John Quiggin at FiveBooks

Interesting selection of five books by an economist John Quiggin on Utopia (via 3quarksdaily):
"The reason I chose this topic is because of the current political situation, particularly on the left. We’ve moved from a situation where the left offered a utopian vision that inspired people, to a situation where the left is primarily trying to stave off the tribalism that dominates politics on the right. That doesn’t really seem to be enough to mobilise and engage people. We need to recapture the kind of vision and language of utopia that used to be part and parcel of left politics. But I suppose I like the idea of utopia more than the work of specifying the details.......
Part of my story is a feasible utopia – it’s talking about things that are actually achievable, rather than purely abstract goals, or the goals that characterised the communists, for example."

Gore Vidal RIP

I read only two books by Gore Vidal "The Last Empire" and "United States: Essays 1952-1992" both of which were excellent and I keep going back to them. Yves Smith has given links to some of the obituaries in http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/08/gore-vidal-is-dead.html including this NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/01/books/gore-vidal-elegant-writer-dies-at-86.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all with this correction which seems strangely appropriate:
"Correction: August 3, 2012

An obituary about the author Gore Vidal in some copies on Wednesday included several errors. Mr. Vidal called William F. Buckley Jr. a crypto-Nazi, not a crypto-fascist, in a television appearance during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. While Mr. Vidal frequently joked that Vice President Al Gore was his cousin, genealogists have been unable to confirm that they were related. And according to Mr. Vidal’s memoir “Palimpsest,” he and his longtime live-in companion, Howard Austen, had sex the night they met, but did not sleep together after they began living together. It is not the case that they never had sex."

Persistence of prejudices

A recent paper "Persecution Perpetuated: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Semitic Violence in Nazi Germany"
Abstract


How persistent are cultural traits? Using data on anti-Semitism in Germany, we find local continuity over 600 years. Jews were often blamed when the Black Death killed at least a third of Europe’s population during 1348–50. We use plague-era pogroms as an indicator for medieval anti-Semitism. They reliably predict violence against Jews in the 1920s, votes for the Nazi Party, deportations after 1933, attacks on synagogues, and letters to Der Stürmer. We also identify areas where persistence was lower: cities with high levels of trade or immigration. Finally, we show that our results are not driven by political extremism or by different attitudes toward violence.
..................
There is a passing reference to India ",Jha (2008) finds that Indian trading ports with a history of peaceful cooperation between Hindus and Muslims saw less violent conflict during the period 1850–1950 and in 2002."
The paper of Jha mentioned is (revised version)http://aalims.org/uploads/jha.pdf

Jha Saumitra "Trade, Institutions and Religious Tolerance: Evidence from India". Stanford University Research Paper No. 2004, 2008.

Links to several Rakhi songs

in Atul's http://atulsongaday.me/2012/08/02/hum-behnon-ke-liye-mere-bhaiyya/among them this bleak one

A game changer?

A new paper by William Press and Freeman Dyson is drawing a lot of attention (via Steven Hsu who also links to relevant papers). From the summary by William Poundstone:
"Executive summary: Robert Axelrod's 1980 tournaments of iterated prisoner's dilemma strategies have been condensed into the slogan, Don't be too clever, don't be unfair. Press and Dyson have shown that cleverness and unfairness triumph after all."
From a response by KARL SIGMUND & MARTIN NOWAK:
"With their splendidly 'mischievous' extortionate strategies, Press and Dyson contribute to classical game theory, by considering two players who grapple with each other in a kind of mental jiu-jitsu. The leverage afforded by zero-determinant strategies offers a splendid new arsenal of throws, locks, and holds.

Which of these strategies can flourish in an evolutionary setting is less clear. Being successful, in this context, feeds back at the population level. It means that more and more players will act like you, be they your offspring or your epigones. Thus you are increasingly likely to encounter your own kind. If your 'extortionate' strategy guarantees that you do twice as well as your opponent, and your opponents' strategy guarantees that she does twice as well as you, this only means that both get nothing. The only norm which is not self-defeating through population dynamics requires players to guarantee each other as much as themselves. We are then back to Tit For Tat. Press and Dyson are perfectly aware of this, of course. In a nutshell, they have uncovered a vast set of strategies linking the scores of two players deterministically (as TFT does), but asymmetrically (unlike TFT). This enriches the canvas of individual interactions, but not necessarily the range of outcomes open to evolving populations."

Building local economies

From The Humble Origins of New Global Economy. Don't Miss Out (via Naked Capitalism):
"What is evident to me, in the geeky splendor of the photos, is that this type of event is where the future is being made.
....
Here’s an example of what is available. The machine pictured is an Amaya Bravo. It’s a 16-thread computer controlled embroidery machine that can rapidly and flawlessly embroider complex designs onto hats, shirts, and dresses. It’s probably not of much interest to most readers, but IF you want to build an artisanal clothing business that uses embroidery, you will be well served to buy one of these machines.

