Migrants' transfers three times more than aid budgets

From The Guardian "The amount has tripled in a decade and is now more than three times larger than total global aid budgets, sparking serious debate as to whether migration and the money it generates is a realistic alternative to just doling out aid. If remittances at the level recorded by the World Bank were a single economy, it would be the 22nd largest in the world, bigger than Iran or Argentina."
The real figure may be larger since many bypass banks and transfer companies from which the data is recorded by the World Bank. The transfer companies swallow quite a bit of money "At present, the average fee is about 9%, meaning an average of $18 for every $200 sent, but in some parts it tops 20%." I find that in transferring money to India by banks, about three banks, one here and two in India have been charging money, but overall it came to about six percent for a transfer of a thousand Australian dollars. For smaller amounts, the percentage gets higher.

Duncan Green reviewed a book "a distillation of 6000 interviews carried out from 2005-9 with people who have received or been involved in aid......And it’s an uncomfortable read: it had me squirming on multiple levels, because of its highly convincing criticisms of the aid business, the crassness of its generalizations, and its tendency to suggest what we already know to be true (and are trying to put into practice), not to mention wondering whether my negative reactions were just defensiveness. But the book’s origins – giving a voice to those on the receiving end of aid – means it is particularly worth reading, and some of it is unexpected and (I think) new."
Possibly, the aid by the kith and kin gets closer to the real needs of the recipients.

Old people's problems

Jarred Diamond on the danger of taking showers That Daily Shower Can be a Killer via 3quarksdaily where the suggested solutions by commentators are using stools or grab bars.
A less dangerous problem is with the bladder. According to Sadat Manto ""Out here, many Mullah types after urinating pick up a stone and with one hand inside their untied shalwar, use the stone to absorb the after-drops of urine as they resume their walk." I have not heard of modern solutions. May be some sort of diapers.

Articles on Mali

Trying to follow the events in Mali, I came across a site which has several articles like this Mali War: The Wages of Sin.

"In my experience, actually, there is very little corruption faced by the middle class."

says Rahul Siddhardhan in a post on some strange comments of Ashis Nandy.

Advice to women travellers to India

by Ute Junker in The Age: Why women travellers should not avoid India

Review of 'The World Until Yesterday'

in The Guardian by Wade Davis.Forget the book and read the review.  Brilliant as Vaughan Bell comments in the renewed Spike Activity.

Sign of aging or infection?

The Hindu article Could it be an infection? has some advice to older people and doctors. From my experience, it may be also good to avoid some doctors, particularly those who send us for too many  expensive tests and make us come regularly to visit them.

Buddy scheme in U.K.

Guardian article 'Buddy' scheme to give more multinationals access to ministers :
"The government is expanding a controversial scheme which pairs dozens of multinational companies with a ministerial "buddy", giving them privileged access to the heart of government,...
Analysis of official registers reveals the 38 companies in the first wave of the initiative – more than two-thirds of which are based overseas – have collectively had 698 face-to-face meetings with ministers under the current government, prompting accusations of an over-cosy relationship between corporations and ministers.
The full degree of contact between the chosen companies and the government is not known as telephone calls, emails, and meetings with officials are not recorded on the registers."

Jeff Ely recommends Dragon Box for teaching algebra

How to Teach a Six-Year Old Algebra

Wazir Jan song?

The Wazir Jan song mentioned before, possibly from around 1906, has disappeared at that link but is now available at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuXAD63L9qs&list=UURsoJiIFG2_uZzBS1HOy5pg&index=38
uploaded by Shalin Bhatt whose uploads I found via Songs on the Footpath.
P.S. See Shalin Bhatt's comment at the above YouTube link. Apparently, the removed video was also his and was removed by himself when he realized that it was sung by Dipali Nag.

Ed Yong on fecal and pseudo-fecal transplants

From Fecal transplants beat antibiotics in clinical trial "The infusions of faeces cured 94 percent of patients who received it (15 out of 16), all of whom had already suffered at least one relapse of C.difficile. By comparison, the standard antibiotic—vancomycin—only cured 27 percent of patients (7 out of 26). The difference was so great that the Dutch team behind the study had to stop the trial early. Everyone eventually received the faecal transplants."

See also his article in Nature News. His earlier article on pseudo-poo cures. An earlier post with links to various articles including one about Australian studies which showed promise in the treatment of Crohn's disease.

