Links 13th October

Search for Yield: From VoxEU "An increase in the supply of savings that reduces equilibrium real rates can be associated with an increase in the risk of the banking system. This link can explain the emergence of endogenous boom and bust cycles."

Key member of the Swedish Academy calls for the immediate suspension of the "Nobel Prize for Economics": "Rothstein’s article argues that today with increasing success, economics as commonly taught in universities and endorsed by most winners of the economics prize promotes corruption in societies around the world.  Therefore he concludes that the Nobel Foundation’s awarding the economics prize is “in direct conflict with what Alfred Nobel decreed in his will.”"

What financial advice do experts provide?From VoxEU: "When it comes to financial products, households have limited ability to make a choice and they must rely on the advice of experts, and the more complex the decision, the more this is the case. Often, the expert they rely on for advice is also the supplier of the financial product, so that a conflict of interest may arise and with it the question: Does the expert provide recommendations in the customer’s interest or in his own?"

"You see, money does not exist in the 24th century" by Izabella Kaminska at FTAlphaville (reistration may be needed)

Angus Deaton wins the Economics Nobel

Links to his work from Tyler Cower in Marinal Revolution. Angus Deaton appeared a few times in this blog and I read a few of his articles and paters but do not have the competence or feel to appraise it.But there arte objections to some of his work on consumption from people who studies and tried to check. Pradhamesh Turaa wrote on my wall "We actually tested their hypothesis using some data, and we realised for calorie consumption drop to reflect activity level drops would mean that majority of the country would have to shift from heavy work to sedentary work. It seemed like an absurd proposition."

Bezzle and febezzle

From The Bezzle Years by John Kay:
"More than a half-century ago, John Kenneth Galbraith presented a definitive depiction of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 in a slim, elegantly written volume. Embezzlement, Galbraith observed, has the property that “weeks, months, or years elapse between the commission of the crime and its discovery. This is the period, incidentally, when the embezzler has his gain and the man who has been embezzled feels no loss. There is a net increase in psychic wealth.” Galbraith described that increase in wealth as “the bezzle.”

In a delightful essay, Warren Buffett’s business partner, Charlie Munger, pointed out that the concept can be extended much more widely. This psychic wealth can be created without illegality: mistake or self-delusion is enough. Munger coined the term “febezzle,” or “functionally equivalent bezzle,” to describe the wealth that exists in the interval between the creation and the destruction of the illusion."

Charlie Munger's talk from 2000 at The Philanthropy Round Table

via The automatic Earth post on October 15. which has links and excerpts from other articles like this one by Will Hutton

Biswanath Ghosh visits Modi's constituency

Grime on the ghat : I particularly liked the story of the two clean ghats and the contrasting ways of cleaning them. Excerpts:
"It was Sulabh that cleaned up the ghat and is now maintaining it — the central government sanctioned close to Rs.30 crore for the project, formally titled “Development of Area around Assi Ghat, Varanasi” — .......

From Assi Ghat, I walk downstream to Prabhu Ghat, one of my two favourite ghats of Varanasi, the other being Darbhanga Ghat. I like them because they are clean, set against handsome, historical structures, and have an old-world feel about them — ideal spots in the city to gaze at the river.

At Prabhu Ghat, I find young men with guitars sitting on the steps. Loudspeakers are being set up and standees erected. A musical programme is about to begin: a radio channel is celebrating the first anniversary of a show in which budding singers from the city are invited to perform, and many of those singers are in attendance now.

A small audience has already gathered, among them a lady who stands out because every now and then, someone or the other, mostly young men, touch her feet.

“Who is she?” I ask the boatman, a boy of 17, who has become friendly with me in a matter of minutes.

“She is the one who cleaned up Prabhu Ghat,” he says.

“Was this ghat also dirty?”

“Unimaginably dirty. Go talk to her,” the boy says.

The lady, Temsutula Imsong, who is 32 now, was born in a village called Ungma in Nagaland. She studied in Shillong, went on to work in Delhi, and in 2012, came to Ghazipur, near Varanasi, to join an NGO started by her friend — an ex-Navy man — who is now her husband. That’s how she first set eyes on the ghats of Varanasi.

“This ghat was an open toilet when I first saw it,” she told me. “It was buried under silt — you couldn’t see the steps — and people were relieving themselves wherever they pleased. It irked me.”

One day in March this year, she and a woman friend — who has now left Varanasi — pooled in some money, bought brooms, buckets, masks and some basic equipment, and, enlisting the support of local boatmen and idlers on the ghat, began cleaning it.

