Samir Shukla on some Indian academics

Worried Indian scientists and my friend’s sons
“As the story of my friend is obviously unique and one of a kind, I hope that it is not linked by my readers with my scientist friends I mentioned in the opening paragraph in any manner.

We all know that most of the academic community toiling in Indian institutes have been constantly engaged in pushing science and technology ahead for benefits of the nation and the result is evident. 

The state of the nation clearly proves that our academic researchers exactly know what are the areas of research that the nation needs them to work on and hence no one should dare ask them what to do, or rather no one should dare ask them what they are doing at all.

It is nothing but sheer misfortune that with so many hard-working researchers toiling in India, we remain the only large sovereign nation not to have won even one Nobel Prize for science. So, let us not start making false assumptions on that irrelevant trivia.

It is also just some dirty trick of fate that, with all these scientists diligently working and solving the problems of the nation for all these decades, we still have billions living below poverty line and enduring a hell of a life, as there is no doubt that scientists have no role to play in the prosperity of a nation.”

My comment: I did not read all the comments but I see this sort of things by some approximate Anna Karenina principles: “All large groups are similar” and “The larger the group, the closer it is to the general populace around”. I think that our views of academics were formed when the group was small with few shining lights highlighted by texts of an earlier period.

Anya Parampil on Ricardo Hausmann and Venezuela

“While unknown to most Venezuelans, Hausmann remains a key player in his country’s tumultuous politics. During a talk at the World Affairs Council of Greater Houston in November 2018, he eerily predicted Guaidó’s self-proclaimed presidency, telling the crowd “the international community is now focused on the idea that… January 10th is the end of the presidential period of Nicolás Maduro.”

“On January 11th, Nicolás Maduro will not be recognized as… the legitimate president of Venezuela,” Hausmann anticipated. “I think that’s an important date.”

On January 11th, when Juan Guaidó declared his preparedness to become president of Venezuela, the Harvard professor’s prophecy was fulfilled.

Almost two months later, Guaidó appointed Hausmann to serve as his representative at the Inter-American Development Bank. ” from Ricardo Hausmann’s 'Morning After' for Venezuela: The Neoliberal Brain Behind Juan Guaido’s Economic Agenda
Ricardo Hausmann seems to be a respected economist with a number of interesting ideas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Hausmann

An excerpt from a book by Aatish Taseer

The emperor of destiny
“A search in Benares for Brahmins, the twice-born, leads to an encounter with a young member of the aristocracy of the mind”

The Twice-Born: Life and Death on the Ganges | Aatish Taseer

Natural sequence farming

How weeds help fight climate change
“Natural sequence farming has four main elements. First, restore fertility to improve the soil; second, increase groundwater; third, re-establish vegetation, including with weeds if necessary; fourth, understand the unique needs of a particular landscape.”

Flightlessness of a bird evolved twice

Birds on an island in the Indian Ocean evolved flightlessness twice “The flightless rail is descendent from a species of flying bird known as the white-throated rail (Dryolimnas cuvieri).

In the layers of rock immediately after the last inundation event, Julian found some more fossil bones. 'We found the leg bone of a rail in these deposits,' he says. 'But from that one bone we can see that it is already becoming more robust when compared to the flying rail, showing that the bird is getting heavier and so losing its ability to fly.'

This suggests that once the sea levels dropped again and Aldabra reappeared, the white-throated rail once again recolonised the islands and became flightless, giving rise to the modern birds we see today.

'There is no other case that I can find of this happening,' explains Julian, 'where you have a record of the same species of bird becoming flightless twice. It wasn't as if it were two different species colonising and becoming flightless. This was the very same ancestral bird.'”

Noah Smith on Emi Nakamura

A Rare Prize for an Economist Looking at the Big Picture by Noah Smith

Gudavalli

Just noticed the Wikipedia entry on Gudavalli. It has the picture of the library named after my mother Gadde Lalitha Devi. It is in the precinct named after Yalavarthi Nayudamma organised by Koduri brothers and the funds for the building were provided by my brother Gadde Kamalakar. In the days we lived in Gudavalli (1943-50 approximately) my mother used to get lot of books from the public library. Women did not go to the library those days I think. My cousin Gadde Babu Rajendra Prasad (Baburao) used to bring the books for her. It seems appropriate that her name is still associated with books in Gudavalli. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gudavalli,_Guntur_district 

A school that accepts waste plastic for fees

An article in better india
Another video https://youtu.be/ZHF1_TQXamg 

What happened Snowden papers

Silencing the Whistle: The Intercept Shutters Snowden Archive, Citing Cost Check also https://medium.com/@barrettbrown/why-the-intercept-really-closed-the-snowden-archive-e99f46bbfbbc by Barrett Brown 

About ‘Intercept’ of Pierre Omidyar

Whom Not To Trust - U.S. Government Indicts Another Intercept Source Lots of comments about Glenn Greenwald’s role.

Tongue twisters from South Indian languages

https://youtu.be/VP-wX-J9Sz8 I wonder whether there is some McGurk effect too.

Some hope for treating antibiotic resistance

Teenager recovers from near death in world-first GM virus treatment
“Finding the right phages for each patient is a big challenge. In the future, scientists hope it may be possible to conduct automated searches of phage libraries to identify personalised treatments. Some infections, such as the hospital superbug Staphylococcus aureus, are known to be genetically homogeneous enough that a few phages could treat almost all strains of the infection, raising the prospect of phage therapy becoming routine.

