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.

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/

Some vegetables from scraps

Seven vegetables you can grow from scraps and cuttings

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.”

A debut novel by Megha Majumdar

A Début Novel’s Immersive Urgency from The NewYorker

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. 

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.

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.”

50 books about india

The lounge guide to India in 50 books . I have read some of them.