Accidental Blogger

Whither The Human Race?

November 3, 2007

This BBC report on a possible dramatic split in the future within the human race based on superior and inferior genetics provides an interesting sci-fi twist to our recent discussions about genetics and IQ. Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics predicts that by the end of the next millennium, human beings will fall into two distinct sub-species based of physical stature and beauty in which current day racial differences will have been ironed out to give rise to a uniform race of coffee-colored people.

Update: According to Razib: this guy’s an idiot. he pulled this s–t last year.

Update # 2: Okay, Oliver Curry is not an idiot after all. That honor goes to the journalists.

Humanity may split into two sub-species in 100,000 years’ time as predicted by HG Wells, an expert has said.

Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics expects a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass to emerge.

The human race would peak in the year 3000, he said – before a decline due to dependence on technology.

People would become choosier about their sexual partners, causing humanity to divide into sub-species, he added. The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the "underclass" humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.

Race ‘ironed out’

But in the nearer future, humans will evolve in 1,000 years into giants between 6ft and 7ft tall, he predicts, while life-spans will have extended to 120 years, Dr Curry claims.

Physical appearance, driven by indicators of health, youth and fertility, will improve, he says, while men will exhibit symmetrical facial features, look athletic, and have squarer jaws, deeper voices and bigger penises.

Women, on the other hand, will develop lighter, smooth, hairless skin, large clear eyes, pert breasts, glossy hair, and even features, he adds. Racial differences will be ironed out by interbreeding, producing a uniform race of coffee-coloured people.

However, Dr Curry warns, in 10,000 years time humans may have paid a genetic price for relying on technology. Spoiled by gadgets designed to meet their every need, they could come to resemble domesticated animals.
Jewish “I.Q.” vs. “The Mothers of Brooklyn” (Anna)

November 2, 2007

In my comments on Ruchira’s post on IQ below, I noted in passing Stanley Kaplan’s embodiment of the contradiction between the rewards, in aptitude test results, paid by effort and sociological factors, and the claims aptitude tests make to predictive value or to gaging innate aptitude; and the irony of that contradiction with respect to arguments about innate Jewish high I.Q. As with many of my bright ideas, the point of my comment is more articulately fleshed out by someone else. And as is also often true, the someone else who said it better is Malcolm Gladwell.

In his 2001 "Examined Life" piece in the New Yorker on "What Stanley H. Kaplan taught us about the SAT", Gladwell looks at the S.A.T.’s original design, in the mid-1940s, as a standardized test of innate aptitude, like an I.Q. test, and how Kaplan revolutionized educational testing by undermining that claim:

Unlike existing academic exams, [the S.A.T.] was intended to measure innate ability–not what a student had learned but what a student was capable of learning–and it stated clearly in the instructions that "cramming or last-minute reviewing" was pointless. Kaplan was puzzled. In Flatbush you always studied for tests. He gave [a student who had sought his tutoring help] pages of math problems and reading-comprehension drills. He grilled her over and over, doing what the S.A.T. said should not be done. And what happened? On test day, she found the S.A.T. "a piece of cake," and promptly told all her friends, and her friends told their friends, and soon word of Stanley H. Kaplan had spread throughout Brooklyn.

Gladwell also discusses the explicitly Anti-Semitic use in the early to mid-20th century of aptitude tests, which were designed to weed out the hard-working, robotic immigrants who were perceived as stealing college positions and jobs from meritorious native-born Americans (negatively employed "positive" stereotypes that should be familiar to anyone sensitive to similar claims made about Asian immigrants today):

In proving that the S.A.T. was coachable, Stanley Kaplan did something else, which was of even greater importance. He undermined the use of aptitude tests as a means of social engineering. In the years immediately before and after the First World War, for instance, the country’s élite colleges faced what became known as "the Jewish problem." They were being inundated with the children of Eastern European Jewish immigrants. These students came from the lower middle class and they disrupted the genteel Wasp sensibility that had been so much a part of the Ivy League tradition. They were guilty of "underliving and overworking." In the words of one writer, they "worked far into each night [and] their lessons next morning were letter perfect." They were "socially untrained," one Harvard professor wrote, "and their bodily habits are not good." But how could a college keep Jews out? Columbia University had a policy that the New York State Regents Examinations–the statewide curriculum-based high-school-graduation examination–could be used as the basis for admission, and the plain truth was that Jews did extraordinarily well on the Regents Exams. One solution was simply to put a quota on the number of Jews, which is what Harvard explored. The other idea, which Columbia followed, was to require applicants to take an aptitude test. According to Herbert Hawkes, the dean of Columbia College during this period, because the typical Jewish student was simply a "grind," who excelled on the Regents Exams because he worked so hard, a test of innate intelligence would put him back in his place. "We have not eliminated boys because they were Jews and do not propose to do so," Hawkes wrote in 1918: We have honestly attempted to eliminate the lowest grade of applicant and it turns out that a good many of the low grade men are New York City Jews. It is a fact that boys of foreign parentage who have no background in many cases attempt to educate themselves beyond their intelligence. Their accomplishment is over 100% of their ability on account of their tremendous energy and ambition. I do not believe however that a College would do well to admit too many men of low mentality who have ambition but not brains."