“We’re sort of in uncharted territory,” Hatfull said.”

Branko Milanovic on democracy

Democracy or dictatorship, which works better? A key quote is Oscar Wilde’s quip that “the trouble with socialism is that it takes up too many evenings”.

Trying to understand

What does one do when one does not understand? Keep staring at it so that it is in the front of your mind most of the time. In due course, after few days or months or years, one gets some feeling of familiarity and understanding. “His peculiar gift was the power of holding continuously in his mind a purely mental problem until he had seen straight through it. “ That was Keynes on Newton.  Well, one may not be able to see through it like Newton, but it seems to help. I was reminded of this when a collaborator used some material of whose basics I did not well and stared it for about six days before convincing myself. There were times when it took months or years. Here is a link to the Keynes article   Newton, the Man.

Oil again

“The US’s inherited mastery of the Gulf has given it a degree of leverage over both rivals and allies probably unparalleled in the history of empire. Washington has established a highly conservative regional order through alliances with successive military dictatorships in Egypt and an ethno-nationalist Israel. Its overwhelming military control of the region ensures that Japan, South Korea, India and even China must deal with the US in the knowledge that it could, if it wished, cut them off from their main source of energy. It is difficult to overstate the role of the Gulf in the way the world is currently run. In recent years, under both Obama and Trump, there has been talk of plans for a US withdrawal from the Middle East and a ‘pivot’ to Asia. If there are indeed such plans, it would suggest that recent US administrations are ignorant of the way the system over which they preside works.”  from What are we there for?, a review of AngloArabia: Why Gulf Wealth Matters to Britain by David Wearing by Tom Stevenson.
Check also Venezuela and binary choice by Craig Murray.

Sri Sri again

There seem to be quite few posts reminding us of Sr Sri and a video which I have not seen before is making rounds. A classmate says that he has never seen or heard Sri Sri and was touched by that video (See the previous post).
Thinking about the persisting appeal of Sri Sri, I am reminded of these words “We don’t need an answer to the question of life’s meaning, just as we don’t need a theory of everything. What we need are multifarious descriptions of many things, further descriptions of phenomena that change the aspect under which they are seen, that light them up and let us see them anew. “ of Simon Critchley writing about his philosophy teacher Frank Cioffi. And “They allow us to momentarily clarify and focus the bewilderment that is often what passes for our “inner life” and give us an overview on things. We might feel refreshed and illuminated, even slightly transformed, but it doesn’t mean we are going to stop scratching that itch. “  More literary people may look for nuanced thinking and find some cliches in his writings. But for me who finds many ‘faults in the texture of our existence’ Sri Sri has lighted up  many corners more often than many other writers.

SriSri

https://youtu.be/RjCyMD7o3Lk
Special issue of Eemaata about SriSri 2010
Some dialogues from Amalie rajyam 1981 

Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali !han documentary.

Probably around 1964.

Manna Dey

Would have been hundred today. An earlier portrait from Upperstall. Some favourite songs

From Parineeta  1953. The next from Boot Polish 1954

And the next from Devdas 1955,a duet with Greta Roy Dutt:

Richard Singer on ‘Find Metiabruz’

Some Nice Film and Dance References to the last Nawab of Awadh, Wajid Ali Shah (plus some other things) “The last dance in the lineup on Friday also contained references to Wajid Ali Shah. This dance was performed by the Courtyard Dancers, a dance group out of the Philadelphia area (which now has branches in Pittsburgh and Kolkata too). The title of the dance is “Find Metiabruz,” a reference to the neighborhood in Kolkata where Wajid Ali Shah was exiled by the British. Quoting from the description in the program guide (which also appears on YouTube under the video that I’ve linked to below), “In this dance theater piece, Metiabruz, a forgotten corner of a forgetful city, is a metaphor for the habitations of poetry.””

Water problems for women near Mumbai

Battling A Severe Water Crisis, These Tribal Women Are Rappelling Down A 6-Ft-Long Well To Get Water

Soft enforcements of culture

in a comment on women’ headwear of a particular sect, Ramarao Kanneganti says:

”We may think that women have choice; or underprivileged have choice. But, that choice is illusory. With one choice comes advantages: respect, community, safety, support, and cultural advantages. With other choice, they are left to create their own cultural, social universes. 

We are conditioned to think force means physical or mental. There are soft enforcements of culture. Lot of times they are for good; lot of times they are not. They are the ways societies perpetuate themselves in unwritten ways. 

How societies deal with breaking of these unwritten rules is an interesting study. Usually breaking them is not against the fundmental rules of the society. Progressive societies define a gradual way of making these changes (see: gay marriage etc). The conservative societies started making these unwritten rules as written rules.

Probably too obvious, but I find it fascinating how societies choose to govern themselves.”

Ahmadiyas in Sri Lanka

Muslims in hiding in Sri Lanka as tensions rise after bombings ““The people in Pakistan attacked us and say we’re not Muslims,” Tariq Ahmed, a 58-year-old Ahmadi who fled his home, told the Associated Press. “Then in Sri Lanka, people attack us because they say we are Muslims.””

A version of capitalism?

They worked in torrid heat for Exxon, Shell and Walmart for free from Al Jazeera

Dare to declare capitalism dead – before it takes us all down with it by George Monbiot

How a New Generation of Socialists Can Win Power (While Avoiding the Mistakes of the Past) 

, a review of book by Bhaskar Sunkara.

