Krugman on the Republicans. But I don’t know, that doesn’t sound like the John McCain I know, who is not rooting for the end of the world to mobilize his base of poison-breathing flesh zombies; not someone anyone would want to torture to stop a ticking bomb; not a leading warmonger who likes to joke about bombing Iran; not someone who likes to joke about finding other good ways to murder Iranians, such as with American cigarettes; and definitely not someone reasonable people should fear. I forgot where I was going with this, but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with how Republicans are just like great white sharks — you just have to punch them in the nose without stopping to think about it.
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Some weeks ago, this report highlighted the Vatican’s giving the green light to a new Indianized Bible which depicts Mary and Joseph as poor Indian villagers (Click on the photo for a larger view):Barefoot and wearing a sari, with a bindi on her forehead and a naked baby on
her shoulder, the woman in the picture is unmistakably Indian. So is the man
behind her, clad in a loincloth and turban.They could be any poor family in an Indian village, or at one of the country’s
teeming railway stations. This, however, is no ordinary family.The image is one of the Virgin Mary with Joseph and the baby Jesus in the
first “Indianised” version of the Bible, published by the Roman Catholic
Church last month.The New Community Bible is part of an attempt by the Vatican to attract
more converts in the world’s second-most populous country as congregations
decline in Europe and North America.Not only do Mary, Joseph and others adopt Indian clothing and contexts, but this bible goes further in syncretization.
The Bible uses passages from Hindu scriptures, such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and Sanskrit words such as Moksha – meaning salvation – in its notes, so newcomers do not feel alienated by new concepts and vocabulary.
…
“The scholars felt that any serious and contextualised and inculturated commentary on the sacred text, made specially for India, could not ignore the rich cultural and religious heritage of the land,” said Fr Tony Charanghat, a spokesman for the archbishop of Mumbai.
For example, alongside the well-known passage in Matthew where Jesus tells disciples to “turn the other cheek”, the accompanying notes compare this to Gandhi’s creed of ahimsa, or non-violence.
Beneath another passage about miracles, the notes explain the difference between Jesus’s teachings and the Vedanta – a Sanskrit term for enlightenment.
“His miracles are eruptions of charismatic power not the result of yogic techniques,” the commentary says.The oddity of this New Community Bible is not the Indianization of the context, but the fact that it is rewritten in English, rather than the major languages of India. Who might the target audience be? Why would an English speaking and reading (presumably middle class or higher) Hindu/Muslim/Jain/Sikh/Buddhist be convinced by this to convert to the ‘one true faith’?
Adopting the context and imagery from different cultures is hardly unique. It has been done over the ages, even during the spread of Buddhism over much of Asia. This series of images (Click on the image for a larger view)
shows the distinctive change in appearance of depictions of Buddha as the faith travelled along from Asia Minor to the Far East. It has always been to the advantage of proselytizing groups to depict their deity in terms which would appeal to the largest group, which makes this Sari Mary and Turban Joseph not that radical or new.I suspect that the New Community Bible is targeted less at attracting converts and more at retaining current Indian Catholics, tempted as they may be by the lures of Hinduism and/or its practices, which strike a more resonant chord to them culturally than the rituals of the Roman Catholic liturgy. This Indian-American Catholic blogger concurs:
"so, it seems, this endeavor is really addressed to Indian Catholics, as part of the ongoing attempt to shuck the colonial baggage of being understood to be foreigners or European lackeys."
I have it on good authority that in order to discourage the tendency of Indian Christians to go to temples with their young children on Vijayadasami day (considered auspicious for ‘Vidyaarambham’ or initiation of learning), even churches have started their own special ‘Vidyaarambham’ services in the Indian state of Kerala. Now that is co-opting other religious practices indeed, despite the tendency of outside authorities like the Vatican to frown on these as straying from accepted liturgical practice.
There’s no doubt that the commissioning and promotion of the New Community Bible is a significant concession for the Vatican, even as the current pope has promoted the return to older practices such as masses in Latin rather than the local language, in an effort to prevent the dilution of the faith and the loss of the faithful.
