From 'The natural selection of bad science'

 Seems applicable to other areas as well.

"The requirements for natural selection to produce design are easy to satisfy. Darwin outlined the logic of natural selection as requiring three conditions:

(i) There must be variation.

(ii) That variation must have consequences for survival or reproduction.

(iii) Variation must be heritable.

In this case, there are no biological traits being passed from scientific mentors to apprentices. However, research practices do vary. That variation has consequences—habits that lead to publication lead to obtaining highly competitive research positions. And variation in practice is partly heritable, in the sense that apprentices acquire research habits and statistical procedures from mentors and peers. Researchers also acquire research practice from successful role models in their fields, even if they do not personally know them. Therefore, when researchers are rewarded primarily for publishing, then habits which promote publication are naturally selected. Unfortunately, such habits can directly undermine scientific progress." 

"Despite incentives for productivity, many scientists employ rigorous methods and learn new things about the world all the time that are validated by replication or by being effectively put into practice. In other words, there is still plenty of good science out there. One reason is that publication volume is rarely the only determinant of the success or failure of a scientist’s career. Other important factors include the importance of one’s research topic, the quality of one’s work, and the esteem of one’s peers. The weight of each factor varies among disciplines, and in some fields such factors may work positively to promote behaviours leading to high-quality research, particularly when selection for those behaviours is enculturated into institutions or disciplinary norms. In such cases, this may be sufficient to counteract the negative effects of incentives for publication volume, and so maintain high levels of research quality. If, on the other hand, success is largely determined by publication output or related quantitative metrics, then those who care about quality research should be on high alert. In which direction the scale tips in one’s own field is a critical question for anyone interested in the future of science."

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303698773_The_Natural_Selection_of_Bad_Science?fbclid=IwAR1zn5t6CzzuO2hGOYmWOAPYbtZxM5ggEXL8fybNJ0xmUHdjya-1G4j_Iqo

Victor Toth on entanglement

 No man is an island.

Victor Toth in Quora about entanglement:

Well, actually, that is precisely the point. Most of the time, everything is entangled with everything else.

When we talk about, say, creating an entangled pair of particles, the point is not to get them entangled with each other; the point is to reduce or eliminate their entanglement with everything else to the extent possible, for as long as possible. That is to say, make sure that the pair are isolated from the environment.

That’s the hard part. Not entangling them with each other; that’s a given.

The original question:

If interacting particles become entangled, why isn't everything entangled with everything else from the big bang?

A comment from Dan Kervick

 Dan Kervick comments in a Doug Henwood post;

Seems like leftists of various kinds and degrees are always bemoaning the failure of the masses to develop a consciousness of their “true” material interests, and their susceptibility to fake or fraudulent cultural, religious, identity or moral concerns. (What’s the matter with Kansas?)

Is it possible that, after many decades of failure, these kinds of leftists might want to reconsider their own flat, two-inch deep understanding of human nature and what they understand as its “real” material interests.

People actually care about their spiritual lives, their loves and friendships and family lives, their linguistic heritage and the cultural riches embodied in it, and their sense of justice and morality. Leftist philistines who think all of this is fake, false consciousness need to expand their own intellectual and spiritual horizons, and then might understand why they have failed, over and over and over, to gain much of a foothold.

The socialist vision of society is ancient and rich and varied. It is exalted. It has a noble artistic, moral and religious heritage. It didn’t begin in the cold, smoggy and mechanical mid-nineteenth century and isn’t solely the product of the satanic mills and what a handful of modernist urban European thinkers thought about them.

The plight of migrants

 The plight of twenty first century migrants by Mit Ali Husseni 

"But those who want to approach the question of migration truthfully must ask the question which Arendt asked about the Greek democracy but failed to answer when it came to the United States. To what extent does our freedom from the necessities of life rely, and has historically relied, on the labor of people living thousands of miles away? Just as America’s political ideals were founded on enslaved people’s labor, just as Europe was enriched by looting the colonies, today too, our freedom relies, at least partly, on exploiting other parts of the world.

So, as it turns out, to be a “Dane” does in fact have a meaning. The price of Denmark being named “the happiest country in the world” is paid not just by Danes, but also by others whom the global economy exploits. No political citizenry, despite what Arendt’s consecration of the political presupposes, can be stripped from its enabling social and economic conditions."

