Michael Hudson: Debt, Land and Money, From Polanyi to the New Economic Archaeology There is also a discussion of Marx and origin of money along the way,
Friday, September 11, 2020
Tuesday, September 08, 2020
Bellator 2019
Available on YouTube https://youtu.be/xs3aPA3X_5Y
One of the popular dances from the film https://youtu.be/sDZA54sTqwQ
One of the popular dances from the film https://youtu.be/sDZA54sTqwQ
Sunday, September 06, 2020
S. Radhakrishnsn
The Calm, Studied Brilliance Of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan by Keerthik Sasidharsn in Swarajya, considered a right we ing magazine.
David Graeber links
David Graeber Left Us a Parting Gift — His Thoughts on Kropotkin’s “Mutual Aid” by Pier Marco Tacca
An Everyday Anarchist: David Graeber, 1961-2020 by Paul Mason:"His most profound insight was, for me, not the need for prefigurative activism, but a critique of Marxism’s totalising claims and the all or nothing strategy that flows from them. Graeber’s antidote to the fatalism of a generation who thought themselves trapped in capitalism’s inescapable matrix was to reject the idea of a “capitalist totality”: there is capital, and it subsumes other things – like friendship, co-operation, consumption and culture."
A Jewish goodbye to David Graeber by Benjamin Balthaser in Jacobin
For the first time in my life, I'm frightened to be Jewish by David Graeber himself in Open Democracy about an year ago.
I neglected reading David Graeber because of his cantankerous attitude in some discussion, see for example, the discussion on his book 'Debt' in Crooked Timber https://crookedtimber.org/2012/02/22/seminar-on-david-graebers-debt-the-first-5000-years-introduction/.
And https://crookedtimber.org/?s=David+Graeber
But from these articles, if seems that he had several interesting ideas worth studying.
An Everyday Anarchist: David Graeber, 1961-2020 by Paul Mason:"His most profound insight was, for me, not the need for prefigurative activism, but a critique of Marxism’s totalising claims and the all or nothing strategy that flows from them. Graeber’s antidote to the fatalism of a generation who thought themselves trapped in capitalism’s inescapable matrix was to reject the idea of a “capitalist totality”: there is capital, and it subsumes other things – like friendship, co-operation, consumption and culture."
A Jewish goodbye to David Graeber by Benjamin Balthaser in Jacobin
For the first time in my life, I'm frightened to be Jewish by David Graeber himself in Open Democracy about an year ago.
I neglected reading David Graeber because of his cantankerous attitude in some discussion, see for example, the discussion on his book 'Debt' in Crooked Timber https://crookedtimber.org/2012/02/22/seminar-on-david-graebers-debt-the-first-5000-years-introduction/.
And https://crookedtimber.org/?s=David+Graeber
But from these articles, if seems that he had several interesting ideas worth studying.
Monday, August 24, 2020
Trump medicine may be working if given in early stages
Long read Hydroxychloroquine: A Morality Tale by Norman Doidge
“ The Henry Ford study also studied HCQ in combination with azithromycin to improve outcomes, and it did. It specified all doses, seemed to get them right, and gave them at the proper time, early, right after admission, which as we’ve seen, is crucial to precede the cytokine storm. The study followed the patient’s electrocardiograms (ECGs), and heart status throughout, checking for any of the alleged cardiac problems, to make sure the HCQ didn’t cause harm. It found that with early prescription of HCQ (82% within 24 hours of hospitalization, 91% within 48 hours), the patients had far fewer cardiac problems than are usually seen in later stages of COVID. Since this study, multiple studies have come out showing that HCQ, when properly monitored, is notassociated with increased cardiac fatalities. The authors made the very sensible point, that it is probably the case that we will have to work with several drugs to treat this disease, and the combinations will likely be different for different patients. Imagine.”
That is just one except. There is a lot more in the article. A shorter version is needed.
A shorter article on a much touted drug https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/remdesivir-clinical-trial-jama-gilead-bad-science/
“ The Henry Ford study also studied HCQ in combination with azithromycin to improve outcomes, and it did. It specified all doses, seemed to get them right, and gave them at the proper time, early, right after admission, which as we’ve seen, is crucial to precede the cytokine storm. The study followed the patient’s electrocardiograms (ECGs), and heart status throughout, checking for any of the alleged cardiac problems, to make sure the HCQ didn’t cause harm. It found that with early prescription of HCQ (82% within 24 hours of hospitalization, 91% within 48 hours), the patients had far fewer cardiac problems than are usually seen in later stages of COVID. Since this study, multiple studies have come out showing that HCQ, when properly monitored, is notassociated with increased cardiac fatalities. The authors made the very sensible point, that it is probably the case that we will have to work with several drugs to treat this disease, and the combinations will likely be different for different patients. Imagine.”
That is just one except. There is a lot more in the article. A shorter version is needed.
A shorter article on a much touted drug https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/remdesivir-clinical-trial-jama-gilead-bad-science/
Saturday, August 22, 2020
Friday, August 21, 2020
Jonathan Adrian on sleeping positions
Why You’ve Been Sleeping All Wrong
“ By removing the pillow, we naturally transition into a lateral position, as it renders other possible positions quite disagreeable. If you don’t believe me, try it at home tonight. Hide your pillows in the cupboard, and then try to sleep without them. You’ll probably end up turning your arm into a makeshift pillow, but that’s kind of what you want, because you end up on your side, sleeping your way into a more salubrious future.”
“ By removing the pillow, we naturally transition into a lateral position, as it renders other possible positions quite disagreeable. If you don’t believe me, try it at home tonight. Hide your pillows in the cupboard, and then try to sleep without them. You’ll probably end up turning your arm into a makeshift pillow, but that’s kind of what you want, because you end up on your side, sleeping your way into a more salubrious future.”
Is it time for MMT?
Like It or Not, a Modern Monetary Theory Experiment Is Underway “ Robert Hormats, who has worked in senior economic and trade policy roles under five different U.S. presidents and spent 25 years at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., believes the Covid-19 pandemic has forced the government to embark on what could be considered an involuntary experiment with Modern Monetary Theory..... What could disrupt the markets and what could cause either the Treasury to run into trouble with its issues, or the Fed to feel uncomfortable underwriting those issues for the indefinite future? We don't know that. This is all terra incognita.”
About collapse of civilizations
“The only material technologies that routinely survive collapse are small-scale agriculture and small-scale metallurgy, likely because the social technologies needed to sustain such smaller communities can arise organically.” From an article by Samo Burja Why civilizations collapse.
More on Ilaiyaraja
There’s India in Ilaiyaraja's music “ The phenomenon Ilaiyaraja has to be located in his journey from communism to spirituality -- both of which aspire for the greater common good. Ilaiyaraja’s music presents an integrated idea of India. May he be blessed with creative eternity.”
In Telugu KiranPrabha on the Beginnings, says his name used to be Daniel Rajaiah.
His friendship with SPB, both started around the same time “ Ilayaraja mentioned his early days with SPB when they did a number of live concerts before he got opportunities to compose music for films. Both have risen from the ranks. SPB left Andhra Pradesh for Chennai despite acquiring an Engineering degree. He was the lead singer at Ilayaraja’s live music events, with Ilayaraja and his brothers providing orchestral support.”
An earlier post here.
In Telugu KiranPrabha on the Beginnings, says his name used to be Daniel Rajaiah.
His friendship with SPB, both started around the same time “ Ilayaraja mentioned his early days with SPB when they did a number of live concerts before he got opportunities to compose music for films. Both have risen from the ranks. SPB left Andhra Pradesh for Chennai despite acquiring an Engineering degree. He was the lead singer at Ilayaraja’s live music events, with Ilayaraja and his brothers providing orchestral support.”