Gladwell describes how immigrant Jews like Kaplan overcame this barrier not by proving their innate intellectual superiority, as Murray et al. would seem to have it, but by defeating the underlying assumption of the importance and predictive value of tested innate ability:

These students faced a system designed to thwart the hard worker, and what did they do? They got together with their pushy parents and outworked it. Kaplan says that he knew a "strapping athlete who became physically ill before taking the S.A.T. because his mother was so demanding." There was the mother who called him to say, "Mr. Kaplan, I think I’m going to commit suicide. My son made only a 1000 on the S.A.T." "One mother wanted her straight-A son to have an extra edge, so she brought him to my basement for years for private tutoring in basic subjects," Kaplan recalls. "He was extremely bright and today is one of the country’s s most successful ophthalmologists." Another student was "so nervous that his mother accompanied him to class armed with a supply of terry-cloth towels. She stood outside the classroom and when he emerged from our class sessions dripping in sweat, she wiped him dry and then nudged him back into the classroom." Then, of course, there was the formidable four-foot-eight figure of Ericka Kaplan, granddaughter of the chief rabbi of the synagogue of Prague. "My mother was a perfectionist whether she was keeping the company books or setting the dinner table," Kaplan writes, still in her thrall today. "She was my best cheerleader, the reason I performed so well, and I constantly strove to please her." What chance did even the most artfully constructed S.A.T. have against the mothers of Brooklyn?

I highly recommend reading Gladwell’s full article, which is broader than these extracts would suggest, nuanced, and well-worth a read.
Group Genetics and IQ – The New Caste System

November 2, 2007

Everyone must be aware by now of the uproar caused by the recent remarks made by James Watson, the Nobel Prize winner for the discovery of the structure of DNA. According to Watson, he feels "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours, whereas all the testing says not really." Watson also asserted there was no reason to believe different races separated by geography should have evolved identically, and he said that while he hoped everyone was equal, "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true."

I was aware of Watson’s hubris long before this latest story broke. He had previously made similarly disparaging remarks about homosexuals and the "unintelligent" among us. I did not write anything about his latest gaffe here because it was widely covered in the media, it followed a predictable pattern and I had not much to add. Also, I had already vented sufficiently at another blog where a discussion on Watson’s "ignoble" ways was under way. However, Watson is not alone in his obsession with IQ. Many other "intelligent" people can’t leave the notion of IQ out of their evaluation of human worth. Some have made a career out of it.

I am not a post-modernist touchy-feely type myself. I do not believe for a moment that all of us have equal aptitude for everything we attempt to do. I also accept that some of what we are capable or incapable of is determined by our innate heritable traits. But that consideration ought to be limited to "individuals" who need to be evaluated for a specific task at hand. Even when a group consists of individuals with closely comparable traits in some enterprise or the other, it is dangerous to base human interactions on that blanket calculation. Doing so is unfair to the individual. It is a prescription for short changing some and setting up others for failure. The human society for better or worse, no longer operates by the law of the jungle for the most part. The criteria for survival in the modern world are more complex than they were for primitive societies. As important as a sharp mind and sound body, are our aptitude for co-operation, compassion and ability to handle stress. Also, survival in the wilderness and in an urban setting require different kinds of intelligence. Other than the conventional indicators of intelligence like business acumen and academic brilliance, our ability to respond to disasters, stewardship of the environment, good parental and educational insights, developing appropriate ethical and legal groundwork to guide our personal and public lives have become increasingly more important facets of intelligence that ensure success and survival as the world becomes more interactive, urbanized and the insularity of discrete cultural groups diminish. We have also seen repeatedly that an above average intelligence as measured by IQ tests does not guarantee that an individual will make a good parent, be ethical or well adjusted and as in Watson’s case, have wisdom commensurate with intelligence.

Yet our society remains in thrall of IQ. I always cringe when this inadequate and even flawed measure is repeatedly used to assign worth (or unworth) to human life. I consider it especially pernicious when applied to entire racial/cultural groups. Once before I had expressed my unease with such stereotyping here. Today I came across an American Enterprise Institute talk discussing Jewish intelligence and other genetic traits. Not much in the discussion is new. But I find this obsession with "positive" group genetics as disturbing as Watson’s insult to an entire continent and race based on so called "inferior" DNA. The main speaker was Jon Entine, an AEI fellow and author of a new book, Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People. Charles Murray, another AEI fellow and IQ worshipper was predictably present as an enthusiastic participant.

Entine, author of the new book "Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People," argued that genetic mutations gave Jews very high IQs. "If you had one of these mutations" — such as those that cause Tay-Sachs disease — "it probably could cause high intelligence," he asserted.