Pakistan Beats India In Happiness

Pakistan Beats India In Happiness “Pakistan in the 67th position, and India in the 140thposition—near the bottom of the list of the 156 countries ranked.....

“It must be other metrics, like income inequality and poverty,” says Udayan Roy, Professor of Economics at LIU POST. “That’s matters more than per capita GDP when it comes to well-being of the masses.”

 

Indeed, the rich are getting richer in India while the poor are getting poorer.“

Luz Long letter to Jesse Owens

From the series ‘Letters of Note’
“My heart tells me, if I be honest with you, that this is the last letter I shall ever write. If it is so, I ask you something. It is a something so very important to me. It is you go to Germany when this war done, someday find my Karl, and tell him about his father. Tell him, Jesse, what times were like when we not separated by war. I am saying—tell him how things can be between men on this earth. ”
The story at Olympics Great Olympic Friendships: Jesse Owens, Luz Long and a beacon of brotherly love at the Nazi games

Review of new biography of Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt

An old book and a review. Will Power : Why Shakespeare remains the necessary poet.  BY Adam Gopnik. The book at Amazon.com https://www.amazon.com/Will-World-How-Shakespeare-Became/dp/0393050572

Working with in the system

Harvard Grad Quits World Bank Job, Uses Data to bring Govt Help to 50 Lakh Indians! it seems that this is the kind of work that many groups of retired educated Indians and NRIs can do.

Some help for rural farmers

In Telengana, depressed farmers can phone a friend
An earlier link about Ramanjaneyulu and the organisation CSA This Man Gave up an IRS Job to Sow The Seeds of Change in 7000 Villages, 30 Lakh Acres!

Rural employment in India

Rural employment: As opportunities drop, women pay the highest price 

Google searches on different tragedies

Google Searches for Notre Dame 7 Times Higher Than Sri Lanka in Wake of Tragedies
Why I Said I Don’t Care About the Notre Dame Fire, Who (Understandably) Criticized Me, and Who (Surprisingly) Was Supportive

Roland Barthes article

on the death of the author. Here is the Wikipedia article which has a link to the actual article. A short write up from 2008 from The Guardian Signs of the times by Ben Myers who has several more articles on Barthes in The Guardian. 

John Pilger on Assange arrest

John Pilger: The Assange Arrest Is a Warning From History
“In the 1970s, I met Leni Reifenstahl, close friend of Adolf Hitler, whose films helped cast the Nazi spell over Germany.

She told me that the message in her films, the propaganda, was dependent not on “orders from above” but on what she called the “submissive void” of the public.

“Did this submissive void include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie?” I asked her.

“Of course,” she said, “especially the intelligentsia …. When people no longer ask serious questions, they are submissive and malleable. Anything can happen.”

And did.

The rest, she might have added, is history.”

The the healing power of gardens

Oliver Sacks: The Healing Power of Gardens

Underdevelopment of Africa

The Persisting Relevance of Walter Rodney’s “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” There are several specific ones related to France posted earlier. These from AlJazeera.

A poem by Li-Young Lee

Mnemonic His father was a political prisoner in Indonesia.

Another example of Richard Feynman’s genius

The Day Feynman Worked Out Black-Hole Radiation on My Blackboard

”After a few minutes, Feynman had worked out the process of spontaneous emission, which is what Stephen Hawking became famous for a year later. Feynman had it all on my blackboard. He wasn’t interested in copying down what he’d written. He just wanted to know how nature worked, and he had just learned that isolated black holes are capable of emitting energy when you take into account quantum effects. After he finished working it out, he brushed his hands together to get the chalk dust off them, and walked out of the office.

After Feynman left, Bill and Saul and I were looking at the blackboard. We were thinking it was probably important, not knowing how important. Bill and Saul had to go off to some appointment, and so they left the office. A little bit later, I left. But that night I realized this was a major thing that Feynman had done and I needed to hurry back to my office and copy down the equations. But when I got back to my office in the morning, the cleaning lady had wiped the blackboard clean.”

Hannah Arendt’s unfinished dialogue with Marx

The book on Marxthat Arendt never finished Interesting but does not seem particularly perceptive. “Instead of the means of production, Arendt would have us seize the means of exercising responsibility for the world.”

Amitava Kumar on Kanhaiya and others

Listening to Kanhaiya, Then Looking Back in Anger  Ravish Kumar might have figured in the earlier work of Amitava Kumar http://www.sunday-guardian.com/artbeat/between-fact-and-fiction-amitava-kumar-a-the-hunt-for-the-real-patna The article of Daisy Rockwell mentioned is ‘The flyover country’ which appeared in Chapati Mystery under her pen name at that time Lapata.

