Accidental Blogger

Post 9/11 priorities

June 2, 2011

Here are a few stories recently in the news that illustrate the priorities of our politicians and government agencies when it comes to spending public money.

A United Airlines flight from Washington DC to Ghana made a mid-air U-Turn because of a fist fight between two irritated and uncivil passengers. The disturbance was deemed "serious" enough for the plane to require a F-16 fighter jet escort. Before landing, the plane jettisoned $50,000 worth of fuel in order to reduce the weight of the aircraft to a landing-worthy level. We do not know how much it costs to send up an F-16 into the air.

A suicidal man drowned in San Francisco Bay over the Memorial Day weekend while police and firefighters who were summoned there stood by and watched. Fire officials claimed that recent budget cuts prevented them from attempting a "water rescue."

Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey who prides himself for being a fiscally responsible politician and has suggested wide ranging pay cuts and reduction in benefits for school teachers and state employees, flew in a state helicopter to his son's baseball game. The brand new helicopter is meant to be used for medical and Homeland Security related emergencies. It costs $2,500 per hour to fly the helicopter.
The US & Pakistan: more on what Omar has been telling us

June 1, 2011

The volatile detritus of America's disastrous cold war diplomacy in South Asia – Lawrence Wright in the New Yorker.
3 QD Science Prize, 2011

June 1, 2011

The 3rd annual competition for the best science writing on blogs and e-zines is now open at 3 Quarks Daily. If you have read an interesting science post in the last 12 months, please consider nominating it. For details of the rules and deadlines, see here.
Answer: Black women are unattractive. Question: WHAT!!! (Norman Costa)

May 30, 2011

Answer: Black women are unattractive. Question: WHAT!!!

A research psychologist, myself, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about over the Satoshi Kanazawa article:

"Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women? Why black women, but not black men?" Published on May 15, 2011 by Satoshi Kanazawa in The Scientific Fundamentalist

I have come to the defense of scientists, in the past, who were castigated for their research because the results and interpretations flew in the face of political and religious correctness. The biologist Eric Pianka at UT Austin was one. So I wanted to see if Kanazawa did his homework. Please note, that I did not start with "How could he state such an hypothesis that is offensive?" This is not where scientific criticism starts.

I read the review, "The Data Are In Regarding Satoshi Kanazawa" by Khadijah Britton, May 23, 2011 10:10 AM. HERE. I looked at the original blog post by SK. HERE. I was ready to see if he should have said that such-and-such a group thought black women were less attractive than other women. Perhaps black women were quite attractive to everyone, but the edge went to the other groups. In other words, I wanted to keep an open mind and see what he was up to.

Here is my conclusion:

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A few not very memorable Memorial Day weekend links

May 29, 2011

Without further analysis from my side, the links are followed by exchanges that occurred elsewhere – in an e-mail thread among A.B. authors and my Facebook page. (Joe, see I always follow good advice!)

The most complete 3-D map of the universe: (link Dean)

Norman Costa: The 2MRS image is a hoax. It is actually a recently discovered, and previously unknown, Jackson Pollack canvas. The astronomers superimposed a Mercator Projection of grid lines upon the image. The fraud was uncovered by a grandson of Pollack, a graduate student at Yale University in the Art History department.

Missing mass of the universe found: (link Dean)

Dean: Love this sentence: “We don’t know where it went. Now we do know where it went because that’s what Amelia found.” Reads like one of my kids’ bedtime books!

Prasad (our own resident physicist): Ah, I have nothing to say about the universe, but mass is a weird thing, psychologically speaking. You think of what masses want, and basically it’s to be left to do as they please, Newton’s first law style. And the heavier something is, the better it withstands your pushes and pokes at it. It’s a principle of self-respect and stateliness, combined with some John Wayne type loner. But then there’s gravity. Masses lose their minds when they encounter each other. You take more than one of these dignity-soaked objects, and right there they have to run right toward each each other. And if there’s something really top-dog around like the earth, you can see how everything around it, feather or ten-ton weight, runs toward it at the same rate, independent of how much heft it has in its own right. It would be hard to make sense of a person who behaved in this peculiar way.

“Storming” gender biases: (a link I posted on Facebook; do read the news report before you look at the comments that follow)

Jordan Brand: They are definitely getting a large amount of attention about this.

