Mahesh Kathi banned from Hyderabad for six months

“It all began after Kathi Mahesh allegedly made derogatory comments against Lord Rama and Sita during a debate on a regional news channel.

Mahesh was participating in a debate about a sedition case filed against rationalist Babu Gogineni, when he said, “For me, Ramayana is just another story…I believe Rama is as much a cheater (dagulbhaji) as he is ideal in that story. And I think perhaps Sita would have been better, might have gotten justice if she had stayed with Ravana. What’s wrong with that?” ” from The news minute. More about  Mahesh Kathi

• See also  Shambuka story for some of the reasons why some people may not appreciate Rama.

Some thoughts from Tyler Cowen

If technology has arrived everywhere, why has income diverged?
Informational autocrats
Theabove are links to ideas in papers which he seemed to have appreciated. Here is an article by himself Holding Up a Mirror to the Intellectuals of the Left :
“Often my best conversations are with doers and practitioners, rather than intellectuals and writers. The politics of the doers are typically difficult to discern or to boil down to simple classifications.”

More of Jim Holt

A review of his recent book When Einstein walked with Godel by Parul Sehgal. A review of his earlier book Why does the world exist? By Free an Dyson :What can you really know? Freeman Dyson links to earlier review of his of the book

The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World

by David Deutsch

which is very nice but behind a firewall.

Interview with Jim Holt

 Why does Jim Hilt exist? “I do in fact steer by One Big Idea, which makes me a hedgehog rather than a fox. It is this: the part of reality that we can make meaningful claims about is limited by our experience and observation. This is a Big Idea that tends to deflate other Big Ideas.”

Kalpana 1948

Martin Scorsese restored version here https://indiancine.ma/BKLU/player/EZU
This is through a comment in Richard Singer’s blog ‘Dances on the footpath’ where there is a discussion of different restored versions https://roughinhere.wordpress.com/2008/11/06/in-search-of-uday-shankars-kalpana-1948/#comment-13577
There is also one on YouTube https://youtu.be/e0U7ORtnJ78

An old post by Scott Alexander

Though I know the name, I have not really read any thing by Scott Alexander. Today, I stumbled on this old post I CAN TOLERATE ANYTHING EXCEPT THE OUTGROUP which has some very nice insights though some may be US specific like “I am saying that the underlying attitudes that produce partyism are stronger than the underlying attitudes that produce racism, with no necessary implications on their social effects.” A crucial insight which I liked and which reminded me of ‘intimate enmity’ of  D.R. Nagaraj (of The flaming feet) is the Narcissism of small differences. More about Scott Alexander and a link to some of his posts here.

An apparaisal of Tom Paine

from Jacobin, last year. Reading Paine from the left by Sean Monahan. Paine’s writings were familiar in India in the fifties through cheap editions of American books published by USIS. I remember reading some of the works of Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, John Gundhur and others those days. It is through John Gunthur’s ‘Death be not proud’ that I first came to know about John Donne. Somewhere around that time, I came across ‘Citizen Tom Paine’ and ‘Spartacus’ by Howard Fast. Some of these books seem still influential in my case.

Refugees at Dachau

The refugees housed at Dachau: 'Where else should I live?' “Like many other German towns, Dachau has made huge efforts to help refugees. The small community of only 45,000 inhabitants is housing about 350 refugees in the communal shelter. It is planning to open another shelter for up to 100 people in the coming months, and may see numbers rise given the current influx. Faced with such pressure on the available space, the town may not rehouse the Dachau camp residents any time soon. Hammermann, the director of the memorial site, says she could accept a compromise that would still see some of the buildings used as residential space, and the rest for exhibitions and seminars. Negotiations between the town and the state of Bavaria over the future use of the herb garden will take place this winter.”
This was from three years ago. Current situation?

Why don’t Americans take more vacations?

Why Don’t Americans Take More Vacations? Blame It on Independence Day 

Persistence of practices

During a recent trip to India, I noticed that though there is less resistance to divorce and remarriage than before, some of the attitudes widows seem unchanged. Even in the cases where widows regular saree and use bindu, when they are invited to functions either there is no bindu or it is put on the entrance of the house. This was in one area. Some practices related to ceremonies have strengthened; even those which were not observed frequently before like clothing ceremonies, and several ceremonies accompany marriages. This also seems to be true with Indian diaspora practicing various ceremonies when they buy new cars to houses. I started for looking for articles about change and persistence of practices, particularly associated with religion. In an interview with The Hindu, Daud Ali showed interest in such studies. But so far I could find only articles on friendship among the articles he authored. Perhaps there are more. Also, it seems difficult for people living abroad to observe current practices which have a lot of regional variation. Here is one more on friendship take from a book on ‘Same-sex love in India’. Unlike many interpretations of Gita, it emphsizes friendship between Krishna and Arjuna Ancient Indian materials by Ruth Vanita. Any pointers are welcome. 

Dalits among Gadars

Babu Ram and probably Pridhvi Singh Azad
Found these while listening to a story from Aruna Tella:”Aruna Tella tells me that he jumped from the train near Ongole while being transported from Andamans to Rajahmundry. He was from the Gadar party. He crawled to Mukhtinuthalapadu about four miles from Ongole. There was in the village who knew Hindi( this was in early 1920s) and his shackles were broken and are still on display in the village. He was recaptured and sent to Rajahmundry. Apparently Alluri Seetharama Raju tried to free him but failed and died soon after. So this was just before 1924. The Wikipedia entry says that he was a ‘harijan’ and also a Rajput from Punjab. He was a minister in Bhimsen Sachar cabinet in 1949 and died at the age of 96. His autobiography seems available at least in libraries and the google version confirms that he was in Ongole and Rajahmundry. He also visited Russia on the advice of Chandrasekhar Azad and a book on this trip is also available from libraries. More information welcome.”