The British Queen's veto powers

From The Guardian article Ministers accused of exploiting royal veto to block embarrassing legislation: "Tam Dalyell, the sponsor of a 1999 parliamentary bill that aimed to give MPs a vote on military action against Saddam Hussein, said he is "incandescent and angry" that it was blocked by the Queen under apparent influence from Tony Blair's government. It also emerged that Harold Wilson used the Queen's power to kill off politically embarrassing bills about Zimbabwe and peerages."
I wonder how many antiquated colonial laws are still on the books and whether they are being used in countries like India.
P.S. The above link attributes it Dipali Nag where as the disappeared YouTube attributed it to Wazir Jan. It does appear in Michael Kinnear's book on page 182 with attribution to Wazir Jan of Benares. May be it is in the repertoire of several singers for a long time.

Use Toilet! & Get Money!

From Scope (via Professor Shiv Shankar in Chennai) "The reason for paying money for the users is to impress on them the high nutrient value of human excreta, which is collected in the toilet is used for farming."

More information here,  here, and here.

Hindustani Music in Dharwad

Earlier Ramachandra Guha said that "How and why Dharwad became a nucleus of shastriya sangeet awaits explanation." Tejaswani Niranjana attempts an answer in "Music in the Balance: Language, Modernity and Hindustani Sangeet in Dharwad"  (via Guru  . The EPW articles usually available for a month without subscription). Abstract:
"The paper examines the social role of Hindustani music in the Dharwad-Hubli region, situating the music's early 20th century emergence and proliferation against and within the debates on language that were central to cultural transformation in that area. What was the problem of Kannada and more broadly the language question in the mid to late 19th and early 20th centuries? What might have been the role of vocal music in negotiating the language conflict? The paper suggests that Hindustani music is part of the cultural labour undertaken in the region during the rise of Kannada "nationalism". The phrase draws attention to the nature of the work involved in cultural practice and performance, and the nature of performers' activity, through teaching, singing, playing, evaluating and arguing about music. Cultural labour references a visible aspect of social transformation and social process, the latter to be seen as marked by elusive shifts in ways of living, thinking and creating. The formation of the taste for Hindustani sangeet in Dharwad is one result of such shifts."

Dean Baker on Aaron Swartz

In "Aaron Swartz: A Tragic Early Death":
"Here is an administration that could find nothing to prosecute at the Wall Street banks who enriched themselves by passing on hundreds of billions of dollars of fraudulent mortgages in mortgage backed securities and complex derivative instruments, but found the time and resources to prosecute a young man who wanted to make academic research freely available to the world.

It would be an appropriate tribute to Aaron if his death prompted a re-examination of copyright and patent laws. These laws are clearly acting as an impediment to innovation and progress. If economists had the allegiance to efficiency that they claim, and not just serving the rich and powerful, the profession would be devoting its energies to finding more modern mechanisms for promoting creative work and innovation.

Unfortunately most economists are comfortable with the status quo, regardless of how corrupt it might be. Let's hope that Aaron's tragic death can be an inspiration to revamping intellectual property and making a better world."

Michal Kalecki's 1944 essay on unemployment

seems to making rounds again. The essay "Political Aspects of Full Employment" says among other things: "The reasons for the opposition of the 'industrial leaders' to full employment achieved by government spending may be subdivided into three categories: (i) dislike of government interference in the problem of employment as such; (ii) dislike of the direction of government spending (public investment and subsidizing consumption); (iii) dislike of the social and political changes resulting from the maintenance of full employment.  We shall examine each of these three categories of objections to the government expansion policy in detail."
Earlier, Richard Williamson highlighted another quote from the paper to discuss US unemployment and said "There is little I have ever said or thought about economics that Kalecki hadn’t said or thought better in this short and very readable essay." More recently Aditya Chakraborty has an article in The Guardianm titled "To understand the deepening mess we are in now, it is worth looking to the words of a Polish economist in 1944" 

Snow in the Desert

Snow in the Deesrt, Floods in the West Bank:Deadly Winter Storm slams Mideast from NBC news
Snow-covered Desert NASA image of Taklamakan Desert in Western China
(via Naked Capitalism)

'Amrutahuni god naam tujhe Deva' by Manik Verma

YouTube link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffg4GqRtG2Q

సంక్రాంతి శుభాకాంక్షలు !

From Prabhava http://prabhavabooks.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/blog-post.html

Harmless Economics

An interesting article 'The Naural Experimenter' on the work of Joshua Angrist, coauthor of Mostly Harmless Economics: An Empiricists's Companion. Discussion at Economist's View, Some praise and criticism from Noam Sheiber Freaks and Geeks and response from Angrist.
Earlier posts on natural experiments here and here.