“Were you inspired by the Swachh Bharat campaign?”

“No, nothing like that. Though when we were cleaning up the place, we could hear passersby saying, ‘See, see, Modiji’s campaign is going on!’”

Modi has acknowledged her work. He mentioned her name in two tweets, she said. A local paper called her ‘Kashi ki bahu’ — the daughter-in-law of Kashi, or Varanasi. “I take that as a compliment, even though that’s not correct, I am the daughter-in-law of Ghazipur,” she laughs. As I sit with her on the steps, more boys touch her feet as they walk past.

“How long did it take you to clean up the ghat?” I ask her.

“Five days. We started on March 18, and by March 22, the ghat was shining, just the way it is now,” she pats the steps.

“And how much did it cost you?”"

“Three thousand rupees.”

He never ran for Australia again

The white man in that photo
The funeral

Links October 11, 2015

Dung beetles worth more than polished diamonds
The lingering effects of Nazi propaganda
The politics of waste management by Barbara Harriss-White from The Hindu "India’s waste management economy is clearly and uniquely impregnated with caste. Research suggests that to break this down modern jobs that are caste-neutral are needed, along with opportunities for education and migration. "
Elephants:Large, Long-Living Less Prone to Cancer by Carl Zimmer
Why Elephants Don't Get Cancer - and What That Means to Humans by Alexander Nazaryan

Why do India and China have so many people?

Why do India and China have so many people? (The link does not seem to be working. It is Balaji Viswanathan's article in this https://www.quora.com/Why-are-countries-like-India-and-China-so-densely-populated-What-are-the-circumstances-and-reasons or search the title, via Pramathnath Sastry)
Abstract: India and China together hold 20% of world’s arable land (land suitable for a major crop), producing 50% of the world’s rice and 30% of the world’s wheat. They are spread around the Tropic of Cancer (a great zone for human settlement), were unified multiple times in the past (leading to a large land area under one flag), got to the major cereals earlier (rice & wheat), got the benefit of other civilizations nearby (borrowing ideas of wheel & writing systems) and were spared from many of the major human calamities & migrations of history. 

Three Tandav dances

From Anada Bhairavi 1983  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3sUbjwOX3I&feature=youtu.be

Damini 1993

Sivaanai Seemai 1959

Two recent 'results' in mathematics

An old mathematics problem gets completely solved by Terence Tao with little help from friends At least the problem is easy to follow though not the solution.
A more esoteric development in number theory On abc conjecture But the Nature article does not mention "When an error in one of the articles was pointed out by Vesselin Dimitrov and Akshay Venkatesh in October 2012, Mochizuki posted a comment on his website acknowledging the mistake, stating that it would not affect the result, and promising a corrected version in the near future.^[14] He revised all of his papers on "inter-universal Teichmüller theory", the latest of which is dated September 2015." from the Wikipedia article.

Katha-2014 in Tenali

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxTGUi646zk

Hundreds of new species found in Eastern Himalayas

A report from Al Jazeera "A new report on wildlife in the Eastern Himalayas says researchers in the area have discovered more than 200 new species, including "walking" fish and a "sneezing monkey" in the last six years.

The findings, made in Nepal, Bhutan, the far north of Myanmar, southern Tibet and northeastern India, were published by the World Wildlife Fund."

WWF report:"The Eastern Himalayas includes four of the Global 200 ecoregions, critical landscapes of international biological importance, and is home to more than 10,000 plant species, 300 mammal species, 977 bird species, 176 reptiles, 105 amphibians and 269 freshwater fish. The region also has the highest density of the Bengal tiger and is the last bastion for the charismatic greater one-horned rhino. The rugged and largely inaccessible landscape of the Eastern Himalayas, however, hides the real extent of the region’s biodiversity, with extraordinary new species continuing to be discovered year-on-year. Between 2009 and 2014, at least 211 new species have been discovered in the Eastern Himalayas, 34 new species finds on average every year for the last six years (see Appendix). The discoveries include 133 plants, 39 invertebrates, 26 fish, 10 amphibians, one reptile, one bird and one mammal."