Notre Dame disaster

Reaction of the rich to the Notre Dame fire teaches us a lot about the world we live in

A short autobiography of B.R. Ambedkar

Waiting for a visa via Columbia University teaches Ambedkar’s biography, but few in India have even read it 

The cost of Gothic churches during the High Middle Ages

“During the High Middle Ages, Western Europe was plagued with famine, disease, and dismal economic growth. Population was increasing at a rate faster than the (Maddison, 2003), leaving the average person experiencing declining levels of sustenance every year. However, during the period known as the High Middle Ages, between 1100-1250, the Catholic Church built over 1400 Gothic churches in the Paris Basin alone. The lavish ecclesiastical building campaigns of the Church represented a portion of the GDP for the region, but what percentage of GDP does this building campaign represent? Several scholars have studied the explicit (tangible) costs of the ecclesiastical buildings constructed in the High Middle Ages. However, no scholar has examined the implicit (opportunity) cost of unskilled labor required for their construction, or tried to estimate the total cost of their building as a percentage of regional GDP. This thesis examines the implicit costs of building the Gothic churches of the Paris Basin built between 1100-1250, and attempts to estimate the percentage of the regional economy that was devoted to building them. I estimate that over this 150-year period, on average, 21.5 percent of the regional economy was devoted to the construction of these Gothic churches, 1.5 percent of which is directly related to the implicit cost of labor.” from a thesis “How Much did the Gothic Churches Cost? An Estimate of Ecclesiastical Building Costs in the Paris Basin between 1100-1250” by Amy Denning, via MR.
see also

   Desa Charitralu  (Histories of the Nations)

                  -Sree Sree (Srirangam Srinivasarao)
                 Maha Prasthanam
               
-*-Translation from Telugu-*-

Whichever country's history you see      [E Desa charitra chusina
what reason is there to be proud?        [ E munnadi, garva karanam?
Entire history of human race             [Nara Jaathi charitra samastham
is exploitation of others                [ Parapeedana parayanatwam

Entire history of human race             [Nara jaathi charitra samastham
is an exercise in mutual destruction     [ Parasparaaharanodyogam
entire history of human race             [nara jaathi charitra samastam
is drenched in the blood of the wars     [ rana raktha pravaha siktham

Terror as its principal                      [Bheebatsa rasa pradhanam
Ghostly herds as its equivalent              [ visacha gana samavakaram
The entire history of human race is          [narajathi charitra samastham
leeching of the penniless                    [ daridrulanu kaalchuku thenadam

The mighty made slaves                       [Balavanthulu durbala jaathini
 out of the meek race                        [ Banisalanu kaavincharu
The murderers became owners of the earth     [narahanthalu dharaadhi patulai
 and climbed to glory in history             [charaitramuna prasiddi kekkiri

A place that is not a battle field           [ranarangam kaani chotu bhu
 cannot be found anywhere on earth           [ sthalamantha vedakina dorakadu
Entire past is wet with blood                [gathamantha thadise rakthamuna
 if not,  with tears                         [ kaakunte kanneelulatho

Extinguished families                        [challarina samsaaralu
decimated populations                        [ maraninchina jana sandoham
cries  of the helpless                       [asahaayula hahakaaram
are echoing history                          [ charitralo moolugu thunnavi

Malice, selfishness                          [Vaishamyam, Swardhaparatwam
connivance, jealousies and conflicts         [ Koutilayam, eershyalu, spardhalu
Armed with tricks and disguises              [maayalatho, maaruperla tho
proved the course of the history             [charatragathi niroopinchinavi

Chengiz Kahn, Thamarlane                       [Chengiz Kahn, thamarlenu
Nadirshaw, Ghajni, Gori                        [ Nadirshaw, Ghajni, Ghori
Sikander--what does it matter who they are?    [Sinkandaro evadaithe nem?
Each one a grand murderer                      [ Okkokkadu maha hantakudu

Vikings, white huns                           [ Vikingulu, swetha hunulu
Sithians, Parsis                              [  sithinlu, paraseekulu
Pindaris and Thugs built                      [ pindarulu, thaggulu kattiri
a bridge of swords to the time                [  Kalaaniki kattula vanthena

In the dark ages of ignorance                 [Agyanapu tandha yugam lo
in hunger and passion--                       [ aakalilo, aavesham lo
guided by unknown  and extreme forces         [Theliyani E theevra sakthulo
marched people-- [thinking]                   [ nadapisthe, nadhichi manushyulu

everything is their own achievement           [antha thama prayojakatvam
they are the lords of the earth               [ thaame bhuvi kadhinaadhulamani
built kingdoms                                [sthapinchina saamrajyalu
made artificial laws [which]                  [ nirminchina kruthrima chattal

with the rise of other forces                 [ Itarethara sakthulu leste
fell down as houses of cards!                 [  padipoyenu peka medalai
from the forces engaged in mutual battle      [ parasparam sangharshinchina
rose the history                              [  sakthulato charitra puttenu

The deception that went on for ever           [ Chirakalam jarigina mosam
the heinous crimes of the mighty              [  balavanthula dowrjanyalu
the schemes of the rich                       [ dhanavanthula pannagalu
even now? can't be allowed from now on        [  Inkaana? ekapai chellavu

A social justice based on exploitation of     [ Oka vyakthini marokka vyakthi
One person by another person                  [  oka jaathini veroka jaathi
one race by a different race                  [ peedinche saanghika dhrmam
even now? can't go from now on                [  Inkaana? ekapai saagadu

The rickshaw-wallah in china                      [cheena lo rickshaw walla
the mine worker of Czech                      [ check desapu gani pani manishi
the ship-cleaner of Ireland                   [irelanduna oda kalaasi
All the down-trodden peoples                  [anagaarina aarthulandaru--

Hotentots, Zulus, Negroes                     [Hotentot, julu, neegro
the different races of all continents         [ khandantara naanaa jaathulu
will broadcast in one voice                   [chaaritraka yadartha tatwam
the true nature of the history                [Chaatista roka gonthukatho

Which battle took place why?                  [E uddham enduku jarigeno
which kingdown lasted how long?               [ E rajyam ennallundo
the dates, and the documents                  [Taareekhulu, dastavejulu
These are not the essence of history,         [ivi kaavoyi, charitra saram
                           my friend!

