From Sydney Morning Herald:
A 2800-KILOMETRE wildlife corridor will be established along almost the entire east coast of Australia, allowing plants and animals to move as climate changes.
State and federal governments, led by NSW, have agreed that the plan is one of the nation's highest environmental priorities for this year.
The outgoing state Environment Minister, Bob Debus, will announce first-stage funding of $7 million worth of incentives to private landowners.
The money will be spent restoring and maintaining land along the Great Eastern Ranges corridor. The Government promises there will be no compulsory acquisitions.
Instead, private landholders will be encouraged to undertake land care works and sign voluntary conservation agreements. Planning instruments would also be reformed to ensure that connections between ecosystems are maintained and restored when development decisions are made.
"We have to create, protect and restore ecological corridors that will allow species to move, and to find new areas of sanctuary," Mr Debus told the Herald.
Currently, much of the state's reserve system has become isolated - islands of conservation from which species cannot move as the world warms. Nearly two-thirds of the state's threatened species are found along the land the corridor would encompass.
Presently, however, many of these species will be stranded as the climate changes.
Last year the Bureau of Meteorology estimated that the current rate of global warming was the equivalent of a town moving northwards 100 kilometres each year.
The corridor would also improve the management of the nation's most economically significant watersheds, including the Murray and the Darling.
"To do what we can in this country to help avoid the threat of mass global warming-induced extinction, I believe we must look to better protect the ecological integrity of this 2800-kilometre corridor," Mr Debus said.
The Australian Bush Heritage Fund will announce the acquisition of the first property specifically identified as part of the corridor. Scottsdale is 1300 hectares south of Canberra at Bredbo, taking in critical platypus and native fish habitat in the Murrumbidgee River, vast native grasslands, dry sclerophyll forest and numerous endangered species. It will be crucial in helping to close a gap not only in the Great Eastern Ranges corridor but also another proposed connection between Kosciuszco and the coast.
The Australian Bush Heritage Fund is a non-profit organisation that buys high-conservation land with donations from the public and government. It has formed partnerships with the NSW Department of Environment and Conservation, other agencies and community groups to establish wildlife corridors.
The co-ordinator of the project with the Bush Heritage Fund, Stuart Cowell, said it was not possible to rely only on reserves to guarantee the long-term survival of species. "We need to work with other landholders," he said. "It's becoming more essential that we give species and ecological communities room to move."
The governments' proposed initiative will stretch from the Victorian Alps through to Atherton in Queensland and will include existing national parks, state forests and other Crown land. Currently, however, the corridor is broken by hundreds if not thousands of private properties. The hardest links to restore are expected to be in the Upper Hunter and parts of Queensland, where large tracts of land have been cleared for agriculture. Once complete, the Alps to Atherton wildlife corridor will be among the longest in the world.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Corporate Buccaneers in UK
FromCorporate Buccaneers... in the Guardian:
" "It is about extracting as much as you can as quickly as you can," says Karel Williams at Manchester Business School. "It is part of a broader series of changes in capitalism. These intermediary groups, like private equity and hedge fund managers, are able to enrich themselves in ways thought unimaginable a few years ago.
"The ultimate question is whether this behaviour becomes normalised and accepted. This is a socio-cultural change. The culture of naked self-interest among private equity managers is characteristic of the elites in third world countries." "
" "It is about extracting as much as you can as quickly as you can," says Karel Williams at Manchester Business School. "It is part of a broader series of changes in capitalism. These intermediary groups, like private equity and hedge fund managers, are able to enrich themselves in ways thought unimaginable a few years ago.
"The ultimate question is whether this behaviour becomes normalised and accepted. This is a socio-cultural change. The culture of naked self-interest among private equity managers is characteristic of the elites in third world countries." "
Kishore Mahbubani on India
The latest from CASI occasional papers, is a talk by Ambassador Kishore Mahbubani, Dean, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore:
"Will India Emerge as an Eastern or Western Power?" Occasional Paper No. 27. It is interesting to see the comments by a ethnic Indian of different nationality. There ia lot of feel good stuff in the talk. Some excerpts from the questions and answers session;
"Q: Let me offer a different view and get a reaction. Is it possible that we are all just
overreacting? If you turn the clock back to thirty-three years ago, the Soviet Union was an alternative pole perhaps, comparable to Islam in some ways, you had the Mai Lai disaster which was comparable to Guantanamo, you had a president of the United States who effectively almost had been impeached, and that too passed, and the West maintained a position of leadership for several decades back at a similar position. Is it conceivable that this too shall pass and perhaps pass quickly?
KM: Yes, that’s actually a very good question. I tell my Asian friends that the biggest danger they face is Asian triumphalism. Asian countries will take at least thirty to forty years more, at least. They haven’t arrived yet. China has got to make this tremendous transformation of its political system. It is not going to be easy. It’s going to be very difficult, very painful. Indeed along the way it’s quite conceivable that China may well stumble, and I think it’s also true of the other countries. Even India can stumble once or twice in its effort to get there, like other countries did. But they say you cannot make predictions about the future except in one dimension. If you can measure the amount of snow that’s fallen in the Himalayas, if you have enough information you can predict the level of floods in the Ganges six months later because there’s a correlation between the amount of snow that has fallen and the flood levels in the Ganges. Now a lot of snow has fallen on Asia already. The huge transformation in Asia is that the number of young people in Asia are the largest in the world. Europe literally has very few young people, and India has this huge demographic pool of young people. That’s one fact. That’s a fact, it’s a concrete reality. The second concrete reality is that this young generation is the most confident young generation of Asians seen in centuries. They believe tomorrow will be better than today. They believe that tomorrow is theirs, and that shift in mindset motivates you in a dramatic fashion. I think this explains fundamentally the tremendous energy you see in both China and India and the other Asian countries, too. ...."
"Q: .......On a more serious note, in terms of the moral dimension, in which the West has suffered a loss,especially the United States in the wake of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and other sorts of sad excesses, I have been very struck by something that I think is emerging in India in conversations that I’ve had with business leaders and social leaders over the last year. I think it is very interesting to look at the politics of inclusion that you were just talking about and the necessity of inclusiveness in the institutions of global order. India has been one of the champions of pushing for that, whether it’s in the WTO or the United Nations. Across the board India has been a leader of the nonaligned movement in previous decades, but domestically the politics of inclusion and a paradigm of inclusion have become very current in India. I can’t tell you the number of leading CEOs that I have spoken to recently who have talked about the importance of equity and of making sure that India’s economic takeoff includes all of the population. As Mukesh Ambani said to me, we have to do something that no one in the world has been able to do, and that is to grow equitably. I’ve heard this over and over again and I just wondered if you could comment on whether Asia is really the center of gravity as the world moves toward Asia materially, and what is the possibility of coming up with something that goes past Fukuyama’s final moment of history of Western liberalism in some kind of a new model that includes capitalism in some way but differently?
KM: ….
But the good news is that the great values of Western civilization, the enormous regard for human self-worth, the idea that every individual matters, are being adopted. Incidentally one reason why China and India are thriving today is because finally the Chinese and Indians also came to realize that the people at the very bottom are resources and not burdens. That’s a Western idea that has been captured by China and India. So many of the great Western values I believe should become universal values, but for them to become the universal values, the West must stop portraying them as Western values, the West should say that these are human values and we are all working together to defend not Western civilization but human civilization. Once the West speaks in that way, then I think it can be done, then the differences will disappear."
"Will India Emerge as an Eastern or Western Power?" Occasional Paper No. 27. It is interesting to see the comments by a ethnic Indian of different nationality. There ia lot of feel good stuff in the talk. Some excerpts from the questions and answers session;
"Q: Let me offer a different view and get a reaction. Is it possible that we are all just
overreacting? If you turn the clock back to thirty-three years ago, the Soviet Union was an alternative pole perhaps, comparable to Islam in some ways, you had the Mai Lai disaster which was comparable to Guantanamo, you had a president of the United States who effectively almost had been impeached, and that too passed, and the West maintained a position of leadership for several decades back at a similar position. Is it conceivable that this too shall pass and perhaps pass quickly?
KM: Yes, that’s actually a very good question. I tell my Asian friends that the biggest danger they face is Asian triumphalism. Asian countries will take at least thirty to forty years more, at least. They haven’t arrived yet. China has got to make this tremendous transformation of its political system. It is not going to be easy. It’s going to be very difficult, very painful. Indeed along the way it’s quite conceivable that China may well stumble, and I think it’s also true of the other countries. Even India can stumble once or twice in its effort to get there, like other countries did. But they say you cannot make predictions about the future except in one dimension. If you can measure the amount of snow that’s fallen in the Himalayas, if you have enough information you can predict the level of floods in the Ganges six months later because there’s a correlation between the amount of snow that has fallen and the flood levels in the Ganges. Now a lot of snow has fallen on Asia already. The huge transformation in Asia is that the number of young people in Asia are the largest in the world. Europe literally has very few young people, and India has this huge demographic pool of young people. That’s one fact. That’s a fact, it’s a concrete reality. The second concrete reality is that this young generation is the most confident young generation of Asians seen in centuries. They believe tomorrow will be better than today. They believe that tomorrow is theirs, and that shift in mindset motivates you in a dramatic fashion. I think this explains fundamentally the tremendous energy you see in both China and India and the other Asian countries, too. ...."
"Q: .......On a more serious note, in terms of the moral dimension, in which the West has suffered a loss,especially the United States in the wake of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and other sorts of sad excesses, I have been very struck by something that I think is emerging in India in conversations that I’ve had with business leaders and social leaders over the last year. I think it is very interesting to look at the politics of inclusion that you were just talking about and the necessity of inclusiveness in the institutions of global order. India has been one of the champions of pushing for that, whether it’s in the WTO or the United Nations. Across the board India has been a leader of the nonaligned movement in previous decades, but domestically the politics of inclusion and a paradigm of inclusion have become very current in India. I can’t tell you the number of leading CEOs that I have spoken to recently who have talked about the importance of equity and of making sure that India’s economic takeoff includes all of the population. As Mukesh Ambani said to me, we have to do something that no one in the world has been able to do, and that is to grow equitably. I’ve heard this over and over again and I just wondered if you could comment on whether Asia is really the center of gravity as the world moves toward Asia materially, and what is the possibility of coming up with something that goes past Fukuyama’s final moment of history of Western liberalism in some kind of a new model that includes capitalism in some way but differently?
KM: ….
But the good news is that the great values of Western civilization, the enormous regard for human self-worth, the idea that every individual matters, are being adopted. Incidentally one reason why China and India are thriving today is because finally the Chinese and Indians also came to realize that the people at the very bottom are resources and not burdens. That’s a Western idea that has been captured by China and India. So many of the great Western values I believe should become universal values, but for them to become the universal values, the West must stop portraying them as Western values, the West should say that these are human values and we are all working together to defend not Western civilization but human civilization. Once the West speaks in that way, then I think it can be done, then the differences will disappear."
More on Auden
From The New York Sun via 3quarksdaily:
"By 1939, Auden had grown tired of being the most contemporary of poets, an antenna for his generation. "
May be this is the appeal of artists like Auden and Bob Dylan (Even John Howard used to like Bob Dylan). Continued:
"Rather, Auden's breaking of his own style now looks like one of the key moral gestures of 20th-century English literature. Auden was one of the first great writers to recognize that, after World War II, the modernist vision — with its abstractions and myths, its glamorizing of danger and sacrifice — was no longer sustainable. Poetry, to be credible in a new world, had to be ethical in a new way: scrupulous about its claims, its concepts, even its language."
"By 1939, Auden had grown tired of being the most contemporary of poets, an antenna for his generation. "
May be this is the appeal of artists like Auden and Bob Dylan (Even John Howard used to like Bob Dylan). Continued:
"Rather, Auden's breaking of his own style now looks like one of the key moral gestures of 20th-century English literature. Auden was one of the first great writers to recognize that, after World War II, the modernist vision — with its abstractions and myths, its glamorizing of danger and sacrifice — was no longer sustainable. Poetry, to be credible in a new world, had to be ethical in a new way: scrupulous about its claims, its concepts, even its language."
Friday, February 23, 2007
Mothers again
From BBC news:
"Chimpanzees in Senegal have been observed making and using wooden spears to hunt other primates, according to a study in the journal Current Biology.
.......
Adult males have long been regarded as the hunters in chimp groups.
But the authors of the paper in Current Biology said females, particularly adolescent females, and young chimps in general were seen exhibiting this behaviour more frequently than adult males.
"It's classic in primates that when there is a new innovation, particularly in terms of tool use, the younger generations pick it up very quickly. The last ones to pick up are adults, mainly the males", said Dr Pruetz, who led the National Geographic-funded project.
This is because young chimps pick the skill up from their mothers, with whom they spend a lot of their time."
"Chimpanzees in Senegal have been observed making and using wooden spears to hunt other primates, according to a study in the journal Current Biology.
.......
Adult males have long been regarded as the hunters in chimp groups.
But the authors of the paper in Current Biology said females, particularly adolescent females, and young chimps in general were seen exhibiting this behaviour more frequently than adult males.