Two on meat

What Mahatma Gandhi said to those who wanted beef banned in India in 1947
What would happen if everybody in the world became a vegetarian from Slate 2014 by L.V.Anderson

A few good officers

"And, it is through the third seat of power that three young women IAS officers of the 2008 batch are redefining the system in Madhya Pradesh. Posted in extreme border districts, the trio, in their early thirties, have become legends of sorts among the masses for their strict administration and hard work. Chhavi Bharadwaj, Shilpa Gupta and Irene Cynthia Joseph have been successfully holding the fort as district magistrates, locally known as collectors, of Dindori, Morena and Burhanpur, respectively, for more than a year now. While Dindori in the far east corner of the state has a Naxal presence, Chambal dacoits had once made Morena in the north their home and southern Burhanpur has a history of communal violence." from Works like a charm (via Madhukar Shukla)

Taleb on the domonance of the minority

The most stubborn wins:The dominance of the minority Interesting readin via Akshay Regulaedda. It seems to be a draft chapter from a new book that Nassim Nicholas Talib is writin and circulating the draft chapters.

Rounding error

says Tyler Cowen "To put that number in context, the World Health Organization estimates that about seven million people die each year worldwide from air pollution. Even within the United States, early deaths from air pollutionhave been estimated to run about 200,000 a year, in comparison to which the losses from the Volkswagen scandal are a rounding error."

2015 Nobel prize in medicine

https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2015/press.html
Traditioal medicine has a role in one of the prizes:
"Malaria was traditionally treated by chloroquine or quinine, but with declining success. By the late 1960s, efforts to eradicate Malaria had failed and the disease was on the rise. At that time, Youyou Tu in China turned to traditional herbal medicine to tackle the challenge of developing novel Malaria therapies. From a large-scale screen of herbal remedies in Malaria-infected animals, an extract from the plant Artemisia annua emerged as an interesting candidate. However, the results were inconsistent, so Tu revisited the ancient literature and discovered clues that guided her in her quest to successfully extract the active component from Artemisia annua. Tu was the first to show that this component, later called Artemisinin, was highly effective against the Malaria parasite, both in infected animals and in humans (Figure 4). Artemisinin represents a new class of antimalarial agents that rapidly kill the Malaria parasites at an early stage of their development, which explains its unprecedented potency in the treatment of severe Malaria."
P.S. A turning point for traditional Chinese medicine?

A short course on superforecasting

by Philip Tetlock. Around eight and half hours. I have not even started but may watch some of it. From The Edge : "Steven Pinker, who has written about Tetlock's work on Superforecasting, noted that "Tetlock is one of the very, very best minds in the social sciences today. He has come up with one brilliant idea after another, and superforecasting is no exception. Everyone agrees that the way to know if an idea is right  is to see whether it accurately predicts the future. But which ideas, which methods, which people have an actual, provable track record of non-obvious predictions vindicated by the course of events? The answers will surprise you, and have radical implications for politics, policy, journalism, education, and even epistemology—how we can best gain knowledge about the world we live in."

Among Tetlock's "students" at the Edge weekend were many intellectual heavyweights including political scientist and National Medal of Science winnerRobert Axelrod; psychologist, Nobel Laureate, and recipient of the 2013 Presidential Medal of Freedom Daniel Kahneman; the political scientist and Director of Stanford’s CASBS Margaret Levi; Google Senior Vice President Salar Kamangar; psychologist and National Medal of Science winner Anne Treisman; Roboticist Rodney Brooks, former head of MIT's Computer Science Lab; W. Daniel Hillis, pioneer in massively parallel computation; medical inventor Dean Kamen; and Peter Lee, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Research, overseeing MSR NExT. "

Tyler Cowen conversation with Dani Rodrik

The transcript Tyler Cowen description of the conversation Rodrik's preparation for the interview
There are bita about India in the interview (Dani Rodrik studied with Avinash Dixit at princeton and colloborated with Arvind Subramanian). Wide rangin discussion about theory and covering several countries. Difficult to summarize. Starts with :
"We’re going to start this conversation with some questions about some of your recent papers on this topic of premature deindustrialization. I find this one of the most interesting themes in your work. The notion that a mix of automation and competitive trade with wealthier nations might mean that poorer nations today will not be able to industrialize and follow the path of South Korea or Taiwan or Singapore."`

In answer to “If you could make one change to help produce more Dani Rodriks for all the rest of us, what would that be?”

RODRIK: I wish I had a very quick and good answer to this but it’s not a great answer but it probably would help. I was helped a lot by going into economics after having done political science. I think a lot of what’s wrong in economics is that it’s so much driven by people who first do engineering or math before they go into economics. And so, it’s relatively late that they get immersed into the real world.