An earlier post here.
Sunday, August 16, 2020
Dharavi model
Jayaprakash Muliyil, India’s leading epidemiologist, who is part of one of the Indian government’s sub-committees on COVID, said, “Two factors must have worked. One, whatever screening they did, it helped extract the virus out of the system. Two, herd immunity must have done the trick.” From Did Dharavi model work? Is it herd immunity or plain luck?
The Earlier article of the series “ Testing was to be on a gargantuan scale — virtually impossible. Instead, team started to screen people on a massive scale by visiting houses and setting up fever camps in localities. Temperatures were taken by infrared thermometers and blood oxygen levels were read by pulse oximeters.
The Earlier article of the series “ Testing was to be on a gargantuan scale — virtually impossible. Instead, team started to screen people on a massive scale by visiting houses and setting up fever camps in localities. Temperatures were taken by infrared thermometers and blood oxygen levels were read by pulse oximeters.
Screening holds no parallel to testing. But by screening about 0.4 million people helped in taking out suspect cases — some 15,000 — from the system. Among those suspected to be carrying the SARS-CoV-2 virus, those with symptoms were quarantined and subsequently tested. The ones who tested positive, were sent to hospital isolation wards; those negative remained at the quarantine centres for 14 days.
While ‘test-test-test’ was the mantra of the experts, on ground in Dharavi it was ‘screen-test-screen-test’. This, local doctors and other epidemiologists said, is at the heart of the Dharavi model. It showed how smart testing could be a way out of shortages of resources and kits.”
Saturday, August 15, 2020
Friday, August 14, 2020
Wednesday, August 12, 2020
Monday, August 10, 2020
Early days of women in Bombay films
“Interestingly, it is Saraswati Devi herself who is credited with introducing the playback system in Indian cinema. According to legend, Chandraprabha nee Manek had to shoot a song sequence but had a sore throat. Himansu Rai suggested that Khorshed sing into the microphone instead while Manek moved her lips in a synchronized manner. And thus was the playback mode devised. The stories of women’s work in film, told through certain moments of irruption, also yield details of practice and innovation that tend to get obscured in the rush to glorify watershed transformative moments.” From
Notes on a Scandal: Writing Women’s Film History Against an Absent Archive
Debashree Mukherjee
Notes on a Scandal: Writing Women’s Film History Against an Absent Archive
Debashree Mukherjee
Virtue signaling
I met him about 7-8 years ago when I was visiting a village to help with Dalits with micro loans and such. He just finished his IT degree and gave me a ride of about 100 kilometres around the villages and to Pedavadlapudi. We got talking. He just finished his IT degree but was working as a labourer in his village since he could not get a job. At that time there were some short courses in Hyderabad which specialised in training graduates to jobs. I had 20,000 rupees left. I gave to him and asked him to go for some training in Hyderabad and try his luck. He did but fell sick since he was trying to save on food. During our journey he took me to the college where he studied and reminisced about his happy days in college. Some time later, he told me of a girl he met in college. She came to him at the end of his college days and told him that she liked his ways and would like to marry him. He said that he had to look after his family first. Moreover he is a Dalit Christian and she is a Hindu possibly from one of the upper castes. He struggled. His father came down with paralysis, his mother with a serious snake bite. He got a small IT job in Bangalore in which he had to travel. He fell in a ditch during one of those trips and broke his leg. He stayed in a room with three others where the room rent and food was 5,000 rupees a month and helped with his brother’s education and parents health problems. Meanwhile the long distance love affair continued, she has been working in Madras. She refused to marry anybody else. Her parents did not agree. He built house for his father and the parents are well settled now. I kept meeting him off and on and tried through internet friends to help him. I think Avineni Bhaskar agreed but could not establish contact. Once he had to spend six months in Delhi and was like a fish out of water. I wrote to math ph.d student there, a UP Brahmin and he met him and tried to make him feel at home. Recently the girl picked up enough courage to go home and tell her parents. Her father threw her out but her mother was sympathetic. I kept telling him that it is hard to find good girls and he may regret for the rest of his life if he let her go. They married yesterday. He phoned me at midnight to tell me and I cannot sleep now.
Sunday, August 09, 2020
Tributes to C.S.Seshadri
Many in one place Check David Mumford’swhose early work parallel that of Seshadri.
Physics and biology
Read of the day for me:Does new physics lurk inside living matter?
“ The informational basis of life has led some scientists to pronounce the informal dictum, Life = Matter + Information. For that linking equation to acquire real explanatory and predictive power, however, a formal theoretical framework is necessary that couples information to matter. The first hint of such a link came in 1867. In a letter to a friend, Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell imagined a tiny being that could perceive individual molecules in a box of gas as they rushed around.....
To resolve the paradox, information must be quantified and formally incorporated into the laws of thermodynamics.“
“ The informational basis of life has led some scientists to pronounce the informal dictum, Life = Matter + Information. For that linking equation to acquire real explanatory and predictive power, however, a formal theoretical framework is necessary that couples information to matter. The first hint of such a link came in 1867. In a letter to a friend, Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell imagined a tiny being that could perceive individual molecules in a box of gas as they rushed around.....
To resolve the paradox, information must be quantified and formally incorporated into the laws of thermodynamics.“
The spread of the virus in Melbourne
A city divided: COVID-19 finds a weakness in Melbourne's social fault lines
“ Now, new analysis by The Sunday Age and The Sun-Herald that matches geography with demography and the disease burden shows clearly that COVID-19 is not affecting us all the same.
Melbourne is a city divided. Of its five most disadvantaged municipalities, four of them have the most active COVID-19 cases.“
“ Now, new analysis by The Sunday Age and The Sun-Herald that matches geography with demography and the disease burden shows clearly that COVID-19 is not affecting us all the same.
Melbourne is a city divided. Of its five most disadvantaged municipalities, four of them have the most active COVID-19 cases.“
Namit Arora reviews a book on caste
Social Structure by Namit Arora
Raj Reddy briefly discusses meritocracy (from around 9:00-11:30) Here.
Raj Reddy briefly discusses meritocracy (from around 9:00-11:30) Here.
Friday, August 07, 2020
Ed Yong on immunology
Immunology Is Where Intuition Goes to Die
That was in relation to coronavirus. See also A vaccine reality check by Sarah Zhang linked by Ed Yong in the above article.
That was in relation to coronavirus. See also A vaccine reality check by Sarah Zhang linked by Ed Yong in the above article.
Tuesday, August 04, 2020
A blog post from 2016 by Art Caplan
The End of Civilization and the Real Donald Trump
Saturday, August 01, 2020
Ramanan on Seshadri
CS Seshadri (1932-2020): World-class algebraic geometer, institution-builder and music lover
The author S. Ramanan was big influence on me when I joined TIFR in 1964. He (and M.S. Raghunathan) taught me several topics informally, sometimes during nights, and started an year long seminar for my benefit. He knew lot of mathematics in which he did not work and was a treasure to people around. I remember his insistence on canonical or natural thinking about mathematics. He is also one of those people who does not seem to have aged at all.
P.S. Raghunathan-Ramanan style: Once in a while, they would barge in to my office and ask something like ‘Do you know Peter-Weyl Theorem’. If I said no, they would say that everybody should know, start from scratch, develop the theory and prove the theorem.