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In older agrarian and trade based societies, names often reflected people’s vocations or otherwise described their position in a place or tribe. Some South Indian and Scandinavian names derive from the father’s first name rather than the family name (a similar system existed among older Jewish cultures). Names like Smith, Miller, Fletcher, Bauer, Baker etc. point to the type of work the name holders did. Hindu caste names routinely revealed a person’s profession, business and social hierarchy. Jewish priestly names like Cohen, Katz and Levi once played a similar role. But with the diminishing role of temple priests in Judaism, these names mostly hark back to their historic significance.
Old cultural / vocational barriers having mostly broken down, our names are no longer a reliable indicator of the type of life we lead. But we cannot fully shake off the notion of a name revealing something about a person’s character or expertise. Which is why there is a whole genre of off-color jokes which rely on the sophomoric play on imaginary names and the professional / artistic pursuits of their owners. (The Case of the Open Kimono written by Seymour Hare, The Yellow River sung by I.P. Daley, Dr. A. Cula – phlebotomist/ hematologist etc. I used to know a lengthy series of these in high school) Then there are names that people acquire by the dint of their real life accomplishments or character. Nicknames such as Honest Abe, Mahatma Gandhi, Hammerin’ Hank, Joltin’ Joe, The Brown Bomber etc. reflect how others saw those public figures of renown. These names are of course afterthoughts – names describing lives. But what about real names that live up to their promise – lives imitating names, as in those silly jokes I mentioned? In a comment I left on Dean’s post about Norman Mailer, where I linked to the video of a brawl between the author and film director Rip Torn, I noted that the latter’s name sadly coincided with his condition after Mailer bit off part of his ear during the violent encounter.
How many people can you think of whose first or last names later matched up with their achievements or circumstances? I haven’t given enough thought to the matter and can come up with just a few that qualify, even though they require a bit of linguistic stretch and imagination.
Richard Smalley: Nobel prize winner in chemistry and pioneer of nanotechnology.
Alois Alzheimer: Neuropathologist whose work on dementia lead to the recognition of Alzheimer’s Disease. Here the connection in my mind is between Altsheim (loosely translated as old [folks] home in German) and the name of the doctor.
Alfred Nobel: His fortune went toward honoring noble human endeavors. So one could say that made Nobel a noble man.
Given the encyclopedic knowledge of my co-bloggers and our readers, I am hoping to hear a few more.
(The mention of Alzheimer’s brought to mind a touching story in the news about Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and her husband of more than five decades)
Update: This post first appeared in November, 2007. I am bringing it to the front as a filler post during my absence.
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"To subdue and crush the masses of a nation by military force,…. is to attempt the imprisonment of a whole people: all such projects must be temporary and transient, and terminate in a catastrophe." : Josiah Harlan, 1799-1871 – First American in Afghanistan Recently, in quick succession, I read two books about Afghanistan. One, "The Kite Runner", a best selling novel by the Afghan born Khaled Hossseini, is perhaps known to many readers. The other, "The Man Who Would Be King", by British writer and journalist (The Times, London) Ben Mcintyre is a historical non- fiction which reads like a work of fiction. Mcintyre’ book is the biography of the first American believed to have entered Afghanistan, where he fought wars, retraced Alexander’s footsteps in Central and South Asia and even became a "king", under circumstances both amazing and amusing. It is widely believed that Rudyard Kipling’s famous eponymous short story (made into a film by John Huston, starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine) was based on the life of this early American adventurer.
The Man Who Would Be King is the improbable life story of American Josiah Harlan, a young Quaker from Chester County, Pennsylvania. In 1822, Harlan, an earnest young man of twenty two, robust in health and florid in his imagination, set out to seek a new life with nothing more at his disposal than a love of adventure, history (especially the exploits of Alexander the Great of Macedonia) and botany. His journey began in Philadelphia and landed him in Calcutta, India, by way of China in 1824. In India he enlisted as an assistant surgeon in the army of the East India Company (the precursor to the British Raj) although the only medical knowledge Harlan possessed came from a medical manual he read during his ocean crossing. After being injured during battle in Burma, Harlan obtained his discharge from the Company’s army and traveled to northwest India and Afghanistan, seeking to realize his fondest dream – to follow in the footsteps of Alexander the Great.
