The Seven Finalists for the 3QD Science Prize 2009.
Unfortnuately, I only browsed through some of the posts and read only one in detail
Bands of Iron which I found excellent. It did make to the final seven.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
On the outlook of societies
from Rajib Abortion & religion - an international view:
"What significance does this have? People tend to assume that their beliefs are driven by specific and distinctive individual abstract principles and beliefs, but these data suggest that cultural Zeitgeist matters much more Within a given society a group X may have a particular disposition, but the general outlook of the society shapes their ultimate mean viewpoint far more than their distinctive group identity."
What about immigrants? From In the blood:
"Even after controlling for income, education and other relevant economic and social factors such as work history and age, views about redistribution in an immigrant’s home country are a strong predictor of his own opinions. Indeed, this measure of “cultural background” explains as much as income levels, and three-fifths as much as income and education combined. These results hold even for immigrants who moved 20 years before they were surveyed; they cannot be attributed to people not having had time to adjust their views."
"What significance does this have? People tend to assume that their beliefs are driven by specific and distinctive individual abstract principles and beliefs, but these data suggest that cultural Zeitgeist matters much more Within a given society a group X may have a particular disposition, but the general outlook of the society shapes their ultimate mean viewpoint far more than their distinctive group identity."
What about immigrants? From In the blood:
"Even after controlling for income, education and other relevant economic and social factors such as work history and age, views about redistribution in an immigrant’s home country are a strong predictor of his own opinions. Indeed, this measure of “cultural background” explains as much as income levels, and three-fifths as much as income and education combined. These results hold even for immigrants who moved 20 years before they were surveyed; they cannot be attributed to people not having had time to adjust their views."
Mathematics in retirement
I always wanted to do mathematics without insitutional affiliations but that was possible only in retirement. Here is a recent note Splittings and C-complexes. Part of my share of the work was done in Vivekananda University, Belur Math at the instance of Swami Vidyanadhananda.
Now, without the pressure to publish, I can wait for comments and see how it goes. In any case, it clarified some things that I wodered about off and on. Some more papers that I put in the archives which may or may not be published are:
Delzant's variation on Scott complexity and Annulus-Torus decompositions for Poincaré duality pairs. The last one is too long and I hope that some one will simplify it.
Now, without the pressure to publish, I can wait for comments and see how it goes. In any case, it clarified some things that I wodered about off and on. Some more papers that I put in the archives which may or may not be published are:
Delzant's variation on Scott complexity and Annulus-Torus decompositions for Poincaré duality pairs. The last one is too long and I hope that some one will simplify it.
Monday, June 08, 2009
On the evolution of morality and culture
From Blood and Treasure:
"TWO of the oddest things about people are morality and culture. Neither is unique to humans, but Homo sapiens has both in an abundance missing from other species. Indeed, that abundance—of concern for the well-being of others, (even unrelated others), and of finely crafted material objects both useful and ornamental—is seen by many as the mark of man, as what distinguishes humanity from mere beasts.
How these human traits evolved is controversial. But two papers in this week’s Science may throw light on the process. In one, Samuel Bowles of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico fleshes out his paradoxical theory that much of human virtue was forged in the crucible of war. Comrades in arms, he believes, become comrades in other things, too.
In the other paper, Mark Thomas and his colleagues at University College, London, suggest that cultural sophistication depends on more than just the evolution of intelligence. It also requires a dense population. If correct, this would explain some puzzling features of the archaeological record that have hitherto been put down to the arbitrary nature of what has survived to the present and what has not."
Like many I wondered about these topicsoff and on but do not have enough grasp on the literature for any informedcomments. Informed comments on such topics are usually in Rajib's blog, for example, in this post:
Group selection, red in tooth and claw .
"TWO of the oddest things about people are morality and culture. Neither is unique to humans, but Homo sapiens has both in an abundance missing from other species. Indeed, that abundance—of concern for the well-being of others, (even unrelated others), and of finely crafted material objects both useful and ornamental—is seen by many as the mark of man, as what distinguishes humanity from mere beasts.
How these human traits evolved is controversial. But two papers in this week’s Science may throw light on the process. In one, Samuel Bowles of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico fleshes out his paradoxical theory that much of human virtue was forged in the crucible of war. Comrades in arms, he believes, become comrades in other things, too.
In the other paper, Mark Thomas and his colleagues at University College, London, suggest that cultural sophistication depends on more than just the evolution of intelligence. It also requires a dense population. If correct, this would explain some puzzling features of the archaeological record that have hitherto been put down to the arbitrary nature of what has survived to the present and what has not."
Like many I wondered about these topicsoff and on but do not have enough grasp on the literature for any informedcomments. Informed comments on such topics are usually in Rajib's blog, for example, in this post:
Group selection, red in tooth and claw .
Recent news on Indian students in Melbourne
Bashings undermine image blitz from The Age and
Indian students in Oz to be trained in self-defence skills from Samachar.com
Here is an article from The Outlook by Namrata Goswami'Racism' Down Under
where the views are similar to my impressions. One excerpt:
"Higher education sectors in Melbourne like hospitality, teaching etc have been taken over by the private sector which is mostly unregulated by the government. Most of these private institutes attract students from India and China with the promise of world class courses, accommodation and jobs but end up ‘way short’ in reality."
I met student from Hyderabad yesterday who utilized one of these private sector organizations with are cruiting adency in Hyderabad. Apparently it costs about 2 to 3lakh rupees for bribes and applications for various certificates and there was no orentation advice. He was told that he could go and do whatever he liked. I know of one private institute which provides these courses in Melbourne. It did provide jobs for many Indians here. When I enquired about part time work for an Indian student, I was told that he could teach their institute! There are stories that one of the 'owners' was beaten up by disgruntled students and left for USA. A few who worked in that institute are now starting their own institute.
Indian students in Oz to be trained in self-defence skills from Samachar.com
Here is an article from The Outlook by Namrata Goswami'Racism' Down Under
where the views are similar to my impressions. One excerpt:
"Higher education sectors in Melbourne like hospitality, teaching etc have been taken over by the private sector which is mostly unregulated by the government. Most of these private institutes attract students from India and China with the promise of world class courses, accommodation and jobs but end up ‘way short’ in reality."
I met student from Hyderabad yesterday who utilized one of these private sector organizations with are cruiting adency in Hyderabad. Apparently it costs about 2 to 3lakh rupees for bribes and applications for various certificates and there was no orentation advice. He was told that he could go and do whatever he liked. I know of one private institute which provides these courses in Melbourne. It did provide jobs for many Indians here. When I enquired about part time work for an Indian student, I was told that he could teach their institute! There are stories that one of the 'owners' was beaten up by disgruntled students and left for USA. A few who worked in that institute are now starting their own institute.
The passion of Benjamin Kaila
During the last few years Benjamin Kaila has organized Ambedkar Scholarships with a small group of friends (see also Friends for Education International) though he himself had some job problems off and on in USA. I came to know of his efforts through Shivam Vij and have been in touch with him. Yesterday I sent this link to him
Cowherd excels in Class XII exams
and he already got in touch with the student and arranged a small loan. Since there were communication problems (Ramakant could not speak either English or Telugu), Benjamin has alerted a small network of friends that he developed.
Here is an old write up on Benjamin Kaila To Learn With Dignity by Shivam and a more recent one Change Makers Inc in Tehelka.
P.S. Photos of some of the beneficiaries of the micro loan program organized by Benjamin Kaila are in the photo section of this blog.
Cowherd excels in Class XII exams
and he already got in touch with the student and arranged a small loan. Since there were communication problems (Ramakant could not speak either English or Telugu), Benjamin has alerted a small network of friends that he developed.
Here is an old write up on Benjamin Kaila To Learn With Dignity by Shivam and a more recent one Change Makers Inc in Tehelka.
P.S. Photos of some of the beneficiaries of the micro loan program organized by Benjamin Kaila are in the photo section of this blog.
Thursday, June 04, 2009
Future directions in science?
In Generalization and truth, MaxLiberman said:
"Generalization is the essence of rationality. But the ways that human languages encourage us to generalize can cause enormous damage to rational thinking, especially in combination with the natural human preference for clear and simple stories over complicated ones."
I hope that the following series is not in this vein WHAT'S NEXT? Dispatches on the Future of Science (via3quarksdaily).
P.S. A review in the New Scientist here.
"Generalization is the essence of rationality. But the ways that human languages encourage us to generalize can cause enormous damage to rational thinking, especially in combination with the natural human preference for clear and simple stories over complicated ones."
I hope that the following series is not in this vein WHAT'S NEXT? Dispatches on the Future of Science (via3quarksdaily).
P.S. A review in the New Scientist here.
Kim Plofker's book on Indian mathematics
Kim Plofker's book on Indian mathematics which has been mentioned before Indian mathematics miscelleny is reviewd by Pervez Hoodbhoy in Naure An Indian history of numbers. It seems to be a lazy review. Having gone through her long article in The Mathematics of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, and Islam: A Sourcebook, I am not planning to read her new book any time soon and assume that it is good. Excerpts of thelater book are available here. Here is a review of the later book in which Kim Plofker's contribution is discussed in some detail by Clemency Montelle.
Why I follow blogs
From my comment in Qalandar:
Anon.
Many thanks for the detailed comments. I have been following topics outside mathematics only for five years or so and so my comments may be quite uninformed. This interest was sparked by roughly two events. One was the war in Iraq and I felt that I could not ignore the outside world any longer. Secondly, after about 50 years of professional life with most of the reading and communications in English, I suddenly started remembering Telugu songs that I have not heard for 40-50 years. I started following blogs and other sources both in English and Telugu. At first Telugu blogs and sites were disappointing with a lot of abuse and language that did not seem equipped to express difficult ideas and nuianced thought. Then suddenly lot of young people started blogging in Telugu and already the usage is much better than before and many topics from science to philosophy are discussed reasonably in some of the blogs. Internet and blogs seem to be making a lot of difference. I think that the situation may be better in languages like Tamil, Bengali, Urdu..
Secondly, I find many books are appearing published in India written by many living in India of high standard on history, etymolgy.. Some are in English (like 'Comprehensive History and Culture of Andhra Pradesh') but there are also books and translations in Telugu. For example P.V. Parabrahma Satry's 'Kakatiyas' isrecently translated in to Telugu is a nice complement to Cynthia Talbot's book.
Some of these changes seem to be coming from the cumulative power of number of bright people using the new facilities rather than a few outstanding individuals. I have seen David Shulman's articles but I have also seen posts by some bloggers working in IT with detailed knowledge of vedas. So it may not be too long before more work with reasonable methodologies will emerge from the subcontinent.
Anon.
Many thanks for the detailed comments. I have been following topics outside mathematics only for five years or so and so my comments may be quite uninformed. This interest was sparked by roughly two events. One was the war in Iraq and I felt that I could not ignore the outside world any longer. Secondly, after about 50 years of professional life with most of the reading and communications in English, I suddenly started remembering Telugu songs that I have not heard for 40-50 years. I started following blogs and other sources both in English and Telugu. At first Telugu blogs and sites were disappointing with a lot of abuse and language that did not seem equipped to express difficult ideas and nuianced thought. Then suddenly lot of young people started blogging in Telugu and already the usage is much better than before and many topics from science to philosophy are discussed reasonably in some of the blogs. Internet and blogs seem to be making a lot of difference. I think that the situation may be better in languages like Tamil, Bengali, Urdu..
Secondly, I find many books are appearing published in India written by many living in India of high standard on history, etymolgy.. Some are in English (like 'Comprehensive History and Culture of Andhra Pradesh') but there are also books and translations in Telugu. For example P.V. Parabrahma Satry's 'Kakatiyas' isrecently translated in to Telugu is a nice complement to Cynthia Talbot's book.
Some of these changes seem to be coming from the cumulative power of number of bright people using the new facilities rather than a few outstanding individuals. I have seen David Shulman's articles but I have also seen posts by some bloggers working in IT with detailed knowledge of vedas. So it may not be too long before more work with reasonable methodologies will emerge from the subcontinent.
Monday, June 01, 2009
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Things academic
Interesting article How to Learn About Everything (via Marginal Revolution which has interesting comments). Some excerpts:
"Note that the title above isn’t “how to learn everything”, but “how to learn about everything”. The distinction I have in mind is between knowing the inside of a topic in deep detail — many facts and problem-solving skills — and knowing the structure and context of a topic: essential facts, what problems can be solved by the skilled, and how the topic fits with others.
This knowledge isn’t superficial in a survey-course sense: It is about both deep structure and practical applications. Knowing about, in this sense, is crucial to understanding a new problem and what must be learned in more depth in order to solve it. The cross-disciplinary reach of nanotechnology almost demands this as a condition of competence.
Studying to learn about everything
I recommend that intellectually ambitious students invest considerable time in a mode of study may set off subconscious alarm signals that conflicts with almost instinctive impulses imparted by classroom experience:
Read and skim journals and textbooks that (at the moment) you only half understand. . Include Science and Nature.
Seldom stop to study a single subject with a student’s intensity, as if you had to pass a test on it.
Don’t drop a subject because you know you’d fail a test — instead, read other half-understandable journals and textbooks to accumulate vocabulary, perspective, and context.
Notice that concepts make more sense when you revisit a topic, and note which topics provide keys to many others.
Continue until almost everything you encounter in Science and Nature makes sense as a contribution to a field you know something about.
Why is this effective?
You learned your native language by immersion, not by swallowing and regurgitating spoonfuls of grammar and vocabulary. With comprehension of words and the unstructured curriculum of life came what we call “common sense”.
The aim of what I’ve described is to learn an expanded language and to develop what amounts to common sense, but about an uncommonly broad slice of the world. Immersion and gradual comprehension work, and I don’t know of any other way."
The general thrust of this and his previous article seem interesting and useful to me, even with in one subject. It is not so hard to get a grasp of the structure of related areas or possible areas which may have a bearing on the problems one is interested in. Sometimes, one may be even able to contribute to these areas if one has an understanding of the general structure and not the worn-out techniques. I think that it avoids narrow specialization and some later thinking type of approaches. I think that I followed this type of approach without actually articulating and has been useful in my research.
Somewhat related article Tenure and the Future of the University. Summary (need subscription for the full artcle):
"The fundamental rationale for the tenure system has been to promote the long-term development of new ideas and to challenge students' thinking. Proponents argued more than 60 years ago that tenure is needed to provide faculty the freedom to pursue long-term risky research agendas and to challenge conventional wisdom (1). Those arguments are still being made today (2) and are still valid. However, a 30-year trend toward privatization is creating a pseudo–market environment within public universities that marginalizes the tenure system. A pseudo–market environment is one in which no actual market is possible, but market-like mechanisms (such as benchmarking and rankings based on research dollars, student evaluations, or similar attributes) are used to approximate a market."
I think that the tenure system worked fairly well in USA. Howit works in each country may depend on the culture and institutions.
"Note that the title above isn’t “how to learn everything”, but “how to learn about everything”. The distinction I have in mind is between knowing the inside of a topic in deep detail — many facts and problem-solving skills — and knowing the structure and context of a topic: essential facts, what problems can be solved by the skilled, and how the topic fits with others.
This knowledge isn’t superficial in a survey-course sense: It is about both deep structure and practical applications. Knowing about, in this sense, is crucial to understanding a new problem and what must be learned in more depth in order to solve it. The cross-disciplinary reach of nanotechnology almost demands this as a condition of competence.
Studying to learn about everything
I recommend that intellectually ambitious students invest considerable time in a mode of study may set off subconscious alarm signals that conflicts with almost instinctive impulses imparted by classroom experience:
Read and skim journals and textbooks that (at the moment) you only half understand. . Include Science and Nature.