Messiness in research

The Guardian has an article Scientists take to Twitter to reveal their less than scientific methods:
"Scientists are a precise bunch. Our experiments are carefully planned down to the last detail, the methods we use are selected with great care and forethought and our sample sizes are perfectly calibrated to ensure statistically valid results. But first our hypotheses are constructed only after carefully reading our peers' work. You can see evidence of this clearly spelled out in any research paper which will invariably present a logical series experiments that lead to a nice clear conclusion all carefully referenced to all the relevant prior-art. So if a reaction was left for 60 minutes there must be a sound scientific reason for this. And of course the equipment we use is carefully built from only the highest quality parts.

At least these stereotypes are what we wanted you to believe in. That is until a couple of days ago. Since then, scientists from all four corners of the twitterverse have not just dismantled that pure-of-thought image but demolished it with repeated 140-character salvos all bearing the hashtag#overlyhonestmethods. Most of these tweets are jokes that rail against the stuffy and sometimes unclear way that scientific papers are written, but there is certainly more than a grain of truth in most of them."

I am reminded of my own messiness in research which pursued me in retirement. In 2003 I had a long paper with Peter Scott after several years of work. We were exhausted and about to give up when we found the final piece and wrote up the paper over an year. Even though the overall picture seemed clear for many years there were too many details and lot of mistakes crept in. Now the lisy of corrections is about thirty pages long, still in progress, and meanwhile simpler approaches appeared. One of the mistakes was the proof of Theorem 7.11 in the paper which was needed for crucial result on the finiteness of some Boolean algebras. I knew the result since 1995 and convinced Peter of my arguments. But a few years ago, Vincent Guirardel pointed out some examples (not counter examples) which suggested that the result may not be correct. After correcting several other mistakes, we finally came to 7.11 and found our proof wrong and could not prove it. Peter started looking for counter examples, I kept saying that I was not convinced that it was wrong. Then the problem started bugging Peter and after several weeks of exhausting work, he found a correct argument a few weeks ago. Though this had a happy ending, the whole process seemed messy and perhaps many of the published results are wrong but may be get sorted out eventually. Anyway, these mistakes made earlier still keep me thinking about some mathematics off and on. It also helps to have brilliant collaborators.

A nice mathematical exposition

of the Recent Progress in 3-manifolds mentioned earlier by Erica Klarreich

Getting Into Shapes: From Hyperbolic Geometry to Cube Complexes and Back

(via Jo)

More expository artcles by Erica Klarreich at http://ericaklarreich.com/computerscience.html and her research papers here.

A song from Apradhi 1949

From the comments in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VluJgiwQVgI, there seems to be some dispute about the singer. See also http://atulsongaday.me/2013/01/05/pyaar-karne-waalon-ke-liye-hai-duniya/

Links.... January 8th 2013

Vaughan Bell on DSM-5 A depressing financial justification "But bias, as you can find out from picking up any social psychology paper from the past century, is where incentives change our behaviour usually without us having insight into the presence or effect of the influencer.....We’re all susceptible to them. The trick is to recognise they exist and put measures in place to account for them."

Justin Smith My Faith: A Cofession. In the comments Justin Smith says "It is my personal blog, and what I say here has no bearing on my scholarship. As I explicitly said above, this is not an argument for a position, but a profession of faith. " More discussion at 3quarksdaily.

India gang rape victim's father  tells The Sunday People he hopes revealing her name will give courage to other women who have survived such attacks.

C.P. Chandrasekhar India's Triumph in Rice "So, if Yingluck Shinawatra is sacrificing exports in order to improve the lot of Thai farmers, India’s rice export success partly occurs at the expense of its poor and needy who are still to be delivered the promised food security."

Minai writes about the iconic dancer Ram Gopal.

Velchru Narayana Rao at eighty, possibly the best writer writing about Telugu in English.

Saigal's Tamil Songs

Possibly wellknown, but I came to know about them only today in a book by V.A.K. Rangarao
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVU0pbXBNj4 and
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHAwS2aHQuU

Telugu at Alphabet Olympics

Korean script 'wins' Controversial 'Alphabet Olympics' with Telugu winning the second prize. Discussion at Language Log.

C.Ramachandra as a singer

From an interview with V.A.K. Rangarao:
"Of the Indian male and female singers you have heard, who are your favourites?

When it comes to the male voice, it is unquestionably Singer-Music DirectorChitalkar Ramchandra. I have around one hundred of his songs, both solos and duets. Actually, not many know that his first two films were in Tamil. He told me that he sang only when he could not get the singers he wanted. There is something delightfully off-the-cuff and spontaneous about his singing. In his own words, he never wished to polish a song to a jewel.

Of the female singers, my favourite is Geeta Dutt, even though she was not always on the sharp edge of sruti."

