Coalgate

Gulzar Natarajan  in Spectrumgate vs Coalgate:
"The competitive pressures created subsequent to the allotment process, by design or otherwise, contained incentive compatibilities that forced the companies to share their excessive gains. 

However, in case of the mining blocks, despite its fundamental similarity with telecom spectrum, the winners have sought to corner all their disproportionate gains. They have, as the Jindals have done, sought to take advantage of the market structure (the freedom  Comptroller and Auditor Generalto sell the power so produced on a merchant power route). Or, as most others have done, they have sought to keep the allotted blocks undeveloped, assured by the belief that they were sitting on potential gold mines. In fact, it is a damning indictment of the whole policy framework that barring a few, most of the mines have been allowed to keep them undeveloped despite being allotted at extremely concessional rates. 

In other words, unlike the telecom spectrum, where market competition and a policy framework kept the spectrum owners honest and thereby forced them to share the benefits arising from low capital costs, the coal block owners were not constrained by any policy framework. "

M.Rajshekhar has several posts on the scam and in this studies the case of EMTA. Meanwhile, the government and the prime minister are attacking the office of the CAG (Comptroller and Audit General):

"The ruling Congress has been defending its action and the prime minster has taken the unprecedented step of making a statement in the House and has observed that the report is flawed and disputable. Charges have been made that the CAG has overstepped his mandate."

Links mostly about developing countries

Asia's next revolution in Economist. Excerpt:
"...the world's most  vibrant economies are shifting gear, away from simply building wealth towards building a welfare state."
Lancet on the momentum towards universal heath care both via Duncan Green.
Martin Khor on the recent non-aligned summit in Tehran.
Analysis finds benefits to racial quota in Brazilian higher education from ScienceDaily
Evolutionary trees of traditional medicine plants provide hints for drug-makers by Ed Yong.
Yves Smith on getting economists to acknowledge rentier finance.

Louis Malle on film and dance in Madras

From the Wikipedia article on Louis Malle
"In 1968 Malle visited India and made a seven part documentary series L’Inde fantôme: Reflexions sur un voyage and a documentary filmCalcutta, which was released in cinemas.^[1] Concentrating on real India, its rituals and festivities, Malle fell afoul of the Indian government, which disliked his portrayal of the country, in its fascination with the pre-modern, and consequently banned the BBC from filming in India for several years.^[2] Malle later claimed his documentary on India was his favorite film^{[2]" 
Some of the commentary in the film seems politically incorrect and some over the top but he seems unafraid to explore and spell out his reactions. There are many uploads, but the following version has English subtitles (the same person also uploaded the parts on caste):
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3}

Duncan Green informs on development courses

in the post:
"Back to school time: CGD celebrates the start of term with a pile of online syllabuses on different aspects of development while it’s boss Nancy Birdsall is even taking 3 months off to do some teaching. The Guardian asks ‘why study development?’ Meanwhile uberblogger Tyler Cowen is running an online development economics course with Alex Tabarrok [h/t Charles Kenny]. And here’s Chris Blattman’s development syllabus."

Songs and dances in campaigns

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JB_Mqm1tV8&list=UUwZe40roJacf6xx9dRLuEeg&index=18&feature=plcp
The description "While helping a Dalit community build houses as part of a volunteer trip April 29 - May 6 2011, we found time for some of the equally important things in life: having fun, and DANCING! The kids in Chevuru LOVE to dance. Our volunteer group also loved this song, so Emily Bucherati, one of the volunteers, compiled footage of us dancing with the kids and created into a dance video to go along with it."
After seeing this, I wondered what happened tp 'praja natya mandali; the Andhra wing of IPTA. They seem to be operating still and have a few videos on YouTube. in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlLSmwvr1PY they seem to be cooperating with a non-communist group. Sumangala Damodaran on IPTA songs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6Lr1llA6Ko She has an album too.

Similar songs in different languages, 1949

From Patanga , Shamshad Begum and Lata Mangeshkar

 Pyar ke jahan ki nirali sarkar

From Vazhkai (from 11:35, Rajeshwari, Bhagavati?)

R. Sudarshanam, the MD of Vazhaki seems to have followed closely some Hindi tunes(from Badi Behan, Mela) in this film, but the above films are from the same year. According to http://www.thehindu.com/arts/cinema/article3509383.ece
an earlier tune of C.Ramachandra influenced one in Vazhkai.

Kuffir on the efficiency of caste

mostly about economic efficiency in Caste is not efficient or capable. The thrust of the post comes from a paper of Abhijit Banerjee and Kaivan Munshi
How efficiently is Capital Allocated? Evidence from Knitted Garment Industry in Tirpur
From Kuffir's account ( the last paragraph is quote from the paper):
To sum up, roughly, the Gounders employ more capital than the Outsiders but dont get better results than them. Caste isn't efficient.