Once I and Raghunathan were struggling to construct an inverse object in some K-group of projective modules with nilPotent endomorohisms. Ramanan came along ( this was around 1966-67) and suggested to look at the natural such object and map it on to our object in the obvious way. The kernel was the inverse. The construction also led to a proof that any object representing the trivial element can be made trivial by elementary operations which can be easily imitated topologically.
The author S. Ramanan was big influence on me when I joined TIFR in 1964. He (and M.S. Raghunathan) taught me several topics informally, sometimes during nights, and started an year long seminar for my benefit. He knew lot of mathematics in which he did not work and was a treasure to people around. I remember his insistence on canonical or natural thinking about mathematics. He is also one of those people who does not seem to have aged at all.
P.S. Raghunathan-Ramanan style: Once in a while, they would barge in to my office and ask something like ‘Do you know Peter-Weyl Theorem’. If I said no, they would say that everybody should know, start from scratch, develop the theory and prove the theorem.
Once I and Raghunathan were struggling to construct an inverse object in some K-group of projective modules with nilPotent endomorohisms. Ramanan came along ( this was around 1966-67) and suggested to look at the natural such object and map it on to our object in the obvious way. The kernel was the inverse. The construction also led to a proof that any object representing the trivial element can be made trivial by elementary operations which can be easily imitated topologically.
Letters and numbers
The mysterious case of man who can read letters—but not numbers—exposes roots of consciousness
Ellen Contini-Morava comments:
This is fascinating, but too bad the story doesn't talk about the orthographic difference between a letter and a number. A number is a "semasiographic" symbol, representing an idea rather than a word (so someone can "read" the symbol 8 in lots of different, unrelated languages). A letter is a "phonographic" symbol, representing a sound. So it's not that surprising that they might be processed differently in the brain.
Ellen Contini-Morava comments:
This is fascinating, but too bad the story doesn't talk about the orthographic difference between a letter and a number. A number is a "semasiographic" symbol, representing an idea rather than a word (so someone can "read" the symbol 8 in lots of different, unrelated languages). A letter is a "phonographic" symbol, representing a sound. So it's not that surprising that they might be processed differently in the brain.
The great migrant exodus in india
I die every day on such a long journey home by Sonjoy Hazarika. It may be soon forgotten except for a few articles like this.
Pandemics and politics in Victoria, Australia
One case where it seems possible to trace how it happened in Victoria but not the rest of Australia
Not happy, Dan: Victoria's Premier cops a pandemic pounding
Another As the enemy advances, who's in charge of Victoria's defences?
Not happy, Dan: Victoria's Premier cops a pandemic pounding
Another As the enemy advances, who's in charge of Victoria's defences?
Thursday, July 30, 2020
Tuesday, July 28, 2020
India's covid response
Modi stumbles,India's deepening coronavirus crisis from Finsncial Times
Why won't India admit how Covid-19 is spreading? From BBC News.
Why won't India admit how Covid-19 is spreading? From BBC News.
Cavafy poems
“Waiting for the Barbarians” and the Government Shutdown By Daniel Mendelsohn
Other countries, other shores by Orhan Pamuk both from 2013
Other countries, other shores by Orhan Pamuk both from 2013
Tuesday, July 21, 2020
Some seem to have immunity to Covi-19
The people with hidden immunity against COVID-19 “ Most bizarrely of all, when researchers tested blood samples taken years before the pandemic started, they found T cells which were specifically tailored to detect proteins on the surface of Covid-19. This suggests that some people already had a pre-existing degree of resistance against the virus before it ever infected a human. And it appears to be surprisingly prevalent: 40-60% of unexposed individuals had these cells.”
Remembering C.S.Seshadri
Remembering C.S. Seshadri. Though I was not closely associated with Seshadri, in a somewhat closed atmosphere that I lived, some memories filter across. What I remember most about him is his good nature. TiFR had high attrition rates with respect to new students and a loose atmosphere of guiding students. Many who did well in university found it difficult to cope with the atmosphere where they had to do some independent thinking and many used to drop off or sent off. The reasons were never clear cut. Possibly it had some thing to with the personalities of students as well as seniors. In this sort of atmosphere, Seshadri was a sort of oasis for many who did not quite fit in. He took them under his wing and guided them with kindness and rigorous training. He was bubbling with ideas and always could provide them with problems to work on. But what probably mattered was the friendliness and kindness with which he treated them. Almost all thrived and went on to do well with their mathematical careers. And his friendliness also was helpful to those with whom he did not interact directly and differed from him in many ways. At the same time, he himself was constantly developing and changing. I think that all who knew him will remember him fondly.
https://thewire.in/the-sciences/c-s-seshadri-from-proofs-to-transcendence-via-theorems-and-ragas
https://thewire.in/the-sciences/c-s-seshadri-from-proofs-to-transcendence-via-theorems-and-ragas
Tuesday, July 07, 2020
A long read on Gandhi
Was Gandhi racist?
“ Was Gandhi racist towards blacks? The short answer is: before 1906, emphatically yes; from 1906 to 1913, qualifiedly yes; after 1913 or so, increasingly no. However, we need to ask a supplementary question: what light and shade does thinking with Gandhi throw on our current understanding of racism and anti-racism? To that question, the schematic answer would be: most of us are anti-racist in a speciesist way, or by invoking the idea of a unified human species where all of us are equals.”
“ Was Gandhi racist towards blacks? The short answer is: before 1906, emphatically yes; from 1906 to 1913, qualifiedly yes; after 1913 or so, increasingly no. However, we need to ask a supplementary question: what light and shade does thinking with Gandhi throw on our current understanding of racism and anti-racism? To that question, the schematic answer would be: most of us are anti-racist in a speciesist way, or by invoking the idea of a unified human species where all of us are equals.”
Friday, June 26, 2020
What the new coronavirus can do
Watch: From nose to toe, the Covid-19 virus attacks like no other ‘respiratory’ infection
And why does it spread so easily between people https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00660-x
And why does it spread so easily between people https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00660-x
Saturday, June 13, 2020
‘Judicial evasion’ says Gautam Bhatia
Judicial Evasion
“ Two days ago, on this blog, we discussed the pending challenge before the Supreme Court to the government’s directions requiring employers to pay wages to their workers during the nationwide lockdown imposed under the Disaster Management Act. At the time, the matter had been reserved for orders; today, the Supreme Court passed an order that can only be described as bizarre: it refused to rule on the legal issues before it, postponed arguments to the end of July (seven weeks from now), directed employers and employees to “negotiate” between themselves, but in the meantime extended its interim orders preventing any coercive action against employers for not complying with the direction to pay wages. In effect, therefore, the Court made the wages direction unenforceable without holding it to be illegal or unconstitutional, at least for the foreseeable future.”
“ Two days ago, on this blog, we discussed the pending challenge before the Supreme Court to the government’s directions requiring employers to pay wages to their workers during the nationwide lockdown imposed under the Disaster Management Act. At the time, the matter had been reserved for orders; today, the Supreme Court passed an order that can only be described as bizarre: it refused to rule on the legal issues before it, postponed arguments to the end of July (seven weeks from now), directed employers and employees to “negotiate” between themselves, but in the meantime extended its interim orders preventing any coercive action against employers for not complying with the direction to pay wages. In effect, therefore, the Court made the wages direction unenforceable without holding it to be illegal or unconstitutional, at least for the foreseeable future.”