Here is one when Talat  was not availavle:

P.S. The above link is gone. Another http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwKsgkK8rp8

K. Jamuna Rani still singing

A Jamuna Rani song from 2012 (via a post in oldtelugusongs).
Jamuna Rani remembers her first song from 1944 in this interview:

P.S. Moving stories of Jikki and Leela in fourth episode.
Another series starting here. Candid and very appreciative of her co-singers. Somhow an unusual song and one of my favourites was not mentioned anywhere:
http://gaddeswarup.blogspot.com.au/2010/10/tamil-film-song-by-k-jamuna-rani.html
The Telugu version link is not working but the song seems available at sites like pathabangaram.

Susan Bayly om 'saints, goddesses, and kings...'

I have been reading 'Saints, Goddesses and Kings: Muslims and Christians in South Indian Society, 1700-1900' off and on. It is interesting and seems to explain some rituals that puzzled me. It seems available for downloading at some sites. I am not sure whether there are different editions and what is available is an earlier edition. She has also written 'Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age' which also looks interesting but I have only read a few pages of it.
P.S. Both are available to buy or read at http://en.bookfi.org/g/Susan%20Bayly
I do not know any thing about the site but Vamsi Mohan Maganti comments that quite a few good reads are available at that site.

Arunkumar Deshmukh on the arrival of the golden age of Hindi Film Music

in Atul's blog (as usual short, comprehensive seems generally correct to me):
"The fifth decade gave us musical films like, Khazanchi, Basant, Khandan, Ratan, Shehnai, Anmol Ghadi, Andaz, Badi Behan, Ek thi ladki, Patanga, Barsat, Mahal etc etc. Almost every alternate film was musical.

The Golden Era had arrived.

Filmistan’s popular film Shehnai-47 also played an important role in the history of HFM.

C.Ramchandra came into his own with this film. As newer experiments were made in HFM, the next big contribution ,after Ghulam Hyder(Khazanchi),came from C.Ramchandra. "

Paula Stephan

a labor economist is chosen as the person of the year by Science Careers. Her work highlighted in the article seems to be mostly about American science:
 "In numerous articles and books, and as a member of scholarly bodies and study commissions examining the situation and prospects of young scientists, Stephan has long expounded the view that the current graduate and postdoctoral training system constitutes, in her words, a “pyramid scheme.” This system, she has repeatedly shown, uses young and aspiring scientists as cheap labor for professors’ grant-funded research and then fails to provide the career opportunities that have been implicitly or explicitly promised."

Obama about himself

From a post in Economist's View:
Said Obama, "The truth of the matter is that my policies are so mainstream that if I had set the same policies that I had back in the 1980s, I would be considered a moderate Republican."

Somesh Bagchi remembered

I just found out that Somesh Bagchi passed away in October. I was in Kolkata when Somesh was diagnized with cancer and we even smoked together after the diagnosis. He seemed so much a part of Kolkata that I knew, I assumed that he would be there next time I visited Kolkata. I routinely asked a friend to pass on my new year greetings to Somesh when the unexpected response came. He was one of the nicest persons that I met.
Here are responses from some of his friends and colleagues:
Remembering Somesh ...

Landfill Harmonic

Happy New Year
The video is not available any more. Try
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFHTIhyNdhk
An article here.

Links December 30, 2012

Far from media storm, U.P. village grieves for its daughter, from The Hindu
Insensitive remarks add to India's shame, from Al Jazeera
How India treats its women, by Soutik Biswas
Women in the violent world of mathematics from Alexander Borovik's blog
Of Men, Navigation and Zits by Carl Zimmer
Class in the 21st century by Goran Therborn
Why next to no political reaction to the second gilded age? by Brad DeLong
Discussion of the above post in Economist's View

"The Economists and the Powerful"

by Norbert Haring and Niall Douglass seems to be drawing positive reviews from left of the centre writers. Here is a  review by Michael Hudson. An older article (before the book was written) from The Economist.

Disease Burden and Economic growth

Economist's view has an interesting discussion Disease Burden Links Ecology to Economic Growthof a paper Disease Ecology, Biodiversity and The Latitudinal Gradient in Income.

Abstract

"While most of the world is thought to be on long-term economic growth paths, more than one-sixth of the world is roughly as poor today as their ancestors were hundreds of years ago. The majority of the extremely poor live in the tropics. The latitudinal gradient in income is highly suggestive of underlying biophysical drivers, of which disease conditions are an especially salient example. However, conclusions have been confounded by the simultaneous causality between income and disease, in addition to potentially spurious relationships. We use a simultaneous equations model to estimate the relative effects of vector-borne and parasitic diseases (VBPDs) and income on each other, controlling for other factors. Our statistical model indicates that VBPDs have systematically affected economic development, evident in contemporary levels of per capita income. The burden of VBDPs is, in turn, determined by underlying ecological conditions. In particular, the model predicts it to rise as biodiversity falls. Through these positive effects on human health, the model thus identifies measurable economic benefits of biodiversity."