But the Gounders can start garment units more easily, get easier access to capital and labour, rely on better co-operation from local authorities, and can stick around longer (even if they are not as efficient as the Outsiders) because of what the researchers call the 'community effect' (or plain old caste loyalty, in other words). But despite all those advantages:

 In our data the Outsiders seem to outperform the Gounders. This is easiest to see by comparing the Gounders and Outsiders who have more than 5 years of experience. The Outsiders in this category own less capital stock than the corresponding Gounders. Yet they produce significantly more. Moreover, the growth rate of output is higher for the Outsiders with more than 5 years of experience compared with the corresponding Gounders, which rules out the possibility that the Gounders are trading off current productivity for future growth. Finally, these Gounders use more capital per unit of output and own more capital stock at every level of experience: everything else being the same, this should give them a higher growth rate. The slower growth of the Gounders is therefore in spite of this additional advantage. 

Micronutrient fortifications and supplements

Following up on an article in New York Times Easier Than Taking Vitamins which bemoans the delay in the spread of the use of Sprinkles, I came across the interesting article Taken with a Grain of Salt? Micronutrient Fortification in South Asia

"Abstract: This paper reviews the research on fortification of food in the context of South Asia, with an emphasis on avenues for future research in economics and policy. We argue that while the efficacy of fortified foods in controlled settings is well established, more research is needed to evaluate the take-up and effectiveness of fortified foods distributed through standard channels. In addition, we argue that more research is needed to understand the determinants of long-term demand for fortified foods."
Some sample passages about the problems of policies and distribution in India:
"Political support in India for micronutrient interventions and fortification, specifically, has been slow and inconsistent.......
 Some states, such as Tamil Nadu, have already made progress on the distribution of DFS, but these recent developments signal headway towards resolving one nation-wide obstacle in the use of fortified foods: the absence of a directive from the Central Government on the regulation of fortified foods and their use. Without such a directive, NGOs working in this area often find it difficult to motivate local governments to allocate money towards fortifying food in schools
......

There are important target groups not reached through schools. For example, there is evidence that children
younger than school age are more likely to benefit from nutrition programs (Adelman, Gilligan,and Lehrer, 2008). In India, 70% of children under the age of five and 56% of ever-married women age 15-49 are anemic, making reaching these at-risk groups imperative.
......

Another way to provide fortification is through hospital or clinic distribution, although this might be a more natural channel for supplementation. In theory, the advantage to this strategy is that there is existing infrastructure to promote health awareness and possibly better targeting of households at-risk of micronutrient deficiencies. However, the performance of health clinics across India does not inspire confidence in either of these tasks. Health providers are absent on average 40% of the time and absence rates are higher in poor places (Chaudhury et al., 2006), where households are also more likely to be micronutrient deficient. Despite public health mandates to provide iron and folic acid syrup to pregnant women and vitamin A supplements to  children, these treatments do not reach all of their intended beneficiaries: in India, 65% of pregnant women were given or purchased iron and folic acid syrup, but only 23% took it for more than 90 days, and only 25% of children receive regular vitamin A supplements
(International Institution for Population Sciences, 2007). This is likely due in part to lack of demand for clinic services, these facilities being closed unpredictably and to the health facilities not being adequately stocked even when they are open. Research on how to improve the health care sector’s performance and how to increase awareness among households on when to visit health clinics and what care to expect, are important open questions. There is little evidence on this, although one notable exception suggests that contracting to non-governmental organizations, where payment and contract renewal depend on achieving health targets, such as how many children receive vitamin A supplements, improved performance (Bhushan et al.,2007)."

A government document of India also says that the targets for the tenth five year plan were not reached.

A discussion in ft.com/alphaville

Recently most commented article in ft.com/alphaville Towards a steady-state economy/
Tom_ comments at 8:17 PM and 8:38 PM on September 4 seem interesting to me.
P.S. Related Is US Economic Growth Over?

The Guardian on ENCODE project

From Breakthrough study overturns theory of 'junk DNA' in genome :
"For years, the vast stretches of DNA between our 20,000 or so protein-coding genes – more than 98% of the genetic sequence inside each of our cells – was written off as "junk" DNA. Already falling out of favour in recent years, this concept will now, with Encode's work, be consigned to the history books.
Encode is the largest single update to the data from the human genomesince its final draft was published in 2003 and the first systematic attempt to work out what the DNA outside protein-coding genes does. The researchers found that it is far from useless: within these regions they have identified more than 10,000 new "genes" that code for components that control how the more familiar protein-coding genes work.
.....................

This means that the individual differences in people's diseases can be more effectively targeted for treatment. "Diseases have been defined by the medical profession observing symptoms," says Dr Tim Hubbard of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge. "[But] we know, for example, that breast cancer is not one disease but there's multiple types of breast cancer with all sorts of different mechanistic processes going wrong.

