I will post on some mathematics topics here:
http://www.arunn.net/scienceblog/
Some blogs that I follow regularly:
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.tompaine.com/
http://delong.typepad.com/
http://www.sciencedaily.com/
http://www.physorg.com/
I follow and comment often here:
http://nanopolitan.blogspot.com/
Friday, September 08, 2006
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Some friends
Pl. check this http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9916
and http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1865918,00.html
These seem to happen in our family on a regular basis.
and http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1865918,00.html
These seem to happen in our family on a regular basis.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Devaluing the race card
It seems to me that the feeling that one is underprivileged while growing up may contribute to poor performance. The following study, still in preliminary stages, seems to support the view. It may also be useful in experimenting with strategies to improve the lot of underprivileged classes in India.
From http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2006/831/2?etoc
( via Evolutionary-Psychology group)
Devaluing the Race Card
By Yudhijit Bhattacharjee
ScienceNOW Daily News
31 August 2006
The life of African-American middle-school students can be pretty stressful. From the moment they step into the classroom, some must contend with not only coursework but also the anxiety that performing badly might confirm negative stereotypes. That fear can itself lead to poor performance, researchers have known for a while; now they've come up with a simple antidote: getting students to reflect on their sense of self-worth by writing a personal essay about what they value.
Geoffrey Cohen, a psychologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and his colleagues tested the strategy among 243 seventh graders at a northeastern U.S. school that had a roughly 50:50 ratio of African-American and white students. Each student was asked to complete a 15-minute writing assignment that included a page with a list of values such as one's relationships with friends, athletic ability, and creativity. Students circled their top two or three values. On the next page, they wrote a few sentences explaining their choices and describing moments when they had felt the importance of the chosen values. The researchers designed a similar assignment for a control group in which students had to circle the value they thought was least important to them and explain why that value could be important to other people. The students were not told the purpose of the assignment.
At the end of the term, the researchers found that African-American students in the treatment group got significantly better grades than same-race students in the control group. Low-performing African Americans seemed to have benefited the most. The assignment didn't have any effect on white students. Overall, the intervention closed the racial achievement gap by 40%, the team reports tomorrow in Science. "The results exceeded our expectations," says Cohen. "It was remarkable."
To find out how the treatment worked, the researchers had the students complete 34 word fragments, seven of which--such as _ACE--could be completed to form either a stereotype-relevant word such as RACE or a stereotype-irrelevant word such as FACE. African-American students who got the intervention formed fewer stereotype-relevant words than did African Americans in the control group. This suggests that the intervention allowed students to distance themselves from racial stereotypes, Cohen says.
The researchers also found that African Americans in the control group did progressively worse as the academic term went on, while those in the treatment group stabilized or started improving after the intervention. "There is something about the stereotype threat that feeds off its consequence: You are stressed that you'll do badly, and so you do; then you get even more stressed and do even worse," Cohen explains. "Our intervention seems to halt this downward spiral."
"These are very exciting results," says Claude Steele, a psychologist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who was among the first to show that the threat of reinforcing negative stereotypes can impair performance among minority students. "They suggest some powerful and simple ways of fixing things in American education." Cohen warns, however, against viewing the intervention as a silver bullet for improving minority-student performance. "It worked in this particular school," he says. "Whether it'll work in a predominantly minority school or at a different grade level, we can't say."
From http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2006/831/2?etoc
( via Evolutionary-Psychology group)
Devaluing the Race Card
By Yudhijit Bhattacharjee
ScienceNOW Daily News
31 August 2006
The life of African-American middle-school students can be pretty stressful. From the moment they step into the classroom, some must contend with not only coursework but also the anxiety that performing badly might confirm negative stereotypes. That fear can itself lead to poor performance, researchers have known for a while; now they've come up with a simple antidote: getting students to reflect on their sense of self-worth by writing a personal essay about what they value.
Geoffrey Cohen, a psychologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and his colleagues tested the strategy among 243 seventh graders at a northeastern U.S. school that had a roughly 50:50 ratio of African-American and white students. Each student was asked to complete a 15-minute writing assignment that included a page with a list of values such as one's relationships with friends, athletic ability, and creativity. Students circled their top two or three values. On the next page, they wrote a few sentences explaining their choices and describing moments when they had felt the importance of the chosen values. The researchers designed a similar assignment for a control group in which students had to circle the value they thought was least important to them and explain why that value could be important to other people. The students were not told the purpose of the assignment.
At the end of the term, the researchers found that African-American students in the treatment group got significantly better grades than same-race students in the control group. Low-performing African Americans seemed to have benefited the most. The assignment didn't have any effect on white students. Overall, the intervention closed the racial achievement gap by 40%, the team reports tomorrow in Science. "The results exceeded our expectations," says Cohen. "It was remarkable."
To find out how the treatment worked, the researchers had the students complete 34 word fragments, seven of which--such as _ACE--could be completed to form either a stereotype-relevant word such as RACE or a stereotype-irrelevant word such as FACE. African-American students who got the intervention formed fewer stereotype-relevant words than did African Americans in the control group. This suggests that the intervention allowed students to distance themselves from racial stereotypes, Cohen says.
The researchers also found that African Americans in the control group did progressively worse as the academic term went on, while those in the treatment group stabilized or started improving after the intervention. "There is something about the stereotype threat that feeds off its consequence: You are stressed that you'll do badly, and so you do; then you get even more stressed and do even worse," Cohen explains. "Our intervention seems to halt this downward spiral."
"These are very exciting results," says Claude Steele, a psychologist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who was among the first to show that the threat of reinforcing negative stereotypes can impair performance among minority students. "They suggest some powerful and simple ways of fixing things in American education." Cohen warns, however, against viewing the intervention as a silver bullet for improving minority-student performance. "It worked in this particular school," he says. "Whether it'll work in a predominantly minority school or at a different grade level, we can't say."
Why are breast pumps so expensive?
In Australia it costs abpout 30 dollars to rent one for a month. they do not seem to be cheap in USA either:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/01/health/01nurse.html?
As more and more women work at various levels, there is a need to produce these cheaply and for lactation centres in work places.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/01/health/01nurse.html?
As more and more women work at various levels, there is a need to produce these cheaply and for lactation centres in work places.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Left and right
After Daniel Bell, I thought that the division between left and right is over and it is only arguments between different defenders of 'truth'. Dilip D'Souza has this blurb on his blog; 'I am not leftist, I am not rightist, I am a typist". But looking at the alignment in Indian blogs, there seems to be a division. Apparently in USA too. Greg Mankiw in the post "Are rich a form of pollution?" (http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/) says
"Brad DeLong reveals his inner Veblen:
"I'm enough of a touchy-feely sociology-lover to believe that a good chunk of the utility the rich derive from their conspicuous consumption is transferred to them from the poor."
This quotation goes to the heart of one reason left-leaning economists like Brad and right-leaning economists like me differ in their policy views".
"Brad DeLong reveals his inner Veblen:
"I'm enough of a touchy-feely sociology-lover to believe that a good chunk of the utility the rich derive from their conspicuous consumption is transferred to them from the poor."
This quotation goes to the heart of one reason left-leaning economists like Brad and right-leaning economists like me differ in their policy views".
"The Age" on Indian women
The Australian newspaper "The age" has a couple of articles on Indian women. The first
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/stare-wars-indian-file-for-lechers/2006/09/01/1156817099394.htmlis about Jasmeen Patheja and her project http://blanknoiseproject.blogspot.com/ fighting back against the 'Eve teasers'. An excerpt:
"At first, in her own personal revolt, Mr Patheja would yell at any men who stared at her. She refused to avert her gaze and suffer passively as most Indian women did.
But it had little impact. The perpetrator would grin at her, amused. "It was only when I took out my camera and photographed them that the dynamics changed and the power situation was reversed," she says. "The camera instantly transfers power to the woman. Instead of being amused, the man felt threatened." She remembers the humiliation of being on a crowded bus once where a man cupped her breast. Furious, she whipped out her camera and started clicking. A few stops later, he got down and apologised.
Apart from her "lechers' gallery" on the website, Ms Patheja is collecting the clothes that women were wearing when they were pestered, squashing the idea (popular among Indian males) that women "ask for it" by wearing skimpy clothes.
Blank Noise has another weapon — the "street performance", which its members put on in busy places. Reversing the normal situation in which groups of men stand around and stare at the women, it is Ms Patheja's female "warriors" who do the staring.
They stand in a group, about a dozen of them, wearing T-shirtswith the slogan "Y R U Looking At Me?". When a man leers, they surround him silently and stare right back.
Most men, faced with a dozen pair of eyes boring into them,retreat. When a camera is trained at them, most panic and beg the women to put the camera away, insisting they are "family men withchildren".
Curious onlookers are given leaflets, explaining how sexual harassment violates a woman's self-respect and dignity. Blank Noise activists also board buses to read out letters from victims ofsexual harassment. With the permission of the bus conductor, agroup of women get on and start reading out loud the testimony that victims of sexual harassment have posted on the website.
A Bangalore journalist, Nirmala Ravindran, who witnessed a bus reading, says the men were shell-shocked.
"Sometimes women would jump up and applaud," she says. "They said that their own experiences were identical."
The official statistics support these personal testimonies— 90 per cent of female college students suffer harassment.
Government figures released in June show that a woman is raped every half-an-hour in India.
Such behaviour is primarily the outcome of a sexually repressivesociety, which segregates the sexes from childhood onwards,forbidding even innocent contact.
Laura Neuhaus, 23, a Texan who works in Bangalore and supports Blank Noise, is appalled at the Neanderthal habits of many Indian men.
"Because they've had so little interaction with women while growing up, men here are totally uninformed about women," she says.
"There is a deep-seated awkwardness. They don't realise what is acceptable or what the boundaries are."
With women like Ms Patheja around, they will soon learn."
Tjhe second is an old article from The Observer about hair trade
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1805328,00.html
There is not only 'legitimate' trade from places like Tirupati but also coercisin in some places. an excerpt:
"Away from the crowd sits 19-year-old Uma, one of dozens of girls living close to Chennai's main Egmore suburban rail-line, who have had nastier experiences with more unscrupulous hair collectors. 'I was held down by a gang of men who hacked at my hair,' she says. 'I'm not the only one who has been attacked. I know other women who have been blackmailed and threatened to shave their own heads, in some cases their husbands have received money for their hair and ordered their wives to have their heads shaved. There is a lot of money to be made from hair not just from temples but from villages like ours, the police don't care, they will do nothing to protect women.'"
There is another article comparing how women managers are faring in different western countries:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/out-of-step-losing-the-top-women/2006/09/01/1156817098295.html
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/stare-wars-indian-file-for-lechers/2006/09/01/1156817099394.htmlis about Jasmeen Patheja and her project http://blanknoiseproject.blogspot.com/ fighting back against the 'Eve teasers'. An excerpt:
"At first, in her own personal revolt, Mr Patheja would yell at any men who stared at her. She refused to avert her gaze and suffer passively as most Indian women did.
But it had little impact. The perpetrator would grin at her, amused. "It was only when I took out my camera and photographed them that the dynamics changed and the power situation was reversed," she says. "The camera instantly transfers power to the woman. Instead of being amused, the man felt threatened." She remembers the humiliation of being on a crowded bus once where a man cupped her breast. Furious, she whipped out her camera and started clicking. A few stops later, he got down and apologised.
Apart from her "lechers' gallery" on the website, Ms Patheja is collecting the clothes that women were wearing when they were pestered, squashing the idea (popular among Indian males) that women "ask for it" by wearing skimpy clothes.
Blank Noise has another weapon — the "street performance", which its members put on in busy places. Reversing the normal situation in which groups of men stand around and stare at the women, it is Ms Patheja's female "warriors" who do the staring.
They stand in a group, about a dozen of them, wearing T-shirtswith the slogan "Y R U Looking At Me?". When a man leers, they surround him silently and stare right back.
Most men, faced with a dozen pair of eyes boring into them,retreat. When a camera is trained at them, most panic and beg the women to put the camera away, insisting they are "family men withchildren".
Curious onlookers are given leaflets, explaining how sexual harassment violates a woman's self-respect and dignity. Blank Noise activists also board buses to read out letters from victims ofsexual harassment. With the permission of the bus conductor, agroup of women get on and start reading out loud the testimony that victims of sexual harassment have posted on the website.
A Bangalore journalist, Nirmala Ravindran, who witnessed a bus reading, says the men were shell-shocked.
"Sometimes women would jump up and applaud," she says. "They said that their own experiences were identical."
The official statistics support these personal testimonies— 90 per cent of female college students suffer harassment.
Government figures released in June show that a woman is raped every half-an-hour in India.
Such behaviour is primarily the outcome of a sexually repressivesociety, which segregates the sexes from childhood onwards,forbidding even innocent contact.
Laura Neuhaus, 23, a Texan who works in Bangalore and supports Blank Noise, is appalled at the Neanderthal habits of many Indian men.
"Because they've had so little interaction with women while growing up, men here are totally uninformed about women," she says.
"There is a deep-seated awkwardness. They don't realise what is acceptable or what the boundaries are."
With women like Ms Patheja around, they will soon learn."
Tjhe second is an old article from The Observer about hair trade
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1805328,00.html
There is not only 'legitimate' trade from places like Tirupati but also coercisin in some places. an excerpt:
"Away from the crowd sits 19-year-old Uma, one of dozens of girls living close to Chennai's main Egmore suburban rail-line, who have had nastier experiences with more unscrupulous hair collectors. 'I was held down by a gang of men who hacked at my hair,' she says. 'I'm not the only one who has been attacked. I know other women who have been blackmailed and threatened to shave their own heads, in some cases their husbands have received money for their hair and ordered their wives to have their heads shaved. There is a lot of money to be made from hair not just from temples but from villages like ours, the police don't care, they will do nothing to protect women.'"
There is another article comparing how women managers are faring in different western countries:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/out-of-step-losing-the-top-women/2006/09/01/1156817098295.html
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
A new blog about India
An American sociologist Stephen Zavestovski has started a blog http://curiousstall.blogspot.com/ about India after spending 6 months there. At the moment he has a series of posts about consumerism in India. The blogs make easy and pleasant reading. He has also started giving links to blogs which are not that known but have interesting posts about working class Indians. All these are refreshingly different from other Indian blogs and give some glimpses of India that I miss. By the looks of it, Stephen may travel to India again and continue with this blog for some time; at least I hope that he will.
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Money and mathematics
For those who worried about Perelman missing out on a million dollara, here is an example of the sort of money some can make by quitting mathematcs (coutesy gene expression):
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_34/b3998412.htm
Excerpts:
"James H. Simons, the former math professor who founded the $12 billion quantitative shop Renaissance Technologies Corp., pocketed an estimated $1.5 billion last year. That was thanks to the 5% in fees and nearly 44% of profits that Renaissance docks its investors (vs. traditional hedge funds' typical "2 and 20"). Clients don't complain; Renaissance's leading fund has returned 35%, after fees, since 1989".
Simons was a professor mathematics at SUNY (Stoney Brook) and was doing quite well (still lots of papers on Chern-Simons invariants) when he moved to financial investment. Apparently, some of these companies pay newcomers 250,000 US dollars an year plus bonus. Being good on mathematics seems to help in getting jobs in these companies.
Update:
There is avery interesting article in the Newyorker explaining some of the politics involved in mathematical circles and Perelman's refusal to accept the Fields medal:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060828fa_fact2
The article may suggest that some thing is strange about Chinese mathematics but this kind of controversies and postings of incomplete proofs and changing them have been going for some time ( see various papers on Tarski problems). See also:
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg19125661.400
In this kind of atmosphere, Perelman is impressive and this comes out very well in the Newyorker article. His attitude seems to be that even honest mathematicians are putting up with dishonest practices and he wants no part in these politics.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_34/b3998412.htm
Excerpts:
"James H. Simons, the former math professor who founded the $12 billion quantitative shop Renaissance Technologies Corp., pocketed an estimated $1.5 billion last year. That was thanks to the 5% in fees and nearly 44% of profits that Renaissance docks its investors (vs. traditional hedge funds' typical "2 and 20"). Clients don't complain; Renaissance's leading fund has returned 35%, after fees, since 1989".
Simons was a professor mathematics at SUNY (Stoney Brook) and was doing quite well (still lots of papers on Chern-Simons invariants) when he moved to financial investment. Apparently, some of these companies pay newcomers 250,000 US dollars an year plus bonus. Being good on mathematics seems to help in getting jobs in these companies.
Update:
There is avery interesting article in the Newyorker explaining some of the politics involved in mathematical circles and Perelman's refusal to accept the Fields medal:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060828fa_fact2
The article may suggest that some thing is strange about Chinese mathematics but this kind of controversies and postings of incomplete proofs and changing them have been going for some time ( see various papers on Tarski problems). See also:
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg19125661.400
In this kind of atmosphere, Perelman is impressive and this comes out very well in the Newyorker article. His attitude seems to be that even honest mathematicians are putting up with dishonest practices and he wants no part in these politics.