Survey of Paul Krugman's development

 The Gatekeeper by Adam Tooze

Survey of gene-culture evolution

Long-term gene–culture coevolution and the human evolutionary transition 

Abstract

It has been suggested that the human species may be undergoing an evolutionary transition in individuality (ETI). But there is disagreement about how to apply the ETI framework to our species, and whether culture is implicated as either cause or consequence. Long-term gene–culture coevolution (GCC) is also poorly understood. Some have argued that culture steers human evolution, while others proposed that genes hold culture on a leash. We review the literature and evidence on long-term GCC in humans and find a set of common themes. First, culture appears to hold greater adaptive potential than genetic inheritance and is probably driving human evolution. The evolutionary impact of culture occurs mainly through culturally organized groups, which have come to dominate human affairs in recent millennia. Second, the role of culture appears to be growing, increasingly bypassing genetic evolution and weakening genetic adaptive potential. Taken together, these findings suggest that human long-term GCC is characterized by an evolutionary transition in inheritance (from genes to culture) which entails a transition in individuality (from genetic individual to cultural group). Thus, research on GCC should focus on the possibility of an ongoing transition in the human inheritance system.

On approaching the age of 80

 I will be 80 in less than week. A close friend who is like a younger brother suggests: “Also, I suggest (with some trepidation) that you should consider devoting some spare time beyond your  mathematics and grandfatherly duties to writing up some more autobiographical material.  Perhaps that could  include how you came to do the work you chose to do, the mathematicians with whom you became involved and the way you feel about doing mathematics or anything else (including farming, as I recall).  By doing something like that, it could encourage many othersto follow their own path [including one of my grandsons when he is a little older]: a sort of much more human-oriented and personal than E.T. Bell's offering.”

Well, there is not much to say. I was silly and a bit stubborn, had some passions and followed my interests. Moreover I was lucky with friends. I am surprised that I am still around.

Sibling resemblance

A 1946 parable from Sarada Natarajan

 Sarada Natarajan  (Subrahmanya Iyer Natarajan)1924-55 is Telugu writer whose mother tongue was Tamil. He was also well-versed in Tamil when he landed in Tenali in 1937 and started working as a waiter. He learnt Telugu and started writing in Telugu. Tenali at that time had many writers with various ideologies. Sarada was pen name and he became quite famous mostly posthumously. Here is a short piece by him translated by Rohith which I found on his wall.

Mister World Has Fallen Sick

- Sarada, July 1st 1946 (translated from Telugu) 

Mr World has fallen sick. He is bed-ridden. Mr Imperalism immediately sends a message to Sir Bourgeoisie. 

The car of Sir Bourgeoisie creeks to a halt outside. 

Mr Imperialism offers a chair to Mr Bourgeoisie to sit. 

"Sir Bourgeoisie, Mr World is unwell. We don't know the disease yet. We should send for a doctor." says Mr Imperialism. 

Imperialism thinks for a while and says "Call Dr. Socialism"

Sir Bourgeoisie takes off his specs, clears the smudge on the glass, puts it back on saying, "Him! Oh, no no.  He gives injections of equality and solutions of revolution for every small thing.' 

Mr Imperialism retorts "Oh, it's not for treatment. Its only to have a precise diagnosis. He knows the nature of Mr World very well. Call him."

Bourgeoisie calls Dr Socialism right away. He comes to help. 

Mr Imperialism and Sir Bourgeoisie asks Dr Socialism to diagone the disease of Mr World. 

He looks at the palm of Mr World, "This is a dangerous disease. It's called the sickness of servitude. It needs a high dose of revolution-medicine. And then, injections of socialism are to be infused into veins. Only then he can recover." 

The other two oldies jolted to conscience saying, "Did we ask you to prescribe medicines? We needed you to only diagnose. Take this 'dollar' and leave." 

Dr Socialism leaves. 

Mr World's pain intensifies after Dr Socialism leaves. He is writhing with pain on the cot. The situation has come to a stay. Dr Socialism is out of question now. Mr Imperialism and Sir Bourgeoisie ties up Mr World to the cot and begin thinking again : 'how do we cure this?'

Sir Bourgeoisie suddenly reckons: "Don't we have our  Fanatic-Priest Rao Bahadur Sir. He can treat with our own homemade pills and domestic oils instead of those toxic foreign medicines. I am calling him", and takes out his phone. 

Fanatic-Priest Rao Bahadur Sir comes by his own chartered flight. He takes a look at the hand of World. "May God Bless Him, Misters! This Mr World has the typhoid fever called atheism in his body. That's why he is twisting with pain. It's not something that can be cured. I will give a blended spirit to sedate him for now." 

He gives two ounces of vedanta, two grams of desh-bhakti and three ounces of non-violence. 

"That's better. He makes a lot of nuisance awake. Let him sleep.", says Sir Bourgeoisie with a sigh of relief.

A landmark judgement on environment from Australia

 The Federal Court judgement 

"The children took a novel route in asserting the federal environment minister owed them a duty of care. A duty of care means a responsibility not to take actions that could harm others. A duty of care is the first step in a claim of negligence.

A similar duty was found in the Netherlands in 2015, as a global first. In 2019, the Supreme Court upheld that duty – the Dutch government owed it citizens a duty to reduce emissions in order to protect human rights. 

Other cases around the world were inspired by that success, including the one decided in Australia today."