"It's classic in primates that when there is a new innovation, particularly in terms of tool use, the younger generations pick it up very quickly. The last ones to pick up are adults, mainly the males", said Dr Pruetz, who led the National Geographic-funded project.
This is because young chimps pick the skill up from their mothers, with whom they spend a lot of their time."
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
From scidev.net
There is usually interesting developmental news at scidev. net and you can get updates by registering here.
From this article onIndian scientists:
"Indian scientists must engage in policymaking by contributing more to public discussions on scientific and environmental issues, says a Nature editorial.
A few nongovernmental organisations in India, such as the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), have enormous influence on public opinion and policy in the country.
But some scientists complain that this impact is disproportionate to the thoroughness and reliability of the organisations' work.
The editorial says these grumbling scientists would do better to look at their own involvement in public debate and ask themselves whether their influence reflects their expertise.
According to the CSE, Indian scientists often have a low opinion of and do not participate in the public discussions accompanying science policymaking, instead preferring to concentrate on improving their status among peers.
From Gene deleting tool for safer crops?:
"If this technique is applied successsfully to other crops, it could allow farmers to grow non-transgenic and fully viable plants using seeds or pollen from GM plants — unlike the terminator gene system, which makes the plants infertile."
From this article on phones and biofuel
:"Access to electricity in rural areas is typically poor. By producing biofuel energy from organic matter, rural communities could sell it to the mobile phone companies, powering base stations that receive and transmit wireless signals.
Two pilot schemes are currently underway in Lagos, Nigeria and Pune, India, to try powering GSM networks with biofuels. GSM is a digital standard for mobile phones used by more than two billion people worldwide.
...
In Lagos, soy oil biodiesel is being used to power a suburban base station owned by MTN in a six-month trial. The study in Pune will use cotton and the hedge plant jatropha, according to a BBC report."
For more on Jatropha, see Jatropha in India
For news on an Indian pioneer on biofuel, see Vulluvar's post.
From this article onIndian scientists:
"Indian scientists must engage in policymaking by contributing more to public discussions on scientific and environmental issues, says a Nature editorial.
A few nongovernmental organisations in India, such as the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), have enormous influence on public opinion and policy in the country.
But some scientists complain that this impact is disproportionate to the thoroughness and reliability of the organisations' work.
The editorial says these grumbling scientists would do better to look at their own involvement in public debate and ask themselves whether their influence reflects their expertise.
According to the CSE, Indian scientists often have a low opinion of and do not participate in the public discussions accompanying science policymaking, instead preferring to concentrate on improving their status among peers.
From Gene deleting tool for safer crops?:
"If this technique is applied successsfully to other crops, it could allow farmers to grow non-transgenic and fully viable plants using seeds or pollen from GM plants — unlike the terminator gene system, which makes the plants infertile."
From this article on phones and biofuel
:"Access to electricity in rural areas is typically poor. By producing biofuel energy from organic matter, rural communities could sell it to the mobile phone companies, powering base stations that receive and transmit wireless signals.
Two pilot schemes are currently underway in Lagos, Nigeria and Pune, India, to try powering GSM networks with biofuels. GSM is a digital standard for mobile phones used by more than two billion people worldwide.
...
In Lagos, soy oil biodiesel is being used to power a suburban base station owned by MTN in a six-month trial. The study in Pune will use cotton and the hedge plant jatropha, according to a BBC report."
For more on Jatropha, see Jatropha in India
For news on an Indian pioneer on biofuel, see Vulluvar's post.
From the New Scientist
From New York Times to Mark Thoma's site, more and more articles are appearing which many may consider leftist. Hopefully, as Daniel Bell said, the age of big ideologies is over and many are discussing issue by issue for the general good. In this direction are the current editorials in New Scientist (20th February, 2007). Recently there has been condemnation of Indonesia, including in some of the science blogs, for withholding birdflu samples. The editorial (unfortunately needs subscription) supports Indonesia's stand:
"In a fair world, Indonesia would send its virus to the best labs and share in any vaccine made from it. In our world, Indonesia sends off its virus, companies make vaccine from it and sell it to countries that can pay. Indonesia is not one of them, and neither are the other countries suffering badly from H5N1.
Indonesia is treating this as a case of biopiracy. Like other tropical countries, it is a hotspot of biodiversity. For decades foreign companies have helped themselves to its plants, microbes or whatever, and made lucrative products from them. In response, it has passed laws to stop exports of genetic material without agreement. It is invoking such a law to control samples of H5N1 and asking developed countries to respect the sort of intellectual property rules that they themselves have imposed for decades."
The rest of the editorial needs subscription. I hope that New Scientist can take a leaf out of its own book and make such editorials and articles accessible to all.
The second editorial is about the travails of a young scientist:
"This week a paper is published by a young researcher named Shahriar Afshar describing an experiment that he believes explodes an 80-year-old orthodoxy in quantum theory (see "Quantum rebel wins over doubters"). It has been a long road. Afshar failed to post his paper on the Arxiv database apparently because of a mix-up over his affiliation. Journals rejected it out of hand. New Scientist covered his work after quantum physicists advised us that, right or wrong, it raised important issues. Regrettably, Afshar was then chastised for talking to the press.
Aspiring scientists should expect to run the gauntlet of their peers, but they should not have to put up with the abuse to which Afshar was subjected, including attacks on his honesty and his religion. Why the extreme reaction? Perhaps people thought an experiment as simple as his must be wrong. Perhaps those who interpret quantum theory are unused to seeing their pronouncements put to the test. Whatever the reason, there can be no excuse for this kind of treatment."
Young scientists are increasingly being forced to go along with the prevailing orthodoxies and increase the research output of their seniors rather than persuing interesting and risky topics. In many universities tenures, increments, and promotions are measured by the number of papers rather than quality. And young researchers are pressurized to spend their most of their best productive years in such activities to increase the output of their seniors. The concept of universities where one is exposed to exciting ideas, connections between desciplines, connections to improving real life etc seem to be becoming more and more of a rarity as administrators, administrative type professors are increasing in numbers and taking over the universities.
"In a fair world, Indonesia would send its virus to the best labs and share in any vaccine made from it. In our world, Indonesia sends off its virus, companies make vaccine from it and sell it to countries that can pay. Indonesia is not one of them, and neither are the other countries suffering badly from H5N1.
Indonesia is treating this as a case of biopiracy. Like other tropical countries, it is a hotspot of biodiversity. For decades foreign companies have helped themselves to its plants, microbes or whatever, and made lucrative products from them. In response, it has passed laws to stop exports of genetic material without agreement. It is invoking such a law to control samples of H5N1 and asking developed countries to respect the sort of intellectual property rules that they themselves have imposed for decades."
The rest of the editorial needs subscription. I hope that New Scientist can take a leaf out of its own book and make such editorials and articles accessible to all.
The second editorial is about the travails of a young scientist:
"This week a paper is published by a young researcher named Shahriar Afshar describing an experiment that he believes explodes an 80-year-old orthodoxy in quantum theory (see "Quantum rebel wins over doubters"). It has been a long road. Afshar failed to post his paper on the Arxiv database apparently because of a mix-up over his affiliation. Journals rejected it out of hand. New Scientist covered his work after quantum physicists advised us that, right or wrong, it raised important issues. Regrettably, Afshar was then chastised for talking to the press.
Aspiring scientists should expect to run the gauntlet of their peers, but they should not have to put up with the abuse to which Afshar was subjected, including attacks on his honesty and his religion. Why the extreme reaction? Perhaps people thought an experiment as simple as his must be wrong. Perhaps those who interpret quantum theory are unused to seeing their pronouncements put to the test. Whatever the reason, there can be no excuse for this kind of treatment."
Young scientists are increasingly being forced to go along with the prevailing orthodoxies and increase the research output of their seniors rather than persuing interesting and risky topics. In many universities tenures, increments, and promotions are measured by the number of papers rather than quality. And young researchers are pressurized to spend their most of their best productive years in such activities to increase the output of their seniors. The concept of universities where one is exposed to exciting ideas, connections between desciplines, connections to improving real life etc seem to be becoming more and more of a rarity as administrators, administrative type professors are increasing in numbers and taking over the universities.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Minority Report
From Minority Report in The Guardian:
"It is not Livia Jaroka's youth or talent that mark her out in the beige corridors of the European parliament, but her skin. Jaroka, a centre-right MEP for Hungary, was nominated for a parliamentary award for her conscientious work last year. The response? A Bulgarian objected, arguing that she did not deserve it. "In my country, there are tens of thousands of Gypsy girls way more beautiful," Dimitar Stoyanov wrote in an email to MEPs. "In fact, if you're in the right place at the right time you even can buy one (around 12-13 years old) to be your loving wife. The best of them are very expensive - up to €5,000 a piece, wow!"
......
With 785 representatives from 27 member countries and chambers in Brussels and Strasbourg, it is the world's only directly elected international chamber. It represents a more diverse range of people than almost any other - 492 million European citizens. It is also almost completely white, and it is against this backdrop that Stoyanov's inclusion starts to make sense."
"It is not Livia Jaroka's youth or talent that mark her out in the beige corridors of the European parliament, but her skin. Jaroka, a centre-right MEP for Hungary, was nominated for a parliamentary award for her conscientious work last year. The response? A Bulgarian objected, arguing that she did not deserve it. "In my country, there are tens of thousands of Gypsy girls way more beautiful," Dimitar Stoyanov wrote in an email to MEPs. "In fact, if you're in the right place at the right time you even can buy one (around 12-13 years old) to be your loving wife. The best of them are very expensive - up to €5,000 a piece, wow!"
......
With 785 representatives from 27 member countries and chambers in Brussels and Strasbourg, it is the world's only directly elected international chamber. It represents a more diverse range of people than almost any other - 492 million European citizens. It is also almost completely white, and it is against this backdrop that Stoyanov's inclusion starts to make sense."
An excerpt from "Mothers and others"
From the article "Mothers and others" by Sarah Blaffer Hardy (available at http://www.citrona.com/articlesbysbh.htm. In this article, Sarah Hrdy proposes that humans are cooperative breeders,discusses alloparenting and worries about its future):
"And this is why I get so worried. Just because humans have evolved to be smart enough to chronicle our species' histories, to speculate about its origins, and to figure out that we have about 30,000 genes in our genome is no reason to assume that evolution has come to a standstill. As gene frequencies change, natural selection acts on the outcome, the
expression of those genes. No one doubts, for instance, that fish benefit from being able to see. Yet species reared in total darkness—as are the small, cave-dwelling characin of Mexico—fail to develop their visual capacity. Through evolutionary time, traits that are unexpressed are eventually lost. If populations of these fish are isolated in caves long
enough, youngsters descended from those original populations will no longer be able to develop eyesight at all, even if reared in sunlight.
If human compassion develops only under particular rearing conditions, and if an increasing proportion of the species survives to breeding age without developing compassion, it won't make any difference how useful this trait was among our ancestors. It will become like sight in cave-dwelling fish.
No doubt our descendants thousands of years from now (should our species survive) will still be bipedal, symbol-generating apes. Most likely they will be adept at using sophisticated technologies. But will they still be human in the way we, shaped by a long heritage of cooperative breeding, currently define ourselves?"
"And this is why I get so worried. Just because humans have evolved to be smart enough to chronicle our species' histories, to speculate about its origins, and to figure out that we have about 30,000 genes in our genome is no reason to assume that evolution has come to a standstill. As gene frequencies change, natural selection acts on the outcome, the
expression of those genes. No one doubts, for instance, that fish benefit from being able to see. Yet species reared in total darkness—as are the small, cave-dwelling characin of Mexico—fail to develop their visual capacity. Through evolutionary time, traits that are unexpressed are eventually lost. If populations of these fish are isolated in caves long
enough, youngsters descended from those original populations will no longer be able to develop eyesight at all, even if reared in sunlight.
If human compassion develops only under particular rearing conditions, and if an increasing proportion of the species survives to breeding age without developing compassion, it won't make any difference how useful this trait was among our ancestors. It will become like sight in cave-dwelling fish.
No doubt our descendants thousands of years from now (should our species survive) will still be bipedal, symbol-generating apes. Most likely they will be adept at using sophisticated technologies. But will they still be human in the way we, shaped by a long heritage of cooperative breeding, currently define ourselves?"
Friday, February 16, 2007
Some quotes
Robert Dreyfussquotes Bush :
"Either they knew or didn't know, and what matters is, is that they're there. What's worse, that the government knew or that the government didn't know? … What’s worse, them ordering it and it happening, or them not ordering it and it happening?"
Compare this with how university professors write ( from my blog October 15, 2006):
"We all know that the political world judges Iraq by the absolute badness of what is going on (which means Bush critics find a higher number to fit their priors), but that is an incorrect standard. We should judge the marginal product of U.S. action, relative to what else could have happened. (North Korea, and the UN response, will give us one data point from another setting.) In that latter and more accurate notion of a cost-benefit test, U.S. actions probably appear worst when deaths are rising over time, and hitting very high levels in the future.