A mosquitoe repellent

CDC lists oil of lemon eucalyptus as comparable to DEET for mosquitoes 

Devesh Kapur on social science research about India in USA

In the US, there is a rise of social science research about India – but it has little policy impact
“When asked how many of these expensive randomised control trials had moved the policy needle in India, Arvind Subramanian, chief economic advisor to the Indian government (who announced in June that he would be stepping down from the post), was hard pressed to find a single one that had helped him address the dozens of pressing policy questions that came across his table. By contrast, the compiling of just some key facts on learning outcomes by the non-governmental organisation Pratham has had a big impact on policy discussions in education, because it is backed by a degree of specific knowledge and engagement that is more credible and persuasive. One could question whether “relevance” or “timeliness” are a valid standard for good research – yes they are, when those are precisely the reasons given to funders for these projects.

One should acknowledge the wide range of social science type work in US business schools, demography, and even development economics that has been adding to a body of knowledge about India. Nonetheless, a not inconsiderable number of research articles in top journals elide facts or simply interpret them selectively, relying on reviewers’ ignorance about India. That would normally not matter, but because they are published in prestigious journals, they effectively create “new facts” and become the gatekeepers of knowledge in that area.”

Lukaku Dummy

He did not touch the ball but look what he did Romelu Lukaku Against Japan during the last moments

The monster has been with us all along

Forget it By Corey Robin

Interesting new paper by Daniel Gilbert and others

but based on relatively small samples (20-100) of Harvard graduate students:
Prevalence-induced concept change in human judgement.
Abstract:
Why do some social problems seem so intractable? In a series of experiments, we show that people often respond to decreases in the prevalence of a stimulus by expanding their concept of it. When blue dots became rare, participants began to see purple dots as blue; when threatening faces became rare, participants began to see neutral faces as threatening; and when unethical requests became rare, participants began to see innocuous requests as unethical. This “prevalence-induced concept change” occurred even when participants were forewarned about it and even when they were instructed and paid to resist it. Social problems may seem intractable in part because reductions in their prevalence lead people to see more of them.
Discussion at Sciencedaily Problem with solving problems and Marginal Revolution Why Sexism and Racism Never Diminish–Even When Everyone Becomes Less Sexist and Racist

Daniel Gilbertis the author often best seller Stumbling on Happiness which has been mentioned before a few times in this blog. See also Overton window.

An autobiographical essay (talk) from Arundhati Roy

Long read. IN WHAT LANGUAGE DOES RAIN FALL OVER TORMENTED CITIES? wonderful read. But whenever I read Roy, I am reminded of the words of caution from Leela Naidu http://gaddeswarup.blogspot.com/2012/05/while-reading-about-balraj-sahni-i-came.html

Periodic Table using AI

https://news.stanford.edu/2018/06/25/ai-recreates-chemistrys-periodic-table-elements/ 

“Zhang hopes that in the future, scientists can harness Atom2Vec’s knowledge to discover and design new materials. “For this project, the AI program was unsupervised, but you could imagine giving it a goal and directing it to find, for example, a material that is highly efficient at converting sunlight to energy,” Zhang said.

His team is already at work on version 2.0 of their AI program, which will focus on cracking an intractable problem in medical research: designing just the right antibody to attack antigens – molecules capable of inducing an immune response – that are specific to cancer cells. Currently, one of the most promising approaches to curing cancer is cancer immunotherapy, which involves harnessing the antibodies that can attack antigens on cancer cells.

But the human body can produce more than 10 million unique antibodies, each of which is made up of a different combination of about 50 genes. “If we can map these building block genes onto a mathematical vector, then we can organize all antibodies into something similar to a periodic table,” Zhang says. “Then, if you discover that one antibody is effective against an antigen but is toxic, you can look ”

Tyler Cowen and others on asylum rights

Are asylum rights misguided?  And Australia is given as an example! “You should note, by the way, that Australia has relatively tough asylum rights, but takes in a large number of legal immigrants.  The country also goes to great lengths to stop people from showing up at the border in boats and claiming asylum.  So it seems there is at least one case where this is a sustainable posture.”

Some others A world of free movement would be $78 trillion richer  “If something seems too good to be true, it probably is not actually true. But occasionally it is. Michael Clemens, an economist at the Centre for Global Development, an anti-poverty think-tank in Washington, DC, argues that there are “trillion-dollar bills on the sidewalk”. One seemingly simple policy could make the world twice as rich as it is: open borders.”

Fundamental rule of brain plasticity

Study reveals how, when a synapse strengthens, its neighbors weaken.
“Our brains are famously flexible, or “plastic,” because neurons can do new things by forging new or stronger connections with other neurons. But if some connections strengthen, neuroscientists have reasoned, neurons must compensate lest they become overwhelmed with input. In a new study in Science, researchers at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT demonstrate for the first time how this balance is struck: when one connection, called a synapse, strengthens, immediately neighboring synapses weaken based on the action of a crucial protein called Arc
....
Though the rule they found was simple, the experiments that revealed it were not. As they worked to activate plasticity in the visual cortex of mice and then track how synapses changed to make that happen, lead authors Sami El-Boustani and Jacque Pak Kan Ip, postdocs in Sur’s lab, accomplished several firsts.“