Fellow AEI fellow Charles Murray suggested that the rigors of Talmudic study drove out the dull Jews centuries ago. "If you were dumb and a Jew," said the philo-Semitic Murray, "it was a lot easier to be a Christian." Murray, best known for his incendiary book about race and intelligence, "The Bell Curve," explored Jewish smarts in an April article in Commentary titled "Jewish Genius." ….

All this might be traced, Entine said, to diseases that afflict Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe; these genetic mistakes "may promote the growth and interconnection of brain cells." "This is highly debated," the author admitted. "You’re suggesting there could be a genetic basis to intelligence and it could be found more in one population than another."

It was not controversial with Murray, however. His only beef was that Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal were smart, too. "You had not only Maimonides . . . you had Jews prominent in business, you had Jews who were advisers to the court," he argued. "Many historians attribute in part the subsequent decline of Spain and Portugal to the fact that they got rid of their Jews." He further credited Jews for the rise of the Netherlands and noted that "one of my thesis advisers at MIT was a Sephardic Jew."

William Saletan of Slate and Dana Milbank of the Washington Post were in the audience and reacted with nervousness and humor to Entine and Murray’s theses.

Update: For the nitty gritty on how mothers beat genetics, see Anna’s post here.
Regeneration Through Violence (Andrew)

October 31, 2007

One of the things I most enjoy about vacation is the chance to catch up on my reading — as well as my junk pop culture consumption. So I recently had the chance to read The Fight Club, the novel on which the popular 1999 movie is based, about severely-depressed white-collar workers who find succor for their soul-killing drudgery by beating each other up at night. As a child of the 80s, I loved the original Die Hard, and like a moth to flame, also eagerly checked out the (fourth) sequel, conveniently putting out of my mind that II and III were godawful. Live Free or Die Hard, which came out this past summer, features John McClane trying to protect the life of a nerdy young computer hacker played by Justin Long, as they battle a group of cyberterrorists led by an evil white programmer played by Tim Olyphant, and his Asian girlfriend, played by Maggie Q, who knows kung-fu and keeps tricking nerds into blowing themselves up with their computer.

Both Die Hard and The Fight Club both made me think of a 1970s American studies classic that I read in grad school: Regeneration Through Violence, by Richard Slotkin. Slotkin’s thesis is that from the 17th-century onward, narratives of violent subjugation of the wilderness and Native Americans were paradoxically associated with healthy development, or "regeneration." Killing bears, chopping down trees, and blasting Native Americans was part of the process of carving civilization from an unruly nature and its "savage" inhabitants. Internalizing some of that savagery was a necessary part of being a heroic man.

Which invites the question of what happens to that glorification of violence in a society like ours, when nature and Native Americans have largely been destroyed. Die Hard With A Vengeance is interesting as an unreconstructed version of the myth — the nerdy computer hacker spouts anti-Bush slogans about the Administration fomenting fear among the populace even as he is totally incompetent to defend himself from terrorists and needs McClane’s assistance. (McClane drops the evil girlfriend down an elevator shaft, and kills many henchmen). In the final scene, however, the nerd redeems himself by shooting the villain, thereby rescuing McClane and getting to date his daughter. Regeneration through violence, dude! Giuliani ’08! Maybe Cheney will invite you to his secret location for a highball!

I had thought Fight Club to be a similarly updated (and frankly, repellant) version of the myth that violence can get you in touch with a healthier, more vital you. In Googling around, however, I discovered this intriguing essay by a UVA grad student named Robin Freed (her master’s thesis, no less!), which argues that The Fight Club is actually a pomo ironic retelling of the regeneration through violence myth, in which the fighting is not presented as the necessary brutality undertaken by a frontier warrior engaged in the relentless process of industrialization but rather a way to "soothe the men’s feelings of inadequacy and alienation" in a technocratic order that no longer requires violence from the average Joe. The fact that the violence is self-destructive and ultimately does not solve any problems for the men makes the book and film "anti-violent."

Freed wants to make the book effectively a critique of the soul-deadening quality of modern business life, in which unmotivated, staged fights feel more real than the rest of our lives — but I’d point to the popularity of the movie to question her thesis. Even though most of us are bored at work, perhaps even depressed, we think of cultural anti-hero Tyler Durden kicking ass just because he’s so angry and frustrated and needs someone to take it out on. We think about Tyler, maybe even watch Fight Club again, get a cathartic release, and then get back to work. Is this really so different than the way Americans glorified Davy Crockett blowing Indians away in the 19th century? I’d like to hear ABers chime in.

Also, I’d love to hear any other contemporary examples people can think of that might fit with, or work against Slotkin’s thesis.
Gap Flap (Sujatha)

October 29, 2007

A new story of bonded child labor in an expose by the UK newspaper The Observer came out early yesterday, prompting indignant and horrified commentary on the blogosphere.