For several years, Harlan crossed and re-crossed the border between India (now Pakistan) and Afghanistan. In a political climate, where every man was spinning in a private orbit of political ambition, alliances were made and broken with dizzying pace. Harlan played the field on several different sides with the keen eye of a mercenary. He accumulated considerable wealth, acted as a doctor and a governor to a powerful Indian king, sided with and opposed the British and conspired for and against several Afghan aspirants to the throne.
Between the years,1837 -1839, Harlan returned to Afghanistan for the final and most eventful of his journeys. By this time he was thoroughly enamored of this rugged and dangerous land, spoke the local languages fluently, dressed in Afghan garb and sincerely admired the Afghan ruler, Dost Mohammed, who made him his military advisor. On behalf of the king, Harlan undertook a grueling expedition across the treacherous Hindu Kush Mountains. His mission, to subdue a particularly pesky and unscrupulous Uzbek warlord, based in the vicinity of Balkh, a central Asian town closely associated with Alexander of Macedonia. The dual purpose of serving his friend, the king, and traveling in Alexander’s footsteps made it a doubly attractive venture and Harlan performed his duties with aplomb and joy. His impossible mission was successful and somewhere between leaving Kabul, defeating the enemy and his return to the capital, the Quaker from Pennsylvania became the Prince of Ghor, the ruler of the Hazaras ! It was to be the most momentous event in Harlan’s already interesting life.
Josiah Harlan returned home to Pennsylvania after 22 years of high adventure and in his own mind, as an Afghan "king". His first order of business upon returning home was to write and publish a bitter diatribe against the British imperial design in the Indian subcontinent. He continued to write prolifically but could never again publish another book, including his memoirs. His first book caused so much uproar and anger in Britain that the American publishers did not want to take another chance with Harlan’s writings. Disappointed, Harlan spent the rest of his life as a mill operator, a "civilian general" in the Union army during the Civil War, got married and had a daughter. But he had left his heart in Afghanistan and longed to return there and claim his "kingdom". To that end, he tried to convince the US government to finance his trips to Afghanistan as a "camel procurer and a grape agent"! But Harlan never did return to his kingdom which was as much a geographical place in a far away land, as it was a fantasy in his own mind. He died a poor and lonely man in San Francisco in 1871. Among his meager belongings which were returned to his widow, were a "fine golden sword, an ancient miniature ruby engraved with the image of Athena and a sheaf of yellowing papers in Persian script, which were the royal warrants of an Afghan prince".
Josiah Harlan’s life story reads like a fairy tale adventure with echoes in the present. An American, leading military expeditions through Jalalabad, Kandahar, Mazar-e-Sharif, Bamian and Kabul – places most American first heard of after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2002. The Afghanistan of the 1830s was not too different from Afghanistan today – invasions by Western powers, widespread unrest, sporadic and precarious peace and warlords running amok. Harlan, the mercenary prince and early imperialist, faced the dilemma of all occupiers – either the colonizer must shed his own humanity in order to oppress fellow humans or he must acknowledge the humanity of his enemy. For Harlan, the second path prevailed and the "pompous prince" began to see the colonization through the eyes of the colonized. His observation is as true today as it was more than one hundred fifty years ago – "To subdue and crush the masses of a nation by military force,…. is to attempt the imprisonment of a whole people: all such projects must be temporary and transient, and terminate in a catastrophe." In the end, Harlan reverted to what he was brought up to be in the progressive and tolerant Quaker community of his youth – a Jeffersonian American who militated at the outrage of "offense against liberty".
Note: Although I enjoyed this book very much, I hesitate to make a general recommendation of it. One woman’s cup of tea in this case may be another person’s valium. But those who are curious about exotic and obscure stories of the past with lessons for the present, will enjoy it. If you don’t want to own a copy, check it out at the library.
