Gioia De Cari in "Truth Values"

Gioia is a self described “recovering mathematician” who has a great gift for writing, acting, and singing. (Oh, did I happen to mention she is a soprano?) Her play was unexpectedly funny and enjoyable. When I first received an email about it, I expected a litany of complaints about how hard it is for a woman to make it in math and science (largely male-dominated fields). But it wasn’t and yet it was, at the same time. It is said, “there is no story so good that it can’t be spoiled in the telling”. With Gioia, she had a fantastic story and told in the best manner possible, as a monologue/mono-act by the author/actress herself. It was funny, and it was sad, and best of all, no matter who you are, you couldn’t help but empathize with her. It offered a scathing and insightful look at an academic (sub)culture that was born out of the incidental male-dominance in mathematics (and sciences) and continues to serve as a deterrent for women to succeed in these fields. But Gioia wasn’t complaining, she was just holding up a mirror; and to ensure that the walls of prejudice do not block the message, she gift wrapped it with some irrepressible humor which was a treat to watch.

Incidentally, Gioia wrote the play as a response to former Harvard President Lawrence Summers’ (yes, the same Larry Summers who Obama said “did a heckuva job” on the Daily Show) statement that women are less represented than men in the sciences because there is a ”greater variance in intelligence among men than women, and that this difference in variance might be intrinsic.” [source] Not surprisingly, that controversy contributed to his resignation the following year.

The performance schedule for Truth Values is available here. If you get a chance to attend it, then do not miss out! I promise you that you will not be disappointed.

I close this post with a video by Gioia discussing her play:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwt7KZHfKKc

And here is the attached flyer [transcript follows]:

Transcript of the solicitation text:

Dear Sir, Madam
We understanding that your esteemed concern has a considerable requirement of travel service during your office/VIPS visit of Delhi and other places. We are pleased to introduce our selves to you as renowned tourist travel Agent. We have a fleet of brand new tourist/A/C cars and already handing Travel business of various reputed commercial houses and hotels from all over India. We are anxious to enlist your esteemed concern along honored [sic]¹ clients. We are sending our rates as under, which are sute [sic]² you would find as reasonable & acceptable.

So, did you figure out what exactly is being offered and how? :)

I find it hard to believe that such excrement is still sold like it is worth something. But, to Half-Price’s credit, its priced at less than half the original price. In fact, $5 is more like 25% of the original price.

Seeing that price tag, I couldn’t help but mimic Palin saying, “sucky, sucky. Five Dolla. Me love you long time!“

The sane will wonder the justification in such a pay rise given that a crippling double digit inflation is strangling the nation’s economy. But the smart figure out a justification for it. Here’s how it goes…. well, on second thoughts, maybe someone who is an expert in these matters should explain them to you. And of course I am referring to Sir Humphry and Sir Arnold. :)

Here is a clip from one of my all time favourite TV series Yes Prime Minister, that describes the entire process in hilarious detail: [link (part 2), link (part 3)]

Part 2:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JObTDctaZOc

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB5R40Ds_yg

One is forced to wonder: why is Pat Robertson saying such things knowing fully well that he is hurting people through his statements and hate? There has to be a logical explanation for it, and I think I have found one. My explanation is based on three important assumptions: (a) Pat Robertson believes that Jesus died for everyone’s sins, (b) he believes that the end times is near ^[1], and (c) he is a capitalist^[2].

Now, given that Pat Robertson is a capitalist, he must believe that the capitalist economic principles can be applied everything in life, including sin. So according to him, there must be some smallest unit of sin (arguably the smallest unit corresponds to the quality of sin in the ‘original sin‘), and also that Jesus’s death is worth only so many (finite) units of sin. Given that the end times are around the corner — being a shrewd capitalist one needs to get the best ‘bang for the buck’, so to speak — Pat Robertson probably wants to make Jesus’s death more worthwhile by sinning as much as he can so that the quota of sins for which Jesus died may be used up.

After all, every ‘true’ Christian’s goal is to make Jesus’s death worthwhile (in that Jesus’s death should not be in vain). So, it turns out that Pat Robertson is actually out sinning to make Jesus’s death count for something! Now he also knows that you sin then you will probably go to hell, and yet he pursues this path of validate Jesus’s crucifixion. Could there possibly be a greater sacrifice?

^[1]In fact, in the 70s Pat Robertson has predicted that the world would end in 1982!

^[2]This is more of an inference, than an assumption, based on the fact that Pat Robertson is a businessman, owns a broadcasting station, and sells books for money.

“I figured out size does matter in the canine brain. Bill – golden retriever – very smart animal. When he was a puppy and I had to potty train him, if he pooped on the living room carpet, I stuck his nose in it. Three time later, he figured out ‘Oh, I am not supposed to crap here!’. Next two dogs, the same thing.

Now the little brain-dead Chihuahua comes along. She poops on the living room carpet, I stick her nose in it; three times later she thinks ‘Oh, I am not supposed to crap ever!’….. And that’s why they shake.”

The TSA did pretty much the same thing. On December 26th 2009, Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines plane as it was preparing to land in Detroit. The usual noises followed ranging from blaming Obama for the incident to demanding that all Muslims be made to go through special security checks.