The investigation highlighted the plight of several children essentially ‘sold into servitude’ by their families:
Amitosh, a 10 year old pushed into embroidering toddler blouses says:

‘I was bought from my parents’ village in [the northern state of] Bihar and taken to New Delhi by train,’ he says. ‘The men came looking for us in July. They had loudspeakers in the back of a car and told my parents that, if they sent me to work in the city, they won’t have to work in the farms. My father was paid a fee for me and I was brought down with 40 other children. The journey took 30 hours and we weren’t fed. I’ve been told I have to work off the fee the owner paid for me so I can go home, but I am working for free. I am a shaagird [a pupil]. The supervisor has told me because I am learning I don’t get paid. It has been like this for four months.’

This isn’t the first case of such bonded labor coming to light, and won’t be the last either. Child labor is the not-so-secret dirty underbelly of the labor scene in India and will continue to remain so, so long as unscrupulous business people try to deliver cut-rate goods.

Gap has promptly reacted to try and repair the damage done to its image by ordering an investigation into how this practice escaped the eagle eyes of its oversight employees, issuing a press statement reiterating its commitment to non-employment of underage workers:

As soon as we were alerted to this situation, we stopped the work order and prevented the product from being sold in stores. While violations of our strict prohibition on child labor in factories that produce product for the company are extremely rare, we have called an urgent meeting with our suppliers in the region to reinforce our policies.

So, the cycle begins again. Gap will clean up its list of subcontractors, and those discarded by it will find another eager customer to take Gap’s place and the cycle of abuse will continue, perpetuated in equal parts by poverty, ignorance and corruption.

Here’s an illuminating discussion on an Indian court victory in 2006 on a petition filed to free bonded child laborers. There are tireless groups of NGOs that fight for the rights of these voiceless laborers, who despite their age, contribute upto 20% of the GNP of India (as per a UN study).

The powers-that-be in India worry about the effect of this report on the perception and marketing of Indian goods and rightly so, as this article from time.com would indicate.

The Indian government tried to downplay the issue and none of the ministries in whose domain it has arisen has commented. It was left to Commerce Minister Kamal Nath to react to the report. According to the Times of India, Nath said the allegations would be probed, while warning developed countries against using allegations of child labor as a pretext for taking protectionist tariff measures. Children’s rights activists, however, see the latest allegations as typical of the problems associated with India’s economic rise, where growth is prioritized over social equity. Pradeep Narayan of the non-profit Child Rights and You says, "Policies on liberalization, privatization, trade, export-import, et cetera get implemented very fast and very effectively. But the policies on the social sector, like health or child labor, never do."

The ugly fact remains that while the West has generally been able to eradicate the scourge of child labor in its territories, they have merely outsourced the small hands that labored in their factories once upon a time to India, China and other countries.
Cough, cough…(Sujatha)

October 28, 2007

After the horrors of plumbophobia , the next big meme in the media : Cough syrups and how bad they are for the youngest and most vulnerable among us. From the MSNBC article:

Over-the-counter cough syrups generally contain drugs in too low a dose
to be effective, or contain combinations of drugs that have never been
proven to treat coughs, said Dr. Richard Irwin, chairman of a cough
guidelines committee for the American College of Chest Physicians

Naturally, the cough syrup manufacturers’ group takes the opposite stance.

The Consumer Healthcare Products Association, a trade group for makers
of over-the-counter medications, disputed the guidelines and said
over-the-counter cough medicines provide relief to millions of people
each year.

My purely personal conclusion, after nights sitting up sleepless with coughing kids, matches exactly with the conclusions of the physicians. It’s all more for the ‘peace of mind’ of the adults administering what they hope will ease their child’s discomfort and get them to sleep, rather than real relief of the cough. I can guarantee that I slept better after giving my coughing kid a dose of Delsym or Triaminic or Robitussin, though I could never tell whether it helped my kid, who repeated the performance night after night till the cough finally died a natural death.

Sure enough this 2006 article from USA Today (note the recycling of old news as new!) quotes the good Dr.Irwin as saying then:

"Cough is so common, and there are medicines that actually work," says
guidelines committee chair Richard Irwin, professor of medicine at the
University of Massachusetts Medical School. If you feel you need to
take something, he says, "take something that has been shown to be
helpful."
…

OTC cough medicines have been shown to have a strong placebo effect,
Irwin says. And coughs from colds eventually go away on their own, he
says. If a cough persists for weeks on end, he says, it might be a
result of something more serious than a cold and should be brought to a
doctor’s attention.

Since fall and colder temperatures have finally set in, the media has decided to do its dusting up of old articles and requesting fresh quotes from the same people who commented on the issue last year. A little controversy would never hurt the sales of cough syrups, would it? People might decide that they really need it and purchase more ("Stock up, before the FDA bans it" or some such idiocy).

Of course, the current (2007) article reads, at the end:

Coughs can have numerous underlying causes, including asthma, allergies, severe heartburn, postnasal drip and bronchitis.