Ruchira Paul: ‎Jordan, that in itself is quite bad, don’t you think? Ironically, people are now focusing exactly on what the parents don’t want to reveal. Who would have cared if Storm was just another little boy or girl?
BTW, I think it is a boy.

Jordan Brand: I also think the child looks like a boy. I guess we’ll never know. Until he rebels and grows up to be an ultra right wing talk show host or something.

Elatia Harris: Well, if you want to seriously make a fetish of something, keep it a secret! These people have gone to too many Marilyn Manson concerts. I suppose the reductio ad absurdum here is starting a special account for Storm’s transgender surgery, in the event he or she shall have been raised with too many choices.

Akim Reinhard: They don’t want to burden their children with society’s definitions, but they have a son named Jazz.

Ruchira Paul: The parents have embarked upon a crusade and are using the children as weapons. This is how Jazz feels:

But Stocker and Witterick’s choices haven’t always made life easy for their kids. Though Jazz likes dressing as a girl, he doesn’t seem …to want to be mistaken for one. He recently asked his mother to let the leaders of a nature center know that he’s a boy. And he chose not to attend a conventional school because of the questions about his gender. Asked whether that upsets him, Jazz nodded.

Elatia Harris: Okay, well, this has left the sphere of Progressivism raised to eccentricity. This is pussyfooting around child abuse. Childhood is not a time of life when being “the odd one” in a group feels okay; rather, it is a time of life when most ki…ds want to differentiate themselves very slowly. Ask any kid who had 30 IQ points on the rest of the smart ones in 2nd grade how good that difference felt; you will not find one to say it was highly rewarding to be off the charts at age 7. Letting an unusual child be unusual is good, and refraining from privileging the mainstream over all other options is good, but if a little boy is asking to identify as such, and avoiding situations where his mother’s refusal to designate him a boy causes pain, then these parents are not all about choice for their kids but about flouting norms they’re angry with, and sending the bill for that to the kids. If they want to create a gender-free society they should start by muddying up their own genders, not with inflicting that life on their kids.

Lester Hunt: The first time I saw this title I literally thought it was an Onion headline. It reads like a stinging parody of parenting styles I have actually seen. My wife calls it “trying to raise a boy-girl.”

Samina Raza: Way to confuse the hell out of the poor child… life is confusing enough without crazy parents…

Elatia Harris: Ruchira, it’ll be a post to remember! Do you find it funny that no one has come out for the parents’ rights to their philosophical conceits and the methods those conceits generate? Christian Scientists teach their children to have no truck …with medical science, after all, even if physicians say their lives are at stake. And countless people raise their children to expect the End of Days — soon! Still more teach their children to disregard evolution, global warming, and certain nagging problems with Hitler. Civil liberties lawyers seem to embrace all that at the legal and philosophical level, while not of course liking it personally. Could it be the parents in this case are afflicting their children with problems that education, peer pressure, and the eventual embarkation on a life beyond the parental grasp just cannot ameliorate?

Lester Hunt: Elatia, I do think these parents have a right to do what they are doing, but whether it is wise to exercise these rights in this way is a separate question for me.

Elatia Harris: If they have rights to raise there children this way, then our questioning their wisdom is only an exercise. I’ll bet we all know some very impaired people who raise their children with love and precious little judgment. As long as love is …present, life at home may be better than life in the foster care system. But defiantly presenting your child to the world as ungendered, and digging out on all the ensuing confusion because, s–t, man, your point is made, and you HAVE gotten in peoples’ faces, is really unhinged. Malicious stage-mothering x 10, and I wish a sane auntie would step in.

Lester Hunt: By “have the right” I just mean it would be wrong to use force or violence against them. The rest of us have a right to remonstrate with them, ridicule them, and so forth. To start coercing people about things like this would be a slippery slope to Hell, I believe.

Elatia Harris: I agree, Lester — the greater harm would not be outbalanced by the isolated good. This is like the Neo-Nazis parading in Skokie, IL, home to many Holocaust survivors, some decades ago. A real test case. If these parents are let alone, to w…oefully compromise their kids’ journey to puberty, because they are not doing anything illegal, only something grotesque and harmful, then the rights of unconventional parents who do not expose their children to harm are safeguarded. Difficult as it all is, it’s better so.