One of the commenters in the Economist's View says "the greatest burden of disease in poor countries are maternal and neonatal, see: http://home.earthlink.net/~jdc24/"

I wonder whether India during the early days if independence neglected primary health, education.. and went for more glamorous projects.

Another interestiong discussion in Economist's View: Will Macroeconomists Ever Agree?

A song from Aakhri Khat 1966

Finding many Hindi songs that I missed following hints in Atul's blog. I never heard of Aakhri Khat before/ It seems to be an interesting film. Here are links to reviews from The Hindu and memsaab. Above is a song from the film by Bhupinder Singh in which the Goan trumpeter Chic Chocolate makes an appearance. Chic Chocolate seems to be a friend of C.Ramachandra and apparently they influence each other. Atul's blog has a song in which C. Ramachadra sang for Chic Chocolate.

All-round insecicides for vegetables

I am bit worried about using strong pesticides for vegetables and have been using strained lquid from a pate of a mixture of garlic, capsicum, chillies and turmeric. I do not know how well it works but it seems similar to the all-round insecticide described here.

From 'Gaon Ki Gori' 1945

I remember part of this song well , particularly the part containing 'o ghatta kali ghatta' but  not the film or singer. It seems both Zohrabai and Noor Jehan sang it in 1945.

From 'Jagachya Pathivar', 1960 Marathi film

Naturam Sweetsay in the YouTube comments gives the translation as
" Oh Lord, amazing is thy Reign ! Willful King, blind subjects, Court levitates in clouds ! Here flowers are destined to be mortal, while even stones are immortal ! Weeds lead extended existence, while the Sandal is axed ! Shrewd collect mansions, while virtuous get shacks ! Fidel gets yoke, while slut a pearl necklace ! Vices blossom here, while virtues go sour ! No shelter for Human on this earth ! Amazing is thy reign, oh Lord ! .."
The film has quite few nice songs with dances by Seema Deo.

A 2010 Marathi song

from Natrang (trailer)

A semi lavani from the same film

A jarring note in a wonderful music program

There is an interesting program Padutha Teeyaga in which young contestants sing songs from Telugu films and SPB seems to be the compere. Recently, I watched bits of it on 24th December (should be available on YouTube in a couple of weeks) since the first part of the contest is rendering songs of Saluri Rajeswara Rao. Rajeswara Rao started as singer but his voice seemed weak and suit only certain type of songs and later on he shone as a music director. One of his famous songs is 'paata paduma krishna'

 Many of the youngsters were good, particularly the one who sang the above song. In the program SPB actively participated, correcting the youngsters, asking them to repeat passages which they performed well, appreciating and instructing. There were anecdotes from Rajeswara Rao's life, repeating some conversations in Rao's accent and some new information I did not know that Balasaraswati Devi used to sing the song earlier but Rao apparently insisted that he should record it. May be, there was some emotional attachment to the song since it was written by his father). On the whole it seemed a wonderful program with a great singer passing on his wisdom and entertaining. But there were also at least one jarring note. It seems that a rich farmer produced one of the films for which Rao was the music director. When the film was still in production, some farmers from the producer visited Madras and the producer brought them to the studio and requested Rao to entertain them with his latest song. Rao obliged and then asked one of the farmers for his opinion. The farmer replied that it was good but not as good as his Malliswari songs. Apparently Rao was upset but instead of showing his disapproval directly waited until the tea-boy came along and asked for his opinion. The suggestion seems to be that the farmer was put in his place by this subtle strategy.  A jarring note in a wonderful program. And caste too does not seem to go away. Some Melbourne ladies watching were rooting for one of the contestants but said that he may not get the prize since the compere seemed to be encouraging one of his caste. No caste was announced in the program and I wonder how they knew.
P.S. Interesting interview with Ilaiyaraja where he asks 'Why classify music?'
P.P.S. Landfill Harmonic (via Duncan Green)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fXynrsrTKbI
P.S. The comments which I could not appreciate are from 12:35 in
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVr8il_sHx8
This video as well as parts one and two on December 24th (can be found on the side of tha above video) has many Rajeswara Rao songs, sung by youngsters, snatches of the original songs and many interesting comments.

A lavani song "Latpat Latpat Tujha Chaalan Ga"

Seems to be from Amar Bhoopali 1951, sung by Lata Mangeshkar and dance by Sandhya

Links 24th December 2012

The 'Mommy Penalty' Around the World
In most of the developed world, women spend more time working each day than men do, if you include unpaid work. both from NYTimes
David Warsh 'Paradigms after Fifty Years'
Miles Kimball 'David Lakoff on Science'
Taleb on 'Understanding a poor substitute for Convexity (Antifragility). I do not understand most of it but will try a few times more.
Duncan Green on a new study 'Small producer Agency in the Global market'. I have not read the study yet, but Duncan Green is very enthusiastic about the study.