Wednesday, June 10, 2020
Some sites for Indian films, songs and dances
Some other sites for Indian film reviews film songs and dances:
https://p-pcc.blogspot.com/
https://indiancinema.sites.uiowa.edu
https://roughinhere.wordpress.com
http://cinemanrityagharana.blogspot.com
https://cinemachaat.com
https://madhulikaliddle.com
https://tunes.desibantu.com
https://mrandmrs55.com
https://p-pcc.blogspot.com/
https://indiancinema.sites.uiowa.edu
https://roughinhere.wordpress.com
http://cinemanrityagharana.blogspot.com
https://cinemachaat.com
https://madhulikaliddle.com
https://tunes.desibantu.com
https://mrandmrs55.com
Monday, June 08, 2020
James Baldwin on education
James Baldwin’s Lesson for Teachers in a Time of Turmoil by Clint Smith
A talk to teachers by James Baldwin in 1963
“ The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. ”
A talk to teachers by James Baldwin in 1963
“ The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. ”
Sunday, June 07, 2020
A long review of Tristes Tropiques by Paul Kahn
With several references to India. “ A long read with passages about India.
“He is appalled and revolted by what he finds in India. He sees colonial history and parliamentary democracy as so much veneer covering a social arrangement that has been in place for thousands of years. His analysis is based entirely on the density of population in relation to the physical resources. People in India treat each other in an inhuman way in order to reduce the number of humans per square foot.”
Centennial Sauvage: The Survival of Tristes tropiques
From pp 149-150 of 1974 translation by John and Doreen Weightman:
“India’s great failure can teach us a lesson. When a community becomes too numerous, however great the genius of its thinkers, it can only endure by secreting enslavement. Once men begin to feel cramped in their geographical, social and mental habitat, they are in danger of being tempted by the simple solution of denying one section of the species the right to be considered as human. This allows the rest a little elbow-room for a few more decades. Then it becomes necessary to extend the process of expulsion. When looked at in this light, at the culmination of a century during which the population figures have doubled, […] can no longer appear as being simply the result of aberration on the part of one nation, one doctrine, or one group of men. I see them rather as a premonitory sign of our moving into a finite world such as southern Asia had to face a thousand or two thousand years ahead of us, and I cannot see us avoiding the experience unless some major decisions are taken. The systematic devaluation of man by man is gaining ground, and we would be guilty of hypocrisy and blindness if we dismissed the problem by arguing that recent events represented only a temporary contamination.
What frightens me in Asia is the vision of our own future which it is already experiencing. In the America of the Indians, I cherish the reflection, however fleeting it may have now become, of an era when the human species was in proportion to the world it occupied, and when there was still a valid relationship between the enjoyment of freedom and the symbols denoting it.”
“He is appalled and revolted by what he finds in India. He sees colonial history and parliamentary democracy as so much veneer covering a social arrangement that has been in place for thousands of years. His analysis is based entirely on the density of population in relation to the physical resources. People in India treat each other in an inhuman way in order to reduce the number of humans per square foot.”
Centennial Sauvage: The Survival of Tristes tropiques
From pp 149-150 of 1974 translation by John and Doreen Weightman:
“India’s great failure can teach us a lesson. When a community becomes too numerous, however great the genius of its thinkers, it can only endure by secreting enslavement. Once men begin to feel cramped in their geographical, social and mental habitat, they are in danger of being tempted by the simple solution of denying one section of the species the right to be considered as human. This allows the rest a little elbow-room for a few more decades. Then it becomes necessary to extend the process of expulsion. When looked at in this light, at the culmination of a century during which the population figures have doubled, […] can no longer appear as being simply the result of aberration on the part of one nation, one doctrine, or one group of men. I see them rather as a premonitory sign of our moving into a finite world such as southern Asia had to face a thousand or two thousand years ahead of us, and I cannot see us avoiding the experience unless some major decisions are taken. The systematic devaluation of man by man is gaining ground, and we would be guilty of hypocrisy and blindness if we dismissed the problem by arguing that recent events represented only a temporary contamination.
What frightens me in Asia is the vision of our own future which it is already experiencing. In the America of the Indians, I cherish the reflection, however fleeting it may have now become, of an era when the human species was in proportion to the world it occupied, and when there was still a valid relationship between the enjoyment of freedom and the symbols denoting it.”
Saturday, June 06, 2020
Some good news
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/3-times-more-pay-air-travel-how-migrants-are-being-wooed-back/articleshow/76210270.cms
Via Madhukar Shukla “ Chennai realty firms hire chartered flight to bring back 150 workers Bihar; Punjab farmers send buses to Bihar and offer three time higher wages; Small business in Haryana and other northern states book air tickets or send cars; Kerala govt comes out with a health insurance scheme for guest workers; Builders in Mumbai assure workers of job security and safety; MP industrial units assign officials to bring migrant workers from their villages, and so on…”
Via Madhukar Shukla “ Chennai realty firms hire chartered flight to bring back 150 workers Bihar; Punjab farmers send buses to Bihar and offer three time higher wages; Small business in Haryana and other northern states book air tickets or send cars; Kerala govt comes out with a health insurance scheme for guest workers; Builders in Mumbai assure workers of job security and safety; MP industrial units assign officials to bring migrant workers from their villages, and so on…”
Friday, June 05, 2020
Wednesday, June 03, 2020
Vanaja C on the Indian migrant crisis
Tuesday, June 02, 2020
Privilege
I saw this on TV this morning and was not sure whether I would see it again. A comment in Reddit “This is the kind of priveledge I can get behind. Respect to her for knowing it exists and she has it and double respect for putting it to use in this situation. Powerful.”
https://www.upworthy.com/powerful-footage-shows-a-white-girl-putting-herself-in-front-of-riot-police-to-protect-a-young-black-man
https://www.upworthy.com/powerful-footage-shows-a-white-girl-putting-herself-in-front-of-riot-police-to-protect-a-young-black-man
Sunday, May 31, 2020
Friday, May 29, 2020
Revisiting old stuff
Since my education has not been systematic, I find that there are lots of things in mathematics that I assumed without learning the lengthy proofs. But I keep thinking about them and try to see why they are plausible. The process seems to help but takes time. Sometimes, the final proofs I found are considerably simpler than the original proofs. Here is one example of a proof found after about thirty years:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0108116.pdf
The final proof is only about two pages, assuming what was considered standard by then. This seems to be how things are simplified and subsumed in later work.
Another, slightly more complicated example:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0401308.pdf
I am currently revisiting a topic from 1974-75. This process of learning also makes research fun.
Here is a monstrosity from me and Peter Scott:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0703890.pdf
Waiting for it to be simplified.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0108116.pdf
The final proof is only about two pages, assuming what was considered standard by then. This seems to be how things are simplified and subsumed in later work.
Another, slightly more complicated example:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0401308.pdf
I am currently revisiting a topic from 1974-75. This process of learning also makes research fun.
Here is a monstrosity from me and Peter Scott:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0703890.pdf
Waiting for it to be simplified.
Wednesday, May 27, 2020
Durga Devidas post on Facebook about the current govermental paralysis
“ I think this govt is shell shocked.
The stranded migrant situation is the first real big physical crisis they are facing and the modi and gang have got terrified and as usual have absolutely no clue on how to tackle it.
Moreover, they don't have a good machinery to sort this. Unlike the Congress, their own party workers are a bunch of freeloading unscrupulous untrustworthy louts who have only been trained to create insurgency but not to contain it or deal with it or direct a crowd to a good fruitful end like in this case, to help the poor migrant reach his home.
Though this is not an insurgency, the sight of so many people standing up together looks extremely intimidating and confrontational to this govt with a primary school bully mindset.
This govt which is stuck in a permanent election campaign mode, seems very confused.
The gigantic bunch of mostly poor people is not a crowd which the govt has pulled in, with the help of campaign event managers or agents.
