A Note from Christopher Duff-Tytler of Adelaide, 30 July 2021
Subject: Great ambition for:- A 9 year old SriLankan origin, NASA ambassador in Australia.
I Just found out that this boy with SL parents lives in Adelaide…..Chris
Category Archives: performance
Sir Garfield Sobers: A Cricketing Genius
Rex Clementine, in The Island, 28 July 2021, where the title is “Cricket’s greatest is 85 today”
Sir Don Bradman called him the ‘greatest cricketing being to have ever walked the earth,’ and in Sri Lanka, he is considered as someone who shaped the careers of many players. Sir Garry Sobers turns 85 today. He was hired by the Board of Control for Cricket in Sri Lanka in 1980s and his influence benefited a young cricket team, enaabling them to rub shoulders with formidable opponents of the game.
Scott Atran on Unconditional Commitment draws Reflections from Thuppahi Roberts
ONE: Scott Atran: “The Devoted Actor Unconditional Commitment and Intractable Conflict across Cultures,” ... as introduced to Thuppahi by The Library of Social Science,in New York, … with this abstract at journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/685495
Uncompromising wars, revolution, rights movements, and today’s global terrorism are in part driven by “devoted actors” who adhere to sacred, transcendent values that generate actions dissociated from rationally expected risks and rewards. Studies in real-world conflicts show ways that devoted actors, who are unconditionally committed to sacred causes and whose personal identities are fused within a unique collective identity, willingly make costly sacrifices. This enables low-power groups to endure and often prevail against materially stronger foes. Explaining how devoted actors come to sacrifice for cause and comrades not only is a scientific goal but a practical imperative to address intergroup disputes that can spiral out of control in a rapidly interconnecting world of collapsing and conflicting cultural traditions. From the recent massive media-driven global political awakening, horizontal peer-to-peer transcultural niches, geographically disconnected, are emerging to replace vertical generation-to-generation territorial traditions. Devoted actors of the global jihadi archipelago militate within such a novel transcultural niche, which is socially tight, ideationally narrow, and globe spanning. Nevertheless, its evolutionary maintenance depends on costly commitments to transcendental values, rituals and sacrifices, and parochial altruism, which may have deep roots even in the earliest and most traditional human societies. Fieldwork results from the Kurdish battlefront with the Islamic State are highlighted.
Filed under accountability, art & allure bewitching, atrocities, authoritarian regimes, chauvinism, communal relations, Eelam, ethnicity, Fascism, heritage, historical interpretation, Indian religions, Islamic fundamentalism, jihad, landscape wondrous, life stories, LTTE, military strategy, performance, photography, politIcal discourse, religiosity, self-reflexivity, suicide bombing, Tamil Tiger fighters, terrorism, the imaginary and the real, trauma, unusual people, vengeance, war reportage, world events & processes
Vale: Dr Nalini Kumari Kappagoda, 21 January 1936-23 July 2021
Hugh Karunanayake
It is with much sadness that I record the demise of Dr Nalini Kappagoda, lately of Bundanoon and Killara. Dr Nalini Kappagoda, a long-time resident, of West Pymble, Killara, and Bundanoon, in New South Wales, passed away at the age of 85 on 23 July. She was one of the most brilliant products of the Ceylon Medical College, from where she passed out as a doctor with First Class Honours in 1960. She was most likely the only student in the history of the Medical College to collect a bag of 4 gold medals during a studentship. In 1958 she was awarded the Hazarai Gold Medal for the best student at the Third MBBS examination. In 1958 she was also awarded the Loos Gold medal for pathology. In the same year she was also awarded the Mathew Gold Medal for Forensic Medicine. In her final year in 1960 she was awarded the Dadabhoy Gold Medal for Medicine. She subsequently obtained her PhD in Pathology from the University of London and was a Fellow of the Royal Australian Society of Pathologists.
Filed under art & allure bewitching, charitable outreach, cultural transmission, education, female empowerment, heritage, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, life stories, medical marvels, meditations, performance, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, travelogue, unusual people, world events & processes
Remembering Manouri Muttetuwegama nee De Silva
ONE REQUEIM from Gamini Seneviratne , in The Island, 25 July 2021 v
In the early nineteen sixties when we met, politics here was in a kind of crisis. The Left parties were defining themselves and each other in terms that emasculated such terms as ‘socialist’ of the meanings assigned to them not just in the literature but in the practice of revolution. We had sama samaja ‘new’ or without qualification, united socialist, revolutionary socialist, Bolshevik Leninist, Stalinist aka Communist, Trotskyite, Maoist and, lurking not far behind them every nuance of Democracy and Socialism. In hindsight all that seems innocent given the skulduggery that came to be sort of enshrined in a “Constitution” that enjoyed the distinction of being totally unconstitutional / illegal. So much more has been done since that J R J, the breaker of laws and trasher of justice would be chortling in whatever shades he now resides.
Filed under accountability, democratic measures, governance, heritage, legal issues, life stories, performance, politIcal discourse, press freedom, social justice, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, tolerance, unusual people, women in ethnic conflcits, working class conditions, world events & processes
Lessons from Margaret Thatcher for Sri Lanka Today
Sanjeewa Jayaweera, in The Island, 25 July 2021, where the title is “SRI LANKA’S ECONOMIC QUAGMIRE AND HOW MARGRET THATCHER SMASHED THE KEYNESIAN CONSENSUS”
For quite some time, experts in economics and finance not associated with any political party have been raising the red flag about the severe economic challenges that our country was facing. Unfortunately, the politicians have consistently ignored these challenges. Many in the private sector believed that commonsense would prevail and necessary course correction will occur, and the ship will sail smoothly.
Filed under accountability, centre-periphery relations, disparagement, economic processes, education, governance, historical interpretation, island economy, life stories, modernity & modernization, performance, politIcal discourse, power politics, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, unusual people, world events & processes
A Brilliant Kurumba Raider
Courtesy of Cyril Ernst …. Benedictine, Cricketer, Medical Doctor, dual International Crickter … AND …. a speiclist in Ceyloniana
Also visit https://www.beautyofbirds.com/srilankaparrotsparakeets.html
Australian Aboriginal Peoples as Sophisticated Hunter-Gatherers?
Christine Judith Nicholls, reviewing the book Farmers or Hunter-Gatherers? authored by Peter Sutton & Keryn Walshe …. with highlighting imposed by The Editor Thuppahi
Eminent Australian anthropologist Peter Sutton and respected field archaeologist Keryn Walshe have co-authored a meticulously researched n a meticulously researched new book, Farmers or Hunter-gatherers? The Dark Emu Debate. It’s set to become the definitive critique of Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu: Black Seeds — Agriculture or Accident?
Filed under Aboriginality, accountability, art & allure bewitching, Australian culture, australian media, British colonialism, centre-periphery relations, cultural transmission, economic processes, education, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, life stories, literary achievements, performance, politIcal discourse, religiosity, self-reflexivity, teaching profession, the imaginary and the real, travelogue, world events & processes
Duncan White: Trinitian, Hurdler and Trailblazer for Ceylon
KLF Wijedasa**
During this Olympic year it is pertinent to remember one of our country’s greatest athletes Major Duncan White on his 23rd death anniversary (July 3). On his way to success, he had to glide over 10 barriers and not break them!
14th August 1948: Duncan White of Ceylon fixes his starting blocks to the track at the 1948 London Olympics. Original Publication: Picture Post – 4582 – Fastest Men On Earth – pub. 1948 (Photo by Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