NYTimes on the work of Ted Kaptchuk on Placebo phenomenon

From the article by Clara Feinberg
"This was disturbing for Kaptchuk, too; deception played no role in his own success as a healer. But years of considering the question led him to his next clinical experiment: What if he simply told people they were taking placebos? The question ultimately inspired a pilot study, published by the peer-reviewed science and medicine journalPLOS ONE in 2010, that yielded his most famous findings to date. His team again compared two groups of IBS sufferers. One group received no treatment. The other patients were told they’d be taking fake, inert drugs (delivered in bottles labeled “placebo pills”) and told also that placebos often have healing effects.

The study’s results shocked the investigators themselves: even patients who knewthey were taking placebos described real improvement, reporting twice as much symptom relief as the no-treatment group. That’s a difference so significant, says Kaptchuk, it’s comparable to the improvement seen in trials for the best real IBS drugs."

Kaptchuk's response to possible defects in his methodology is also quite exaplary "When Kaptchuk talks about Hrobjartsson’s 2001 paper now, he winces, then nods with acceptance. “At first when I read it, I worried I’d be out of a job,” he says. “But frankly, [Hrobjartsson] was absolutely right.” In order to legitimize his findings to mainstream practitioners, the results must be expertly quantified, he acknowledges. “We have to transform the art of medicine into the science of care.”"

via 3quarksdaily where Dr. Larocca comments "A singurarly well-balanced review of one of the greatest medical conundrums: That of the psychosomatic dualism."

Another theory of music

Dave Brubeck apparently said "The folk origins of music aren’t far apart anywhere in the world.”
According to Virginia Huighes
"According to a study out yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, our cognitive connection to music may have evolved from an older skill, the ability to glean emotion from motion. People will choose the same combination of spatiotemporal features — a certain speed, rhythm, and smoothness — whether pairing a particular emotion with a melody or with a cartoon animation, the study found. But most surprising, the results held true in people from two starkly different cultures: a rural village in Cambodia and a college campus in New England."
via Ed Yong who has links to several other posts including some lists of the best of the year.

Review of two reviews of Nate Silver's book

and various comments by experts in Two reviews of Nate Silver's new goo... Since I am planning to read this book at some stage, it may be useful to have this handy.

Passages from Michael Mann's first volume

On page 503(first edition):"The comparative method has no solution to these problems, not because of any general logical or epistemological defects it might have but because, in dealing with the problems we simply do not have enough autonomous, analogical cases. Confronted by that empirical reality, we must turn to pragmatically to the second method, of careful historical narrative, attempting to establish "what happened next"to see if it has the "feel" of a pattern, a process, or a series of accidents and contingencies. Here we will need broad concepts and theories about how socities generally work and how human beings behave, but we employ them in a historic narrative, looking for continuity or conjecture, pattern or accident.  Historical not comparative, sociology has been my principal method."
In an earlier chapter on 'Comparative excursus into world religions'(page371), he says " From then on India, China, Islam, and Europe went different ways. Global comparative sociology-always difficult in my view- now becomes too difficult. From now on I chronicle only one case, Christian Europe and its offshoots"
Given this, it is not clear to me how useful these volumes will be in Indian context. Things like caste and status do not play any role in the next part. In any case, I am continuing with Volume 2 and also his book on 'The Darkside of Democracy'.
Several essays on the first two volumes and Mann's response are in 'An Anatomy of Power' edited by J.A. Hall and Ralph Schroeder, available online.

M.C.R. Butler RIP

I just heard that Michael Butler passed away at the age of 84:
"He was admitted into Liverpool Royal Hospital in March with a chest infection, he subsequently became very seriously ill but after a long struggle was discharged to St Michaels in June where he made steady progress until the end of October, he was then able to go out for about 3 hours, shopping, having a meal and walking before getting tired and needing a rest, he became very much his old self. After this point he gradually deteriorated and became very ill eventually dying from Lymphoma. Although very ill at the end he maintained his sense of humour and was mercifully free from pain.

The Funeral details are
4th of January at 3:00 pm
at
Rosemary Chapel
Springwood Crematorium.
Springwood Avenue
Liverpool
Merseyside
L25 7UN"

I remember fondly fourteen months during 1968-69 spent in Liverpool when Michael and his wife Sheila Brenner were like surrogate parents to foreigners like me.