2006 Fields medals
Perelman seems to be bringing a lot of attention to mathematics. From
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/
(which has discussions on the work of winners and various links):
Today the arXiv servers contain the message ” arXiv.org servers are currently under very heavy load due to demand for Grisha Perelman’s papers, published only as arXiv.org e-prints, which are available below.”
The information about various winners and their work can be found at;
http://www.icm2006.org/press/releases/
The work of Nevanlinna prize winner Jon Kleinberg seems to be of general interest and accessible to most:
http://www.icm2006.org/dailynews/nevannlina_kleinberg_info_en.pdf
The youngest this year is Terence Tao at 31 and he describes his methods in:
http://www.college.ucla.edu/news/05/terencetaomath.html
Though all this news seems to be rekindling a bit of interest in mathematics again, nothing brought me the same thrill as Galois Theory of which:
Hermann Weyl, one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century, said of this testament ( composed on the night before his death}, "This letter, if judged by the novelty and profundity of ideas it contains, is perhaps the most substantial piece of writing in the whole literature of mankind."
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/
(which has discussions on the work of winners and various links):
Today the arXiv servers contain the message ” arXiv.org servers are currently under very heavy load due to demand for Grisha Perelman’s papers, published only as arXiv.org e-prints, which are available below.”
The information about various winners and their work can be found at;
http://www.icm2006.org/press/releases/
The work of Nevanlinna prize winner Jon Kleinberg seems to be of general interest and accessible to most:
http://www.icm2006.org/dailynews/nevannlina_kleinberg_info_en.pdf
The youngest this year is Terence Tao at 31 and he describes his methods in:
http://www.college.ucla.edu/news/05/terencetaomath.html
Though all this news seems to be rekindling a bit of interest in mathematics again, nothing brought me the same thrill as Galois Theory of which:
Hermann Weyl, one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century, said of this testament ( composed on the night before his death}, "This letter, if judged by the novelty and profundity of ideas it contains, is perhaps the most substantial piece of writing in the whole literature of mankind."
Monday, August 21, 2006
Green Energy
A series of articles on green enery:
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/51688.html
(courtesy of http://valluvar.blogspot.com/)
Brazil's road to oil independence via green energy:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/19/AR2006081900842.html
and comentary at: http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2006/08/brazils_independence_from_fore.php
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/51688.html
(courtesy of http://valluvar.blogspot.com/)
Brazil's road to oil independence via green energy:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/19/AR2006081900842.html
and comentary at: http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2006/08/brazils_independence_from_fore.php
More on Grigori Perelman
Simon Singh in
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/08/18/bright_green_security.php
says "I believe that this hairy Russian hermit could be the poster boy who helps create a new generation of mathematical geniuses".
Somebody actually interviewd Perlman recently:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/08/20/nmaths20.xml
More from the Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/08/20/nmaths120.xml
Wikipedia has continuous updates:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman
Abinandanan at http://nanopolitan.blogspot.com/ gave the link to an aricle
http://www.slate.com/id/2147954/ by Jordan Ellenberg. Ellenberg has other interesting articles on mathematics in the same site. I hope that he will write one on Galois Theory.
Here is a link to talks by John Morgan:
http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/lectures/clemens/five_talks.html
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/08/18/bright_green_security.php
says "I believe that this hairy Russian hermit could be the poster boy who helps create a new generation of mathematical geniuses".
Somebody actually interviewd Perlman recently:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/08/20/nmaths20.xml
More from the Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/08/20/nmaths120.xml
Wikipedia has continuous updates:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman
Abinandanan at http://nanopolitan.blogspot.com/ gave the link to an aricle
http://www.slate.com/id/2147954/ by Jordan Ellenberg. Ellenberg has other interesting articles on mathematics in the same site. I hope that he will write one on Galois Theory.
Here is a link to talks by John Morgan:
http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/lectures/clemens/five_talks.html
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Poincare Conjecture
The following article gives a very nice and accurate wrte up on the solution of the Poinacre conjecture and mathematician who is different:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/15/science/15math.html?_r=2&8dpc=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
Suddenly, the topic seems to be in several blogs; may be again the influence of mainstream news. Despite the recent disquiet in several blogs about the rise of anti-scientic attitudes in USA, USA is still a power house in science and mathematics. Though Perelmam came from a Russian tradition which seems to be weakening, many of the mathematicians who contributed to the solution are Americans or educated in USA. The Americans took to Toplogy when it was young and many of the big names and large number of mathematicians working in Toplogy starting with Veblen, Alexander have been Americans. Thurston popularized Hyperbolic Geometry since the late 70's and formulated the Geometrization Conjecture of which Poincare Conjecture is a special case. The Geomtrization Conjecture is much more wide ranging and (now known to be true after Perelman) elucidates the structure of all compact three manifolds. Richard Hamilton started developing the Ricci flow techinque in the 80's specially for the purpose of attacking the Geometrzation Conjecture. Even after Perelman's three papers improving Hamilton's techniques, it took a number of powerful mathematicaians (mostly Americans) three and half years to complete the programme.
George Szpiro, who earlier wrote a popular book on the Kepler Problem is writing a popular book on the Poincare Conjecture and may come out in an year. If the preliminary chapters are any indication, it should be a very readable book.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/15/science/15math.html?_r=2&8dpc=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
Suddenly, the topic seems to be in several blogs; may be again the influence of mainstream news. Despite the recent disquiet in several blogs about the rise of anti-scientic attitudes in USA, USA is still a power house in science and mathematics. Though Perelmam came from a Russian tradition which seems to be weakening, many of the mathematicians who contributed to the solution are Americans or educated in USA. The Americans took to Toplogy when it was young and many of the big names and large number of mathematicians working in Toplogy starting with Veblen, Alexander have been Americans. Thurston popularized Hyperbolic Geometry since the late 70's and formulated the Geometrization Conjecture of which Poincare Conjecture is a special case. The Geomtrization Conjecture is much more wide ranging and (now known to be true after Perelman) elucidates the structure of all compact three manifolds. Richard Hamilton started developing the Ricci flow techinque in the 80's specially for the purpose of attacking the Geometrzation Conjecture. Even after Perelman's three papers improving Hamilton's techniques, it took a number of powerful mathematicaians (mostly Americans) three and half years to complete the programme.
George Szpiro, who earlier wrote a popular book on the Kepler Problem is writing a popular book on the Poincare Conjecture and may come out in an year. If the preliminary chapters are any indication, it should be a very readable book.
Sunday, August 13, 2006
Links 13/8/06
Review of a book on the entire human past:
http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/a-look-at-the-entire-human-past
......
Review of book on the origins ofresearch universities:
http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/the-professor-comes-of-age
Excerpts:
“Therefore the professor could not come of age until the birth of the modern secular state.
This observation is the linchpin of Clark’s analysis. After making it, he introduces a startling set of ideas: It was not the professors who created the modern academic profession; rather, it was the rationalizing, bureaucratic, market-conscious functionaries who served the various German states of the 18th century. Through site visits, the careful recording of facts, new methods of accountability and judicious use of budgets, government ministers forced the once-indolent professors to become hardworking and reputation-seeking. It was ultimately the state that created the syndrome of "publish or perish" and put us on the path to the large-scale research environments in which scientific work is pursued today.”
“Even four decades ago, Clark Kerr, who was then president of the University of California, warned about the damage to academic culture caused by the "rise of the Research Grant University." In the final chapter of Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University, William Clark joins a large number of critics in finding fault both with the managerial and corporate styles of governance present in research academia today and with the grandstanding and self-seeking that have encouraged institutions to purchase faculty. It is assuredly difficult to recognize the remains of collegial authority in today’s universities. The heavy emphasis on wealth generation has produced university-government-industrial alliances that are often disturbing, compromising our sense of the proper use of scientific inquiry and making us wonder about the true strength of professional values. However, this is a complicated story of losses and gains. This tailpiece of the book is its least original part, but in fairness it does tell us where Clark began his retrospective investigations.”
...
Last of the recent papers on gender differences by Jake Young in Pure Pedantry:
http://scienceblogs.com/purepedantry/2006/08/some_confounds_in_gender_diffe_1.php#more
This time he summarizes 1993 paper by Diane Halpern:
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/05-03-15.html
In spite of the research since then, her conclusions are similar to those by Jake Young. Final two sentences of her paper:
"We should keep in mind the words of the 18th-century British writer who was once asked, “Which is smarter, men or women?” He replied: “Which man, which woman?””
...
Suggested solution to the middle east problem from health scientists:
http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2006/08/war_crimes_in_lebanon_and_isra.php
I agree with them but how does one go about it?
....
An interesting post with a link to recent research and discussion on terrorism fear at:
http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2006/08/terrorism_and_irrational_fear.php
....
Madhukar Shukla is as usual informative and skeptical on future employment in India:
http://alternativeperspective.blogspot.com/2006/08/future-of-work-employment-in-india.html#comments
http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/a-look-at-the-entire-human-past
......
Review of book on the origins ofresearch universities:
http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/the-professor-comes-of-age
Excerpts:
“Therefore the professor could not come of age until the birth of the modern secular state.
This observation is the linchpin of Clark’s analysis. After making it, he introduces a startling set of ideas: It was not the professors who created the modern academic profession; rather, it was the rationalizing, bureaucratic, market-conscious functionaries who served the various German states of the 18th century. Through site visits, the careful recording of facts, new methods of accountability and judicious use of budgets, government ministers forced the once-indolent professors to become hardworking and reputation-seeking. It was ultimately the state that created the syndrome of "publish or perish" and put us on the path to the large-scale research environments in which scientific work is pursued today.”
“Even four decades ago, Clark Kerr, who was then president of the University of California, warned about the damage to academic culture caused by the "rise of the Research Grant University." In the final chapter of Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University, William Clark joins a large number of critics in finding fault both with the managerial and corporate styles of governance present in research academia today and with the grandstanding and self-seeking that have encouraged institutions to purchase faculty. It is assuredly difficult to recognize the remains of collegial authority in today’s universities. The heavy emphasis on wealth generation has produced university-government-industrial alliances that are often disturbing, compromising our sense of the proper use of scientific inquiry and making us wonder about the true strength of professional values. However, this is a complicated story of losses and gains. This tailpiece of the book is its least original part, but in fairness it does tell us where Clark began his retrospective investigations.”
...
Last of the recent papers on gender differences by Jake Young in Pure Pedantry:
http://scienceblogs.com/purepedantry/2006/08/some_confounds_in_gender_diffe_1.php#more
This time he summarizes 1993 paper by Diane Halpern:
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/05-03-15.html
In spite of the research since then, her conclusions are similar to those by Jake Young. Final two sentences of her paper:
"We should keep in mind the words of the 18th-century British writer who was once asked, “Which is smarter, men or women?” He replied: “Which man, which woman?””
...
Suggested solution to the middle east problem from health scientists:
http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2006/08/war_crimes_in_lebanon_and_isra.php
I agree with them but how does one go about it?
....
An interesting post with a link to recent research and discussion on terrorism fear at:
http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2006/08/terrorism_and_irrational_fear.php
....
Madhukar Shukla is as usual informative and skeptical on future employment in India:
http://alternativeperspective.blogspot.com/2006/08/future-of-work-employment-in-india.html#comments
Saturday, August 12, 2006
A review of "The New York Review of Books"
It was the December 2003 holiday issue that hooked me. Since then, I have been reading Review fairly regularly, off and on going to the back issues. Since I am not particularly in to any thing except mathematics, I was pleasanly see this endorsement of the Review:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1842962,00.html
One excerpt: "The first is the inherent interest and intellectual stimulation of each. But the second is that each is dazzlingly discussed in the most recent edition of the publication that, at least in the opinion of this general reader, has the largest claim to be regarded as the indispensable publication of the modern English-speaking world - the New York Review of Books."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1842962,00.html
One excerpt: "The first is the inherent interest and intellectual stimulation of each. But the second is that each is dazzlingly discussed in the most recent edition of the publication that, at least in the opinion of this general reader, has the largest claim to be regarded as the indispensable publication of the modern English-speaking world - the New York Review of Books."
Attitudes to evolution in different countries
There is a very interesting discussion:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/08/put_the_blame_where_it_belongs.php
on this report:
http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/060810_evo_rank.html
See http://newsroom.msu.edu/site/indexer/2827/content.htm
for a link to the original article.
A couple of correspondents tried to see the correlation to tax rates and murder rates. Unfortunately, the list has only 34 counntries. The two countries that I am most familiar with, Australia and India, are not on the list. The survey is confined to some western countries. A follow up post:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/08/africa_our_past_perhaps_our_fu.php#c192201
Pharyngula has a list of books on evolution here:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/02/an_updated_book_list_for_evolu.php
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/08/put_the_blame_where_it_belongs.php
on this report:
http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/060810_evo_rank.html
See http://newsroom.msu.edu/site/indexer/2827/content.htm
for a link to the original article.
A couple of correspondents tried to see the correlation to tax rates and murder rates. Unfortunately, the list has only 34 counntries. The two countries that I am most familiar with, Australia and India, are not on the list. The survey is confined to some western countries. A follow up post:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/08/africa_our_past_perhaps_our_fu.php#c192201
Pharyngula has a list of books on evolution here:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/02/an_updated_book_list_for_evolu.php
Friday, August 11, 2006
At last
Having been a smoker for over 40 years, I find this news cheery:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Why-smoking-may-have-a-health-benefit/2006/08/10/1154803011586.html
but probably there are many other ways, like exercising, which may prevent Parkinson's.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Why-smoking-may-have-a-health-benefit/2006/08/10/1154803011586.html
but probably there are many other ways, like exercising, which may prevent Parkinson's.
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Book Recommendations
Off and on, newspapers and magazines have lists of best books of the decade, century and so on. Even in this information age, I find that I have not read most of these books. Finally I have found a list in which I have read some of the books and know of the others. Here is the link;
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/ScientistNightstandTypeDetail/assetid/52883
Americanscientist has this kind of interviews periodically.
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/ScientistNightstandTypeDetail/assetid/52883
Americanscientist has this kind of interviews periodically.
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
New Scientist on antioxidants
From:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19125631.500.html
"You name it, if it's an antioxidant, we'll swallow it by the bucket-load. According to some estimates around half the adults in the US take antioxidant pills daily in the belief they promote good health and stave off disease. We have become antioxidant devotees. But are they doing us any good? Evidence gathered over the past few years shows that at best, antioxidant supplements do little or nothing to benefit our health. At worst, they may even have the opposite effect, promoting the very problems they are supposed to stamp out."
The article needs subscrption. The gist is that antioxidants work when taken in the form of naturally occuring vegetables and fruits, they rarely work and may be even harmful (except in some cases of particular deficiencies). The scientists are not sure of the mechanisms involved; may be fibrous material in vegetables and some other unknown mechanisms may be involved.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19125631.500.html
"You name it, if it's an antioxidant, we'll swallow it by the bucket-load. According to some estimates around half the adults in the US take antioxidant pills daily in the belief they promote good health and stave off disease. We have become antioxidant devotees. But are they doing us any good? Evidence gathered over the past few years shows that at best, antioxidant supplements do little or nothing to benefit our health. At worst, they may even have the opposite effect, promoting the very problems they are supposed to stamp out."
The article needs subscrption. The gist is that antioxidants work when taken in the form of naturally occuring vegetables and fruits, they rarely work and may be even harmful (except in some cases of particular deficiencies). The scientists are not sure of the mechanisms involved; may be fibrous material in vegetables and some other unknown mechanisms may be involved.
A scientist looks at colour prejudice
Pl. check:
http://pages.globetrotter.net/peter_frost61z
http://www.cybereditions.com/CYVIEWSUMMARY::10033
http://pages.globetrotter.net/peter_frost61z
http://www.cybereditions.com/CYVIEWSUMMARY::10033
Brazil's Innovation Law
From:
http://www.scidev.net/Editorials/index.cfm?fuseaction=readEditorials&itemid=197&language=1
"Innovation is now widely acknowledged as an essential tool for development. Other nations would do well to learn from the political challenges that Brazil's new legislation has unearthed."
...
"An important element of the new law is its explicit attempt to increase social inclusion by encouraging public participation in decision making — which has rarely featured in the country's history. The law was drawn up with public consultations, primarily through posting a draft version on the Internet and asking for comments from different segments of society before it was discussed at public meetings. The final draft was approved in December 2004 (see Brazil adopts innovation law), and came into force last October.
The law has three main components: incentives for building and strengthening partnerships between universities, research institutes and private companies; incentives to encourage the participation of universities and research institutes in the innovation process; and incentives for promoting innovation within private companies.
A key component is that it encourages public and private companies to share research staff, funding and facilities, including scientific laboratories. This was previously forbidden on the grounds that it meant that public funds would be subsidising private business.