I think anything that would get them a little bit more cognizant of the problems of the real world. I would say that there are parts of political science that have become even worse than economics right now. I’m not sure that that would work.

I don’t know. Maybe a gap year, spending a year in a developing country between your first and second year?

P.S. Link to an earlier interview.

Some good news from Bisada

Hindu neighbours helped Muslim family in Bisada escape mob:
"As the mob approached the homes of the Muslims on Monday night, three Hindu men – Vineet Kumar, Umesh Kumar and Ashok – planned a dramatic escape for the joint family.

Ashok helped women, children and the elderly cross a knee-deep pond at 2 am to reach a nearby road, while Vineet and Umesh drove their utility vehicle to the road through a narrow alley that is not used by the villagers.

“They escaped secretively from the village. Since there were almost 70 family members, we had to make three rounds from the village to Dadri. It took us more than two hours to ensure that all of them reached safely,” said Vineet, a 35-year-old farmer who is studying law......

Their Hindu neighbours are the only hope for them. The marriage of a Muslim girl, Nafeesa, is scheduled for October 11.

“The pandal is set up in the temple. They (the Muslims) were afraid about whether her marriage could be conducted peacefully. I have assured them and taken responsibility for the marriage of Nafeesa, who is like a sister to me,” said Vineet."

Bonding?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJAliFDzWTE

More on TPP

Joseph Stiglitz and Adam Hersh at Project Syndicate The Trans-Pacific Free -Trade Charade
"The biggest regional trade and investment agreement in history is not what it seems.

You will hear much about the importance of the TPP for “free trade.” The reality is that this is an agreement to manage its members’ trade and investment relations – and to do so on behalf of each country’s most powerful business lobbies. Make no mistake: It is evident from the main outstanding issues, over which negotiators are still haggling, that the TPP is not about “free” trade............

The TPP would manage trade in pharmaceuticals through a variety of seemingly arcane rule changes on issues such as “patent linkage,” “data exclusivity,” and “biologics.” The upshot is that pharmaceutical companies would effectively be allowed to extend – sometimes almost indefinitely – their monopolies on patented medicines, keep cheaper generics off the market, and block “biosimilar” competitors from introducing new medicines for years. That is how the TPP will manage trade for the pharmaceutical industry if the US gets its way.

Similarly, consider how the US hopes to use the TPP to manage trade for the tobacco industry."

Similar reading at Politico and more links from Lambert Strether at Naket Capitalism.

Why are statues of Indian icon Ambedkar being caged?

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-34399696
Responding to a previous post which was also posted on Facebook Ramarao Kanneganti asked "The more we learn about the atrocities that went on in the name of caste, the more the mind boggles. Perhaps, life was cheap then. How much comparable was it to the other massacres, the other atrocities of kings against the subjects is something I want to understand. I do not know what the legal system was and how strict it was etc. I feel out of depth in most of these matters." I keep posting these because it is not all past, it is present.

Granddaughters in our frontyard, Spring 2015

India's Independence:World War 2, Some sources from the British Library

I do not know why these particular ones  are selected. the preamble:
"The Second World War had a profound influence on the British policy towards India. Britain needed India's manpower to fight the war and, to secure Indian support, was willing to offer to hand over its political power after it won the war. In 1942, Sir Stafford Cripps on his first mission to India made on behalf of the British Government his offer of independence after the war in exchange for cooperation, but the Indian political parties rejected his proposals. The Indian National Congress launched the "Quit India" movement. The Indian National Army led by Subhas Chandra Bose joined the Japanese to fight against the British."
Contents:

Source 1:
Clement Attlee's wartime concern about India's future status (1942) (L/PO/6/106b)

Source 2:
Draft declaration for discussion with Indian leaders (30 March 1942) (cmd 635)

Source 3:
Telegram from President Roosevelt to Harry Hopkins during the Cripps Mission to India (1942) (R/30/1/1)

Source 4:
Telegram from the US State Department to the American Ambassador at Paris (1947) (L/P&S/12/4705)

Source 5:
Secret report from the War Staff Office of the India Office 14 July 1943,'Recent activities of Subhas Chandra Bose' [L/WS/1/1576:ff. 79-80]

Source 5b:
Biographical note on Subhas Chandra Bose (1943) [L/WS/1/1576: ff. 79-80]

Source 6:
Sarat Bose calls for Indians to fight alongside the Vietnamese (1947) (L/PS/12/4705)

Source 7:
Indian National Army court martial (1945) (MSS EUR D977/14)