This is not a strike or an election rally. This is not something the opposition party or parties have organised which needs to be quelled. The govt is unable to lathi charge them or call the army in which are only two options the modi and amit shah know when they see an unprecedented crowd of ten people or more for whatever reason.
Besides, the modi regime does not like anyone else, say the Congress or perhaps even a good samaritan individual or organisation, trying to help either, simply because, they are afraid they (the bjp) will lose credit and worse, their worst mortal damned enemy will score political or electoral brownie points for sure.
I have never seen such a tiny minded, jealous, petty and a completely petrified lot like the bjp when it comes to action, ever.”
The stranded migrant situation is the first real big physical crisis they are facing and the modi and gang have got terrified and as usual have absolutely no clue on how to tackle it.
Moreover, they don't have a good machinery to sort this. Unlike the Congress, their own party workers are a bunch of freeloading unscrupulous untrustworthy louts who have only been trained to create insurgency but not to contain it or deal with it or direct a crowd to a good fruitful end like in this case, to help the poor migrant reach his home.
Though this is not an insurgency, the sight of so many people standing up together looks extremely intimidating and confrontational to this govt with a primary school bully mindset.
This govt which is stuck in a permanent election campaign mode, seems very confused.
The gigantic bunch of mostly poor people is not a crowd which the govt has pulled in, with the help of campaign event managers or agents.
This is not a strike or an election rally. This is not something the opposition party or parties have organised which needs to be quelled. The govt is unable to lathi charge them or call the army in which are only two options the modi and amit shah know when they see an unprecedented crowd of ten people or more for whatever reason.
Besides, the modi regime does not like anyone else, say the Congress or perhaps even a good samaritan individual or organisation, trying to help either, simply because, they are afraid they (the bjp) will lose credit and worse, their worst mortal damned enemy will score political or electoral brownie points for sure.
I have never seen such a tiny minded, jealous, petty and a completely petrified lot like the bjp when it comes to action, ever.”
Monday, May 25, 2020
Some good news from india
The work NGOs some formed spontaneously. The first one from Indus Martin in Telugu. He started distributing sandals and saw the transformation
https://www.facebook.com/1058915620/posts/10220422781413795/
The second from Bharati Ramachandran in The Guardian
Global development Where India’s government has failed in the pandemic, its people have stepped in
When people have this sort of capacity why did they elect the leaders they did?
https://www.facebook.com/1058915620/posts/10220422781413795/
The second from Bharati Ramachandran in The Guardian
Global development Where India’s government has failed in the pandemic, its people have stepped in
When people have this sort of capacity why did they elect the leaders they did?
Sunday, May 24, 2020
Saturday, May 23, 2020
Why are India’s labour laws not working for migrants?
Why India's Legal and Labour System Needs to be Reconfigured to Really Help Migrant Workers :
“ If the law is there, then why was it not implemented? If the migrants are entitled to a dislocation allowance then why was it not given to them? In fact, why were even the monies due to them not paid? If the contractor who hires them is to be licensed then how did he disappear deserting them and leaving them to fend for themselves? Why were health facilities and other basic amenities not provided? If even some of this would have happened, then we may have been able to hold back these workers from embarking the journey back home. The answer is that the Act is in many ways obsolete and hardly enforced anywhere. One may wonder, how is that even possible, but that is the harsh reality.”
Barbara Harriss-White suggests that it is a deliberate policy:” So much for policies of apparently deliberate state inaction. When we turn to active policies, the direction of travel is obvious: states seizing opportunities to fast-track reforms to formalise de jure punitive practices that have operated de facto for years. Labour Law reforms in some states enable the working day to be formally lengthened to 12 hours, and overtime pay to be made unnecessary. Elsewhere they have been waived for three years. Minimum wages have been reduced. Reforms to Agriculture are being enacted at speed to incentivise contract farming by agri-business and to enable reverse tenancies, in which small landholdings are consolidated by large tenant enterprises expected to benefit from economies of scale. As the transport of marketable surpluses is dislocated by the lockdown, reforms relaxing the states’ Agricultural Produce Markets Acts are pushed through to incentivise the use of ‘e-NAM’ (NationalAgricultural Markets) – just as though e-markets can substitute for real markets for more or less perishable material supplies. A new wave of environmental assaults is also being reported. Hard-won citizens’ rights such as those to food and livelihood are being denied. The newly announced relief package is mostly an exercise in re-labelling allocations already made. The autonomy of bankrupt state governments is under attack as they reel under the weight of responsibility for ‘disposable people’: the country’s federal structure is being weakened.”
“ If the law is there, then why was it not implemented? If the migrants are entitled to a dislocation allowance then why was it not given to them? In fact, why were even the monies due to them not paid? If the contractor who hires them is to be licensed then how did he disappear deserting them and leaving them to fend for themselves? Why were health facilities and other basic amenities not provided? If even some of this would have happened, then we may have been able to hold back these workers from embarking the journey back home. The answer is that the Act is in many ways obsolete and hardly enforced anywhere. One may wonder, how is that even possible, but that is the harsh reality.”
Barbara Harriss-White suggests that it is a deliberate policy:” So much for policies of apparently deliberate state inaction. When we turn to active policies, the direction of travel is obvious: states seizing opportunities to fast-track reforms to formalise de jure punitive practices that have operated de facto for years. Labour Law reforms in some states enable the working day to be formally lengthened to 12 hours, and overtime pay to be made unnecessary. Elsewhere they have been waived for three years. Minimum wages have been reduced. Reforms to Agriculture are being enacted at speed to incentivise contract farming by agri-business and to enable reverse tenancies, in which small landholdings are consolidated by large tenant enterprises expected to benefit from economies of scale. As the transport of marketable surpluses is dislocated by the lockdown, reforms relaxing the states’ Agricultural Produce Markets Acts are pushed through to incentivise the use of ‘e-NAM’ (NationalAgricultural Markets) – just as though e-markets can substitute for real markets for more or less perishable material supplies. A new wave of environmental assaults is also being reported. Hard-won citizens’ rights such as those to food and livelihood are being denied. The newly announced relief package is mostly an exercise in re-labelling allocations already made. The autonomy of bankrupt state governments is under attack as they reel under the weight of responsibility for ‘disposable people’: the country’s federal structure is being weakened.”
Tuesday, May 19, 2020
What can one say?
Congress, U.P. govt continue to spar over buses for migrant workers
“ The controversy took off on Monday when, after a studied delay, the U.P. government accepted Ms. Vadra’s offer of 1,000 buses but sought the names and other details of the drivers and conductors.”
“ The controversy took off on Monday when, after a studied delay, the U.P. government accepted Ms. Vadra’s offer of 1,000 buses but sought the names and other details of the drivers and conductors.”
Sunday, May 17, 2020
About my mathematics
Recently, somebody asked me me to write about my mathematical experiences. Here it goes, based on comment in Pramathanath Sastry’s post.
There is no precedent for mathematics in the family. I came from a farming family, though my father was a teacher who taught English and History. I started studying mathematics, a B,A. (Hons) course in Madras University since father thought it would be good for competitive examinations, particularly, I.A.S. Examinations where one could choose two optionals in mathematics. I was doing ok but did not understand what I was doing. Even calculus I started understanding only after I saw how real numbers were constructed. Slowly, it be came a passion, mainly learning. Also I was not in any sense trained, cutting classes and learning what I liked. When it came to research, I did not want to guided and continued learning what I could understand. So the background was always patchy and incomplete. There was no ambition or aim except that I settled on topology early after browsing Hausdorff’s ‘Set Theory’ in college. Some of the results seemed metaphysical, like the invariance of domain and dimension, and I wondered how such things could be proved at all. Luckily I found an unpublished lecture notes by Samuel Eilenberg in 1964 and saw the proofs. To this day Algebraic Topology has been the first love.