This queen's love affairs                     [Eee ranee prema puranam
The expenses of that invasion                 [ Aa muttadi kaina kharchulu
schemes, and accounts                         [Matalabulu, Kaifeeyatulu
these are not the essence of history,         [ivi kaavoyi, charitra saram
                        my friend!

The stories hidden under the                  [Ithihaasapu cheekati konam
 the dark corners of the history              [ Attaduguna padi kaanpinchani
are wanted now!                               [kadhalannee kavalippudu
A truth that won't hide by being hidden       [daacheste daagani satyam

In the civilisation of nile river             [Nilu nadee naagarikathalo
 what is the life style of a common man? [sic][ saamanyuni jeevana mettidi?
In the building of Taj Mahal                  [taj mahal nirmananiki
 who are the labourers that lifted the stones?[ rallethina kooli levvaru?

In the invasion of the dynasty                 [Saamrajyapu Dandayatra lo
 what are the braveries of the common people?  [ samaanyula sahasamettidi?
It is not the Palanquin of the king, my friend,[Prabhuvekkina pallaki kaadoyi
 who are the bearers that carried it?          [Adi mosina boyi levvaru?

In takshasila, Pataliputram                   [Taskhasila, Pataliputram
 on the shores of Mediterranean sea           [ Madhyadhara samudra teeram
In Harappa, Mohanjadaro                       [Harappa, Mohanjadaro
 on cro-magnon  cave fronts--                 [Cro-Manyon guha mukhallo

In the twilights of the history               [Chaaritraka Vibhata Sandhyala
 what was the development of human story?     [ Maanava kadha vikasamettidi
What country, in what time                    [E Desham E kalam lo
 achieved what grand truths?                  [ Saadhinde paramardham?

Which sculpture? what literature?             [E Silpam? E Saahityam?
 Which science? what  music?                  [ E Sastram? E Gandharvam?
To which rays is this renunciation?           [E velgulakee prasthanam?
 Which dream? What conquest?                  [ E swapnam? E digvijayam?

==========

About theories

Long read from Jim Baggot Status anxiety: all ‘throries’ Are not the same via Why trust a theory? Which has many more related links. I read and liked one of Jim Baggot’s books ‘A farewell to reality’. More about Jim Baggot here.

For Julian Assange

Radical Thinking Must Fall Like a Gentle Mist, Not a Heavy Downpour This seems to be from Vijay Prashad

Mating dance, bird of paradise

https://youtu.be/rX40mBb8bkU

Street music from India

It is ektara, I think. 

Lovely rap from Pakistan

https://youtu.be/IffLUlwY0AE

Anu’s new blade

https://youtu.be/bcDagxUK2wk 

Law education in India

Edward Berman and others have mentioned that the emphasis on higher education soon after independence might not have been beneficial to Indians. It seems to have spawned global elites who seem to me more in touch with foreign things than Indian. This may be partly due to the career opportunities that were available or which seemed attractive. Somehow, law education in India seems to be bit of an exception, perhaps because it is more tied to immediate realities. The following paper was linked nine years ago and I am reading it again

Professor Kingsfield Goes to Delhi: American Academics, the Ford Foundation, and the Development of Legal Education in India by Jayanth K. Krishnan.

Edward Berman’s book The ideology of philanthropy is not easily available now. Here is a review by Michael Barker and also an interview With Edward Berman.

P.S.  These were linked earlier but posted again since some of the links disappeared when I tried to revisit the topic.

The great African wall

Africa is building a wall—a wall of trees across the entire continent that's changing the world
An earlier article by Jim Morrison at Smithsonian.
Check also the Wikipedia article Great green wall Which has links to similar efforts from China.

Two on triangular slave trade

Historians expose early scientists’ debt to the slave trade “In the “triangular trade” of the 16th through 19th centuries, millions of people were shipped to the Americas as slaves, raw materials were transported to Europe, and manufactured goods went to Africa. The three-way trade provided European collectors access to specimens from Africa and the Americas.”
Another related triangular trade posted earlier  “Here is how that form of economic skullduggery went down: molasses was imported from the Caribbean islands to the New England states, and the colonists distilled the molasses into rum. A portion of the rum was sold domestically, but much of it was transported to Africa, where it was traded for slaves. The slaves were packed into the holds of tiny wooden boats and sold into bondage, either in the Caribbean sugar plantations or the American colonies. The profits were used to purchase more molasses, which was then imported back to New England to restart the triangle. While the trade was not terribly efficient, it worked well enough to sustain the many and enrich the few.” from Ground down molasses 

Emmanuel Todd’s new book

“But as T Eliot, top bard, pointed out, humankind cannot bear very much reality. We get protective, especially where our young ones are concerned. And this is where a different kind of family set-up stems from. Emmanuel Todd, who is a demographer as well as anthropologist, hit me with an amazing statistic. In Iraq, 35 per cent of married couples are first-cousins (he reckons that this figure can rise to 50 per cent in Pakistan). He finds that across vast areas of Eurasia, a different kind of kinship system has developed which is patrilineal and communitarian, with fathers transmitting power and property to sons and keen to see close relatives marrying. This leads not just to women being disenfranchised and segregated, but to the subordination of the individual, social stasis and clan wars. The powerful point that he makes, contrary to conventional wisdom, is that the more repressive, controlling, non-nuclear, more centripetal and inward-looking (or “endogamous”) family is not “primitive”, although it may well be medieval. It is the nuclear (and “exogamous”) family that is more primitive, more caveman, more nomad. The cosy-cousins family is a much more recent invention and should, to his way of thinking be deconstructed. We need to go more primitive, not less.” From the review of Lineages of Modernity: A History of Humanity from the Stone Age to Homo Americanus’ in The Independent. Table of contents here.