In principle, one of the benefits of the new legislation is that it provides a way for private companies to receive government funding for innovation projects. Whether this materialises has yet to be seen; so far the government has not given any details on what form this support will take.
Private companies have also welcomed the government's promise to give tax credits for investment in research and development, although the details of how this will work have also not yet been clarified."
For more hopes and doubts, read the complete article at SciDev.Net
http://www.scidev.net/Editorials/index.cfm?fuseaction=readEditorials&itemid=197&language=1
"Innovation is now widely acknowledged as an essential tool for development. Other nations would do well to learn from the political challenges that Brazil's new legislation has unearthed."
...
"An important element of the new law is its explicit attempt to increase social inclusion by encouraging public participation in decision making — which has rarely featured in the country's history. The law was drawn up with public consultations, primarily through posting a draft version on the Internet and asking for comments from different segments of society before it was discussed at public meetings. The final draft was approved in December 2004 (see Brazil adopts innovation law), and came into force last October.
The law has three main components: incentives for building and strengthening partnerships between universities, research institutes and private companies; incentives to encourage the participation of universities and research institutes in the innovation process; and incentives for promoting innovation within private companies.
A key component is that it encourages public and private companies to share research staff, funding and facilities, including scientific laboratories. This was previously forbidden on the grounds that it meant that public funds would be subsidising private business.
In principle, one of the benefits of the new legislation is that it provides a way for private companies to receive government funding for innovation projects. Whether this materialises has yet to be seen; so far the government has not given any details on what form this support will take.
Private companies have also welcomed the government's promise to give tax credits for investment in research and development, although the details of how this will work have also not yet been clarified."
For more hopes and doubts, read the complete article at SciDev.Net
Monday, August 07, 2006
A GD Naidu type story
This has been around for three days but no comments so far:
http://madisonian.net/archives/2006/08/05/burying-innovation/
I wonder whether this is because the story is not taken up by the mainstream media. Apparently there is a new scholarly book on blogging: http://snurb.info/index.php?q=node/158. May be it will tell us why.
http://madisonian.net/archives/2006/08/05/burying-innovation/
I wonder whether this is because the story is not taken up by the mainstream media. Apparently there is a new scholarly book on blogging: http://snurb.info/index.php?q=node/158. May be it will tell us why.
Saturday, August 05, 2006
A gambling case before WTO
The following interesting and cheery news via madisonian.net and
http://scrivenerserror.blogspot.com/2006/08/up-down-and-strange-but-ch_115470362238672778.html
From
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/03/AR2006080301390_pf.html;
"Scoffing, the Antiguans are asking the WTO to declare that Washington is defying its ruling. Many experts expect Antigua to win again, after months of delay.
Then comes the hard part for Antigua.
The WTO cannot force a country to do anything. Even if found guilty, a country can refuse to change its trade practices. The WTO largely enforces its rulings by giving the victorious country the right to impose punitive duties on the loser's products.
That enforcement mechanism works for big, rich countries such as the United States because other nations fear losing the vast U.S. market. But Antigua's economy is so tiny that few U.S. companies would notice.
"The WTO gives the little guys clout, but it cannot guarantee symmetry of justice," said Claude Barfield, a trade expert at the American Enterprise Institute.
So the Antiguans plan to ask the WTO for the right to impose sanctions that would hurt -- namely, permission to copy and export U.S.-made DVDs, CDs and similar material. Hollywood is not amused."
Read the full story at the above link to Washington Post.
http://scrivenerserror.blogspot.com/2006/08/up-down-and-strange-but-ch_115470362238672778.html
From
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/03/AR2006080301390_pf.html;
"Scoffing, the Antiguans are asking the WTO to declare that Washington is defying its ruling. Many experts expect Antigua to win again, after months of delay.
Then comes the hard part for Antigua.
The WTO cannot force a country to do anything. Even if found guilty, a country can refuse to change its trade practices. The WTO largely enforces its rulings by giving the victorious country the right to impose punitive duties on the loser's products.
That enforcement mechanism works for big, rich countries such as the United States because other nations fear losing the vast U.S. market. But Antigua's economy is so tiny that few U.S. companies would notice.
"The WTO gives the little guys clout, but it cannot guarantee symmetry of justice," said Claude Barfield, a trade expert at the American Enterprise Institute.
So the Antiguans plan to ask the WTO for the right to impose sanctions that would hurt -- namely, permission to copy and export U.S.-made DVDs, CDs and similar material. Hollywood is not amused."
Read the full story at the above link to Washington Post.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Interesting threads from blogs
One of the crticisms of Putnam's social capital is that it is a local and small scale. Responses to pandemics may show how to combine such local efforts when there is a common cause. The science blog 'Effect Measure'
has the surprising example of Hezobollah's organization as a network of local units without strict hierarchies of conventional armies which makes it effecive and suggests similar strategies to fight pandemics:
http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2006/08/what_hesbollah_can_teach_publi.php#more
SciDev.Net has continuous updates of efforts and news from all over the world.
There are several new articles on mirror neurons, parly stimulated by a sceptical post in 'mixing memory':
http://scienceblogs.com/cgi-bin/MT/mt-search.cgi?search=mirror%20neurons&Template=combinedSearch
It is not clear what makes a topic break the 36 hour life span. Possibly topics taken up by main stream media still make them popular in blogs. An article in New york times describing the role of early development on health in later life seems to be generating a fair amount of discussion:http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/07/on-being-your-mothers-son.php
Related work of Robert Fogel and others is reviewd in
http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A1UF3SPVQUE2RH/103-9810104-7233449?ie=UTF8
I hope to learn more of this.
I am still looking for a nice and simple write up on Bernoulli Effect with some pointers to everyday life.
has the surprising example of Hezobollah's organization as a network of local units without strict hierarchies of conventional armies which makes it effecive and suggests similar strategies to fight pandemics:
http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2006/08/what_hesbollah_can_teach_publi.php#more
SciDev.Net has continuous updates of efforts and news from all over the world.
There are several new articles on mirror neurons, parly stimulated by a sceptical post in 'mixing memory':
http://scienceblogs.com/cgi-bin/MT/mt-search.cgi?search=mirror%20neurons&Template=combinedSearch
It is not clear what makes a topic break the 36 hour life span. Possibly topics taken up by main stream media still make them popular in blogs. An article in New york times describing the role of early development on health in later life seems to be generating a fair amount of discussion:http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2006/07/on-being-your-mothers-son.php
Related work of Robert Fogel and others is reviewd in
http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A1UF3SPVQUE2RH/103-9810104-7233449?ie=UTF8
I hope to learn more of this.
I am still looking for a nice and simple write up on Bernoulli Effect with some pointers to everyday life.
Market economy?
I heard this kind of horror stories when I was in school. Apparently they are not just stories:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060801/od_nm/india_beggars_dc_1
Courtesy: "Marginal Revolution".
See http://www.truthonthemarket.com/2006/07/20/organ-markets-social-justice-and-the-poor-a-reply-to-professor-pasquale/ for a discussion of the ethics of the organ market.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060801/od_nm/india_beggars_dc_1
Courtesy: "Marginal Revolution".
See http://www.truthonthemarket.com/2006/07/20/organ-markets-social-justice-and-the-poor-a-reply-to-professor-pasquale/ for a discussion of the ethics of the organ market.
SciDev.Net news team wins an award
From http://www.scidev.net/ms/abswaward/
Friday 21 July 2006
SciDev.Net news team wins top UK science writing award
Lawrence McGinty, Health & Science Editor, ITN News (far left) and
Martin Taylor, Chairman of Syngenta (far right) present the award to
SciDev.Net's director, David Dickson and senior correspondent,
Catherine Brahic.
The Science and Development Network (SciDev.Net) news team has been awarded "best science journalism on the world wide web" by the UK's top science writing body.
The prize was presented to SciDev.Net by the Association of British Science Writers (ABSW) for its online coverage of the consequences of the tsunami that swept across the Indian Ocean in December 2004, claiming 300,000 lives.
Its timing coincides with calls to improve the region's tsunami early warning system, put in place in the aftermath of the 2004 disaster. This week, a new tsunami struck the Indonesian island of Java. Although the threat was detected, the warning messages did not reach the coastal communities, contributing to a death toll that is currently nearing 550.
SciDev.Net's coverage is grouped into a continually updated feature known as 'Tsunami update'. This combines regular news coverage of tsunami-related research, policy decisions and events with detailed background information about the causes of the disaster, analysis of its consequences and comment about lessons for the future.
SciDev.Net's coverage of the tsunami was coordinated by news editor Mike Shanahan, senior correspondent Catherine Brahic and South Asia regional coordinator T. V. Padma.
Other contributors to 'Tsunami update' during 2005 include SciDev.Net freelance reporters Sanjit Bagchi in India, Mustak Hossain in Bangladesh, Dilrukshi Handunnetti and Nalaka Gunawardene in Sri Lanka, Ochieng' Ogodo and Kimani Chege in Kenya, Abiodun Raufu in Nigeria, and Marilyn Smith in France.
In announcing the award, Ted Nield, the president of the ABSW, said that the short-list for the web-writing awards had provided a strong set of contenders that all made full use of the web’s capabilities. "Our winner delivered a really high quality writing product," said Nield. "Science writing for the web has finally arrived."
David Dickson, the director of SciDev.Net, said that he and the organisation's news team had been thrilled and honoured to receive recognition of its work by the ABSW. "I would like to thank all of those who contributed to this achievement, which demonstrates that one can combine good science journalism, the new possibilities opened up by the Internet, and a commitment to improving people's lives," he said.
The SciDev.Net news team has decided to donate its UK£2,000 prize money to the Disasters Emergency Committee, a coalition of aid agencies providing ongoing relief in areas affected by the 2004 tsunami.
Also at the 2005 ABSW science writing awards, Sonja van Renssen, who worked as an intern at SciDev.Net in the summer of 2005 and contributed to 'Tsunami update' during this time, won the category of "Young broadcaster of the year" for a radio programme about the ethical dilemmas raised by military research.
See http://www.scidev.net/content/opinions/eng/we-need-a-slow-race-for-science-based-development.cfm
for a flavour of some of their posts.
Friday 21 July 2006
SciDev.Net news team wins top UK science writing award
Lawrence McGinty, Health & Science Editor, ITN News (far left) and
Martin Taylor, Chairman of Syngenta (far right) present the award to
SciDev.Net's director, David Dickson and senior correspondent,
Catherine Brahic.
The Science and Development Network (SciDev.Net) news team has been awarded "best science journalism on the world wide web" by the UK's top science writing body.
The prize was presented to SciDev.Net by the Association of British Science Writers (ABSW) for its online coverage of the consequences of the tsunami that swept across the Indian Ocean in December 2004, claiming 300,000 lives.
Its timing coincides with calls to improve the region's tsunami early warning system, put in place in the aftermath of the 2004 disaster. This week, a new tsunami struck the Indonesian island of Java. Although the threat was detected, the warning messages did not reach the coastal communities, contributing to a death toll that is currently nearing 550.
SciDev.Net's coverage is grouped into a continually updated feature known as 'Tsunami update'. This combines regular news coverage of tsunami-related research, policy decisions and events with detailed background information about the causes of the disaster, analysis of its consequences and comment about lessons for the future.
SciDev.Net's coverage of the tsunami was coordinated by news editor Mike Shanahan, senior correspondent Catherine Brahic and South Asia regional coordinator T. V. Padma.
Other contributors to 'Tsunami update' during 2005 include SciDev.Net freelance reporters Sanjit Bagchi in India, Mustak Hossain in Bangladesh, Dilrukshi Handunnetti and Nalaka Gunawardene in Sri Lanka, Ochieng' Ogodo and Kimani Chege in Kenya, Abiodun Raufu in Nigeria, and Marilyn Smith in France.
In announcing the award, Ted Nield, the president of the ABSW, said that the short-list for the web-writing awards had provided a strong set of contenders that all made full use of the web’s capabilities. "Our winner delivered a really high quality writing product," said Nield. "Science writing for the web has finally arrived."
David Dickson, the director of SciDev.Net, said that he and the organisation's news team had been thrilled and honoured to receive recognition of its work by the ABSW. "I would like to thank all of those who contributed to this achievement, which demonstrates that one can combine good science journalism, the new possibilities opened up by the Internet, and a commitment to improving people's lives," he said.
The SciDev.Net news team has decided to donate its UK£2,000 prize money to the Disasters Emergency Committee, a coalition of aid agencies providing ongoing relief in areas affected by the 2004 tsunami.
Also at the 2005 ABSW science writing awards, Sonja van Renssen, who worked as an intern at SciDev.Net in the summer of 2005 and contributed to 'Tsunami update' during this time, won the category of "Young broadcaster of the year" for a radio programme about the ethical dilemmas raised by military research.
See http://www.scidev.net/content/opinions/eng/we-need-a-slow-race-for-science-based-development.cfm
for a flavour of some of their posts.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Crazyfinger writes
"Be that as it may, it appears to me that, while our eye is on the ball for the impressive economic growth in the years to come, nothing noteworthy is happening on the law front. I haven’t read a single article or a news report that seriously talked about legal reforms, commensurate with economic reforms. Why is that? We occasionally read business community (international) complaining about the legal impediments to establishing scale businesses in India, but no response is reported. How is it that we embrace with so much enthusiasm our own economic boom while riding on the coattails of U.S. business world, but show no interest in the supreme U.S. legal system? If push comes to shove, I’d take the boom in legal reform anyday, over the boom in the economic reform. Puzzling. So I wanted to dig into history and try to figure out what is our legal tradition, what is its status now, and why is it that legal professionals don’t seem to participate in the social commentary.
All that and more I found in a gem called “Professor Kingsfield Goes to Delhi: American Academics, the Ford Foundation, and the Development of Legal Education in India” by Professor Jayanth Krishnan of William Mitchell College of Law (free download). Once in a while, when you are looking for something, it feels like all the answers are hidden in plain view already, lurking and springing forward as soon as you form the right question in the right way. This paper feels like one of those springing forward answers, if you are looking to understand what is happening to the state of legal education in India.
Writing with simple clarity is a hard-earned skill - a long and arduous labor before it becomes “natural” (or “intuitive”) - and deserves a premium appreciation by itself. Not only this approximately 55-page document written with an illuminating clarity, but it also reads like a Dashiell Hammett page-turner."
See http://www.crazyfinger.org/2006/03/its_the_law_not.html#comments
I ditto his sentiments.
All that and more I found in a gem called “Professor Kingsfield Goes to Delhi: American Academics, the Ford Foundation, and the Development of Legal Education in India” by Professor Jayanth Krishnan of William Mitchell College of Law (free download). Once in a while, when you are looking for something, it feels like all the answers are hidden in plain view already, lurking and springing forward as soon as you form the right question in the right way. This paper feels like one of those springing forward answers, if you are looking to understand what is happening to the state of legal education in India.
Writing with simple clarity is a hard-earned skill - a long and arduous labor before it becomes “natural” (or “intuitive”) - and deserves a premium appreciation by itself. Not only this approximately 55-page document written with an illuminating clarity, but it also reads like a Dashiell Hammett page-turner."
See http://www.crazyfinger.org/2006/03/its_the_law_not.html#comments
I ditto his sentiments.
Lalu goes to Harvard
Fromhttp://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1715301.cms
Lalu Prasad Yadav's work with the Indian Railways may soon be a part of the curriculum at Harvard.
His detractors may call him a 'clown and a joker', but there's no denying that Lalu Prasad Yadav has a flair for business. The way he turned around the Indian Railways -- written off by the Rakesh Mohan Committee and termed a white elephant by the government -- is the stuff business curriculums are made of. And it is not just IIMs who want to fete Laluji for posting a fund balance of Rs 11,280 crore in March 2006, even the premier international business schools are joining in.
Harvard Business School and HEC Management School, France, have shown interest in turning Lalu's experiment with the railways into case studies for aspiring biz graduates. For HEC, the crux lies in how a railway system, under the jurisdiction of a coalition government, can be put on the road to success.
Explains Karine Lejoly of HEC, "We are looking at making the Indian Railways a part of our course. While nothing has been finalised as of now, I will be visiting India in October-November to talk to the concerned officials."
....
Prof G Raghuraman from IIM-A, who first introduced Lalu in their curriculum, says, "We are not just working on the facelift that Lalu has given to the railways but also his personality, the team he works with and the initiatives he has taken. It was not as if Lalu applied some new principles, he was just the guy who said, 'Let's get down to it'."
Earlier story: Lalu goes to IIM-A:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1513349.cms
and some his ‘reforms’:
http://www.blonnet.com/2006/02/25/stories/2006022504010100.htm
Acknowledgement: kaburlu.com
For an overview of Lalu's turbulent period in Bihar see:
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/casi/publications/india_in_transition.htm
Social Justice and Stalled Development:
Caste Empowerment and the Breakdown of Governance in Bihar, Spring 2006.