For a long time I was happy with abstract and formal thinking without worrying about examples. As late as 1992, a collaborator was exhorting that integers were a counterexample to what I was trying to prove. Anyway, with interest more in learning than career, learning continued. If I could not do a ph.d. there was always the possibility of going home and teaching in a mofussil college. After a few years, research came easy since there are always natural questions when you learn some thing. So it continues.
Then at some stage, around 1978 or so William Thurston came long, and learning became difficult. After a few years I went back to old books on Complex Analysis trying to learn the background to Thurston and organised a one year seminar in I.S.I. Delhi. Around this time Peter Scott advised that it would be difficult to learn this stuff without talking to others and invited me to a conference in Warwick which he organised. There I found that even senior professors were struggling with this and were trying to figure out even the definitions. In any case, I started talking to others and trying to learn through conversations.
Then luckily in the late eighties, Peter Scott decided to collaborate with me perhaps because he used some of my early work. That led to a different sort of approach. I was getting interested in other stuff like political economy and would not work in mathematics for months. But once in a while there would be queries from Peter related to joint work. It would take a week or so to understand the definitions and start thinking about the problems again. Sometimes, I did not understand my own papers and a colleague Lawrence Reeves kindly agreed to listen to me when I tried to read them again. Again talking to others helped. Then at some stage, some of the areas of research became more crystallised and one could start thinking about them without too much paraphernalia.
For the last 25 years or so, it seems more physical. You have these things floating around in front of you and keep staring and feel some thing emerging. Often the results are approximate but stable. Recently I found that several things in a 2003 paper were incomplete and since then there are few more papers based on that paper. But over all they seem correct. May be it depends on how much one is exposed to at a given stage. But in my case, keeping the problems in front of my mind and staring at them for days and months seem to help. But this is with somebody not particularly talented ( I know since I collaborated with some good mathematicians) and I do not know how it works for others. Somehow, the work in the last three four years seems to be the most satisfactory work I have done so far.
There is no precedent for mathematics in the family. I came from a farming family, though my father was a teacher who taught English and History. I started studying mathematics, a B,A. (Hons) course in Madras University since father thought it would be good for competitive examinations, particularly, I.A.S. Examinations where one could choose two optionals in mathematics. I was doing ok but did not understand what I was doing. Even calculus I started understanding only after I saw how real numbers were constructed. Slowly, it be came a passion, mainly learning. Also I was not in any sense trained, cutting classes and learning what I liked. When it came to research, I did not want to guided and continued learning what I could understand. So the background was always patchy and incomplete. There was no ambition or aim except that I settled on topology early after browsing Hausdorff’s ‘Set Theory’ in college. Some of the results seemed metaphysical, like the invariance of domain and dimension, and I wondered how such things could be proved at all. Luckily I found an unpublished lecture notes by Samuel Eilenberg in 1964 and saw the proofs. To this day Algebraic Topology has been the first love.
For a long time I was happy with abstract and formal thinking without worrying about examples. As late as 1992, a collaborator was exhorting that integers were a counterexample to what I was trying to prove. Anyway, with interest more in learning than career, learning continued. If I could not do a ph.d. there was always the possibility of going home and teaching in a mofussil college. After a few years, research came easy since there are always natural questions when you learn some thing. So it continues.
Then at some stage, around 1978 or so William Thurston came long, and learning became difficult. After a few years I went back to old books on Complex Analysis trying to learn the background to Thurston and organised a one year seminar in I.S.I. Delhi. Around this time Peter Scott advised that it would be difficult to learn this stuff without talking to others and invited me to a conference in Warwick which he organised. There I found that even senior professors were struggling with this and were trying to figure out even the definitions. In any case, I started talking to others and trying to learn through conversations.
Then luckily in the late eighties, Peter Scott decided to collaborate with me perhaps because he used some of my early work. That led to a different sort of approach. I was getting interested in other stuff like political economy and would not work in mathematics for months. But once in a while there would be queries from Peter related to joint work. It would take a week or so to understand the definitions and start thinking about the problems again. Sometimes, I did not understand my own papers and a colleague Lawrence Reeves kindly agreed to listen to me when I tried to read them again. Again talking to others helped. Then at some stage, some of the areas of research became more crystallised and one could start thinking about them without too much paraphernalia.
For the last 25 years or so, it seems more physical. You have these things floating around in front of you and keep staring and feel some thing emerging. Often the results are approximate but stable. Recently I found that several things in a 2003 paper were incomplete and since then there are few more papers based on that paper. But over all they seem correct. May be it depends on how much one is exposed to at a given stage. But in my case, keeping the problems in front of my mind and staring at them for days and months seem to help. But this is with somebody not particularly talented ( I know since I collaborated with some good mathematicians) and I do not know how it works for others. Somehow, the work in the last three four years seems to be the most satisfactory work I have done so far.
Saturday, May 16, 2020
Two on graduate advantage
Experts have jobs. They have to understand those who don’t:” Lind’s book, “The New Class War,” argues that the best way to understand America today is through the lens of class conflict, which has been sharpened by the rise of an “overclass” that dominates the three spheres he mentions. In all three, leaders tend to be urban, college-educated professionals, often with a postgraduate degree. That makes them quite distinct from much of the rest of the country. Only 36 percent of Americans have a bachelor’s degree, and only 13 percent have a master’s or more. And yet, the top echelons everywhere are filled with this “credentialed overclass.””
Deaths of despair:Angus Deaton “And we saw very quickly that this was happening to both men and women, and, most importantly, that this decline was only happening to white people who didn’t have college degrees. Those of us with at least a bachelor’s degree, the educational elite, were somehow exempted from these horrors.”
Deaths of despair:Angus Deaton “And we saw very quickly that this was happening to both men and women, and, most importantly, that this decline was only happening to white people who didn’t have college degrees. Those of us with at least a bachelor’s degree, the educational elite, were somehow exempted from these horrors.”
Michael Pollan on food supply chains in USA
“ The advantages of local food systems have never been more obvious, and their rapid growth during the past two decades has at least partly insulated many communities from the shocks to the broader food economy.
The pandemic is, willy-nilly, making the case for deindustrializing and decentralizing the American food system, breaking up the meat oligopoly, ensuring that food workers have sick pay and access to health care, and pursuing policies that would sacrifice some degree of efficiency in favor of much greater resilience. Somewhat less obviously, the pandemic is making the case not only for a different food system but for a radically different diet as well.” from The sickness of our food supply by Michael Pollan
Thursday, May 14, 2020
Taleb on Covid-19
The Pandemic Isn’t a Black Swan but a Portent of a More Fragile Global System
“ For Taleb, an antifragile country would encourage the distribution of power among smaller, more local, experimental, and self-sufficient entities—in short, build a system that could survive random stresses, rather than break under any particular one. (His word for this beneficial distribution is “fractal.”)
“ For Taleb, an antifragile country would encourage the distribution of power among smaller, more local, experimental, and self-sufficient entities—in short, build a system that could survive random stresses, rather than break under any particular one. (His word for this beneficial distribution is “fractal.”)
We should discourage the concentration of power in big corporations, “including a severe restriction of lobbying,” Taleb told me. “When one per cent of the people have fifty per cent of the income, that is a fat tail.” Companies shouldn’t be able to make money from monopoly power, “from rent-seeking”—using that power not to build something but to extract an ever-larger part of the surplus. There should be an expansion of the powers of state and even county governments, where there is “bottom-up” control and accountability. This could incubate new businesses and foster new education methods that emphasize “action learning and apprenticeship” over purely academic certification. He thinks that “we should have a national Entrepreneurship Day.””
