LAND'S END--THE SOUTHERN TIP OF INDIA  Three different seas meet in Kanyakumari:  the Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea, each of them was bringing its own kind of sand.  There was of course yellow sand, but also black sand and even red sand.  The funny thing about different sands was that the grain sizes must have been different enough so that the sands would not really mix with each other and so every single wave was creating a new pattern at the beach . . . http://www.seetheworldinmyeyes.com/travel-diary/south-asia/india/roasting-in-kanyakumari/  See also https://aglobalaffair.com/2012/07/10/cape-comorin-a-jewel-in-the-southern-tip-of-india/

"What can't be cured must be endured."  "Americans have mastered the universe, but have no dominion over their mouths; whereas India is impotent, but her children tend to have excellent teeth."  Midnight's Children, a novel by Salman Rushdie

In his Booker-winning novel Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie spared neither Indira Gandhi nor the cow, subjecting them to his irreverent caricatures.  One of the most unforgettable mention in the novel is of a fictional film called “Gai-Walla”.  Rushdie wrote:  “The film was an eastern Western.  Its hero, Dev, who was not slim, rode the range alone.  It looked very like the Indo-Gangetic plain.  Gai-Wallah means cow-fellow and Dev played a sort of one-man vigilante force for the protection of cows.  SINGLE-HANDED!  And DOUBLE-BARRELLED!, he stalked the many herds of cattle which were being driven across the range to the slaughterhouse, vanquished the cattlemen and liberated the sacred beasts.  (The film was made for Hindu audiences; in Delhi it had caused riots.  Muslim Leaguers had driven cows past cinemas to the slaughter, and had been mobbed.)”  The first line of Rukun Advani’s 1994 novel Beethoven Among The Cows takes its inspiration from the opening line of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.  http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/5NTru5ASNPqZtes6f9uSRM/Mooing-with-the-times.html

In his 1994 novel, "Beethoven Among the Cows," Rukun Advani told the story of two Indian brothers, anglicized and urbane, who decide to take the train to Agra on a whim.  Their fictional journey was in the weeks after Hindu nationalists had razed a 16th-century mosque in Ayodhya, believing that it was built at the precise spot where the mythical Hindu god Rama was born.  In the riots that followed, hundreds died.  The brothers decided to see the Taj Mahal one last time, just in case the nationalists turned their wrath on the Taj next.  That fear isn't fanciful.  A Hindu conspiracy theorist called P.N. Oak has claimed that the Taj Mahal was originally a Hindu monument, called Tejo Mahalaya, which the invading Muslims appropriated.  Only a few of India's gifted writers have tackled the rise of Hindu militancy in their fiction.  Advani dealt with it in "Beethoven Among the Cows."  http://shashitharoor.in/review_details_fiction/36  Book review in The Asian Wall Street Journal  December 2001  See also http://www.stir.ac.uk/arts-humanities/research/areas/indianwritersatstirling/rukunadvani/

Well before the Declaration of Independence, in 1743 Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) and his friend the Quaker botanist John Bartram (1699-1777) established the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia as a declaration of scientific independence from Great Britain’s scientific domination.  The APS developed from a group of local intellectuals keen on expanding human knowledge to serve informally as the national academy of science and national library for a half century after 1790, when the United States capital moved to Philadelphia.  Over time, the APS expanded into a multidisciplinary society and prominent institution as members applied their expertise to endeavors ranging from charting unknown territories in the nineteenth century to examining the ethics of scientific advancement in the modern world.  Benjamin Franklin founded the American Philosophical Society with others in order to “promote useful knowledge.”  It was an extension of his earlier intellectual club, the Junto.  Franklin and Bartram designated Philadelphia as the most logical headquarters because of its location, its easy access by sea, and the vibrant bookish culture fostered by the Library Company of Philadelphia, the lending library Franklin founded in 1731.  Philadelphia also had the benefit of Bartram’s unparalleled botanical knowledge, as he collected and identified species of plants found only in North America.  https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/american-philosophical-society/

The American Philosophical Society Library is a major national center for research in the history of the sciences, medicine, and technology.  It houses over 350,000 volumes and bound periodicals, thirteen million manuscripts, 250,000 images, and thousands of hours of audio tape.  Among the many extraordinary books in the collections of printed materials are first editions of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia, Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, a presentation copy of Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, the elephant folio of Audubon's Birds of North America (for which the APS was an original subscriber), as well as a majority of Benjamin Franklin imprints and a significant portion of Franklin's personal library.  Manuscript collections range from eighteenth-century natural history, American Indian linguistics and culture, to nuclear physics, computer development, and medical science. The Library is among the premier institutions in the nation for documenting the history of genetics and eugenics, the study of natural history in the 18th and 19th centuries, quantum mechanics, and the development of cultural anthropology in America.  https://amphilsoc.org/library

History of the idea of “inalienable rights.”  One key to understanding “inalienable” rights (as distinguished from ordinary, “alienable” rights) is found by turning to one of Thomas Jefferson’s rough drafts of the Declaration of Independence.  There, he originally wrote that “all men” are “endowed by their Creator with [inherent &] inalienable rights . . .  ”  http://www.civiced.org/resources/curriculum/911-and-the-constitution/terms-to-know  

Jefferson's "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence  https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/ruffdrft.html

hegemony  noun  Leadership or dominance, especially by one state or social group over others.  Origin:  Mid 16th century--from Greek hēgemonia, from hēgemōn ‘leader’, from hēgeisthai ‘to lead’.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/hegemony

October 19, 2017  A new type of archaeological site with has been discovered in the desert lava fields of western Saudi Arabia.  Nearly 400 structures dating back thousands of years have been found, with many clustered in Harrat Khaybar.  And it's partially thanks to the introduction and growing accessibility of aerial mapping technologies, which allow researchers to view areas they can't easily reach by land, or don't know are significant.  The monuments have been called "gates", and are described in an upcoming paper by David Kennedy of the University of Western Australia, who in 1978 founded the Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East.  In spite of the name, the structures are not gates.  They are low, with rough-built walls, the majority measuring between 50 and 150 metres (164 to 492 feet), but of the 389 total gates found, 36 are over 200 metres (656 feet) and the longest one measures 518 metres (1,699 feet) in length.  What they are and why they were built is yet unknown, but their presence suggests that the lava fields used to be much more habitable.  "The lava fields are often rich in archaeological remains, implying a moister past and more abundant vegetation, and recent fieldwork identifying larger settlement sites supports this notion," Kennedy wrote in the paper.  Michelle Starr  Read more and see graphics at https://www.sciencealert.com/a-new-type-of-ancient-monument-has-been-found-in-saudia-arabia

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1788  October 23, 2017  On this date in 1850, the first National Women's Rights Convention began in Worcester, Massachusetts.  On this date in 1915, in New York City, 25,000–33,000 women marched on Fifth Avenue to advocate their right to vote.  Thought for Today  Remember, we all stumble, every one of us.  That's why it's a comfort to go hand in hand. - Emily Kimbrough, author and broadcaster (23 Oct 1899-1989)  The Emily Kimbrough Historic District was named for Hoosier author Emily Kimbrough who lived in a house at 715 East Washington Street.  Her writing reflects Muncie, Indiana's past, with reminiscences of the "East End", an early name for the area.  http://www.muncie-ecna.org/kimbrough.html 

Word of the Day  nocebo   noun  (pharmacology, also attributive)  A substance which a patient experiences as harmful due to a previous negative perception, but which is in fact pharmacologically (medicinally) inactive.  Wiktionary