Update(September 1, 2006)
More links and news in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laloo_Prasad_Yadav
Foe a recent discussion and comments see http://acorn.nationalinterest.in/?p=2082#comments
Lalu Prasad Yadav's work with the Indian Railways may soon be a part of the curriculum at Harvard.
His detractors may call him a 'clown and a joker', but there's no denying that Lalu Prasad Yadav has a flair for business. The way he turned around the Indian Railways -- written off by the Rakesh Mohan Committee and termed a white elephant by the government -- is the stuff business curriculums are made of. And it is not just IIMs who want to fete Laluji for posting a fund balance of Rs 11,280 crore in March 2006, even the premier international business schools are joining in.
Harvard Business School and HEC Management School, France, have shown interest in turning Lalu's experiment with the railways into case studies for aspiring biz graduates. For HEC, the crux lies in how a railway system, under the jurisdiction of a coalition government, can be put on the road to success.
Explains Karine Lejoly of HEC, "We are looking at making the Indian Railways a part of our course. While nothing has been finalised as of now, I will be visiting India in October-November to talk to the concerned officials."
....
Prof G Raghuraman from IIM-A, who first introduced Lalu in their curriculum, says, "We are not just working on the facelift that Lalu has given to the railways but also his personality, the team he works with and the initiatives he has taken. It was not as if Lalu applied some new principles, he was just the guy who said, 'Let's get down to it'."
Earlier story: Lalu goes to IIM-A:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1513349.cms
and some his ‘reforms’:
http://www.blonnet.com/2006/02/25/stories/2006022504010100.htm
Acknowledgement: kaburlu.com
For an overview of Lalu's turbulent period in Bihar see:
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/casi/publications/india_in_transition.htm
Social Justice and Stalled Development:
Caste Empowerment and the Breakdown of Governance in Bihar, Spring 2006.
Update(September 1, 2006)
More links and news in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laloo_Prasad_Yadav
Foe a recent discussion and comments see http://acorn.nationalinterest.in/?p=2082#comments
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Problems ahead for India?
Interesting analysis in:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060723/india_nm/india260678_2
See also for intersting articles and links :http://communalism.blogspot.com/
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060723/india_nm/india260678_2
See also for intersting articles and links :http://communalism.blogspot.com/
Saturday, July 22, 2006
Asian Future of Evolutionary Psychology
In the Evolotutionary Psychology yaoo discussion group, there is a link to an exchange between Professors Geoffrey Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa on the future of evolutionary psychlogy in Asia. The discussion seems to be of general interest and not really specific to one science. Strangely neither of them seems to take in to account the strong immigration component of the US population. I am enclosing the links to the papers and their abstracts. I hope that Madhukar Shukla and Abi will have some comments.
http://human-nature.com/ep/downloads/ep04107119.pdf
The Asian Future of Evolutionary Psychology
Geoffrey Miller, Department of Psychology, Logan Hall, 1 University of New Mexico, MSC03 2220, Albuquerque, NM 87131-1161, USA. Email: gfmiller@unm.edu.
Abstract: Asia’s population, wealth, cognitive capital, and scientific influence are growing quickly. Reasonable demographic, economic, and psychometric projections suggest that by the mid-21st century, most of the world’s psychology will be done in Asia, by Asians. Even if evolutionary psychology wins the battles for academic respectability in the United States and European Union, if it ignores the rise of Asian psychology, it will fail to have any serious, long-term, global influence in the behavioral sciences after the current generations of researchers are dead. I outline a ‘marketing strategy’ for promoting evolutionary psychology in the current Asian powers (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore), the new Asian mega-powers (China, India), and other developing Asia countries (e.g. Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia), in a way that takes advantage of Asia’s relative secularism, freedom from political correctness, sex-positive social attitudes, and intellectual traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism.
http://human-nature.com/ep/downloads/ep04120128.pdf
No, It Ain’t Gonna Be Like That
Satoshi Kanazawa, Interdisciplinary Institute of Management, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom. Email: s.kanazawa@lse.ac.uk.
Abstract: For cultural, social, and institutional reasons, Asians cannot make original contributions to basic science. I therefore doubt Miller's prediction for the Asian future of evolutionary psychology. I believe that its future will continue to be in the United States and Europe.
http://human-nature.com/ep/downloads/ep04129137.pdf
Asian Creativity: A Response to Satoshi Kanazawa
Geoffrey Miller, Department of Psychology, Logan Hall, 1 University of New Mexico, MSC03 2220, Albuquerque, NM 87131-1161, USA. Email: gfmiller@unm.edu.
Abstract: This article responds to Satoshi Kanazawa’s thoughtful and entertaining comments about my article concerning the Asian future of evolutionary psychology. Contra Kanazawa’s argument that Asian cultural traditions and/or character inhibit Asian scientific creativity, I review historical evidence of high Asian creativity, and psychometric evidence of high Asian intelligence (a cognitive trait) and openness to experience (a personality trait) – two key components of creativity. Contra Kanazawa’s concern that political correctness is a bigger threat to American evolutionary psychology than religious fundamentalism, I review evidence from research funding patterns and student attitudes suggesting that fundamentalism is more harmful and pervasive. Finally, in response to Kanazawa’s focus on tall buildings as indexes of national wealth and creativity, I find that 13 of the world’s tallest 25 buildings are in China, Hong Kong, or Taiwan – of which 11 were built in the last decade. Asian creativity, secularism, and architectural prominence point to a bright future for Asian science.
http://human-nature.com/ep/downloads/ep04107119.pdf
The Asian Future of Evolutionary Psychology
Geoffrey Miller, Department of Psychology, Logan Hall, 1 University of New Mexico, MSC03 2220, Albuquerque, NM 87131-1161, USA. Email: gfmiller@unm.edu.
Abstract: Asia’s population, wealth, cognitive capital, and scientific influence are growing quickly. Reasonable demographic, economic, and psychometric projections suggest that by the mid-21st century, most of the world’s psychology will be done in Asia, by Asians. Even if evolutionary psychology wins the battles for academic respectability in the United States and European Union, if it ignores the rise of Asian psychology, it will fail to have any serious, long-term, global influence in the behavioral sciences after the current generations of researchers are dead. I outline a ‘marketing strategy’ for promoting evolutionary psychology in the current Asian powers (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore), the new Asian mega-powers (China, India), and other developing Asia countries (e.g. Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia), in a way that takes advantage of Asia’s relative secularism, freedom from political correctness, sex-positive social attitudes, and intellectual traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism.
http://human-nature.com/ep/downloads/ep04120128.pdf
No, It Ain’t Gonna Be Like That
Satoshi Kanazawa, Interdisciplinary Institute of Management, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom. Email: s.kanazawa@lse.ac.uk.
Abstract: For cultural, social, and institutional reasons, Asians cannot make original contributions to basic science. I therefore doubt Miller's prediction for the Asian future of evolutionary psychology. I believe that its future will continue to be in the United States and Europe.
http://human-nature.com/ep/downloads/ep04129137.pdf
Asian Creativity: A Response to Satoshi Kanazawa
Geoffrey Miller, Department of Psychology, Logan Hall, 1 University of New Mexico, MSC03 2220, Albuquerque, NM 87131-1161, USA. Email: gfmiller@unm.edu.
Abstract: This article responds to Satoshi Kanazawa’s thoughtful and entertaining comments about my article concerning the Asian future of evolutionary psychology. Contra Kanazawa’s argument that Asian cultural traditions and/or character inhibit Asian scientific creativity, I review historical evidence of high Asian creativity, and psychometric evidence of high Asian intelligence (a cognitive trait) and openness to experience (a personality trait) – two key components of creativity. Contra Kanazawa’s concern that political correctness is a bigger threat to American evolutionary psychology than religious fundamentalism, I review evidence from research funding patterns and student attitudes suggesting that fundamentalism is more harmful and pervasive. Finally, in response to Kanazawa’s focus on tall buildings as indexes of national wealth and creativity, I find that 13 of the world’s tallest 25 buildings are in China, Hong Kong, or Taiwan – of which 11 were built in the last decade. Asian creativity, secularism, and architectural prominence point to a bright future for Asian science.
Iron Law of Oligarchy
From Penguin dictionary of Sociology:
“In his analysis of German Social Democracy, Robert Michels argued (1911) that labour organizations with democratic aims, such as political parties and trade unions, experienced a tension between the need foe efficiency and membership control of the making and execution of policy. As they grew in size, labour organizations became more complex and permanent bureaucracies developed to cope efficiently with the problems of administration. The officials, by virtue of their expertise and experience, became indispensable and difficult to change even when subject to periodic re-election. Once they occupied this strong position, the leaders began to emancipate themselves from member control and displace member goals with their own. These goals are usually less radical than those of the members and the official party or union ideology. As they controlled the channels of communication, they manipulated the flow of information to help buttress their positions. In the final analysis, goal displacement depended on the apathy and lack of involvement of members with issues of party or union government.
The modern study of trade-union government and the internal structure of mass political parties has been deeply influenced by Michel’s pessimism, though research shows that the ‘iron law’ of oligarchy does not always apply to such organizations.”
Some more about Michels is at:
http://www.humanities.mq.edu.au/Ockham/y64l11.html
There seems to be an element of truth in the iron law, particularly when there are no grass roots political and social organizations. Lok Satta started developing such organizations and is now debating about becoming a political party. Coincidentally Govt. of India is trying to dilute RTI Act:
http://alternativeperspective.blogspot.com/2006/07/indias-improved-right-to-ifrain-act.html#comments.
According to Dilip D'Souza http://dcubed.blogspot.com/, a place to contact is:
NCPRI
C 17A Munirka, New Delhi 110 067, India
Telefax: +91 (0)11 26178048; Phone: 26168759,
email: ncpri.india@gmail.com
where my old friend Shekhar Singh seems to be working.
“In his analysis of German Social Democracy, Robert Michels argued (1911) that labour organizations with democratic aims, such as political parties and trade unions, experienced a tension between the need foe efficiency and membership control of the making and execution of policy. As they grew in size, labour organizations became more complex and permanent bureaucracies developed to cope efficiently with the problems of administration. The officials, by virtue of their expertise and experience, became indispensable and difficult to change even when subject to periodic re-election. Once they occupied this strong position, the leaders began to emancipate themselves from member control and displace member goals with their own. These goals are usually less radical than those of the members and the official party or union ideology. As they controlled the channels of communication, they manipulated the flow of information to help buttress their positions. In the final analysis, goal displacement depended on the apathy and lack of involvement of members with issues of party or union government.
The modern study of trade-union government and the internal structure of mass political parties has been deeply influenced by Michel’s pessimism, though research shows that the ‘iron law’ of oligarchy does not always apply to such organizations.”
Some more about Michels is at:
http://www.humanities.mq.edu.au/Ockham/y64l11.html
There seems to be an element of truth in the iron law, particularly when there are no grass roots political and social organizations. Lok Satta started developing such organizations and is now debating about becoming a political party. Coincidentally Govt. of India is trying to dilute RTI Act:
http://alternativeperspective.blogspot.com/2006/07/indias-improved-right-to-ifrain-act.html#comments.
According to Dilip D'Souza http://dcubed.blogspot.com/, a place to contact is:
NCPRI
C 17A Munirka, New Delhi 110 067, India
Telefax: +91 (0)11 26178048; Phone: 26168759,
email: ncpri.india@gmail.com
where my old friend Shekhar Singh seems to be working.
Dr. Free-Ride's Advice to Non-Scientists
Interesting article by Janet Stemwedel at:
http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/2006/07/things_nonscientists_can_do_to.php#more
"Rather, I think what I'd be happy with is a population which:
has a sense of the kinds of questions science can answer -- and the kinds of questions science cannot answer
has a reasonable understanding of the methods scientists use to try to answer these questions
has a reasonable understanding of the types of "qualitiy control" to which putative scientific findings are subjected
This kind of basic grasp of science puts the non-scientist in a position to get something more from reports of scientific findings than an updated set of facts to take on someone else's authority. My hope, anyway, is that a better feel for the way science works will help people be more critical consumers of science reporting -- an audience that will read past the headline to the "fine print" that provides the qualifiers about the precise conditions the scientists examined and the strength of their conclusions. An audience that knows something about how scientific knowledge comes into being can ask questions about what kinds of assumptions were made in studying a particular question, how widely applicable the findings are, and what questions remain unanswered."
There is much more and also some concrete advice in the article.
http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/2006/07/things_nonscientists_can_do_to.php#more
"Rather, I think what I'd be happy with is a population which:
has a sense of the kinds of questions science can answer -- and the kinds of questions science cannot answer
has a reasonable understanding of the methods scientists use to try to answer these questions
has a reasonable understanding of the types of "qualitiy control" to which putative scientific findings are subjected
This kind of basic grasp of science puts the non-scientist in a position to get something more from reports of scientific findings than an updated set of facts to take on someone else's authority. My hope, anyway, is that a better feel for the way science works will help people be more critical consumers of science reporting -- an audience that will read past the headline to the "fine print" that provides the qualifiers about the precise conditions the scientists examined and the strength of their conclusions. An audience that knows something about how scientific knowledge comes into being can ask questions about what kinds of assumptions were made in studying a particular question, how widely applicable the findings are, and what questions remain unanswered."
There is much more and also some concrete advice in the article.
Training the Brain
Two free articles in the current issue of “Scientific American Mind”, one about training the mind using computer games and the second about taste In ‘Circuit Training’:
http://www.sciammind.com/article.cfm?articleID=00016C9D-2761-1477-9D3383414B7F0000
Kasper Mossman discusses Ryuta Kawashima’s game ‘Brain Age’. Kawashima’s idea is that your brain has its own age and if you do not train it, it gets old. He has various exercise to train the brain. Gross man who is only 34 had an estimated brain age of 60 to begin with but:
“After a week of exercises such as Low to High, CalculationsÅ~100, and Head Count, were my synapses any slicker? It is hard to say, when there is no external yardstick against which to measure progress. But one week into brain training, while taking a phone message, I found I could effortlessly hold one 10-digit number in my head and scribble down another. Maybe Kawashima is onto something.”
Mossmam also describes other computer games designed for children with attention difficulties and patients recovering from brain injuries.
See also another free article by Ulrich Kraft “Train Your Brain”:
http://www.sciammind.com/article.cfm?articleID=000C075D-4357-13D9-810183414B7F0000
I have already forgotten the contents of this earlier article. It is time to start training my brain.
http://www.sciammind.com/article.cfm?articleID=00016C9D-2761-1477-9D3383414B7F0000
Kasper Mossman discusses Ryuta Kawashima’s game ‘Brain Age’. Kawashima’s idea is that your brain has its own age and if you do not train it, it gets old. He has various exercise to train the brain. Gross man who is only 34 had an estimated brain age of 60 to begin with but:
“After a week of exercises such as Low to High, CalculationsÅ~100, and Head Count, were my synapses any slicker? It is hard to say, when there is no external yardstick against which to measure progress. But one week into brain training, while taking a phone message, I found I could effortlessly hold one 10-digit number in my head and scribble down another. Maybe Kawashima is onto something.”
Mossmam also describes other computer games designed for children with attention difficulties and patients recovering from brain injuries.
See also another free article by Ulrich Kraft “Train Your Brain”:
http://www.sciammind.com/article.cfm?articleID=000C075D-4357-13D9-810183414B7F0000
I have already forgotten the contents of this earlier article. It is time to start training my brain.
Friday, July 21, 2006
Toxoplasmosis
Toxoplsma gondii is a parasite related to the malaria parasite and can be carried by many warm-blooded mammals including humans. But its definitive host is cats and it can sexually reproduce only in cats. Its eggs are spread in cat faeces. A passing rat can pick it up from the moist infected soil. Apparently rats behave recklessly when infected (resulting in toxoplasmosis or toxo for short) , are more active and less scared of new things and are even attracted to cat's urine. This makes them easy prey to cats and the life cycle of the parasite continues.
Between 30 to 70 percent of the humans (depending on the country) are supposed to be infected with this parasite and the effects may vary considerably. Apparently it can affect one’s intelligence, has been linked to schizophrenia and may raise chances of being knocked out by a car. But the main danger seems to be to pregnant women and pregnant women are urged to be vary of handling cats and cat litter:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dpd/parasites/toxoplasmosis/factsht_toxoplasmosis.htm
According to New Scientist:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17623665.200;jsessionid=GDHALMBFEDLA
the definite host is cats and the effects on humans may be much less harmful and depend on the gender:
“The results from personality tests were complicated and showed confusing gender differences, but men at least seemed to mimic one aspect of rat manipulation. Infected men tended to be more independent and inclined to break rules, although infected women tended to go the other way. Could it be that males are being made more reckless, like the rats, while for some reason the mind-control chemical has the opposite effect in females? “
“But one test, measuring reaction times and attention span, gave more consistent results (Parasitology, vol 122, p 515). Both men and women who had a latent infection took longer to press a computer key after a prompt from the monitor. People without an infection took about 250 milliseconds to react, but those with a latent infection reacted about 8 per cent slower. What's more, toxo-positive subjects did worse as the experiment went on, suggesting that they have shorter attention spans. Again, the effects in humans seem to be mimicking those in rats.