Unfortunately, while the machine’s price has been DRASTICALLY reduced and the size of the machine is MUCH smaller than it used to be, the basic model still costs $9,000. As such, it’s a tough purchase for someone starting or running a micro-business.
Fortunately, makerspaces are being established in communities all around the world to make it easier for people to get access to tools like this.
It’s simple. If you want to build a thriving local economy. A local economy that makes your community resilient to economic failure and shocks, you need to find ways to help the innovators in your community make things."

P.S. Related An Inspiring Story

An excellent book on some devadasis

in coastal Andhra and parts of Tamilnadu Unfinished Business:Devadasis, and Modernity in South India by Davesh Soneji. Apart from the politics, economics, legislations, the author actually meets several devadasis over a period of several years. The book is interspersed with accounts of these meetings, particularly chapters 2,4 and 5. A version of parts of Chapter 5 is available online
http://acceleratedmotion.wesleyan.edu/primary_sources/texts/bharatanatyam/memory_recovery.pdf
and also of Chapter 2
http://www.fwalive.ualberta.ca/mediawiki/images/6/67/Soneji_Book_Chapter.pdf
Some of these ladies are in their seventies, their reminiscences, still singing and dancing for themselves and their friends are some of the most enjoyable parts of the book. Some of these arts are to some extent preserved under the names Andhra Natyam by Nataraja Ramakrishna and Vilasini Natyam by Swapnasundari.
On the whole a very enjoyable book for laymen like me. I became aware of this book through Minai whose excellent posts on dances have been mentioned several times before.

Amirbai Karnataki background song forgtten artists

There seem to be more like her sister Goharbai Karnataki (who had an interesting life with Bal Gandharva), Hirabai Barodekar etc. Music seems to be one thing which somewhat unifies the subcontinent.
P.S. See also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eWlfejlJRQ&feature=related from the same people who uploaded the above http://www.filmimpressions.com/

What made Indian democracy work?

In a long article After Nehru by Perry Anderson, an ex-editor of  New Left Review:
"Why then has the sheer pressure of the famished masses, who apparently hold an electoral whip-hand, not exploded in demands for social reparation incompatible with the capitalist framework of this – as of every other – liberal democracy?
......
The answer lies, and has always lain, in what also sets India apart from any other country in the world, the historic peculiarities of its system of social stratification. Structurally, by reason of their smaller numbers and greater resources, virtually all ruling classes enjoy an advantage over the ruled in their capacity for collective action. Their internal lines of communication are more compact; their wealth offers an all-purpose medium of power, convertible into any number of forms of domination; their intelligence systems scan the political landscape from a greater height. More numerous and more dispersed, less equipped materially, less armed culturally, subordinate classes always tend, in the sociologist Michael Mann’s phrase, to be ‘organisationally outflanked’ by those above them. Nowhere has this condition been more extreme than in India. There the country is divided into some thirty major linguistic groups, under the cornice of the colonial language – the only one in which rulings on the constitution are accessible – of which, at most, a tenth of the population has any command. These would be obstacles in themselves daunting enough to any national co-ordination of the poor.


But the truly deep impediments to collective action, even within language communities, let alone across them, lay in the impassable trenches of the caste system. "
(via quarksdaily)

Dawn on Anil Gupta

Notable Inventions Discovered by Indian Professor
Some of the previous posts about Anil Gupta here and here.

Brief glimpses of Lalita and Padmini in Kalpana (1948)

here (around two minutes)
But Indians may have to wait for some more time since the resored reels are stuck in customs godown. Hoever there is an adverisement announcing a DVD related to Kalpana.

Interesting paper

The Clan and the City: Sustaining Cooperation in China and Europe by Avner Greif and Guido Tabellini  (via Chris Blattman) Abstract:


Over the last millennium, the clan and the city have been the locus of cooperation in China and Europe respectively. This paper examines -- analytically, historically, and empirically -- the cultural, social, and institutional co-evolution that led to this bifurcation. We highlight that groups with which individuals identify are basic units of cooperation. Such groups impact institutional development because intra-group moral commitment reduces enforcement cost implying a comparative advantage in pursuing collective actions. Moral groups perpetuate due to positive feedbacks between morality, institutions, and the implied pattern of cooperation.

Zachary Latif discusses caste

http://www.brownpundits.com/2012/07/25/help-black-power-need-in-the-subcontinent-the-desi-version-telling-caste-by-picture-surname/
There seem to be mistakes and over simplifications but the thrust of the article seems right to me. There are some follow up posts as well.

Strange ways of the market

US exports ehanol to Brazil and also imports ethanol of different grade from Brazil. Read the details, implications to food prices and a discussion of alternative enery resources in the discussion 'US ethanol policies set to reach their illogical conclusion'

Links July 24, 2012

To preserve competetion, nationalize the largest ones from NY Times
Wealth does not tricle down... from The Guardian about the $2 trillion dollars or so stashed offshore by the rich with a graphic on the off shore destinations and loosers. Surprisingly India is not in the list of top 20 loosers. But India figures in the next
Why India is so bad for women?
See also Captain Lakshmi Dahgal: A Life of Struggle :Freedom comes in three forms,” the diminutive doctor goes on to say on camera in her unadorned and direct manner. “The first is political emancipation from the conqueror, the second is economic [emancipation] and the third is social… India has only achieved the first.”