"A given drug only works in about a third of the people you give it to, but you don't know which third. A lot of that is related to genomics, so if you knew the relationship between a person's genome and which drugs work for them and which ones they shouldn't take because it gives them side effects, that would improve medicine.""

More By Ed Yong in ENCODE: the rough guide to the  human genome and Carl Zimmer in The Loom.

A multilingual song from Aadmi (1939)

According to some this was Shantaram's best film. Even the acerebic Baburao Patel praised it(page 21)

More about the film here.

Chandralekha and others

After watching a few traditional dances in the fifties, I was turned off for the following sort of resaons;.it seems that several others including many professional dancers had similar doubts. From an article by Sunil Kothari:
"Chandralekha raised several questions:

• Why have classical Indian dances become insular and unresponsive to the dramatic social, historical, scientific, human changes that have occurred in the world during the past thirty years?
• What makes them resistant to contemporary progressive values?
• Why have attempts not been encouraged to explore the power and strength of the forms and their links with the martial arts?"

It seems that Chandralekha and several others like from Mrinalini Sarabhai, Mallika Sarabhai did some thing about it ( I came across these names in the book of essays "Bharatanatyam : A Reader" edited by Davesh Soneji).

Here are two articles on Chandralekha, her obituary by Reginald Massey and her profile by Ashish Khokar. Sadananda Menon who spent thirty years in her house recounts his first meeting with her and other impressions.

Obama at Reddit

here via Razib's pinboard link to NY Times article Left Alone by Its Owner, Reddit Soars

Mera naam chun chun choo

via New York Times and Ksenia Sigalova version in Dances on the Footpath
Information about the Mayuri Dance Group here and here.
P.S. Interview with some members of the group, mostly in Hindi

Indira Gandhi's emergency

Lot of good people supported Indira Gandhi's emergency rule. P.N.Dhar was one of them. I was curious about his role since he was the husband of Sheila Dhar who wrote an excellent and irreverent book about Indian music. It turned out that P.N. Dhar wrote a book about the emergency and there is a readable review by Paul R.Brass. Excerpts from the review:
"With regard to the declaration of the Emergency regime, Dhar artfully displaces blame for it away from Mrs. Gandhi’s own willfulness to the opposition and the people of India as a whole. The “cause” of the Emergency, in his account, was not the Allahabad High Court judgment invalidating Mrs.Gandhi’s election and her determination to avoid its inevitable consequences of loss of power by establishing an authoritarian regime and changing the relevant laws and whole sections of the Constitution of India as well. The cause, rather, “was a systemic failure”: the “democratic system” had been breaking down for years. The most blatant manifestations of its breakdown, Dhar argues, occurred in the immediately preceding years in the mass movements launched by Jayaprakash Narain (JP) and other opposition leaders against the Congress and Mrs. Gandhi’s leadership. Dhar glides from his general “causal analysis” to a complete reversion of blame for the establishment of the Emergency regime from Mrs. Gandhi’s specific and well-known decisions to JP’s leadership, which led the opposition parties “to convert JP’s call into a confrontationist movement which eventually ended in the Emergency” (p. 248). He ignores completely the fact that the mass movements led by JP had petered out many months before the decision of the Allahabad High Court, though that decision raised the hopes of its leaders and the fears of Mrs. Gandhi that it could once again be revived during her moment of truth."
Brass goes on to analyze the ruling classes in India. Interestingly many of the bureaucrats of that time went on to win Padma Vibhshan and such awards.The emergency was lifted in 1977, apparently without consulting Sanjay Gandhi. Guha says in the above mentioned article of 2000 "The Emergency lasted for 20 months. In January 1977, to everyone's surprise, Mrs. Gandhi called elections. There are competing explanations as Jo why she did this. Back then, it was widely believed that Mrs. Gandhi's own trusted advisors in the Research and Analysis Wing had predicted a hands-down victory for her. In his book, P. N. Dhar speculates that Mrs. Gandhi wanted once more to hear the accolade of the people, to seek through the campaign trail the admiration and reverence that had so readily come her way in 1971. A third possibility is that Mrs. Gandhi was shamed by the example of Pakistan, then enjoying one of its all-too-rare periods of democratic rule." 

There is longer and more nuanced account in Guha's 2007 book "India after Gandhi" (Here Gandhi is Mahatma Gandhi). It may be a combination of the above reasons together with Indira Gandhi's sensitivity to opinions of India's friends in UK and USA  and with some of whom Indira was in correspondence much of the time.