Covid's next phase By Zeynep Tufekci

 Covid's deadliest phase may be here soon by Zenep Tufekci

By the same author according to Gautam Menon but I cannot find the link:

M.S. Narasimhan (7 June 1932 – 15 May 2021) RIP

 Reminiscences of M.S.Narasimhan (possibly more about myself):

I joined TIFR as a research student in 1964 eleven years after Narasimhan. Though he was much senior and already a star, he was friendly from the beginning. Both of us being students of Fr. C. Racine in Loyola college may have some thing to do with it. Sometimes, he used to attend/oversee our first year courses. One incident, I remember is that the lecturer in algebra confused all of us while explaining tensor products. Then Narsimham took me to his office offering to explain and he too made a mess of it. I assumed that he was big picture man as Raghunathan told me at some stage that Narasimhsn explained the essentials of Kodaira-Spencer work in an hour during seaside walks near the TIFR canteen.

Having browsed Hausdorff's Set Theory in college, I was already committed to learning Topology and in spite of Narasimhsn's diverse interests, I chose an area in which he was not an expert. He did try to get me interested in the topology of moduli spaces. But my interest was more towards general theories rather than specific calculations. Our acquaintance which slowly developed in to a sort of brotherly guidance continued. Around my third year or so, we occasionally had beer together on Saturdays. I do not remember what we talked about, it must have been about general things and some about mathematicians rather than mathematics. The actual mathematical discussions were with M.S. Raghunathan and S.Ramanan who were both interested in topology.

Meanwhile there were visiting professors and I particularly liked the lectures of John Stallings whose papers I read earlier. I enjoyed learning mathematics and was not sure or care whether I could do a ph.d. And TIFR gave great opportunity to learn without pressure of publishing papers or doing a ph.d. There was always the possibility of teaching in a college in Guntur area if one could not do a ph.d.  I also enjoyed reading Milnor, Browdrer, Zeeman, Serre's Thesis and various Cartan seminars on topology. Towards the end of his stay, Stallings said that Papakyriakopoulos did some great work in three dimensional topology. After Stallings left, I started studying  Papa's papers though I did not have any background in 3-manifolds. It soon led to some minor work which became part of my thesis.

Then came a crucial intervention from Narasimhan at the beginning of 1968. He heard of Nuffield Foundation Fellowships and thought that I had some chance of getting it and went about organising my application. By that time I had 3-4 papers and he thought that it would be good if I had specific place in mind. I read several papers of CT.C. Wall who was in Liverpool. He organised sending my papers to Wall and a letter of support from Wall. He coached me on preparations for the interview. Since I was generally like a bull in China shop reflecting my village farmer background, he advised me about being polite to the interviewers. It seemed to have worked. One Kothari asked me name the greatest theorems in topology. I replied that it was a silly question. Apparently, I came back and told Narasimhsn that I followed his advice since I said that the question was silly instead of saying that it was stupid. To my surprise, I got the fellowship snd the visit to Liverpool proved to be very useful in terms of what I learnt there which was used in later research and the start of acquintance with Peter Scott which resulted much later in a long collaboration.

He was supposed to be one of those persons who understood me. Kalyan Mukherjea told me once that he told MSN that I was planning to quit TIFR. He asked MSN to guess what I wanted to do. Apparently, the reply was that I was planning to go back to Guntur which was correct.

Narasimhan went on to bigger things both mathematically and as an administrator in the development of mathematics in India. He was slso Head of the Mathematics group at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste from 1992–1999.

I was not in touch with him during some periods. But I remember gratefully his visits to Delhi during 1982-86. This was a difficult period for me and his visits both to my office and home offered some succour.  We renewed correspondence after he moved to Bangalore. I visited him a few times in Bangalore and was looking forward to visiting him again when the sad news came.

covid vaccine waiver likely?

 

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/07/opinions/covid-vaccine-patent-waiver-as-equals-intl-cmd/index.html?fbclid=IwAR0e7y2g8gCFGIp8UZHR4JGVEceeDKgvasbJJBpFAoZYrq5kUfk765Y2I3E

With a Covid-19 vaccine patent waiver likely, time to rethink global intellectual property rules

The verdict on covid surge in india

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/04/30/india/covid-second-wave-narendra-modi-intl-hnk-dst/index.html

The government

Interview with Arvind Gupta

 Interview A good toy is one that can be taken apart, says toy scientist Arvind Gupta

Doug Henwood summarises aa article of Matt Levine

MattLevine's article. I did not read it completely;too long. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-04-19/everyone-loves-the-100-million-new-jersey-deli-except-david-einhorn-knottrmb

Doug Henwood's summary:

 https://www.facebook.com/749518284/posts/10158602377663285/

Remember that little deli in NJ that is the public face of a stock valued at over $100 million? No doubt it's a front for something or other, but we don't know what yet. In any case, it came to the world's attention when hedgie David Einhorn wrote about it in a letter to clients, as an example of how the market might be just a little bubbly? Well, guess what—Einhorn's letter prompted people to buy the damn stock.