Seldom stop to study a single subject with a student’s intensity, as if you had to pass a test on it.
Don’t drop a subject because you know you’d fail a test — instead, read other half-understandable journals and textbooks to accumulate vocabulary, perspective, and context.
Notice that concepts make more sense when you revisit a topic, and note which topics provide keys to many others.
Continue until almost everything you encounter in Science and Nature makes sense as a contribution to a field you know something about.
Why is this effective?
You learned your native language by immersion, not by swallowing and regurgitating spoonfuls of grammar and vocabulary. With comprehension of words and the unstructured curriculum of life came what we call “common sense”.
The aim of what I’ve described is to learn an expanded language and to develop what amounts to common sense, but about an uncommonly broad slice of the world. Immersion and gradual comprehension work, and I don’t know of any other way."
The general thrust of this and his previous article seem interesting and useful to me, even with in one subject. It is not so hard to get a grasp of the structure of related areas or possible areas which may have a bearing on the problems one is interested in. Sometimes, one may be even able to contribute to these areas if one has an understanding of the general structure and not the worn-out techniques. I think that it avoids narrow specialization and some later thinking type of approaches. I think that I followed this type of approach without actually articulating and has been useful in my research.
Somewhat related article Tenure and the Future of the University. Summary (need subscription for the full artcle):
"The fundamental rationale for the tenure system has been to promote the long-term development of new ideas and to challenge students' thinking. Proponents argued more than 60 years ago that tenure is needed to provide faculty the freedom to pursue long-term risky research agendas and to challenge conventional wisdom (1). Those arguments are still being made today (2) and are still valid. However, a 30-year trend toward privatization is creating a pseudo–market environment within public universities that marginalizes the tenure system. A pseudo–market environment is one in which no actual market is possible, but market-like mechanisms (such as benchmarking and rankings based on research dollars, student evaluations, or similar attributes) are used to approximate a market."
I think that the tenure system worked fairly well in USA. Howit works in each country may depend on the culture and institutions.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Zooming for science
From Billion-Pixel Pictures Allow Ultra-Zooming for Science:
"GigaPan "is not quite being there, but it's coming close," Tuckey said.
Tuckey also hopes to use GigaPan to enlist virtual volunteers.
For example, he said, "to manage [our grassland habitat] successfully, we have to know the numbers and density of different wildflowers, and we have to keep monitoring, to see the impact we're having with grazing or cutting."
GigaPan images could help many hands make light work of these types of environmental-monitoring tasks, whether at threatened coral reefs, in vanishing rain forests, or on Durlston's grasslands.
"With a great shot of a meadow, people could actually zoom in and count the numbers and varieties of different wildflowers," Tuckey said.
"If we make these astonishing images available on the Web, people could potentially log on at home and do actual research. And it doesn't matter if they are in Birmingham or Singapore." "
"GigaPan "is not quite being there, but it's coming close," Tuckey said.
Tuckey also hopes to use GigaPan to enlist virtual volunteers.
For example, he said, "to manage [our grassland habitat] successfully, we have to know the numbers and density of different wildflowers, and we have to keep monitoring, to see the impact we're having with grazing or cutting."
GigaPan images could help many hands make light work of these types of environmental-monitoring tasks, whether at threatened coral reefs, in vanishing rain forests, or on Durlston's grasslands.
"With a great shot of a meadow, people could actually zoom in and count the numbers and varieties of different wildflowers," Tuckey said.
"If we make these astonishing images available on the Web, people could potentially log on at home and do actual research. And it doesn't matter if they are in Birmingham or Singapore." "
Prizes
3 Quarks Daily Announces Four Annual Blog Prizes: The Quarks!. I read a fair number of posts from science blogs but cannot remember any particular post that I would like to recommend; in any case I do not like prizes. Usually, those who get prizes do not need them and those who hanker for prizes do not deserve them. As Brian Switek says in The dangerous link between science and hype:
"Science proceeds through discovery and debate, and hypotheses do not become accepted by flooding the media with press releases."
(via the excellent blog Gene Expression of Rajib)
There are many excellent blogs, some by professional writers, but there seems to be news of breathtaking discoveries from some fmri scans and/or experiments on a few students and such almost every day both from universities and bloggers. Some like Max Liberman of Language Log and Andrew Gellman(http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/)seem to bring some sobriety to the discussions. However, the particular post in 3qurksdaily may be useful in giving list of some interesting posts on science.
P.S. The list HERE.
"Science proceeds through discovery and debate, and hypotheses do not become accepted by flooding the media with press releases."
(via the excellent blog Gene Expression of Rajib)
There are many excellent blogs, some by professional writers, but there seems to be news of breathtaking discoveries from some fmri scans and/or experiments on a few students and such almost every day both from universities and bloggers. Some like Max Liberman of Language Log and Andrew Gellman(http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/)seem to bring some sobriety to the discussions. However, the particular post in 3qurksdaily may be useful in giving list of some interesting posts on science.
P.S. The list HERE.
Indian students in Melbourne
Manmohan raises attacks on students with Rudd . Some tipsTips: How not to be attacked in Australia.
I am not surprised and had similar but less severe experiences when we arrived in 1988. After wandering around several countries, I was eager to own a house and do some gardening. Melbourne has wide tree lined streets, houses with large yards and lots of parks and open spaces. We found a house on a plot of over 900 square metres, on a bus route between two universities. I enquired about the suitability with a few in our dept. and there were no comments. After we moved to the house, we found that many in the neighbourhood were on dole and lots of the houses were the so called 'commision housing' owned by the government and rented to those on dole or low income. There were many youngsters idle and some not going to school and they would wander around in groups having fun harassing whomever they could. Our children were easy targers and epithets like 'black dogs', 'blackies' and 'abos' were common. There were even graffiti like 'black c...s' in front of the house. And thefts. Once I got into a shoving match with one of the kids but it got worse when he came in a group. The police said that there was not much point complaining since the kids would at the most get a rap on their wrists. Colleagues did not want to seem hear unpleasant things about their country. Finally, we sold the house at a considerable loss and moved to another area. Ther was very little trouble later on and there seemed to be some general improvement due to news paper campaign against racial sledging of aborinal athletes. It did not seem to have a lasting effect on the children who grew up here and most of them did well in school and college and usually got jobs before the locals.
Now with many foreign students visible in poor areas, there is an increase in this mindless fun by local youngsters. Some of the advice given in the Rediff piece seems sensible.
P.S. One of the results of my Australian experiance is to try to help with some of the 'dalit' organizations in India working in microfinance and education. There also seem to be many muslim groups isolated and virtually untouched by prosperity. A friend in Hyderabad tells me of a muslim area and a family in which only the mother or the daughter can go out since they have only good set of clothes to wear.
P.P.S. From Trujillo remarks may have legs: ex-Westpac boss:
"This week's accusation from the former Telstra boss Sol Trujillo that Australia is "backward and racist" has provoked a defensive reaction from many Australians.
But there are some who believe that rather than sour grapes, Sol Trujillo might have a point."
I am not surprised and had similar but less severe experiences when we arrived in 1988. After wandering around several countries, I was eager to own a house and do some gardening. Melbourne has wide tree lined streets, houses with large yards and lots of parks and open spaces. We found a house on a plot of over 900 square metres, on a bus route between two universities. I enquired about the suitability with a few in our dept. and there were no comments. After we moved to the house, we found that many in the neighbourhood were on dole and lots of the houses were the so called 'commision housing' owned by the government and rented to those on dole or low income. There were many youngsters idle and some not going to school and they would wander around in groups having fun harassing whomever they could. Our children were easy targers and epithets like 'black dogs', 'blackies' and 'abos' were common. There were even graffiti like 'black c...s' in front of the house. And thefts. Once I got into a shoving match with one of the kids but it got worse when he came in a group. The police said that there was not much point complaining since the kids would at the most get a rap on their wrists. Colleagues did not want to seem hear unpleasant things about their country. Finally, we sold the house at a considerable loss and moved to another area. Ther was very little trouble later on and there seemed to be some general improvement due to news paper campaign against racial sledging of aborinal athletes. It did not seem to have a lasting effect on the children who grew up here and most of them did well in school and college and usually got jobs before the locals.
Now with many foreign students visible in poor areas, there is an increase in this mindless fun by local youngsters. Some of the advice given in the Rediff piece seems sensible.
P.S. One of the results of my Australian experiance is to try to help with some of the 'dalit' organizations in India working in microfinance and education. There also seem to be many muslim groups isolated and virtually untouched by prosperity. A friend in Hyderabad tells me of a muslim area and a family in which only the mother or the daughter can go out since they have only good set of clothes to wear.
P.P.S. From Trujillo remarks may have legs: ex-Westpac boss:
"This week's accusation from the former Telstra boss Sol Trujillo that Australia is "backward and racist" has provoked a defensive reaction from many Australians.
But there are some who believe that rather than sour grapes, Sol Trujillo might have a point."
Friday, May 29, 2009
Post Poll studies of Indian elections
Shivam's post on UP elections UP’s Dalits remind Mayawati: Democracy is a beautiful thing. In a later post he
recommends looking at the CSDS=Lokniti post poll Study.
The studies are probably preliminary and might have to be studied state by state and region by region.(links via http://qalandari.blogspot.com/).
recommends looking at the CSDS=Lokniti post poll Study.
The studies are probably preliminary and might have to be studied state by state and region by region.(links via http://qalandari.blogspot.com/).
Mourning Nehru in Pakistan
Mourning Nehru in Pakistan via Sundeep Dougal's blog:
"Asrar Ahmed, a Pakistani colleague, asked me whether something worthwhile would come out of the Nehru-Ayub talks. With my unfailing knack for stressing the obvious, I replied that it all depended on how much time Nehru had. Whereupon Asrar and others exclaimed in unison, “May Allah prolong his life”. As if on cue, Hafeez Jullundari — the nearest thing Pakistan had to the poet laureate as well as a sort of minister-in-waiting during the Sheikh’s stay — stalked up to our table and sat down. Wagging his finger, he told me: “Inder Malhotra, you people have had a long ride feeling superior to us because you were lucky to have Nehru. Our misfortune was that after the early deaths of Jinnah and Liaquat, all our leaders were useless. Now Nehru is about to go. You will be down to our level, and then we will see”. All the Pakistanis around the table were horrified. They started remonstrating with the renowned poet but their attempt was drowned in the sudden flurry and noise. Sheikh Sahib had come down and everyone was being directed to his or her vehicle.
I do not know whether Murree’s Lintot restaurant still exists. On that day, however, it served us excellent breakfast in its balcony. It was there that the news of Nehru’s illness caught up with us. He died at the precise moment when the Sheikh set foot in Muzaffarabad. The thought uppermost in my mind was that the capital of Pakistan-held Kashmir was not the best place to to be in at the time of Nehru’s passing. But what followed stunned me.
The huge crowd that had assembled to welcome Sheikh Abdullah instantly turned into a mourning mass. Every man, woman and child, hands raised skywards, was praying for Nehru. Some of them were crying. No one touched the elaborate wazwan laid out. Suddenly, there was commotion at a short distance. A tall man was shouting my name, beating his head with both his hands and cursing his “black tongue”. It was Hafeez Jullundari. As he apologised to me profusely, Sheikh Sahib arrived to calm him. Instead, the two embraced each other and sobbed.
...
After the dinner trays were cleared, most of us got busy writing our dispatches. The airhostess came, sat down in the empty seat next to me, and asked if she could read what I was typing. When, while reading my homage to the iconic leader for The Statesman, my paper then, she reached my brief reference to the Pakistani reaction to his death, she broke down. Rushing to the washroom, she came back composed, and said: “Sir, I am sure we cannot be enemies for ever”. I told her that these were exactly the words Nehru had used seven years earlier."
"Asrar Ahmed, a Pakistani colleague, asked me whether something worthwhile would come out of the Nehru-Ayub talks. With my unfailing knack for stressing the obvious, I replied that it all depended on how much time Nehru had. Whereupon Asrar and others exclaimed in unison, “May Allah prolong his life”. As if on cue, Hafeez Jullundari — the nearest thing Pakistan had to the poet laureate as well as a sort of minister-in-waiting during the Sheikh’s stay — stalked up to our table and sat down. Wagging his finger, he told me: “Inder Malhotra, you people have had a long ride feeling superior to us because you were lucky to have Nehru. Our misfortune was that after the early deaths of Jinnah and Liaquat, all our leaders were useless. Now Nehru is about to go. You will be down to our level, and then we will see”. All the Pakistanis around the table were horrified. They started remonstrating with the renowned poet but their attempt was drowned in the sudden flurry and noise. Sheikh Sahib had come down and everyone was being directed to his or her vehicle.
I do not know whether Murree’s Lintot restaurant still exists. On that day, however, it served us excellent breakfast in its balcony. It was there that the news of Nehru’s illness caught up with us. He died at the precise moment when the Sheikh set foot in Muzaffarabad. The thought uppermost in my mind was that the capital of Pakistan-held Kashmir was not the best place to to be in at the time of Nehru’s passing. But what followed stunned me.
The huge crowd that had assembled to welcome Sheikh Abdullah instantly turned into a mourning mass. Every man, woman and child, hands raised skywards, was praying for Nehru. Some of them were crying. No one touched the elaborate wazwan laid out. Suddenly, there was commotion at a short distance. A tall man was shouting my name, beating his head with both his hands and cursing his “black tongue”. It was Hafeez Jullundari. As he apologised to me profusely, Sheikh Sahib arrived to calm him. Instead, the two embraced each other and sobbed.
...
After the dinner trays were cleared, most of us got busy writing our dispatches. The airhostess came, sat down in the empty seat next to me, and asked if she could read what I was typing. When, while reading my homage to the iconic leader for The Statesman, my paper then, she reached my brief reference to the Pakistani reaction to his death, she broke down. Rushing to the washroom, she came back composed, and said: “Sir, I am sure we cannot be enemies for ever”. I told her that these were exactly the words Nehru had used seven years earlier."
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Book recommendations from a linguist
Scientists' Nightstand: Derek Bickerton from American Scientist. A site about one of the recommendations Niche Construction.
Some old telugu songs back on youtube
Due to some alleged copyright problems, they keep disappearing but some of my favourites are back:
vacchindoyi samkranti, both Ghantasala and M.S.Ramarao are among the singers, snatches of music reminds me Barsaat music (Palleturu around 1952, and Barsaat 1949?).
aa manasulona aa choopulona; the sort of houses in which I grew up.
cheyetti jaigottu telugoda, a rousing (andhra) nationalist song written by Vemulapalli Srikrishna, later communisi MLA from Mangalagiri.
MELUKO VENKATA RAMANA ; some sort of lullaby.
kulamulo emundira ; Rajanala lights up the screen. Apparently, the Kannada version is still very popular.
chigurakulalo chilakamma; very nice lyrics and clearly Pendyala's music.
These
sites have some video songs and movies.
P.S. Telugu articles by K. Rohiniprasad on Indian Music. A few are on film music.
Shaji Chennai has also some nicearticles on film music.