Update: This review first appeared in November of 2005, less than a month after I had launched the blog. A couple of days ago I went back to the archives for it because a friend inquired about The Man Who Would Be King. At the time of its first posting, A.B. readership was much smaller than it is now. Many of our current readers may not have seen the article. Unlike political and cultural news, most book reviews are not time sensitive. I decided therefore to bring the post to the front for those readers who found A.B. at a later date. The book is one of my favorites and I really enjoyed reviewing it.
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A few days ago marked the passing of Randy Pausch, professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, from pancreatic cancer. His most remarkable achievement, apart from the legions of students and colleagues whom he inspired, was his Last Lecture, given on September 18, 2007 in front of a full auditorium of students and colleagues- a paean to his work, his family and life in general, so inspiring that it became and still remains a Youtube sensation.From the Carnegie Mellon website:
"Outside the classroom, he gained public fame for delivering what would come to be known as "The Last Lecture."
On Sept. 18, 2007, only a month after doctors told him that he had
three-to-six months to live following a recurrence of pancreatic
cancer, he presented a lecture called "Really Achieving Your Childhood
Dreams" to a packed auditorium at Carnegie Mellon.The moving and often humorous talk recounted his efforts to achieve
such childhood dreams as becoming a professional football player,
experiencing zero gravity and developing Disney World attractions. In
the process, he shared his insights on finding the good in other
people, working hard to overcome obstacles and living generously."If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself," Pausch said. "The dreams will come to you."
The final days of his life have a moving day to day chronicle that he maintained until almost the end. The final update regarding his struggle with cancer appears from an anonymous friend posting on his behalf, just as he was moved into hospice for palliative end-of-life care.
And so a life ends, having illuminated for millions of people (over 5 million views of his Last Lecture) that life is all about living your dreams, regardless of its duration.
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I am a conscientious recycler. Every Tuesday evening I set an assortment of paper, aluminum, cardboard and plastic (but no glass) items out on the curb side, neatly bundled and arranged in the blue recycling bin for pick up the next day. The recycleables are duly collected by the waste management company of my county. What happens to that trash afterwards is not known to me. But at least I feel I have done my part as an earth friendly consumer. Judging by the number of recycling bins I see throughout our neighborhood on Wednesday mornings, it appears that most of my neighbors also sort and recycle their household trash. But "real" Houstonians (I live in the suburbs) apparently are resistant to the idea of recycling – the reluctance has been attributed to their "independent streak." However, some of those who may wish to conform with the rest of the country in this regard, can’t do so because the city of Houston hasn’t equipped all its residents with recycling bins. ( link: Dean)
HOUSTON — While most large American cities have started ambitious recycling programs that have sharply reduced the amount of trash bound for landfills, Houston has not. The city’s shimmering skyline may wear the label of the world’s energy capital, but deep in Houston’s Dumpsters lies a less glamorous superlative: It is the worst recycler among the United States’ 30 largest cities.
Houston recycles just 2.6 percent of its total waste, according to a study this year by Waste News, a trade magazine. By comparison, San Francisco and New York recycle 69 percent and 34 percent of their waste respectively. Moreover, 25,000 Houston residents have been waiting as long as 10 years to get recycling bins from the city.
Environmental advocates are pleading for municipal intervention. And some small improvements — an organic waste program, for one — are expected soon.
But city officials say real progress will be hard to come by. Landfill costs here are cheap. The city’s sprawling, no-zoning layout makes collection expensive, and there is little public support for the kind of effort it takes to sort glass, paper and plastics. And there appears to be even less for placing fees on excess trash.
“We have an independent streak that rebels against mandates or anything that seems trendy or hyped up,” said Mayor Bill White, who favors expanding the city’s recycling efforts. “Houstonians are skeptical of anything that appears to be oversold or exaggerated. But Houstonians can change, and change fast.”