Michael Mann on the sources of social power

I am just finshing the first volume of the four volume series, the fourth volume is scheduled to come out next January. From an earlier description
"The work begins with the dawn of civilization in Mesopotamia, charting the emergence of four distinct forms of power (ideological, military, economic, and political) that Mr. Mann finds operating throughout recorded history. The second volume, appearing in 1993, extended the analysis up to the outbreak of the First World War. A review in The Journal of Economic History began, simply, "Colossal!" Scholars often mention Max Weber's Economy and Society (1914), another work routinely called monumental, when discussing Mr. Mann's work."
The first chapter of the first edition of Volume 1 is available here and the first chapter of the first edition of the  second volume here. Another article by Mann 'The Autonomous Power of the State:Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results' from 1984. A 2006 interview with Michael Mann and a 2004 interview.

Shankar of S-J on his music making

From an article by Raju Bharatan reproduced here. Excerpts

“They weren’t in Bhairavi, come to think of it. But the total musician never thinks of the raag while composing. He plays in Sur and raag just flows. So I can’t go along with you on the point that Mera joota hai Japani, as it finally emerged, because it was in Bhairavi. I maintain that my first three tunes were good, very good. But then I only looked at the tune Raaj Saab had an exact visual idea of what he wanted. And he just seized that fourth tune from my custody the moment I struck the right note, as he audio-visualised it”.

"Incidentally, I always prepared the tune first and then got words written by Shailendra. Letting the poet write the song first, I had discovered, led to his penning the song-lyrics in the same monotonous metre. No, I don’t agree this, my reverse style of tuning, placed a limitation on Shailendra’s poetry. The Ramaiyya vastavaiyya tune came first, yet did Shailendra’s poetry suffer in any way’ No! the words for me represented the portrait, the tune the frame. Once the framework was ready in the form of my tune, the portrait, the song- lyric, could always be fitted in, exactly to size.”

An early Roshan song

from Neki Aur Badi (1949)

via http://atulsongaday.me/2012/12/15/kyun-jee-scent-lagaaya-hai/ which also has the lyrics and translation.

'The Loom' moving

And also 'Not Exactly Rocket Science'. Both will be publishing with the National Geographic Magazine. I have been regularly reading 'The Loom' for at least five years and Ed Yong more recently. In my opinion, Carl Zimmer is among the best science writers ever and Ed Yong is quite good too.

The apparent lack of caste politics in West Bengal

There are two articles in EPW explaining the anomaly among similar lines. The one by Partha Chatterjee says " The partition of Bengal was ­demanded in 1947 by an overwhelming majority among Hindus who could not imagine a future under permanent Muslim domination......The partition removed the principal political challenge to upper-caste Hindu dominance in West Bengal. " , and describes later developments. The other article is by Sarbani Bandopadhay.

Ravi Shankar RIP

Obituary at The Guardian "Shankar not only transcended culture, race and geography but also had no difficulty with the generation gap and the phenomenon of class."
From The Concert for Bangladesh "On 5 June 1972, in recognition of their “pioneering” fundraising efforts for the refugees of Bangladesh, George Harrison, Ravi Shankar and Allen Klein were jointly honoured by UNICEF with its “Child Is the Father of the Man” award."
P.S. The previous link to Pather Panchali music is not working. Here is a link to improvisations from it:

An early Lalita, Padmini dance with ANR from 'Or Iravu'

A duet from a Dilip Kumar film

That used in the film was by Talat  Mahmood and Shamshad Begum. There is also a version not used in the film by Hemant Kumar and Uma Devi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0oxCnN5eVg

From the 'Payal Aur Sagam' series

apparently banned during Zia's time

Payal Aur Sargam - Aas Kay Taray Tootay - Part-1 of 2 Episode-1

and

Payal Aur Sargam - Aas Kay Taray Tootay - Part-2 of 2 Episode-1

and many more like

Payal Aur Sargam - Kahan Gaey Mujhay Chor - Episode-10A

Ramachandra Guha on EPW

EPW is the only journal that I have been subscribing to. Years ago Angus Deaton and Valeri Kozel said
"EPW is a cross between an academic journal (it has equations, and econometrics) and a magazine, such as The Economist. It provides rapid publication and acts as a unique bridge between research, the press, and policymakers, and i tcould well be emulated in other countries, including many rich countries. " Now Ramchandra Guha wtites about Krishna Raj, long time editor of EPW and has an insider view of the journal here (via 3quarksdaily):"The EPW is a unique, three-fold mix of political prejudice, dispassionate reportage, and solid scholarly analysis."

Melbourne councillors caught in a bind

From The Age:
"MELBOURNE City Council could be denied a say on key building projects, with a majority of councillors unable to vote because of developer donations that bankrolled their election campaigns.