May be the last post for now by Carl Zimmer on Chromosome fusion in humans http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2012/07/23/and-finally-the-hounding-duck-can-rest/
A nice article on the real value of Higgs Boson
And Noisy sex may mean death for some flies
Finally Choking dog saves its own life by dialling 999 (via Naked Capitalism)
P.S. Data for developing world about secret offshore wealth
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/datablog/2012/jul/19/developing-world-offshore-wealth-external-debt

gayegi duniya geet mere

From the 1962 film Mousimqar, seems appropriate for Noor Jejan to sing

There are better versions on the YouTube without subtitles
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aicyhqgyj-Y
and some by Noor Jehan in concert
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpLFz-puznM

US science quite healthy

says a new book Is American Science in Decline? by Yu Xie and Alexandra Killewald. A comprehensive review in an editorial of Current Science by P.Balaram Animal Spirits : A Powerful Prescription

Pankaj Mishra's new book

review From the Ruins of the Empire by Pankaj Mishra (via 3quarksdaily) concludes
"The book concludes by tracing the painful legacies of Asia's responses to the west: Japan's near-genocidal pan-Asian revenge for earlier imperial slights; Maoism's disastrous pursuit of a post-imperial modernity; the violent anti-westernism of global Islam. Despite widespread western admiration for the contemporary Asian miracle, Mishra sees in China a country in which some "stand up, while most others are forced to stand down, and the privileged Chinese minority aspire for nothing higher than the conveniences and gadgets of their western consumer counterparts". He hails India as a democracy in which "numbers of the disenchanted and the frustrated" are growing, along with a huge sense of hopelessness among landless peasants. And to those who read China's and India's embrace of capitalism as a comforting sign of their reconciliation with western ways, he offers a warning. Environmental apocalypse, he anticipates, will be the final consequence of these centuries-old collisions between Europe and America, and Asia: "the bitter outcome of the universal triumph of western modernity, which turns the revenge of the east into something darkly ambiguous, and all its victories truly Pyrrhic"."
From a recent NPR interview Slowed Growth reflects China's Uphill Battle

"If you went back in the '90s, like people who didn't have a lot of money were looking to visas to get out, and may be opportunities in America. Now, it's all the winners who are trying to get out. Two of the biggest banks in China did this survey of their high net worth individuals, that $1.6 million in assets or more - which is a lot of money in China. Sixty percent in both surveys said that they were considering emigrating, maybe in the process of getting a green card.


And they said things like education for their children. You know, everybody in America raves about the Chinese education system. Well, Chinese people want for their kids, they want critical learning, which they can't really quite get in the Chinese system.

They're looking for clean air. And the other thing is they're looking for ways to, frankly, protect their assets 'cause there's no rule of law. And everybody sort of feels there that, you know, if something bad happens or if I get on the wrong side of the government, I could lose all that I've made"

Curry may be ancient

From the Science magazine article The ingredients for a 4000 year old proto-curry
by Andrew Lawler. Summary:
"When cooks in the ancient Indus River civilization prepared their meals 4000 years ago, the results may not have been much different from what you might order today in an Indian restaurant. Recent studies presented at the meeting found a surprisingly diverse Indus diet that incorporated spices such as ginger and turmeric, beans such as lentils and mung, grains such as rice and millet, and even bananas. An explosion in food-related studies, thanks to both new tools and new interest in rural villages, provides exciting clues to day-to-day life in the Indus, experts say. "
The article is behind a pay wall. The article says that the results from the teeth of humans dated between 2500 BC to 2200 BC in the town of  Farmana near Delhi, and also from a cooking pot found cooked ginger and turmeric. Apparently cow teeth from Harappa yielded the same material. Even banana turn up.but no black pepper or chilli pepper. "Examining two sites near today's Masudpur, west of Delhi, University of Cambridge archaeologist Jennifer Bates compared carbonized seed and phytolith density per liter of soil near hearths to determine the relative abundance of crops by period and site. Bates found that both villages practiced summer and winter cropping, and both ate wheat, barley, millet, and rice from early Indus times, as shown by nearby pottery; she also identified lentils and mung beans. Rice has long been assumed to be only a late addition in the Indus, yet one village apparently ate more rice than wheat or barley, although millet dominated."

"Boot Polish" again on YouTube

I have posted about this film before a few times but many of the links have disappeared including some of the links to the reviews posted in
http://gaddeswarup.blogspot.com.au/2008/03/raj-kapoors-boot-polish.html

I find now the film is again available on YouTube with English subtitles.
The link to one of my favourite songs also is not working and I found a new link from Atul's Bollywoodsongaday