Dr. Edward Schulman, an American Thoracic Society representative on the guidelines panel, said patients should see their doctors
for coughs that linger longer than three weeks or are accompanied by
shortness of breath, which could indicate pneumonia or other serious
conditions.

Coughs
due to colds usually last less than three weeks. Drinking lots of
fluids can help relieve these coughs, and so can chicken soup, Schulman
said.

Note the reference to the well-known folk remedy for all ills, though only at the end of the article. Of course, nothing like hot soup for colds and agues.

My preference for treating coughs is a spoon of honey dissolved in a couple of tablespoons of warm water. My kids are well-trained enough now that it’s what they ask for if a cough bothers them.

What’s your favorite?
Fair and Balanced: California Fires Set By Al Qaida

October 25, 2007

No time for a commentary – I am in a hurry to leave on a trip. This story speaks for itself.

Questionable 4-year-old FBI memo presented as new to stoke terror fears

Did al Qaeda start the California wildfires?

As more than a million people escaped the flames, Fox News anchors couldn’t help speculating about a terrorism link to the blazes ravaging southern California.

"I’ve heard some people talk about this a little bit to me, but have you heard anybody suggest that this could be some form of terrorism," Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy asked Wednesday morning.

Correspondent Adam Housley said he’s received "hundreds of comments" from readers of his Fox News blog speculating about a link to terrorism.

Investigators have determined that one 15,000 acre fire in Orange County was deliberately set, and Housley reported that authorities arrested one man who set a hillside on fire. Causes of most other fires are still being investigated, and there has been little speculation beyond Fox News about a terror plot.

A review of Housley’s blog posts about the fire reveals that his characterization of the terror fears perhaps was inflated.

Of his 15 posts on the fires, just two included speculation from commenters about a terrorism link.

"Is anyone asking how these fires started? I see no comments or speculations," observed "clyde teeter" in response to a post Tuesday. "Could it be linked to illegal alien misadventure on the border […] Terrorism? … If you are a journalist, then these questions need to be asked and investigated. Your coverage is admirable but the emotional journalism about the loss of peoples homes is not helping to find the causes."

Fox & Friends co-host Judge Andrew Napolitano tried to serve as the voice of reason.

"That’s a fear, Adam, but is there any evidence of it?" the judge asked.

Such skepticism could not last, though.

(more…)
Doris Lessing on Bush, Blair and 9/11

October 24, 2007

This year’s Nobel Prize winner in literature, Doris Lessing recently expressed her views on the political events of the past few years. According to her the 9/11 attacks were "not that terrible." She also confessed that she "always hated Tony Blair from the beginning" and that George W. Bush is "a world calamity." Lessing is 88. She has the Nobel. What does she care? She feels she can speak her mind.

Nobel Prize-winning author Doris Lessing has said that the 11 September attacks were "not that terrible" compared to the IRA’s terror campaign.

"Some Americans will think I’m crazy… but it was neither as terrible or as extraordinary as they think," the writer told Spanish newspaper El Pais.

The 88-year-old added that "people forget" the IRA bomb attack on Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1984. Five people died and 34 were injured when an IRA bomb exploded in a Brighton hotel where leading members of the Conservative party – including Mrs Thatcher – were staying for its annual conference.

‘World calamity’

The author conceded that "many people died and two prominent buildings fell" in the attacks on New York’s World Trade Center in 2001. "They’re a very naive people, or they pretend to be," she added of Americans.

Lessing, whose novels include The Golden Notebook and Memoirs of a Survivor, also branded President George W Bush "a world calamity".

"Everyone is tired of this man. Either he is stupid or he is very clever, although you have to remember he is a member of a social class which has profited from wars."

The writer also said that she "always hated Tony Blair from the beginning".
It’s All In The Vedas

October 23, 2007

Once after giving a talk on a seminal piece of work, the brilliant Indian physicist Meghnad Saha was told by an elderly member in the audience, "There is nothing new here. It’s all in the Vedas." From then on, whenever Saha came across a new or intriguing development in physics, he is said to have quipped, "But it’s all in the Vedas!" He of course was being sarcastic and dismissive of the claims by some Hindu purists that the answer to pretty much anything pertaining to mathematics, physics, metaphysics, ethics, morality and the universe was discovered, understood and transcribed in the Vedas millennia ago by the ancient sages of a burgeoning philosophy which came to constitute the foundations of Hinduism.