The following post has somereferences to cross cultural influences even on classical south indian music:
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/oldtelugusongs/message/2343
See in particular the passage:
"1. Surprizingly no one mentioned about the very early entry of "western
instruments" into India and Indian classical music. I thought that a
person like UVR, who is well acquainted with Carnatic classical music
would refer to Dikshitar brothers (Muttuswami & Baluswami), their early
exposure to British bands at Fort St. George, Baluswamy's interest in
Violin (and how this instrument got so popularized even replacing veeNa
as accomp. instrument in concerts), paTnam subrahmaNya ayyar's
compositions like "raghuvaMSa sudhaaMbudhi chandrasi" (raaga:
kadanakutoohalam), or Tyaagayya's "SaraSara samaraika" (raaga:
kuntalavaraaLi), etc. etc."
vacchindoyi samkranti, both Ghantasala and M.S.Ramarao are among the singers, snatches of music reminds me Barsaat music (Palleturu around 1952, and Barsaat 1949?).
aa manasulona aa choopulona; the sort of houses in which I grew up.
cheyetti jaigottu telugoda, a rousing (andhra) nationalist song written by Vemulapalli Srikrishna, later communisi MLA from Mangalagiri.
MELUKO VENKATA RAMANA ; some sort of lullaby.
kulamulo emundira ; Rajanala lights up the screen. Apparently, the Kannada version is still very popular.
chigurakulalo chilakamma; very nice lyrics and clearly Pendyala's music.
These
sites have some video songs and movies.
P.S. Telugu articles by K. Rohiniprasad on Indian Music. A few are on film music.
Shaji Chennai has also some nicearticles on film music.
The following post has somereferences to cross cultural influences even on classical south indian music:
http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/oldtelugusongs/message/2343
See in particular the passage:
"1. Surprizingly no one mentioned about the very early entry of "western
instruments" into India and Indian classical music. I thought that a
person like UVR, who is well acquainted with Carnatic classical music
would refer to Dikshitar brothers (Muttuswami & Baluswami), their early
exposure to British bands at Fort St. George, Baluswamy's interest in
Violin (and how this instrument got so popularized even replacing veeNa
as accomp. instrument in concerts), paTnam subrahmaNya ayyar's
compositions like "raghuvaMSa sudhaaMbudhi chandrasi" (raaga:
kadanakutoohalam), or Tyaagayya's "SaraSara samaraika" (raaga:
kuntalavaraaLi), etc. etc."
Monday, May 25, 2009
Binayak Sen gets bail
From Civil rights activist Binayak sen gets bail :
"The Supreme Court on Monday granted bail to civil rights activist Binayak sen, who has been lodged in a Raipur jail for over two years under unproven charges of links with Maoists in Chhattisgarh.
The bail was granted by a vacation bench of Justice Markandey Katju and Justice Deepak Verma.
Former law minister Shanti Bhushan, appearing for Sen, had earlier pleaded to the court to accord an urgent hearing to Sen's bail plea in view of his precarious health condition.
A bench of Justice DK Jain and Justice BS Reddy had on May 4 issued notice to the Chhattisgarh government on Sen's bail plea.
While seeking its reply, the bench had also ordered the state government to provide him the "best possible medical aid" for the heart ailment he has been suffering from.
The Chhattisgarh government has booked Sen, the vice president of People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) under the stringent anti-terror law, Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, for his alleged links with Maoists.
He was arrested on May 14, 2007 and accused of acting as a courier for an alleged Maoist lodged in jail.
On May 4, former law minister Ram Jethmalani, appearing for Sen, had sought bail for him pleading that "the case against him has already been demolished in the trial court as all the material witnesses in the case have been examined" and none of them have deposed against him.
Jethmalani had contended that despite the case against Sen having been demolished, the Chhattisgarh High Court was not entertaining his bail plea."
"The Supreme Court on Monday granted bail to civil rights activist Binayak sen, who has been lodged in a Raipur jail for over two years under unproven charges of links with Maoists in Chhattisgarh.
The bail was granted by a vacation bench of Justice Markandey Katju and Justice Deepak Verma.
Former law minister Shanti Bhushan, appearing for Sen, had earlier pleaded to the court to accord an urgent hearing to Sen's bail plea in view of his precarious health condition.
A bench of Justice DK Jain and Justice BS Reddy had on May 4 issued notice to the Chhattisgarh government on Sen's bail plea.
While seeking its reply, the bench had also ordered the state government to provide him the "best possible medical aid" for the heart ailment he has been suffering from.
The Chhattisgarh government has booked Sen, the vice president of People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) under the stringent anti-terror law, Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, for his alleged links with Maoists.
He was arrested on May 14, 2007 and accused of acting as a courier for an alleged Maoist lodged in jail.
On May 4, former law minister Ram Jethmalani, appearing for Sen, had sought bail for him pleading that "the case against him has already been demolished in the trial court as all the material witnesses in the case have been examined" and none of them have deposed against him.
Jethmalani had contended that despite the case against Sen having been demolished, the Chhattisgarh High Court was not entertaining his bail plea."
Links...
Asish Nandy in The Hour Of The Untamed Cosmopolitan:
"No overriding consideration drove the voting across the country. Diverse configurations in diverse places determined the fate of different candidates and parties. Different regions had different logic even within a given state. Still, underlying the diversity there were some common themes.
....
There are other reasons why it would be premature to read this election as a post-Mandal era. In India, except in very small, modern, urban pockets, the unit of mobility is not the individual; the unit of mobility is caste. The lowest common denominator for any party decision on their choice of candidates is caste — all other considerations of aptitude and intention come after that. In fact, we cannot reach a post- Mandal era of politics yet because entering politics from the periphery is still a very crucial instrument in Indian politics.
Some of the parties lay less emphasis on it because their constituencies have arrived in the mainstream. The Marathas, Patels, Vokkaligas, Lingayats, Jats. Yadavs too talk less about it because they have just arrived. Perhaps, with Nitish Kumar, Kurmis too will feel more secure. But there are still hundreds of communities who are not well represented. Now that the big communities have organised themselves and reaped the benefits, the smaller ones want a slice of the pie. Just as the Kammas emerged in the 1970s and 1980s through NTR, the Kapus have emerged this election through Chiranjeevi. These are much smaller communities. Earlier, they would have voted under larger umbrellas. Now they think they can carve out a smaller, more targeted domain or space in the political arena.
Recently, the Gujjars began to lobby violently for Scheduled Tribe status — as if a mere Parliamentary decree can turn a group into a tribe. This sort of misuse, battles for quotas, unreasonable demands for affirmative action, and other forms of vote bank wheeling-dealing will continue to happen. But in the long run, all of this will be good for India.
As representations in the system give different communities larger space, everybody’s stake in the democratic system will increase. In the long run, there will be so many crosscutting configurations, the problem will take care of itself. There is a big difference between caste groups angling for 35 or 40 Lok Sabha seats like Mulayam or Lalu, and a caste group contesting for eight or ten. Chiranjeevi, for instance, just has four or five seats. The scale is going down because we have already accommodated a lot of people. The next generation will not face this. They will inherit a much more inclusive world."
From The Hindu Iran, Pakistan ink gas pipeline deal :
"IRNA said the 2,700-km pipeline would transfer Iranian gas to India, through Pakistan. Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency earlier reported that the text of the agreement included an article that would allow India to join the project at an appropriate time."
From PAKISTAN: Sikhs flee Swat, seek refuge in shrine :
"Sundar Singh, a medical technician at Pakistan Telecommunication Company, said this was his family’s second migration. “We moved out of Swat in January, but when the peace deal was signed between the Taliban and the government [on 16 February], we moved back to Swat,” he said."
Amitav Kumar on Belonging:
"...I find myself thinking that I belong not to India or to the United States but to the academy. I realize that I’m a sad provincial; for years, I’ve been living in a place called the English Department."
From Chapati Mystery: Action for Progressive Pakistan apologize to Bangladesh Regarding 1971 .
From the above blog: on Pakistani identity Pakistan Day 2009 and Will Pakistan Become a Theocracy?. Generally interesting blog with interesting links to articles on the subcontinent and history books. Some heated discussions in the recent weeks and I do not understand many of the posts with excerpts as in Strangers in the Night:
"In the aftermath of Mumbai attacks, the world has found yet another reason to doubt the sustainability of Pakistan, doubt the intentions of the people and the State, doubt their commitment to being a peaceful global citizens. These doubts, those proclamations, some of the harsh denouncements of the Indian media were heard loudly and clearly across Pakistan. The bellicosity - apparent even in the flyer for this panel - generated its own predictable response. The military, which had finally lost all credence, is slowly coming back in business. It is the protector. It is the sustainer of the national myths.
The Pakistanis are also attuned to the silences. They note that in the teleology of modern terror - NYC, Madrid, London, and now Mumbai - there is no mention of Lahore and Islamabad. The September 20th blast at the Marriott, Islamabad is a clear precursor to the tragedy at Taj, Mumbai. It, too, was a site where the local elite gathered for daily mingling. It, too, catered to the foreign visitors. It, too, was a sign of Pakistan’s growing economy. Yet, while NYC and Mumbai are forever linked, the victims of Islamabad and Lahore find themselves on the other side of history."
From an old post of Qalandar who seems to have relatives in both India and Pakistan On The Historical Relationship Between Muslim Religiosity and Political Separatism :
"As an aside, and on the subject of overlapping identities, consider the Meo of Rajasthan. During the partition violence, the Meo were among the worst affected communities, and by some estimates 200,000-300,000 were driven away from their ancestral homelands (now borderlands) in India as “Muslims.” However, in many instances, when the Meo appeared on the Pakistani side they were attacked by Muslim League-led mobs too, for being “Hindus”! The Meo's biggest problem, alas, was that they didn't “fit” with the (supposedly) liberal, modern conception of what it meant to have an identity that the state—perhaps most nation-states, but a state like Pakistan even more so, given its founding ideology—simply could not acknowledge without provoking a philosophical crisis within itself. By 1957, most of the Meo had returned to India."
"No overriding consideration drove the voting across the country. Diverse configurations in diverse places determined the fate of different candidates and parties. Different regions had different logic even within a given state. Still, underlying the diversity there were some common themes.
....
There are other reasons why it would be premature to read this election as a post-Mandal era. In India, except in very small, modern, urban pockets, the unit of mobility is not the individual; the unit of mobility is caste. The lowest common denominator for any party decision on their choice of candidates is caste — all other considerations of aptitude and intention come after that. In fact, we cannot reach a post- Mandal era of politics yet because entering politics from the periphery is still a very crucial instrument in Indian politics.
Some of the parties lay less emphasis on it because their constituencies have arrived in the mainstream. The Marathas, Patels, Vokkaligas, Lingayats, Jats. Yadavs too talk less about it because they have just arrived. Perhaps, with Nitish Kumar, Kurmis too will feel more secure. But there are still hundreds of communities who are not well represented. Now that the big communities have organised themselves and reaped the benefits, the smaller ones want a slice of the pie. Just as the Kammas emerged in the 1970s and 1980s through NTR, the Kapus have emerged this election through Chiranjeevi. These are much smaller communities. Earlier, they would have voted under larger umbrellas. Now they think they can carve out a smaller, more targeted domain or space in the political arena.
Recently, the Gujjars began to lobby violently for Scheduled Tribe status — as if a mere Parliamentary decree can turn a group into a tribe. This sort of misuse, battles for quotas, unreasonable demands for affirmative action, and other forms of vote bank wheeling-dealing will continue to happen. But in the long run, all of this will be good for India.
As representations in the system give different communities larger space, everybody’s stake in the democratic system will increase. In the long run, there will be so many crosscutting configurations, the problem will take care of itself. There is a big difference between caste groups angling for 35 or 40 Lok Sabha seats like Mulayam or Lalu, and a caste group contesting for eight or ten. Chiranjeevi, for instance, just has four or five seats. The scale is going down because we have already accommodated a lot of people. The next generation will not face this. They will inherit a much more inclusive world."
From The Hindu Iran, Pakistan ink gas pipeline deal :
"IRNA said the 2,700-km pipeline would transfer Iranian gas to India, through Pakistan. Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency earlier reported that the text of the agreement included an article that would allow India to join the project at an appropriate time."
From PAKISTAN: Sikhs flee Swat, seek refuge in shrine :
"Sundar Singh, a medical technician at Pakistan Telecommunication Company, said this was his family’s second migration. “We moved out of Swat in January, but when the peace deal was signed between the Taliban and the government [on 16 February], we moved back to Swat,” he said."
Amitav Kumar on Belonging:
"...I find myself thinking that I belong not to India or to the United States but to the academy. I realize that I’m a sad provincial; for years, I’ve been living in a place called the English Department."
From Chapati Mystery: Action for Progressive Pakistan apologize to Bangladesh Regarding 1971 .
From the above blog: on Pakistani identity Pakistan Day 2009 and Will Pakistan Become a Theocracy?. Generally interesting blog with interesting links to articles on the subcontinent and history books. Some heated discussions in the recent weeks and I do not understand many of the posts with excerpts as in Strangers in the Night:
"In the aftermath of Mumbai attacks, the world has found yet another reason to doubt the sustainability of Pakistan, doubt the intentions of the people and the State, doubt their commitment to being a peaceful global citizens. These doubts, those proclamations, some of the harsh denouncements of the Indian media were heard loudly and clearly across Pakistan. The bellicosity - apparent even in the flyer for this panel - generated its own predictable response. The military, which had finally lost all credence, is slowly coming back in business. It is the protector. It is the sustainer of the national myths.
The Pakistanis are also attuned to the silences. They note that in the teleology of modern terror - NYC, Madrid, London, and now Mumbai - there is no mention of Lahore and Islamabad. The September 20th blast at the Marriott, Islamabad is a clear precursor to the tragedy at Taj, Mumbai. It, too, was a site where the local elite gathered for daily mingling. It, too, catered to the foreign visitors. It, too, was a sign of Pakistan’s growing economy. Yet, while NYC and Mumbai are forever linked, the victims of Islamabad and Lahore find themselves on the other side of history."
From an old post of Qalandar who seems to have relatives in both India and Pakistan On The Historical Relationship Between Muslim Religiosity and Political Separatism :
"As an aside, and on the subject of overlapping identities, consider the Meo of Rajasthan. During the partition violence, the Meo were among the worst affected communities, and by some estimates 200,000-300,000 were driven away from their ancestral homelands (now borderlands) in India as “Muslims.” However, in many instances, when the Meo appeared on the Pakistani side they were attacked by Muslim League-led mobs too, for being “Hindus”! The Meo's biggest problem, alas, was that they didn't “fit” with the (supposedly) liberal, modern conception of what it meant to have an identity that the state—perhaps most nation-states, but a state like Pakistan even more so, given its founding ideology—simply could not acknowledge without provoking a philosophical crisis within itself. By 1957, most of the Meo had returned to India."
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Cash cows
From French Turn to 'Cash Cows' as Alternative Investments:
" The French, known for their mistrust of banks, are not just stuffing money into mattresses in these anxious days of recession and minuscule interest rates. They are also putting their cash into cows.
There are about 37,000 cows under contract at 880 farms.
An investment in cows can bring a 4 to 5 percent return a year based on the sale of their offspring. For Mr. Durand, the arrangement frees up capital for improvements to his small dairy farm.
For Pierre Marguerit, 60, cows make a safe, secure investment, allowing for long-term growth from a renewable resource. The cow contracts are hardly new, but go back to Richard the Lionheart; the French word for livestock, “cheptel,” is the root for “capital.”"
Coming from a rural farming family, I have a weakness for this kind of schemes. I wonder whether this kind of investment can be combined with microfinance.
" The French, known for their mistrust of banks, are not just stuffing money into mattresses in these anxious days of recession and minuscule interest rates. They are also putting their cash into cows.
There are about 37,000 cows under contract at 880 farms.
An investment in cows can bring a 4 to 5 percent return a year based on the sale of their offspring. For Mr. Durand, the arrangement frees up capital for improvements to his small dairy farm.