Lindsay Beyerstein: This is a publicity stunt. I don’t see why people are so exercised about it, though. Basically, they’re saying that they’re not going to announce the kid’s gender based solely on his (?) anatomical sex. They’re waiting for him (?) to come t…o his own conclusions. If you accept the thesis that gender is primarily a matter of what’s in your brain, as opposed to what’s between your legs, it seems only reasonable to wait until the individual can express their identity. Odds are, Storm will come to the conclusion that his brain matches his junk–but if not, so what? I don’t buy the whole “confusion” argument as to why you’re abusing your kids if you don’t relentlessly drill gender norms into them. I’m too much of a biological determinist for that. Kids know who they are. The worst-case scenario is if the brain doesn’t match the junk and society spends an entire childhood trying to ignore or suppress the mismatch. That’s what’s confusing.
Israel, the real Third Rail of US politics

May 26, 2011

WASHINGTON—State Department diplomat Nelson Milstrand, who appeared on CNN last week and offered an informed, thoughtful analysis implying that Israel could perhaps exercise more restraint toward Palestinian moderates in disputed territories, was asked to resign Tuesday. “The United States deeply regrets any harm Mr. Milstrand’s careful, even-tempered, and factually accurate remarks may have caused our democratic partner in the Middle East,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in an unequivocal condemnation of the veteran foreign-service officer’s perfectly reasonable statements. “U.S. policy toward Israel continues to be one of unconditional support and fawning sycophancy.” Milstrand, 63, will reportedly appear at an AIPAC conference to offer a full apology as soon as his trial concludes and his divorce is finalized.

Granted, this is from the Onion. But it encapsulates accurately the cowardliness of US politicians in handling the Israel-Palestine peace negotiations. Although American presidents, including Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have made attempts to be even handed on the matter, they have done so with caution making sure that their re-election chances were not jeopardized by honesty or fairness. President Obama, emboldened perhaps by his success in eliminating Osama bin Laden, went out on a limb and called on both Israelis and Palestinians to take a serious look at creating a Palestinian state with mutually acceptable borders before his election for a second term. Whether this is a courageous move or a foohardy gamble, we will find out in a year and a half.

Even though Obama's views are almost identical to what Bush had proposed in 2008 and what Clinton had hinted at, it is being interpreted by Israel's hard line American supporters as throwing Israel under the bus and sympathetic towards Hamas. The distortions and lies come hardly as a surprise to Americans who have watched the same old theater for decades. The irony is that most Americans do want to see a Palestinian state and an end to Israeli-Palestinian hostilities. So it was especially disgusting to watch our elected representatives behave like trained circus seals who rose up and repeatedly applauded right wing Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent speech to Congress. Netanyahu had no intention to come across as a negotiator for peace. His objective was incendiary and misleading demagoguery and he succeded in that with usual aplomb. The reason that this tired old rhetoric will once again not receive the scrutiny of ordinary American voters is that the never ending mid-east mess is not very high up on their priority list, despite general support for an independent Palestinian state and peace between the warring populations, as reflected in numerious polls. But our elected officials of both parties are scared to death of the AIPAC and the rapture-friendly conservative Christians and they know that they will not pay a political price for ignoring the sentiment of the majority and pandering to the reactionaries. That is why a fiercely partisan but small group of Israel supporters repeatedly get away with putting a kibosh on all serious peace negotiations. Let us see if despite Obama's steely resolve and success in getting Osama bin Laden and the Republican Mediscare, whether the right wing will be able to sink him in 2012 by wrapping the albatross of Israel-Palestine around his neck.

Here are some reactions to Obama and Netanyahu's speeches:

From the Washington post, here and here, from the BBC and from the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz (this is from the reliably left wing Gideon Levy). Note the reference to the standing ovations to Netanyahu's speech.
Pakistan: the narrative comes home to roost (Omar Ali)

May 23, 2011

Initially posted at 3 Quarks Daily.

Most countries that exist above the banana-republic level of existence have an identifiable (even if always contested and malleable) national narrative that most (though not all) members of the ruling elite share and to which they contribute. Pakistan is clearly not a banana-republic; it is a populous country with a deep (if not very competent) administration, a very lively political scene, a very large army, the world’s fastest growing nuclear arsenal and a very significant, even if underdeveloped, economy. But when it comes to the national narrative, Pakistan is sui-generis. The “deep state” has promoted a narrative of Muslim separatism, India-hatred and Islamic revival that has gradually grown into such a dangerous concoction that even BFFs China and Saudi Arabia are quietly suggesting that we take another look at things.