An Amartya Sen chair

LSE announces Amartya Sen Chair in Inequality Studies and
 Amartya Sen’s bicycle now in a museum

Their pain and our pain

Why the sexes don’t feel pain the same way 

Coexisting with cancer

Tasmanian devils 'adapting to coexist with cancer

The great Bengal famine debate continues

A Recent study of soil moisture in Bengal indicated that there were reasonable food stocks before the 1943 famine. But studies by others used by Madhusree Mukherjee indicate that there was fungus infection which probably caused depletion of food. Sen claimed the report of the infection was only from two stations. Others contend that the stations were 150 km apart which indicated a widespread infection. But both sides seem to blame the British policies for the disaster. Amartya Sen says in his response to Madhusree Mukherjee, he says “... and in her single-minded, if understandable, attempt to nail down Churchill, she ends up absolving British imperial policy of confusion and callousness, which had disastrous consequences.” This and Some of the links to the discussion Amartya Sen, Churchill and Two Rice Research Stations in Bengal

The end of the dinosaurs

These fossils may capture the day the dinosaurs died. Here's what you should know from National Geographic by Michael Greshko. A longer article in The NewYorker The day the dinosaurs died by Douglas Preston

Different versions of reality

Different Versions Of Reality Can Exist In The Quantum World, Study Confirms “The particle assumes fixed polarization once the person in the lab measures it, but for someone outside of the laboratory who is not aware of the results of the measurements, the unmeasured photon remains in a state of superposition.” The idea is due to Eugene Wigner,called Wigner’s froend, inside and outside here are replaced by entangled particles.

Zara Bachke 1959, Same song at three places

https://youtu.be/2bXETrxeSfw

Morality as cooperation (MAC)

What’s Wrong with Moral Foundations Theory, and How to get Moral Psychology Right “According to MAC, morality consists of a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation recurrent in human social life. ”
Link to a longer article Mapping morality with a compass: Testing the theory of ‘morality-as-cooperation’ with a new questionnaire 

The poor have been always with us

Pomei’s fast food bar unearthed in city after 2000 years “The 150 or so thermopolia, or snack bars, dotted across the city were mostly used by the poorer residents, who rarely had cooking facilities in their home, to grab a snack or drink. Typical menus included coarse bread with salty fish, baked cheese, lentils and spicy wine.”

Important medical news?

Scientists find genetic mutation that makes woman feel no pain “Jo Cameron, 71, has a mutation in a previously unknown gene which scientists believe must play a major role in pain signalling, mood and memory. The discovery has boosted hopes of new treatments for chronic pain which affects millions of people globally.”

Robert Sapolsky on nationalism

This is your brain on nationalism “Modern society may well be stuck with nationalism and many other varieties of human divisiveness, and it would perhaps be more productive to harness these dynamics rather than fight or condemn them. Instead of promoting jingoism and xenophobia, leaders should appeal to people’s innate in-group tendencies in ways that incentivize cooperation, accountability, and care for one’s fellow humans. Imagine a nationalist pride rooted not in a country’s military power or ethnic homogeneity but in the ability to take care of its elderly, raise children who score high on tests of empathy, or ensure a high degree of social mobility. Such a progressive nationalism would surely be preferable to one built on myths of victimhood and dreams of revenge. But with the temptation of mistaking the familiar for the superior still etched into the mind, it is not beyond the human species to go to war over which country’s people carry out the most noble acts of random kindness. The worst of nationalism, then, is unlikely to be overcome anytime soon.“

Review of a book by Sanjay Subrahmanyam

Europe's India - Words, People, Empires, 1500-1800 by Sanjay Subrahmanyam Just started reading.

Long read on American power under Trump

Is this the end of the American Century? By Adam Tooze.
“As of today, two years into the Trump presidency, it is a gross exaggeration to talk of an end to the American world order. The two pillars of its global power – military and financial – are still firmly in place. What has ended is any claim on the part of American democracy to provide a political model. This is certainly a historic break. Trump closes the chapter begun by Woodrow Wilson in the First World War, with his claim that American democracy articulated the deepest feelings of liberal humanity. A hundred years later, Trump has for ever personified the sleaziness, cynicism and sheer stupidity that dominates much of American political life. What we are facing is a radical disjunction between the continuity of basic structures of power and their political legitimation.”

Sanctions regime

Sanctions still effective but confusing “As Newman and I discuss in our research, the United States has expanded its use of sanctions in the recent past. It has been able to apply new kinds of power, leveraging the central role that the dollar and financial messaging systems such as SWIFT play in the global financial architecture. The United States has been able to rely on a sophisticated administrative apparatus, centered in the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), to administer sanctions policy. However, this power has its limits. It works best when other countries — especially U.S. allies — respect it and go along with it. ”
Somewhat related America’s Corruption Is a National Security Threat 

Two articles on Alan Krueger

A hero of the revolution By David Warsh
James Buchanan calling the kettle black By David Glaesner contains this from James Buchanan “...we have not yet become a bevy of camp-following whores.”