Ellie Cole wins gold at Paralympics

Ellie Cole from The Melbourne suburb of Frankston won gold medal at the 2012 Paralympics in London
"Ellie Cole was similarly dominant in women's S9 100m backstroke final, also setting a new Oceania best time. She finished 1.65 seconds up on Britain's Stephanie Millward." She won the silver medal in the 100m butterfly in 2008 Beijing Paralympic Games.
From the Wikipedia article:
" At two years of age she was diagnosed with a rare tumour, a sarcoma that was wrapped around the nerves of her right leg.^[3]After unsuccessful attempts to treat her cancer with chemotherapy, her right leg was amputated above the knee on 14 February 1994.^[6] Eight weeks after the surgery, as part of her rehabilitation, Cole's mother Jenny enrolled her in swimming lessons at the Kings Swimming Club in Mornington. The instructors expected Cole to take about a year to learn how to swim in a straight line, but it took her two weeks."
I met her parents a couple of times. They are good hardworking middle class Australians who spend part of their time and money in social work.
P.S. A recent interview with Ellie Cole http://www.theage.com.au/sport/energy-in-the-pool-to-make-a-difference-20120908-25lev.html

From science blogs

Carl Zimmer on using evolution to evolve drugs, one study uses the fact that humans and yeast share a common ancestor.
Carl Zimmer links to a post on the power of replication.
I do not believe this study. More discussion in Eat Smarter, don't work harder?
Discussion of whether eating before going to bed is bad at Askscience
"but only 1 of my nostrils was plugged up, while the other one was easy breathing as usual. Why does that happen sometimes? " again at Askscience and many more at the same site.

Gorgeous dances by Padmini

from the film Pardesi/Travels Beyond Three Seas. The dances are also available in the second part 0f the film uploaded by Mosfilms here around 10 and 30 minutes (the link sent to me by Minai). The first part here. From the New York Times review
"Unfortunately, the first (Russian) half lumbers along like an elephant, as Mr. Strizhenov restlessly leaves home and tackles various dangers head-on. This portion is clogged with a lot of bearded raving and ranting (not his) and some dreadful ensemble acting. Meanwhile, sliding past are some striking outdoor panoramas of the Volga country, various deserts and seaports.

But the picture is more persuasive, and relaxed, when the hero arrives at his destination and visits Nargis' peasant family during a monsoon. The backgrounds of this pleasant, rather idyllic interlude are beautifully tinted and the mood is happy and serene. And, as we say, Nargis, who leads a chorus in one delightful native song, is a doll. Why the hero leaps on his horse and bolts for home mystifies us. Anyway, the Russians, not the Indians, have the last word."

There is a longer review with many comments at Dustedoff

"What I liked about this film:

Padmini. I must confess I’m not much of a Padmini fan, but in this, she’s wonderful. She’s grace, she’s beauty, she’s allure. Her dancing is fabulous, too—watch this fascinating performancewhere, just by gestures, she says a lot."

The link mentioned does not work but I think that the author is referring to the first dance.

The film also figures in discussions in the blogs of Minai and Richard.

Budaraju Radhakrishna's ''Telugu sangatulu'

కినిగె వాళ్ళు బూదరాజు రాధాక్రిష్న గారి 'తెలుగుసంగతు'లు మళ్ళీ
ప్రచురించారు. ఇంతవరకు చదవని వారికి ఉపయోగపడవచ్చు
http://kinige.com/kbook.php?id=603&name=Telugu+Sangatulu

Joep Bor's article "Mamia,,Ammani...."

is mostly available at google books except for the pictures. It is a brilliant article, in part based on the experiences of Jacob Haafner. It is also included in the collection of essays Bharatanatyam :A Reader, edited by Davesh Soneji.

Reviews of some books on big questions

I am suspiocious of books about big questions and read only one of the books mentioned below.
 Mike Beggs' reviews of Debt by David Graeber A sample passage:
"The mint can print any numbers on its bills and coins, but cannot decide what those numbers refer to. That is determined by countless price-setting decisions by mainly private firms, reacting strategically to the structure of costs and demand they face, in competition with other firms. Graeber interprets Aristotle as saying that all money is merely “a social convention,” like “worthless bronze coins that we agree to treat as if they were worth a certain amount.” Money is, of course, a social phenomenon. What else would it be? But to call its value a social convention seems to misrepresent the processes by which this value is established in an economy like ours – not by general agreement or political will, but as the outcome of countless interlocking strategies in a vast, decentralized, competitive system."

There is more discussion of the review at Crooked Timber

Gulzar Natarajan discusses "Why Nations Fail" "The search for that magic pill which can explain economic development and national economic growth has a long history of failures."