Of course the rate of change of deaths is not exactly the proper variable. Ideally we would like some measure of the contingency of eventual total deaths, relative to policy. I am not sure what other proxies for that we might have."
Compared to these Indian bloggers seem clearer.Here is a quote from one if them:
"Real or fake Indian, I don't read books written by Sudras. Hope that clears it up."
"Either they knew or didn't know, and what matters is, is that they're there. What's worse, that the government knew or that the government didn't know? … What’s worse, them ordering it and it happening, or them not ordering it and it happening?"
Compare this with how university professors write ( from my blog October 15, 2006):
"We all know that the political world judges Iraq by the absolute badness of what is going on (which means Bush critics find a higher number to fit their priors), but that is an incorrect standard. We should judge the marginal product of U.S. action, relative to what else could have happened. (North Korea, and the UN response, will give us one data point from another setting.) In that latter and more accurate notion of a cost-benefit test, U.S. actions probably appear worst when deaths are rising over time, and hitting very high levels in the future.
Of course the rate of change of deaths is not exactly the proper variable. Ideally we would like some measure of the contingency of eventual total deaths, relative to policy. I am not sure what other proxies for that we might have."
Compared to these Indian bloggers seem clearer.Here is a quote from one if them:
"Real or fake Indian, I don't read books written by Sudras. Hope that clears it up."
Monday, February 12, 2007
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Links 2/11/07
Browsed through these and should look at them again:
1)
Asghar Ali Engineer on Ram-Prasad's 'Hindu View of Islam'
2)
lectue notes on evolutionary psychology and related topics. It has also links to online resources.
3)
Mark Thoma's views on markets with lots of comments. Back to the basics
4)
an exposition of Stolper-Samuelson Theorem and discusses an application (?).
5)
Toxoplasma gondii
involved in sex ratios (?).
Trivers-Willard Hypothesis
on sex ratios
6)
Discover on Sarah Hrdy.
Sarah Hrdy has a good discussion of sex ratios in her book 'Mother Nature'. I am reading this book for the second time immediately after first reading. At the moment, I feel that this one of the best popular science books that I have read. I tried to buy copies for my daughters but it is not available in Melbourne. Many of the book shops have several books by Diamond, Pinker and others but not this one. I wonder why? Robert Trivers, Matt Ridley, Frank Sulloway and others have high praise for the book. Here is Judge Posner's comment from the blurbs:
" A superb book ... It establishes more covincingly than any other book with which I am familar the relevance of the study of (other) primates and of human evolution to urgent current issues of public policy involving women, children, and family"
Over to you Annie.
1)
Asghar Ali Engineer on Ram-Prasad's 'Hindu View of Islam'
2)
lectue notes on evolutionary psychology and related topics. It has also links to online resources.
3)
Mark Thoma's views on markets with lots of comments. Back to the basics
4)
an exposition of Stolper-Samuelson Theorem and discusses an application (?).
5)
Toxoplasma gondii
involved in sex ratios (?).
Trivers-Willard Hypothesis
on sex ratios
6)
Discover on Sarah Hrdy.
Sarah Hrdy has a good discussion of sex ratios in her book 'Mother Nature'. I am reading this book for the second time immediately after first reading. At the moment, I feel that this one of the best popular science books that I have read. I tried to buy copies for my daughters but it is not available in Melbourne. Many of the book shops have several books by Diamond, Pinker and others but not this one. I wonder why? Robert Trivers, Matt Ridley, Frank Sulloway and others have high praise for the book. Here is Judge Posner's comment from the blurbs:
" A superb book ... It establishes more covincingly than any other book with which I am familar the relevance of the study of (other) primates and of human evolution to urgent current issues of public policy involving women, children, and family"
Over to you Annie.
Another 'gloom and doom' story
Today's Age has this story of pain in Spain. Excerpts:
"Of all the developed countries, it is in Spain where the warning signs of environmental disaster are most advanced. Spain's environmental ills read like the worst predictions of the panel's report come true.
A United Nations study published in 2005 warned that the Sahara Desert is poised to jump the Mediterranean, and that within 50 years one-third of Spain, including 90 per cent of Spanish territory bordering the Mediterranean, will be desert — Africa will enter Europe by the back door.
..........
Last year was Spain's hottest year on record. In the past 150 years, temperatures in Spain have increased by 1.5 degrees, compared with a global average of just 0.6 degrees. Madrid's average temperature has risen by 2.2 degrees in the past three decades, the greatest increase of any capital city in Europe. Rainfall in south-eastern Spain decreased by 23 per cent during the past 100 years.
.........
Spain's summer is also lengthening at an alarming rate, to the extent that spring arrives in Spain two weeks earlier than it did 30 years ago and autumn arrives nine days later, according to an EU study published last August.
........
"The reality is that we are consuming twice as much water as our rivers and aquifers can provide," Julia Martinez, a water specialist at Murcia University, told Spain's El Pais newspaper last year. "We must make new plans. Our system of intensive tourism and inefficient farming is simply unsustainable."
Even before the building boom reached current levels, National Geographic Traveller Magazine, one of the world's leading travel magazines, agreed, announcing in 2004 that Spain's Costa del Sol (or the "Costa del Concrete" as the magazine called it) was the least environmentally sustainable tourist destination in the world. Spain's coast was, the magazine said, the "epitome of overdeveloped mass-tourism" and "the antithesis of sustainability".
........
The fear remains, however, that even if Spain suddenly transforms itself into a good environmental citizen, the human impact on its environment may already be irreversible."
"Of all the developed countries, it is in Spain where the warning signs of environmental disaster are most advanced. Spain's environmental ills read like the worst predictions of the panel's report come true.
A United Nations study published in 2005 warned that the Sahara Desert is poised to jump the Mediterranean, and that within 50 years one-third of Spain, including 90 per cent of Spanish territory bordering the Mediterranean, will be desert — Africa will enter Europe by the back door.
..........
Last year was Spain's hottest year on record. In the past 150 years, temperatures in Spain have increased by 1.5 degrees, compared with a global average of just 0.6 degrees. Madrid's average temperature has risen by 2.2 degrees in the past three decades, the greatest increase of any capital city in Europe. Rainfall in south-eastern Spain decreased by 23 per cent during the past 100 years.
.........
Spain's summer is also lengthening at an alarming rate, to the extent that spring arrives in Spain two weeks earlier than it did 30 years ago and autumn arrives nine days later, according to an EU study published last August.
........
"The reality is that we are consuming twice as much water as our rivers and aquifers can provide," Julia Martinez, a water specialist at Murcia University, told Spain's El Pais newspaper last year. "We must make new plans. Our system of intensive tourism and inefficient farming is simply unsustainable."
Even before the building boom reached current levels, National Geographic Traveller Magazine, one of the world's leading travel magazines, agreed, announcing in 2004 that Spain's Costa del Sol (or the "Costa del Concrete" as the magazine called it) was the least environmentally sustainable tourist destination in the world. Spain's coast was, the magazine said, the "epitome of overdeveloped mass-tourism" and "the antithesis of sustainability".
........
The fear remains, however, that even if Spain suddenly transforms itself into a good environmental citizen, the human impact on its environment may already be irreversible."
An Indian village takes lead on HIV
From today'sAge:
"The council in Budni, in the state of Karnataka, has decided that the only way to curb the spread of HIV is to make sure that no HIV-positive person marries and passes it on to their spouse.
"We are fed up with boys living in the cities coming to marry our girls, going off after the marriage and then finding that the girl, who stayed behind, has got the virus. It's ruining young lives," council head Shrikant Prasad said.
............
"I don't oppose premarital testing, but we have to be aware that it could spark off a new industry in fake negative certificates," said Ashok Khanna, an AIDS volunteer worker in Bangalore.
An estimated 5.7 million people in India are afflicted with AIDS/HIV, more than any other country in the world."
"The council in Budni, in the state of Karnataka, has decided that the only way to curb the spread of HIV is to make sure that no HIV-positive person marries and passes it on to their spouse.
"We are fed up with boys living in the cities coming to marry our girls, going off after the marriage and then finding that the girl, who stayed behind, has got the virus. It's ruining young lives," council head Shrikant Prasad said.
............
"I don't oppose premarital testing, but we have to be aware that it could spark off a new industry in fake negative certificates," said Ashok Khanna, an AIDS volunteer worker in Bangalore.
An estimated 5.7 million people in India are afflicted with AIDS/HIV, more than any other country in the world."
Interesting site
Check this sitefor a quick view of various type of data about the world. Go to description of the site. SeeMap categories for categories.
Primary (lack of) education for girls is here. Click on 'Open PDF poster' for more details. This has a description of Royalties and Licence fees.
Primary (lack of) education for girls is here. Click on 'Open PDF poster' for more details. This has a description of Royalties and Licence fees.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Photo blog from rural children
"Children at a rural school in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh are running a photoblog about daily life in their village, Kalleda. The school gives children from poor families a free education." Check here.
UPDATE: Kuffir in blogbharti has given direct links to to the Rural Development Foundation and the Photoblog.
UPDATE: Kuffir in blogbharti has given direct links to to the Rural Development Foundation and the Photoblog.
Saturday, February 03, 2007
K.Rohiniprasad
There is an interview in Telugu of Kodavatiganti Rohiniprasad (son of the famous Telugu writer Kodavatiganti Kutumbarao)in Koumidi . Rohiniprasad is a physicist who writes, mainly in Telugu, on science and music. He has a blog which has some of his writings.
Friday, February 02, 2007
National characteristics and sports
I never thought that a respected commentator like Peter Roebuck would so openly link national characteristics to performance in sportsperformance in sports. Considering India's performance in Olympics, may be there is some thing to ponder about. Some excerpts:
"It is a nation despoiled by voyeuristic newspapers, obsessed with soccer, driven by desperate nationalism, a nation of cringing monarchists and lager louts leavened by sudden shafts of doomed humour better expressed in the cries of the Barmy Army than in soap operas populated by baleful characters.
....
Australia suffers not from a surfeit of arrogance but servility. At its best, England combines stoicism with a strong sense of social justice. At its worst, it is sniffy. At its best, Australia is democratic and independent. At its worst, it is inhospitable.
....
The next step must be to engage the black African community that has contributed so much to British soccer and athletics.
Apart from these players, England has not impressed. None of the others has markedly improved. Faulty batting techniques have been exposed and the pace bowling has been relentlessly wayward.
It is not impossible to conquer Australia. Sachin Tendulkar arrived as a teenager and scored dazzling hundreds in Perth and Sydney. Alas, these Englishmen have lacked the mental and technical capacities needed to meet the challenge."
"It is a nation despoiled by voyeuristic newspapers, obsessed with soccer, driven by desperate nationalism, a nation of cringing monarchists and lager louts leavened by sudden shafts of doomed humour better expressed in the cries of the Barmy Army than in soap operas populated by baleful characters.
....
Australia suffers not from a surfeit of arrogance but servility. At its best, England combines stoicism with a strong sense of social justice. At its worst, it is sniffy. At its best, Australia is democratic and independent. At its worst, it is inhospitable.
....
The next step must be to engage the black African community that has contributed so much to British soccer and athletics.
Apart from these players, England has not impressed. None of the others has markedly improved. Faulty batting techniques have been exposed and the pace bowling has been relentlessly wayward.
It is not impossible to conquer Australia. Sachin Tendulkar arrived as a teenager and scored dazzling hundreds in Perth and Sydney. Alas, these Englishmen have lacked the mental and technical capacities needed to meet the challenge."
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Quote of the day
Long ago, I visited the village Maddipadu near Ongole in Andhra Pradesh where my father was teaching. I met the village munsif who was my father's neighbour. He did not study beyond fifth class and never travelled in a train. Yet he started the village high school. By that time I had a Ph.D. travelled in several countries. I was confused and silly (still am) and wondered why I did not have the calm wisdom of the villager who never travelled 50 miles beyond his village. Today I saw this inCosmic Voices:
It is said Somerset Maugham traveled the world with a notebook to learn the essence of life and Kafka sat in a room for the same objective. Yet Kafka came out with a better world-view. - U.R. ANANTHA MURTHY
It is said Somerset Maugham traveled the world with a notebook to learn the essence of life and Kafka sat in a room for the same objective. Yet Kafka came out with a better world-view. - U.R. ANANTHA MURTHY
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Monday, January 29, 2007
Choosing seeds
An article (via Evo. Psychology group) in Science Daily: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070125133450.htm
about choosing GT cotton seeds in India. I have not seen the original articles or the articles by Munshi on choosing rice and wheat seeds: http://www.econ.brown.edu/fac/Kaivan_Munshi/jde.pdf. This is mainly for future reference.
about choosing GT cotton seeds in India. I have not seen the original articles or the articles by Munshi on choosing rice and wheat seeds: http://www.econ.brown.edu/fac/Kaivan_Munshi/jde.pdf. This is mainly for future reference.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Currently reading
1) 'Mother Nature' by Sarah Hrdy, and
2) 'Evolution in four dimensions' by Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb
and also trying to complete a mathes paper which started four years ago as two page e-mail response to a colleague and has now grown to a paper over a hundred pages. Probably nobody will read it but felt pressurized to complete it after the very senior colleague expressed some doubts. Reminded of Pankaj Mishra's words at the end of his review of "The Namesake".