From Matt Levine's Money Stuff:

"But then Einhorn published his letter, and Hometown became the laughingstock of financial media last Friday. And here is what happened:

Volume exploded, from 800 shares on Thursday to 42,762 on Friday. By Friday evening, Hometown had traded a total of about 70,000 shares in all of 2021; more than 60% of that trading happened on Friday.

The stock was down by 3.1%. It closed at $12.99, for a market capitalization of $101.3 million.

Last Wednesday, when there was a single trade of 200 shares and Hometown closed at $13.90, you might have asked incredulously, “who’s paying $13.90 per share for this deli,” but the answer would have been “exactly one person, for reasons of their own.” But on Friday there were hundreds of trades, and almost half a million dollars’ worth of stock changed hands. And the stock barely budged. People were like “yes, $100 million deli, absolutely, I want to buy that.” Hometown went from a thinly traded pink-sheet deli that nobody had heard of, to a company that everyone had heard of exclusively because it was a poster child for market excess, and … people … bought … it? Like, a whole new class of investors was introduced to Hometown International specifically by a hedge-fund letter saying “small investors who get sucked into these situations are likely to be harmed eventually,” and they looked at it and decided they wanted to be harmed. “Yes, step on my neck, Hometown International.”[3] David Einhorn warned people not to invest in Hometown International, even though it had never occurred to them to invest in Hometown International, but once they were warned not to they absolutely did."

Namita Arora comments:

 Anandaswarup, yes, it's now safe to say that the foundational ideas, practices and social class elements that later gave rise to the full-fledged varna system / Brahminism can be traced to the cultural substrate of the Aryans who migrated in from central Asia.

I hesitate to use the word ’stability’ to characterize India’s caste society, because that word has positive connotations. I personally prefer ‘continuity’. I think this oppressive system has continued for so long because unlike other systems where the oppressors and oppressed are more identifiable, caste is graded inequality. As Ambedkar wrote, ‘there is no such class as a completely unprivileged class except the one which is at the base of the social pyramid. The privileges of the rest are graded ... each class being privileged, every class is interested in maintaining the system.’ Of course, those near the top of this pyramid of privilege and resources gain the most from preserving the status quo but their job is made easier by the 'graded inequality' in the system that militates against people coming together in common cause. Indeed, it's too pervasive to imagine its demise anytime soon though aspects of it have certainly been defanged over recent decades.

His original post https://www.facebook.com/586055302/posts/10157750383645303/

Remembering my father-2

 Remembering my father-2

Today there was some discussion of a bit of weirdness in our family. May be it started with my father. He came from a family of lower middle class farmers; his father had six acres of land and had 3 sons and 2 daughters. Their village Avanigadda was the Taluk headquarters and a high school was started there. My grandfather promised send any son who finished school to college and my father was the only one who completed. He was sent to study in Masulipatnam about 50 miles away by bus. He started with Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry (MPC) group in his Intermediate. Then he found the lecturer in Logic was popular with students and started attending Logic classes instead of Mathematics classes without informing anybody. After several months the College Principal found out about this and took him to task. But strangely, there was also an LPC group those days ( he finished his B.Ed in 1941 and so this must be about 1936) and he was shifted to LPC group. I did similar things in college but that is another story.

The bus fare was about one half rupees then and one could also walk 30 miles to reach  Masulipatnam. In the holidays he used to come home, work on the farm, and carry bags of lentils and other food stuff and go back by walking. Compared to that we had it much easier. Probably Sambasivarao Kolli knows more about my father than me.

An earlier story here https://gaddeswarup.blogspot.com/2007/06/remembering-my-father.html

Doing mathematics

 Like many other things, doing mathematics may be just a question of working hard and staying power. I complained to Peter “I still do not have good command of the stuff. Your answer shows that I was wrong I one case. I have to work some more.” He responds “It definitely takes a while to get into it. I worked on section 11 for many months, maybe more than a year. But the last time I worked on it was before I retired (3 years ago), and probably 4 or 5 years ago!” And having collaborators helps, some thing I discovered at the age of 53 or so. I will be 80 this June.

Universal jurisdiction

 From https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56160486

Eyad al-Gharib was a relatively low-level operative among thousands of others in the Syrian regime's highly developed network of coercion and repression.

The verdict is a legal landmark. The prosecution was intended as a test case, to build up a body of evidence about the actions of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad that could be used in other trials, not just in Germany.

Al-Gharib's conviction starts to chip away at any sense of impunity felt by Syrians 

still working for the regime who might be involved with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The German human rights lawyers behind the case have spent years using the principle of universal jurisdiction to reach out across borders to pursue other allegations. Their targets have included the former US President George W Bush for crimes including violations of the UN Convention against Torture.