An overview in Nature of Peter Turchin Human Cycles: History as Science via a post of Razib Khan. Razib Khan has reviewed earlier some of Peter Turchin's books.Razib Khan's readable review of "War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires" is here. Of the three cycles (abasiya cycles, secular cycles, fathers-and-sons cycles) discussed by Turchin , Razib says "The other two dynamics are much simpler to understand. For secular cycles Turchin presents some simple phenomenon which occur in many societies

1) Elites overproduce and become top-heavy during times of plenty
2) Inequality in material wealth lead to resentment and social discord

The metastable situation will generally shift at some point and switch to rebellion and civil war. This tends to kill off much of the elite, and naturally redistribute wealth with the collapse of law and order. Obviously there's much more, but that's the gist of it. "

From The Nature article "the fathers-and-sons cycle: the father responds violently to a perceived social injustice; the son lives with the miserable legacy of the resulting conflict and abstains; the third generation begins again. Turchin likens this cycle to a forest fire that ignites and burns out, until a sufficient amount of underbrush accumulates and the cycle recommences."

Apparently, Turchin predicts "He has analysed historical records on economic activity, demographic trends and outbursts of violence in the United States, and has come to the conclusion that a new wave of internal strife is already on its way¹. The peak should occur in about 2020, he says, and will probably be at least as high as the one in around 1970. “I hope it won't be as bad as 1870,” he adds."

Somewhat different from the above theories. Hartosh Singh Bal on "Arundhati Roy's Magic Realism"

Two Mukesh songs from Aag

The first is well known http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro6xp09uEy4

and the second a curious duet with Shamshad Begum http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9FRMg4x6tI&playnext=1&list=PLE93C366E01018263&feature=results_video

Carrying coal at the source

Photograph in The Hindu. More here.

Understanding Tamil Nadu development

A doctoral thesis Understanding Tamil Nadsu's commitment to Public Services:An Institutionalm Perspective by Vivek mSrinivasan available at the above link. Abstract
"Compared to most other states in India, Tamil Nadu is noted for widespread provision of education, primary health care, nutrition support, rural roads, electricity, water and other public services. These services are typically well planned and tend to work well. I examine what determines Tamil Nadu’s performance. I argue that widespread and decentralized collective action for public services plays a critical role in it but such collective action is a new phenomenon, dating back to the seventies. I also argue that normative challenges by major social movements, changing influences of various social groups and raising individual capabilities among common people played an instrumental role in enabling such collective action that ultimately had an impact on public services."

Some remarks of Elinor Ostrom

From Conversations on Comlexity: A Tribute to Elinor Ostrom by Ben Ramalingam

"The lack of long timeframes and a lack of supporting cultures means that aid agencies don’t help people learn how to think about and change the structure of the situations they are facing. In many situations, this is because of colonial roots of aid, which did not respect local institutions – they didn’t understand them so they were treated as non-existent.

The difference between this approach and that of Darwin is stark – the care and diligence that was given to studying animal species in the 19th century is so evident, and it from this that we have evolutionary theory. But these countries also had people, but there was no attempt to understand their knowledge systems, the rules they had developed to manage various kinds of socio-ecological systems… Colonial powers assumed we have the answers, and destroyed social capital. Aid agencies, unfortunately, do much the same thing."

via http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/?p=11442 This post links to an interesting talk by Owen Border where Steven Jones' nozzle story is again mentioned.

 

Steve Jones on natural selection

From The End Of Evolution?
"LET'S TURN TO THE second issue: natural selection. People often think of natural selection as something almost magical. But it isn't. It's extraordinarily simple. I first witnessed natural selection taking place in a soap factory in Liverpool in the 1960s, where I worked after leaving school.

Detergent was made then as it is made now: by forcing boiling hot chemicals at great pressure through a nozzle. As the mixture zooms out, the pressure drops, and it breaks into a vapour that is sucked away and a powder which is then sold as detergent.

The nozzles were a damn nuisance. They were inefficient, kept blocking and made detergent grains of different sizes.

Unilever and various other companies hired mathematicians and physicists in an attempt to improve the situation. But they didn't do very well; it turns out that the physics and maths of the transition from liquid to powder is quite difficult to understand.

So, almost in despair, they turned to the lowly biologists and asked if they had anything to add. What the biologists did was to apply Darwinian natural selection.

They made 10 copies of the nozzles, with slight changes absolutely at random. Some nozzles were longer, some shorter, some had a bigger or smaller hole, maybe a few grooves on the inside. But one of them improved a very small amount on the original, perhaps by just one or two per cent.

Based on the improved nozzle, they made another 10 slightly different copies, and repeated the process. After only 45 generations – which would be an utterly trivial instant in evolutionary time – they had a nozzle that worked many times better than the original. This was without any forethought of any kind, only by a simple application of evolutionary mechanisms."