The official “story of Pakistan” may not appear to be more superficial or contradictory than the propaganda narratives of many other nations, but a unique element is the fact that it is not a superficial distillation of a more nuanced and deeper narrative, it is ONLY superficial ; when you look behind the school textbook level, there is no there there. What you see is what you get. The two-nation theory and the creation of Pakistan in 712 AD by the Arab invader Mohammed Bin Qasim and its completion by the intrepid team of Allama Iqbal and Mohammed Ali Jinnah in the face of British and Hindu connivance is the story in middle school textbooks and it turns out that it is also the story in universities and think tanks (this is not imply that no serious work is done in universities; of course it is, but the story of Pakistan does not seem to have a logical relationship with this serious work).

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No, the maid doesn’t come with the room (or the mansion)

May 20, 2011

Nor do subordinates come with the office.

Once again, the news cycle is dominated by stories of powerful men embroiled in sexual behavior which is at best unsavory in one instance and probably criminal in another. Boys will be boys, right? And it is none of our business, most of the time. But older men in positions of power are not adolescent boys and predatory behavior resembling a rutting chimpanzee or treating women like prosciutto, if shrugged off will lead sooner or later, to unlawful actions. The French, often haughtily condescending towards the puritanical Americans are beginning to see the difference between elaborate seduction and aggressive sexual harrassment. At least French women are beginning to do some soul searching to evaluate what they may be putting up with in a culture that prides itself in being free of sexual hang-ups. But France's male intellectuals still don't seem to get it. David Rieff in The New Republic.

Early in the summer of 1995, a colleague and I went into South Sudan to report from the side of the South Sudanese guerrilla army, the SPLA. At dinner on the day we arrived, completely out of the blue, one of our minders turned to me and said, “I am so sorry about this Gennifer Flowers.” I had expected to talk about many things in South Sudan, but the woman with whom Bill Clinton had had an affair in the 1980s was certainly not one of them. Not quite sure of how I should answer, I took refuge in sanctimonious platitudes. We take sexual exploitation of women by powerful men very seriously in the United States, I said. Hearing this, the minder only smiled. “With us,” he said, “the fault is always with the woman.”

I have not thought of this incident for years, but the reaction of so many leading French public figures—and not just his allies within the French Socialist Party—to the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn brought it all back to me. The International Monetary Fund’s managing director who, until this week, was widely believed to have a good chance of being elected president of France in next year’s elections is facing seven charges, including attempted rape and unlawful imprisonment of a maid at the New York hotel in which he was staying. From Bernard-Henri Lévy to Jean Daniel, the longtime editor of the weekly Le Nouvel Observateur, to the distinguished human rights lawyer turned politician Robert Badinter, who, as Francois Mitterand’s justice minister secured the abolition of the death penalty, the French elite consensus seems to be that it is Strauss-Kahn himself and not the 32-year-old maid who is the true victim of this drama.

To be sure, Strauss-Kahn might not be guilty. But French intellectuals’ vociferous defense of him, without all the facts of the situation, goes too far. In his weekly column in Le Point, Lévy asked “how a chambermaid could have walked in alone, contrary to the habitual practice of most New York hotels of sending a ‘cleaning brigade’ of two people, into the room of one of the most closely watched figures on the planet.” For his part, Daniel wrote in an editorial for his magazine that the fate meted out to DSK, as Strauss-Kahn is generally referred to in the French press, has made him think that, “We [French] and the Americans do not belong to the same civilization,” and demanded to know—shades of my guerrilla friend in South Sudan—why “the supposed victim was treated as worthy and beyond any suspicion?”

Dominique Strauss-Kahn will have his day in court. Thank goodness it will be an American court. After all, in France it is believed that Roman Polanski is too talented to be tried for anything as trite as child rape.

As for Arnold, who as far as we know, has not committed a crime in responding recklessly to his libido, his fortunes on or off the movie screen, will be determined by the court of public opinion (and the Kennedy clan's vast influence).
Odds and Ends (Sujatha)

May 19, 2011

-I knew the CDC was the go-to place for information on dealing with epidemics, the latest outbreaks of measles, travel vaccination recommendations etc, but did you know that they offer instructions on how to deal with a Zombie Apocalypse ?

-Not all planets need their stars, some may be Lonely Rangers, like these newly found types of planets.