For Pierre Marguerit, 60, cows make a safe, secure investment, allowing for long-term growth from a renewable resource. The cow contracts are hardly new, but go back to Richard the Lionheart; the French word for livestock, “cheptel,” is the root for “capital.”"
Coming from a rural farming family, I have a weakness for this kind of schemes. I wonder whether this kind of investment can be combined with microfinance.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Contrasting views on Indian elections
Vijay Prashad in Counter Punch The Indian Elections: a Game Changer
India KnoledgeWharton After the Elections: What's Next on India's Economic Agenda?.
Some detailed and careful analysis from Qalandar.
And ongoing analysis in Sundeep Dougal's Outlook blog. Some surprises: in the new Lok Saba"There are 390 graduates and above, with 23 doctorates and 130 Post graduates" "But there are still 153 MPs with criminal charges, 74 of which are serious."
P.s. (May 25th)The Hour Of The Untamed Cosmopolitan by Ashish Nandy.
India KnoledgeWharton After the Elections: What's Next on India's Economic Agenda?.
Some detailed and careful analysis from Qalandar.
And ongoing analysis in Sundeep Dougal's Outlook blog. Some surprises: in the new Lok Saba"There are 390 graduates and above, with 23 doctorates and 130 Post graduates" "But there are still 153 MPs with criminal charges, 74 of which are serious."
P.s. (May 25th)The Hour Of The Untamed Cosmopolitan by Ashish Nandy.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Soliciting for science research
From Public donations to lift research :
"Researchers looking for a little extra money to explore an idea may soon have a new funding 'agency' to ask for help: the masses. A Florida researcher has launched a project designed both to solicit public donations for individual research programmes and to inspire public interest in science and engineering.
The 'SciFlies' project (www.sciflies.org) will profile scientists from a range of disciplines and the new ideas they want to pursue, or ways in which they would like to expand their current research programme. Website visitors will be able to donate any amount to support the projects they find most interesting or worthwhile."
News of a similar project in the comments.
"Researchers looking for a little extra money to explore an idea may soon have a new funding 'agency' to ask for help: the masses. A Florida researcher has launched a project designed both to solicit public donations for individual research programmes and to inspire public interest in science and engineering.
The 'SciFlies' project (www.sciflies.org) will profile scientists from a range of disciplines and the new ideas they want to pursue, or ways in which they would like to expand their current research programme. Website visitors will be able to donate any amount to support the projects they find most interesting or worthwhile."
News of a similar project in the comments.
Indian election discussions
Qalandar whose post Mellow on Indian elections was quoted before has further posts on A.P.ANDHRA PRADESH: Notes on the 2009 Elections and U.P. Qalandar’s pieces on Election-2009 . I came across Qalandar's comments in Chapati Mystery and looked up his site.
See also Best readings on the election results from Ajay Shah.
It is tempting to think that voters have become more rational but the calculus of elections seems to vary from state to state. Meanwhile Ahmad Rashid in Pakistan on the Brink warns:
"What has shocked the world is not just the spread of the Taliban forces southward, but the lack of the government's will and commitment to oppose them and the army's lack of a counterinsurgency strategy. This disarray makes them all the more vulnerable in view of the apparent cohesiveness of the Taliban's tactics and strategy. Although the group has no single acknowledged leader, it has formed alliances with around forty different extremist groups, some of them with no previous direct connection to the Taliban. Moreover, the Afghan Taliban have become a model for the entire region. The Afghan Taliban of the 1990s have morphed into the Pakistani Taliban and the Central Asian Taliban and it may be only a question of time before we see the Indian Taliban."
P.S. Qalandar gives these two links for comparing 2004, 2009 vote shares of different parties.
See also Best readings on the election results from Ajay Shah.
It is tempting to think that voters have become more rational but the calculus of elections seems to vary from state to state. Meanwhile Ahmad Rashid in Pakistan on the Brink warns:
"What has shocked the world is not just the spread of the Taliban forces southward, but the lack of the government's will and commitment to oppose them and the army's lack of a counterinsurgency strategy. This disarray makes them all the more vulnerable in view of the apparent cohesiveness of the Taliban's tactics and strategy. Although the group has no single acknowledged leader, it has formed alliances with around forty different extremist groups, some of them with no previous direct connection to the Taliban. Moreover, the Afghan Taliban have become a model for the entire region. The Afghan Taliban of the 1990s have morphed into the Pakistani Taliban and the Central Asian Taliban and it may be only a question of time before we see the Indian Taliban."
P.S. Qalandar gives these two links for comparing 2004, 2009 vote shares of different parties.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Books on microfinance?
I started looking for books on microfinance after a request from a friend. I came across one through Chris Blattman's blog: Portfolios of the Poor: How the World's Poor Live on $2 a Day .
An interview with one of the authors Q and A with Daryl Collins.
Wikipedia entry on another of the authors and links to some reviews Jonathan Morduch.
Jonathan Morduch'sHomepage and NYU page.
Suggestions of any other books are welcome.
An interview with one of the authors Q and A with Daryl Collins.
Wikipedia entry on another of the authors and links to some reviews Jonathan Morduch.
Jonathan Morduch'sHomepage and NYU page.
Suggestions of any other books are welcome.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Jayaprakash Narayan of Lok Satta wins from Kukatpalli
Here is a first video from an interview with him Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan on Politics and Governance-1.
What happened to vote banks?
Zoya Hasan says in Disenchantment Of The Dispossessed :
"This verdict (from UP) has the first intimations of a shift away from identity politics. In this sense, the UP results could be read as a bellwether of post-identity politics taking shape in regions beyond it. But there is a challenge here that is easy to identify though difficult to address in the short term: How to combine economic development and a workable social welfare system with pluralism and equal respect."
From BBCVoters opt for middle path :
"The victory is emphatic and with the caste-based regional parties suffering setbacks in states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, India's political landscape suddenly does not look so deeply fractured."
P.S. Many more links to Indian election resultsand reactions at Nanopolitan.
See also Qalander. Some excerpts from qalander's post:
"In the end, my (tentative) inclination is to read the election results as the reward for a moderation that was not just ideological as temperamental: the principal Congress leaders generally seemed relatively calm and unruffled over the course of the campaign, as indeed they had appeared over the preceding five years. Thus, while both major parties spoke of stability, the likes of Manmohan Singh, Chidambaram, Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, seemed to exude it -- remarkably, the party didn't lose its poise even in the aftermath of Mumbai attack last year (undoubtedly aided by the fact that the urban public's disgust with the status quo was general vis-a-vis all politicians, as opposed to specific to the Congress).
.....
The second point I'd like to make concerns India's rural voters, specifically, the populist measures touted by the Congress/UPA. For the second national election in a row, the Congress has devoted more attention to the economic concerns of rural Indians than the BJP has -- and has reaped the rewards. This isn't to say that the Congress' commitment to economic liberalization is any more or less than the BJP's (there isn't much to choose between the parties on that front these days), but that the Congress is more comfortable with the realization that public support for the sort of cautious, fits-and-starts liberalization India has seen since 1991, will not endure if the rural poor do not see some immediate benefits from the political dispensations championing that liberalization. To the extent the BJP has tried to take small town and rural voters along, it has tried to do so by means of cultural issues (such as the Babri mosque/Ramjanambhoomi temple movement). Increasingly, however, that sort of bi-polar mobilization, of a Hindu identity in opposition to a Muslim other imagined to be receiving preferential treatment from the Indian state, has proven difficult in the seat-rich states of the Hindi heartland, as caste-based parties have undermined the plausibility of the BJP's narrative. The Congress has shown signs of picking up the rural baton on economic grounds, and so far appears to have profited as a result.
Perhaps the two points are not unrelated: Shekhar Gupta (editor of the Indian Express) summed it up well when he eschewed the grand narratives of "secularism" and "development" in favor of an explanation that the Indian electorate has, over the past few years, tended to vote for parties who run campaigns addressing the public's aspirations, not its resentments. While the recent history of India hardly affords room for complacency -- it was less than a year ago that large-scale communal violence in Orissa killed dozens and displaced tens of thousands; and 2008 was the worst year on record as far as terrorism was concerned, with serial blasts in cities across the country -- the political atmosphere does seem a shade less shrill than it used to be in the decade leading up to the Gujarat pogroms of 2002 and beyond. I wouldn't ascribe any permanence to this softening of the edges, nor a tendency toward ever-increasing moderation, but Gupta's comment does capture the tenor of the moment. Given where the country has been in the recent past, and where it could easily go, I'll chalk that up as a victory of sorts."
"This verdict (from UP) has the first intimations of a shift away from identity politics. In this sense, the UP results could be read as a bellwether of post-identity politics taking shape in regions beyond it. But there is a challenge here that is easy to identify though difficult to address in the short term: How to combine economic development and a workable social welfare system with pluralism and equal respect."
From BBCVoters opt for middle path :
"The victory is emphatic and with the caste-based regional parties suffering setbacks in states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, India's political landscape suddenly does not look so deeply fractured."
P.S. Many more links to Indian election resultsand reactions at Nanopolitan.
See also Qalander. Some excerpts from qalander's post:
"In the end, my (tentative) inclination is to read the election results as the reward for a moderation that was not just ideological as temperamental: the principal Congress leaders generally seemed relatively calm and unruffled over the course of the campaign, as indeed they had appeared over the preceding five years. Thus, while both major parties spoke of stability, the likes of Manmohan Singh, Chidambaram, Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, seemed to exude it -- remarkably, the party didn't lose its poise even in the aftermath of Mumbai attack last year (undoubtedly aided by the fact that the urban public's disgust with the status quo was general vis-a-vis all politicians, as opposed to specific to the Congress).
.....
The second point I'd like to make concerns India's rural voters, specifically, the populist measures touted by the Congress/UPA. For the second national election in a row, the Congress has devoted more attention to the economic concerns of rural Indians than the BJP has -- and has reaped the rewards. This isn't to say that the Congress' commitment to economic liberalization is any more or less than the BJP's (there isn't much to choose between the parties on that front these days), but that the Congress is more comfortable with the realization that public support for the sort of cautious, fits-and-starts liberalization India has seen since 1991, will not endure if the rural poor do not see some immediate benefits from the political dispensations championing that liberalization. To the extent the BJP has tried to take small town and rural voters along, it has tried to do so by means of cultural issues (such as the Babri mosque/Ramjanambhoomi temple movement). Increasingly, however, that sort of bi-polar mobilization, of a Hindu identity in opposition to a Muslim other imagined to be receiving preferential treatment from the Indian state, has proven difficult in the seat-rich states of the Hindi heartland, as caste-based parties have undermined the plausibility of the BJP's narrative. The Congress has shown signs of picking up the rural baton on economic grounds, and so far appears to have profited as a result.
Perhaps the two points are not unrelated: Shekhar Gupta (editor of the Indian Express) summed it up well when he eschewed the grand narratives of "secularism" and "development" in favor of an explanation that the Indian electorate has, over the past few years, tended to vote for parties who run campaigns addressing the public's aspirations, not its resentments. While the recent history of India hardly affords room for complacency -- it was less than a year ago that large-scale communal violence in Orissa killed dozens and displaced tens of thousands; and 2008 was the worst year on record as far as terrorism was concerned, with serial blasts in cities across the country -- the political atmosphere does seem a shade less shrill than it used to be in the decade leading up to the Gujarat pogroms of 2002 and beyond. I wouldn't ascribe any permanence to this softening of the edges, nor a tendency toward ever-increasing moderation, but Gupta's comment does capture the tenor of the moment. Given where the country has been in the recent past, and where it could easily go, I'll chalk that up as a victory of sorts."
Friday, May 15, 2009
Bill Easterley likes this speech
by Hillary Clinton Remarks at the New York University Commencement Ceremony (BREAKING NEWS: Nation’s senior diplomat talks sense, inspires, is not babbling nonsense). Excerpts:
"But they can no longer be seen just as government-to-government. There is a time and an opportunity, and with the new technologies available, for us to be citizen diplomats, citizen activists, to solve problems one by one that will give in to hard work, patience, and persistence, and will then aggregate to the solutions we seek.
............
But I know that you don’t have to wait for us to create a new program. When you go home today, go online and find the website called Kiva, K-i-v-a, where you can help someone like San Ma, a mother in Vietnam who is seeking a microcredit loan to buy rice seed and fertilizer for her family farm; or log on to Heifer International’s site, and for less than the cost of a dinner out, you can donate a flock of geese to a hungry family in Asia or Africa; or help Wangari Mathai’s Green Belt movement in planting trees and offsetting carbon emissions and empowering women in Africa.
Now, supporting these projects and others like them doesn't require a lot of time or money. But for the people you help and the planet you protect, your participation can be not just a game changer, but a life changer. Global service also means promoting good governance. We need informed citizens, both here at home and around the world, to hold their governments accountable for getting results and finding solutions."
She also says "we are increasing funding for Gilman scholarships by more than 40 percent" and "I am committed to streamline the visa process – (applause) – particularly for science and technology students so that even more qualified students will come to our campuses in the future."
"But they can no longer be seen just as government-to-government. There is a time and an opportunity, and with the new technologies available, for us to be citizen diplomats, citizen activists, to solve problems one by one that will give in to hard work, patience, and persistence, and will then aggregate to the solutions we seek.
............
But I know that you don’t have to wait for us to create a new program. When you go home today, go online and find the website called Kiva, K-i-v-a, where you can help someone like San Ma, a mother in Vietnam who is seeking a microcredit loan to buy rice seed and fertilizer for her family farm; or log on to Heifer International’s site, and for less than the cost of a dinner out, you can donate a flock of geese to a hungry family in Asia or Africa; or help Wangari Mathai’s Green Belt movement in planting trees and offsetting carbon emissions and empowering women in Africa.
Now, supporting these projects and others like them doesn't require a lot of time or money. But for the people you help and the planet you protect, your participation can be not just a game changer, but a life changer. Global service also means promoting good governance. We need informed citizens, both here at home and around the world, to hold their governments accountable for getting results and finding solutions."
She also says "we are increasing funding for Gilman scholarships by more than 40 percent" and "I am committed to streamline the visa process – (applause) – particularly for science and technology students so that even more qualified students will come to our campuses in the future."
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Some interesting articles
Benjamin Friedman reviews'Animal Spirits' in The Failure of the Economy & the Economists.
Richard C. Lewontin reviews in Why Darwin? several Darwin Books and also mentions some of the background:
"The Darwin-Wallace explanation of evolution, the theory of natural selection, is based on three principles:
1) Individuals in a population differ from each other in the form of particular characteristics (the principle of variation).
2) Offspring resemble their parents more than they resemble unrelated individuals (the principle of heritability).
3) The resources necessary for life and reproduction are limited. Individuals with different characteristics differ in their ability to acquire those resources and thus to survive and leave offspring in the next generations (the principle of natural selection).
It seems amazing that two naturalists could independently arrive at the same articulated theory of evolution from a consideration of the characteristics of some species of organisms in nature, their geographic distribution, and their similarities to other species. This amazement becomes considerably tempered, however, when one considers the social consciousness and economic milieu in which the theory arose, a milieu marked by the rise of competitive industrial capitalism in which individuals rose in the social hierarchy based, presumably, on their greater entrepreneurial fitness."
Jonah Lehrer on the secret of self-control in Don’t!The secret of self-control. Sample passage:
"Angela Lee Duckworth, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, is leading the program. She first grew interested in the subject after working as a high-school math teacher. “For the most part, it was an incredibly frustrating experience,” she says. “I gradually became convinced that trying to teach a teen-ager algebra when they don’t have self-control is a pretty futile exercise.” And so, at the age of thirty-two, Duckworth decided to become a psychologist. One of her main research projects looked at the relationship between self-control and grade-point average. She found that the ability to delay gratification—eighth graders were given a choice between a dollar right away or two dollars the following week—was a far better predictor of academic performance than I.Q. She said that her study shows that “intelligence is really important, but it’s still not as important as self-control.”"
