Subject: 
          rt7
    Date: 
          Tue, 18 Jun 2002 14:29:02 -0400
   From: 
          sankar <sankar@scs.howard.edu>
      To: 
          Sankar Sitaraman <sankar@scs.howard.edu>








Dear friends,

Here are the random thoughts from the past week which was
immersed in soccer (separate article on that).
Sankar

1. Nature is really my temple and therapy center and refuge
all in one. This sunday morning when I woke up around 5 am
after going to bed around 2, I was feeling a little bit
despondent. Part of the problem was sleep deprivation due
to incessant soccer watching but partly it was stress from
the past few weeks. I was feeling a bit sorry for myself,
and despair over love unrequited, friendships undeveloped,
stories unwritten, problems unsolved, and books unread.

Daylight was already breaking out. I did not want to stay
on bed any longer and decided to spend the day in solitude
and with nature. I caught the S4 bus to silver spring and
got my sister's car. Driving back down 16th st, I could
see the waters of the tidal basin and wanted to go there.
Walking down from the Washington monument on the lush
grass the glorious freshness and joyous serenity of the
early morning overwhelmed me and all my problems now
looked totally insignificant.

I walked around the tidal basin. The scenery was simply
magnificent. It has a very different feel at that time of
the morning, before tourists start flocking to it. I was
feeling quite euphoric and greeted everyone I ran into
energetically. I started talking to a Russian man who was
fishing. He complained that a big catfish dragged one of
his fishing rods away. He showed me a couple of catfish
that he had caught. They were quite big, each about 18"
long, and were splashing about in the water at the end of
the line. I asked him if he was going to release them and
he laughed. I wondered if the catfish knew that they were
living their last few moments.

There seemed to be quite a lot of fish in those waters,
coming in through two gates from the Potomac. Catfish,
carp, shad... some of which were floating dead in the
water. One shad had a chunk neatly cut off from its side.
I also saw a turtle swimming in the water and a great blue
heron flying low. It was an impressive sight. Later in the
day I was walking along the C & O canal towpath and a
heron was flying low over the canal. That was even more
impressive--the gracious bird with its enormous wingspan
dominated the scenery.

2. The reason democracy survives and dynasties don't is the
capriciousness of genes. After a few generations most
dynasties seem to fade. Whereas democracy brings the best to
the top from whatever corner of the society he or she lives
in.

3. American society today is best described by the term
Darwinistic.

4. Society is best understood in terms of schoolyard life.
Trying to understand it in terms of intellectual constructs
such as capitalism, socialism, etc., only leads to confusion.
Collections of human beings behave more according to juvenile
logic. There are some boys who are the leaders, some who are
smart but not so strong and co-operate with them, some who
are strong but not so smart and act as enforcers, then the
good kids who live under constant ridicule because they
threaten the power structure, and the vast mass of kids who
are just happy to play along and be part of the group.

5. And finally, here is a funny news item, this from the Post,
after Cameroon managed to eke out a win against a clearly
weak Saudi side:

But nothing has been easy for Cameroon during this World Cup.
Things went wrong from the very beginning. First, the team's
departure from Paris was delayed by three days, reportedly
because of a pay dispute. Then, the team plane made an
unscheduled seven-hour stop in Bangkok when the pilot
realized he did not have permission to fly over Cambodia,
Vietnam and the Philippines.