Now, I am no Vedic scholar. I have only a vague and incomplete understanding of the original philosophical / ritualistic texts although I am quite familiar with the Puranas which constitute the mythological literature deriving from that line. My own fractured understanding leads me to believe (perhaps erroneously) that the Vedas do touch upon many aspects of the real and imaginary forces governing the universe but much of that, except guidelines to ritual worship and mantras, is vague and open to multiple interpretations in light of subsequent latter day knowledge. Even though the sages speculated on physical laws, I am not sure how much actual verifiable data are present in the ancient texts. Does a rich and rational imagination qualify as knowledge? If one fantasizes about flying, is that proof that one formulated Bernoulli’s principle ? Does pondering over the nature of matter automatically point to a grasp of the structure of the atom? Should beautiful mythology filled with awesome weapons of mass destruction lead the reader to conclude that the bards were alluding to nuclear fission and fusion? I am not referring to the classical Indian scholars of the early middle ages like Aryabhata , his disciples and their substantial contributions to mathematics, but to the more ancient era – a few thousand years B.C. and earlier. How many of the modern mathematical concepts had been refined during early Vedic times? What exactly is Vedic math? I found an article that mentions it but doesn’t explain much except to say that the Vedic system makes computation simpler and liberates the student from an over dependence on calculators. Well, whatever it may be, Houston students can now benefit from Vedic math.

Imported wisdom
Delhi engineers and Houston school children both gain from Indian math traditions

”One more than before," the ancient text advises. In the original Sanskrit, this centuries-old wisdom wasn’t meant as a fast track into the global economy.

But for a new generation of Indian technology students, these formulas based on Hindu scriptures offer remarkable shortcuts for success in math. It makes sense for Houston schoolchildren to adopt some of these habits and learning techniques that make many Indians such good mathematicians.

According to a story by Chronicle writer Purva Patel, a local Indian-American businessman, Rajesh Parikh, has founded a tutoring school that teaches so-called "Vedic math" — traditional formulas that make computing problems from basic math to algebra and differential equations almost magically simple.

For example, to calculate the square of 45, or any two-digit number that ends in 5, simply find the number to the left of the 5, which is 4, and multiply it by the next higher number, which is 5. This gives you 20. Now tack on the number 25 to that result for the answer: 2,025.

The math school’s growing success reflects Houston students’ increased use of tutoring programs and, of course, the city’s entrepreneurial spirit. But it also shows how the traditions of Houston’s immigrants are among the city’s greatest assets. Indian children often grow up learning these techniques in households where math proficiency is strongly encouraged.

Recently, starting with a Florida franchise, more American students are learning Vedic Math. Its appeal is in the speed at which students can compute in their head — and the confidence and fun that come with success. It’s easy to see how in Texas this could translate onto better test scores and more interest in careers in math, science and engineering. While Houston entrepreneur Parikh found success with his Vedic math tutoring business, several other sources — including an online study group run by Florida expert Rick Blum — can teach these skills for free.

In the quest to keep youngsters in school and competitive with their often better-prepared peers in Asia, Houston-area schools should explore using the ancient techniques of Vedic math. Their students stand to reap new rewards as they benefit from the wisdom of the immigrants who make this city strong.
Two Years … And Talking

October 19, 2007
Sometimes it seems like only yesterday and at other times depressingly long since I set a tentative foot in the blogosphere. It is neither. Today is Accidental Blogger’s second anniversary and we at A.B. are probably as surprised as our readers by the blog’s moderate longevity. On our first anniversary, I was effusive and adopted a right brained approach to the yearly wrap up. This year I hope to take stock in a left brained way and present some facts and factoids. That of course means that this post will be bristling with links.

All the bloggers who were on board in October, 2006 are still here. Since then we have added one more author, taking the total writing force on A.B. to a half dozen, evenly divided among male & female voices and left & right brains as determined by a nifty little experiment (no, the latter divide does not fall along gender lines.) We also recently celebrated a wedding between co-bloggers which as I noted is surely a rare distinction for a blog.

Apart from that, A.B. remains a modest sized, friendly and cheerful place where we agree enthusiastically and disagree without rancor. We have grown a little in size in the past year in terms of traffic but not by a whole lot. The nice thing is that the regulars continue to visit. Our readers come from many different countries of the world and all fifty US states. Despite some slow down in the blogging rate, we still maintain an average of 1.04 posts per day. Comments average roughly 3.5 per post (with wild variations from article to article) which means that A.B. remains a relatively quiet blog most of the time.

The biggest impact on A.B. traffic was felt when our long time patron, Brian Leiter, whose links invariably resulted in sizeable spikes in our readership, decided to move away from political blogging and concentrate on academic and philosophical topics. But as in life, you lose some and you gain some in the blogging world. Other blogs, big and small, continue to be friendly to us, most notable among them being the immensely popular website 3 Quarks Daily and the widely read Indian filter blog Desi Pundit.

I will end with some loose statistics about A.B.’s two year history. None of this reflects any degree of serious measurement or monitoring. The data are based on my general observations and memory but they are probably pretty close to the accurate picture.