More discussion in Lehrer's blog The Secret of Self-Control.
Malcom GladwellHow David Beats Goliath: When underdogs break the rules.
Jonah Lehrer onHow creativity springs from a choreographed set of mental events.
Richard C. Lewontin reviews in Why Darwin? several Darwin Books and also mentions some of the background:
"The Darwin-Wallace explanation of evolution, the theory of natural selection, is based on three principles:
1) Individuals in a population differ from each other in the form of particular characteristics (the principle of variation).
2) Offspring resemble their parents more than they resemble unrelated individuals (the principle of heritability).
3) The resources necessary for life and reproduction are limited. Individuals with different characteristics differ in their ability to acquire those resources and thus to survive and leave offspring in the next generations (the principle of natural selection).
It seems amazing that two naturalists could independently arrive at the same articulated theory of evolution from a consideration of the characteristics of some species of organisms in nature, their geographic distribution, and their similarities to other species. This amazement becomes considerably tempered, however, when one considers the social consciousness and economic milieu in which the theory arose, a milieu marked by the rise of competitive industrial capitalism in which individuals rose in the social hierarchy based, presumably, on their greater entrepreneurial fitness."
Jonah Lehrer on the secret of self-control in Don’t!The secret of self-control. Sample passage:
"Angela Lee Duckworth, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, is leading the program. She first grew interested in the subject after working as a high-school math teacher. “For the most part, it was an incredibly frustrating experience,” she says. “I gradually became convinced that trying to teach a teen-ager algebra when they don’t have self-control is a pretty futile exercise.” And so, at the age of thirty-two, Duckworth decided to become a psychologist. One of her main research projects looked at the relationship between self-control and grade-point average. She found that the ability to delay gratification—eighth graders were given a choice between a dollar right away or two dollars the following week—was a far better predictor of academic performance than I.Q. She said that her study shows that “intelligence is really important, but it’s still not as important as self-control.”"
More discussion in Lehrer's blog The Secret of Self-Control.
Malcom GladwellHow David Beats Goliath: When underdogs break the rules.
Jonah Lehrer onHow creativity springs from a choreographed set of mental events.
Saturday, May 09, 2009
The 24th sun cycle
Despite Maya warnings, the next sun cycle will be relatively mild says this report:Sun entering weakest cycle since 1928 .
And I seem to be missing most of the 100 Awesome Blogs By Some of the World’s Smartest People.
And I seem to be missing most of the 100 Awesome Blogs By Some of the World’s Smartest People.
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
Bringing culture to the laboratory
From Birds Raised In Complete Isolation Evolve 'Normal' Species Song Over Generations:
"Biologists have discovered that zebra finches raised in isolation will, over several generations, produce a song similar to that sung by the species in the wild. The experiment provides new insights into how genetic background, learning abilities and environmental variation might influence how birds evolve "song culture" -- and provides some pointers to how human languages may evolve.
.....
"What is remarkable about this result is that even though we started out with an isolated bird that had never heard the wild-type, cultured song, that's what we ended up with after generations," explains Mitra. "So in a sense, the cultured song was already there in the genome of the bird. It just took multiple generations for it to be shaped and come about."
.....
This work, the scientists maintain, now provides a unified experimental framework for researchers studying topics as diverse as cultural evolution, neuroethology (biology of song development) and quantitative genetics. "We've provided a starting point to explore the biology of cultural transmission in the laboratory," says Mitra."
P.S. more discussion in Neurophilosophy and Culture evolving & converging due to genes.
"Biologists have discovered that zebra finches raised in isolation will, over several generations, produce a song similar to that sung by the species in the wild. The experiment provides new insights into how genetic background, learning abilities and environmental variation might influence how birds evolve "song culture" -- and provides some pointers to how human languages may evolve.
.....
"What is remarkable about this result is that even though we started out with an isolated bird that had never heard the wild-type, cultured song, that's what we ended up with after generations," explains Mitra. "So in a sense, the cultured song was already there in the genome of the bird. It just took multiple generations for it to be shaped and come about."
.....
This work, the scientists maintain, now provides a unified experimental framework for researchers studying topics as diverse as cultural evolution, neuroethology (biology of song development) and quantitative genetics. "We've provided a starting point to explore the biology of cultural transmission in the laboratory," says Mitra."
P.S. more discussion in Neurophilosophy and Culture evolving & converging due to genes.
Saturday, May 02, 2009
Rahul Siddharthan on Indus script
Rahul Siddharthan has a long post Indus:What did Rao et al. really do? with plenty of discussion, comments and links. One of the comments links to Boring No More, a Trade-Savvy Indus Emerges and other articles of Andrew Lawler all of which I missed. Abstract of the article (needs subscrption):
"Long in the shadow of its sister civilizations to the west, the Indus is emerging as the powerhouse of commerce and technology in the 3rd millennium B.C.E. But political and economic troubles dog archaeologists' efforts to understand what made this vast society tick."
Rahul's post and the comments seem worth going through a few times.
P.S. A follow up post by RahulMore Indus thoughts and links
and a recent article by I. Mahadevan The Indus ‘non-script’ is a non-issue
"Long in the shadow of its sister civilizations to the west, the Indus is emerging as the powerhouse of commerce and technology in the 3rd millennium B.C.E. But political and economic troubles dog archaeologists' efforts to understand what made this vast society tick."
Rahul's post and the comments seem worth going through a few times.
P.S. A follow up post by RahulMore Indus thoughts and links
and a recent article by I. Mahadevan The Indus ‘non-script’ is a non-issue
Some Telugu related links
A nice article on film singer A.M. Raja by J.K. Mohana Rao and Paruchuri Sreenivas. It has several downloadable songs in Telugu and Tamil; it seems A.M. Raja sang more songs in Tamil films than Telugu films. Here is apage of some of Raja's Telugu film songs from
oltelugusongs. Some of my favourites, eventhiugh they are not his best, are: chEyi chEyi kalupa rAvE, vennela pamdiri lOna. jAmi cheTTu mIdanunna jAti rAmachiluka possibly because the lyricsarein simple spoken Telugu. Paruchuri links to an AIR program of Savitri. There are some songs but more interesting to me are Savitri's conversationsabout her background and work.
The Seed transcriptUnlocking the Secrets and Powers of the Brain has a descrption of some of the views of Daniel Levitin, the author 'This is your Brain on Music':
"When a song comes on the radio that you haven’t heard since high school, you’re right there with it. You’re singing along. You remember all the nuances. The big story of memory revealed by music is that you tend to remember those things that you care about or that you have some deep emotional connection with. It can be a positive emotion, it can be negative, but there appear to be neurochemical tags associated with memories that are highly emotional. Those are the ones that get most accurately recorded in your memory and the ones that are easiest to draw out."
P.S. From the comments section in the article about A.M. Raja, there are interesting stories (from Rohiniprasad Kadavatiganti) on how A.M. Raja was chosen sing in the films 'vipranarayana' and 'missamma'. Apparently, around that time 'vipranarayana' was made Ghantasala used to smoke cigars and those days only one mike was used when recording duets. The female lead Bhanumati seems to have raised some objections. For the second film, the reasons seem to be due to prior contractual differences. In any case, A.M. Raja did a great job in both the films. I have also heard from a grandchild of Ghantasala that Ghantasala had two different families and a daughter from the second family is a bharatanatyam dancer.
oltelugusongs. Some of my favourites, eventhiugh they are not his best, are: chEyi chEyi kalupa rAvE, vennela pamdiri lOna. jAmi cheTTu mIdanunna jAti rAmachiluka possibly because the lyricsarein simple spoken Telugu. Paruchuri links to an AIR program of Savitri. There are some songs but more interesting to me are Savitri's conversationsabout her background and work.
The Seed transcriptUnlocking the Secrets and Powers of the Brain has a descrption of some of the views of Daniel Levitin, the author 'This is your Brain on Music':
"When a song comes on the radio that you haven’t heard since high school, you’re right there with it. You’re singing along. You remember all the nuances. The big story of memory revealed by music is that you tend to remember those things that you care about or that you have some deep emotional connection with. It can be a positive emotion, it can be negative, but there appear to be neurochemical tags associated with memories that are highly emotional. Those are the ones that get most accurately recorded in your memory and the ones that are easiest to draw out."
P.S. From the comments section in the article about A.M. Raja, there are interesting stories (from Rohiniprasad Kadavatiganti) on how A.M. Raja was chosen sing in the films 'vipranarayana' and 'missamma'. Apparently, around that time 'vipranarayana' was made Ghantasala used to smoke cigars and those days only one mike was used when recording duets. The female lead Bhanumati seems to have raised some objections. For the second film, the reasons seem to be due to prior contractual differences. In any case, A.M. Raja did a great job in both the films. I have also heard from a grandchild of Ghantasala that Ghantasala had two different families and a daughter from the second family is a bharatanatyam dancer.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Review article on the evolution of morality discussions
A wide ranging article by Jonathan Haidt & Selin Kesebir on Morality. Excerpt from the conclusion:
"The long debate over the relative roles of “emotion” and “cognition” seems to have given way to an emerging consensus on the first principle: “intuitive primacy but not dictatorship.” New discoveries about emotion, intuition, and the ways that brains respond to stories about moral violations have led to a pronounced shift away from information processing models and toward dual process models. In these models, most (but not all) of the action is in the automatic processes, which are cognitive processes that are usually affectively valenced. The second principle, “moral thinking is for social doing,” reflects the growing recognition that much of human cognition was shaped by natural selection for life in intensely social groups. Human cognition is socially situated and socially functional, and a great deal of that functionality can be captured by viewing people as intuitive politicians and prosecutors, not as intuitive scientists. The third principle, “morality binds and builds,” reflects the emergence of multi-level selection theory and of gene-culture co-evolutionary theory. Groups may not be significant units of selection for the great majority of other species, but once human beings developed the capacity for cumulative cultural learning, they invented many ways to solve the free-rider problem, increase the entitativity of their groups, and increase the importance of group-level selection pressures relative to individual-level pressures (which are always present and powerful).
Many other narratives could be told about the last century of moral psychology, and any narrative leaves out inconvenient exceptions in order to create a coherent and readable story. The particular narrative told in this chapter will probably be rejected by psychologists who were already united by a competing narrative. For example, many cognitive developmentalists believe the redemption occurred forty years ago when Lawrence Kohlberg (1969) vanquished the twin demons of behaviorism and psychoanalysis. Moral psychology, like any human endeavor, is influenced by moral psychology, which means that there is often a tribal or team aspect to it.
It remains to be seen whether the intuitionist team replaces the rationalist team and gets to write the history of moral psychology that graduate students will learn in 20 years.
For today’s young researchers, however, this chapter closes with three suggestions, each meant to be analogous to the 19th century American journalist Horace Greeley’s advice to “go west young man!” "
Jonathan Haidt's home page here.
"The long debate over the relative roles of “emotion” and “cognition” seems to have given way to an emerging consensus on the first principle: “intuitive primacy but not dictatorship.” New discoveries about emotion, intuition, and the ways that brains respond to stories about moral violations have led to a pronounced shift away from information processing models and toward dual process models. In these models, most (but not all) of the action is in the automatic processes, which are cognitive processes that are usually affectively valenced. The second principle, “moral thinking is for social doing,” reflects the growing recognition that much of human cognition was shaped by natural selection for life in intensely social groups. Human cognition is socially situated and socially functional, and a great deal of that functionality can be captured by viewing people as intuitive politicians and prosecutors, not as intuitive scientists. The third principle, “morality binds and builds,” reflects the emergence of multi-level selection theory and of gene-culture co-evolutionary theory. Groups may not be significant units of selection for the great majority of other species, but once human beings developed the capacity for cumulative cultural learning, they invented many ways to solve the free-rider problem, increase the entitativity of their groups, and increase the importance of group-level selection pressures relative to individual-level pressures (which are always present and powerful).
Many other narratives could be told about the last century of moral psychology, and any narrative leaves out inconvenient exceptions in order to create a coherent and readable story. The particular narrative told in this chapter will probably be rejected by psychologists who were already united by a competing narrative. For example, many cognitive developmentalists believe the redemption occurred forty years ago when Lawrence Kohlberg (1969) vanquished the twin demons of behaviorism and psychoanalysis. Moral psychology, like any human endeavor, is influenced by moral psychology, which means that there is often a tribal or team aspect to it.
It remains to be seen whether the intuitionist team replaces the rationalist team and gets to write the history of moral psychology that graduate students will learn in 20 years.
For today’s young researchers, however, this chapter closes with three suggestions, each meant to be analogous to the 19th century American journalist Horace Greeley’s advice to “go west young man!” "
Jonathan Haidt's home page here.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Assorted links
Economist surveys professions of political leaders in different countries There was a lawyer, an engineer and a politician... and an
interesting comment by Stephen Morris.
Rajib in Which nationalities are trusting says:
"Reading Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational I was struck and concerned by his data which suggested that once social norms of reciprocity break down it is difficult to regenerate them. In other words, social capital can be thought of as a limited nonrenewable resource, at least proximately." and posts data from World Values Survey responses from different countries on whether most people can be trusted.
Acemoglu and colloborators on the role of institutions in development via Chris Blattman's post The secret to development Fetchez la vache.
interesting comment by Stephen Morris.
Rajib in Which nationalities are trusting says:
"Reading Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational I was struck and concerned by his data which suggested that once social norms of reciprocity break down it is difficult to regenerate them. In other words, social capital can be thought of as a limited nonrenewable resource, at least proximately." and posts data from World Values Survey responses from different countries on whether most people can be trusted.
Acemoglu and colloborators on the role of institutions in development via Chris Blattman's post The secret to development Fetchez la vache.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Reviews of Jonah Lehrer's new book
From Book of the week: The Decisive Moment by Jonah Lehrer:
"One message: if you are already an expert on a subject, then trust your gut reaction when making a decision. If you know little about the subject, then find out more and make a logical decision.
By the way, one decision we can help you make. If you want to get a copy of the book, make sure you get ‘The Decisive Moment’ and not ‘How we decide’ by the same author. Turns out it’s the same book with a different title and a higher price! How rational is that???
If you haven’t got time to read the book, then check out reviews in the New Scientist (21 Feb 2009) and The Sunday Times (1 March 2009) or listen to it on BBC."
From the Nature review Decisions, decisions... by Adam Kepecs:
"Lehrer aims high by applying lessons from the neuroscience of decision-making to everyday choices. He provides valuable — if obvious — advice, such as relying on gut instinct for unimportant decisions but on reason when faced with new problems. But we were promised insights from neuroscience, not age-old wisdom.
Neuroscientists must grapple with how to communicate subtle conclusions in a world of headline-news reporting. Popular books such as this one could serve this goal of translating science for the public. But by smoothing out the rough edges of our knowledge, Lehrer leads the reader astray. Among his well-told dramatic stories the science often gets lost. Yet he is a gifted writer, so I hope for his next project he will dig deeper, embrace complexity and make it his job to report from the cutting-edge of scientific knowledge."
"One message: if you are already an expert on a subject, then trust your gut reaction when making a decision. If you know little about the subject, then find out more and make a logical decision.
By the way, one decision we can help you make. If you want to get a copy of the book, make sure you get ‘The Decisive Moment’ and not ‘How we decide’ by the same author. Turns out it’s the same book with a different title and a higher price! How rational is that???