-A possible competitor for Mad Hal, the crazed computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Research from U Texas shows that it is possible to make a computer schizophrenic.
Teeth of Tyrants

May 16, 2011

A wonderful article at 3 Quarks Daily by Ryan Sayre. Enjoy.
Skimming the “News” about Domestic Trends (Dean)

May 11, 2011

By accident–this is, after all, the Accidental Blogger–two stories from major news outlets came my way, both in relevant part pertaining to domestic amenities, kitchen conveniences in particular. I don't often read the real estate or dining pages. Now I'm reminded why.

With rare exceptions, I can't stomach food writing. A story in yesterday's New York Times (beware the paywall) is a perfect example of putrid journalism parading as insightful, novel human interest. Essentially, two pages of precious web journalism copy space are occupied by fluff about Indian cookery. Don't get me wrong. I love tandoori cooking, which I first learned about in, oh, around 1986 (India's Oven, Los Angeles). This story finds interesting the fact that some guy, who now runs a business manufacturing tandoor ovens for home use, hadn't heard about it until…1986. That's 25 years ago. We learn that Madhur Jaffrey, whom I first heard about in, I dunno, the '90s, maybe, heard about it only as recently as 1947. How is this news? Or even interesting?

The tandoor may have originated in Rajasthan, India, where archeologists have found tandoor remains dating from 2600 B.C. — about the same time as the pyramids. The first tandoors were used to bake flatbread, a tradition that survives in Indian roti, Afghan naan and Turkmen chorek.

Visit a bakery on the teeming Chandni Chowk in Old Delhi — or any Indian restaurant, for that matter — and you will see fresh naan being made to order. Soft white balls of yeasted dough are rolled into flat cakes, which are draped over a round cloth pillow called a gadhi and pressed onto the hot inner walls of the tandoor, where they puff, blister and brown in minutes.

The searing heat and smoke, and moisture-retaining properties of the tandoor, make it equally effective for roasting meat on vertical skewers, a delicacy mentioned by the Indian surgeon Sushruta as early as the eighth century B.C. Shah Jahan, the Mughal emperor who built the Taj Mahal, held the tandoor in such high esteem he had a portable metal model constructed to take on his travels.

In spite of its ancient origins and utter simplicity, the tandoor produces startlingly sophisticated results, including smoky flatbreads that puff like pillows, and roasted meats of uncommon succulence.

And what is this baloney? "In spite of its ancient origins and utter simplicity, the tandoor produces startlingly sophisticated results, including smoky flatbreads that puff like pillows, and roasted meats of uncommon succulence." Such condescension to those dumb, unsophisticated ancient originals! "Uncommon succulence" sounds downright dirty.

So the core of the story is: some ceramics guy in Florida was approached by some NY Indian restaurant owner who wanted a homemade tandoor. Floridan made it and parlayed his success into a business. Now he knows more about tandoors than your average diner at an Indian restaurant. And now he sells a unit for home use. Ah, American ingenuity!

Then there's this Houston Chronicle piece about homebuilding and "diversity."

Ramesh Bhutada didn't plan on moving. However, when his son married a few years ago, he knew the growing family needed more space to keep living together.

He bought a 5,000 square-foot house in Sugar Land with a second master bedroom upstairs for the newly wed couple, an option the builder, Perry Homes, offered.

"We knew they would want their privacy, and this way we can still enjoy living together," said Bhutada, whose family is among South Asian buyers requesting additional master bedrooms. "Our grandchild is on the way at anytime now, so it will be a lot of fun for us as grandparents to have a little kid around."

Carrying over a tradition from their native countries, some South Asian children live with their parents until they marry and then often live with the groom's parents after marriage.

In the Houston area, such cultural norms have builders responding to the region's diversity by incorporating special design demands into homes. Aside from extra bedrooms, they're adding secondary kitchens and prayer rooms that appeal to South Asians and courtyards popular with Hispanic buyers.

The changes haven't yet become a common part of most standard home plans, but more builders are accommodating well-heeled buyers who ask for such features.

So, South Asian families are demanding additional master bedrooms in the homes of the parents of newlywed grooms, into which the married youngsters can move. On the one hand, and despite my disdain for the awful convention we call family, I do believe families should live together in extended configurations. (My wife and I are raising two kids, one a newborn, with no family nearby to help.) So, I think there's nothing weird at all about the newlyweds moving upstairs. On the other hand, I myself find home ownership unheimlich, disturbing. My preference would be for widespread communal living and widely shared responsibility for raising kids. (This in no way reflects the opinions of my wife and two children.)