2) 'Evolution in four dimensions' by Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb
and also trying to complete a mathes paper which started four years ago as two page e-mail response to a colleague and has now grown to a paper over a hundred pages. Probably nobody will read it but felt pressurized to complete it after the very senior colleague expressed some doubts. Reminded of Pankaj Mishra's words at the end of his review of "The Namesake".
Vinod Khosla and Atanu Dey's ideas for India
I have been intrigued for some time by Atanu Dey's ideas on planned urbanization. This post and links inthe post explain these ideas.
Pay what you can
From The Age on Australia Day :
"MELBOURNE'S Shanaka Fernando was named Australia's Local Hero for his work founding not-for-profit restaurant chain Lentil as Anything.
The group of four restaurants, which employs about 80 young people and provides space for artists and writers, does not set prices for dishes.
Instead, diners are encouraged to pay what they can afford or what they think the meal was worth.
Mr Fernando sunk his personal capital into the first restaurant and turned it into a co-operative and youth training enterprise. Lentil as Anything has shown that it is possible for a business to be run on a socially responsible, idealistic basis and still be financially successful and popular.
The 38-year-old restaurateur, who was born in Sri Lanka and arrived in Australia in 1989, said the award meant a great deal to him.
"Hopefully it means the nature of what is happening through our organisation is important and will spill out to the greater society.
"I hope this award will inspire other migrants and anyone in the community who may have ideas that might not seem normal and which have no prior format to go ahead and try these ideas and follow your heart."
And on the eve of Australia Day, Mr Fernando said he thought to be Australian was to be "welcoming of others … to be encouraging of each other"."
The 'Australian of the Year'award went to Tim Flannery.
"MELBOURNE'S Shanaka Fernando was named Australia's Local Hero for his work founding not-for-profit restaurant chain Lentil as Anything.
The group of four restaurants, which employs about 80 young people and provides space for artists and writers, does not set prices for dishes.
Instead, diners are encouraged to pay what they can afford or what they think the meal was worth.
Mr Fernando sunk his personal capital into the first restaurant and turned it into a co-operative and youth training enterprise. Lentil as Anything has shown that it is possible for a business to be run on a socially responsible, idealistic basis and still be financially successful and popular.
The 38-year-old restaurateur, who was born in Sri Lanka and arrived in Australia in 1989, said the award meant a great deal to him.
"Hopefully it means the nature of what is happening through our organisation is important and will spill out to the greater society.
"I hope this award will inspire other migrants and anyone in the community who may have ideas that might not seem normal and which have no prior format to go ahead and try these ideas and follow your heart."
And on the eve of Australia Day, Mr Fernando said he thought to be Australian was to be "welcoming of others … to be encouraging of each other"."
The 'Australian of the Year'award went to Tim Flannery.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
From David Miliband's speech in Delhi
Excerpts fromthe speech on January 22, 2007:
"Climate change will affect every country. But the impact will be greater in India, South-East Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
The joint India-UK project on climate change highlighted some of the impacts on India:
Water resources are already under strain here. India has 16 per cent of global population but only 4 per cent of global water resources. Across India the hydrological cycle is predicted to become more intense, both with higher annual average rainfall as well as longer periods of drought.
Agriculture constitutes the single largest component of India’s economy, nearly 27% of the GDP. A temperature increase of 2°C is predicted to result in a 10-16% reduction in rice yields, while a 4°C rise led to a 21-30% reduction.
India has a low-lying coastline. India will be one of the countries most vulnerable to sea level rise. Coastal infrastructure, tourist activity, inshore explorations are at risk. Large scale emigration from coastal zones is expected due to submergence of coastal-lines after sea levels have risen. This will create large numbers of environmental refugees especially from low-lying delta regions.
Other impacts include the changes to the makeup of India’s forests, in which 200,000 villages are located in or near; higher rates of certain diseases, such as Malaria, and damage to railways and infrastructure from higher temperatures, increased rainfall and flooding and sea-level rises.
In short, no part of life in India will remain unaffected. The effects will be economic and social, not just environmental.
.......
You therefore have the potential to be a leapfrog economy - going straight to a model of low-carbon development without having to scrap existing infrastructure and technologies. You are already leaders in some renewable energy technologies. About 100,000 biogas plants and 16,530 solar photovoltaic lighting systems were installed during 2004-05. You are the only country to have a Ministry dedicated to the use of renewable energy – sharing experience of development and deployment of these technologies can provide global benefits. You can forge a distinctive economic path that will give you a comparative economic advantage in future. As your President has suggested in calling for a goal of Energy Independence, renewable energy technologies could contribute 20 to 25 per cent of your energy needs by 2030. You have nearly 60 million hectares of wasteland, of which 30 million hectares are available for energy plantations. With each crop lasting 50 years and being carbon-neutral, biofuels could make a significant contribution meeting future demand in transport fuels and delivering emissions reductions."
"Climate change will affect every country. But the impact will be greater in India, South-East Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
The joint India-UK project on climate change highlighted some of the impacts on India:
Water resources are already under strain here. India has 16 per cent of global population but only 4 per cent of global water resources. Across India the hydrological cycle is predicted to become more intense, both with higher annual average rainfall as well as longer periods of drought.
Agriculture constitutes the single largest component of India’s economy, nearly 27% of the GDP. A temperature increase of 2°C is predicted to result in a 10-16% reduction in rice yields, while a 4°C rise led to a 21-30% reduction.
India has a low-lying coastline. India will be one of the countries most vulnerable to sea level rise. Coastal infrastructure, tourist activity, inshore explorations are at risk. Large scale emigration from coastal zones is expected due to submergence of coastal-lines after sea levels have risen. This will create large numbers of environmental refugees especially from low-lying delta regions.
Other impacts include the changes to the makeup of India’s forests, in which 200,000 villages are located in or near; higher rates of certain diseases, such as Malaria, and damage to railways and infrastructure from higher temperatures, increased rainfall and flooding and sea-level rises.
In short, no part of life in India will remain unaffected. The effects will be economic and social, not just environmental.
.......
You therefore have the potential to be a leapfrog economy - going straight to a model of low-carbon development without having to scrap existing infrastructure and technologies. You are already leaders in some renewable energy technologies. About 100,000 biogas plants and 16,530 solar photovoltaic lighting systems were installed during 2004-05. You are the only country to have a Ministry dedicated to the use of renewable energy – sharing experience of development and deployment of these technologies can provide global benefits. You can forge a distinctive economic path that will give you a comparative economic advantage in future. As your President has suggested in calling for a goal of Energy Independence, renewable energy technologies could contribute 20 to 25 per cent of your energy needs by 2030. You have nearly 60 million hectares of wasteland, of which 30 million hectares are available for energy plantations. With each crop lasting 50 years and being carbon-neutral, biofuels could make a significant contribution meeting future demand in transport fuels and delivering emissions reductions."
Scenes from farming areas
Via blogbharti, this photo essay of the sort areas I grew up and scenes that I remember. Similar distress and some of the consequences of globalization are now expressed in many quarters.
From opendemocracy:
"The poor of the developing world and the middle classes of the developed world seem unlikely allies. But, according to economist Branko Milanovic - whose main field of interest is the relationship between globalisation and inequality - the two groups are the biggest losers as a result of globalisation. Milanovic is a lead economist at the World Bank research department and a senior associate at the Carnegie."
From a comments by John Quiggin in Why globalization is opposed:
"Among my people, globalisation has negative connotations because it takes away power from the individuals. As a consequences, the communality of daily life has become more and more frustrating and aggressive. If the crop fails because the neighbour is blocking the water stream, I could rely on local institutions-institutions that I contribute to shape- to solve the problem. If the crop fails because water has been privatised and sold to a multinational corporation, there is no local institution that can fix the problem. As a consequence, local diatribes over resource are exacerbated. In summary, globalisation is not just about prosperity and morality, it's also about power and control."
It seems that there will be more and more opposition from the countries which seemed to support globalization earlier.
Update: See also Bush's remarks:
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holnus/001200701260921.htm
and Guardian's remarks on Iowa farmers:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1999055,00.html
From opendemocracy:
"The poor of the developing world and the middle classes of the developed world seem unlikely allies. But, according to economist Branko Milanovic - whose main field of interest is the relationship between globalisation and inequality - the two groups are the biggest losers as a result of globalisation. Milanovic is a lead economist at the World Bank research department and a senior associate at the Carnegie."
From a comments by John Quiggin in Why globalization is opposed:
"Among my people, globalisation has negative connotations because it takes away power from the individuals. As a consequences, the communality of daily life has become more and more frustrating and aggressive. If the crop fails because the neighbour is blocking the water stream, I could rely on local institutions-institutions that I contribute to shape- to solve the problem. If the crop fails because water has been privatised and sold to a multinational corporation, there is no local institution that can fix the problem. As a consequence, local diatribes over resource are exacerbated. In summary, globalisation is not just about prosperity and morality, it's also about power and control."
It seems that there will be more and more opposition from the countries which seemed to support globalization earlier.
Update: See also Bush's remarks:
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/holnus/001200701260921.htm
and Guardian's remarks on Iowa farmers:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1999055,00.html
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
A route to happiness
After seeing so many posts by Abi on happiness, I started browsing through some articles on happiness and even bought a book on happiness ( it was on sale, otherwise I would not have been too happy). Here is an article which is close to my beliefs. Excerpts:
"In 2005, a team of U.S. researchers developed a comprehensive model of sustainable happiness change that integrated the major lines of the subjective well-being literature. The result was a theory which proposed that up to 50 per cent of one’s happiness was rooted in a genetically determined set-point, 10 per cent was related to circumstantial factors (nation of residence, demographics, culture, income, etc), and the remaining 40 per cent was determined by intentional activities such as pursuing goals, looking at things optimistically, and being physically active. The keys to sustainable happiness change rest in these activities, and the first direct empirical validation for the theory is my favourite article from the past 3 years.
....
“In other words, our data suggest that effort and hard work offer the most promising route to happiness. In contrast, simply altering one’s superficial circumstances (assuming they are already reasonably good) may have little lasting effect on well-being. (p.82-83).” "
I usually enjoy my evening coffeee better if did some work that day.
"In 2005, a team of U.S. researchers developed a comprehensive model of sustainable happiness change that integrated the major lines of the subjective well-being literature. The result was a theory which proposed that up to 50 per cent of one’s happiness was rooted in a genetically determined set-point, 10 per cent was related to circumstantial factors (nation of residence, demographics, culture, income, etc), and the remaining 40 per cent was determined by intentional activities such as pursuing goals, looking at things optimistically, and being physically active. The keys to sustainable happiness change rest in these activities, and the first direct empirical validation for the theory is my favourite article from the past 3 years.
....
“In other words, our data suggest that effort and hard work offer the most promising route to happiness. In contrast, simply altering one’s superficial circumstances (assuming they are already reasonably good) may have little lasting effect on well-being. (p.82-83).” "
I usually enjoy my evening coffeee better if did some work that day.
Monday, January 22, 2007
Saving the cypress
Science Daily gives this example dual culivation with lavender helping to spread cypress in Morocco. Perhaps many such examples exist in the traditional knowledge of several communities.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Do prizes matter?
I find that I am more and more wrong. I used to think that one should work on things that interested one and prizes and such are irrelevant distractions. Apparently prizes matter since often some status comes with them. Even blogs seem to look for number of hits, rank etc ( I do not know how to check most of these). From New Scientist:
"Scientists who have won a Nobel prize live nearly two years longer than those who were merely nominated, according to a new study. The findings suggest that social status confers "health-giving magic", the researchers say."
"Scientists who have won a Nobel prize live nearly two years longer than those who were merely nominated, according to a new study. The findings suggest that social status confers "health-giving magic", the researchers say."
New online technology transfer resource
From scidev.net:
A key issue is a nation's own learning efforts and its ability to
absorb and further develop acquired technologies.
SciDev.Net has today published online a free technology transfer
resource for developing country policymakers that includes, among other
things, information on how to take advantage of foreign direct investment,
how to help firms build their own technological capacity and what the
public sector can do to support agricultural technology transfer.
The resource contains peer-reviewed policy briefs, opinion articles, a
collection of key documents and links as well as definitions of
essential terms.
Visit: http://www.scidev.net/techtransfer
A key issue is a nation's own learning efforts and its ability to
absorb and further develop acquired technologies.
SciDev.Net has today published online a free technology transfer
resource for developing country policymakers that includes, among other
things, information on how to take advantage of foreign direct investment,
how to help firms build their own technological capacity and what the
public sector can do to support agricultural technology transfer.
The resource contains peer-reviewed policy briefs, opinion articles, a
collection of key documents and links as well as definitions of
essential terms.