If you haven’t got time to read the book, then check out reviews in the New Scientist (21 Feb 2009) and The Sunday Times (1 March 2009) or listen to it on BBC."
From the Nature review Decisions, decisions... by Adam Kepecs:
"Lehrer aims high by applying lessons from the neuroscience of decision-making to everyday choices. He provides valuable — if obvious — advice, such as relying on gut instinct for unimportant decisions but on reason when faced with new problems. But we were promised insights from neuroscience, not age-old wisdom.
Neuroscientists must grapple with how to communicate subtle conclusions in a world of headline-news reporting. Popular books such as this one could serve this goal of translating science for the public. But by smoothing out the rough edges of our knowledge, Lehrer leads the reader astray. Among his well-told dramatic stories the science often gets lost. Yet he is a gifted writer, so I hope for his next project he will dig deeper, embrace complexity and make it his job to report from the cutting-edge of scientific knowledge."
Saturday, April 18, 2009
An Australian counter-terrorism expert
Awrite up about David Kilcullen: Fighting terror with brain power. Excerpts:
"The strategic mistake Kilcullen identifies at the heart of the immediate US-led response to September 11 was the weight given to counter-terrorism — an "enemy-centric" assumption that removing a terrorist network would remove the problem. Classical counter-insurgency, on the other hand, is "population-centric".
"It focuses on the population, seeking to protect it from harm by, or interaction with, the insurgents. It competes with the insurgents for influence and control at the grassroots level," he writes.
....
The second fault is a layer of hypocrisy he sees in Washington's new show of good faith on Afghanistan and its hand-wringing on Pakistan — American lawmakers cannot help themselves when it comes to spending hugely on resources that are inappropriate for today's wars, he says.
In campaigning for costly defence industry facilities to win jobs and votes in their electorates, lawmakers continue to replenish defence inventories with more of the conventional, shock-and-awe capability — when the wars Washington confronts are the unconventional misfortune of accidental guerillas.
He writes: "It takes factories, jobs and industrial facilities to produce battleships and bombers. But aid workers, linguists and special forces operators are vastly cheaper and do not demand the same industrial base. (Yet) shifting spending priorities … would cost jobs and votes in the congressional districts of the very people who control that spending."
....
Kilcullen proposes that new US troops bound for Afghanistan be tasked with securing population centres, allowing the people to get on with their lives and politics, while Afghan security forces, backed by small teams of US special forces, secure the areas between the centres.
"The conflict remains winnable, but the overall trend is extremely negative and a concerted long-term effort is needed — lasting 5-10 years at least — if we are to have any chance of building a resilient Afghan state and the kind of civil society that can defeat the threat.
"Extending an effective, legitimate government presence into 40,020 villages for the first time in modern Afghan history is the principal challenge, as government weakness, corruption, misrule and perceived lack of legitimacy at the village and district level allows militias, warlords and criminals to reassert themselves.""
There is also a discussion of some of Kilcullen's comments in the Chapati Mystery:
Will Pakistan Become A Theocracy? II. The first part has many interesting comments and links.
"The strategic mistake Kilcullen identifies at the heart of the immediate US-led response to September 11 was the weight given to counter-terrorism — an "enemy-centric" assumption that removing a terrorist network would remove the problem. Classical counter-insurgency, on the other hand, is "population-centric".
"It focuses on the population, seeking to protect it from harm by, or interaction with, the insurgents. It competes with the insurgents for influence and control at the grassroots level," he writes.
....
The second fault is a layer of hypocrisy he sees in Washington's new show of good faith on Afghanistan and its hand-wringing on Pakistan — American lawmakers cannot help themselves when it comes to spending hugely on resources that are inappropriate for today's wars, he says.
In campaigning for costly defence industry facilities to win jobs and votes in their electorates, lawmakers continue to replenish defence inventories with more of the conventional, shock-and-awe capability — when the wars Washington confronts are the unconventional misfortune of accidental guerillas.
He writes: "It takes factories, jobs and industrial facilities to produce battleships and bombers. But aid workers, linguists and special forces operators are vastly cheaper and do not demand the same industrial base. (Yet) shifting spending priorities … would cost jobs and votes in the congressional districts of the very people who control that spending."
....
Kilcullen proposes that new US troops bound for Afghanistan be tasked with securing population centres, allowing the people to get on with their lives and politics, while Afghan security forces, backed by small teams of US special forces, secure the areas between the centres.
"The conflict remains winnable, but the overall trend is extremely negative and a concerted long-term effort is needed — lasting 5-10 years at least — if we are to have any chance of building a resilient Afghan state and the kind of civil society that can defeat the threat.
"Extending an effective, legitimate government presence into 40,020 villages for the first time in modern Afghan history is the principal challenge, as government weakness, corruption, misrule and perceived lack of legitimacy at the village and district level allows militias, warlords and criminals to reassert themselves.""
There is also a discussion of some of Kilcullen's comments in the Chapati Mystery:
Will Pakistan Become A Theocracy? II. The first part has many interesting comments and links.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Reports of farmers suicides in Chhattisgarh
From Mass Farmer Suicide Sobering Reminder of Consequences of Water Shortages:
"In one of the more tragic stories related to water shortage in recent history, some 1,500 farmers in India’s agricultural state of Chhattisgarh committed mass suicide in response to the devastating effects of water shortages on their crop production.
The story, reported here by The Belfast Telegraph and The Independent, underscores the potentially devastating effects of water shortages to agriculture-centric regions of the globe, and to those who rely on water for not only their financial livelihoods and health, but for their hope.
“The water level has gone down below 250 feet here. It used to be at 40 feet a few years ago….”
said Shatrughan Sahu, a villager local from a Chhattisgarh district, to India’s Down To Earth magazine. The district has been particularly devastated by farmer suicides in recent years, having recorded 206 in the past year alone. District police records indicate that many of the deaths occur due to distress over financial debt related to crop failures. In the Chhattisgarh region, water levels in the area have been reported to have been in major decline during recent years primarily due to drought, which has all but destroyed agricultural efforts in the region."
Earlier reports by Shubhranshu Choudhary:The truth about farmer suicides in Chhattisgarh and Chhattisgarh: Where Journalists get paid to keep their mouths shut.
"In one of the more tragic stories related to water shortage in recent history, some 1,500 farmers in India’s agricultural state of Chhattisgarh committed mass suicide in response to the devastating effects of water shortages on their crop production.
The story, reported here by The Belfast Telegraph and The Independent, underscores the potentially devastating effects of water shortages to agriculture-centric regions of the globe, and to those who rely on water for not only their financial livelihoods and health, but for their hope.
“The water level has gone down below 250 feet here. It used to be at 40 feet a few years ago….”
said Shatrughan Sahu, a villager local from a Chhattisgarh district, to India’s Down To Earth magazine. The district has been particularly devastated by farmer suicides in recent years, having recorded 206 in the past year alone. District police records indicate that many of the deaths occur due to distress over financial debt related to crop failures. In the Chhattisgarh region, water levels in the area have been reported to have been in major decline during recent years primarily due to drought, which has all but destroyed agricultural efforts in the region."
Earlier reports by Shubhranshu Choudhary:The truth about farmer suicides in Chhattisgarh and Chhattisgarh: Where Journalists get paid to keep their mouths shut.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Marx's dream?
From Chris Dillow's Marx's important error :
"...there is this passage in the The German Ideology, written some 30 years before vol III:
In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.
.....
He was presaging a point made 85 years later by Keynes, in his essay (pdf), Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren. In this, he predicted - just as Marx did - that productivity would grow sufficiently to allow our needs to be met with very little labour:
For the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem - how to use his freedom form pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.
Marx thought that living wisely and well would consist in working voluntarily, cultivating mind, body and garden.
This, though, raises a question. Why is it that the rise in productivity hasn’t had the effects predicted by Marx and Keynes? Why have our “needs” risen as our productive powers have, with the result that the hours we devote to employment haven’t fallen as much as Marx or Keynes forecast? Why is it that so many of us - I count myself fortunate to be a partial exception - haven’t used wealth to free ourselves from alienating labour?"
There is a suggestion in the podcast linked in the post Jonathan Wolff on Marx on Alienation that the above remark by Marx might have been an isolated statement to tease Engels.
"...there is this passage in the The German Ideology, written some 30 years before vol III:
In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.
.....
He was presaging a point made 85 years later by Keynes, in his essay (pdf), Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren. In this, he predicted - just as Marx did - that productivity would grow sufficiently to allow our needs to be met with very little labour:
For the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem - how to use his freedom form pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.
Marx thought that living wisely and well would consist in working voluntarily, cultivating mind, body and garden.
This, though, raises a question. Why is it that the rise in productivity hasn’t had the effects predicted by Marx and Keynes? Why have our “needs” risen as our productive powers have, with the result that the hours we devote to employment haven’t fallen as much as Marx or Keynes forecast? Why is it that so many of us - I count myself fortunate to be a partial exception - haven’t used wealth to free ourselves from alienating labour?"
There is a suggestion in the podcast linked in the post Jonathan Wolff on Marx on Alienation that the above remark by Marx might have been an isolated statement to tease Engels.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Links, April 14th
William Easterley reviews False Economy: A Surprising Economic History of the World By Alan Beattie. Excerpts:
"Looking in hindsight, one can emphasise the favourable factors, minimise the unfavourable factors and produce a plausible explanation. Sometimes these explanations will be orthodox economics 101 (free trade worked!); other times they will be heterodox (government industrial policy worked!). But these “explanations” cannot really be proved or disproved; each particular bout of success or failure is special. Ultimately, they give little guidance – to other countries, or even to the same country in a future period.
Economics has a better track record explaining very long run patterns of success or failure – explaining the level of development (per capita income) more than the economic growth rate. This requires economists to swallow our professional pride and admit that many fluctuations around very long run paths are indeed surprising – they will always resist explanation or prediction.
Even the long run patterns don’t explain everything; any prescription has counter- examples. We must give up the search for the grand unified theory of short run and long run growth and development, a bitter pill indeed. But at least this would keep us from chasing the ephemeral “miracles” for their unstable “lessons”, and keep us from trying to squeeze a prescription out of every last counter-example. Instead, we’d stick with ideas that, on average, for most countries, have stood the test of time."
Mark Thoma discusses Tim Hartford's views on macroeconomics in Macroeconomic Meltdown? and Willem Buiter's views in"The Unfortunate Uselessness of Most 'State of the Art' Academic Monetary Economics".
Thoma's comment from the first discussion:
"We do not have either the theoretical models or the empirical evidence we need to understand this episode thoroughly and completely, and to provide the policy advice that will cure the problem with any degree of certainty. Without solid theoretical models and the associated empirical evidence, we really have no choice but to fall back upon older models that were "built to answer the questions that are important at the moment," i.e. the old-fashioned Keynesian model, and to rely upon loose, but solid theoretical principles rather than a tightly constructed model and vast amounts of empirical evidence. It's quite understandable that economists who have been striving to push the profession in a positive, scientific, solidly theoretical and evidence based direction would resist going backward, and resist strongly, but what choice do we have? Until we have a better mousetrap, the simple, old fashioned one will have to suffice."
Alladi Sudhir Venkatesh profiled in The Other Cicago School (via Freakonomics Blog. Excerpt:
"The underground economy includes a vast array of people providing services that are off the books but otherwise legal. Venkatesh enumerates those having a harder time in the face of the recession: office cleaners, squeegee men, informal security guards, "canners" who scavenge for recyclables (there's less consumption now, so less to recycle) and nannies whose employers have been laid off. And as business contracts, underground workers face certain problems unique to their status. They have no unemployment insurance or other benefits, and, with little protection from law enforcement, they tend to resolve disputes by physical means.
Venkatesh prefers to leave detailed prescriptions to policymakers but nevertheless ventures a few. Microcredit loans, as well as education on risk management and planning, could help shift some black market entrepreneurial zeal above ground. He heartily approves of the proposal by Barack Obama--a fellow pickup basketball player at the University of Chicago when Venkatesh studied there--to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit to give a bigger break to low-income parents. Sales taxes also hit the poor hard, he says; one way to help would be to let them use prepaid cards to buy goods tax free.
Venkatesh is struck by how much the black market resembles the wider society in which it is enmeshed."
Interview with Michael Perelman in 'Politics and Culture'. Excerpt:
"In 1866, British industry could not get cotton from the Confederate states because of the American Civil War. Britain turned to it’s Indian colony for cotton, restricting rice cultivation and causing the infamous famine of 1866. Karl Marx reported that this famine cost the lives of a million people in the district of Orissa alone—a more extreme version of the recent food crisis resulting from the destructive biofuels movement I mentioned earlier. Similarly, when the potato famine hit Ireland in the 1840s, the country’s agriculture was largely geared to exporting crops to England. Local poor people relied on potatoes. When the British finally got around to sending relief, they sent wheat, but the people had no facilities for baking.
In my book, The Invention of Capitalism, I tried to show how British economists and the powerful economic and political forces that they represented went to great lengths to figure out how to make people dependent on purchased food by making it impossible for them to produce for themselves."
"Looking in hindsight, one can emphasise the favourable factors, minimise the unfavourable factors and produce a plausible explanation. Sometimes these explanations will be orthodox economics 101 (free trade worked!); other times they will be heterodox (government industrial policy worked!). But these “explanations” cannot really be proved or disproved; each particular bout of success or failure is special. Ultimately, they give little guidance – to other countries, or even to the same country in a future period.
Economics has a better track record explaining very long run patterns of success or failure – explaining the level of development (per capita income) more than the economic growth rate. This requires economists to swallow our professional pride and admit that many fluctuations around very long run paths are indeed surprising – they will always resist explanation or prediction.
Even the long run patterns don’t explain everything; any prescription has counter- examples. We must give up the search for the grand unified theory of short run and long run growth and development, a bitter pill indeed. But at least this would keep us from chasing the ephemeral “miracles” for their unstable “lessons”, and keep us from trying to squeeze a prescription out of every last counter-example. Instead, we’d stick with ideas that, on average, for most countries, have stood the test of time."
Mark Thoma discusses Tim Hartford's views on macroeconomics in Macroeconomic Meltdown? and Willem Buiter's views in"The Unfortunate Uselessness of Most 'State of the Art' Academic Monetary Economics".
Thoma's comment from the first discussion:
"We do not have either the theoretical models or the empirical evidence we need to understand this episode thoroughly and completely, and to provide the policy advice that will cure the problem with any degree of certainty. Without solid theoretical models and the associated empirical evidence, we really have no choice but to fall back upon older models that were "built to answer the questions that are important at the moment," i.e. the old-fashioned Keynesian model, and to rely upon loose, but solid theoretical principles rather than a tightly constructed model and vast amounts of empirical evidence. It's quite understandable that economists who have been striving to push the profession in a positive, scientific, solidly theoretical and evidence based direction would resist going backward, and resist strongly, but what choice do we have? Until we have a better mousetrap, the simple, old fashioned one will have to suffice."
Alladi Sudhir Venkatesh profiled in The Other Cicago School (via Freakonomics Blog. Excerpt:
"The underground economy includes a vast array of people providing services that are off the books but otherwise legal. Venkatesh enumerates those having a harder time in the face of the recession: office cleaners, squeegee men, informal security guards, "canners" who scavenge for recyclables (there's less consumption now, so less to recycle) and nannies whose employers have been laid off. And as business contracts, underground workers face certain problems unique to their status. They have no unemployment insurance or other benefits, and, with little protection from law enforcement, they tend to resolve disputes by physical means.