Until recently, few people have taken Flegr's results very seriously. So what if toxo causes a few strange lab results, what difference does that make in the real world? What made people sit up and take notice was research published in August by Flegr's team showing that humans with a latent infection are 2.7 times more likely to be involved in a car accident (BMC Infectious Diseases, www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/2/11).”
It is possible that this parasite has very little affect on humans but I was reminded of it by the developments in the middle east.
Update (August 2, 2006). See http://scienceblogs.com/loom/2006/08/01/a_nation_of_cowards_blame_the.php
for the latest.
Between 30 to 70 percent of the humans (depending on the country) are supposed to be infected with this parasite and the effects may vary considerably. Apparently it can affect one’s intelligence, has been linked to schizophrenia and may raise chances of being knocked out by a car. But the main danger seems to be to pregnant women and pregnant women are urged to be vary of handling cats and cat litter:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dpd/parasites/toxoplasmosis/factsht_toxoplasmosis.htm
According to New Scientist:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17623665.200;jsessionid=GDHALMBFEDLA
the definite host is cats and the effects on humans may be much less harmful and depend on the gender:
“The results from personality tests were complicated and showed confusing gender differences, but men at least seemed to mimic one aspect of rat manipulation. Infected men tended to be more independent and inclined to break rules, although infected women tended to go the other way. Could it be that males are being made more reckless, like the rats, while for some reason the mind-control chemical has the opposite effect in females? “
“But one test, measuring reaction times and attention span, gave more consistent results (Parasitology, vol 122, p 515). Both men and women who had a latent infection took longer to press a computer key after a prompt from the monitor. People without an infection took about 250 milliseconds to react, but those with a latent infection reacted about 8 per cent slower. What's more, toxo-positive subjects did worse as the experiment went on, suggesting that they have shorter attention spans. Again, the effects in humans seem to be mimicking those in rats.
Until recently, few people have taken Flegr's results very seriously. So what if toxo causes a few strange lab results, what difference does that make in the real world? What made people sit up and take notice was research published in August by Flegr's team showing that humans with a latent infection are 2.7 times more likely to be involved in a car accident (BMC Infectious Diseases, www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/2/11).”
It is possible that this parasite has very little affect on humans but I was reminded of it by the developments in the middle east.
Update (August 2, 2006). See http://scienceblogs.com/loom/2006/08/01/a_nation_of_cowards_blame_the.php
for the latest.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Hard Blogging (Science)
From http://drrob.typepad.com/hpb_etc/
Razib at GNXP (Classic) says:
John Hawks is the Chris of Mixing Memory for paleoanthropology, and Chris of Mixing Memory is the John Hawks of cognitive psychology. And Robert Skipper is the philosopher & historian of science equivalent of the pair. Can you name other weblogs that stand head & shoulders above the pack in terms of their scholarly orientations?
What Razib didn't say, modestly, is that his own blogging at GNXP and GNXP Classic "stands head & shoulders above the pack" in terms of scholarly orientation. I'll add RPM at Evolgen. And in philosophy of biology, John Wilkins' stuff on species at Evolving Thoughts is required reading.
Some of these links:
http://scienceblogs.com/mixingmemory/
http://johnhawks.net/weblog
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/
http://scienceblogs.com/evolgen/
http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/
http://drrob.typepad.com/hpb_etc/
Pl.check also the comments in gnxp
Razib at GNXP (Classic) says:
John Hawks is the Chris of Mixing Memory for paleoanthropology, and Chris of Mixing Memory is the John Hawks of cognitive psychology. And Robert Skipper is the philosopher & historian of science equivalent of the pair. Can you name other weblogs that stand head & shoulders above the pack in terms of their scholarly orientations?
What Razib didn't say, modestly, is that his own blogging at GNXP and GNXP Classic "stands head & shoulders above the pack" in terms of scholarly orientation. I'll add RPM at Evolgen. And in philosophy of biology, John Wilkins' stuff on species at Evolving Thoughts is required reading.
Some of these links:
http://scienceblogs.com/mixingmemory/
http://johnhawks.net/weblog
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/
http://scienceblogs.com/evolgen/
http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/
http://drrob.typepad.com/hpb_etc/
Pl.check also the comments in gnxp
Sunday, July 02, 2006
Some science sites
Science seems to be getting more and more complicated. May 25th issue of Nature has an article: "What is a gene". It seems that two decades ago, the concept of gene was explained in two hours to fresh undergraduates. Now, it takes a whole semester. According to one scientist "Diecrete genes are beginning to vanish. We have a whole continuum of transcripts". Even many of the teachers are unaware of basic discoveries in other areas. I am listing below a few online journals which have popular science articles. I will correct and update it from time to time.
1 Science magazines and sites (free):
http://www.sciencedaily.com/
http://www.physorg.com/
http://www.eurekalert.org/
http://www.livescience.com/
http://www.world-science.net/
http://www.edge.org/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/
http://www.virology.net/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/
2 Longer articles and downloadable books:
http://www.biology.com/
http://www.biologymad.com/
http://www.estrellamountain.edu/faculty/farabee/biobk/biobooktoc.html
http://www.howstuffworks.com/
http://inventors.about.com/library/bl/bl12.htm
http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/
3 Science magazines and sites (some free articles):
http://www.newscientist.com/home.ns
http://www.sciammind.com/
http://scientificamerican.com/news_directory.cfm
http://www.americanscientist.org/
4 Science news and discussion blogs :
http://scienceblogs.com/
http://www.gnxp.com/
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/cat_trends_human_evolution.html
http://science.slashdot.org/
5 Sustainable development, water resources
http://www.planetark.com/
http://www.cseindia.org/
http://www.zeri.org/
6 Future prospects
http://www.kurzweilai.net/
7. Continuous updates about interesting sites
http://forumhub.mayyam.com/hub/viewtopic.php?t=5010
1 Science magazines and sites (free):
http://www.sciencedaily.com/
http://www.physorg.com/
http://www.eurekalert.org/
http://www.livescience.com/
http://www.world-science.net/
http://www.edge.org/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/
http://www.virology.net/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/
2 Longer articles and downloadable books:
http://www.biology.com/
http://www.biologymad.com/
http://www.estrellamountain.edu/faculty/farabee/biobk/biobooktoc.html
http://www.howstuffworks.com/
http://inventors.about.com/library/bl/bl12.htm
http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/
3 Science magazines and sites (some free articles):
http://www.newscientist.com/home.ns
http://www.sciammind.com/
http://scientificamerican.com/news_directory.cfm
http://www.americanscientist.org/
4 Science news and discussion blogs :
http://scienceblogs.com/
http://www.gnxp.com/
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/cat_trends_human_evolution.html
http://science.slashdot.org/
5 Sustainable development, water resources
http://www.planetark.com/
http://www.cseindia.org/
http://www.zeri.org/
6 Future prospects
http://www.kurzweilai.net/
7. Continuous updates about interesting sites
http://forumhub.mayyam.com/hub/viewtopic.php?t=5010
More from theotherindia.org
In retirement, I have started trying to find out how things are in India. The period I still remember distinctly is the decade of post independence. By that time, I was bitten by the mathes bug and did not pay much attention to the world around. By 60’s there seemed to be some improvements and the time of major famines seemed to be over. The whole Indira Gandhi period was a bit of haze for me though traumatic for many others. Off and on when I visited home, I heard comments that our caste was loosing out and the lower castes did not know their place any more. Overall, there seemed to be improvements. I hoped that the period when poverty dehumanised both haves and have nots was over. Since, I do not have too much faith in the mainstream media, I started looking at blogs. There seem to be many brilliant people and many brilliant blogs, generally interested and anxious about India’s development, but somehow frenetic and I could not get a picture of how things actually work in India. I also feel that the problems are too complex, news too unreliable that it is difficult for any one person to understand the current realities and one has to be a part, formally or informally, of a discussion group to get a grip on the current events and future directions.
One such group seems to be www.theothetindia.org
I read comments in some other blogs that these are commies, but as far as I can see from individual blogs, some of them seem to be suspicious of ideologies. They all seem vaguely left (for me left means those who are concerned about others irrespective of their race and creed. Possibly many economists are leftists according to this definition). At the moment, I am sold on this blog and hope that many more such group blogs will arrive. To get an idea of how difficult social change may be in India, look at the articles and comments on reservations. To get an idea of how things actually work and the nitty-gritty of clash of ideologies, politics, egos see mrajshekhar’s articles about Orissa and ‘World Bank, SHGs, market linkages and the private sector”. In spite of all the anxiety about development, there seem to more comments about caste and reservation and less about development. There are more such articles in the ‘My Articles’ section of http://www.fracturedearth.org/, for example, http://www.fracturedearth.org/articles/itc-hll.pdf.
I do not know how long the site will last but at the moment it seems to be doing a good job of educating people like me about India.
One such group seems to be www.theothetindia.org
I read comments in some other blogs that these are commies, but as far as I can see from individual blogs, some of them seem to be suspicious of ideologies. They all seem vaguely left (for me left means those who are concerned about others irrespective of their race and creed. Possibly many economists are leftists according to this definition). At the moment, I am sold on this blog and hope that many more such group blogs will arrive. To get an idea of how difficult social change may be in India, look at the articles and comments on reservations. To get an idea of how things actually work and the nitty-gritty of clash of ideologies, politics, egos see mrajshekhar’s articles about Orissa and ‘World Bank, SHGs, market linkages and the private sector”. In spite of all the anxiety about development, there seem to more comments about caste and reservation and less about development. There are more such articles in the ‘My Articles’ section of http://www.fracturedearth.org/, for example, http://www.fracturedearth.org/articles/itc-hll.pdf.
I do not know how long the site will last but at the moment it seems to be doing a good job of educating people like me about India.
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Living from a suitcase
Since a trip last October, I have been living from a suitcase. One of the daughters moved back and all the bedrooms in the house are taken up. In the nights, I move my mattress, a few books and laptop to the rumpus room and when my wife takes over the room in the day time try to I find some room wherever in the house. It is bit like the situation of some Japanese derelicts living in stations each near a pole which I saw long ago. I try to pretend that this gives me some glimpse of how the other half lives and keep reading and thinking about social change.
So many great minds have thought about social change before and what hope do I have of solving these problems. Unfortunately one has to vote, think about jobs for near and dear and take a stand sometimes and it seems that one has to think about the decisions of various people around the world. With so much information, it seems possible to support any stand one takes and one usually ends up forming opinions which seem beneficial and at the same time makes one feel moral and a bit better than most others. One tries to confirm and strengthen such good feelings by gossip. In any case, the world seems so complex that it is impossible to have informed opinion on every issue. But we have some idea and consensus on what are good in life and institutions and if one can develop some ways of quantifying such things, it may be possible to make some decisions and formulate flexible courses of actions. Robert Putnam has been trying to do such measurements in terms of what he calls ‘social capital’. From his 1995 article “Bowling Alone” part of which appeared in:
http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itdhr/0796/ijde/putnam.htm
“Recently, American social scientists of a neo-Tocquevillean bent have unearthed a wide range of empirical evidence that the quality of public life and the performance of social institutions (and not only in America) are indeed powerfully influenced by norms and networks of civic engagement. Researchers in such fields as education, urban poverty, unemployment, the control of crime and drug abuse, and even health have discovered that successful outcomes are more likely in civically engaged communities. Similarly, research on the varying economic attainments of different ethnic groups in the United States has demonstrated the importance of social bonds within each group. These results are consistent with research in a wide range of settings that demonstrates the vital importance of social networks for job placement and many other economic outcomes.
No doubt the mechanisms through which civic engagement and social connectedness produce such results as better schools, faster economic development, lower crime, and more effective government are multiple and complex. While these briefly recounted findings require further confirmation and perhaps qualification, the parallels across hundreds of empirical studies in a dozen disparate disciplines and subfields are striking. Social scientists in several fields have recently suggested a common framework for understanding these phenomena, a framework that rests on the concept of social capital. By analogy with notions of physical capital and human capital -- tools and training that enhance individual productivity -- "social capital" refers to features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit.”
Putnam has studied measurements and development of social capital in three books and some web sites. The books are “Making Democracy Work”, “Bowling Alone” and “Better Together”. I read the last, browsed through the second and have not yet seen the first, which is supposed to be the best of the lot. In “Bowling Alone” he gives exhaustive statistics to show the decline of social capital in USA since around 1965. In the third book, he gives diverse examples of organizations which raised social capital in their communities; Valley Interfaith in Southern Texas working for the education of migrant children, branch libraries in Chicago, Tupelo model in Southern Mississippi developing an impoverished agricultural community to a thriving semi-industrial community etc. The last mentioned case is impressive though there are fresh conflicts. These are all small scale local phenomena and even the one internet community discussed craigslist.org mainly works in the San Fransisco area though similar sites have sprung up in other towns and cities. One of the main criticisms of Putnam’s programme is that the work is necessarily of local nature and small scale and it is not clear that these can achieve the sort of changes for the whole society which Putnam envisages. See, for example, the reviews:
http://www.la.utexas.edu/chenry/civil/archives95/csspapers/0006.html
http://www.ciaonet.org/wps/boc01/
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/13805
Politicians and even KKK may bring cohesiveness to some communities which may not be palatable for other communities. Moreover there are strange factors about social capital; a war may increase the social capital in a community or a country and prosperity may lessen it as it has done in USA. So, in spite of its apparent measurability, the very concept seems to be rooted in some contradiction. Perhaps, that is the only way we can go.
A more extreme form of social capital called ‘asabiya’ has been studied by a theoretical bioligist Peter Turchin in “War, Peace and War”. Asabiya used by Arab historian Ibn Khladun apparently means ‘collective solidarity’ in Arabic and according to Tutchin “Asabiya of a group is the ability of its members to stick together, to cooperate; it allows a group to protect itself against the enemies, and to impose its will on others” and “Putnam’s social capital is abasiya for democratic societies, with an emphasis on its non-military aspects”. Turchin used this concept of asabiya to study the rise and fall of empires and he also has mathematical studies of various other cycles; see for example the reviews by Herbert Gintis and of a mathematical version of the book byPaul Seabright (The reviews can be found at: http://www.eeb.uconn.edu/faculty/turchin/Clio.htm). Though Turchin’s analysis looks impressive, it is probably not so difficult to cast a net to explain the past and the power of any theory also lies in its predictiveness. In any case, most of Turchin’s study is about agrarian states and we seem to in a completely different set up now. One of the few people who predicted with a fair amount of accuracy seems to be Daniel Bell about the information age but he failed in other predictions (so far):
http://www.newamerica.net/index.cfm?pg=article&DocID=346
http://www.slate.com/id/3123/
People like Jeffrey Sachs (in “The End of Poverty”) have pointed out that over all there is much development in the past two hundred years in all continents and much larger percentage of people are generally living much better now than a few decades ago. Perhaps we should look at progress over 3-4 generations rather than one generation. Is it possible for one person to understand all this and make decisions? Perhaps we need more informed discussions among groups; some way of combining local social capital information of the sort Putnam described with global information and reach through a group of like minded people around the world and concerned about the less privileged. One site which seems to be trying to make such study and provide information in India is www.theotherindia.org/
Perhaps there are more such sites.
For the moment I seem go along with the thoughts about the faults in the texture of existence expressed by Pankaj Mishra in his review of “The Namesake”. I will go back to science where things are a bit more clearer.
So many great minds have thought about social change before and what hope do I have of solving these problems. Unfortunately one has to vote, think about jobs for near and dear and take a stand sometimes and it seems that one has to think about the decisions of various people around the world. With so much information, it seems possible to support any stand one takes and one usually ends up forming opinions which seem beneficial and at the same time makes one feel moral and a bit better than most others. One tries to confirm and strengthen such good feelings by gossip. In any case, the world seems so complex that it is impossible to have informed opinion on every issue. But we have some idea and consensus on what are good in life and institutions and if one can develop some ways of quantifying such things, it may be possible to make some decisions and formulate flexible courses of actions. Robert Putnam has been trying to do such measurements in terms of what he calls ‘social capital’. From his 1995 article “Bowling Alone” part of which appeared in:
http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itdhr/0796/ijde/putnam.htm
“Recently, American social scientists of a neo-Tocquevillean bent have unearthed a wide range of empirical evidence that the quality of public life and the performance of social institutions (and not only in America) are indeed powerfully influenced by norms and networks of civic engagement. Researchers in such fields as education, urban poverty, unemployment, the control of crime and drug abuse, and even health have discovered that successful outcomes are more likely in civically engaged communities. Similarly, research on the varying economic attainments of different ethnic groups in the United States has demonstrated the importance of social bonds within each group. These results are consistent with research in a wide range of settings that demonstrates the vital importance of social networks for job placement and many other economic outcomes.