The ten most popular blog posts to date – those which generated the most traffic in a 72 hour period: ( all were linked by one or more large blogs or posted on popular feeds.)
Three articles that continue to attract traffic through their original links long after their publication: (Joe’s post about Dianna Abdala’s rash email brings in readers more than a year and a half after it first appeared!).
The post that generated the largest number of comments: (funnily enough it was a report on a local school district’s travails in suburban Pittsburgh, not a general interest story)

A School District Saga (Sujatha)

Blogging continues to be fun for the most part. But I am no longer as obsessed as I once was. My co-bloggers too have slowed down although they promptly oblige whenever I need their help. Barring unforeseen circumstances, we hope to stick around at least until the 2008 elections to disburse opinions and wisdom. We’ll see. In the meantime, A.B. is here and we hope you keep coming back. Thanks as always, for reading.

Note: The attached photo (open in a new window if you can’t see it fully) is of one of my oil on canvas paintings. I made it for my son’s room when he was quite young. It has no other relevance to this post other than the fact that this is our two year anniversary and there are two birds in the picture. Although I like the painting, I don’t consider it one of my best. My artistic effort was mainly directed towards successfully creating the crackled look on the tree trunk. But its prints sold briskly at my exhibition.
DO NOT LINK HERE OR ELSE (Joe)

October 17, 2007

Is this a joke? I can’t tell.

The user agreement/privacy policy page at Dozier Internet Law, P.C.’s website contains, inter alia, the following language (emphasis mine):

Dozier Internet Law, P.C. has a lot of intellectual property on our
site. For instance, we are the creators of all of the text on this
website, and own the “look and feel” of this website. We also own all
of the code, including the HTML code, and all content. As you may know,
you can view the HTML code with a standard browser. We do not permit
you to view such code since we consider it to be our intellectual
property protected by the copyright laws. You are therefore not
authorized to do so. In addition, you should not make any copies of any
part of this website in any way since we do not want anyone copying us.
We also do not allow any links to our site without our express
permission, except that you must maintain the link in our Copyright
Infringement Warning Button as it is designed. The name “Dozier
Internet Law, P.C.", and similar derivatives of it, constitute our
trademark and servicemark, and should not be used in any manner without
our permission.

Oops. I guess I should have referred to them as "cybertriallawyer.com" rather than as "Dozier Internet Law, P.C.," since the name is their trademark and I’m not authorized to use it in any manner. I also probably shouldn’t have linked to them, since they don’t allow links to their site without permission, which I obviously don’t have. I also love the part about not being allowed to view their source code, which they acknowledge that I can do with any standard web browser (which I just did, thank you Firefox!).

Granted, I’m not an IP expert, I’m not even a lawyer yet, but wow, how bizarrely idiotic. And according to their website, a lot their "internet lawyers" went to good law schools: Boston University, William & Mary, Tulane, George Mason. Damn, did I just accidentally link to them again?

Incidentally, I really like this blog post in response, which quotes some of their source code before issuing this "agreement":

By reading this blog post in whole or in part, you agree that you shall waive any and all legal recourse against its author, maintainer, publisher, and web-host, in perpetuity, in all issues regarding the website of Dozier Internet Law, P.C. This agreement nullifies any previous user agreements engaged in between yourself and the author, maintainer, publisher and/or web-host of this website. You agree to waive any and all legal liability regarding website user agreements on the part of the author, maintainer, publisher and/or web-host in all countries, forever. Plus, you like, totally owe me ten bucks.

Dozier Internet Law, if you’re reading this, consider that agreement adopted here.
Lux Populi and Charity

October 16, 2007

In his op-ed piece in the Washington Post, George Will describes the democratization of luxury. With the profusion of millionaires world wide, increased wealth in the hands of the middle and upper middle class and mass production of luxury goods, conspicuous consumption is no longer what it once was. It has become easier to keep up with the Joneses, even the very posh ones. Consequently, Will claims that the new positional goods may lie in the realm of philanthropy rather than in the market for deluxe items like fancy cars, name-brand personal items or second and third homes. The rich may better ensure their "elite" status and boost to the ego by giving spectacularly rather than by spending on trophy blings or laughably priced booze, even if it is a limited edition $200,000 bottle of Hennessy cognac.

Enough, already, with compassion for society’s middle and lower orders. There currently is a sympathy deficit regarding the very rich. Or so the rich might argue because they bear the heavy burden of spending enough to keep today’s plutonomy humming.

Furthermore, they are getting diminishing psychological returns on their spending now that luxury brands are becoming democratized. When there are 379 Louis Vuitton and 227 Gucci stores, who cares?

This is the outer symptom of a fascinating psychological phenomenon: Envy increases while — and perhaps even faster than — wealth does. When affluence in the material economy guarantees that a large majority can take for granted things that a few generations ago were luxuries for a small minority (a nice home, nice vacations, a second home, college education, comfortable retirement), the "positional economy" becomes more important.

James Twitchell, a University of Florida professor of English and advertising, writing in the Wilson Quarterly, says this "lux populi" is "the Twinkiefication of deluxe." Now that Ralph Lauren is selling house paint, can Polo radial tires be far behind? When a yacht manufacturer advertises a $20 million craft — in a newspaper, for Pete’s sake; the Financial Times, but still — cachet is a casualty.

