An opinion piece from Haaretz on Corbyn

The contract on Corbyn

Remembering C.P.Ramanujam

From The Wikipedia article “Just after his death a commemorative hall was named after him in the former Istituto di Matematica (Institute of Mathematics) of the university of Genoa.” The context may be this. He was one of the few people who studied Italian geometers as well as Grothendieck. Italian geometry from those days was supposed to be interesting but full of gaps and mistakes. Ramanujam was probably one of those who could appreciate what was good in Italian geometry and could justify some of it with modern techniques. I think that some of the Italian mathematicians who met him appreciated this and named the hall after him. He was deep scholar and learner. Even after became a professor, he used to learn a lot of stuff. He felt that his knowledge of Topology was deficient and when Spanier’s book on Algebraic ToPology came out, he read it cover to cover doing all the exercises. Once he said to me ‘ Even though I myself say it, I know algebraic surfaces well”. Coming from such a modest man, it was some statement.

Before one of his breakdowns, I was around and could see it coming. I stayed with him most of a night drinking and talking. Even that state, he was polite. He said “Shall I fight with you?”.

Boris Johnson predicted to win

Johnson Says There’ll Be No U.S. Trade Deal if It Includes the NHS “Boris Johnson is heading for a 68-seat majority in the House of Commons, a mandate not seen since the height of the Margaret Thatcher years, according to the most hotly-anticipated poll of the election campaign. A margin that size would allow him to ratify his Brexit deal ahead of the Jan. 31 deadline, and potentially give him some breathing space to compromise in subsequent trade negotiations with the European Union.”
But Corbyn reveals secret documents that ‘confirm Tory plot to sell off NHS in US trade talks with Trump’ 

Passion for playing the piano

Experience: I learned to play the piano without a piano

Apparently a quote Of Charles Darwin

"If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin"

Branko Milanovic on the current state of capitalism

The ‘crisis of capitalism’ is not the one Europeans think it is “The facts show capitalism to be not in crisis at all. It is stronger than ever, both in terms of its geographical coverage and expansion to areas (such as leisure time, or social media) where it has created entirely new markets and commodified things that were never historically objects of transaction.” 
And
“There is however another issue that does seem to affect most countries, and it is to do with the functioning of political systems. In principle, politics, no more than leisure time, was never regarded as an area of market transaction. But both have become so. This has made politics more corrupt. Even if a politician does not engage in explicit corruption during their time in office, they tend to use the connections acquired to make money afterwards. Such commodification has created widespread cynicism and disenchantment with mainstream politics and politicians.”

On the universality of music

Universality and diversity in human song, a recent research paper. A brief note on the same https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03567-4

Henrietta Locks portrait unveiled

The Smithsonian unveils a portrait of Henrietta Lacks, the black farmer whose cells led to medical miracles

Female authority

What does female authority sound like? Marie Yovanovitch and Fiona Hill just showed us.
And The Guardian on Fiona Hill https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/21/fiona-hill-the-durham-miners-daughter-creating-waves-in-dc? The last link posted yesterday.

David Graeber reviews Robert Skidelsky’s new book

Against economics by David Graeber in NewYork Review of Books. Richard Werner’s work mentioned in the article is described here A lost century in economics: Three theories of banking and the conclusive evidence. The question arises why mainstream economics continues to be popular. Possibly hegemony aligned with the interests of dominant countries as described by Marion Fourcade  
The construction of a global profession: transnationalization of economics. She seems to have softened her stand since then described in this post by Tim Taylor Reviled because it matters.

The attraction of US

In spite of trumps Fiona Hill: the Durham miner's daughter creating waves in DC : “This country has offered for me opportunities I never would have had in England. I grew up poor with a very distinctive working-class accent. In England in the 1980s and 1990s, this would have impeded my professional development." It must be similar for many underprivileged in India. But many who migrate from India seem to be from the privileged classes and those from the underprivileged classes face discrimination from other Indians similar to what they face in India. 

A book review by Alex Tabarrok of MR

The Anarchy by William Dalrymple. The full review http://eh.net/book_reviews/the-anarchy-the-relentless-rise-of-the-east-india-company/ Recommended.