No doubt the mechanisms through which civic engagement and social connectedness produce such results as better schools, faster economic development, lower crime, and more effective government are multiple and complex. While these briefly recounted findings require further confirmation and perhaps qualification, the parallels across hundreds of empirical studies in a dozen disparate disciplines and subfields are striking. Social scientists in several fields have recently suggested a common framework for understanding these phenomena, a framework that rests on the concept of social capital. By analogy with notions of physical capital and human capital -- tools and training that enhance individual productivity -- "social capital" refers to features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit.”
Putnam has studied measurements and development of social capital in three books and some web sites. The books are “Making Democracy Work”, “Bowling Alone” and “Better Together”. I read the last, browsed through the second and have not yet seen the first, which is supposed to be the best of the lot. In “Bowling Alone” he gives exhaustive statistics to show the decline of social capital in USA since around 1965. In the third book, he gives diverse examples of organizations which raised social capital in their communities; Valley Interfaith in Southern Texas working for the education of migrant children, branch libraries in Chicago, Tupelo model in Southern Mississippi developing an impoverished agricultural community to a thriving semi-industrial community etc. The last mentioned case is impressive though there are fresh conflicts. These are all small scale local phenomena and even the one internet community discussed craigslist.org mainly works in the San Fransisco area though similar sites have sprung up in other towns and cities. One of the main criticisms of Putnam’s programme is that the work is necessarily of local nature and small scale and it is not clear that these can achieve the sort of changes for the whole society which Putnam envisages. See, for example, the reviews:
http://www.la.utexas.edu/chenry/civil/archives95/csspapers/0006.html
http://www.ciaonet.org/wps/boc01/
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/13805
Politicians and even KKK may bring cohesiveness to some communities which may not be palatable for other communities. Moreover there are strange factors about social capital; a war may increase the social capital in a community or a country and prosperity may lessen it as it has done in USA. So, in spite of its apparent measurability, the very concept seems to be rooted in some contradiction. Perhaps, that is the only way we can go.
A more extreme form of social capital called ‘asabiya’ has been studied by a theoretical bioligist Peter Turchin in “War, Peace and War”. Asabiya used by Arab historian Ibn Khladun apparently means ‘collective solidarity’ in Arabic and according to Tutchin “Asabiya of a group is the ability of its members to stick together, to cooperate; it allows a group to protect itself against the enemies, and to impose its will on others” and “Putnam’s social capital is abasiya for democratic societies, with an emphasis on its non-military aspects”. Turchin used this concept of asabiya to study the rise and fall of empires and he also has mathematical studies of various other cycles; see for example the reviews by Herbert Gintis and of a mathematical version of the book byPaul Seabright (The reviews can be found at: http://www.eeb.uconn.edu/faculty/turchin/Clio.htm). Though Turchin’s analysis looks impressive, it is probably not so difficult to cast a net to explain the past and the power of any theory also lies in its predictiveness. In any case, most of Turchin’s study is about agrarian states and we seem to in a completely different set up now. One of the few people who predicted with a fair amount of accuracy seems to be Daniel Bell about the information age but he failed in other predictions (so far):
http://www.newamerica.net/index.cfm?pg=article&DocID=346
http://www.slate.com/id/3123/
People like Jeffrey Sachs (in “The End of Poverty”) have pointed out that over all there is much development in the past two hundred years in all continents and much larger percentage of people are generally living much better now than a few decades ago. Perhaps we should look at progress over 3-4 generations rather than one generation. Is it possible for one person to understand all this and make decisions? Perhaps we need more informed discussions among groups; some way of combining local social capital information of the sort Putnam described with global information and reach through a group of like minded people around the world and concerned about the less privileged. One site which seems to be trying to make such study and provide information in India is www.theotherindia.org/
Perhaps there are more such sites.
For the moment I seem go along with the thoughts about the faults in the texture of existence expressed by Pankaj Mishra in his review of “The Namesake”. I will go back to science where things are a bit more clearer.
Monday, June 12, 2006
Pankaj Mishra
I have read very little of Pankaj Mishra but the little I read stayed with me. The first is this last paragraph from his review Of Jhumpa Lahiri’s “The Namesake”
“This is the melancholy awareness that suffuses Lahiri's catalogs of desirable things and people. And so while such obvious underdogs as Nazneen and Chanu arouse pity and indignation, an overprivileged immigrant like Ni-khil leaves one with more disturbing feelings: an intimation, such as the one his father once had, of "all that was irrational, all that was inevitable about the world"; a suspicion that "all men are mild lunatics engaged in pursuits that seem to them very important while an absurdly logical force keeps them at their futile jobs." It is as if we have been given a glimpse not so much of an unjust social or political setup as of what Nabokov, writing about "The Overcoat," called "flaws in the texture of life itself."
in http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16837
The second is his story “Edmund wilson in Benares” again from The New York Review of Books: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/887
which reminded me very much of my own growing up in villages, small towns in A.P. and then the exposure to the world of books and ideas in Madras.
Since then I have read a few articles but none of his books. A friend from UK forwarded a review of his latest book:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1793848,00.html
May be I will read this book.
Jo's response (13/6/06): Some writers are most impressive without making you wish you could interact directly and personally with them. Mishra is attractive on both counts.
“This is the melancholy awareness that suffuses Lahiri's catalogs of desirable things and people. And so while such obvious underdogs as Nazneen and Chanu arouse pity and indignation, an overprivileged immigrant like Ni-khil leaves one with more disturbing feelings: an intimation, such as the one his father once had, of "all that was irrational, all that was inevitable about the world"; a suspicion that "all men are mild lunatics engaged in pursuits that seem to them very important while an absurdly logical force keeps them at their futile jobs." It is as if we have been given a glimpse not so much of an unjust social or political setup as of what Nabokov, writing about "The Overcoat," called "flaws in the texture of life itself."
in http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16837
The second is his story “Edmund wilson in Benares” again from The New York Review of Books: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/887
which reminded me very much of my own growing up in villages, small towns in A.P. and then the exposure to the world of books and ideas in Madras.
Since then I have read a few articles but none of his books. A friend from UK forwarded a review of his latest book:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1793848,00.html
May be I will read this book.
Jo's response (13/6/06): Some writers are most impressive without making you wish you could interact directly and personally with them. Mishra is attractive on both counts.
Saturday, June 10, 2006
An old review
I started looking through some Indian blogs and many of them turned out to be very interesting. An enthusiastic review by Tabula Rasa:
http://nomologic.blogspot.com/2006/05/theory-development-as-freak-management.html
made me look at my write up in Telugudanam last year. Here it is:
"Freakonomics" by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner (William Morrow, 2005)seems to be becoming a cult book with its own web site and a column in NewYork Times. I enjoyed the book and though I have some reservations, Irecommend the book. It can be classified under Microeconomics ( thoughsome of the pieces seem to be more like investigative journalism) and startswith a worldview of five general principles, two of which are: "Incentives arethe cornerstones of modern life" and `Knowing what to measure and how tomeasure it makes a complicated world much less so". I will quickly sketch twosmaller pieces in the book.Paul Feldman was an economist working for the US Government, got bored with his job, resigned and started selling bagels. He would deliver bagels tovarious companies in the mornings and come back before lunch to collectleftover bagels and money deposited in boxes. Soon he was delivering 8,400bagels a week to 140 companies. He expected about 95 percent of thepeople to be honest but expected that he could get by even if 80 to 90 percentpeople are honest. It turned out that the percentage 87 and he soon earned more than he did in his previous details.There are some other twists and turns, differences between small and big companies and the affects of 9/11.Check what this has to do with Adam Smith!Another small story is detecting corruption among sumo wrestlers which was difficult because the yazuka threats and the reluctance of the police. Thatthere was corruption was proved just by examining the data which consistedof about 32,000 bouts between 281 wrestlers. A wrestler's ranking and hencehis earning are based on his performance in the elite tournaments held six times an year. In each tournament, there are fifteen bouts and if the wrestler finishes with a winning record (that is at least eight wins) he does not loose his rank and it may rise. So, the first thing that was investigated was the record of the fights of 7-7 wrestlers (7 wins and 7 losses) against 8-6opponents. Statistically (here some technical expertise comes in, but it isnatural to guess that the percentage should be less than 50), the 7-7 wrestleris expected to win 48.7 percent of the time where as they won 79.6 percent ofthe time. Clearly there is some thing funny going on here which warrantedfurther investigation.The chapter I liked most is "Why do drug dealers live with their moms?" basedon Levitt's work with Alladi Sudhir Venkatesh. I have doubts about the next two topics: "Where have all the criminals gone?'and the next two chapters on parenting. For one thing, the conclusions in thetwo chapters seem to contradict each other. The first topic was based on Levitt's own research in which he attributes the decline of violent crime from1990s to the Supreme court ruling in Roe vs Wade and he does not evenmention the follow up papers which did not agree with him. There may be a correalation and may be it just that. There are any number of other theoriesfrom the raise of rap music to reemergence of role models in some ghettos.I get the impression that Levitt has some neat ideas and did some good research ( he won a prize awarded every two years to the best Americaneconomist under forty) and seems to have padded up these with somecareless chapters to make a quick buck. But this is the tendency with many popular books these days. Many educated have disposal incomes and arecurious to know about thing outside the areas of their expertise and there area lot of one idea revelation books (selfish gene etc) by good scientists eithercarried away by their own ideas or trying to make money. I guess we shouldtale all these revelations with a grain of salt.But I like this book. It indicates how even amateurs can study somemicroeconomic problems and problems of corruption. Among the follow upstories in New York Times, there is an interesting story of an Yale economistKeith Chen teaching monkeys how to use money:http://freakonomics.com/times0605col.php
P.S. (June 10, 2006) I may be wrong about "The Selfish Gene". It certainly influenced a generation but the pendulam seems to be swinging back. E.O. Wilson seems to have changed his opinion (?) about group selection and Trivers is back with a new book. More about this later.
Browsing through "Freakonomics" again, I realize why I thought later parts (chapters 5 and 6 on parenting) had contradictory elements. The first part of Chapter 5 is based on Judith Harris' work and is explained in much more detail in Steven Pinker's "The Blank State". If I remember right, Harris's data mainly came from middle class white families. In the later part of Chapter 5 of Freakomomics, the data comes from much wider group of blacks as well as whiltes and of varying economic status. May be that is why the conclusions seemed contradictory.
Apart from this both Levitt and Pinker do not take in to account data given in a 2002 study of Caspi and others described by Matt Ridley in his book "Nature via nurture" pp. 267-269 (see also the previous discussion on experiments with rhesus monkeys on page 255). This experiment studied over a long period the affect of maltreatment on over 400 boys born between 1972-73. They found that children with high-active MAOA gene were virtually immune to maltreatment.
It seems to me that many of these studies give interesting and useful insights but it may take a long time and several different type of studies to come to any suggestion that can be recommended.
http://nomologic.blogspot.com/2006/05/theory-development-as-freak-management.html
made me look at my write up in Telugudanam last year. Here it is:
"Freakonomics" by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner (William Morrow, 2005)seems to be becoming a cult book with its own web site and a column in NewYork Times. I enjoyed the book and though I have some reservations, Irecommend the book. It can be classified under Microeconomics ( thoughsome of the pieces seem to be more like investigative journalism) and startswith a worldview of five general principles, two of which are: "Incentives arethe cornerstones of modern life" and `Knowing what to measure and how tomeasure it makes a complicated world much less so". I will quickly sketch twosmaller pieces in the book.Paul Feldman was an economist working for the US Government, got bored with his job, resigned and started selling bagels. He would deliver bagels tovarious companies in the mornings and come back before lunch to collectleftover bagels and money deposited in boxes. Soon he was delivering 8,400bagels a week to 140 companies. He expected about 95 percent of thepeople to be honest but expected that he could get by even if 80 to 90 percentpeople are honest. It turned out that the percentage 87 and he soon earned more than he did in his previous details.There are some other twists and turns, differences between small and big companies and the affects of 9/11.Check what this has to do with Adam Smith!Another small story is detecting corruption among sumo wrestlers which was difficult because the yazuka threats and the reluctance of the police. Thatthere was corruption was proved just by examining the data which consistedof about 32,000 bouts between 281 wrestlers. A wrestler's ranking and hencehis earning are based on his performance in the elite tournaments held six times an year. In each tournament, there are fifteen bouts and if the wrestler finishes with a winning record (that is at least eight wins) he does not loose his rank and it may rise. So, the first thing that was investigated was the record of the fights of 7-7 wrestlers (7 wins and 7 losses) against 8-6opponents. Statistically (here some technical expertise comes in, but it isnatural to guess that the percentage should be less than 50), the 7-7 wrestleris expected to win 48.7 percent of the time where as they won 79.6 percent ofthe time. Clearly there is some thing funny going on here which warrantedfurther investigation.The chapter I liked most is "Why do drug dealers live with their moms?" basedon Levitt's work with Alladi Sudhir Venkatesh. I have doubts about the next two topics: "Where have all the criminals gone?'and the next two chapters on parenting. For one thing, the conclusions in thetwo chapters seem to contradict each other. The first topic was based on Levitt's own research in which he attributes the decline of violent crime from1990s to the Supreme court ruling in Roe vs Wade and he does not evenmention the follow up papers which did not agree with him. There may be a correalation and may be it just that. There are any number of other theoriesfrom the raise of rap music to reemergence of role models in some ghettos.I get the impression that Levitt has some neat ideas and did some good research ( he won a prize awarded every two years to the best Americaneconomist under forty) and seems to have padded up these with somecareless chapters to make a quick buck. But this is the tendency with many popular books these days. Many educated have disposal incomes and arecurious to know about thing outside the areas of their expertise and there area lot of one idea revelation books (selfish gene etc) by good scientists eithercarried away by their own ideas or trying to make money. I guess we shouldtale all these revelations with a grain of salt.But I like this book. It indicates how even amateurs can study somemicroeconomic problems and problems of corruption. Among the follow upstories in New York Times, there is an interesting story of an Yale economistKeith Chen teaching monkeys how to use money:http://freakonomics.com/times0605col.php
P.S. (June 10, 2006) I may be wrong about "The Selfish Gene". It certainly influenced a generation but the pendulam seems to be swinging back. E.O. Wilson seems to have changed his opinion (?) about group selection and Trivers is back with a new book. More about this later.
Browsing through "Freakonomics" again, I realize why I thought later parts (chapters 5 and 6 on parenting) had contradictory elements. The first part of Chapter 5 is based on Judith Harris' work and is explained in much more detail in Steven Pinker's "The Blank State". If I remember right, Harris's data mainly came from middle class white families. In the later part of Chapter 5 of Freakomomics, the data comes from much wider group of blacks as well as whiltes and of varying economic status. May be that is why the conclusions seemed contradictory.
Apart from this both Levitt and Pinker do not take in to account data given in a 2002 study of Caspi and others described by Matt Ridley in his book "Nature via nurture" pp. 267-269 (see also the previous discussion on experiments with rhesus monkeys on page 255). This experiment studied over a long period the affect of maltreatment on over 400 boys born between 1972-73. They found that children with high-active MAOA gene were virtually immune to maltreatment.
It seems to me that many of these studies give interesting and useful insights but it may take a long time and several different type of studies to come to any suggestion that can be recommended.
Thursday, June 01, 2006
Why blog?
Lyla says that blogging is a bit of cop out; sitting in one's hut like a rishi and waiting for admirers to come in. Far from it. I blog because I am confused and ignorant. After Bush Jr. came to power, I started feeling that one cannot ignore the outside world and pure mathematics started feeling a bit dry.The few sites I tried had arguments, opinions, agendas and rarely discussions. At my age, it is not so easy to learn new things; a bit of science and economics are what I wanted to understand. But then I either only partially understand or keep forgetting. Jotting down partial understanding at intervals seemed a good strategy to keep track of what I am doing. As I go on, I feel that I should revise or delete some of the previous blogs. There are always personal responses from some friends and the very fact that others may look at these seems to put some intensity in to the effort and it seems to help in understanding things a bit better. There is a recent article by Drs. Fernette and Brock Eide:
http://eideneurolearningblog.blogspot.com/2005/03/brain-of-blogger.html
which suggests blogging can be useful.
Actually, now I have found a number of good science blogs and sites like 'gene expression' 'evolutionary-psychology' group site and that lessens the need to blog too often.
Trying to follow the resrvations controvesy, I looked for Indian blogs and sites. Many seem frenetic and could not find much statistics about progress of B/Cs and OBCs in most of the sites. Finally Sujai Karampuri suggested:
http://alternativeperspective.blogspot.com/
which has the explanations for the terminology used and some statistics. From what little I have seen, it seems to be an excellent blog, one of the best blogs that I have seen so far.