Source 8:
Lord Wavell's letter to Churchill (Oct 1944) (L/PS/8/520)

Source 9:
Lord Wavell's note on the results for the British Commonwealth of the transfer of political power in India (13 July, 1946) (MSS EUR D977)

Source 10:
Ernest Bevin, Foreign Secretary, letter to Attlee (1947) (R/30/1/8a)

Source 11:
Attlee's reply to Bevin (1947) (R/30/1/8a)

Some excerpts.
 From FDR To Harry Hopkins, Source 3: "Kindly give the following message immediately to the Former Naval Person (implying Churchill): every effort must be made by us to prevent a break-down.....The feeling is held almost universally that the deadlock had been due to the British Government's unwillingness to concede the right of self-government to the Indians notwithstanding the willingness of the Indians to entrust to the competent British authorities technical military and naval defence control."
From Lord Wavell, Source 9 "2. The principal advantage that Britain and the Commonwealth derive from control of India is Strategic. The greatest asset is India's manpower. The War of 1939-45 could hardly have been won without India's contribution of two million soldiers, which strengthened the British Empire at its weakest point."
From Attlee to Bevin, Source 11 "We have always governed India through the Indians. Without the tens of thousands of lesser functionaries we could not carry on. In a typical district of one or two million population it is quite common for there to be only one or two white officials. Under the regime of constitutional governments, which have now been in existence with some intervals for a number of years, the loyalty of Indian officials is increasingly directed towards the Indian Governments and not to the British Raj. With the knowledge that the termination of British rule in India is not far off, how can you expect them not to look to the future?

It would be quite impossible even if you could find the men for a few hundred British to administer against the active opposition of the whole of the politically minded of the population. I presume when you suggest getting administrators from the Indian Army you mean the British units in India. How could Army officers with only a slight knowledge of the language and no knowledge of administration deal with such a matter as the collection of land revenue, the backbone of Indian Finance, if they had not even got Indian clerical assistance? If you proposed to govern by main force, you would be driven into shootings and the like for which you would find very little support in this country."

Expert predictions

From Expert predictions: hard and soft by Steven Hsu:
"...good amateurs (i.e., smart people who think probabilistically and are well read) typically perform as well as or better than area experts (e.g., PhDs in Social Science, History, Government; MBAs) when it comes to predicting real world outcomes. The marginal returns (in predictive power) to special "expertise" in soft subjects are small.....
In technical subjects, such as chemistry or physics or mathematics, experts vastly outperform lay people even on questions related to everyday natural phenomena (let alone specialized topics). "

Some thing to cheer about

Plastic-eating worms may offer solution to mounting waste (via Naked Capitalism)
100 percent renewable energy by 2050 achievable, necessary-Greenpeace

Some English lines

Even though English is a foreign language, some of it seems to have ot in to my system. Today children were going to the shopping centre asked me what i wanted. I said a 'mandrake root' from one of my favourite misogynist poems
 Song: Go and catch a falling star

On the otherhand I do not understand the antipathy to Wordsworth lines in The Thorn; after all not all lines in a poem can be great:
The much-ridiculed lines of 1798 about the child’s grave–

“I’ve measured it from side to side,
’T is three feet long and two feet wide"–
became in 1820:

“Though but of compass small and bare
To thirsty suns and parching air.”
from http://www.authorama.com/study-of-poetry-5.html

Caste won't go away

and so I continuously remind myself of it. Here is
An open letter to Shashi Tharoor by Dr. A.K.Biswas "A feudal lord of Nadia, Krishna Chandra Roy, advised a body of disgruntled men for “inviting the English to take the government into their hands”. This has been recorded in 1803 by biographer Rajiv Lochan Bandopadhyay who was a descendant of the dynasty of Krishna Chandra. Consequent upon the fall of Siraj-Ud-Daulla, Lord Clive presented twelve guns to Krishna Chandra Roy, “in recognition of the services rendered by him”. This was an extraordinary gesture. Those guns were used in the battle of Plassey. Obviously these devastating firearms were the rewards of no mean service. Krishna Chandra was the tallest and strongest pillar of support for establishment of the British Empire in 1757.

May we ask whether the gift of those lethal weapons to Krishna Chandra Roy was part of the ‘reparations’ the British paid right after the battle of Plassey and or a ‘share of the loot’ Clive is accused of committing?....