Venkatesh prefers to leave detailed prescriptions to policymakers but nevertheless ventures a few. Microcredit loans, as well as education on risk management and planning, could help shift some black market entrepreneurial zeal above ground. He heartily approves of the proposal by Barack Obama--a fellow pickup basketball player at the University of Chicago when Venkatesh studied there--to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit to give a bigger break to low-income parents. Sales taxes also hit the poor hard, he says; one way to help would be to let them use prepaid cards to buy goods tax free.
Venkatesh is struck by how much the black market resembles the wider society in which it is enmeshed."
Interview with Michael Perelman in 'Politics and Culture'. Excerpt:
"In 1866, British industry could not get cotton from the Confederate states because of the American Civil War. Britain turned to it’s Indian colony for cotton, restricting rice cultivation and causing the infamous famine of 1866. Karl Marx reported that this famine cost the lives of a million people in the district of Orissa alone—a more extreme version of the recent food crisis resulting from the destructive biofuels movement I mentioned earlier. Similarly, when the potato famine hit Ireland in the 1840s, the country’s agriculture was largely geared to exporting crops to England. Local poor people relied on potatoes. When the British finally got around to sending relief, they sent wheat, but the people had no facilities for baking.
In my book, The Invention of Capitalism, I tried to show how British economists and the powerful economic and political forces that they represented went to great lengths to figure out how to make people dependent on purchased food by making it impossible for them to produce for themselves."
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Some photographs
from a recent trip to India have been uploaded today. These include photographs of two of the best young mathematicians (in my opinion) from India. Both are working in Vivekananda University, located in Belur Math, Kolkata.
On books
Recently, I was interviewd by Duppala Ravikumar about books for his blog 'Meeru Chadivaara?". Apparrently he came to know of my name through a Telugu book based on "The Confessions of an Economic Hitman" which I presented to a friend.
The interview in Telugu is here:
http://chaduvu.wordpress.com/2009/04/10/interivew23/
Mr. Ravikumar is more literary than me and his translation of my answers seem better than my write up. Below are rough translations of his questions and my answers.
1.What are the books and writers that you found boring?
Many writers and books. Sometimes after a few years, I found some of the books that I could not read earlier appealing. One example Bernard Cohn's "An Anthropologist Among Historians".
2.Your latest read?
"Recovering the Lost Tongue:The Saga of Environmental Struggles in Central India" by Rahul Banerjee (Prachee Publications, Kachiguda). But I have a vested interest in this being partly responsible for the publication. Soon after on the plane, I read V.S. Naipaul's "A Million Mutinees Now".
3. How many books are there in your library?
I do not know. There are five shelves about 6 rows in each. Possibly the number of books in each row varies from 30 to hundred.
4.What are the books that you wanted to read for a long time but could not?
Too many, but I am beginning to feel that after a while just reading is not enough and one has to analyze the topics. It really does not seem to matter if we miss a few books; the same information is spread through other books and sources.
5. What are the books and authors that you liked?
In Telugu, the one I remember most is "Asamarthuni Jeevayaatra" by Gopichand. But I read very few Telugu books since 50's. Since my Telugu is not strong, I like those written in simple Telugu like Annamayya, Vemana, Gurajada, Rallapalli, Arudra, Malladi Ramakrishna Sastry.
In English, there are too many books and writers that I liked. A few recent ones are Matt Ridley (The Red Queen etc), Sarah Blaffer Hrdy (Mother Nature etc) Dan Gilbert "Stumbling on Happiness"), Amitav Ghosh's "In an Antique Land", Suketu Mehta's "Maximum City", V.S. Naipaul's books, Kautilya's Arthasastra (Partly read), Bernard Cohn's books, Cynthial Talbot's book on Medieval Andhra, Sheldon Pollock's "The language of the gods in the world of men". I just started on Ramakrishna Mission's seven volumes on Indian culture and heritage but they are being shipped now.
6. How many books have you presented to friends recently and how many did you recieve?
About 15-20 books to friends. I also get quite a few from my children.
7. Which news papers and magazines do you read regularly?
None in particular. Browse through several on internet. I was told by friends in India that some of the regional language papers are better than the English news papers in India. I read EPW and OUTLOOKindia fairly regularly.
8. What are the books that many others liked but you did not?
I generally do not read best sellers. I start on a topic and try to find books on that topic. Currently I am trying to understand a bit about 'development' particularly in the Indian context. So I am trying to look at books that describe ancient India to medieval to recent developments. I must add that I understand very little of these topics.
9.What are you currently reading?
Planning to read "India: A Wounded Civilization" by V.S. Naipaul. I just finished reading a book by him.
10. What are the books that stimulated you?
Several. If I have to select one book, I would probably choose "Mother Nature" by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy.
P.S. I would like to thank P.P.C. Joshi of Prachee Publications and Paruchuri Sreenivas for suggesting to me several interesting books.
The interview in Telugu is here:
http://chaduvu.wordpress.com/2009/04/10/interivew23/
Mr. Ravikumar is more literary than me and his translation of my answers seem better than my write up. Below are rough translations of his questions and my answers.
1.What are the books and writers that you found boring?
Many writers and books. Sometimes after a few years, I found some of the books that I could not read earlier appealing. One example Bernard Cohn's "An Anthropologist Among Historians".
2.Your latest read?
"Recovering the Lost Tongue:The Saga of Environmental Struggles in Central India" by Rahul Banerjee (Prachee Publications, Kachiguda). But I have a vested interest in this being partly responsible for the publication. Soon after on the plane, I read V.S. Naipaul's "A Million Mutinees Now".
3. How many books are there in your library?
I do not know. There are five shelves about 6 rows in each. Possibly the number of books in each row varies from 30 to hundred.
4.What are the books that you wanted to read for a long time but could not?
Too many, but I am beginning to feel that after a while just reading is not enough and one has to analyze the topics. It really does not seem to matter if we miss a few books; the same information is spread through other books and sources.
5. What are the books and authors that you liked?
In Telugu, the one I remember most is "Asamarthuni Jeevayaatra" by Gopichand. But I read very few Telugu books since 50's. Since my Telugu is not strong, I like those written in simple Telugu like Annamayya, Vemana, Gurajada, Rallapalli, Arudra, Malladi Ramakrishna Sastry.
In English, there are too many books and writers that I liked. A few recent ones are Matt Ridley (The Red Queen etc), Sarah Blaffer Hrdy (Mother Nature etc) Dan Gilbert "Stumbling on Happiness"), Amitav Ghosh's "In an Antique Land", Suketu Mehta's "Maximum City", V.S. Naipaul's books, Kautilya's Arthasastra (Partly read), Bernard Cohn's books, Cynthial Talbot's book on Medieval Andhra, Sheldon Pollock's "The language of the gods in the world of men". I just started on Ramakrishna Mission's seven volumes on Indian culture and heritage but they are being shipped now.
6. How many books have you presented to friends recently and how many did you recieve?
About 15-20 books to friends. I also get quite a few from my children.
7. Which news papers and magazines do you read regularly?
None in particular. Browse through several on internet. I was told by friends in India that some of the regional language papers are better than the English news papers in India. I read EPW and OUTLOOKindia fairly regularly.
8. What are the books that many others liked but you did not?
I generally do not read best sellers. I start on a topic and try to find books on that topic. Currently I am trying to understand a bit about 'development' particularly in the Indian context. So I am trying to look at books that describe ancient India to medieval to recent developments. I must add that I understand very little of these topics.
9.What are you currently reading?
Planning to read "India: A Wounded Civilization" by V.S. Naipaul. I just finished reading a book by him.
10. What are the books that stimulated you?
Several. If I have to select one book, I would probably choose "Mother Nature" by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy.
P.S. I would like to thank P.P.C. Joshi of Prachee Publications and Paruchuri Sreenivas for suggesting to me several interesting books.
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
An old friend reviews Slumdog Millionaire
Bobby Winters' review The One Story: Slumdog Millionaire in which I make an appearance. Apart from helping with driving, I rember that Bobby was very excited then about John Stallings concept of 'binding tie' which later became 'folding' when formulated in terms of trees. I have not seen the movie or read the book yet.
His blog
His blog
Bloomberg's initiative to cut salt intake
From Public Policy That Makes Test Subjects of Us All :
"But that prediction is based on an estimate based on extrapolations based on assumptions that have yet to be demonstrated despite a half-century of efforts. No one knows how people would react to less-salty food, much less what would happen to their health.
....
In the past year, researchers led by Salvatore Paterna of the University of Palermo have reported one of the most rigorous experiments so far: a randomized clinical trial of heart patients who were put on different diets. Those on a low-sodium diet were more likely to be rehospitalized and to die, results that prompted the researchers to ask, “Is sodium an old enemy or a new friend?”"
"But that prediction is based on an estimate based on extrapolations based on assumptions that have yet to be demonstrated despite a half-century of efforts. No one knows how people would react to less-salty food, much less what would happen to their health.
....
In the past year, researchers led by Salvatore Paterna of the University of Palermo have reported one of the most rigorous experiments so far: a randomized clinical trial of heart patients who were put on different diets. Those on a low-sodium diet were more likely to be rehospitalized and to die, results that prompted the researchers to ask, “Is sodium an old enemy or a new friend?”"
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Replicating Milgram
A whole issue of American Psychologist on the famous Stanley Milgram experiments via Chris Blattman.
See also Eric Wargo's Bad Apples or Bad Barrels? Zimbardo on ‘The Lucifer Effect’.
See also Eric Wargo's Bad Apples or Bad Barrels? Zimbardo on ‘The Lucifer Effect’.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Adhunika Vyavahara Kosam
Prachee Publications site has made available Adhunika Vyavahara Kosam by Budaraju Radhakrishna online. Some additions prepared by Sri Budaraju will be available in due course.
Some time ago, I requested Sri P.P.C.Joshi for this favour since I felt that it may be be useful to NRIs like me to help writing in Telugu. I would like to thank Sri P.P.C.Joshi for making the dictionary available and the owners of AMdhra bhArati site for helping with the digitization.
Some time ago, I requested Sri P.P.C.Joshi for this favour since I felt that it may be be useful to NRIs like me to help writing in Telugu. I would like to thank Sri P.P.C.Joshi for making the dictionary available and the owners of AMdhra bhArati site for helping with the digitization.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Links, March 12th
On T.V.Raman's software for the blind :For the Blind, Technology Does What a Guide Dog Can’t .
Protecting traditional medicines: India protects traditional medicines from patents .
On Benjamin Paul KailaChange Makers Inc .
Sugata Mitra againfrom pbs.
Protecting traditional medicines: India protects traditional medicines from patents .
On Benjamin Paul KailaChange Makers Inc .
Sugata Mitra againfrom pbs.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Doing mathematics in Belur Math
I have not been doing mathematics for a while but while visiting a friend in Kolkata, I arranged to stay in Belur Math where one of the monks is is a very good mathematician. He wanted me to explain some theory which Peter Scott and I developed a few years ago and he thought that it would be useful in a problem that he has been thinking for over an year. That turned out to be the case. After a life time in mathematics, it does not seem to be hard to get back in to it even after a long gap.
In the beginning I was afraid that this may be religious place and difficult to stay for agnostics like me. But there is very little talk of religion. The Ramakrishna Mission seems to be more about service than religion. I understand that there are some some moslem and christian monks. In Bengal, apart from educational activities, they seem to be in to extensive rural development activities, running dispensaries and hospitals essentially doing what the government should be doing. I hope that similar activities spread to other states. In any case, this seems to a good place of meditation for an agnostic.
In the beginning I was afraid that this may be religious place and difficult to stay for agnostics like me. But there is very little talk of religion. The Ramakrishna Mission seems to be more about service than religion. I understand that there are some some moslem and christian monks. In Bengal, apart from educational activities, they seem to be in to extensive rural development activities, running dispensaries and hospitals essentially doing what the government should be doing. I hope that similar activities spread to other states. In any case, this seems to a good place of meditation for an agnostic.
Sunday, March 08, 2009
Moni Moshin on the developments in Pakistan
State of Emergency: A personal history of Pakistan on the brink (http://bostonreview.net/BR34.2/mohsin.php,via 3quraksdaily). Enlightening article, but she seems to go easy on on the Bhuttos and few others as pointed out by C.M. Naim in the comments.
Friday, March 06, 2009
Reading Arudra in Kolkata
My knowledge of Telugu writings is ver fragmentary but I knew about Arudra from his film songs (particularly Premalekhalu from around 1852) and his very impressive Samagra Andhra Sahityam. Visiting a friend's house in Kolkata, I came across a number of books by Arudra and a few about him. I have been browsing throuh some of them and find Arudra very impressive. From the biography 'Arudra' by Medipalli Ravikumar, Ifind that Arudra (original name Bhagavatula Shankara Sastry) was rebellios, scholarly and creatve from a very young age. Apparently, he refused to have a thered ceremony, dropped out of college to take part of the freedom movement, and later bcame a Marxist. But he did not seem to be like many other Marxists. As A.S. Ramman says in 'Words cast a spell'(publiahed in Arudra Abhinandana Sanchika, on the occasion of his 60th birthday in 1985):
" He is a Marxist who readily responds to the literary graces of the bourgeois West, an athesist who wrote exquisite devotional poetry, a non-conformist whom conformists find irrestible because of the authenticity of his dissent, and pacifist who advocates war for peace."
Apart several poetry books, plays, stories there are many scholarly books, some on two of my favourite poets: Vemana and Gurajada. From his two books on Vemana (Vemana Vedam and Mana Vemana), it appears that Vemana was not just a clever epigramist that I imagined but had deep knowledge of various philosophies of his time, found them unsatifactory, tried to go beyond then and expressed his thoughts in the language and idiom understandable to common people. Thus his stanzas remained in people's cosciousness, particularly after they were made available by C.F. Brown. Eventhough many pundits did not like his work (when some of his poems were prescribed by Madras Ujversity, copies of the book disappeared and there was a strike by some students and teachers, according to Narla Venkateswara Rao in his introductory articles to "vemana, Pacchatyulu"), Arudra also shows Vemana's influence on several poets. He also brings his formidable knowledge of classical works into play in his discuusons of everyday conversation pieces. Some of these are in his newspaper articles and leaves the discussion usually withe comment that the topic needs futher research. It seems that all his works are worth pursuing. Medipalli Ravikumar's "Arudra" has a comprehensive list of his writings. A book on popular science that he wrote is missing from the list. It is possible that are more works missing. From Ravikumar's book one finds that Arudra wrote under several psedonyms in his younger days. Some of the pseudonyms are Sankaram, Sankarasastry, Chotasastry, Junior Ashwini,Tingu Rangarao, Samidheni Savitri, Markandeyudu, Vamakshi, Haridasu and Konetirao. Possibly some more may be found in the old magazines and newspapers.
" He is a Marxist who readily responds to the literary graces of the bourgeois West, an athesist who wrote exquisite devotional poetry, a non-conformist whom conformists find irrestible because of the authenticity of his dissent, and pacifist who advocates war for peace."
