iconic!

...so one of the things dad always does is give me books that i don't wind up reading...math and science books that are WAY over my head, sci-fi books that are reeeeeeeeeeealy dull  ("fantastic logic,") books of pedantic puzzles that require a knowledge of british coinage and cricket rules, children's books that are totally contrary to aashna's taste ("the berenstain bears eat too much junk food.")
   ...BUT the last book he gave me was "dictionary of word origins," with that "return to  AM Soosaipillai" stamp on every side.  and DAMN, it's fascinating!!!  here goes:
  the words "icon" and "iconoclast."  from context (thelonious monk, for example, is often referred to as "iconoclastic"), i always thought "iconoclast" meant something like "kinda weird" which it can, but the two words, are, in fact, related!
    icon comes from greek eikon meaning "be like," thus likeness or  similarity.
    iconoclast adds the verb klan, "to break," thus "breaker of icons."  from the book:
The original iconoclasts were members of the Eastern Orthodox church in the 8th and 9th centuries who were oppoesed to the use or worship of religious images.  In more extreme cases their opposition took the form of smashimg icons...The term subsequently came to be applied to extreme Protestants in England in the 16th ad 17th centuries who expressed their disapproval of graven images (and popish practices in general) in similar ways.  Its general use of "attacker of orthodoxy" dates from the early 19th century.
  The later iconoclasts will be familiar to readers of "Neal Stephenson's" Baroque Trilogy.  We would call them "Puritans," but another term was "Nonconformists," another word which had a meaning of a specific religious group which, like "iconoclast," is now a general term.

yep, i actually wrote to ben and jerry's!

geeking out over ice cream!!!

Comments: hola! first off, i love your flavors, especially coffee buzz buzz and peanut butter chocolate. i would, however, like to comment on something that perhaps nobody would notice who hasn't worked in an ice cream store but it BUGS the hell out of me!! (this was in the berkeley store): at my Neals (a Texas chain, I suppose) we would get yelled at if we scraped out the "tailings," what was left over at the bottom of an old container, and put them on the top of a new one...they are soft and slimy, look kinda yucky and taste all sticky-uck...i got a sample of "chunky monkey," and i was like, it feels funny...oh, look, that little pile of half-melted ice cream on the top! you can't be losing that much money by tossing it out...and think of your sterling reputation!!!! thanks for listening!

...and another!

moby google!

contributor rob:
To: "arunankono-soosaipillai" <aruyuka@yahoo.com>
Date: Thursday, October 18, 2012, 7:03 AM

If you are not reading this e mail on October 18, you missed the google tribute to Moby Dick. 

ha!  I googled it!  LOOOOOOOOOOVE moby dick!!

1976!

we watched the space shuttle flyover from school today from the outside stairs (i wanted to go inside, but cec insisted!)  i dug up some pictures i found at my dad's house last year:  the original space shuttle, enterprise, at ellington (?) air force base near houston, circa 1976. 
  that's me in the middle, in the houson oilers jacket, with my baby brother tudi and big sis mip.

a cool pic from the internet

the shuttle over the astrodome in houston

Dad loved writing letters to the editor! snarky, too...

Originally created 10/03/03

Iraqi oil falsehood perpetrated by 'Chronicle'

By Letter to the Editor

This is my comment on the Sept. 19 editorial, "Consider it a loan," about money the president plans on asking Congress for to pay for reconstruction in Afghanistan and Iraq.
You write: "...it's lunacy for American taxpayers to foot the bill for bringing Iraq's infrastructure into the 20th century, let alone the 21st, while Iraqis are sitting on top of the greatest supply of oil known to mankind."
Oh, really? Surely you know that the last part of the sentence is not true! And just to be sure that the multitudes are adequately misled, the editorial concludes. "...when they are sitting on all that oil...".
Please, sir! You are allowed your opinions; you may, sometimes, ignore the truth but you may not perpetrate a falsehood.
Or, were you just checking whether or not we are all asleep?
Anton Soosaipillai, Grovetown, Ga.
http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/2003/10/03/let_393603.shtml 

the library!

Alexandria is most famous for having been the site of the ancient library...Back in the days when people moved to information, instead of vice versa, this library attracted most of the most famous smart people in the world: the ultimate hacker, Archimedes;  the father of geometry, Euclid; Eratosthenes, who was the first person to calculate the circumference of the earth, by looking at the way the sun shone down wells at Alexandria and Aswan.  He also ran the library for a while and took the job seriously enough that when he started to go blind in his old age, he starved himself to death.  In any event, this library was burned out by the Romans when they were adding Egypt to their empire.  Or maybe it wasn't.  It's inherently difficult to get reliable information about an event that consisted of the destruction of all recorded information.

Neal Stephenson from the article "Mother Earth, Mother Board,"

 from Some Remarks:  Essays and Other Writing

you can read the full wired article here:  

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html