A nice discussion of the nozzle example in Tim Hartford's Ted talk
Trial, error and the God complex

William Thurston RIP

I was plodding along in low dimensional topology driven more by passion than talent when Thurston came along to the subject around 1978. I could not understand any thing he said and there did not seem to be much point in doing research without understanding some of the things he did. There was a five year gap in my publications and I slowly started getting glimpses of some his insights. Then aroung 1987, one day I told him a little result I proved after an year of hard work. He seemed surprised, looked up for ten seconds and said "of course". I felt like a kid who could not understand fractipons. Now a days there are theories that education is not for everybody, some never understand fractions and that we should go back to some sort of caste sysytem like in India. I take solace in what Thurson said about mathematices http://mathoverflow.net/questions/43690/whats-a-mathematician-to-do/44213#44213
"It's not mathematics that you need to contribute to. It's deeper than that: how might you contribute to humanity, and even deeper, to the well-being of the world, by pursuing mathematics? Such a question is not possible to answer in a purely intellectual way, because the effects of our actions go far beyond our understanding. We are deeply social and deeply instinctual animals, so much that our well-being depends on many things we do that are hard to explain in an intellectual way. That is why you do well to follow your heart and your passion. Bare reason is likely to lead you astray. None of us are smart and wise enough to figure it out intellectually.

The product of mathematics is clarity and understanding. Not theorems, by themselves. Is there, for example any real reason that even such famous results as Fermat's Last Theorem, or the Poincaré conjecture, really matter? Their real importance is not in their specific statements, but their role in challenging our understanding, presenting challenges that led to mathematical developments that increased our understanding.

The world does not suffer from an oversupply of clarity and understanding (to put it mildly). How and whether specific mathematics might lead to improving the world (whatever that means) is usually impossible to tease out, but mathematics collectively is extremely important.

I think of mathematics as having a large component of psychology, because of its strong dependence on human minds. Dehumanized mathematics would be more like computer code, which is very different. Mathematical ideas, even simple ideas, are often hard to transplant from mind to mind. There are many ideas in mathematics that may be hard to get, but are easy once you get them. Because of this, mathematical understanding does not expand in a monotone direction. Our understanding frequently deteriorates as well. There are several obvious mechanisms of decay. The experts in a subject retire and die, or simply move on to other subjects and forget. Mathematics is commonly explained and recorded in symbolic and concrete forms that are easy to communicate, rather than in conceptual forms that are easy to understand once communicated. Translation in the direction conceptual -> concrete and symbolic is much easier than translation in the reverse direction, and symbolic forms often replaces the conceptual forms of understanding. And mathematical conventions and taken-for-granted knowledge change, so older texts may become hard to understand.

In short, mathematics only exists in a living community of mathematicians that spreads understanding and breaths life into ideas both old and new. The real satisfaction from mathematics is in learning from others and sharing with others. All of us have clear understanding of a few things and murky concepts of many more. There is no way to run out of ideas in need of clarification. The question of who is the first person to ever set foot on some square meter of land is really secondary. Revolutionary change does matter, but revolutions are few, and they are not self-sustaining --- they depend very heavily on the community of mathematicians."

Quorum sensing

From a short description of the work of Bonnie Bassler:
"Silverman ended his talk saying “‘Don’t you see, these bacteria are communicating with this molecule. They are acting multicellular.’” At the end of his talk, Bassler steamed to the podium and ask Silverman for a job. Much to her surprise, he offered her a postdoc position right there. She packed her stuff and returned to California and began studying bioluminescence in the marine bacterium V. harveyi.
During her postdoc, Bassler defined the QS circuit of V. harveyi. She showed that, like V. fischeri, V. harveyi communicated with other members of its species by using a chemical signal called an HSL autoinducer (3). The marine bacteria secrete this autoinducer into their environment. As long as bacteria are in low numbers in dilute suspension the autoinducer is washed away and no act is being taken, but when bacteria replicate and grow in number, the concentration of the autoinducer molecule also increases in the surrounding. When it reaches a certain threshold it is sensed by the bacteria and gives it an indication of its own population size. They then respond simultaneously by activating their light genes to produce bioluminescence. As Bassler puts it so nicely in her TED talk, “they vote with these chemical votes, the votes get counted and then everybody responds to the vote”.
Bassler also discovered that V. harveyi had more than one molecule for QS; she called this additional molecule autoinducer-2 (AI-2) (3, 4), and the original, found by Hastings, became autoinducer-1 (AI-1).
........
So… you can legitimately ask what’s all the fuss about understanding the genetic and chemical basis of how marine bacteria talk to each other and produce light?
It turns out that bacteria use QS not only for bioluminescence but also for many other important traits, most important of which, virulence (5-8). Actually, in this regard bacteria act very similar to us; if you would want to do something that’s beyond your reach as an individual, you’d talk to some other guys, get the necessary quorum, and then carry it together. Bacteria use exactly the same strategy, or as Bonnie puts it, “they are just too small to have an impact on the environment if they simply act as individuals”.
Thinking of it, bacteria are microscopic creatures, and probably their only chance to overcome a huge host is by acting together. So they count them self up and only when the right amount of cells is present they launch their virulence attack to take over their host.
And this simple realization, has huge implications for human health. "
Her Ted talk, which according to Carl Zimmer is one of the good Ted talks and a description of the talk towards the end of the blog post Microbial Hermeneutics - 2 which also links to a later interview.