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My blogging frequency is going to be slow for the next couple of weeks. In the coming days I plan to recycle some old posts and resort to links mostly. Here is an email I wrote to friends and family in September 2005 during the turbulent hurricane season when Katrina and Rita created havoc across the US gulf coast.
"Just letting all who enquired know that we, our house, neighborhood and the city of Houston are all fine this Sunday afternoon.
We left Houston on Friday morning for Austin—3 hours drive time– after most people had already evacuated or tried to and given up. You must have seen the horrendous grid locks on the highways out of Houston on Wednesday and Thursday when most people left. We returned on Saturday afternoon — resulting in a 26 hour evacuation which in the end, was not at all necessary. We had originally planned on leaving Houston on Thursday morning and my car was packed with water and other necessary items for the purpose. But after we saw what was happening on the roads, we decided against leaving home.
By Thursday afternoon, I was against evacuating once I found out that most of my immediate neighbors were going to stay put and Rita was changing directions, going eastward. But Sudhir, who had not been paying attention to the storm because he had an NIH grant to submit, looked up from his computer late Thursday afternoon, assessed the danger–which actually was diminishing– and decided early Friday morning that we must evacuate ! Miraculously, we even found a room for us and our cat Ali at the Marriott in Austin on Friday morning although on Thursday we had been told that not a single hotel room was available anywhere in Texas. They advised us to book hotels in New Mexico, Oklahoma or Colorado!
But Rita gave Houston a pass. At the Austin hotel where nearly 80% of the guests were Houstonians, we ended up exchanging evacuation stories rather than storm tales. Sudhir and I were the only ones who had left on Friday and avoided all traffic woes. Most had taken 12 – 13 hours to travel the 165 miles between the two cities. One family had left a coastal area just south of Houston on Wednesday and arrived in Austin 31 hours later !
Next morning when it was clear that Houston had dodged the bullet, the mayor and the governor asked people not to rush back and create the same nightmare that occurred on the way out. Knowing that people who had faced the horrible traffic on Wednesday and Thursday will be more cautious, Sudhir immediately threw our bags into the car, checked out and we took off from Austin before most people could make up their minds. As a result, we made our way back to Houston also without pain in a little over 4 hours. Essentially, what we got out of our non-essential evacuation was a Friday evening on the music filled streets of Austin and an excellent dinner on 6th Street.
Some of the lessons that Rita and Katrina have taught us are:
1. As of today, we have no good way in place to evacuate large, heavily populated areas without causing massive confusion and chaos.
2. People in storm prone areas should have a family evacuation plan very much in advance of the landfall.
3. Sometimes it is better to use your own judgement than to listen to the "experts".
4. The Americans’ general hostility (especially in places like Texas) to public transportation proves to be a liability in times like these when large numbers of people need to move in a short time. The "my car – my family" mode of evacuation is not effective at all.
5. A storm from the sea comes in with some warning – fire, tornadoes, earthquakes and terrorist attacks don’t. In the any of the latter events, a big city anywhere is quite helpless.
Thanks to all for your emails and phone calls. The Gulf of Mexico is warm enough to brew tea this year and the hurricane season is just over 50% over. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.
Ruchira"
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We all know someone whose uncle’s cousin’s wife’s brother-in-law forwarded them an email that conclusively PROVED that Obama is a Muslim (photos wearing turban! In Somalia-wherever on God’s earth that may be!!1!) , or a Jew (photos wearing yarmulke! At the Wailing Wall!!1!), has black children, is the right-hand man of Bin Laden, leading to (but hardly ending with) the much discussed New Yorker cover that Ruchira referred to in her recent post ‘Satire, Slander or no big deal‘ .
The latest is this is that Obama ‘blew off’ meeting with troops in Afghanistan to get to a basketball photo-op with the troops. Snopes.com, the motherlode of all internet rumor debunking, has gotten a flurry of responses regarding this and posted the details within barely 24 hours of the circulation of the smear, just as they had done regarding an email that mentioned Obama’s words taken from his book distorted or out of context.