An extended discussion on Mueller report

As Mueller Finds No Collusion, Did Press Overhype Russiagate? Glenn Greenwald vs. David Cay Johnston There is also a discussion of an earlier interview with Noam Chomsky at the end.

Tayla Harris

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-20/tayla-harris-kicking-a-football/10921904
https://youtu.be/ZkBG33kPglw

Complex societies precede moralising gods

Complex societies precede moralising gods throughout world history by several authors including Peter Turchin  in Nature Letters. A discussion by Razib Khan here. 

Pranab Bardhan on the two largest democracies

Upcoming Challenges for Two of the Largest Democracies Towards the end, he says “But, unfortunately, the corrosive effects of majoritarian ethnic nationalism may outlast any possible changes in elections or leaders. This is because they are partly rooted in deeper social changes in these transitional societies. ” The second sentence does not see consistent with the first. Later, he expresses the hope “But ultimately the survival of some minimum quality of democracy in both countries may depend less on firmly-held secular or liberal values, which are often quite shallow in the general population in spite of a long history of syncretic folk traditions, and more on the extreme social heterogeneity and divisions at all levels in both countries. The latter can, paradoxically, act as a kind of limited insurance against a long reign of intolerance or the predominance of any particular sect or creed. Social diversity can, at least up to a point, serve as a bulwark against the politics of exclusivity.” Diversity is supposed to decrease social capital ( studies of Robert Putnam and others) but may be centuries of practice helps in survival. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-diversity-create-distrust/ 

Padmini and Ragini non classical dance

https://youtu.be/EXs5-fHUGr8 

Savitri and Meenakumari in similar dances

https://youtu.be/A4sRQxv44yUn

https://youtu.be/izCVKnHFWJg

A dance competition

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g_W2yxdhM30&feature=share Hindi and Tamil versions are well known, and available in colour.The video below may not work in which case try the link above.

Density is destiny

Density is destiny; economists predict the far future :”If we look around the world today we see that the places with the densest populations, such as China and India, are poor. But in the long-run of history that doesn’t make sense. As Paul Romer, and others, have emphasized, ideas are the ultimate source of wealth and more people means more ideas. As a result, innovation and GDP per capita should be higher in places and times with more people. The fact that China and India are poor today is an out-of-equilibrium anomaly that happened because they were slower than the West to adopt the institutions of free markets and capitalism necessary to leverage ideas into output. China and India weren’t relatively poor in the past, however, and they won’t be relatively poor in the future.” I am not so sure. It may be more like crabs in a bucket.

Temporary scientists

Science, small groups and stochasticity via Marginal Revolution post The rise of temporary scientist

About the current situation in India

AboutGauri Lankesh by Rolli Romig. The incubation from Gujarati explained by a judge, Himanshu Trivedi, who quit after the riots. “In a phone interview with Scroll.in from Auckland, New Zealand, Trivedi revealed details about his experiences during and after the communal riots that shook his faith in the justice system: he not only witnessed police complicity in the attack on Muslims, but also saw lawyers and judges display extremely prejudiced opinions.” From I was sick of the hateful climate in Gujarat: judge explains why he quit after the riots. My feel that this sort of feeling is common all over India .

Two on rents

Berlin’s grassroots plan to renationalise up to 200,000 ex-council homes from corporate landlords
Gentrification Is a Feature, Not a Bug, of Capitalist Urban Planning

Niti and dharma

‘This country has seen the conflict between ecclesiastical law and secular law long before Europeans sought to challenge the authority of the Pope. Kautilya’s Arthash ̄astra lays down the foundation of secular law. In India unfortunately ecclesiastical law triumphed over secular law. In my opinion this was the one of the greatest disasters in the country’.
—B.R. Ambedkar
Beginning quote of the interesting paper “Notes on Political Thought in Medieval and Early Modern South India” byVelcheru  Narayanarao and Sanjay Subrahmanyam downloadable at Academia.edu
Abstract
This essays deals with a neglected and significant strand of Indian political thought by describing and analysing the corpus known as n ̄ıti in the context of medieval and early modern South India (in particular with reference to the Telugu-speaking region). Works of n ̄ıti are presented here within a larger context, as they evolve from the medieval Andhra of the Kakatiyas into the Vijayanagara period, the Nayakas, and beyond. They are also opposed and contrasted to other texts written within the broad category of dharmash ̄astra, which seem to deal with a far more conservative project for the management of society and politics within a caste-based framework. Authors and compilers dealt with include Baddena and Madiki Singana, but also the celebrated emperor-poet Krishnadevaraya (r. 1509–29). An argument is made for the continued relevance of these texts for the conduct of politics in South Asia, into and beyond the colonial period.

