Category Archives: self-reflexivity

June 13, 2023 · 1:09 am

Reflections on Australia’s Triumph over India

Andrew McGlashan in ESPNcricinfo, 12 June 2023, with this title: “What does Australia’s WTC win mean for the Ashes?” ….

Smith’s ominous form, Boland’s metronomic accuracy augur well for the side as they dust off the cobwebs in style.

 

Australia’s victory in the World Test Championship [WTC] final was a landmark on its own, capping an impressive two years and securing the only title that had yet to feature in their trophy cabinet. However, this was not a tour with a one-off match; it’s only just started. The men’s Ashes begins on Friday at Edgbaston, so while the players spend a day or so celebrating, let’s examine what Australia’s performance at The Oval could mean against England.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under accountability, art & allure bewitching, australian media, cricket for amity, cricket selections, life stories, performance, self-reflexivity, unusual people, world events & processes

June 12, 2023 · 8:22 pm

Surviving A Leopard Attack in Hill-Country Sri Lanka

Kamanthi Wickemasinghe in Daily Mirror, 12 June 2023, where the title reads “Hill Country Leopard Ordeals and A Survivor’s Tale” … with highlighting imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

Dusk had already set in when we reached Bogawantalawa last Friday (June 2). What’s unique about the Central Highlands is that by about 5pm the climate turns misty and dark. We were on our way to meet Deva Prasath (39) from Bridwell Estate, Bogawantalawa who is a survivor of a recent leopard attack.

 

 

 

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under accountability, cultural transmission, landscape wondrous, life stories, plantations, security, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, trauma, wild life

June 12, 2023 · 7:16 pm

Huituto Children Survival Skills in the Amazonian Jungle

Victoria Bisset and Ana Vanessa Herrero, in Stuff, 11 June 2023, where the title reads  “Four children were rescued after 40 days in the jungle. How did they survive?”

Four children have survived 40 days in the Amazon jungle in Colombia after their plane crashed last month, killing all three adults on board, including their mother.

 

 

 

 

The wreckage of the Cessna C206 that crashed in the jungle of Solano in the Caqueta state of Colombia

The children, aged 13, 9, 4 and 1, were rescued Friday (local time) after rescuers spent weeks searching for them in remote areas of the jungle, which is home to jaguars, ocelots and venomous snakes.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under cultural transmission, disaster relief team, heritage, landscape wondrous, life stories, performance, self-reflexivity, trauma, travelogue, unusual people, wild life, world events & processes

June 12, 2023 · 12:19 pm

Nuclear Disarmament! Farcical Face at G7 Summit

 Kanwal Singh, in RT News, 6 June 2023, where the title runs: “The G7’s nuсlear-weapon-free world ‘vision’ is a farce” …. with the highlights in black being those within the digital version

The choice of Hiroshima as the venue of May’s G7 meeting implied that the issue of nuclear disarmament would be highlighted in the summit documents. Not surprisingly, the G7 leaders issued the “Hiroshima Vision on Nuclear Disarmament” to mark the occasion.

 

 

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under accountability, centre-periphery relations, disparagement, economic processes, foreign policy, governance, historical interpretation, law of armed conflict, legal issues, life stories, military expenditure, Pacific Ocean issues, performance, politIcal discourse, power politics, Responsibility to Protect or R2P, security, self-reflexivity, taking the piss, truth as casualty of war, world events & processes

June 12, 2023 · 11:43 am

A Conservative Voice against Today’s Aboriginal ‘Voice’ ”

 Dr David Barton, in THE QUADRANT,  December 2022, with this title “Australia’s Aboriginal Industry: Always Was, Always Will Be About Power”

 

In 1983, as a naïve youth worker and concerned by what I had been reading since the early 1970s about what was happening with Aborigines in Alice Springs, I moved there to see what I could do to help. All told, I spent six years in Central Australia, leaving both depressed and convinced that the situation could never be fixed.

Unfortunately, much of what passes for Aboriginal ‘culture’ today is an invention of the last 50 years.

Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under Aboriginality, Australian culture, australian media, centre-periphery relations, cultural transmission, democratic measures, demography, disparagement, ethnicity, governance, historical interpretation, language policies, legal issues, life stories, reconciliation, self-reflexivity, social justice, tolerance, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, world events & processes

June 8, 2023 · 1:34 pm

DH De Silva: A Cricketing Aficianado … who survived an Assassin’s Bullet

Michael Roberts, … This item was initially presented in my other [now dormant] website CRICKETIQUE in May 2014 as a form of requiem. Buddy Reid’s recent ‘memorial’ to DH prompts me to present this account again. It also provides fuller information on the assassination strike on Hema in Kandy which induced his family to flee from beloved Sri Lanka … albeit without any awareness that a bullet stub remained embedded within his body. This tale also indicates that Hema had been a significant influence in the flowering of Sangakkara’s cricketing skills. Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under accountability, art & allure bewitching, cricket for amity, cricket selections, cultural transmission, education, heritage, landscape wondrous, life stories, patriotism, performance, politIcal discourse, self-reflexivity, Sri Lankan cricket, sri lankan society, travelogue, unusual people, world events & processes

June 5, 2023 · 9:04 pm

‘Artificial Engineered’ Music in Memory of Professor Fred Bartholomeusz of Peradeniya University

Geethasiri Karunatillake, … from Adelaide, Australia

 

I have always been passionate about music, but I never had the opportunity to study music or the ability to sing. That’s why when I learned about the capabilities of Chat-GPT, I knew I had to give it a try.

Undoubtedly, Batho was the most popular professor at the Engineering Faculty at Peradeniya University in the 1950s to 60s. I vividly recall how he could captivate us with his lectures, simplifying even the most intricate concepts and recapitulating in the end.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under accountability, art & allure bewitching, cultural transmission, education, heritage, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, life stories, modernity & modernization, performance, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, teaching profession, travelogue, unusual people, world affairs

June 5, 2023 · 2:49 pm

A Mind For One and All: Jayantha Dhanapala

Tissa Jayatilaka, in The Island, 4 June 2023,  … with highlights imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

The splendid career and the many glittering prizes won by Jayantha Dhanapala is common knowledge and does not require reiteration here. Rather I wish to focus on the man himself in this tribute to an exceptional person whom I had the privilege of getting to know personally at the tail end of the 1980s – I had of course heard of Jayantha and his many accomplishments long before our first meeting. Having read a newspaper review of North-South Perspectives, an international affairs journal that I edited, which focused on the promotion of greater understanding between the ‘developed’ and the ‘developing’ world, Jayantha telephoned me to ask if we could meet. I readily agreed and thus began a friendship that lasted until his death a few days ago.

Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under accountability, art & allure bewitching, centre-periphery relations, cultural transmission, economic processes, education, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, human rights, landscape wondrous, life stories, literary achievements, modernity & modernization, patriotism, politIcal discourse, self-reflexivity, social justice, sri lankan society, theatre world, unusual people, world affairs

June 4, 2023 · 12:17 pm

Deciphering Buddhism: The Correct Pathway

Ananda Abeysekara’s Academic Article: “On Rewriting Buddhism: Or, How Not to Write a History,” Religion and Society, vol. 13. 1(2022): 39-80. 

ABSTRACT: Through a detailed reading of a recent study of medieval Buddhism and politics in Sri Lanka in conjunction with a number of other works, this article explores the troubling legacy of translating the historical questions of subjectivity into the modern language of ‘agency’, ‘autonomy’, ‘innovation’, and ‘creativity’. This legacy cannot easily be separated from the politics of white privilege in post-colonial studies of Buddhism and South Asian religion. The problem with trying to expose creativity, so pervasive in the studies of South Asian religion, is not merely a matter of anachronistic conceptualization of divergent historical forms of religious practice and subjectivity. It is that the very possibility of translating subjectivity into easily digestible aestheticized modes of being (e.g., creativity) is predicated on an uninterrogated assumption about the self-evidence of such concepts independent of temporal forms of power encountered in forms of life. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under ancient civilisations, art & allure bewitching, Buddhism, cultural transmission, education, heritage, historical interpretation, Indian traditions, landscape wondrous, life stories, meditations, modernity & modernization, politIcal discourse, religiosity, religious nationalism, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, tolerance, world events & processes

June 3, 2023 · 1:15 am

Where No Woman is Kota Uda

…. and where one is at ease in the company of the Birds and the Bees                                                                                                           
and Where… Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under accountability, performance, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, unusual people, wild life