It’s good to see the action-reaction pairs in the war on smears in action, that too all within a short time frame. If it continues at this pace, somebody is going to come up with an Obama-smear-widget and Obama-rebuttal-widget, just to make things easier for the campaign and its detractors.
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Some time ago I had posted an article on the possible correlation between paternal age and increased risk of autism among the progeny. In the comments section readers brought up other disorders which too some suspect, are related to the age of the father. Reader Leslie has requested that I bring this topic to the front of the blog once more. She sent me the link to another more recent article from the Irish Times which makes similar claims regarding older fathers.
FERTILITY EXPERTS have warned there is a growing body of evidence showing that the man’s age is a significant factor affecting the chances of a couple conceiving and of having a healthy child.
A new study presented last week at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Barcelona found that miscarriage rates increased significantly when the man was older than 35, and that pregnancy rates dropped when the man was older than 40. The study was based on more than 12,000 couples attending a fertility clinic in Paris.
Professor of reproductive medicine at Queen’s University Belfast, Sheena Lewis, who also presented a paper at the conference, said the Paris study "provided more data to add to an emerging picture" relating to the significance of the age of the father.
She said people needed to realise that they are taking a risk by waiting until they were 35 years or older to have children – as an increasing number of women and men are. "You cannot assume that it will happen, that it will not be a problem," she said.
Prof Lewis, who is a scientist at the Regional Fertility Centre at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, said there was a growing trend of people leaving it later to have children when their careers were established, and of people trying to start second families later in life. She said the clinic was seeing an increasing number of men in their 40s and 50s who wanted to have children, often in a second relationship…..
She said there were now quite a number of studies showing that as a man ages, the likelihood of his sperm being damaged increases. "A sperm is a very specialised little cell – it is just DNA with a tail and it has one single function, to get the DNA to the egg to fertilise it. In order to do that, the cell gets rid of everything but DNA, so it gets rid of repair mechanisms that you find in other cells. So if it gets damaged it can’t repair itself."
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Circa December 2006, a new meme started creeping around the blogosphere. It’s hard to pinpoint the originator, but it is lost in the mists of the hoary internet past. No one is willing to take ownership of the first time this game of Blog Tag was started.
It is simple: Tell five secrets about yourself and then link to five other bloggers you know and then they have to tell five things you probably don’t know about them.
And so on and so forth, propagating this to ever widening numbers of bloggers.
As an interesting variant on this meme, I’m trying it as an intra-blog game, but without the passing on of the blog tag. All authors on A.B., now present four or five secrets that you never knew or would have guessed about them. Believe them (or not)!
Andrew’s Secrets:
- I voted for Nader in 1996 (but not in 2000!)
- As a solitary freelancer, I sometimes pass the time by inventing an elaborate inner life for my cat (as a Lacanian feminist, for instance).
- In high school, my friends and I used to slide down the hills of a golf course on blocks of ice.
- (Courtesy Anna)"I have a secret about Andrew to share (more fun than sharing my own): when he was a child, he was taken by his grandma and parents to an actual Catskills hotel, where he nearly fell out of his chair laughing at the terrible comedy show, leading to warm congratulations from alter cockers at nearby tables about young Andrew’s fine sense of humor."
Anna’s Secrets:
- When I started school, the teacher called home concerned that my loud,assertive voice meant that I had a hearing problem. I do not.
- I co-directed a radio show in high school called, "Eclecticity is almost as fun as inventing words." We played everything from Alberta Hunter to the Pixies to A Tribe Called Quest. One time we received an irritated call from the public because we’d taken a smoking break while playing an 8-track Mormon public service announcement about STDs, which therefore played on a 15 minute endless loop.
- When I was 22, I moved to Italy, where I co-founded a life drawing group and volunteered at a summer camp for people with developmental disabilities. As a result, my Italian includes useful expressions like "for the 15 minute pose, I’m using watercolor on packing paper" and "please don’t go in the pool without floaties."
- In my mind, I belong to a boys club that includes Ernest Borgnine, Dr. John, and Dr. Lonnie Smith. I don’t think this would actually make for a good club in real life, but I love those guys.