Ground water depletion in India

https://phys.org/news/2021-02-indian-agriculture-groundwater-depletion-winter.html 

Indian agriculture: Groundwater depletion could reduce winter cropped acreage significantly in years

Reuters and the British government

 HomeOp-ed Leaked docs reveal how news agency Reuters secretly serves as a tool for British influence across the world

An older article on the topic https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/875776

Continuiing military conflicts

 https://asiatimes.com/2021/02/indias-forever-wars-and-forever-warriors/

Vested interests and entrenched official mindsets drive military conflicts in Afghanistan and on India-China border Says MK Bhadrakumar. The article also links toEli Clifton's article "Vested interests and entrenched official mindsets drive military conflicts in Afghanistan and on India-China border"

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/02/16/weapons-biz-bankrolls-experts-pushing-to-extend-afghan-war/

Richard Singer about Tabla master Zakir Hussain’s Kathak connections

 zakir Hussain’s wife is s Kathak dancer

Reversal of earth’s magnetic poles may happen again.

 Reversal of Earth's magnetic poles may have triggered Neanderthal extinction -- and it could happen again

David Labaree on credentialization

 Credentialing I read only two of the articles here. Many more from a favourite author who appeared here several times before.

About the Russian and Chinese vaccines

 China, Russia steal a vaccine diplomacy marchThere is hope for poorer countries.

See also The Folly of Hoarding Knowledge in the COVID-19 Age

New developments in Bhima Koregaon case

 

Bhima Koregaon: Hope and despair for accused https://m.rediff.com/news/special/bhima-koregaon-hope-and-despair-for-accused/20210212.htm?fbclid=IwAR1008MXi_V8U0OdevYNu11teX7a4C4NSo9Px_3x63cdJPOljjP0IXkrJuM

Scientific American on farm protests in India

 

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/farm-protests-in-india-are-writing-the-green-revolutions-obituary/?fbclid=IwAR1JFOaBMAA-yWUvwKz3Mk8zcTTz8eYO-B3IBQ7RtUghvWWkBlkhYUAxcAw

Farm Protests in India Are Writing the Green Revolution’s Obituary

Mahua Moitra on the current situation in India

 https://youtu.be/OPKw_Y5X1ng

Full speech https://youtu.be/umRjAyqtvYs which seems to be an accurate assessment of the current situation.

Transcript of the speech https://theprint.in/politics/full-text-of-mahua-moitras-lok-sabha-speech-that-landed-her-in-plagiarism-row/258660/?fbclid=IwAR03l-RtQDfwy1vEFTEKNHlo1drsQhaKsZ3l1nLiqbVa0aEXjendqKfH4Lk

A review of ‘Indians: A brief history of a civilisation’ by Namit Arora

This is a compelling book about the deep history of India and its effects on the present. How did the author achieve it? He was once an IT professional who worked in USA for several years. In his 30s, he took a two year leave and travelled the length and breadth of India like several illustrious people before him, followed by deeper reading and writing. Some of it appeared in his first book, “The Lottery of Birth: On Inherited Social inequalities”. If his essay ‘A place called home’ is any indication, his desire to understand India and Indians more deeply must have long been with him. 

After a few more years of working and travelling the world, he quit his job, relocated to India and began exploring more thoroughly the questions that bothered him. To do so, he chose six major historical sites he had visited before, covering different regions and timespans. He studied the historical sources and modern scholarship available and travelled to them again, talking to various people along the way. He has also presented insights from the chronicles of famous historical travellers, the most compelling of whom (for me) is Francois Bernier. The result is a book that combines a narrative history of India with archaeological travel writing.

As the author says in the introduction, “I hoped to find the essence of each site’s [historical] inhabitants—their defining beliefs, customs and institutions; their struggles and living conditions—and their legacy in the cultural mosaic of India.” Namit Arora has done the hard yakka and given us a guide and model to study India’s past. I think Patrick French summarized it well in his tweet about this book: “Options: spend a decade thinking and reading deeply about the early history of India, and going to all the key places. Or read this 250 page book, INDIANS, by someone who has done the work. An extraordinary feat of imaginative framing, achieved through close observation.”

Patrick French’s comment on Namit Arora’s new book

https://www.namitarora.com/Indians.html

French

@PatrickFrench

·

Jan 24

Options: spend a decade thinking and reading deeply about the early history of India, and going to all the key places. Or read this 250 page book, INDIANS, by someone who has done the work. An extraordinary feat of imaginative framing, achieved through close observation.

Pandemic in Australia

 Generally, the effects seem minor here. All the bad news from the rest of the world seems a bit strange. We’re we lucky or is due to relative isolation and prompt actions except for some initial hiccups in Victoria? We are waiting for vaccinations but with the virus mutations, it is not clear how effective vaccinations will be without the already changed habits.