Some other blogs in which I have read a few posts and I found interesting:
http://www.theotherindia.org/
http://nanopolitan.blogspot.com/
http://nomologic.blogspot.com/
http://vivekspace.wordpress.com/
If these blogs are any indication, the argumentative Indian is doing much better in blogs than discussion sites. Somehow discussion does not seem to be strong part of Indian culture and many discussion sites seem to gather groups who support each other's prejudices without much information gathering or discussion. Perhaps some of these blogs will act together and develop in to useful discussion groups.
P.S. (1/7/06) I just found out that bloggers are not exempt from bad writing awards:
http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/
http://eideneurolearningblog.blogspot.com/2005/03/brain-of-blogger.html
which suggests blogging can be useful.
Actually, now I have found a number of good science blogs and sites like 'gene expression' 'evolutionary-psychology' group site and that lessens the need to blog too often.
Trying to follow the resrvations controvesy, I looked for Indian blogs and sites. Many seem frenetic and could not find much statistics about progress of B/Cs and OBCs in most of the sites. Finally Sujai Karampuri suggested:
http://alternativeperspective.blogspot.com/
which has the explanations for the terminology used and some statistics. From what little I have seen, it seems to be an excellent blog, one of the best blogs that I have seen so far.
Some other blogs in which I have read a few posts and I found interesting:
http://www.theotherindia.org/
http://nanopolitan.blogspot.com/
http://nomologic.blogspot.com/
http://vivekspace.wordpress.com/
If these blogs are any indication, the argumentative Indian is doing much better in blogs than discussion sites. Somehow discussion does not seem to be strong part of Indian culture and many discussion sites seem to gather groups who support each other's prejudices without much information gathering or discussion. Perhaps some of these blogs will act together and develop in to useful discussion groups.
P.S. (1/7/06) I just found out that bloggers are not exempt from bad writing awards:
http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/
Sunday, May 21, 2006
After the empire
by Emmanuel Todd seems to be an interesting but erratic book with some valid points. Here are some reviews both favourable and critical:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/023113102X/104-8715834-2637564?v=glance&n=283155
http://www.buzzflash.com/hartmann/05/04/har05004.html
http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2006/01/when_jonah_met.php
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091205H.shtml
http://www.europeanaffairs.org/archive/2004_winter/2004_winter_109.php4
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,1143265,00.html
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/185/1/34/
http://dominionpaper.ca/features/2003/07/26/the_concei.html
http://www.countercurrents.org/us-senn080803.htm
Todd seems to be one of the several people who currently see the beginning of the demise of the American empire ( he is also among several who predicted the collapse of the soviet union). As far as I can see, Todd is not anti-American and actually sees several years of American hegemony from the 50’s as beneficial to the world. According to him, the problems are over consumption and dependence on oil, shift from production to financial services, growing trade deficits. Though there were intentions during Carter’s time to lessen oil dependence, the Russian march to Afghanistan again brought USA to the mode of controlling oil supplies. The increase in military spending, imports etc saw the deficit increasing. Todd thinks that the option of militarism (instead of the harder option of less dependence on oil, increase in production rather than over reliance on services) is just a soft option which appealed to some of the conservatives after the collapse of USSR. The result is an empire which cannot afford democracy everywhere since it cannot otherwise maintain its current consumption levels.
There are some studies http://www.slate.com/id/2141595/?nav=fo ( which has a link to a paper by Harvard economists Hausman-Sturzenegger) which argue that the deficit is not really deficit since US is still making money overall. From 23/01/06 report in the Economist:
http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5408129
“Thanks to its chronic trade deficits, it stood $2.5 trillion in the red at the end of 2004. And yet it still somehow manages to earn more on its foreign assets than it pays out to service its much bigger stock of debts: $36.2 billion more in 2004.Most economists conclude that America earns a higher return on its overseas assets (eg, EuroDisney) than foreigners earn on investments in America (eg, Rockefeller Centre). They don their anoraks, immerse themselves in the data and try to work out why this might be so. Messrs Hausmann and Sturzenegger turn the question on its head. It is not the $36.2 billion of income that is the mystery, they say. The anomaly lies in the $2.5 trillion of debt. If America is still coming out ahead of foreigners, then, contrary to popular belief, it must still be a net creditor. America must have more foreign wealth than we can see.The two authors have borrowed a name for this invisible wealth: dark matter. In theoretical physics, dark matter is the stuff in the universe that we can identify only by its gravitational pull. For the Harvard economists, dark matter is foreign wealth, the existence of which we can infer from the income it provides.How much of it is out there? You can calculate a price for an asset from the earnings it provides. Messrs Hausmann and Sturzenegger elect to value America's net foreign assets at 20 times their annual earnings, which corresponds to a 5% rate of return. Valued at this ratio, America's national "portfolio" of foreign assets and liabilities is really worth $724 billion, not minus $2.5 trillion. What is more, if its foreign assets are as stable as the authors say, it follows that "the country has not been running a deficit."Messrs Hausmann and Sturzenegger were the first to name dark matter, but not the first to discover it. In his book, "The United States as a Debtor Nation", published last year, William Cline, of the Institute for International Economics, performed the same calculation, backing out the value of America's net foreign assets from the income they generate. (Instead of calling it dark matter, Mr Cline, evidently not a born marketing man, called it "capitalised net capital income".)Mr Cline agrees with the dark materialists when they say there is "something misleading about calling a country that makes money on its financial position the world's largest debtor". But sadly he does not think Americans can stop worrying. After making $36.2 billion in 2004, America made just $4 billion on its net foreign assets in the first three quarters of 2005. If it continues on its present trajectory, it will shell out about $190 billion in 2010, Mr Cline calculates. Using Messrs Hausmann and Sturzenegger's methodology, America's net foreign assets would then amount to minus $3.8 trillion. A dark matter indeed.Ptaking on PtolemyApart from its name, the dark matter thesis appeals because of its simplicity. Philip Lane, of Trinity College, Dublin, thinks it too simple. It matters, he says, what a nation's foreign wealth is composed of. Foreigners hold a lot of American debt (bonds and bank loans), whereas America holds a lot of foreign equity, especially foreign direct investment (FDI). This has two implications. First, what America pays to foreign creditors depends a lot on interest rates, which have been unusually low in recent years. Second, the value of America's assets depends on the risks they carry. Yet Messrs Hausmann and Sturzenegger apply the same valuation ratio indiscriminately to bonds, equities, trade credits and bank loans on both sides of the balance sheet.That said, there remains a big gap in reported profitability between American FDI and FDI in America that risk alone cannot explain. Perhaps taxes can. To dodge the revenuemen, a multinational company might report artificially high profits in a low-tax jurisdiction abroad. This tax arbitrage, Mr Lane points out, can shift money from one line of the current account to another. But it does not change the size of the deficit one jot.To Messrs Hausmann and Sturzenegger, mainstream attempts to explain away dark matter look a bit desperate. Fond of their cosmological analogies, they liken them to the labours of medieval astronomers, trying to fit anomalous movements of the planets into their Ptolemaic model of the universe.But the authors' thesis raises anomalies of its own. By their own account, dark matter should be stable. It stems from abiding features of the American economy, such as managerial know-how, a prized but uncounted commodity that Americans export to their subsidiaries abroad. But as Ed McKelvey, of Goldman Sachs, points out, America's exports of dark matter seem to jump up and down wildly from year to year: $351 billion in 2004, $1.2 trillion in 2003, just $172 billion in 2002. Dark matter seems to fluctuate at frequencies that are not structural, nor even cyclical. Perhaps they are best described as epicyclical. “
So, in spite of some creative accounting, there is still a problem. Probably, many of the ideas touted by Todd will be disputed just like the above, but there seem to some interesting insights in the book.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/023113102X/104-8715834-2637564?v=glance&n=283155
http://www.buzzflash.com/hartmann/05/04/har05004.html
http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2006/01/when_jonah_met.php
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091205H.shtml
http://www.europeanaffairs.org/archive/2004_winter/2004_winter_109.php4
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,1143265,00.html
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/185/1/34/
http://dominionpaper.ca/features/2003/07/26/the_concei.html
http://www.countercurrents.org/us-senn080803.htm
Todd seems to be one of the several people who currently see the beginning of the demise of the American empire ( he is also among several who predicted the collapse of the soviet union). As far as I can see, Todd is not anti-American and actually sees several years of American hegemony from the 50’s as beneficial to the world. According to him, the problems are over consumption and dependence on oil, shift from production to financial services, growing trade deficits. Though there were intentions during Carter’s time to lessen oil dependence, the Russian march to Afghanistan again brought USA to the mode of controlling oil supplies. The increase in military spending, imports etc saw the deficit increasing. Todd thinks that the option of militarism (instead of the harder option of less dependence on oil, increase in production rather than over reliance on services) is just a soft option which appealed to some of the conservatives after the collapse of USSR. The result is an empire which cannot afford democracy everywhere since it cannot otherwise maintain its current consumption levels.
There are some studies http://www.slate.com/id/2141595/?nav=fo ( which has a link to a paper by Harvard economists Hausman-Sturzenegger) which argue that the deficit is not really deficit since US is still making money overall. From 23/01/06 report in the Economist:
http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5408129
“Thanks to its chronic trade deficits, it stood $2.5 trillion in the red at the end of 2004. And yet it still somehow manages to earn more on its foreign assets than it pays out to service its much bigger stock of debts: $36.2 billion more in 2004.Most economists conclude that America earns a higher return on its overseas assets (eg, EuroDisney) than foreigners earn on investments in America (eg, Rockefeller Centre). They don their anoraks, immerse themselves in the data and try to work out why this might be so. Messrs Hausmann and Sturzenegger turn the question on its head. It is not the $36.2 billion of income that is the mystery, they say. The anomaly lies in the $2.5 trillion of debt. If America is still coming out ahead of foreigners, then, contrary to popular belief, it must still be a net creditor. America must have more foreign wealth than we can see.The two authors have borrowed a name for this invisible wealth: dark matter. In theoretical physics, dark matter is the stuff in the universe that we can identify only by its gravitational pull. For the Harvard economists, dark matter is foreign wealth, the existence of which we can infer from the income it provides.How much of it is out there? You can calculate a price for an asset from the earnings it provides. Messrs Hausmann and Sturzenegger elect to value America's net foreign assets at 20 times their annual earnings, which corresponds to a 5% rate of return. Valued at this ratio, America's national "portfolio" of foreign assets and liabilities is really worth $724 billion, not minus $2.5 trillion. What is more, if its foreign assets are as stable as the authors say, it follows that "the country has not been running a deficit."Messrs Hausmann and Sturzenegger were the first to name dark matter, but not the first to discover it. In his book, "The United States as a Debtor Nation", published last year, William Cline, of the Institute for International Economics, performed the same calculation, backing out the value of America's net foreign assets from the income they generate. (Instead of calling it dark matter, Mr Cline, evidently not a born marketing man, called it "capitalised net capital income".)Mr Cline agrees with the dark materialists when they say there is "something misleading about calling a country that makes money on its financial position the world's largest debtor". But sadly he does not think Americans can stop worrying. After making $36.2 billion in 2004, America made just $4 billion on its net foreign assets in the first three quarters of 2005. If it continues on its present trajectory, it will shell out about $190 billion in 2010, Mr Cline calculates. Using Messrs Hausmann and Sturzenegger's methodology, America's net foreign assets would then amount to minus $3.8 trillion. A dark matter indeed.Ptaking on PtolemyApart from its name, the dark matter thesis appeals because of its simplicity. Philip Lane, of Trinity College, Dublin, thinks it too simple. It matters, he says, what a nation's foreign wealth is composed of. Foreigners hold a lot of American debt (bonds and bank loans), whereas America holds a lot of foreign equity, especially foreign direct investment (FDI). This has two implications. First, what America pays to foreign creditors depends a lot on interest rates, which have been unusually low in recent years. Second, the value of America's assets depends on the risks they carry. Yet Messrs Hausmann and Sturzenegger apply the same valuation ratio indiscriminately to bonds, equities, trade credits and bank loans on both sides of the balance sheet.That said, there remains a big gap in reported profitability between American FDI and FDI in America that risk alone cannot explain. Perhaps taxes can. To dodge the revenuemen, a multinational company might report artificially high profits in a low-tax jurisdiction abroad. This tax arbitrage, Mr Lane points out, can shift money from one line of the current account to another. But it does not change the size of the deficit one jot.To Messrs Hausmann and Sturzenegger, mainstream attempts to explain away dark matter look a bit desperate. Fond of their cosmological analogies, they liken them to the labours of medieval astronomers, trying to fit anomalous movements of the planets into their Ptolemaic model of the universe.But the authors' thesis raises anomalies of its own. By their own account, dark matter should be stable. It stems from abiding features of the American economy, such as managerial know-how, a prized but uncounted commodity that Americans export to their subsidiaries abroad. But as Ed McKelvey, of Goldman Sachs, points out, America's exports of dark matter seem to jump up and down wildly from year to year: $351 billion in 2004, $1.2 trillion in 2003, just $172 billion in 2002. Dark matter seems to fluctuate at frequencies that are not structural, nor even cyclical. Perhaps they are best described as epicyclical. “
So, in spite of some creative accounting, there is still a problem. Probably, many of the ideas touted by Todd will be disputed just like the above, but there seem to some interesting insights in the book.
Monday, May 15, 2006
Remembering Ben Franklin
In these days blogs and websites where everyone seems to be letting himself go, I keep remembering BenjaminFranklin’s words at the Constitutional Convention onSeptember 17, 1787 at the age of 81:“ … for having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought were right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow the more apt I am to doubt my own judgement, and to pay more respect to the judgement ofothers. Most men indeed as well as most sects in religion, think themselves in possession of all truth,and that wherever others differ from them it is so fare rror….”
He goes on to say:“… I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general government necessary for us, there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered; and I believe further that this is likely to be well administered for several years, and can only end in despotism as other forms before it,when people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.”
I wonder whether some form continuous revolution building social capital through citizen forums is the only hope.
He goes on to say:“… I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general government necessary for us, there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered; and I believe further that this is likely to be well administered for several years, and can only end in despotism as other forms before it,when people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.”
I wonder whether some form continuous revolution building social capital through citizen forums is the only hope.
Monday, May 08, 2006
Tunnel vision
In a wonderful essay “Who is in charge?” (the first chapter of Paul Seabright’s “The Company of strangers: a natural history of economic life”) Seabright defines ‘tunnel vision’ as the capacity to play one’s part in the great complex enterprise of creating prosperity of a modern society without knowing or necessarily caring very much about the overall outcome. He gives the delightful example of how the economy works when one buys a shirt; essentially nobody is in charge. This seems to be a fact of modern life, we get some training with the view of making a living and somehow do not have to worry about all the factors of modern economic life. Often, it is difficult to know all the changing factors of supply, demand politics of various nation states. If we are reasonably successful, we may even develop an arrogance of the right way to do things. However, when your kith and kin start committing suicides because farming is failing in some places despite the great developments in technology, or when there are wars or when you are in a decision making position you start wondering and feel inadequate. This sort of ignorance and tunnel vision seems to be a common phenomenon partly because we lack good all round education and the new developments are, even those which can affect our daily lives are not quickly assimilated. The ignorance of many developments in science seems widespread. Even among university professors, you see many who do not know the difference between bacteria and virus, or DNA and RNA or the suitable age for language learning or the problems of pregnancy for mother and child, just to name a few. We generally have vague ideas about communism and democracy but not much more. We often talk about culture but it just seems to mean a few traditions and rituals. Here is a passage from Edge http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/selfish06/selfish06_index.html:
“In the twentieth century, a period of great scientific advancement, instead of having science and technology at the center of the intellectual world — of having a unity in which scholarship included science and technology along with literature and art — the official culture kicked them out. Traditional humanities scholars looked at science and technology as some sort of technical special product. Elite universities nudged science out of the liberal arts undergraduate curriculum — and out of the minds of many young people, who, as the new academic establishment, so marginalized themselves that they are no longer within shouting distance of the action.
Yet it's the products of this educational system that go straight from their desks at university literary magazines to their offices in the heart of the cultural establishment at our leading newspapers, magazines, and publishers. It's a problem that's systemic and not individual. Unless one is pursuing a career path in science, it is extremely difficult for a non-science major at a top research university to graduate with anything approaching what can be considered an education in science. I recently talked with a noted Italian intellectual, who is as familiar with string theory and as he is with Dante, and writes about both in his philosophical novels. In appraising this situation, he argued for restraint and compassion. "They just don't know," he sighed, "they just don't know." He might well have added, they don't even know that they don't know.
Somebody needs to tell them. Otherwise, we wind up with the center of culture based on a closed system, a process of text in/text out, and no empirical contact with the real world. One can only marvel at, for example, art critics who know nothing about visual perception; "social constructionist" literary critics uninterested in the human universals documented by anthropologists; opponents of genetically modified foods, additives, and pesticide residues who are ignorant of genetics and evolutionary biology.”