- While jogging, I often compose letters in my mind to people with whom I’m no longer in touch.
Dean’s Secrets:
- Used to make beads for a living.
- Worked at Oxford University. (I would be more specific–I worked at the Bodleian Library at OU–but might that be too telling a hint?)
- Performed in a band introduced live by a popular radio DJ as "the ultimate in embarrassment rock."
- Portrayed a clothespin, the lead character in a children’s play.
- Reverse-shoplifted with friends, i.e., created fake product and smuggled it into stores.
Sujatha’s Secrets:
- I have a knack for getting things(software, computers, appliances,etc.) to work, by hook or crook, or even hairpin, on occasion. I firmly believe that there is nothing that a hairpin cannot accomplish, from the task of a box cutter to picking locks or subbing for a stiletto.
- Despite my professed fondness for classical music (Indian and Western), I do nod off to sleep after about an hour of listening to concerts. Advancing age, fatigue or boredom- you be the judge!
- If you met me at a noisy party, and I seem to nod in blissful agreement with you no matter how provocative your assertions, it’s not due to your silver tongued persuasion, but tinnitus which prevents me from hearing what you are saying in the first place.
- I’m a Buddha wannabe, in my spare time (between yelling at kids, blogging, reading and work). Try reading ‘The Power of Now’ by Eckhart Tolle when kids barge in on you with a gazillion requests- you can see how rapidly I will achieve Buddha-hood. Probably after the next 100 lifetimes, I guess.
- I am deathly afraid of mice and rats, ever since I thought I saw one nibbling on my toes when I napped in my grandmother’s village house as a kid. So based on the Chinese proverb reasoning from Ruchira’s cat quote( "He who dislikes the cat, was in his former life, a rat."), that might indicate that I was, in a former life, an elephant.
Ruchira’s Secrets:
- Although I am more comfortable reading and writing English, I count and do mental math in Bengali. I ascribe this to the fact that my father taught me numbers and simple arithmetic long before I was enrolled in school, using Bengali as the medium.
- Despite the fact that I don’t subscribe to any religious faith and harbor hardly any superstitions, I do believe that I may have had two separate ghostly experiences in my life. One occurred in the dark of the night while I was asleep and the other in broad day light when I was wide awake. (This one probably deserves a separate post of its own:-)
- I know very little about botany and plant care. Yet everything I plant thrives, blooms and fruits. My expert gardener friends are flummoxed by my "brown" brain and "green" thumb. ( I sometimes suspect that I may have benefited from the same dumb luck with child rearing)
- In nearly perfect health all my life, early last year I was diagnosed with a very rare autoimmune disorder, which, according to available epidemiological data, shouldn’t have afflicted me at my age. But the experts were adamant about the diagnosis and predicted that the rest of my life would be spent at the mercy of powerful immuno-suppressant drugs. However, just as mysteriously as I was struck with this possibly debilitating condition, I was "cured" by having a tooth pulled. No, it wasn’t magical thinking. It took some very rational and systematic sleuthing through medical literature by my husband and a corroboration of the findings by my dentist. (This one does deserve a post of its own, if only as a cautionary tale.)
- I am generally a thoroughly law abiding and ethical person, especially when it comes to matters of money. But in 1982 when on a trip to Bulgaria (a draconian communist nation then with a notorious prison system), I routinely changed money illegally at street corners from waiters, boat captains and other more shady characters. Those "unoffficial" currency changers offered a far more reasonable exchange rate for the Deutsche Mark than the "official" usurious government rate allowed. I must note that if caught, the offense was punishable by a steep fine and jail time as numerous notices in public places warned tourists.