Visit: http://www.scidev.net/techtransfer
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Eggs with drugs
From livescience.com:
"Traditional methods for producing therapeutic proteins such as antibodies used to treat cancer and arthritis are expensive. Farm animals could produce them faster and cheaper, the thinking goes.
Researchers led by Helen Sang of the Roslin BioCentre in Edinburgh, Scotland created transgenic hens by inserting the genes for desired pharmaceutical proteins into the hen’s gene for ovalbumin, a protein that makes up 54 percent of egg whites.
All the egg whites from these hens contained miR24, an antibody with potential for treating malignant melanoma. The whites also packed human interferon b-1a, an antiviral drug."
"Traditional methods for producing therapeutic proteins such as antibodies used to treat cancer and arthritis are expensive. Farm animals could produce them faster and cheaper, the thinking goes.
Researchers led by Helen Sang of the Roslin BioCentre in Edinburgh, Scotland created transgenic hens by inserting the genes for desired pharmaceutical proteins into the hen’s gene for ovalbumin, a protein that makes up 54 percent of egg whites.
All the egg whites from these hens contained miR24, an antibody with potential for treating malignant melanoma. The whites also packed human interferon b-1a, an antiviral drug."
GDP per square kilometre
econbrowser has an interesting post on the distribution of world income. James Hamilton says that map of GDP density distribution given by Gallup, Sachs and Mellinger is very similar to the satellite pictureof the night sky. Interesting discussion and comments ( I stopped reading Steve Sailor's comments) follow.
Monday, January 15, 2007
A delightful book
"Our inner ape" by Frans De Wall is a popular science book without frills, no footnotes or end notes, not much effort to rigorously support some of the extrapolations. But there are indications of research that can lead to some verifications. Probably many other scientists will not agree with some of his conclusions. It is like a respected guest holding forth after dinner with a life time of interesting experiences. This article from science&spirit, written a few years before the book explains the book as well as any review (it unfortunately does not mention bonobos extensively discussed in the book). Excerpts:
"It is not hard to recognize the two pillars of human morality in the behavior of other primates. These pillars are elegantly summed up by the golden rule, which transcends the world’s cultures and religions. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” brings together empathy (attention to another’s feelings) and reciprocity (if others follow the same rule, you will be treated well). Human morality could not exist without empathy and reciprocity, tendencies that are widespread in other primates.
After one chimpanzee attacks another, for example, a bystander chimp will often go over to embrace the victim; we have documented hundreds of cases. Usually, the effect of such consolation is that screaming, yelping, and other signs of distress come to a stop. In fact, the tendency to reassure others is so strong that Nadia Kohts, a Russian scientist who raised a juvenile chimp nearly a century ago, said that if her charge escaped to the roof of her house, there was only one way to get him down. Holding out food would not do the trick, nor would shouts and threats of punishment. The only way would be for her to sit down and sob, as if she were in pain. Her suffering would prompt the young ape, a worried look on his face, to rush down from the roof and put an arm around her. This indicates the strength of the empathic tendency in our closest relatives.
Reciprocity, on the other hand, can be seen in experiments with captive primates. Before giving one chimpanzee food to divide with others, we measure spontaneous grooming in the colony: who grooms whom and for how long. Grooming is a pleasurable, relaxing activity, and being groomed is much appreciated. In our experiment, we found that one chimpanzee grooming another greatly increased the chance that the first would get food from the second. In other words, the chimpanzees remembered who had groomed them and paid them back later in the day. Like humans, apes seem quite capable of keeping track of incoming and outgoing favors.
Of course, these findings are not sufficient to speak of “morality,” but the tendencies observed in these primates fit what Scottish philosopher David Hume called the “moral sentiments.” Adding enforced social norms, our species turned the moral sentiments into an elaborate system that tells us how we ought to treat others and how we ought to promote the interests of the community."
A more recent book "Primates and philosophers" (which I have not yet seen) contains also discussions by other thinkers.
"It is not hard to recognize the two pillars of human morality in the behavior of other primates. These pillars are elegantly summed up by the golden rule, which transcends the world’s cultures and religions. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” brings together empathy (attention to another’s feelings) and reciprocity (if others follow the same rule, you will be treated well). Human morality could not exist without empathy and reciprocity, tendencies that are widespread in other primates.
After one chimpanzee attacks another, for example, a bystander chimp will often go over to embrace the victim; we have documented hundreds of cases. Usually, the effect of such consolation is that screaming, yelping, and other signs of distress come to a stop. In fact, the tendency to reassure others is so strong that Nadia Kohts, a Russian scientist who raised a juvenile chimp nearly a century ago, said that if her charge escaped to the roof of her house, there was only one way to get him down. Holding out food would not do the trick, nor would shouts and threats of punishment. The only way would be for her to sit down and sob, as if she were in pain. Her suffering would prompt the young ape, a worried look on his face, to rush down from the roof and put an arm around her. This indicates the strength of the empathic tendency in our closest relatives.
Reciprocity, on the other hand, can be seen in experiments with captive primates. Before giving one chimpanzee food to divide with others, we measure spontaneous grooming in the colony: who grooms whom and for how long. Grooming is a pleasurable, relaxing activity, and being groomed is much appreciated. In our experiment, we found that one chimpanzee grooming another greatly increased the chance that the first would get food from the second. In other words, the chimpanzees remembered who had groomed them and paid them back later in the day. Like humans, apes seem quite capable of keeping track of incoming and outgoing favors.
Of course, these findings are not sufficient to speak of “morality,” but the tendencies observed in these primates fit what Scottish philosopher David Hume called the “moral sentiments.” Adding enforced social norms, our species turned the moral sentiments into an elaborate system that tells us how we ought to treat others and how we ought to promote the interests of the community."
A more recent book "Primates and philosophers" (which I have not yet seen) contains also discussions by other thinkers.
Some caste experiences
Dilip D'souza gives links to news and a review of A.N. Sattanathan's memoirs . I have heard similar stories from relatively young people from South India in late 80's.
Basic concepts
For basic terms and concepts in science, check ablogaroundtheclock and updates connecting to other blogs, for example, this one on evolution.
UPDATE: Check this post.
UPDATE: Check this post.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
An NRI in the news
My old economist friend V. K. Chetty's son Raj Chetty is in the list of 13 " young (untenured) economists doing work that is both highly respected among experts and relevant to the rest of us" according to thisarticle from New York Times.
6174
Mysteries of the number 6174 discovered by a Mumbai school teacher D.R. Kaprekar in 1949 is making news again.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Some bad ideas
Fred Halliday gives his list world's twelve worst ideas. One of them:
I tend to agree with this and am vary of commenting on Indian problems though I am very interested. Yet, I find many articles from India opinionated and not very professional (the articles in EPW seem very good). Many articles of the kind that seem technically sound seem to be coming from Americans and Indians in U.S. universities. Some are available at http://www.esocialsciences.com/home/index.asp
If there are more such sources, I would like to know.
Number three: Diasporas have a legitimate role to play in national and international politics
The notion that emigrant or diaspora communities have a special insight into the problems of their homeland, or a special moral or political status in regard to them, is wholly unfounded. Emigrant ethnic communities play almost always a negative, backward, at once hysterical and obstructive, role in resolving the conflicts of their countries of origin: Armenians and Turks, Jews and Arabs, various strands of Irish, are prime examples on the inter-ethnic front, as are exiles in the United States in regard to resolving the problems of Cuba, or policymaking on Iran. English emigrants are less noted for any such political role, though their spasms of collective inebriation and conformist ghettoised lifestyles abroad do little to enhance the reputation of their home country.
I tend to agree with this and am vary of commenting on Indian problems though I am very interested. Yet, I find many articles from India opinionated and not very professional (the articles in EPW seem very good). Many articles of the kind that seem technically sound seem to be coming from Americans and Indians in U.S. universities. Some are available at http://www.esocialsciences.com/home/index.asp
If there are more such sources, I would like to know.
Chillies and cancer
Being an addict of chillie products, partcularly 'kurakaramu' or 'sambarukaramu' from coastal Andhra districts, I was pleased to see this in
BBE news
Excerpts:
Unfortunately, my psoriatic arthritis is worse and my right hand is almost useless.
BBE news
Excerpts:
Scientists have discovered the key to the ability of spicy foods to kill cancer cells.
They found capsaicin, an ingredient of jalapeno peppers, triggers cancer cell death by attacking mitochondria - the cells' energy-generating boiler rooms.
.....
Dr Bates said: "Capsaicin, for example, is already found in treatments for muscle strain and psoriasis - which raises the question of whether an adapted topical treatment could be used to treat certain types of skin cancer.
"It's also possible that cancer patients or those at risk of developing cancer could be advised to eat a diet which is richer in spicy foods to help treat or prevent the disease."
However, Josephine Querido, cancer information officer at Cancer Research UK, said: "This research does not suggest that eating vast quantities of chilli pepper will help prevent or treat cancer."
Unfortunately, my psoriatic arthritis is worse and my right hand is almost useless.
Monday, January 08, 2007
John Quiggin's blog
Discovered fellow Australian John Quiggin's blog only a few weeks ago. Looks interesting and what is more, anybody can post on what interests him/her on Saturdays and Mondays. He posts at Crooked Timber too.
Strong words about China
After describing corruption in China, Will Hutton says in The Guardian:
Sounds familiar?
Update: Will Hutton's article as well his book on which the article is based are discussed in The Economist blog
The judicial apparatus is politicised from top to bottom. Every president and vice-president of a court is appointed by the party; and the courts are funded by provincial governments. The court bureaucracy works on the same basis as the rest of the government, with a party committee system superintending each rung of the court hierarchy. Judges often make decisions at the instruction of the committee or government independently of the legal merits of the case.
Many judges still have no formal legal training - the majority are retired army officers, only too ready to do the party's bidding.
.....
As a potential watchdog to correct any of this, the media is crippled. China now has more than 2,000 newspapers, 2,000 television channels, 9,000 magazines and 450 radio stations, but they are all under the watchful eye of the party in Beijing or provincial propaganda departments. These authorities issue daily instructions on what may and may not be reported; journalists who digress will be suspended from working or even imprisoned.
.....
In February 2006, three of China's most distinguished elders - Li Rui, a former aide to Mao Zedong, Hu Jiwei, former editor of the People's Daily, and Zhu Houze, a former party propaganda chief - published a letter condemning the approach: "History demonstrates that only a totalitarian system needs news censorship, out of the delusion that it can keep the public locked in ignorance," they wrote. Far from ensuring stability, they continued, such media repression would "sow the seeds of disaster".
....
The cumulative result of all this is economic weakness, despite the eye-catching growth figures. Innovation is poor; half of China's patents come from foreign companies. Its growth depends on huge investment, representing an unsustainable 40% or more of GDP financed by peasant savings. But China now needs $5.4 of extra investment to produce an extra $1 of output, a proportion vastly higher than that in economies such as Britain or the US. But 20 years ago, China needed just $4 to deliver the same result. In other words, an already gravely inefficient economy has become even more inefficient. China's national accounts tell the same story. Hu Angang calculates that China is now back to the Mao years in term of the inefficiency with which it uses capital to generate growth.
......
The west is unforgivably ignorant about China's shortcomings and weaknesses, which leads it vastly to exaggerate the extent of the Chinese "threat". China is certainly emerging as a leading exporter, but essentially it is a sub-contractor to the west. It has not bucked the way globalisation is heavily skewed in favour of the rich developed nations. Its productivity is poor; it lacks international champions; its innovation record is lamentable; it relies far too much on exports and investment to propel its economy. To characterise China as an unstoppable force whose economic model is unbeatable and set to swamp us - the stuff of almost every ministerial and business lobby speech - is to make a first-order mistake.
Sounds familiar?
Update: Will Hutton's article as well his book on which the article is based are discussed in The Economist blog
Is it oil after all?
A comment in Mark Thoma's blog links to this article. Excerpts:
Iraq's massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.
The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.
...
Oil industry executives and analysts say the law, which would permit Western companies to pocket up to three-quarters of profits in the early years, is the only way to get Iraq's oil industry back on its feet after years of sanctions, war and loss of expertise.
Funding higher education
Bruno Mascarenhas has a very interesting post on funding doctor's education in India. It indicates that eventhough medical education is expensive, most of the money comes from treating patients. This suggests that perhaps many technical institutes can become essentially self funding. In Australia, technical institutes like TAFEs are funded by the government and seem to make very little money on their own. Even small pcb-cutting guillotines are imported and cost about 1500 Aus. dollars. It seems that many such instruments can be easily made in TAFEs giving training to students and at the same tome saving money and delays to small business people and offices.
At a more basic research level, scidev.net has given this example from south Africa :
"South Africa's best university-industry research networks support industry while maintaining their academic integrity. Other countries can learn from their experience, says Glenda Kruss."
At a more basic research level, scidev.net has given this example from south Africa :
"South Africa's best university-industry research networks support industry while maintaining their academic integrity. Other countries can learn from their experience, says Glenda Kruss."
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Another interesting post from Mark Thoma
Pl. check Mark Thoma's recent post on George Akerloff's speech.