Apart several poetry books, plays, stories there are many scholarly books, some on two of my favourite poets: Vemana and Gurajada. From his two books on Vemana (Vemana Vedam and Mana Vemana), it appears that Vemana was not just a clever epigramist that I imagined but had deep knowledge of various philosophies of his time, found them unsatifactory, tried to go beyond then and expressed his thoughts in the language and idiom understandable to common people. Thus his stanzas remained in people's cosciousness, particularly after they were made available by C.F. Brown. Eventhough many pundits did not like his work (when some of his poems were prescribed by Madras Ujversity, copies of the book disappeared and there was a strike by some students and teachers, according to Narla Venkateswara Rao in his introductory articles to "vemana, Pacchatyulu"), Arudra also shows Vemana's influence on several poets. He also brings his formidable knowledge of classical works into play in his discuusons of everyday conversation pieces. Some of these are in his newspaper articles and leaves the discussion usually withe comment that the topic needs futher research. It seems that all his works are worth pursuing. Medipalli Ravikumar's "Arudra" has a comprehensive list of his writings. A book on popular science that he wrote is missing from the list. It is possible that are more works missing. From Ravikumar's book one finds that Arudra wrote under several psedonyms in his younger days. Some of the pseudonyms are Sankaram, Sankarasastry, Chotasastry, Junior Ashwini,Tingu Rangarao, Samidheni Savitri, Markandeyudu, Vamakshi, Haridasu and Konetirao. Possibly some more may be found in the old magazines and newspapers.
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Book release of "Recovering the Lost Tongue"
Discussion on Fifth Schedule and Book Release
6 March 2009, 3.30 pm
The Other Media and Intercultural Resources cordially invite you for a discussion on the Fifth Schedule of the Indian Constitution and the book release of “Recovering the Lost Tongue”, written by Rahul Banerjee, an activist who has worked with adivasis in western MP for the past two decades. Prof. Manoranjan Mohanty will release the book.
Programme Details:
Discussion on Fifth Schedule and
Book Release of “Recovering the Lost Tongue”
.............
The Indian edition is published by:
Joshi PPC,
Prachee Publications,
3-3-859/1/A, lane opp. Arya samaj,
Kachiguda,Hyderabad 500 027
Phone:(O)040-2460 2009 (11:00 a.m.to 5:00 p.m.)
6 March 2009, 3.30 pm
The Other Media and Intercultural Resources cordially invite you for a discussion on the Fifth Schedule of the Indian Constitution and the book release of “Recovering the Lost Tongue”, written by Rahul Banerjee, an activist who has worked with adivasis in western MP for the past two decades. Prof. Manoranjan Mohanty will release the book.
Programme Details:
Discussion on Fifth Schedule and
Book Release of “Recovering the Lost Tongue”
.............
The Indian edition is published by:
Joshi PPC,
Prachee Publications,
3-3-859/1/A, lane opp. Arya samaj,
Kachiguda,Hyderabad 500 027
Phone:(O)040-2460 2009 (11:00 a.m.to 5:00 p.m.)
Friday, February 20, 2009
Long distance guidance
Here is my tribute to John Stallings on the eve of a trip to India:
I first met John Stallings in early 1967, when he visited Tata Institute of Fundamental Research to give a lecture course on Polyhedral Topology and I was asked to write up his lecture notes. I was a third year research student at that time mainly interested in Algebraic Topology and Differential Topology learnt though some unpublished notes of Samuel Eilenberg and John Milnor. I knew about John's work on Poincare conjecture and that some papers of William Browder were inspired by John's work. In prepartion for his visit, I worked through some papers of J.W. Alexander, J.H.C. Whitehead, E.C. Zeeman's notes from I.H.E.S and some papers of John on engulfing. For two months, I was in constant contact with John discussing his lectures, showing my notes, helping with shopping and a sight-seeing trip to Lonawala. He was unassuming and notes writing turned to be easy except for a couple of appendices where my reading of Whitehead helped. Most of the time, he gave me his own notes and what all I had to do was number the lemmas and add symbols on the stencils. It turned out be somewhat messy and some of the elegance of his presenation was lost in misprints. Surprisingly at the end, he offered joint authorship which I politely declined. He also gave a seminar which seemed very nice until a point when he said 'by waving hands twice, we have the result' and this was probably my introduction to Combinatorial Group Theory.. There was some correspondence soon about his lecture notes, his leaving Princeton for Berkeley and I continued to read his papers. They always seemed very elegant with neat ideas and easy to read with unpleasant technical difficulties tucked away in a half page somewhere. Slowly I found that only were his theorems useful but their generalizations too and when these did not work, one could often go back to his techniques.
Just before Stalling left Bombay, I asked whether he could suggest some problems for my thesis. I think that I wanted to prove some embedding theorems following his ideas in the lecture notes about an alternate argument in the proof of s-cobrdism theorem avoiding the Whitney trick. But what all he said was that somebody named Papakyriakopoulos did some great work. I never sudied any thing in 3-dimensional topology before and after he left, I started reading "On Dehn's lemma and Asphericity of Knots", the first paper on 3-maniflods which I read. To round it off, I read a few more papers and got stuck in 3-manifolds for a long time. Meanwhile, possibly around the end of 1967, he sent a preprint of 'Groups with infinitely many ends' which is probably my main introduction to Topological Group Theory. Though my fascination with higher dimensional topology continued, I found myself returning to Stallins papers and ideas. I do not remember any papers of mine not influenced by Stallings except possibly one on cut points which built on the impressive work of Brian Bowditch. But even here, one of Stallings students Bill Grosso, seemed to have many of the basic ideas but not proofs.
Meeting such a first rate mind at an early part of my career has inflenced me and he kept an affectionate interest in me through out my career. The acquintance with Stallings and miswriting his notes seemed to have made me a member of the Stallings community and I always felt welcomed by his students and friends.
I first met John Stallings in early 1967, when he visited Tata Institute of Fundamental Research to give a lecture course on Polyhedral Topology and I was asked to write up his lecture notes. I was a third year research student at that time mainly interested in Algebraic Topology and Differential Topology learnt though some unpublished notes of Samuel Eilenberg and John Milnor. I knew about John's work on Poincare conjecture and that some papers of William Browder were inspired by John's work. In prepartion for his visit, I worked through some papers of J.W. Alexander, J.H.C. Whitehead, E.C. Zeeman's notes from I.H.E.S and some papers of John on engulfing. For two months, I was in constant contact with John discussing his lectures, showing my notes, helping with shopping and a sight-seeing trip to Lonawala. He was unassuming and notes writing turned to be easy except for a couple of appendices where my reading of Whitehead helped. Most of the time, he gave me his own notes and what all I had to do was number the lemmas and add symbols on the stencils. It turned out be somewhat messy and some of the elegance of his presenation was lost in misprints. Surprisingly at the end, he offered joint authorship which I politely declined. He also gave a seminar which seemed very nice until a point when he said 'by waving hands twice, we have the result' and this was probably my introduction to Combinatorial Group Theory.. There was some correspondence soon about his lecture notes, his leaving Princeton for Berkeley and I continued to read his papers. They always seemed very elegant with neat ideas and easy to read with unpleasant technical difficulties tucked away in a half page somewhere. Slowly I found that only were his theorems useful but their generalizations too and when these did not work, one could often go back to his techniques.
Just before Stalling left Bombay, I asked whether he could suggest some problems for my thesis. I think that I wanted to prove some embedding theorems following his ideas in the lecture notes about an alternate argument in the proof of s-cobrdism theorem avoiding the Whitney trick. But what all he said was that somebody named Papakyriakopoulos did some great work. I never sudied any thing in 3-dimensional topology before and after he left, I started reading "On Dehn's lemma and Asphericity of Knots", the first paper on 3-maniflods which I read. To round it off, I read a few more papers and got stuck in 3-manifolds for a long time. Meanwhile, possibly around the end of 1967, he sent a preprint of 'Groups with infinitely many ends' which is probably my main introduction to Topological Group Theory. Though my fascination with higher dimensional topology continued, I found myself returning to Stallins papers and ideas. I do not remember any papers of mine not influenced by Stallings except possibly one on cut points which built on the impressive work of Brian Bowditch. But even here, one of Stallings students Bill Grosso, seemed to have many of the basic ideas but not proofs.
Meeting such a first rate mind at an early part of my career has inflenced me and he kept an affectionate interest in me through out my career. The acquintance with Stallings and miswriting his notes seemed to have made me a member of the Stallings community and I always felt welcomed by his students and friends.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Links, February 17th
On the eve of a visit to Kolkata, a disturbing report In support of Johann Hari .
The Indian Railway King (via Nanopolitan). Jeffrey Witsoe gives a quick overview of Lalu's record in Bihar Challenges and Opportunities Facing India's Poorest State.
Swat: A Critical Analysis (via Chapati Mystery)
The Indian Railway King (via Nanopolitan). Jeffrey Witsoe gives a quick overview of Lalu's record in Bihar Challenges and Opportunities Facing India's Poorest State.
Swat: A Critical Analysis (via Chapati Mystery)
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Memorial for John Stallings
Rob Kirby from Berkeley informs:
"There will be a memorial for John on March 1, 2009, at 2-4pm in 1015 Evans. (In case you have not heard, John died on 24 Nov., 2008, see Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stallings and a NYTimes obit http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/19/us/19stallings.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=john%20stallings&st=cse )"
"There will be a memorial for John on March 1, 2009, at 2-4pm in 1015 Evans. (In case you have not heard, John died on 24 Nov., 2008, see Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stallings and a NYTimes obit http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/19/us/19stallings.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=john%20stallings&st=cse )"
How to recognize science
A new site Understanding Science.
From the write up New resource for teachers, public on how to recognize science when you see it in physorg.com (via Evolutionary Psychology Discusion Group):
"If you think you know what science is and how science works, think again. A new University of California, Berkeley, Web site called "Understanding Science" (http://undsci.berkeley.edu/) paints an entirely new picture of what science is and how science is done, showing it to be a dynamic and creative process rather than the linear - and frequently boring - process depicted in most textbooks.
....
"The goal was to present (the concept) that testable ideas are right at the center of science, and if you don't generate testable ideas, then you are really not doing science," Kuldell said.
Testing, however, is intertwined with exploration and discovery - the "cowboy" aspect of science, in the words of one project advisor - review of hypotheses and theories by skeptical peers, and actual application of the science to real world problems.
Within the Web site, personal stories contributed by top scientists around the country illustrate the interplay of exploration, peer review and outcomes, and demonstrate the different pathways to discovery taken in different fields of science, from biology to cosmology."
P.S. Another interesting link from Evo.Psychology group:
Group decisions in humans and animals: a survey.
From the write up New resource for teachers, public on how to recognize science when you see it in physorg.com (via Evolutionary Psychology Discusion Group):
"If you think you know what science is and how science works, think again. A new University of California, Berkeley, Web site called "Understanding Science" (http://undsci.berkeley.edu/) paints an entirely new picture of what science is and how science is done, showing it to be a dynamic and creative process rather than the linear - and frequently boring - process depicted in most textbooks.
....
"The goal was to present (the concept) that testable ideas are right at the center of science, and if you don't generate testable ideas, then you are really not doing science," Kuldell said.
Testing, however, is intertwined with exploration and discovery - the "cowboy" aspect of science, in the words of one project advisor - review of hypotheses and theories by skeptical peers, and actual application of the science to real world problems.
Within the Web site, personal stories contributed by top scientists around the country illustrate the interplay of exploration, peer review and outcomes, and demonstrate the different pathways to discovery taken in different fields of science, from biology to cosmology."
P.S. Another interesting link from Evo.Psychology group:
Group decisions in humans and animals: a survey.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Informal economy to the rescue?
From The Age articleSlum economy offers hope in Delhi by Matt Wade:
"The Indian economy relies much less on exports than other developing countries and so is much less exposed to the collapse in consumer demand in the US and Europe.
Exporters have been hit much harder and there are reports that hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost.
This eventually might threaten micro-manufacturers such as Kalimuddin, as export-oriented garment makers shift their product to the domestic market and drive down prices.
Naeem and Kalimuddin operate in the vast "informal economy", meaning they are outside the purview of the tax system, corporate regulation and labour laws.
Tens of millions of informal-sector workers are vulnerable to exploitation but the economy benefits from their vague employment status.
Delhi economist Dr Kanhaiya Singh says they will help cushion Indian from the global slump. "The labour market is highly flexible in the informal sector — it can adjust very quickly," he says."
"The Indian economy relies much less on exports than other developing countries and so is much less exposed to the collapse in consumer demand in the US and Europe.
Exporters have been hit much harder and there are reports that hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost.
This eventually might threaten micro-manufacturers such as Kalimuddin, as export-oriented garment makers shift their product to the domestic market and drive down prices.
Naeem and Kalimuddin operate in the vast "informal economy", meaning they are outside the purview of the tax system, corporate regulation and labour laws.
Tens of millions of informal-sector workers are vulnerable to exploitation but the economy benefits from their vague employment status.
Delhi economist Dr Kanhaiya Singh says they will help cushion Indian from the global slump. "The labour market is highly flexible in the informal sector — it can adjust very quickly," he says."
Friday, February 13, 2009
Links: February 13
How Darwin and Lincoln Shaped Us via Nag Murali's Blog.
Recent progressonTargeted reinnervationbut there are risks of recurrence of phantom limb pain and such.
Sweden may not be a model viaNaked Capitalism.
Taipei Times report from 2004 onBudhist Monks and Business Matters by Gregory Schopen.
P.S.Crooked Timber on The Mysteries of Textbook EconomicsandAre blogs ruining economic debate?with a link to a paper Deconstructing the Argument for Free Trade by Robert Driskill.
Recent progressonTargeted reinnervationbut there are risks of recurrence of phantom limb pain and such.
Sweden may not be a model viaNaked Capitalism.
Taipei Times report from 2004 onBudhist Monks and Business Matters by Gregory Schopen.
P.S.Crooked Timber on The Mysteries of Textbook EconomicsandAre blogs ruining economic debate?with a link to a paper Deconstructing the Argument for Free Trade by Robert Driskill.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Reading
and browsing through some interesting books like Sheldon Pollock's The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India. Two of the reviews are
here and here. As the reviews explain, the book is concerned with "two great moments of transformation in culture and power in premodern India. The first occurred around the beginning of the Common Era, when Sanskrit, long a sacred language restricted to religious practice, was reinvented as a code for literary and political expression... The second moment occurred around the beginning of the second millennium, when local speech forms were newly dignified as literary languages and began to challenge Sanskrit for the work of both poetry and polity, and in the end replaced it."
Like the reviewers above, I find the book interesting but not convincing.
P.S. Some of the issues addressed by Sheldon Pollock are discussed in an earlier essay "Literary History, Indian History, World History in a 1995 issue Social Scientist which also has interesting articles by S. Nagaraju and Velcheru Narayana Rao on the rise of vernacular languages.
P.P.S (14th February) Having more or less finished reading the book (browsed through some pages)I think that it is a wonderful book for its stupendous scholarship, critique of many existing theories and finally for the questions that it raises.
here and here. As the reviews explain, the book is concerned with "two great moments of transformation in culture and power in premodern India. The first occurred around the beginning of the Common Era, when Sanskrit, long a sacred language restricted to religious practice, was reinvented as a code for literary and political expression... The second moment occurred around the beginning of the second millennium, when local speech forms were newly dignified as literary languages and began to challenge Sanskrit for the work of both poetry and polity, and in the end replaced it."
Like the reviewers above, I find the book interesting but not convincing.
P.S. Some of the issues addressed by Sheldon Pollock are discussed in an earlier essay "Literary History, Indian History, World History in a 1995 issue Social Scientist which also has interesting articles by S. Nagaraju and Velcheru Narayana Rao on the rise of vernacular languages.
P.P.S (14th February) Having more or less finished reading the book (browsed through some pages)I think that it is a wonderful book for its stupendous scholarship, critique of many existing theories and finally for the questions that it raises.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Cheap laptops?
India unveils $10 laptop!. But Atanu Dey is skeptical.
P.S. More information at Nanopolitan:Price of hype ... .
P.S. More information at Nanopolitan:Price of hype ... .
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