Major city developers, including high-rise apartment pioneer Central Equity, donated to the campaigns of more than half the candidates now on the council.

As a result, so many of the councillors have conflicts of interest - and are therefore obliged to abstain from voting - that there will be insufficient numbers to make up a council quorum to deal with the donors' planning applications

.......

.A Town Hall spokesman said that in such cases where council decision-making is impeded by multiple conflicts of interest, the council may have to apply to the state government to seek a formal exemption from the conflict-of-interest provisions of the Local Government Act.

Another option would be for the council to consciously fail to make a decision, allowing the project applicant to make an appeal to the Victorian Administrative Appeals Tribunal."

Perhaps some understanding will be reached with the state government which is friendly to developers/

\

Nadeem Paracha's series 'Crazy Diamonds'

From his write up on Waheed Murad about the decline of Pakistani film industry in the 1980s:
"The VCR had arrived and with it Indian films (on video tapes). This machine boded well with what was happening to the film industry’s main audiences: i.e. the urban lower and middle classes.

Ziaul Haq’s reactionary military coup against the Z A. Bhutto regime in 1977 and then the military dictatorship’s strict censor policies, along with its concentrated crackdown on social activities that it deemed ‘un-Islamic’ and ‘immoral,’ began to push the urban middle-classes indoors.

The VCR fitted perfectly in this new, introverted setting. By 1984, Urdu films in Pakistan had already lost almost 50 per cent of its audiences. This was also the period when many cinemas began to close down or be converted into gaudy shopping plazas and wedding halls.

A number of once famous and rich film stars found themselves out of work. Some took to drinking and slipped into obscurity; some compromised their egos (and fee) and began doing teleplays; while others ventured into taking roles in loud, violent Punjabi films whose stock and popularity rose rather bizarrely with the strengthening of the Zia dictatorship."

From the portrait of General Rani:

"For years she played well the role of a good wife, bearing six children and never venturing out of the house without a burqa (veil/abaya).

Then one day in 1963, while holidaying with her husband on the cool hills of Murree, something snapped in her.

Walking with her husband among the tall pine trees of the hills, a gust of wind blew away the burqa from her face.

Enjoying the wind softly breezing across her face, she let the wind to continue making the burqa flap away and expose her face.

Agitated by her callousness, her husband admonished her. She stopped walking. She stared back at him and then casually proceeded to take off the burqa from the rest of her body.

Then after tossing it athim, she walked away, asking him to wear it himself!

......

It was at a club that was frequented by the country’s top military men in Rawalpindi where Pakistan’s future dictator, General Yahya Khan, fell for her.

A compulsive drinker and womaniser, Yahya began an affair with Aqeel sometime in 1967. But throughout her relationship with Yahya, she kept insisting that they were ‘just friends.’

Nevertheless, when a leftist movement between 1968 and 1969 forced General Ayub Khan to resign as head of state, he installed Yahya Khan as the country’s new Martial Law Administrator.

It was at this point that Aqeel began being called (in the press), ‘General Rani.’ It is believed that apart from looking after Yahya’s ferocious appetite for booze and women, she also began ‘advising’ him on policy and political matters.

Those who met her in those days described her to be far more informed and astute in the field of politics than Yahya." Read also how she helped Noor Jehan/

A Holi Song from Pakistan

via Dances on the Footpath

There seem to be two singers Nur Jehan and Irene Parveen. There are more Holi songs in Punjabi from Pakistan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OScX0pILg3M and another from Kartar Singh 1959
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFDS6qo3ci4

Two reviews of Malhar 1951

After listening to a song in the film, I googled and found this eulogy in The Hindu:
"On watching “Malhar”, more than six decades after it was released, one cannot but admire the fundamental laws that govern good cinema, which have stood the test of time, proving that they are inviolate and sacrosanct. Despite the considerable time that has elapsed, “Malhar”, directed by Harish, shows no signs of staleness, at least in certain vital areas."And more. Then this mini-review by memsaab "Shammi’s pain and suffering (much of it self-inflicted) is nothing compared to sitting through this movie, I can assure you, and that is saying something." So, I am not going to watch the movie and am not going to trust all film reviews in The Hindu.

Links December 3, 2012

Amitav Ghosh says that the origin of the word banyan both for the tree and the vest is 'vania' or 'bania'.
Intimations of immortality from jelly fish.
Minai posts clips from University of West Virginia about early Tamil cinema.
Bhaichand Patel Guha is wrong. 'Hindu Fundamentalist' is an oxymoron.
in USA Just four companies—Apple, AIG, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America—together provided a majority of overall earnings growth among large-cap companies.