Saturday, January 06, 2007
Education and longevity
Greg Mankiw links to this article in New York Times
Excerpts:
The study is partly based on empirical studies of Adriana Lleras-Muney. It is not clear how it works (correlation vs causation) but some suspect that education may somehow teach people to delay gratification. Lleras-Muney's papers can be found here and one of the papers relevant to the above article may be mortalityrevision1.pdf. There are other papers on this issue by Angus Deaton, some of them available at the electronic journaledited by Padma Prakash. This site has also an article by Kaushik Basu on teacher truancy in India
Kuffir in his blog and comments in various Indian blogs has been frequently emphasizing the merits of education for all.
Excerpts:
The one social factor that researchers agree is consistently linked to longer lives in every country where it has been studied is education. It is more important than race; it obliterates any effects of income.
Year after year, in study after study, says Richard Hodes, director of the National Institute on Aging, education “keeps coming up.”
The study is partly based on empirical studies of Adriana Lleras-Muney. It is not clear how it works (correlation vs causation) but some suspect that education may somehow teach people to delay gratification. Lleras-Muney's papers can be found here and one of the papers relevant to the above article may be mortalityrevision1.pdf. There are other papers on this issue by Angus Deaton, some of them available at the electronic journaledited by Padma Prakash. This site has also an article by Kaushik Basu on teacher truancy in India
Kuffir in his blog and comments in various Indian blogs has been frequently emphasizing the merits of education for all.
One of America's strengths
From salon.com:
Twenty-five percent of the technology and engineering companies started in the United States between 1995 and 2005 had at least one key co-founder who was an immigrant, reports a new study from researchers at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University. The researchers estimate that these companies generated $52 billion in sales and employed 450,000 workers. Immigrant non-citizens were also responsible for 24 percent of all international patent applications filed from the U.S. in 2006. Indians alone started more engineering and technology companies in the U.S. in the last 10 years than Chinese, Taiwanese and Japanese combined.
......
(Incidentally, the names of the student researchers on the team constitute their own mini-primer on globalization: Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian, Pradeep Kamsali, Nishanth Lingamneni, Chris Morecroft, Niyanthi Reddy, George Robinson, Batul Tambawalla, Mark Weaver and Zhenyu Yang.)
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Allen Orr is disappointed with Richard Dawkins
H. Allen Orr reviews some god books including "The God Delusion" by Richars Dawkins here. It is a free access article. Orr is clearly disappointed.
In my opinion, H. Allen Orr is one of the best reviewers of science related books and has written some nice articles himself. Here is a link to some of his articles and reviews. Some more appeared in the New York Review of Books but not all of them are free access articles.
In my opinion, H. Allen Orr is one of the best reviewers of science related books and has written some nice articles himself. Here is a link to some of his articles and reviews. Some more appeared in the New York Review of Books but not all of them are free access articles.
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Recent news from Scidev.net
Sujatha wins Ramanujam prize :
Research opportunities for scientists from developing countries:
About Indian IT industry :
And many other interesting items. You can register for free updates at
http://www.scidev.net/register
UPDATE 1: Professor Madhukar Shukla has given the link to another article studying the discrepancies in IT figures.
UPDATE 2: Please see Professor Shukla's post on this topic
Sujatha was educated in India and has been with the institute (TIFR)since 1985. While she does not think that being a woman has hindered her career, she believes that scientific policies could be more sensitive to the problems that women face.
The US$10,000 prize — named after the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan — was set up last year by the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, to strengthen science in developing countries.
Research opportunities for scientists from developing countries:
For the first time, researchers in developing countries will be able to apply for European funding under nearly the same terms as European researchers, as opposed to a limited amount of funding for earmarked projects.
The first round of calls for the European Union's US$69 billion Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) will be announced on 22 December.
About Indian IT industry :
India's IT industry is not as successful as it seems and other countries should think carefully before following suit, writes Athar Osama.
.....
In 2003, for example, India claimed to have exported US$8.7 billion worth of software, most of which went to the United States. But US companies recorded just US$420 million worth of software imports from India — a remarkable 20-fold difference.
The GAO believes that this huge inconsistency arises, in part, from India misreporting financial data. For instance, India counts the earnings of all temporary workers in the United States as part of their exports figures. But this is against universally-accepted financial disclosure conventions suggested by the International Monetary Fund. The result is a gross over-representation of Indian software exports.
And many other interesting items. You can register for free updates at
http://www.scidev.net/register
UPDATE 1: Professor Madhukar Shukla has given the link to another article studying the discrepancies in IT figures.
UPDATE 2: Please see Professor Shukla's post on this topic
Friday, December 29, 2006
The Rational Fool quotes from Upanishads
The Rational Fool has an interesting post about Ravi Shastri's travails after commenting on his beef-eating. The quote from Brihadaranyaka Upanishad goes as follows:
VI-iv-18: He who wishes that a son should be born to him who would be a reputed scholar, frequenting the assemblies and speaking delightful words, would study all the Vedas and attain a full term of life, should have rice cooked with the meat of a vigorous bull or one more advanced in years, and he and his wife should eat it with clarified butter. Then they would be able to produce such a son.
The links are in the post. There is also link in the comments to an article in The Guardian which says that according to a poll in UK, 82 percent see religion as a cause of division and tension. The poll also reveals that non-believers outnumber believers in Britain by almost two to one. I hope that these surveys indicate the correct state of affairs.
VI-iv-18: He who wishes that a son should be born to him who would be a reputed scholar, frequenting the assemblies and speaking delightful words, would study all the Vedas and attain a full term of life, should have rice cooked with the meat of a vigorous bull or one more advanced in years, and he and his wife should eat it with clarified butter. Then they would be able to produce such a son.
The links are in the post. There is also link in the comments to an article in The Guardian which says that according to a poll in UK, 82 percent see religion as a cause of division and tension. The poll also reveals that non-believers outnumber believers in Britain by almost two to one. I hope that these surveys indicate the correct state of affairs.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Dhyan Chand's autobiography
is available online at http://www.bharatiyahockey.org/
It starts with the famous words "You are doubtless aware that I am a common man...."
It starts with the famous words "You are doubtless aware that I am a common man...."
Salon.com on Madhukar Shukla
It seems that I am not the only one who likes Madhukar Shukla's AlternatePerspective. From Salon.com:
These numbers were brought to my attention by Madhukar Shukla, a professor of strategic management at Xavier Labour Relations Institute in Jamshedpur, India. Shukla's blog, Alternative Perspective, just jumped to the top of the India department of my blogreader with his thoughtful inside-the-numbers look at the startling contrast between export wealth and starving children.
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Some American views on globalization
Greg Mankiw
links to this article by senators Byron Dorgan and Sherrod Brown. Excerpt:
Mark Thoma links to this post . Excerpt:
From a project (Executive summary here ) sponsored by Democratic Leadership Council:
links to this article by senators Byron Dorgan and Sherrod Brown. Excerpt:
We must insist that all trade agreements have labor, environmental and other protections so that American workers can compete on a level playing field. Trade agreements must also be reciprocal. The American market is the most desirable in the world. Every country wants access to it. That gives us a great deal of leverage, if only we'd use it. Barriers to U.S. products overseas should not be tolerated.
Free-trade agreements have protected drug companies, international investors and Hollywood films, yet failed to protect our communities, our workers and our environment.
Mark Thoma links to this post . Excerpt:
Or consider trade-opening agreements. They give Americans access to more low-cost products and services from abroad. This makes Americans’ dollars go further. But the agreements especially benefit the rich, who spend more than the middle class and the poor because they have more income to spend. The agreements also typically impose a burden on working-class Americans who thereby lose their jobs to foreigners. These job losers get new jobs, but studies show the new jobs pay 10 to 15 percent less than the old ones. Even if you assume that access to cheaper goods from abroad adds about 10 to 15 percent to their purchasing power, these working-class wage earners come out about even, at best. That means the overall result of most trade agreements is to widen inequality. Do the efficiency benefits of trade outweigh this result? Maybe a decade ago when inequality was less pronounced. Probably not, now.
From a project (Executive summary here ) sponsored by Democratic Leadership Council:
While public attitudes are complex and sometimes can appear contradictory, this report finds that the challenge for America’s leaders is clear: In the global era, American voters are waiting for a leader and party that can explain how globalization can be made to work for everyone. We began this work with few preconceptions. We knew from other studies that everyday Americans are feeling new pressures on themselves and their families. We found that these everyday pressures have created stark divisions among voters. Some voters look forward to seizing the opportunities offered by globalization, others are most concerned by the loss of economic security and the rapid pace of change. Many Americans hold seemingly conflicting feelings about globalization. They may simultaneously have concerns about lost income and lost job security, but still express a positive overall sense about globalization reflecting our national optimism and competitive spirit. Successful national leadership will address both the concerns about rising insecurity and the hopes felt by most voters.
Links December 26, 2006
After browsing through some of the standard economic blogs, I tried to see whether there are some new age economists and found the names Paul Ormerod and Brian Arthur in the book “Tumbling Dice” by the Australian journalist Brian Toohey.
Excerpts from an interview with
Brian Arthur.:
Excerpts from another interview which may be relevant to India here .:
Seems to be a sort of new age person from this interview ,
and story of a spat with Krugman .
Here is an article which features both Ormerod and Brian Arthur .
And Ormerod on Milton Friedman: here.
These bring me to a recent post by Madhukar Shukla. One wonders whether the sort of problems which MS mentions need thinking about the existing social structures and cultures discussed by Brian Arthur above.
Kuffir has given several links to farmers’ problems in the comments to my post “Why cotton prices are falling?” here.
Excerpts from an interview with
Brian Arthur.:
-- a great deal of economics is done the way it is done for analytical convenience. It is not just that the framework has become, as I said, so persuasive that economists don't feel that they need to look outside anywhere near as much. It is also that the framework itself is 50 percent an approximation to reality and 50 percent analytical self-convenience.
…….
.
But we're facing a danger that economics is rigorous deduction based upon faulty assumptions. Science after science gets that way from time to time. When it does, we're in real trouble.
……..
: The Libertarians are upset because I'm saying that the invisible hand is not perfect. Indeed, the invisible hand is a little bit arthritic. It's pretty good, but it's slightly less than perfect. I think we need to grow up and recognize this.
Excerpts from another interview which may be relevant to India here .:
These are interesting, especially India. But none are large enough—not even India yet—to make much of a difference.
……..
But a lead in science and in the innovations based on science takes a really long time to build up. You can’t just put in government funding and accomplish this in a decade. Advanced technology comes out of a very deep understanding of the theory and grammar of certain scientific phenomena. It took a huge amount of understanding of quantum physics to produce the laser for example (which lies at the heart of modern telecommunications). And similarly it takes a lot of understanding to translate these scientific understandings into technologies. This sort of understanding can’t just be lifted
from data or knowledge published in technical journals. What counts in these areas is knowing what methods work and what ones don’t, how exactly to “cook” the thing, what ways help to cut through obstacles, and what new directions to pursue next. This sort of expertise is no more easily transferable than is Cordon Bleu cooking. It is a craft—a collection of knowings—of hundreds of particular methods and details. As a craft it resides implicitly in people’s minds and over time, over years, it builds up within small groups in particular high-tech labs and in particular localities. The result is that once a region or a country gets ahead in a set of specific advanced technologies it becomes hard to challenge. I am not saying that other countries don’t have advanced science. I am saying that because of its deep understandings of the sciences behind genomics and proteomics and nanotech, the U.S. is well placed to lead in these new technologies and in the industries they will create.
Seems to be a sort of new age person from this interview ,
and story of a spat with Krugman .
Here is an article which features both Ormerod and Brian Arthur .
And Ormerod on Milton Friedman: here.
These bring me to a recent post by Madhukar Shukla. One wonders whether the sort of problems which MS mentions need thinking about the existing social structures and cultures discussed by Brian Arthur above.
Kuffir has given several links to farmers’ problems in the comments to my post “Why cotton prices are falling?” here.
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Friday, December 22, 2006
Science breakthroughs of the year
Science Magazine's list of the science breakthroughs of the year 2006 is led by Perelman's solution of the Poincare conjecture and is available here (December 22, 2006 issue):
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol314/issue5807/index.dtl
It also has a list of areas to watch in 2007.
Weirdest science storiesof 2006 according to livescience.com are available here:
http://www.livescience.com/bestimg/index.php?cat=weirdest2006
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/vol314/issue5807/index.dtl
It also has a list of areas to watch in 2007.
Weirdest science storiesof 2006 according to livescience.com are available here:
http://www.livescience.com/bestimg/index.php?cat=weirdest2006
Why are cotton prices falling?
Off and on there have been discussions in this and other blogs( for example, http://www.shivamvij.com/ and otherindia.org) about the effects of globalization on Indian farmers. It emerged from the discussions that Indian Govt., various state governments, regional rivalries, spurious seeds and greedy merchants are at least partly to blame. But there was no clear discussion of how prices are fixed. I keep seeing various reports like the following that indicate globalization has effect on prices. From http://www.flonnet.com/stories/20061229004911600.htm:
"Why are cotton prices falling?