Wednesday, May 13, 2020
Coronavirus lesson to india
Coronavirus has upturned the world – and forced us to revisit India’s economic history
“ Lady Corona is also lifting the cover off the ugliness we had hidden away. For example, in India, the dreadful exploitation of people who have been denied access to education, a living income, decent housing. Like in one of those science fiction horror stories, we chained them to oil the engines of production and exchange, and when Lady Corona walked in, we ran into our homes and cabins, leaving those who were oiling and running the engines of our economy, homeless and starving.
“ Lady Corona is also lifting the cover off the ugliness we had hidden away. For example, in India, the dreadful exploitation of people who have been denied access to education, a living income, decent housing. Like in one of those science fiction horror stories, we chained them to oil the engines of production and exchange, and when Lady Corona walked in, we ran into our homes and cabins, leaving those who were oiling and running the engines of our economy, homeless and starving.
But that was not enough. When they decided to walk back to their families and homes to survive this deprivation, we sprayed them with disinfectant, stopped them and held them in cages. They were needed for our return to production and trade, they were the engines of the growth of our economy. After all, foreign capital came to India to reap the benefits of abundant, cheap and unorganised labour.
Now governments and the firms want them back. We recently witnessed the viciousness of that desire when the chief minister of Karnataka banned outgoing trains for migrants. The audacity of that gesture reveals the terror the government felt over what would happen without vulnerable migrant labour. The entire edifice of our cities would collapse without them.“
See also Don’t blame Covid or financial package. Politics is holding India’s migrant workers hostage
See also Don’t blame Covid or financial package. Politics is holding India’s migrant workers hostage
Saturday, May 09, 2020
Facts about US labour market
Facts about labor markets ouch, when are rising wages bad edition
Via MR. “ Workers in the bottom quintile of the wage distribution experienced a 35 percent employment decline while those in the top quintile experienced only a 9 percent decline. ”
A documentary about Capital-21
Are we returning to “ “master and servant” laws in the United Kingdom that made it illegal for workers to quit.”
https://theintercept.com/2020/05/05/capital-21st-century-documentary-thomas-piketty/
Another review https://variety.com/2020/film/reviews/capital-in-the-twenty-first-century-review-thomas-piketty-1234596239/
https://theintercept.com/2020/05/05/capital-21st-century-documentary-thomas-piketty/
Another review https://variety.com/2020/film/reviews/capital-in-the-twenty-first-century-review-thomas-piketty-1234596239/
Saturday, May 02, 2020
Cholera and coronavirus
Cholera and coronavirus: why we must not repeat the same mistakes “ Besides the basic moral argument for a system of public health and international cooperation that benefits all people, it is also in everyone’s interests, because as long as infections blight poor countries, they will continue to pose a threat to the west, too. The Nigerian global health scholar Obijiofor Aginam has written that “enormous sacrifices must then be made by the developed world to confront mutual vulnerability”. Coronavirus has reminded us, once again, of this mutual vulnerability.
To prevent further pandemics, Aginam calls for a “communitarian globalism”: a bottom-up approach, “based on ideals of fairness, justice, and equitable distribution of scarce but moderate global resources”. We have already seen glimpses of this kind of solidarity in the current crisis: from the communist government in Kerala giving food and shelter to migrant workers; to the Somalian doctors offering their help in crisis zones such as Italy; to Cuba allowing an infected British cruise ship to dock to receive timely medical care by its doctors.”
Sunday, April 19, 2020
Jogan 1950
With subtitles, uploaded by Tammydan. If it does not work try the link below the picture.
https://youtu.be/SyA8_Vi5M-8
Saturday, April 18, 2020
Not much to say in
these unprecedented times. The following article by Dani Rodriguez sounds plausible to me.
In a similar vein https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/18/history-fairer-society-coronavirus-workers-black-death-spanish-flu?
“Why the coronavirus pandemic is unlikely to change the world, for better or worse”
https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3078766/why-coronavirus-pandemic-unlikely-change-world-better-or-worseIn a similar vein https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/18/history-fairer-society-coronavirus-workers-black-death-spanish-flu?
Sunday, March 29, 2020
India lockdown
Modi Orders 3-Week Total Lockdown for All 1.3 Billion Indians : With four hours’ notice, India’s prime minister announced that no one could leave home for 21 days — the most severe step taken anywhere in the war against the coronavirus.
Thursday, March 26, 2020
Some articles about the current unprecedented times
The real pandemic danger is social collapse by Brando Milanovic
How the pandemic will end by Ed Yong
Interview with an expert Dr. Bruce Aylward
How the pandemic will end by Ed Yong
Interview with an expert Dr. Bruce Aylward
Tuesday, March 17, 2020
Sunday, March 15, 2020
Saturday, March 14, 2020
Mike Davis on the coronavirus
Mike Davis on COVID-19: The monster is finally at the door
See also The extraordinary decision facing Italian doctors https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas
Viral Coronavirus 'Advisory' Is Not From UNICF https://www.boomlive.in/health/viral-coronavirus-advisory-is-not-from-unicef-7171
See also The extraordinary decision facing Italian doctors https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas
Viral Coronavirus 'Advisory' Is Not From UNICF https://www.boomlive.in/health/viral-coronavirus-advisory-is-not-from-unicef-7171
Tuesday, March 03, 2020
A recent mathematics paper
Comparing decompositions of Poincaré Dulaity pairs One of my better papers, I think.it has massive contributions from collaborators and took about three years to complete. It is based on an earlier paper Canonical decompositions of Poincare Duality pairs which was a revised version of a 2007 manuscript. It is being revised again. Nice to work leisurely in retirement( I retired in 2005).
CAA-NPR-NRC
What Is CAA, NPR, NRC? What Is Its Impact On Indian Citizens? Confusing but may be one can try to see how they tried to implement these in Assam.
There is another article in India Today says:
“ Now, let's see the connection that troubles those skeptical of the government's move.It takes us to 2004, when another Citizenship Amendment Act had been passed - the Citizenship Amendment Bill 2003 - when the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government was in power. In the amendment to the Citizenship Act of 1955, a Section 14A had been inserted. Section 14A relates to issue of national identity cards.
There is another article in India Today says:
“ Now, let's see the connection that troubles those skeptical of the government's move.It takes us to 2004, when another Citizenship Amendment Act had been passed - the Citizenship Amendment Bill 2003 - when the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government was in power. In the amendment to the Citizenship Act of 1955, a Section 14A had been inserted. Section 14A relates to issue of national identity cards.
Saturday, February 29, 2020
Freeman Dyson passed away
Obituary in NYTimes.
Some videos of his contributions to physics and the last one about Fermi indicates a humble person but he was always quite independent while admiring others.
https://youtu.be/i3RcN5UGwgI Linking the ideas of Feynman, Schwinger and Tomonaga
https://youtu.be/pToteaNcIdk Richard Feynman and his work
https://youtu.be/hV41QEKiMlM fermi’s rejection of our work.
And one more on Richard Feynman ‘Meeting Feynman with .....’
Some videos of his contributions to physics and the last one about Fermi indicates a humble person but he was always quite independent while admiring others.
And one more on Richard Feynman ‘Meeting Feynman with .....’
Wednesday, February 26, 2020
Old news
1966 anti-cow slaughter agitation “ M. N. Srinivas commented that the episode solidly convinced him that the Hindus of North India had not evolved into modern people” but I have seen similar attitudes in South India too.