A lively tune from a forgotten composer

Some forgotten singers

Warren Sanders links to a couple of songs of Gohar Bai Karnataki
More about her life and career here  and here.
A song of Sitara Kanpuri from a shelved film

Another song of Sitara Kanpuri and bit of her background from Atul's bollywoodsongaday

KFC shifting to GM free oils in Australia

says a recent report:
"Chief KFC supply chain officer Michael Clark said that at this stage the company will only buy non-GM canola oils and has reached agreements with suppliers Cargill, Intergro Foods and MSM Milling to ensure it could secure enough of the oil for their requirements."
Recommendations from different panels on the merits GM cottonseed oil seem different. The Indian Panel does not like it
 http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/08/indian-parliamentary-panel-slams-gm-crops.html
where as an European Panel report does not see much eidence of harm
http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/doc/2479.pdf

T.G. Kamala Devi RIP

Obituary A Woman of Many Talents by M.L.Narasimham in The Hidu. Although not a front line actress or singer she is remembered for quite a few songs and dances from films like Mugguru Maraateelu, Gunasundari katha, Pathala Bhairavi, Malliswari,.. and due to conflict of interest between recording companies some of her early film songs were not recorded on discs. Here are a couple of songs I listen to often

                                          Her reminiscences

She also dubbed in several Telugu films including for Lalitha in Devadas (1953).

Minai discusses Soneji's book on devadasis

in http://cinemanrityagharana.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/kalavantuludevadasi-dances-in-films.html
"Soneji's focus on the functions and lives of the "devadasi" community outside of their temple work is supremely interesting.  At one point in the book, he outlines his concern, “But why do we not hear of the secular "salon performances" of devadasis in cultural histories of South India?  Why are historical representations of dance in South India linked almost exclusively to temples and temple culture?  How has the use of the term "devadasi," full of ritual and religious connotations, eclipsed possibilities of thinking about the nonreligious lives of professional dancing women in this region?""
It seems that a large number of them acquired some financial independence, freedom from some of the oppressive norms for females in general, many were more educated than women in general and there were also some writers. These freedoms seem to have been lost during the century starting from mid nineteenth. A similar trajectory with tawaif singers in North India. This last article also links to book review in which Gandhi's reactions tp prostitutes attempted efforts to join the Congress Party.

Dreaming of home

Hanif in "Haunted by Homeland" quotes the boy from Shikapur
“My parents are still there,” he said. “All by themselves.” Then he reverted to the subject of his dreams. “When I wake up from these dreams, I often think about my parents. Because you see when we left I was only sixteen. I made a whole life here. They were already in their sixties when they left. And they had never lived outside of Shikarpur. They never talk about it. But I worry about them. I wonder if I can’t get rid of these dreams, what must they be going through?”

About Olympic performances

It may be partly genetics (via Razib Khan)

Links August 10, 2012

The Last Days of Pushing on a String by Mark Blyth (via 3quarksdaily)
Discussion of Dani Rodrik's No More Growth Miracles at Economist's View; interesting comments by Paine ad Anne.
Manu Joseph on Anna Hazare movement The Obituary of a Movement in Open Magazine
Bar GM food crops says Parlimentary Panel from The Hindu
Duncan Green What can we learn from eight successful campaigns on budget transparency and accountability? two of them from India but I have not read the case histories yet.
When battered people took on pesticde industry by Sunita Narain

A song from Jogan (1950)

Arudra's film songs

I read some of Arudra's books and poetry and always felt that his film songs were much better than his poetry. His film songs came out in five volumes compiled by Ramalakshmi Arudra. I just noticed a long list of possible corrections
http://www.andhraprabhaonline.com/cinespecial/article-51703
by Kampalle Ravichandran (కంపల్లె రవిచంద్రన్‌) published in 2009. I have this set and go back to them off and on and this list may be useful for me.
I came across this link looking for the origins of the javali 'antalone tellavare'. It is attributed to Arudra in the film Muddubidda (1956) but according to this 1891 book of R.C. Day (link from Paruchuri Sreenivas), page 79, the javali was one of the most popular in nineteenth century; but there were some regional variations in the lyrics. The film version of the lyrics are here
My favourite song from the film is chitti potti varala muta
P.S. I thought that I mentioned this before but it may be somewhere else. Arudra's film songs are generally written in simple telugu understandable to most whose exposure is mainly to spoken Telugu. Here is a story from one of his sons in law Kalyan Mukherjea told to me about ten years ago. Arudra was once travelling by rickshaw in Vijayawada and there was an Arudra film song played somewhere. The rickshawwala hummed along, then slapped his thigh and said that 'that bastard really knew how to write songs ' or something along those lines (Kalyan did not know Telugu and so the exact words were lost). According Kalyan, Arudra thought that was one of the best compliments to him.