Joe’s Secrets:
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Depending on the topic at hand, our writings frequently reflect our personal feelings, opinions and experience to varying degrees. But that does not necessarily make all our stories "personal." In my inaugural post I had promised readers that Accidental Blogger would serve mostly as a conversational tool between its author [there was only one author at the time] and readers. The personal anxieties, complaints and triumphs of AB bloggers are not meant for the most part, to become the central point of the conversations. To that end, I think the A.B. authors have done a commendable job of keeping this blog impersonal yet engaging for our readers. However, I also decided at the very outset that newsworthy stories involving our authors, their friends or family which might also be of interest to our readers will occasionally be featured here. ("Interesting news of a personal nature can be shared by readers and the author", I wrote.) As far as I can remember there have been just a few stories on our blog which may qualify as such and each contained a broader general interest angle. Amidst the long list of my own posts, I can think of just a few – the announcement of Anna and Andrew’s wedding, my daughter’s unhappy encounter with the LAPD and fellow blogger Matt‘s kind sharing of the experience of living with Asperger’s Syndrome (via his blog).
Now I am bringing another story to the attention of our readers which perhaps qualifies as "personal" but is in fact a public interest report. It has already appeared in several media outlets in the US and abroad and it involves my husband, Sudhir Paul’s scientific research. [The full report in Science Daily:]
ScienceDaily (July 16, 2008) — Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) researchers at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston believe they have uncovered the Achilles heel in the armor of the virus that continues to kill millions.
The weak spot is hidden in the HIV envelope protein gp120. This protein is essential for HIV attachment to host cells, which initiate infection and eventually lead to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome or AIDS. Normally the body’s immune defenses can ward off viruses by making proteins called antibodies that bind the virus. However, HIV is a constantly changing and mutating virus, and the antibodies produced after infection do not control disease progression to AIDS. For the same reason, no HIV preventative vaccine that stimulates production of protective antibodies is available.
The Achilles heel, a tiny stretch of amino acids numbered 421-433 on gp120, is now under study as a target for therapeutic intervention. Sudhir Paul, Ph.D., pathology professor in the UT Medical School, said, “Unlike the changeable regions of its envelope, HIV needs at least one region that must remain constant to attach to cells. If this region changes, HIV cannot infect cells. Equally important, HIV does not want this constant region to provoke the body’s defense system. So, HIV uses the same constant cellular attachment site to silence B lymphocytes – the antibody producing cells. The result is that the body is fooled into making abundant antibodies to the changeable regions of HIV but not to its cellular attachment site. Immunologists call such regions superantigens. HIV’s cleverness is unmatched. No other virus uses this trick to evade the body’s defenses.”
A good summary, although my husband is an immunologist and not a pathologist. The press release above from the University of Texas Health Sciences Center conservatively characterizes the results as a "theory." But in fact it is the conclusion reached at via lengthy experimental research, now many years in the making and it is currently in a fairly advanced stage of progress. The success in neutralizing the HIV virus by this particular approach has been confirmed in other laboratories outside the University of Texas. We have to wait and see what happens next. One can be cautiously optimistic that the favorable publicity will facilitate the work to move into the next step involving animal and human testing to determine the efficacy of the antibodies in a vaccine and palliative drug formulations. In most immunotherapeutic approach to cure and disease control, there is many a slip between the cup and the lip. Let us hope that the promise that has been seen in the test tube will successfully translate to the human body’s own immune system.
My husband and his research collaborators are very excited at the prospect of a vaccine against HIV, as are those who are affected by the ravages of AIDs either directly as patients or indirectly as caregivers. The implications of the findings are therefore of interest in countries where the spread of AIDS is a public health concern, the financial world which takes note of medical innovations and the gay community where AIDS awareness and anti- HIV drug development are of acute concern.
On on-line science forums, the response to the report has been very positive. A few readers have complained that in the press release, the UT researchers have "anthropomorphized" the virus with statements like "HIV’s cleverness is unmatched." I asked Sudhir about it. He said that it is hard to explain to non-scientists or even to non-immunologists the mechanisms of an Abzyme mediated vaccine unless they tell a simple, somewhat anthropomorphized story. And in any case, he said, he probably couldn’t have mustered the doggedness to keep working on this difficult project for such a lengthy period of time unless at some level he hadn’t begun to look at the problem as a "Man vs the wily virus" challenge.
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