Interview with Rahul Banerjee

RAHUL BANERJEE KHEDUT MAZDOOR CHETNA SANGATHAN (KMCS), INDORE, MADHYA PRADESH (M.P.). Long, over 1hour forty minutes.  YouTube link https://youtu.be/JhaEgu8EQEQ

An overview of some of the work of George Price

The mathematics of kindness Several other links have been posted before.

Two women

https://youtu.be/SuNkgyuD1Uk
And the current ‘acting’ president of Bolivia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanine_%C3%81%C3%B1ez “In a deleted Twitter post from 2013, Áñez called an indigenous ritual of the Aymara people "satanic" and said that no belief system is better than the Christian God.^[22]”

Energy Swaraj, by Chetan Singh Solanki

https://youtu.be/HZAQrVIjAxU

Individual vs group

When the Strong Outbreed the Weak: An Interview with William Muir
“Muir’s experiments reveal a tremendous naiveté in the idea that creating a good society is merely a matter of selecting the “best” individuals. A good society requires members working together to create what cannot be produced alone, or at least to refrain from exploiting each other.  Human societies approach this ideal to varying degrees, but there is always an element of unfairness that results in some profiting at the expense of others. If these individuals are allowed to breed, and if their profiteering ways are heritable, then selecting the “best” individuals will cause a cooperative society to collapse. It’s a good thing that the early eugenicists did not have their way!

Muir’s experiments also challenge what it means for a trait to be regarded as an individual trait.  If by “individual trait” we mean a trait that can be measured in an individual, then egg productivity in hens qualifies. You just count the number of eggs that emerge from the hind end of a hen. If by “individual trait” we mean the process that resulted in the trait, then egg productivity in hens does not qualify. Instead, it is a social trait that depends not only on the properties of the individual hen but also on the properties of the hen’s social environment.”

Al-Assad on Trump

Syria’s Al-Assad: Trump, Openly Criminal, is the best US President we could Wish for

On sad Bollywood songs

Ranjish Hi Sahi: How Sad Bollywood Songs Make Life Bearable by Manjri Indurkar. One of the gloomiest songs is supposed to be Gloomy Sunday originally in Hungarian. Billie Holidayversion in English https://youtu.be/KUCyjDOlnPU

Janelle Shane on AI

The danger of AI is weirder than you think

Longer version 

AlisonGopnik interview

The mind at work: Alison Gopnik on learning like children Right combination of nurture and autonomy “Parents, it turns out, have an important role in fostering curiosity and exploration. Gopnik describes a recent study from Columbia University psychologist Nim Tottenham’s lab that updates classical theories of avoidance learning. If you put an adult rat in a maze and it goes down one end and gets a shock, it never goes down that end of the maze again. But young rats actually prefer the arm of the maze that leads to the shock—when their mother is present. And Tottenham replicated this result with three- and four-year-old children as well. If the child feels safe, they are more motivated by exploration than by a predictable outcome.”

Free downlads from California uni. Press

About 90 books, I downloaded this and a few more https://www.luminosoa.org/site/books/10.1525/luminos.72/

Cellular life

Cellular Life, Death and Everything in Between “We now know that cells can flirt dangerously with the boundary of death — and perhaps even cross it entirely — yet regain their lost function.”

Indian brains smaller

'Indian brain is smaller': IIIT-Hyderabad researchers create Indian Brain Atlas “The average Indian brain is smaller in height, width, and volume as compared to the western and eastern population like the Chinese and Korean according to the first-ever ‘Indian Brain Atlas’ created by researchers of the International Institute of Information Technology-Hyderabad (IIITH).” Research for medical purposes.
Check also The Human Brain Has been Getting Smaller Since the Stone Age and Neanderthals Had Bigger Brains Than Modern Humans — Why Are We Smarter?

Developing local self sufficiency in USA

The US city preparing itself for the collapse of capitalism

Facing water problems in Madhya Pradesh

Meet the IAS Officer Who Helped MP Farmers Battle Drought With Over 16,000 Ponds