Since 1994, international prices have fallen and domestic prices reflect this depression. It was $1.10 for one pound of cotton in 1994 [Rs.2,500 a quintal]. It fell to 40 cents a pound. Today, it is 54 cents a pound [Rs.1,800 a quintal]. Between 1997 and 2003, we imported 110 lakh bales of cotton. The import tariff is only 10 per cent. Textile mills that export yarn do not even have to pay this tariff.
Our political leaders say farmers should compete in the free market and not rely on the government. But, it is not a free market. The prices in the international market are low right now because contries like the U.S. and China give subsidies to their cotton farmers. In the U.S., 20,000 cotton farmers get $4.7 billion in subsidies. China gives Rs. 900 a quintal to its farmers, that is, half the price. How can our farmers compete? That is why they are committing suicide.
Our government should at least intervene to ensure that the prices of cotton lint do not fall below Rs. 80 a kg. Then farmers will be assured of a price of Rs.2,700 to Rs.3,000 a quintal. It does not implement this policy because it is under pressure from the mill lobby, which imports cheap, subsidised cotton."
See also http://alternativeperspective.blogspot.com/2006/12/hidden-hand-of-free-market-corporate.html and two earlier posts of Madhukar Shukla mentioned in the article. Again, this is all for my own reference since earlier there was a query as to how American subsidies can affect prices in India.
"Why are cotton prices falling?
Since 1994, international prices have fallen and domestic prices reflect this depression. It was $1.10 for one pound of cotton in 1994 [Rs.2,500 a quintal]. It fell to 40 cents a pound. Today, it is 54 cents a pound [Rs.1,800 a quintal]. Between 1997 and 2003, we imported 110 lakh bales of cotton. The import tariff is only 10 per cent. Textile mills that export yarn do not even have to pay this tariff.
Our political leaders say farmers should compete in the free market and not rely on the government. But, it is not a free market. The prices in the international market are low right now because contries like the U.S. and China give subsidies to their cotton farmers. In the U.S., 20,000 cotton farmers get $4.7 billion in subsidies. China gives Rs. 900 a quintal to its farmers, that is, half the price. How can our farmers compete? That is why they are committing suicide.
Our government should at least intervene to ensure that the prices of cotton lint do not fall below Rs. 80 a kg. Then farmers will be assured of a price of Rs.2,700 to Rs.3,000 a quintal. It does not implement this policy because it is under pressure from the mill lobby, which imports cheap, subsidised cotton."
See also http://alternativeperspective.blogspot.com/2006/12/hidden-hand-of-free-market-corporate.html and two earlier posts of Madhukar Shukla mentioned in the article. Again, this is all for my own reference since earlier there was a query as to how American subsidies can affect prices in India.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Links Dec. 20, 2006
Neweconomist blog on Mixed Joys of Privatization
and Wal-Mart in India
Mark Liberman in
Language Log
More by Liberman on
Science stories
John Quiggin on
Stern Report and David Maddison on
Stern Report .
New York Times on
Sleeping Over It and
Exercising .
Government's natural advantage is in raising money cheaply. The private sector's is in running organisations efficiently. Public-private ventures should capitalise on these core strengths, with the government raising the money - perhaps via bonds, as Ken Livingstone has suggested - and the private sector partner running the operation. This makes economic and fiscal sense - but has the key failing of not taking government capital spending 'off the books'.
and Wal-Mart in India
After abandoning disastrous forays in South Korea and Germany, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is coming to India. The opportunity is no doubt sizzling, though if Wal-Mart is not careful, it might end up making a hash of it...
Mark Liberman in
Language Log
This reinforces my conclusion that in today's public discourse, science is treated not as a search for the truth, but as source of edifying fables.
More by Liberman on
Science stories
As I've watched the reaction to Louann Brizendine's book over the past few months, I've concluded that "scientific studies" like these have taken over the place that bible stories used to occupy. It's only fundamentalists like me who worry about whether they're true. For most people, it's only important that they're morally instructive.
John Quiggin on
Stern Report and David Maddison on
Stern Report .
New York Times on
Sleeping Over It and
Exercising .
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Sir Nick's new job
From http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/newsroom_and_speeches/press/2006/press_107_06.cfm:
"Sir Nicholas Stern is to become the first holder of the IG Patel Chair at the London School of Economics and Political Science, heading a new India Observatory within the LSE's Asia Research Centre. Subject to clearance under the business appointment rules in the normal way, Sir Nicholas will take up this appointment on 1 June. His successor as Head of the Government Economic Service will be announced in due course."
"Sir Nicholas Stern is to become the first holder of the IG Patel Chair at the London School of Economics and Political Science, heading a new India Observatory within the LSE's Asia Research Centre. Subject to clearance under the business appointment rules in the normal way, Sir Nicholas will take up this appointment on 1 June. His successor as Head of the Government Economic Service will be announced in due course."
Monday, December 18, 2006
How the poor live
From
Stumbling and Mumbling
An excerpt from the paper (which tallies with some of my observations):
At somewhat higher income levels, I have seen similar things. Women folk bringing sarees from cities and traveling round villages selling them to augment husbands' salaries.
There is also a discussion of the above paper of Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo in
MR
Stumbling and Mumbling
What exactly does it mean to live on a dollar a day? Here's a fascinating
paper that tells us, by drawing on evidence from 13 countries. Some highlights:
1. "The average person living at under $1 a day does not seem to put every available penny into buying more calories...Food typically represents from 56 to 78% [of household spending]."
Despite this, hunger is common. Among the extremely poor in Udaipur, only 57% said their household had enough to eat in the previous year, and 72% report at least one symptom of disease.
2. "The poor generally do not compain about their health - but then they do not complain about life in general. While the poor certainly feel poor, their levels of self-reported happiness or health are not particularly low."
3. Spending on festivals - religious ceremonies, funerals and weddings - is high. In Udaipur, median spending on these by people living on $1 a day was 10% of income.
4. In several countries, the extremely poor spend about 5% of income on alcohol and tobacco.
5. In the Ivory Coast, 14% of people on $1 a day have a TV - and 45% of those on $2 a day have one.
6. Many of the extremely poor get income from more than one source. Cultivating their own land is not always the main source of income.
7. Participation in microfinance is not as high as you'd think. The poor seem unable to reap economies of scale, therefore.
An excerpt from the paper (which tallies with some of my observations):
Walking down the main street of the biggest slum in the medium sized Southern Indian
city of Guntur at nine in the morning, the first thing one notices are the eateries: In front of every sixth house that directly faced the road, by our count, there was a woman sitting behind a little kerosene stove with a round cast-iron griddle roasting on it. Every few minutes someone would walk up to her and order a dosa, the rice and beans pancakes that almost everyone eats for breakfast in South India. She would throw a cupful of the batter on the griddle, swirl it around to cover almost the entire surface and drizzle some oil around the edges. A minute or two later, she would slide an off-white pock-marked pancake off the griddle, douse it in some sauce, fold it in a newspaper or a banana leaf and hand it to her client, in return for a rupee.
When we walked back down that same street an hour later, the women were gone. We
found one inside her house, filling her daughter’s plate with lunch that she had cooked while making the dosas. She told us that later that day, she was going out to vend her saris, the long piece of decorative cloth that Indian women drape around themselves. She gets plain nylon saris from the shop and stitches beads and small shiny pieces on them, and once a week, she takes them from house to house, hoping that women would buy them to wear on special occasions. And they do buy them, she said confidently. All the other dosa women we met that day had a similar story: once they are done frying dosas, they do something else. Some collect trash; others make pickles to sell; others work as laborers.
At somewhat higher income levels, I have seen similar things. Women folk bringing sarees from cities and traveling round villages selling them to augment husbands' salaries.
There is also a discussion of the above paper of Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo in
MR
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Spelling
I often misspell (forget tense, punctuation etc. My excuse is that I studied in a Telugu medium school and have been mostly doing mathematics) and miss the misspelt letters even after a few checks.It seems that spelling may not be that important. Here is a post from the evolotionary-psycholgy group:
Try to read this. I'm sure you can....very interesting.
fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too
Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe can.
i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it.
Comment:
I could read this at normal reading speed, which seems just a little absurd.
Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek (Thanks Gene Johnson)
Thursday, December 14, 2006
No politics in economics?
From an interview with David Card;
Courtesy
Mark Thoma
I've subsequently stayed away from the minimum wage literature for a number of reasons. First, it cost me a lot of friends. People that I had known for many years, for instance, some of the ones I met at my first job at the University of Chicago, became very angry or disappointed. They thought that in publishing our work we were being traitors to the cause of economics as a whole.
Courtesy
Mark Thoma
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Two of 'Ankuram' organizers
ANKURAM is an organization in the twin cities of Hyderabad-Secunderabad which helps girls from the ages of 3-17 with education and professional skills.
Interesting post on Abdus Salam
Pl. see
Pakistaniat.com
for an interesting article on Abdus Salam and very interesting comments and links in the comments ( see the links in saima nasir's comments to articles by Parvez Hoodbhoy).
Excerpt:
One wonders why in spite of many new research institutes in India, where some of the elite ones have facilities comparable with the best in the west and with light teaching and relative job security, India has not been able to produce scientists of the calibre of C.V.Raman, S.N.Bose, Meghnath Saha, R.C. Bose, C.R. Rao (just to mention a few trained in India). In Pakistan,this article indicates the problems. It may be much more difficult to analyze the Indian situation; after all Vedic mathematics has not been a great success.
Pakistaniat.com
for an interesting article on Abdus Salam and very interesting comments and links in the comments ( see the links in saima nasir's comments to articles by Parvez Hoodbhoy).
Excerpt:
Pakistan’s space research agency Suparco was created by him and it is only symbolic that a group of Shia workers of Suparco were put to death in Karachi in 2004 by sectarian terrorists. Like Dr Salam, a lot of gifted Shia doctors have had to leave Pakistan because of the state’s twisted policies.
Dr Abdus Salam got his Nobel Prize for Physics in 1979. It was a most embarrassing moment for General Zia who had ‘supplemented’ the Second Amendment to the constitution with further comic disabilities against the Ahmedis. He had to welcome the great scientist and had to be seen with him on TV. Since the clerical part of his government was already bristling, he took care to clip those sections of Dr Salam’s speech where he had said the kalima or otherwise used an Islamic expression. It was Dr Salam’s good luck that one of the believers did not go to court under Zia’s own laws to get the country’s only Nobel laureate sent to prison for six months of rigorous imprisonment. Dr Salam then went to India where he was received with great fanfare. He had gone there to simply meet his primary school mathematics teacher who was still alive. When the two met, Dr Salam took off his Nobel medal and put it around the neck of his teacher.
One wonders why in spite of many new research institutes in India, where some of the elite ones have facilities comparable with the best in the west and with light teaching and relative job security, India has not been able to produce scientists of the calibre of C.V.Raman, S.N.Bose, Meghnath Saha, R.C. Bose, C.R. Rao (just to mention a few trained in India). In Pakistan,this article indicates the problems. It may be much more difficult to analyze the Indian situation; after all Vedic mathematics has not been a great success.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
More University-Industry links
From Guardian :
See also here , here and here .
Sir Richard Doll, the celebrated epidemiologist who established that smoking causes lung cancer, was receiving a consultancy fee of $1,500 a day in the mid-1980s from Monsanto, then a major chemical company and now better known for its GM crops business.
While he was being paid by Monsanto, Sir Richard wrote to a royal Australian commission investigating the potential cancer-causing properties of Agent Orange, made by Monsanto and used by the US in the Vietnam war. Sir Richard said there was no evidence that the chemical caused cancer.
See also here , here and here .
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Penile morphology of Indian males?
A recent BBC report about condom sizes in India is drawing interesting comments in several blogs . Indiaincut blog gives links to other sites discussing the topic. Following up a hint in the comments of GNXP, I googled and found here :
If true it seems that many Indian males have it good, a noncompetetive system to find partners and a system (caste) in which they automatically acquire some status.
Update 12.12.06: The BBC article mentioned above is still among the most e-mailed articles and it appears that Indian males may have interesting times abroad. Another article on condom sizes in BBC News, this time about South Africa.
This prediction by Eberhard is supported by Dixson (1987) who has analysed different aspects of penile morphology in primate species and found that size and complexity are indeed related inversely to the number of males that typically mate with each female. Thus for monogamous and polygynous males the penis is smaller and simple in design whereas in multimale/multifemale, or dispersed species, it is larger and more complex. Many species of birds are of course also monogamous which would further support this theory.
If true it seems that many Indian males have it good, a noncompetetive system to find partners and a system (caste) in which they automatically acquire some status.
Update 12.12.06: The BBC article mentioned above is still among the most e-mailed articles and it appears that Indian males may have interesting times abroad. Another article on condom sizes in BBC News, this time about South Africa.
Friday, December 08, 2006
University-Industry links; examples from South Africa
From scidev.net :
In a different direction, New York Times indicates how China chose a modest programme in the 80's which turned out to be useful and productive :
In summary, South Africa's best university-industry partnerships provide a simple lesson to other countries: strategically planning the form and scale of links that are to be promoted can strengthen development and help improve quality of life."