A passage about science from Peter Medawar

After browsing through http://nanopolitan.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/advice-to-young-faculty-and-researchers.html, I started looking through some of Peter Medawar's articles. From his review 'Lucky Jim' of "The Doble Helix" (1968)http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1968/mar/28/lucky-jim/
"A good many people will read The Double Helix for the insight they hope it will bring them into the nature of the creative process in science. It may indeed become a standard case history of the so-called “hypothetico-deductive” method at work. Hypothesis and inference, feedback and modified hypothesis, the rapid alternation of imaginative and critical episodes of thought—here it can all be seen in motion, and every scientist will recognize the same intellectual structure in the research he does himself. It is characteristic of science at every level, and indeed of most exploratory or investigative processes in everyday life. No layman who reads this book with any kind of understanding will ever again think of the scientist as a man who cranks a machine of discovery. No beginner in science will henceforward believe that discovery is bound to come his way if only he practices a certain Method, goes through a certain well-defined performance of hand and mind."

Sisters on a boat

Madhubala and Chanchal in Naata (1955) whih has several nice songs

Miscellaneous links August 5, 2012

When symptoms of high blood pressure started recently, I have followed this kind of advice and it seems to work with in a few weeks.
orgtheory,net links to a new book on collective wisdom many of which are currently available online.

Ed Yong links to several interesting articles, among them this one on a transgender scientist

Economist's View Discussion on Luck vs Skill includes a discussion of Duncan Watts book "Everything is Obvious" which has been mentioned before.

Links August 4th, 2012

Shredding the Ted The Naked and the Ted via Felix Salmon
Pankaj Mishra on Gandhi (also reviews some books in the process)
Pankaj Mishra about his book "Ruins of the Empire"
More research needed on the effects of GM foods

John Quiggin at FiveBooks

Interesting selection of five books by an economist John Quiggin on Utopia (via 3quarksdaily):
"The reason I chose this topic is because of the current political situation, particularly on the left. We’ve moved from a situation where the left offered a utopian vision that inspired people, to a situation where the left is primarily trying to stave off the tribalism that dominates politics on the right. That doesn’t really seem to be enough to mobilise and engage people. We need to recapture the kind of vision and language of utopia that used to be part and parcel of left politics. But I suppose I like the idea of utopia more than the work of specifying the details.......
Part of my story is a feasible utopia – it’s talking about things that are actually achievable, rather than purely abstract goals, or the goals that characterised the communists, for example."

Gore Vidal RIP

I read only two books by Gore Vidal "The Last Empire" and "United States: Essays 1952-1992" both of which were excellent and I keep going back to them. Yves Smith has given links to some of the obituaries in http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/08/gore-vidal-is-dead.html including this NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/01/books/gore-vidal-elegant-writer-dies-at-86.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all with this correction which seems strangely appropriate:
"Correction: August 3, 2012

An obituary about the author Gore Vidal in some copies on Wednesday included several errors. Mr. Vidal called William F. Buckley Jr. a crypto-Nazi, not a crypto-fascist, in a television appearance during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. While Mr. Vidal frequently joked that Vice President Al Gore was his cousin, genealogists have been unable to confirm that they were related. And according to Mr. Vidal’s memoir “Palimpsest,” he and his longtime live-in companion, Howard Austen, had sex the night they met, but did not sleep together after they began living together. It is not the case that they never had sex."

Persistence of prejudices

A recent paper "Persecution Perpetuated: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Semitic Violence in Nazi Germany"
Abstract


How persistent are cultural traits? Using data on anti-Semitism in Germany, we find local continuity over 600 years. Jews were often blamed when the Black Death killed at least a third of Europe’s population during 1348–50. We use plague-era pogroms as an indicator for medieval anti-Semitism. They reliably predict violence against Jews in the 1920s, votes for the Nazi Party, deportations after 1933, attacks on synagogues, and letters to Der Stürmer. We also identify areas where persistence was lower: cities with high levels of trade or immigration. Finally, we show that our results are not driven by political extremism or by different attitudes toward violence.
..................
There is a passing reference to India ",Jha (2008) finds that Indian trading ports with a history of peaceful cooperation between Hindus and Muslims saw less violent conflict during the period 1850–1950 and in 2002."
The paper of Jha mentioned is (revised version)http://aalims.org/uploads/jha.pdf

Jha Saumitra "Trade, Institutions and Religious Tolerance: Evidence from India". Stanford University Research Paper No. 2004, 2008.

Links to several Rakhi songs

in Atul's http://atulsongaday.me/2012/08/02/hum-behnon-ke-liye-mere-bhaiyya/among them this bleak one