A documentary on water

 

Check also https://youtu.be/FLva9qOzKmg

Happy New year

 Grandson Ethan, about 7 weeks old. https://www.facebook.com/749518284/posts/10158335361373285/

Needham and related questions

 Needham and related questions:

Joseph_Needham

1.“ “Why did modern science, the mathematization of hypotheses about Nature, with all its implications for advanced technology, take its meteoric rise only in the West at the time of Galileo?”, and why it “had not developed in Chinese civilization” which in the previous many centuries “was much more efficient than occidental in applying” natural knowledge to practical needs? [16] [17]

"Gunpowder, the magnetic compass, and paper and printing, which Francis Bacon considered as the four most important inventions facilitating the West's transformation from the Dark Ages to the modern world, were invented in China".[18] Needham's works attribute significant weight to the impact of Confucianism and Taoism on the pace of Chinese scientific discovery, and emphasises the "diffusionist" approach of Chinese science as opposed to a perceived independent inventiveness in the western world. Needham thought the notion that the Chinese script had inhibited scientific thought was "grossly overrated".” from Wikipedia.

2. The great divergence is the growing economic gap between west and china over 1100 years. And little divergence is the growing gap between northern and Southern Europe.

3.Modernity from Emmanuel Todd:

First hint from [A], page 33, "...urbanization, industrialization and the spread of literacy, in short by modernization..."

Second hint from [B], pages 2-3, "This is a cultural development, beyond the realm of the material. Cultural development first shows up as a rise in the rate of literacy....In the second stage, a fall in the rates of mortality and fertility follows the rise of literacy. Man thus takes control of his immediate biological environment. Only in the third stage does development appear as an increase in the production of industrial goods or, more generally, material wealth"

 A) The Explanation of Ideology: Family Structures and Social Systems, Translated by David Garrioch, 1985 B)The Causes of Progress: Culture, Authority and Change, Translated by Richard Boulind, 1987

Two recent books: 

 Davids, Karel. Religion, Technology, and the Great and Little Divergences. China and Europe Compared, c. 700-1800.

Rulers, Religion, and Riches: Why the West Got Rich and the Middle East’ by Jared Rubin.

Todd uses family systems to gauge changes. The two recent books use the institutions spawned by religions to gauge changes.

From a review of the second book:

“By combining an institutional argument with religion through the effect that religion had on institutions and politics (rather than on cultural beliefs), Rubin’s argument is reminiscent of an important recent book by Karel Davids, which has not thus far received sufficient attention (Davids, 2013). Both books, in a different way, stress how religious institutions mattered regardless of the precise content of religion. Davids, however, emphasizes another aspect, namely the role of religion in the generation and dissemination of technology. Rubin is primarily interested in institutions that support markets. “

The first book considers:

The aim is to connect the four debates:

1 Religion and visions of nature

2 Religion and Human Capital Formation

3 Religion and circulation of technical knowledge

4 Religion and technical innovation

I am trying to read and trying to understand around these topics.

Demography as destiny

 

The ‘Unconceivable Humankind’ to Come: A Portrait of Lévi-Strauss as a Demographer

Wiktor Stoczkowski

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0392192114568268

See also http://www.cerisepress.com/04/10/centennial-sauvage-the-survival-of-tristes-tropiques/view-all

A review of ‘Lineages of Modernity’ by Emmanuel Todd

 https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/11/emmanuel-todd-lineages-of-modernity.html?fbclid=IwAR0QgOz70IWP4TMnJ6I_4KbFEfw46Qm-8Ku7CRbvGIPUnRK4mk3ybX1FKxQ

“ To be clear, half of this book is unsupported, or sometimes just trivial.  There were several times I was tempted to just stop reading, but then it became interesting again.  Todd covers a great deal of ground (the subtitle is A History of Humanity from the Stone Age to Homo Americanus), not all of it convincingly.  But when he makes you think, you really feel he might be on to something.”

India of the last

 Some stories here http://www.indiaofthepast.org/?fbclid=IwAR32uaJgWZw4s5188p-9NO2BxbBIsiMnk6xFRdse7JwdE2lD8H9KjZljbRY

Faye D’Souza on Indian farm protests

 

From Noah Smith

 https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/the-super-scary-theory-of-the-21st?fbclid=IwAR3ZfMVAT-PBypx6aIsah0TurRsghUTYFxsgbveW-ZZdc7Nt6L0XAMvcWKw

About a scary theory of the new century “ The 2019 protests that rocked every region of the planet had no real unifying theme. They included separatist movements, protests against economic inequality, protests against authoritarianism, and even climate protests. The huge, unprecedented protests in the U.S. a year later were about police brutality. I’m not sure anyone ever figured out what the protests in France were about. 