In a recent artcle in The Guardian, Ian McEwan says:
“I say all this somewhat dutifully, because there actually is a special pleasure to be shared, when a scientist or science writer leads us towards the light of a powerful idea which in turn opens avenues of exploration and discovery leading far into the future, binding many different phenomena in many different fields of study. Some might call this truth. It has an aesthetic value that is not to be found in Galen's confident and muddled assertions about the nature of disease. For example, there is something of the luminous quality of great literature when the 29-year-old Charles Darwin, just two years back from his Beagle voyage and 21 years before he will publish The Origin of Species, confides to a pocket note-book the first hints of a simple, beautiful idea: "Origin of man now proved ... He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke””.
This brings me to ruminate about the role of ‘elite’ in a society
and the uses of literature and writing in general; whether it can bring social change etc etc. I am not very literary; I just remember a few lines here and there both in Telugu and English. They come unannounced giving a brief moment of pleasure or pain or wonder and then go away for a while. From what little I know, literature, if at all was used at least until the 20th century, to preserve the hegemony of the privileged classes and thus preventing social change rather than encouraging social change for the betterment of all. If one wants to know the power of the medium, one has only to look at the polls in various countries about the WMDs in Iraq; still 85 percent of the American soldiers in Iraq believe that Saddam Hussain had WMDs. Some say that if one reads various Telugu classics, one can find about the life of people in those times or history as people lived; may be not in terms of dates etc. but their aspirations. Some of the books I read did not give me much more than glimpses in to court life and sringaram. The book “Castes of mind” by Nicholas Dirks gave a bit more. Widows in the Nayaka period could remarry in temples and when the management of temples passed to different groups during the British period and women were barred from entering the same temples. Things seemed better in Tamilnadu for Khushboo’s ancestors some centuries ago. Coming back to sringaram, nuanced lines like ‘gopee peena payaodhara mardita chanchala karayugasalee’ gives me the image of an aged debaucher in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease. Whereas lines like “Akasamuna harivillu viriste adi makenani anandinche papallara, puvullara’ brings me the scene of happy and innocent children; a scene that I feel should be preserved.( But the very next day I hear reports of Iraqi children playing among war debris and depleted uranium.) Even meaningless lines “Go and catch a falling star” or “Find which wind serves to advance an honest mind” bring moments of happiness. Or a line like “No man is an island” brings visions of an eternal truth which is confirmed more and more by science. For a Telangana farmer ‘it may be a line like “Bamdenuka bamdi katti..” and for a village woman it may be a dampudu pata or tummeda pata. For educated people, it may be a line of Srisri “Kharidu gatte sharabu ledoyi’ which brings a temporary empathy for a factory worker. It seems difficult to calculate these ephemeral feelings over populations and see whether they have brought or likely to bring any social change. What all I can say from my experience is that they sustain me like they sustained many poor and rich people from time immemorial. To ask for their use seems to be like asking whether the time we spend with family and friends has any use.
Does this all mean that there is no point looking for any changes through literature or writing in general. I am not so sure and I think one should try. After all one of the advantages of sound and word is to convey things which cannot always be conveyed rationally. There are perhaps atavistic memories. Scientists have been able to instil fear of snakes in monkeys raised in zoos but only temporarily the fear of flowers. Some have the gift to find some of these essences and convey them through perhaps an unconscious grasp of word and sound. But there is a lot of change in what has to be conveyed. Though some things seem eternal, science continually comes up with surprising confirmations as well as hints of new revelations. This has been prominent in the recent years through the work of people like Trivers and Hamilton, Boyd and Richerson, Cosimides and Tooby, Richard Putnam, Fehr, Hrdy and others which have brought new insights to cognition, empathy, parochialism, cooperation etc. I do not see how writers go on with primitive notions of Marxism, feminism etc without taking these new studies in to account. I think in these times of too much information, this is the challenge to writers: to assimilate the new discoveries, incorporate them with the earlier insights and present them using the magic of language in a form that common people can understand or at least get a feel to sustain them and to ‘improve’ their lives. I had only glimpses of the work of the above people through the writings Jarred Diamond, Herbert Gintis, Matt Ridley and through google search.
Swarup
“In the twentieth century, a period of great scientific advancement, instead of having science and technology at the center of the intellectual world — of having a unity in which scholarship included science and technology along with literature and art — the official culture kicked them out. Traditional humanities scholars looked at science and technology as some sort of technical special product. Elite universities nudged science out of the liberal arts undergraduate curriculum — and out of the minds of many young people, who, as the new academic establishment, so marginalized themselves that they are no longer within shouting distance of the action.
Yet it's the products of this educational system that go straight from their desks at university literary magazines to their offices in the heart of the cultural establishment at our leading newspapers, magazines, and publishers. It's a problem that's systemic and not individual. Unless one is pursuing a career path in science, it is extremely difficult for a non-science major at a top research university to graduate with anything approaching what can be considered an education in science. I recently talked with a noted Italian intellectual, who is as familiar with string theory and as he is with Dante, and writes about both in his philosophical novels. In appraising this situation, he argued for restraint and compassion. "They just don't know," he sighed, "they just don't know." He might well have added, they don't even know that they don't know.
Somebody needs to tell them. Otherwise, we wind up with the center of culture based on a closed system, a process of text in/text out, and no empirical contact with the real world. One can only marvel at, for example, art critics who know nothing about visual perception; "social constructionist" literary critics uninterested in the human universals documented by anthropologists; opponents of genetically modified foods, additives, and pesticide residues who are ignorant of genetics and evolutionary biology.”
In a recent artcle in The Guardian, Ian McEwan says:
“I say all this somewhat dutifully, because there actually is a special pleasure to be shared, when a scientist or science writer leads us towards the light of a powerful idea which in turn opens avenues of exploration and discovery leading far into the future, binding many different phenomena in many different fields of study. Some might call this truth. It has an aesthetic value that is not to be found in Galen's confident and muddled assertions about the nature of disease. For example, there is something of the luminous quality of great literature when the 29-year-old Charles Darwin, just two years back from his Beagle voyage and 21 years before he will publish The Origin of Species, confides to a pocket note-book the first hints of a simple, beautiful idea: "Origin of man now proved ... He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke””.
This brings me to ruminate about the role of ‘elite’ in a society
and the uses of literature and writing in general; whether it can bring social change etc etc. I am not very literary; I just remember a few lines here and there both in Telugu and English. They come unannounced giving a brief moment of pleasure or pain or wonder and then go away for a while. From what little I know, literature, if at all was used at least until the 20th century, to preserve the hegemony of the privileged classes and thus preventing social change rather than encouraging social change for the betterment of all. If one wants to know the power of the medium, one has only to look at the polls in various countries about the WMDs in Iraq; still 85 percent of the American soldiers in Iraq believe that Saddam Hussain had WMDs. Some say that if one reads various Telugu classics, one can find about the life of people in those times or history as people lived; may be not in terms of dates etc. but their aspirations. Some of the books I read did not give me much more than glimpses in to court life and sringaram. The book “Castes of mind” by Nicholas Dirks gave a bit more. Widows in the Nayaka period could remarry in temples and when the management of temples passed to different groups during the British period and women were barred from entering the same temples. Things seemed better in Tamilnadu for Khushboo’s ancestors some centuries ago. Coming back to sringaram, nuanced lines like ‘gopee peena payaodhara mardita chanchala karayugasalee’ gives me the image of an aged debaucher in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease. Whereas lines like “Akasamuna harivillu viriste adi makenani anandinche papallara, puvullara’ brings me the scene of happy and innocent children; a scene that I feel should be preserved.( But the very next day I hear reports of Iraqi children playing among war debris and depleted uranium.) Even meaningless lines “Go and catch a falling star” or “Find which wind serves to advance an honest mind” bring moments of happiness. Or a line like “No man is an island” brings visions of an eternal truth which is confirmed more and more by science. For a Telangana farmer ‘it may be a line like “Bamdenuka bamdi katti..” and for a village woman it may be a dampudu pata or tummeda pata. For educated people, it may be a line of Srisri “Kharidu gatte sharabu ledoyi’ which brings a temporary empathy for a factory worker. It seems difficult to calculate these ephemeral feelings over populations and see whether they have brought or likely to bring any social change. What all I can say from my experience is that they sustain me like they sustained many poor and rich people from time immemorial. To ask for their use seems to be like asking whether the time we spend with family and friends has any use.
Does this all mean that there is no point looking for any changes through literature or writing in general. I am not so sure and I think one should try. After all one of the advantages of sound and word is to convey things which cannot always be conveyed rationally. There are perhaps atavistic memories. Scientists have been able to instil fear of snakes in monkeys raised in zoos but only temporarily the fear of flowers. Some have the gift to find some of these essences and convey them through perhaps an unconscious grasp of word and sound. But there is a lot of change in what has to be conveyed. Though some things seem eternal, science continually comes up with surprising confirmations as well as hints of new revelations. This has been prominent in the recent years through the work of people like Trivers and Hamilton, Boyd and Richerson, Cosimides and Tooby, Richard Putnam, Fehr, Hrdy and others which have brought new insights to cognition, empathy, parochialism, cooperation etc. I do not see how writers go on with primitive notions of Marxism, feminism etc without taking these new studies in to account. I think in these times of too much information, this is the challenge to writers: to assimilate the new discoveries, incorporate them with the earlier insights and present them using the magic of language in a form that common people can understand or at least get a feel to sustain them and to ‘improve’ their lives. I had only glimpses of the work of the above people through the writings Jarred Diamond, Herbert Gintis, Matt Ridley and through google search.
Swarup
Monday, March 27, 2006
Two pop science books
Among the several popular science books that have been coming out during the last few decades, two of the easiest to read are Bill Bryson’s “A short history of everything” and Robin Dunbar’s ‘The human story”. Bryson is a journalist-writer of several popular books who suddenly realized one day that he did not know much about the physical (and biological world) and spent 3-4 years reading and talking to experts and produced a very readable book about earth, cosmos, evolution etc. It is one of those books that cannot be put down and gives a quick view of our world. It has won Aventis prize and is a best seller. Robin Dunbar is a scientist who has written a few popular books and is probably best known for Dunbar number which gives a limit to the number of individuals with whom any person (in a species) can maintain stable relationships. His theory is that this is limited by the mental capacity which in turn measured by the neocortex size. For humans this number (the mean) is supposed to be 150. For a discussion of this number with respect to online communities, see: http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/03/the_dunbar_numb.html
Dunbar develops similar ideas about mind, music and culture which are somewhat speculative but insightful. In the early part of the book, there is a quick review of human origins(out of Africa theory) and human aggression. Some of it is hard science from several disciplines and some speculative but overall a very readable book giving glimpses of our origins and instincts and a taste of some of the recent research. Similar ideas backed by more quantitative research seems necessary to understand economic matters described in Paul Seabright’s “The Company of Strangers: a ntural history of economic life”.
Swarup
I will be away on a trip until May 15. I hope to return to these topics when I come back.
Dunbar develops similar ideas about mind, music and culture which are somewhat speculative but insightful. In the early part of the book, there is a quick review of human origins(out of Africa theory) and human aggression. Some of it is hard science from several disciplines and some speculative but overall a very readable book giving glimpses of our origins and instincts and a taste of some of the recent research. Similar ideas backed by more quantitative research seems necessary to understand economic matters described in Paul Seabright’s “The Company of Strangers: a ntural history of economic life”.
Swarup
I will be away on a trip until May 15. I hope to return to these topics when I come back.
Friday, March 10, 2006
Matt Ridley
Jo has been complaining that I have not written anything for a couple of months. I was planning to write a bit more about Heilbronner’s book on capitalism and Jeffrey Sachs’ book on the end of poverty. Slowly itseemed that big solutions like Sachs’ may suffer fromcorruption and bureaucracy and perhaps such solutions are temporary if there are no cultural changes. Thereare such criticisms by Easterley and others:
http://72.14.203.104/search q=cache:0nQnUijF4hEJ:wwwc.house.gov/international_re\lations/109/bat063005.pdf+William+Easterley&hl=en&gl=au&ct=clnk&cd=27&ie=UTF-8
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/03/opinion/03easterly.html?ex=1138856400&en=5630a\1f66d1fb058&ei=5070
http://imaginingaustralia.blogs.com/imagining/2005/07/end_of_poverty.html
Heilbronner’s book might have been topical when it was written but now it is agreed that most of us are living in some kind of capitalist states. Since capitalism is supposed to be driven by greed and status which somehow are magically adjusted by some invisible hand, it seemed a good idea to read a bit about human nature. And I got stuck in sociobiology etc for a while. Then I found Matt Ridley’s book “Nature via nurture” in a sale and this seems to give a start on some of these topics. It is difficult to agree with some of Ridley’s extrapolations and conclusions but there is no doubt that he is a wonderful science writer. There are anumber of facts and discussions in both “Nature via nurture” and “The origins of virtue” which might have made a difference to me if I had known them earlier.Every chapter is thought provoking and can be used for further discussion and study in either a class room or a group. I think that the purpose of this kind of semi-popular books is not always to give definitive answers. If the authors can present interesting topics which people can understand and enjoy and leads to them to think further on those topics, it is worthwhile. I think that Matt Ridley succeeds in this if my example is any guide. There are good critical reviews of both the books of Ridley by H. Allen Orr. Some links are in : http://www.tsujiru.net/?p=209 for reviews of “The origins of virtue”:“The softer side of sociobiology”and the exchange with Herbert Gintis. Allen Orr discusses variants of Prisoner' dilemma in some detail and Herbert Gintis discusses the Public-goods experiments. These go some way in hinting the origins of empathy, reciprocity which are problematic in theories of capitalism and rational choices. A more enthusiastic review of “The origins of virtue” by Solloway is in the New York Review ofBooks. A critical review of “Nature via nurture: byAllen Orr is in the same journal. I am sold on Ridley and will probably read his "Red Queen" and "Genome".
It seems that studyof reciprocity has been a big research topic in the recent years. There are about 200 references to books and papers on related topics in the article “Unifying Behavioral Sciences” by Herbert Gintis ( available athttp://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~gintis/). There is also a discussion in a different context of Public-goods experiments in Chapter 5 of “War and peace and war” by Peter Turchin. With this weak response to Jo, I go back to struggle with the Herbert Glintis ‘ article.
http://72.14.203.104/search q=cache:0nQnUijF4hEJ:wwwc.house.gov/international_re\lations/109/bat063005.pdf+William+Easterley&hl=en&gl=au&ct=clnk&cd=27&ie=UTF-8
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/03/opinion/03easterly.html?ex=1138856400&en=5630a\1f66d1fb058&ei=5070
http://imaginingaustralia.blogs.com/imagining/2005/07/end_of_poverty.html
Heilbronner’s book might have been topical when it was written but now it is agreed that most of us are living in some kind of capitalist states. Since capitalism is supposed to be driven by greed and status which somehow are magically adjusted by some invisible hand, it seemed a good idea to read a bit about human nature. And I got stuck in sociobiology etc for a while. Then I found Matt Ridley’s book “Nature via nurture” in a sale and this seems to give a start on some of these topics. It is difficult to agree with some of Ridley’s extrapolations and conclusions but there is no doubt that he is a wonderful science writer. There are anumber of facts and discussions in both “Nature via nurture” and “The origins of virtue” which might have made a difference to me if I had known them earlier.Every chapter is thought provoking and can be used for further discussion and study in either a class room or a group. I think that the purpose of this kind of semi-popular books is not always to give definitive answers. If the authors can present interesting topics which people can understand and enjoy and leads to them to think further on those topics, it is worthwhile. I think that Matt Ridley succeeds in this if my example is any guide. There are good critical reviews of both the books of Ridley by H. Allen Orr. Some links are in : http://www.tsujiru.net/?p=209 for reviews of “The origins of virtue”:“The softer side of sociobiology”and the exchange with Herbert Gintis. Allen Orr discusses variants of Prisoner' dilemma in some detail and Herbert Gintis discusses the Public-goods experiments. These go some way in hinting the origins of empathy, reciprocity which are problematic in theories of capitalism and rational choices. A more enthusiastic review of “The origins of virtue” by Solloway is in the New York Review ofBooks. A critical review of “Nature via nurture: byAllen Orr is in the same journal. I am sold on Ridley and will probably read his "Red Queen" and "Genome".
It seems that studyof reciprocity has been a big research topic in the recent years. There are about 200 references to books and papers on related topics in the article “Unifying Behavioral Sciences” by Herbert Gintis ( available athttp://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~gintis/). There is also a discussion in a different context of Public-goods experiments in Chapter 5 of “War and peace and war” by Peter Turchin. With this weak response to Jo, I go back to struggle with the Herbert Glintis ‘ article.
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