Tradition in modern India by J.Heesterman from 1963.
Tradition in modern India by J.Heesterman from 1963.
Tuesday, February 25, 2020
About the new Coronavirus Covid-19
You’re Likely to Get the Coronavirus from The Atlantic, a fairly comprehensive article.
Symptomless cases raise coronavirus control fears from SciDev.net
Symptomless cases raise coronavirus control fears from SciDev.net
Friday, February 21, 2020
Thursday, February 20, 2020
Monday, February 17, 2020
Vikram Chandra on Panini
Pāṇini: Catching the Ocean in a Cow’s Hoofprint Long read and worth several reads.
Thursday, February 13, 2020
Emmy Noether
A short and comprehensive article on her influence.
Our introduction to modern mathematics was through Van der Waerden’s book ‘Modern Algebra’ which stayed that it was in part based on lectures by Emil Artin and army Noether. Do her name was familiar from the beginning. Here he describes the sources of his boo in which her father’s name is also mentioned. I remember when Emil Artin died in 1962, Fr. Racine probably had no one to share his grief. He came to my room in Loyola College hostel to tell me of the sad news. Now Facebook has changed that I think. We can share our emotion with distant people. On the sources of my book Modern Algebra
Our introduction to modern mathematics was through Van der Waerden’s book ‘Modern Algebra’ which stayed that it was in part based on lectures by Emil Artin and army Noether. Do her name was familiar from the beginning. Here he describes the sources of his boo in which her father’s name is also mentioned. I remember when Emil Artin died in 1962, Fr. Racine probably had no one to share his grief. He came to my room in Loyola College hostel to tell me of the sad news. Now Facebook has changed that I think. We can share our emotion with distant people. On the sources of my book Modern Algebra
Sunday, February 09, 2020
Mistakes in mathematics
I probably did a Stallings. I spent the whole of last night ‘proving’ some thing which bothered me off and on for forty years. When the mind is calmer, mistakes will emerge but not in the current state. As Stallings said in ‘How not to prove the Poincaré conjecture’ some excitement and blindness takes over: “I was unable to find flaws in my ‘proof’ for quite a while, even though the error is very obvious. It was a psychological problem, a blindness, an excitement, an inhibition of reasoning by an underlying fear of being wrong. Techniques leading to the abandonment of such inhibitions should be cultivated by every honest mathematician.” May be the body needs rest too. In any case I got some training from Stallings writing his Tata Notes which I wrote in 1967 adding many mistakes of mine to his. He describes the genesis of those Noted towards the end here in Remambering John Stallings
“Early in my career, when I was starting to teach at Princeton, I got to give some seminar talks on my work on PL manifolds, involving the Engulfing Theorem and high-dimensional Poincaré Conjecture. I did not do a good job of this; there were many details, such as general position, which I did not really know how to do; the typical proof was just by hand-waving. I do recall “great” topologists in the audience, such as Milnor. And I think I called it off eventually, finally getting the proofs of some details in my Tata notes of 1967 or so.”
“Early in my career, when I was starting to teach at Princeton, I got to give some seminar talks on my work on PL manifolds, involving the Engulfing Theorem and high-dimensional Poincaré Conjecture. I did not do a good job of this; there were many details, such as general position, which I did not really know how to do; the typical proof was just by hand-waving. I do recall “great” topologists in the audience, such as Milnor. And I think I called it off eventually, finally getting the proofs of some details in my Tata notes of 1967 or so.”
Saturday, February 08, 2020
A bit about Indian educational system
Gautam Menon from three years ago. For some reason I could not share the post. So, I copied and pasted. I saw while I was wondering why many in India including strong leftists who recommend Naxalism for others try to send their children and grand children abroad at considerable expense. This may explain part of the background. Here is the old post:
Some of you may remember my difficulties with the 'summer student' I wrote about a few weeks ago. The one who couldn't plot a graph, not even of y = x. I wish I could report that the situation had miraculously improved. Alas, after almost daily meetings in which we've tried to make some progress on these matters as well as marginally more advanced material, I continue to be mystified as to how she could have qualified for *any* degree in physics in the first place.
The situation is coming to a head now that her term here is drawing to an end and she must write a project report for her university. Apparently, the rule is that the report must be not less than 40 pages in length! It doesn't matter what is in the report, really, provided it is of the appropriate length.
I honestly don't see what I could have done differently. If we were not going over really elementary material that she should have know from school, even, I might have ensured that she did something that might have qualified to be put into a report. Right now, the report can only be an undigested mishmash of copied material from a few chapters of a book that I suggested she read. I am sure that she will achieve a high grade for doing precisely that, just as I'm sure my signature will be required at some place in the report, to sign off on the statement that she did something while she was here.
I'm deeply embarrassed by this charade but, as I said, I don't see anything that I could have done differently. Should I refuse to sign the report? But what good would that do? If the whole system is so messed up that it puts out students who go through bachelors and masters degrees in science without gaining the slightest idea of what science is, gives them high marks and ranks in university exams, even gives them a completely inflated estimate of their own abilities, it seems unfair to penalize a particular student for what is a far more deep-rooted and systemic problem. Perhaps I could write to the head of the department who replied to me following my specific question in this regard, that this was a good student, interested in pursuing research and that she was being specifically recommended? Would I be able to get my point across? What good would it do? Should I at least suggest that asking a student to prepare a 40-page report for a 6 week project is a silly thing to do, that even a 5 or 10 page report on something new that was learnt would be sufficient, if sincerely done?
(At least the student has learnt to plot simple functions which, all said and done, is a tentative first step towards something, although I'm not sure what.)
You are all welcome to weigh in - any advice is welcome.
Some of you may remember my difficulties with the 'summer student' I wrote about a few weeks ago. The one who couldn't plot a graph, not even of y = x. I wish I could report that the situation had miraculously improved. Alas, after almost daily meetings in which we've tried to make some progress on these matters as well as marginally more advanced material, I continue to be mystified as to how she could have qualified for *any* degree in physics in the first place.
The situation is coming to a head now that her term here is drawing to an end and she must write a project report for her university. Apparently, the rule is that the report must be not less than 40 pages in length! It doesn't matter what is in the report, really, provided it is of the appropriate length.
I honestly don't see what I could have done differently. If we were not going over really elementary material that she should have know from school, even, I might have ensured that she did something that might have qualified to be put into a report. Right now, the report can only be an undigested mishmash of copied material from a few chapters of a book that I suggested she read. I am sure that she will achieve a high grade for doing precisely that, just as I'm sure my signature will be required at some place in the report, to sign off on the statement that she did something while she was here.
I'm deeply embarrassed by this charade but, as I said, I don't see anything that I could have done differently. Should I refuse to sign the report? But what good would that do? If the whole system is so messed up that it puts out students who go through bachelors and masters degrees in science without gaining the slightest idea of what science is, gives them high marks and ranks in university exams, even gives them a completely inflated estimate of their own abilities, it seems unfair to penalize a particular student for what is a far more deep-rooted and systemic problem. Perhaps I could write to the head of the department who replied to me following my specific question in this regard, that this was a good student, interested in pursuing research and that she was being specifically recommended? Would I be able to get my point across? What good would it do? Should I at least suggest that asking a student to prepare a 40-page report for a 6 week project is a silly thing to do, that even a 5 or 10 page report on something new that was learnt would be sufficient, if sincerely done?
(At least the student has learnt to plot simple functions which, all said and done, is a tentative first step towards something, although I'm not sure what.)
You are all welcome to weigh in - any advice is welcome.
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