Silent People

The first verse of Casey's Last Ride, a song by Kris Kristofferson, describes silent crowds walking down subway stairs. I see this as a metaphor for a life without love or purpose – minding the arrows and trudging inexorably towards the clicking of the turnstiles.

I've always thought the song would be a good candidate for a bleak graphic-novel-style interpretation, so when I got my hands on a graphics tablet (a gift from Anasua), I gave it a shot (which is to say, I drew the first panel; I would have drawn the whole song if I had the requisite patience, which I clearly don't).

Seasons 3: Isle of Dogs, London

Move your cursor over the image below, and it should change to another image of the same scene in a different season. (If it doesn't work, check that your browser has JavaScript enabled.)

Base photo:	30 May 2014
Mouseover photo:	3 December 2014
Approx. coordinates:	51.49°N, 0.01°W

The boundary fence of our housing development is fringed with what I suspect is meadowsweet. The flowers are fluffy white in summer, but now that it's winter, they are dry and black.

The American Pound

An American professor teaches my Philosophy of Economics course. An incident from Monday's class:

Professor:	On the y-axis we have pound benefit to farmers. [tries to draw a pound symbol, fails, tries again, draws an even worse one]
Class:	[laughter]
Professor:	I... I don't know how to draw a pound.
Class:	[more laughter]
Professor:	I'll practise, I'll practise.

Below is a photo of his effort.

No Nazis, No Racists

A poster I saw in my East London neighbourhood:



I wonder if the London Antifascists have given up on posher areas!

Substitutability

From The Regulation of International Trade by Trebilcock, Howse and Eliason:



What?! No!

A Shop Called Sroyon

My first name – a Bengali word meaning 'shelter' – is pretty uncommon; I have never met anyone who shares it. Saha likes to tell a story (see e.g. the third comment here) about staff in my school naming their kids after me, but this, like most of Saha's stories, is a lie.

But it turns out that for twenty years now, there has been a shop in Bhowanipore, Calcutta which shares my name. My father sent me a photo of the shop and its owner.

The coincidence is all the more surprising because, due to the complexities of Bangla Romanisation, this is only one of several possible ways of spelling শ্রয়ণ in English, and not necessarily the most obvious one. Other possibilities include Srayan, Shrayan and Shroyon – the second being the most orthographically accurate.

* * *

In other news, it appears that my feathered friend from last winter was not unique; if The Telegraph is to be believed, sunbirds are known for window-tapping.

Terms of Use

My CQA page (linked in the sidebar) answers most queries which readers may have about this blog (and several others besides), but it has hitherto been silent about terms of use. I don't make any money from this blog, so I'm not too fussed about asserting copyright over the content as long as people behave with common decency.

On a few occasions, people have been kind enough to email me asking if they can link to a post or use an image. Most recently, someone from tokyobike NYC – a bike company – emailed me to ask permission to use one of my photos (this is where they shared the image, and here is the post where it originally appeared).

So, to save such people the time and effort of having to contact me to ask permission, I hereby introduce The World According to Sroyon terms of use.

I toyed with the idea of adopting Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0, but in the end I settled for something that's even more flexible and non-legalistic (or, to use a Creative Commons phrase, "human-readable").

The Cat-and-Mouse Theory Against the Existence of God

In a letter to the American botanist Asa Gray, Darwin wrote:

But I own that I cannot see, as plainly as others do, & as I sh^d wish to do, evidence of design & beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.

The other day I saw a cat catch a mouse at Mudchute Farm. But perhaps unnerved by my presence, it did not play with its prey. Instead it retreated post-haste under a nearby wagon to finish its lunch, occasionally stealing mistrustful glances in my direction.