The examples given are:
"Two examples from South Africa show that such strategic partnerships can indeed balance academic and industrial interests while contributing to national development.
The Tree Protection Co-operative Programme is a biotechnology research network of large paper firms and small timber producers, working on tree pathogens with academic partners at the University of Pretoria, to the benefit of all.
The university research unit is building an international scientific reputation by producing a large number of postgraduate students and accredited publications. It has become a sponsored 'centre of excellence' that attracts considerable government research funding.
The industry partners depend for their competitive edge on the costly research and development and the risk-management strategies the network provides. For example, the university researchers provide DNA technology to produce trees resistant to pests and pathogens.
A second example of a successful strategic partnership is the remote sensing Multi-Sensor Microsatellite Imager project. In this government-funded research network, university, industry and government partners work together to design micro-satellites that can supply affordable high-resolution imagery to African governments. The images can help monitor, regulate and manage resources, for example, water distribution, crop management and settlement infrastructure.
A Stellenbosch University laboratory conducts fundamental research for the network. A spin-off company manages the technology development, while application research managed by a government science council informs the design. Finally, a Belgian university and industrial partner develop specific technical components.
Mutually beneficial network partnerships like these — where university, industry and intermediary partners work towards a shared objective — generate knowledge and technological innovation for all.
They help universities harness the innovation potential of their researchers while still maintaining academic integrity. They meet industrial needs for technological progress, and also contribute to national development.
In a different direction, New York Times indicates how China chose a modest programme in the 80's which turned out to be useful and productive :
But Dr. Panofsky and others, including Dr. Lee, argued that a more modest machine would serve China better.
“We talked them out of it,” Dr Panofsky said. In 1982, in the midst of economic difficulties, the proton machine was canceled in favor of one that would collide electrons and positrons at the much lower energy of around 2 billion electron volts. Such a machine would produce synchrotron radiation, which has medical and other uses as well as a role in particle research.
......
“It was finished on time and on budget,” said Dr. Chen, who had returned to China from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1980s to work at the physics institute. where he became director in 1998. The size of the Beijing collider was based on what could be achieved at the time, but it turned out to be a fortuitous choice.
“The energy was lower but it was more interesting,” Dr. Chen said.
......
The energy range of the Beijing collider, 1 to 2.2 billion electron volts per beam, contained a lot of puzzling left-behind physics, including the tau, a sort of superfat electron, for which nature has no obvious purpose, and the so-called J/psi. The J/psi, consisting of a pair of quarks each exhibiting the quantum property known whimsically as charm, set off a revolution and led to Nobel prizes when it was discovered in 1974.
“There is a lot going on in that energy region,” said Frederick A. Harris, a professor of physics at the University of Hawaii, who works often at the Beijing collider. By tuning the energy of their colliding beams, the Chinese researchers have been able to measure the mass of the tau very precisely, as well as carry out detailed studies of the J/psi and similar particles.
In the collider’s energy range, Dr. Chen said simply, “We dominate.”
...
Dr. Panofsky, of the Stanford accelerator, said: “Most economic growth is not due to new invention, but making things faster and cheaper. High energy physics mirrors this. In China they measure things known to exist better and with higher accuracy than in the West.”
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Quote of the day
"Regarding tragedies, my polemic was
again to ask why the tragedy of someone that
comes from our socio-economic, cultural and
professional class should be more poignant
than that of someone else from a different class.
I would rather do with tragedies from no class."
B. Ananthanarayan in the comments of:
http://nanopolitan.blogspot.com/2006/12/beyond-faculty-salaries-1-start-up.html
again to ask why the tragedy of someone that
comes from our socio-economic, cultural and
professional class should be more poignant
than that of someone else from a different class.
I would rather do with tragedies from no class."
B. Ananthanarayan in the comments of:
http://nanopolitan.blogspot.com/2006/12/beyond-faculty-salaries-1-start-up.html
Monday, December 04, 2006
Mr. Maxwell follows suit
From this article in New York Times :
"But Mr. Johnson found a way to recover the federal royalties on his own. In 1995, he filed suit under the False Claims Act, a longstanding law intended to encourage whistle-blowers. Under the act, best known for its use against overbilling by military contractors, a private citizen can sue a company, contending that it defrauded the federal government. Companies found guilty have to pay as much as three times the amount of their fraudulent gains, and any person who files a suit is entitled to keep up to 30 percent of the money recovered."
Now Bobby Maxwell whose job has been terminated by the Interior Dept (USA) has filed a suit against Kerr-McGee corporation. If he wins, US Govt., Mr.Maxwell and his lawyers will all make a lot of money just as Mr. Johnson did. It seems to be one way to fight corruption and make money at the same time. I wonder how many other countries have similar Acts.
"But Mr. Johnson found a way to recover the federal royalties on his own. In 1995, he filed suit under the False Claims Act, a longstanding law intended to encourage whistle-blowers. Under the act, best known for its use against overbilling by military contractors, a private citizen can sue a company, contending that it defrauded the federal government. Companies found guilty have to pay as much as three times the amount of their fraudulent gains, and any person who files a suit is entitled to keep up to 30 percent of the money recovered."
Now Bobby Maxwell whose job has been terminated by the Interior Dept (USA) has filed a suit against Kerr-McGee corporation. If he wins, US Govt., Mr.Maxwell and his lawyers will all make a lot of money just as Mr. Johnson did. It seems to be one way to fight corruption and make money at the same time. I wonder how many other countries have similar Acts.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Interesting Economic Discussions
I assumed that economists are like engineers who fix problems as they come up and sometimes even struggle to figure out the problems. This approach is exemplified by Partha Dasgupta's
comments:
“Despite the interdisciplinary nature of my enquiries, the lens through which I
have studied the social world has been that of economics. I have assumed a point of view of the
circumstances of living that gives prominence to the allocation of scarce resources - among
contemporaries and across the generations. One hallmark of the viewpoint is to study human well-being in terms of its commodity determinants and the institutions that shape our lives. Another is to reason quantitatively. Moreover, because it is subject to empirical discipline, the inquiry encourages approximations. Inevitably, the viewpoint is partial. But increasingly I have come to realize that it is possible to look outward from that partial view to catch a glimpse of the larger enterprise called "living". I do that regularly in the essays that follow and, in the one methodological essay in the present collection, I respond to several prominent critics of contemporary economics by showing that they misunderstand the foundations of my discipline.
While re-reading the essays here, I noticed that I have rarely ever published an article in which
the bird I was ultimately able to catch was in fact caught. This is because I have rarely ever known what it was that I was really after. Maybe I knew it subconsciously, but I doubt that. In my case, a discovery has meant a growing realization, not a blinding revelation. Usually, it has taken me several publications,brick by metaphorical brick, before I was able even to understand what the phenomenon I had been working on was, let alone to uncover the pathways that give rise to the phenomenon. I don't know whether this is a common experience among scientists, but I doubt it. I suspect there is nothing common among the processes by which we gain an understanding of the world around us."
But it seems lot of economic thinking is also driven by ideology and politics. Before I loose track of them ( once discussions get in to archives, it seems difficult to locate them), I record URL's of some recent discussions, particularly from Mark Thoma's site .
A general discussion of politics in economics:
matthewyglesias.
See also the discussion
where suddenly this kind of statements jump out:
"Of the tendencies that are harmful to sound economics, the most seductive, and in my opinion the most poisonous, is to focus on questions of distribution. "
Discussion of Christopher Hayes article on neoclassical indoctrination:
Mark Thoma
crooked Timber.
Some Comments in Crooked Timber:
1)…
Too much of economics teaching is reminiscent of calculus as practiced by Wernher von Braun (in the words of Tom Lehrer): “Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department,” says Wernher von Braun.
Posted by Ken Houghton · November 15th, 2006 at 3:30 pm
2) Say, rather, that neoclassical economics is a very useful set of disciplinary tools for somebody whose instincts and intuitions are on the left. They sharpen your arguments and clarify your thought. By contrast, I think that most people whose instincts and intuitions are on the right find their arguments dulled and muddied by too much exposure to neoclassical economics…
Extensive discussion of invisible hand:
Mark Thoma
Towards the end of the comments, there is a lot of quibbling about definitions.
Pardha Dasgupta's defence of traditional economics:
here and Pardha Dasgupta gives a lesson in math. economics here.
Partha Dasgupta's comments on Stern Report discussed in
Brad DeLong.
There are too many referencesto Mark Thoma and Pardha Dasgupta. It is just that I feel at the moment that Mark Thoma is really struggling to explore the relevance of economics. About Pardha Dasgupta, I heard in the early 80's that he used to travel around India on his bike trying to study the economic and social conditions. I will spend the next few months trying to understand some of these discussions.
comments:
“Despite the interdisciplinary nature of my enquiries, the lens through which I
have studied the social world has been that of economics. I have assumed a point of view of the
circumstances of living that gives prominence to the allocation of scarce resources - among
contemporaries and across the generations. One hallmark of the viewpoint is to study human well-being in terms of its commodity determinants and the institutions that shape our lives. Another is to reason quantitatively. Moreover, because it is subject to empirical discipline, the inquiry encourages approximations. Inevitably, the viewpoint is partial. But increasingly I have come to realize that it is possible to look outward from that partial view to catch a glimpse of the larger enterprise called "living". I do that regularly in the essays that follow and, in the one methodological essay in the present collection, I respond to several prominent critics of contemporary economics by showing that they misunderstand the foundations of my discipline.
While re-reading the essays here, I noticed that I have rarely ever published an article in which
the bird I was ultimately able to catch was in fact caught. This is because I have rarely ever known what it was that I was really after. Maybe I knew it subconsciously, but I doubt that. In my case, a discovery has meant a growing realization, not a blinding revelation. Usually, it has taken me several publications,brick by metaphorical brick, before I was able even to understand what the phenomenon I had been working on was, let alone to uncover the pathways that give rise to the phenomenon. I don't know whether this is a common experience among scientists, but I doubt it. I suspect there is nothing common among the processes by which we gain an understanding of the world around us."
But it seems lot of economic thinking is also driven by ideology and politics. Before I loose track of them ( once discussions get in to archives, it seems difficult to locate them), I record URL's of some recent discussions, particularly from Mark Thoma's site .
A general discussion of politics in economics:
matthewyglesias.
See also the discussion
where suddenly this kind of statements jump out:
"Of the tendencies that are harmful to sound economics, the most seductive, and in my opinion the most poisonous, is to focus on questions of distribution. "
Discussion of Christopher Hayes article on neoclassical indoctrination:
Mark Thoma
crooked Timber.
Some Comments in Crooked Timber:
1)…
Too much of economics teaching is reminiscent of calculus as practiced by Wernher von Braun (in the words of Tom Lehrer): “Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department,” says Wernher von Braun.
Posted by Ken Houghton · November 15th, 2006 at 3:30 pm
2) Say, rather, that neoclassical economics is a very useful set of disciplinary tools for somebody whose instincts and intuitions are on the left. They sharpen your arguments and clarify your thought. By contrast, I think that most people whose instincts and intuitions are on the right find their arguments dulled and muddied by too much exposure to neoclassical economics…
Extensive discussion of invisible hand:
Mark Thoma
Towards the end of the comments, there is a lot of quibbling about definitions.
Pardha Dasgupta's defence of traditional economics:
here and Pardha Dasgupta gives a lesson in math. economics here.
Partha Dasgupta's comments on Stern Report discussed in
Brad DeLong.
There are too many referencesto Mark Thoma and Pardha Dasgupta. It is just that I feel at the moment that Mark Thoma is really struggling to explore the relevance of economics. About Pardha Dasgupta, I heard in the early 80's that he used to travel around India on his bike trying to study the economic and social conditions. I will spend the next few months trying to understand some of these discussions.
Saturday, December 02, 2006
Muslims in India
From the Indian Express on Sachar Report :
"Tucked away in one paragraph on page 21 of the 404-page Sachar Committee report on the dismal presence of Muslims in virtually every sector is one finding that holds out a glimmer of hope when it comes to Muslims in employment.
Business Process Outsourcing (BPOs), the heart of the services boom in the economy, the report says, has provided a window of opportunity “where, interestingly a large number of Muslims seem to find employment. It was found that the proficiency of English was the only criterion for gaining employment — sheer market forces were determining recruitment, rather than affiliations of any kind.”"
See also Peter Foster's post.
Update(Jan, 07, 2007):a recent article
"Tucked away in one paragraph on page 21 of the 404-page Sachar Committee report on the dismal presence of Muslims in virtually every sector is one finding that holds out a glimmer of hope when it comes to Muslims in employment.
Business Process Outsourcing (BPOs), the heart of the services boom in the economy, the report says, has provided a window of opportunity “where, interestingly a large number of Muslims seem to find employment. It was found that the proficiency of English was the only criterion for gaining employment — sheer market forces were determining recruitment, rather than affiliations of any kind.”"
See also Peter Foster's post.
Update(Jan, 07, 2007):a recent article
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)