D.D.Kosambi and Benjamin Franklin

starting from different directions predict similar futures for their respective countries. D.D.Kosambi seems to see the possibility of a ‘strong man’ in India starting from some ideas of Marx (via Swapan Bhattacharjee). From a completely different direction Benjamin Franklin saw the possibility of despots in America. “But just as the Indian bourgeoisie imports the latest foreign machinery for production, so, when all else fails, the latest capitalist developments in politics will also be imported. And this means fascism, in the long run the only possible alternative to socialism. Already the talk in circles that count is of the need for a "strong man." And models are at hand, from nearby Thailand to faraway Egypt and Guatemala.” from On the class structure of India. BenjaminFranklin’s words at the Constitutional Convention onSeptember 17, 1787 at the age of 81:“ … for having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought were right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow the more apt I am to doubt my own judgement, and to pay more respect to the judgement ofothers. Most men indeed as well as most sects in religion, think themselves in possession of all truth,and that wherever others differ from them it is so fare rror….”
He goes on to say:“… I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general government necessary for us, there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered; and I believe further that this is likely to be well administered for several years, and can only end in despotism as other forms before it,when people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.”

Work of GV Ramanjaneyulu on sustainable agriculture

This Man Gave up an IRS Job to Sow The Seeds of Change in 7000 Villages, 30 Lakh Acres!:
“And so, the Centre of Sustainable Agriculture (CSA) was formed to propagate sustainable agricultural practices, that would not only pull distressed farmers out of perpetual poverty but also create a model that could be scaled, through the support of state governments.

From 2005 to 2008, they partnered with the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty, (SERP), the then Government of Andhra Pradesh, which is a federation of women self-help groups. Training women farmers for 45 weeks over two seasons through Farmer Field Schools (FFS), they helped propagate Non-Pesticidal Management (NPM). This led to freeing over 30 lakh acres of land from chemical pesticides across 7,000 villages.” And an interview in Telugu.

https://youtu.be/h8A3zTT3VCs

Becoming

See a salamander grow from a single cell from National Geographic

Indigenous entrepreneur

‘Seed Mother’ who never went to school has lessons for scientists

Haiti and Venezuela

How the U.S. Is Strangling Haiti as It Attempts Regime Change in Venezuela :”Since 2007, Venezuela had provided $4 billion in oil through Petrocaribe.

The debt that Venezuela had, in the long-term thinking of Chávez, was because of something that happened in 1815. The first president of the Republic of Haiti, Alexandre Pétion, gave Simón Bolivar sanctuary and armed him to return and liberate Gran Colombia (the vast northern lands of South America). Bolivar had promised Pétion that he would emancipate the enslaved Africans in Gran Colombia. This is what he did. Without Pétion’s demand and Bolivar’s victory, Chávez—whose ancestors had been enslaved—said on a visit to Haiti in 2007, “I would not be here.”

Haiti’s Debt to the West

No such generosity has come from the West. In fact, from the first fires of Haiti’s revolution, Western powers—from France to the United States—have attempted to destroy the Haitian republic. In 1804, France forced Haiti to agree to pay it $21 billion for the “theft” of enslaved Africans and others. It took Haiti till 1947 to pay off this odious, disgusting debt. France has never apologized for it. Nor has Citibank, which made billions off the payments. Neither France nor Citibank has considered replaying the inhumane plunder.

Venezuela’s generosity was not matched by any Western country or financial institution. Instead, the West piled on debt upon debt onto Haiti. Even the “assistance” given during the 2010 earthquake made Western companies money.”
More on Haiti Haiti still pays the price for having fought slavery 

The forest whisperer

The woodsman who's revealing the secret lives of trees “He wrote the book “The Hidden Life of Trees” in 2015, spelling out the communication patterns of the forest, how tree families support new generations, and their strategies to fight predators such as moss, lichen and fungi.”

A selection of articles on MMT

MMT streetfighting of which I tried reading MMT for Dummies  by Edward Harrison : “ Every single controversy involving MMT revolves around this one concept - boosting demand with new spending or by cutting taxes, and thus ballooning the deficit -- and doing so without seeming to worry about the deficit consequences. Even 'Keynesians' say you have to worry about the consequences of deficits, less now than at other times; but you still have to worry.“

Aruna Tella is 63 today

copied this from a Facebook post of  vs Kumar:
కష్టజీవి కి కేరాఫ్ అడ్రస్
వంట పనివరలకు నీడనిచ్చిన చెట్టు
హక్కుల ఉద్యమాలకు ఊపిరి
స్త్రీ హక్కుల సారధి
అభాగ్యులకు అమ్మ...   మా అరుణక్క

జన్మదిన శుభాకాంక్షలు..  కుమార్.

A world without clouds

A world without clouds can result in extreme global warming.

Two about Gina Rippon

Meet the neuroscientist shattering the myth of the gendered brain

https://youtu.be/SBs0HbHKWyY

Two on knitting

About Volcker years Other people’s blood :
“Teeters, also the first woman on the Fed board, told journalist William Greider that “None of these guys has ever sewn anything in his life.””

The calming effects of sewing can help people express and heal themselves 

Hunnic wars (India)

HANS BAKKER: MONUMENTS OF HOPE, GLOOM, AND GLORY IN THE AGE OF THE HUNNIC WARS. 50 YEARS THAT CHANGED INDIA (484 - 534)
From the abstract:
“The period 484 – 534 was a violent and perturbing one, in which the Gupta Empire crumbled and the political map of northern India was redrawn. At the same time, state-sponsored devotion to Viṣṇu gave way to royal worship of Śiva. The deadly confrontation ‘with rude and cruel kings of the present Kali age, who delight in viciousness’ gave rise to a resilient spirit that found expression in art, religion and Sanskrit literature.“