If there’s one “silver bullet” explanation for why protests are erupting all over the world, it’s technology. Social media dramatically lowers the cost of both organizing a protest and spreading a protest-related ideology. Martin Gurri’s The Revolt of the Publicand Zeynep Tufekci’s Twitter and Tear Gas are essential reading on this topic. 

Big protests create instability and can paralyze governments — or even, as we saw with the color revolutions, overthrow them. Great-power conflict in the 21st century might simply be about outlasting your opponents — holding out longer against the naturally bubbling forces of internal dissent. “

So then the question becomes: If social media driven protests are a permanent feature of the modern age, what sort of institutions and technology allow governments to resist the resulting instability?

And I’m not sure we’ll like the answer.

India’s new farm bills

https://thewire.in/rights/farm-laws-legal-rights-constitution article from Wire

http://egazette.nic.in/WriteReadData/2020/222039.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1RWBi7vz37kplkTW_selQEBOXGPP668VYB8yUmxjFrKsdUcXkUZ7EEXKM

Section 13: “No suit, prosecution or other legal proceedings shall lie against the Central Government or the State Government, or any officer of the Central Government or the State Government or any other person in respect of anything which is in good faith done or intended to be done under this Act or of any rules or orders made thereunder.”

A documentary on Ellis Dungan

 

https://youtu.be/gVw4Jtahy4s

Comments from Minai here

A review of one of my favourite books on complex functions

 By Caratheodory

A documentary on Saroj Khan

 

https://youtu.be/ZikNLJeJ17M

A civil servant during emergency

From 2009, another namesake. “The chaotic culture created by such a scramble still persists, and there is no sign that our bureaucracy will ever recover from it. Many of the Emergency era go-getter civil servants have gone from success to success, riding on the shoulders of all hues of politicians who welcome opportunistic civil servants willing to jettison their professional ethics for the rewards of pelf and patronage. Now, no politician or senior civil servant likes a subordinate who talks about what can or cannot be done within the constraints of laws and regulations\; people in power are looking for those who would get ‘any job' done irrespective of proprieties. Even today, unconditional personal loyalty is viewed as the ultimate criterion for judging suitability for jobs.” 

Sanjay Gandhi Effect

One of the greatest tennis shots

 Mary Pierce explains

Two on Sean Connery and Ian Fleming

Toxic Maculinity

The first 50 years of James Bond by Alexander Cockburn

This may explain Trump

 Growing through sabotage

Abstract

According to the theory of capital as power, capitalism, like any other mode of power, is born through sabotage and lives in chains — and yet everywhere we look we see it grow and expand. What explains this apparent puzzle of ‘growth in the midst of sabotage’? The answer, we argue, begins with the very meaning of ‘growth’. Whereas conventional political economy equates growth with a rising standard of living, we posit that much of this growth has nothing to do with livelihood as such: it represents not the improvement of wellbeing, but the expansion of sabotage itself. Building on this premise, the article historicizes, theorizes and models the relationship between changes in hierarchical power and sabotage on the one hand and the growth of energy capture on the other. It claims that hierarchical power is sought for its own sake; that building and sustaining this power demands strategic sabotage; and that sabotage absorbs a significant proportion of the energy captured by society. From this standpoint, capitalism grows, at least in part, not despite but because of — and indeed through — sabotage. 

Lectures on Polyhedral Topology by J.R. Stallings

 “Lectures on Polyhedral Topology” by J.R. Stallings, of his lectures in TIFR 1967, is available online. It also has bits of my first research. I think that the appendix to Chapter seven is mine. And 8.9.3, the proof of s-cobordism with prescribed torsion is mine. I did not understand Stallings proof which used Stiefel-Whitney classes which I was not comfortable with at that time. I came up with the argument given here which is now standard, I think.

https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/stallpl.pdf

Peter Scott

 My friend Peter Scott does not seem to be feeling too well. He had prostrate cancer for a long time and there was a relapse two years ago. Since then, he has been to the hospital off and on, recently to ER for a day. We first met in Liverpool in 1968. Later we corresponded in 1972, he was still in Liverpool and I in Bombay. Some of the resulting work by him was noticed widely and we lost touch, but he seemed to be keeping track of my work and sometimes referred to my work even when it did not seem necessary. Then around 1984, he was one of the organisers of a conference in Warwick. He told me that the conference was organised to understand some of Thurston’s work and I should attend and talk to others since it is difficult to understand it alone. I did attend and it helped. He seems to have decided to resurrect my career since he might have seen some promise in the early days of our contact. We met again in Stillwater in 1986 and he came up with two problems for us to work on, we ended up doing both, one each by correspondence. Then he visited a Melbourne in 1994 and again decided to work with me on some problems of common interest. I was aware of the first one but had no idea how to start. He gave me a paper of Tukia and said what all I had to do was to read about five pages there for the clues. This turned out to be the torus theorem that was completed by others later on. It also started a period of intense collaboration which is still going on. It is probably the hardest work that either of us was ever engaged in and slowly clarified several related problems that interested us. Like many of these things, this kind of difficult technical work may not interest others but was very satisfactory for us. The final clarifications came only this year. Meanwhile we found that we made some mistakes in the early days and since some of this material entered mainstream, it seemed a good idea to publish corrections. But corrections and extensions became another long and difficult affair and seems to be reaching completion now. This will be some thing which nobody may read but compelling to us. Meanwhile Peter keeps chiselling away whenever he is well.

