Shakespeare &Sainte

 How distinct is faking one's identity from inculcating a different one? Mimicry has its fair share of practitioners, some even blissfully unaware they are engaged in this imitative practice. JesicaKrug, a history professor in George Washington University (GWU) in the US capital, is not one of them– she was very much aware of passing herself off as something she wasn't. Confessing recently about being a White woman pretending to be Black, the professor of African American, colonial and imperial history resigned, not because she was bad at her job, but because of peddling an identity lie. So much for colour being only skin deep. It turns out that Krug was indeed suscepted by some colleagues of fakery–she had claimed that she was from New York City's Black-majority borough of Bronx,while she was actually from sunburn Kansas City. What raised suspicious included her being clearly 'inexpert salsa dancing' and 'awful New York accent'. Krug has since blamed unaddr...

 From flights to nowhere to space station odysseys, jugaad has gone international Steve Jobs famously said, 'The Journey is the reward, but for whome it is not clear in the case of all the airlines who are now selling tickets for 'flight to nowhere', taking the cue from the successful Taiwanese one in early August. The passengers get around international travel restrictions. A rewarding venture all round; carbon footprints are so yesterday anyway. Indeed, it may not be farfetched to contemplate that these popular round trips could become a permanent travel category from now on for those who love journeys but not destinations. Obviously , the very Indian philosophy of jugaad has become the order of the day. So, it is not surprising that even high-flying institutions like NASA are thinking of ways to generate additional revenue. After all, even $90 billion or biting research stations must pay their way.  With Estes Lauder forking out $128,000 for a product to be photographed ...

 One museum's fossil can be an art collector's installation  In December 2019, a real banana duct-taped to a wall, billed as a work called comedian, by the Italian satirical artist Maurizio Cattelan fetched $120,000 at a prestigious art show in Miami. Not long after, another identical work by the same artist was also sold for the same amount.Both buyers were French and they were connoisseurs, not consumers, presumably. Not only did the perishable nature of the art not affect its saleability— a 'performance artist' peeled the banana off the wall and ate it — the work was declared the 'unicorn of the art world'. If that banana symbolised the evenescence of an artistic idea, its timelessness will surely be underlined by the sale of a67 million-year-old composition of bones that is the highlight of Christie's Evening sale of 20the century Art in October in New York.  The 'work' has been named Tyrannosaurus Rex(by paleontologists) and Stan (by its finders...

  Clearly rats have got a bad deal both in popular imagination and the English language. While its cutar, relative the mouse, has been elevated to a technoc-rat thanks to the advent of the computer, a rat rarely gets any grattitude; instead it is usually regarded as vermin. Praise, if any, is gratituous. So it I very heartening indeed to note that a colossus if the species, an African giant pouched rat, 6-year-old Magawa, has been awarded a gold medal by the UK veterinary charity PDSA for his four year stint detecting 39 hidden landmines and 28 pieces of unexploded ordnance in Cambodia. While Magawa himself is reportedly happy to be rewarded with just basket of bananas, what makes the gold medal particularly gratifying, of course he is the only rat to be selected by PDSA- all previous 29 winners have been dogs. The award is a significant recognition for rat kind given the bad press that Magawa's smaller cousins attract. Even now studies and irate stories abound about rats taking ov...

 The unfortunate incident last week of the main in France who had a narrow escape when his house burned down because his attempt to swat a fly with an electric racket ignited a leaking gas cylinder underlines a the dangers if complicating simple tasks. If not an old-fashioned swatter, a rolled-up newspaper could have accomplished the deep more efficiently with considering the fate of that fly remains unknown. The efficacy of old-fashioned methods to deal with annoying flies has been immortalised in the Brothers Grimm 1812 tale, The Valiant Little Tailor, who dispatched no less than 'seven at one blow' and leveraged that feat to eventually become a king. An American cartoonist named Rube Goldberg became a by-word for the propensity to invent convoluted contraptions to perform simple tasks because of his sketches bon the subject. His cartoon Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin, published in 1931 has become a meme for complex contrivances; but nearly a century bof techno...

  Look beyond dragons to multi pronged diplomacy The meeting between the foreign ministers of India and China made it clear that the situation along the Line of Actual Control and beyond is unlikely to defuse quickly or easily. Though the meeting ended with the joint statement and a 5-point action agenda for peace, China is intent on blaming India for the standoff while india has stressed the necessity of restoring the pre-April 2020 status along the LAC. Notably, the joint statement leaves actual disengagement not to any political imperative but to the troops on the border and their continued dialogue. The meeting at the political level should serve, it is to be hoped, at least to prevent further escalation of the standoff into active hostilities. The restoration of peace and tranquility is unlikely to be easy. Ahead of the meeting and after it, Beijing blamed India for the situation at the border. India has raised concern about China's troop build-up in the region and along the L...