A Wrong Number is Never Busy?

"Ever wonder why a wrong number is never busy?" goes a question in a chain mail. It immediately strikes a chord in you. You feel, "Really! How true!"

You hear this sob story. "Whenever I miss a call from an unknown number and call back, I find it to be a guy who called a wrong number". That strikes a chord too. "Happens all the time".

He got an engaged wrong number didn't he? You know what I mean?

Two Art Exhibitions

I had been to two art exhibitions recently. One was, of course, that of Prabha Narayanan that I had already blogged about.

Here is she is, between two of her paintings. Large canvasses, acrylic colour portraits of people from the Kumaon region. She called it the drip series. You will know why, when you see the paintings. (See below) These paintings were very different from the line drawings and watercolours of hers that I have seen. Completely new and in unchartered territory for her. In order not to sound too much like an art critic, let me say, I enjoyed and admired her works!

The other exhibition was that of Amrish Malvankar's abstract paintings. I am not a great fan of abstract art. So, I was surprised that I liked his paintings. Even at the risk of sounding like an art critic, I would say that the colurs are bright, many or most of his paintings exude optimism and serenity, I felt. Or was I biased by the three Buddha images at the very beginning of the rows of paintings?

It really does not matter. As for me, I enjoyed my time watching the paintings.

Prabha Narayanan's First Solo Show

A fellow Pencil Jam member (Pencil Jammer), Prabha Narayanan, is holding the first solo show of her art in Chitrakala Parishat, starting tomorrow.

I admire her art a lot.

I am sure you do too. Please do visit the show!

Murder

What do you want,

by burning books?

The glory that covered

the perpetrators of "Kristallnacht"?

The cloud off the flames -

the book's truth to permeate the world.

The dust that falls - a culture's ashes

that saw in a book, Saraswathi herself.

The pile you burn,

her funeral pyre, nude or not.

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There are 365 days in a year.

That means there are 365 X 24 = 8760 Hrs in a year.

It amounts to 8760 X 60 = 525600 Minutes a year.

In 30 Years there are 525600 X 30 = 15, 768, 000 minutes.

Mata Amritanandamayi is supposed to have hugged 29 million devotees in 30 years, according to a news report.

That amounts to 1.84 (~2) hugs a minute, every living minute of the last 30 years. No sleep, no food, no travel and no other engagements.

In lieu of in lieu of in view of

Does the title of this post look as if there is a typo?

Actually not. It can be parsed to mean something.

The reason for the title is this.

"An architectural milestone in lieu of the Commonwealth Games" declares a headline.

What it means is in view of. This seems to have become a very common mistake.

Atheists Better at Religion

Here is a news item I read on Spiegel Online and translated for my own pleasure and thought others might be interested in it too.

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Non-believers Know Religions Best

Where was Christ born? What is the first book of the Bible called? People who do not believe in god are most likely to answer such questions. A survey in the US showed that atheists and agnostics knew all about religion.

Washington: According to a recent survey in the US, non-believers know the most about world religions. In a survey of the renowned opinion survey institute PEW about religious knowledge confessed atheists and agnostics the averaged best.

The researchers interviewed 3412 adults in the US about world religions. On an average, atheists could answer correctly 21 out of 32 questions about beliefs, history and representatives of world religions. Protestants knew, on an average 16 correct answers, Catholics only 14.7. Jews came up, on an average, with 20.5 and Mormons with 20.3 correct answers.

Even with questions about Christianity the non-believers averaged better than Catholics and Protestants. In this case, only the Mormons were ahead of agnostics and atheists.

Among the residents of the US, the majority of who identify themselves as Christians, was the lack of knowledge about their own religion clearly noticeable. Only 71 percent of the surveyed knew that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Only 63 percent were in a position to name Genesis as the first book of the bible.

If you are interested, you can see some of the questions of the survey here.

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Interestingly I, an atheist, answered 13 out of 15 questions right. 87% and I was rated to be at 93 percentile. I knew that I would be marked wrong on one answer but the official correct answer is disputable. A catholic colleague of mine answered 13 questions right too. So, it is neither here nor there!