Holey Book??

A book BAG? Impractical, TACKY, and what are they THINKING?

My book is NOT an internet chatroom, thank you very much. And as if there isn’t enough BAD ART out there already.

I have newfound respect and sympathy for what is probably one of the most obscure, tiresome, yet important fields of study EVER - LIBRARY SCIENCE.

Up till recently, I never knew that one could study such things. Never tried applying for a job as a librarian. Never knew anything about libraries except that they have tons of books you can borrow.

But cataloguing the meager number of books here at GOHD Books is utterly miserable and makes me wish someone around here knew SOMETHING about this tragic operation.

If any Library Science person needs an internship, CALL ME IMMEDIATELY. I can’t pay, except maybe in meals. But I promise good treatment and an outstanding report that will make you seem like the GOHD OF LIBRARY SCIENCE.

Doubt and Certainty: The Celebrated Academy Debateds on Science, Mysticism, Reality, in General on the Knowable and Unknowable, with Particular Forays into Such Esoteric Matters as the Mind Fluid, the Behaviour of the Stock Market, and the Disposition of a Quantum Mechanical Sphinx, to Name a Few/ by Tony Rothman, George Sudarshan.

This book is extremely interesting, especially since it’s written quite simply for a book in which fundamentals of PHYSICS is so important. It contains debates such as Is God a Mathematician?, Is There Symmetry in Art, and The Sphinx and The Cat, which discusses and compares the mystery of The Sphinx with the mind-blowing question of Schrodinger’s Cat. For those who aren’t acquainted with this NEITHER DEAD NOR ALIVE zombie of a cat, see the sitcom, The Big Bang Theory:

Anyway, the question that this book raised for me, really, has nothing to do with the book. It’s interesting to note how almost everything has been included in this book except the social sciences - critical theory, anthropology, sociology..you know, those subjects that my students have told me “are easy to score in”.

It’s also interesting to note that many anthropologists, sociologists and historians whom I know choose to completely isolate themselves from science or any field that seeks objectivity, claiming that anything objective must necessarily be biased.

Compare this to many scientists, who research every perspective, every mode of thinking, before coming to a conclusion, afterward coming to a realisation that subjects like mysticism may have more in common with science that scientists had originally perceived.

Contrast this again to anthropologists, many of whom have laughed in my face at any mention of the possibility that things we cannot see may exist. Instead, they argue that, if you’re not a complete atheist, it must be solely because of cultural conditioning. But no one is asking them to believe in the unseen; but to just consider that they have no way of being certain that it is a big hoax and respect the beliefs of others.

These anthropologists believe in atoms, although we cannot see them in plain sight. And I’m pretty sure none of these anthropologists have ever touched scientific equipment after high school. If they were to go all the way with their post-modernism, they should then rightly question why they believe in atoms. Because they were conditioned to believe in atoms since they were children, because everybody else believes in atoms, and because people extraordinarily smarter than them have proved that atoms exist; although the anthropologists themselves have no way of knowing whether the proof is valid or not.

Some months ago, I had a debate with an extremely dismissive anthropologist on the relationship between science and ancient texts (which to him was “NEW AGE”), concerning Sanskrit ideas in particular. This academic, naturally, had no knowledge of science or Sanskrit, although, given his field of research, he should rightly have studied languages and texts at least related to the Sanskrit language.

So, I’d like to end of this rant by showing the world this video - Part 1 of Sanskrit Language:

Gohd recently discovered that, contrary to our pessimistic beliefs, there actually have been people visiting our website. Prior to this knowledge, we had always assumed that our visitors were exclusively robots (the search engine type of robots, not a euphemism for the mindless automatons that modern society has produced).

A note to those who have been visiting - a thousand apologies for our ABYSMAL abilities at creating, developing and maintaining a website. You must have noticed the numerous changes in design, the half-baked incomplete sites (including the present one), or, even worse, the complete absence of a website.

The current website is approximately our 500th attempt at building one. Unlike the previous sites, the current one actually instills in us some sense of HOPE for our virtual future. May our 500th attempt be successful.

A few of our books are online already, and this time, we’ve managed to include…wait for it…PICTURES. We’ll consistently add more and more books. In the painful course of uploading our catalogue, we’ve discovered something truly interesting:

We have many, many rare books you can’t find easily throughout the world. (We’d thought that our books were only hard to find in Singapore.)

If only so we can make a global display of our acquisitions via the internet….May our 500th attempt be successful.