Feudal lords apart, the British had strange suitors. In 1803 when the British Army, con-quering Orissa, reached the gates of Jagannath temple at Puri, a delegation of priests met Lieutenant Colonel Campbell and conveyed to him an ‘oracle’ of the Lord of the Universe for handing over its management......

The Compulsory Primary Education Bill 1911, tabled by Gopal Krishna Gokhale in the Central Legislative Council of the Governor-General, has occupied—unjustifiably as well as undeservingly—huge spaces in historical discourses. The following stipulation occupied the heart and soul of Gokhale’s Bill: “In any area, where 33 per cent of the male population is already at school, there this principle of compulsion should be applied.” (Italicised by this writer) Who were to benefit if this principle was applied? First of all females were altogether excluded by the great leader. The compulsion, if passed, as a law and enforced could benefit perhaps few urban centres, for example, Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Poona, Dhaka, Cuttack, Karachi, Lahore etc. Who could reap the advantage of compulsion in the given framework?

Let me point out, by 1911 Bengal, which was ahead in educational progress, presented a picture of peculiar interest for appreciation. W. H. Thompson, Superintendent of Census Operations of Bengal had observed that “The extent of literacy among males of thebhadralok seems to have reached its limit.” As an alumni of St Xavier College, Calcutta, you, I guess, need no elucidation of word ‘bhadralok’, who actually is an exclusive caste club for Brahmans, Baidyas and Kayasthas. The official, however, underlined that in the case of all three the last decade (1901-1911) “has shown great progress” in female education. Speaking factually, this self-styled bhadralok club did everything to frustrate the educational aspirations of all others in Bengal. The opponents of the Gokhale education bill were Sir Surendra Nath Banerjea ..."

And more.

A caste atrocity in CSSS: can savarna apologize? by Georgy Kurivilla Roy, a student of Partha Chatterjee who is mentioned in the article: "The incident that happened on July 15 involves a contract labourer at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata. The said laborer, belonging to the Dalit Muslim category, was made to do sit-ups in front of a lot of other staff of the Centre by the Registrar. This was done as the laborer did not pick up the chairs as his supervisor asked him to do the day before, for some meeting that had happened.....Now, coming to the reason for the Director not asking for an apology from the Registrar - she says he is an efficient Registrar and that she doesn't want him to resign."

Links, 30th September 2015

Heidi Williams, Macarthur Genius
Another Karthik Chandran
Simple way to make kids more vegetables
A student asking Partha Chatterjee some questions
The majority of the world's chidren are in school. So why aren't they learning?
Children's ability to learn Minimally Invasive Education
Light Electricity Utility Vehicle More from BBC From South Sudan, the world's most important SUV
Chris Blattman Fear, what a century-old theologian can teach the modern scientist :"...Fear, then, becomes the safety device with which the oppressed surround themselves in order to give some measure of protection from complete nervous collapse. How do they achieve this? In the first place, they make their bodies commit to memory ways of behaving that will tend to reduce their exposure to violence."

The education of an economist

Michael Hudson on his education, Long read. More from Michael Hudson here.

Links, 29/9/2015

Top signs Pope Francis is an honest conservative
The New York Times interviews neuorobioligist Cori Bargmann
3quarksdaily top quark winner The fundamental philosophical dilemna of chemistry by Ashutosh Joglekar
I do not believe this 'workers of the world areabout to get their revenge' by Ambrose Evans-Pritchad but not too many demoraphic studies around in spite of the collapse of Soviet Union predicted by Emmanuel Todd base on such studies.
Change Makers: Kumar Ankit of Green Leaf Energy Private Limited
8 must-watch films to understand India's indigenous people via Xavier Dias
Malapati Raja Sekhar on Baobab in 2008
Quartz on Baobab Africa-India connections
A prophet in reverse; A conversation between Jorge Luis Borges and Osvaldo Ferrari
Cash beats stocks,bonds for first time in 25 years from Marketwatch
How to pronounce Narendra Modi

Endometriosis

Endometriosis:the hidden suffering of millions of women revealed:
"Endometriosis has existed in the twilight for centuries because of society’s reluctance to discuss what was euphemistically known for so long as “women’s troubles”. 

It occurs when tissue similar to the lining of the womb is found elsewhere – most commonly in the abdomen, ovaries, in the recto-vaginal septum, bladder and bowel. That tissue behaves like the lining of the womb, bleeding every month, and can cause cause severe and chronic pain . Women tell of such acute pain that they pass out."?