The article goes on to describe a vile status-seeking development in home design around the kitchen, ostensibly one respecting "diverse" needs of other cultures, the construction of two kitchens, one for show, the other for the "dirty" work of cooking. The show kitchen feature is, to me, pure capitalist cancer. I wish food poisoning on those who demand them. I don't think there's anything wrong with using multiple spaces to prepare meals (or, say, to brew beer), but installing a kitchen as an ornament is obnoxious.

I dunno. Maybe one day soon slow news days, like slow cooking, will be all the rage.
An elder statesman reminisces and cautions …

May 11, 2011

without once mentioning American blunders – here.
Difference between relief and triumphalism

May 8, 2011

Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post has some adult thoughts on the killing of Osama bin Laden.

It seems nearly heretical to say so, but the termination of Osama bin Laden feels oddly anti-climactic.

Now what? And how to explain the sense that nothing has changed? The boogeyman may be dead, but the boogey is still at large in the world.

How, also, to explain my own discomfort as others have expressed jubilation? ’Twas a mystery….

…

Whereupon the strangest thing happened. People began congregating outside the White House and cheering, celebrating the death of bin Laden. Young people, mostly, chanted “USA” and waved the flag. I wanted very much to share their joy and to feel, ah yes, solidarity in this magnificent moment, but the sentiment escaped me. Curiosity was the most I could summon. How curious that people would cheer another’s death.

Not since Dorothy landed her house on the Wicked Witch of the East have so many munchkins been so happy. My 20-something son explained ever so patiently that OBL was his generation’s Hitler and that of course he was happy. Why wasn’t I?

I don’t know. To me, the execution of bin Laden was more punctuation than poetry — a period at the end of a Faulknerian sentence. That is, too long and rather late-ish. To the 9/11 generation, if we may call it that, OBL wasn’t only the mastermind of a dastardly act; he was evil incarnate and the world wouldn’t be safe until he was eliminated.

Would that justice were so neat and evil so conveniently disposed of….

…

Inarguably, Osama bin Laden needed to leave this earth — and perhaps it is just that he did so by the wit, sleuth and sure aim of our bravest men. Even so, discomfort is a necessary companion to any violence we commit, even in the service of good. There is nothing to celebrate in any man’s death, and I wish this had been the sentiment telegraphed to the rest of the world rather than the loutish hoorahs of late-night revelers.

Bin Laden was an icon and a figurehead. But he was not the sole proprietor of evil. For all of human time, it seems, there will be another one willing to fill his shoes and eager to find expression in others’ suffering. Evil, after all, is a vagabond, ever on the prowl for a crack in the door.

Not to be one of those Debbie Downers who puts things in unwelcome perspective, but shouldn’t we be slightly less delighted to kill? Triumphalism might play better on the day when we no longer have to kill each other.
Cutting for Stone : Review and Ruminations (Sujatha)

May 7, 2011

The book came out two years ago. One look at the blurb : "A winner…Filled with mystical scenes and deeply felt characters…Verghese is something of a magician as a novelist." -USA Today, and I decided to take a pass.

I revisited the decision and finally tackled the book a couple of weeks ago, and am pleased to report that I did not rue my choice.

Some books draw you in because of the beauty of the language, others by the vividness of the characters, still others for their fast-paced absorbing story lines, drawing you along with the force of a rapid current. This book is a happy coincidence of all three, the only jarring notes being the predictability and facility of the 'loose end tie ups' at the end. But that much can surely be forgiven.

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Dr. Kiran Martin – Working for Social Justice (Norman Costa)

May 6, 2011

Dr. Kiran Martin – Working for Social Justice (Norman Costa)

"Cambridge, MA…. Dr. Kiran Martin spoke recently at the Center for the Study of World Religions. Dr. Martin is founder of Asha, an organization dedicated to the health, education, and well-being of some of the poorest citizens of the poorest neigbhorhoods of New Delhi, India."

Question: Is there scientific proof of God's existence?

Answer: NO.

Question: Is belief in God necessary to be good?

Answer: NO.

Question: Must a person have religious faith to be inspired to work for social justice?

Answer: NO.

Question: What should a non-believer do when finding a person whose religious faith and belief in God inspire them to work for social justice for the poor?

Answer: REJOICE!

Here is a video of her address from April 13, 2011.

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