This incident could have been prevented if Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab was not allowed to board the plane in the first place. All the warning signs were there: Umar’s father had warned the CIA about Umar,  anti-terror chiefs were warned five months ago that an al-Qaeda cell in Yemen was plotting a deadly attack using “The Nigerian”. Disregarding both these (vital) pieces of information, here is someone who bought one-way tickets from Nigeria to Yemen to the USA paying only cash and with no baggages to check-in. This should have raised suspicions, and he should have been singled out for additional security and through additional scanners.

Metaphorically speaking, TSA pooped on the living room carpet and the Nigerian stuck their nose into it! One would expect a rational response to be better mechanisms to profile passengers, not according to race or religion (which seems to be what all the rage is about), but according to passenger behavior. In this case, someone on the “alert list”, paying cash for a one-way transcontinental flight, with no check-in baggage would qualify as suspicious behavior. That would be saying “Oh, I am not supposed to crap here!”.

Instead, the TSA chooses to think “I am not supposed to crap ever!” and decides to put ALL passengers through additional security increasing [Bangkok Post, EUObserver, NY Times].

It was quite a sight to see with aerial prop roots all over the place.

View of the Big Banyan Tree upon entering the premises

It was difficult to tell where the center of the tree was. No matter which part of the tree you saw, you seemed to see the center with similar trunks and branches all over the the place! Here is shot of the tree which look like its the center:

Big Banyan Tree: Is this the trunk?

Here is another one that seems to suggest an old ‘main trunk’ that no longer is:

Big Banyan Tree: The old trunk perhaps?

From the looks of it, the tree is still growing. I saw several aerial prop roots still growing towards the ground. 400 years old and still kicking!

Big Banyan Tree: Prop roots are still growing

Ironically, the most interesting part of the visit was not the tree itself. It was the happenings around the tree that was the most fascinating. The imitation of forms between a man and a monkey had me glued for over 30 minutes! Here’s a glimpse of what I saw.

Sharing the meal time

Whatever it is, it has both of them transfixed.

Here’s more, only this time its between man and his best friend.

Let the sleeping... well, you know the rest

The rest was well… monkey business.

What are you lookin' at?

We are the best of friends

Until one of us has something the other doesn't

Especially food!

I want it! It's mine!

After it's all over, we kiss and make up :)

A great start to my vacation! Can’t wait what the rest of the month will bring about!

The pope said that evolution is ok by him. So I guess that means that the Catholics can down become evolutionary biologists/anthropologists and such. I wonder what happened in 150 years that changed Vatican’s mind? Given that Catholics assume that Pope has God’s mandate over Christiandom, Pope must have been talking to god on a fairly regular basis. My best guess is that the Pope got a call from God and it went something like this:

“Hey Benedict! Wassaap? Its your old man here. Howz my favorite catholic doin’?…”

“Oh yeah, by the way, Darwin and I had a long chat some time back. He’s a really nice fella. He’s got an awesome beard too. Nothing like mine, but hey, gotta give props where its due right? Anywayz, so Darwin and I were chillin’ out smoking some reefer and stuff… hey, now don’t be judging, I created it remember? So yeah, I realized Darwin’s a cool dude after all. We play checkers all the time now. He’s awesome, he always let me win! So I’ve decided to let him into heaven….”

“What’s that? Oh, the evolution thing? Yeah… well… tell ya what, we are still vetting Einstein to be let into heaven. All the Democratic angels want him in, but the Republican angels are giving him a tough time, with he being a Jew and not believing in my Son and all, but we’ll get there….”

“Why Einstein? Dude! I am sick and tired of there harps all over the place, I need something different, and Einstein’s awesome on the violin. Anywayz, coming back, here’s what you can do, you can tell everyone that evolution is now cool with Me, and that the whole creating the universe in 7 days.. well Einstein here tells me that if I said that I was going at the speed of light when I created the universe, then somehow my watch slows down, and so my 7 days is really billions of years on earth. And that fits nicely with evolution and everything….”

“What?! Me come down and say that myself? The last time I tried doing something like that they nailed my Son to a tree! No way pal! Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me!…”

“Look, I know its not going to be easy convincing everyone, but hey, its not the first time! Remember Galileo? Yeah, we managed to get people to be cool with him after 300 years, and this is just half that time. It’ll work out Benedict… tell ya what, you do this for me and I’ll throw in a couple of extra virgins when you get here. How about that?…”

“Sweet! Gotta go pal. The whole global warming crap that people are into is keepin’ me busy.. I got a few more hurricanes to create in the Atlantic, and yeah, I was tardy on the whole ice-sheet melting thing. Apparently it wasn’t as drastic as last year. Gotta make up for that! Jeez, I need a vacation! Anywayz, gotta go, ciao.”

Image source: http://www.markvernon.com/friendshiponline/images/Jesus&Darwin.jpg

My office mate does have the right to complain, and most likely the issue will be taken up with our adviser, the American, and of course she’ll side with my office mate (Since they are both members of NATO, and war on terror on what not). Since Pakistan got the F-16s from the US, my office mate will get better equipment for research. Now its my turn to go crying to someone else. And who would that be? The Russian in my committee of course! Russia and India go way back! He’ll back me up by giving me some of this equipment for my research.

This is almost too perfect :-) I think we are going to have loads of fun this year. Oh, and there’s research too… eh… kinda. ;-)