Briefly What is endometriosis? A visual guide

Mine is bigger than yours

Obama taunts Putin, China at U.N.: I lead the strongest military the world has ever known'
Syria? Ukraine? ISIS? Blame it all on west's rampant 'eotism', Putin says

Olivier Blanchard Interview

Blanchard: Looking forward, Looking back:

"There is a good chance that we have entered a period of low productivity growth. There is a chance that we have entered a period of structurally weak demand, which will require very low interest rates. And low growth combined with increasing inequality, is not only unacceptable morally, but extremely dangerous politically.

In assessing policies, we cannot just concentrate on short run issues, and we have to address these longer run issues. In doing so, we have to realize two things. First, that this is not our natural expertise, and we have to work with other institutions like the OECD, the World Bank. Second, that there are no magical solutions: We have to be realistic as to what structural reforms are politically feasible, and what they can reasonably achieve."

More in the interview and discussion in Economist's View

A recent scene from India

Curitiba

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIgWDaZeajY
Somewhat different view

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLjhSon0Ltw

Links, 254t September, 2015

Forget 'developing' poor countries. it's time to 'de-develop' rich countries by Jason Hickel in The Guardian
Is this the most effectve development proram in history? by Chris Blattman "It’s a business plan competition for $50,000, and I think it’s a contender.

In 2011 the Nigerian government handed out 60 million dollars to about 1200 entrepreneurs, and three years later there are hundreds more new companies, generating tons of profit, and employing about 7000 new people."

Pope rejects lunch with Boener, Pelosi, McConnel, Reid: he will be dinin with the homeless

America's racial divides are so deep that we can't even agree what the civil war is about from Washington Post

UK, France and Germany lobbied for flawed car emission tests, documents reveal from The Guardian "Leaked documents seen by the Guardian show the three countries lobbied the European commission to keep loopholes in car tests that would increase real world carbon dioxide emissions by 14% above those claimed.

Just four months before the VW emissions scandal broke, the EU’s three biggest nations mounted a push to carry over loopholes from a test devised in 1970 – known as the NEDC – to the World Light Vehicles Test Procedure (WLTP), which is due to replace it in 2017."

(many of the above via Lamber Strether of Naked Capitalism)

The Sanctuary by Elif Batuman (from December 2011) "The idea of a religious monument built by hunter-gatherers contradicts most of what we thought we knew about religious monuments and about hunter-gatherers. Hunter-gatherers are traditionally believed to have lacked complex symbolic systems, social hierarchies, and the division of labor, three things you probably need before you can build a twenty-two-acre megalithic temple. Formal religion, meanwhile, is supposed to have appeared only after agriculture produced such hierarchical social relations as required a cosmic backstory to keep them going and supplied a template for the power relationship between gods and mortals. The findings at Göbekli Tepe suggest that we have the story backward—that it was actually the need to build a sacred site that first obliged hunter-gatherers to organize themselves as a workforce, to spend long periods of time in one place, to secure a stable food supply, and eventually to invent agriculture."

Peter Turchin Complex societies before agriculture and Why become a farmer?. both on the same topic (from 2013)

Is it possible to think without language? "However, while it appears that we can indeed think without language, it is also the case that there are certain kinds of thinking that are made possible by language. Language gives us symbols we can use to fix ideas, reflect on them and hold them up for observation. It allows for a level of abstract reasoning we wouldn't have otherwise. The philosopher Peter Carruthers has argued that there is a type of inner, explicitly linguistic thinking that allows us to bring our own thoughts into conscious awareness. We may be able to think without language, but language lets us know that we are thinking."

Another from 1973 Absurdity of 'Thinkinking in lanuae(The)'

Prabhala Bala Ganadhar Tilak from Tenali

was a school teacher I knew in Gudavalli village around 1950. I was probably in sixth or seventh rade at that time. My father was the head master and he used to visit our house. I was never in his class but remember him as a good looking man with thick curly hair, always smiling and we were always varay of the spray when he talked. I do not remember visiting his house. He was meat eater and probably it was not cooked in his housed. My father liked him and used to invite him. We also heard that he played bridge and chess and sometimes won and was probly the state champion once. I did not remember his family name but mentioned him as a bridge player in a thread on Ramaro Kanneganti's wall. One Venkateswara Rao Veluri remembered him:

"Yes! Tilak, I consider as one of the greatest bridge player from Tenali. ( I can easily rate him as good or better than the current greats from USA).His surname was Prabhala. He was a hired player at one time for a Mumbai team at a national meet in early 1960s."