Nobel to Gluck

 Nobel to Gluck privileges a literature whose job is to resist redemption or enchantmentBy Pratal Bhanu  Mehta

Australian strategy for Covid-19

 Australia's coronavirus lockdown strategy worked. Could this be a model for the US?

Long term studies of childhood and later development

The lifelong studies that hold clues to what today’s kids might have in store Book Review of 

The Origins of You: How Childhood Shapes Later LifeJay Belsky, Avshalom Caspi, Terrie E. Moffitt & Richie Poulton Harvard Univ. Press (2020)

Capital as power

A review of 'Capital as Power'

Interview with the authors http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/372/4/20130900_bn_capitalism_as_a_mop_in_22_ideas_to_fix_the_world_long.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3yorJKTLf-IL9ScpHS3Kj_beurTQU5GZqOh7_7d5-LE2x3pAqDmHXKXRM

Related http://journal.eco.ku.ac.th/upload/document/thai/20150149101549.pdf on the average production function. Also https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/05/pikettys-fair-weather-friends/ And https://college.holycross.edu/eej/Volume31/V31N3P489_491.pdf

Frederick Soddy's economics

It seems that the Nobelm Prize winner in chemistry has written extensively on economics, in particular debt before Michael Hudson.
Frederick Soddy's Debt Economics
Another post in Illogical Economics with some links.
Michael Hudson:"Frederick Soddy pointed this out in the 1920s, describing financial claims as “virtual wealth,” on the opposite side of the balance sheet from tangible capital formation. Adam Smith had argued that money is not real wealth. Bank loans, stocks and bonds are financial claims on wealth. 

The essence of balance-sheet accounting is that assets on the left side equal liabilities on the right-hand side, plus net worth (assets free of debt). It would be double-counting to add an economy’s physical means of production (the asset side of the balance sheet) together with the debt and property claims on these assets (on the liabilities side). Yet most public discourse focuses more on asset prices than on the even faster growth of debt.

Soddy was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1921, showing that good economists sometimes do win – except that he won for his contribution to chemistry, not economics. In an analogy to Ptolemaic astronomy, today’s academic gatekeepers depict an economic system shaped by consumer choice rather than revolving around finance." from https://www.prosper.org.au/2010/05/the-counter-enlightenment/

Tim Harford on statistics and vivid reports

Tim Harford  "Statistics, lies and the virus: Tim Harford’s five lessons from a pandemic" in Financial Times :"Rather than bringing some kind of consensus, more years of education simply seem to provide people with the cognitive tools they require to reach the politically convenient conclusion. From climate change to gun control to certain vaccines, there are questions for which the answer is not a matter of evidence but a matter of group identity." https://app.ft.com/content/92f64ea9-3378-4ffe-9fff-318ed8e3245e?fbclid=IwAR3-oyqteypUnXpBV7MpVH-zL2hmgUXIlVuvZuMxl3i7-2g7ixF6e1bqsCs

Affirmative action returns to University of California

University of California votes to restore affirmative action nearly 24 years after it was outlawed

 An earlier strategy of the university:"The UC system subsequently sought to restore diversity with race-neutral measures. In 2001, it began guaranteeing admission for all students who ranked in the top 4% of their high school class, ensuring that those in all neighborhoods would have an equal shot at a UC education." from another report. The need is felt by reports such as this Black newborns three times more likely to die when cared for by white doctor: study though there are claims like this:

Med school professor removed by UPMC as fellowship director over white paper "In the paper, originally published in the Journal of the American Heart Association on March 24, Wang argued that affirmative action efforts through diversity, inclusion and equity in medicine have been largely unsuccessful because of a “limited qualified applicant pool and legal challenges to the use of race and ethnicity in admissions to institutions of higher education.”

Early years of C.R. Rao

THE ET INTERVIEW:PROFESSOR C.R. RAOInterviewed by Anil K. BeraUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-ChampaignIt
A four hour series of opinions and speeches during his 100 th birthday cekebratipns, a bit chaotic but some of these are coming separately on YouTube https://www.facebook.com/100001729304581/posts/3297381710329440/
His popular book Statistics and Truth available free online at various sites.

Michael Hudson on Karl Polanyi

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, 

Bellator 2019

Available on YouTube https://youtu.be/xs3aPA3X_5Y
One of the popular dances from the film https://youtu.be/sDZA54sTqwQ

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.