evil tendencies in check. When law-enforcing authorities and the government condone evil, rather than strongly condemning it and ensuring punishment for the guilty, human beings take it as a licence to indulge in their deepest evil desires.
    Death penalty for child rapists is a good idea. If enforced and executed properly (without falsely implicating innocent people), it should act as a deterrent to human beings in general from committing such crimes. This law applies to other crimes as well.

Thursday 26 April 2018

Clean-shaven Pope

According to this list, the first clean-shaven Pope was someone called Valentine who was Pope for 40 days from 31st August to 10th October 827.

It was only in the 15th century that all the Popes in a century were clean-shaven. The 16th and the 17th century saw a come-back of the beard but from the beginning of the 18th century, there hasn't been any Pope who wasn't clean-shaven.

This provides a nice way of looking at changing men's fashion in western Europe.