It seems that there was a so much talent around Tenali, some of it forgotten. It was a literary centre when I was growing up (forties and fifties) and there were writers like Tripuranni Ramaswami, Gopichand, humanist Ravipudi Venkatri, G.V.Krishna Rao who wrote on philososphy, Kodavatianti kutumbarao, Sarada, Natarajan, Chakrapani who those days was known for his Sarat translations, many film and drama actors from Tenali and nearby villages. And there was Hindi promotion movement started by Yalamanchili Venkatappiah which influenced some of the writers. Here is a blog post about Tenali (not all the information may be correct. I do not think Chittoor Nagayya was from Tenaqli)

G.T. Murthy

He was senior to us when I was in TIFR (1964-79). We admired him but did not know much of what he was doing as we were in different groups Sanjay Maniktala, who met him later in the 1980s writes about him. Mentors are life changing "But far more important that the creativity that was being fostered there by Doc, was the grooming of the “engineering psyche” which many of us totally abide by today. One of Doc’s famous statements was: “A technical institution is not a king’s court, where the king says it is dark outside, and everyone obediently nods.” He went on to declare that in any technical discussion there is no such thing as a “boss” either. We were encouraged to speak up, but keeping in mind that we are eventually only as good as our facts, data and analyses. Rank does not count, he declared. And so, if you ever came close to proving Doc wrong, he would be very pleased actually. We realized he meant all of it, heart and soul."
I too interacted with G.T.Murthy but in a different way. A photograph from 1974

What is the name of The Viriginan?

What is the name of the Virginian in the TV series 'The Virginian'? According to the Wikipedia nobody knows. I watch it often but miss bits of it due to naps. Today in 'The Stranger' Season 7 , Episode 26, after giving the stranger a job, Virginian asks for the strangers name and then introduces himself. It sounded like a name, but it was so unexpected, I missed what he said. I watched it a second time as it comes with a two hour gap on another station. But I napped at the crucial time.

Response to a friend who worries about UK

I certainly do not see any solutions. and today I see this
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/09/21/what-a-massive-sexual-assault-survey-showed-about-27-top-u-s-universities/?tid=sm_tw

 I certainly did not see the Arab Spring or the later developments. What little I see is more conflict. We have come to zero interest rates in most developed economies. I think that this means less profits and elites will try to take biger piece of the pie and more misery for the rest. Even Andrew Haldane does not seem to know how to handle this. http://mainlymacro.blogspot.com.au/2015/09/haldane-on-alternatives-to-qe-and-one.html

So I think that there will be increasing conflict. One hopeful sign is the increase of co-operatives 

"Today the sector is estimated to have around 1 billion members. Co-operatives employ, directly or indirectly, 250 million people around the world. The world's top 300 co-operatives by themselves have an estimated global turnover of 2.2 trillion USD, as revealed by the 2014 World Co-operative Monitor."

from http://ica.coop/en/whats-co-op/history-co-operative-movement. Central governments won't go away and what we may see is growing co-operatve movements and tensions and conflicts between those and states. May be.

politics

Australia's Slow Motion Crisis from Jacobin by Tad Tietze "The most important driver of volatility is the hollowing out of the social base of the political system, and the growing detachment of the political class from the voting public. It’s a process that has been described in many countries, perhaps in most detail by the late Peter Mair in Ruling The Void, which mainly focuses on Western Europe."
Guardian's terrble dilemna over Corbyn from Jonathan Cook "Corbyn’s victory represented a huge failure not just for the political class in all its narrow neoliberal variations, but also for the media class in all its narrow neoliberal variations. It was a sign that the Guardian’s credibility with its own readers is steadily waning. "
Jeremy Corbyn predicted that Euro would lead to 'the imposition of Banker's Europe' But "Today, after striking a moderately eurosceptic position during his leadership campaign, Mr Corbyn has now categorically said Labour would not campaign for EU exit.

He says he wants Britain to work for a "social Europe, a cohesive Europe, a coherent Europe, not a free market Europe".He made the about-face after coming under pressure from Labour MPs, including former shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna and shadow foreign secretary Hilary Benn."

UN Watch, an independent campaigning NGO, has discovered that Mr Trad, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador at the UN in Geneva, has been elected as chair of a panel of independent experts on the UN Human Rights Council.

Two on interest rates

Ultra-low interest rates:danerous or just a price? by Tim Taylor
Compare and contrast, 5000 years of interest rates by David Keohane in FTAlphaville