As Adam Smith wrote in "The Wealth of Nations," for most rich people "the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eye is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves." Hennessy understands the logic of trophy assets: It is selling a limited batch of 100 bottles of cognac for $200,000 a bottle.

There is some good news lurking amid the vulgarity. Americans’ saving habits are better than they seem because the very rich, consuming more than their current earnings, have a negative savings rate.

Furthermore, because the merely affluent are diminishing the ability of the very rich to derive pleasure from positional goods, philanthropy might become the final form of positional competition. Perhaps that is why so many colleges and universities (more than 20, according to Twitchell) are currently conducting multi billion-dollar pledge campaigns. When rising consumption of luxuries produces declining enjoyment of vast wealth, giving it away might be the best revenge.

Speaking of charity, this is the time of year until Christmas when most of us will be writing checks to our favorite causes and institutions. In case you would like to add to your list, please consider animal welfare organizations – your local animal shelter is a good choice. (If anyone is interested, I will be happy to provide a list of my favorite animal charities.) To help out with educational initiatives in schools, you may want to check out the wide ranging list that the Science Seed bloggers have compiled.
Monday Miscellany (Sujatha)

October 15, 2007

A few interesting links I picked up over the past week:

Morford and the Art of Zen Maintenance

The Thinking Baboons

Right Brain or Left : Which type are you?

JK Rowling vs. Parvati (the deity, not the Hogwarts student)

Colbert ,NYTimes columnist?!!
Rice criticizes anti-democratic Bush Administration (Joe)

October 13, 2007

Oh, wait, my bad. Secretary Rice criticized the Russians for all the flaws which any sane person sees in the American government today. [CNN]

The Russian government under Vladimir Putin has amassed so much
central authority that the power-grab may undermine Moscow’s commitment
to democracy, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday.

"In any country, if you don’t have countervailing institutions, the
power of any one president is problematic for democratic development,"
Rice told reporters after meeting with human-rights activists.

"I think there is too much concentration of power in the Kremlin. I
have told the Russians that. Everybody has doubts about the full
independence of the judiciary. There are clearly questions about the
independence of the electronic media and there are, I think, questions
about the strength of the Duma," said Rice, referring to the Russian
parliament.

It’s fun to plug in the American counterparts to the Russians, because, well, it reads like a real and legitimate criticism. The American government under George W. Bush has amassed so much central authority that the power-grab may undermine the District’s commitment to democracy. Jack Balkin, Sandy Levinson, Marty Lederman, Geoff Stone and others have been saying this for ages, e.g. in the context of the unlawful NSA program or with respect to our secretive torture institutions. There is too much concentration of power in the White House. Everybody has doubts about the full independence of the judiciary. See, e.g., Bush v. Gore, Carhart II, or nearly any of the votes cast by Chief Justice Roberts or Justice Alito. There are clearly questions about the independence of the mainstream media, which is largely why the blogosphere exists (although of course it’s a marginal sector which speaks more or less only to itself). And there are, I think, questions about the strength of the Congress, which routinely does whatever its superiorly coequal branch (the Executive) wants it to do, despite overwhelming popular opposition to the Executive and its misguided-at-best policies.
Remembering Joe Zawinul (Andrew)

October 12, 2007

I had the chance to spend an hour and a half talking with the late great keyboardist Joe Zawinul in June for Jazz at Lincoln Center Radio, not knowing that he had a rare form of skin cancer that would kill him in early September. When I arrived at his study for the interview, he informed me that his wife was in intensive care. Embarrassed to be intruding on the family at such a sad time, I asked if he wanted to cancel the interview. He stoically brushed me off, saying "We must cope."

And he proceeded to give an amazing interview, ranging from his pre-war conservatory training as a child prodigy, to his life as a poor "street kid" in post-Nazi Austria, to his gospel-tinged soul jazz contributions to Cannonball Adderley to his co-leadership of the seminal rock-influenced jazz group Weather Report in the 1970s, and his most recent group the Zawinul Syndicate.

While I only met him that one time, his death saddened me because he shared a quality with his one-time boss Miles Davis that is all too rare in jazz and other forms of music today: a refusal to repeat what he’s already done, and insistence on trying to re-invent himself stylistically as he moved through life. I mentioned a quip that the jazz critic Gary Giddins made in his brilliant book Visions of Jazz about the stale repertory of contemporary jazz singing– that even in the 1990s, singers were still mining the songbook of 1938. Zawinul’s response was emphatic: "It cannot be. It can not be!"

So whether you like what he was doing with the Zawinul Syndicate later in his career (I certainly do, although others in my household remain unconvinced), which might be described as synth-heavy groove-based songs with elements drawn from African and Latin American musics, you can’t help but admire his fearless refusal to keep trying to develop new sounds and styles, that restive relationship with tradition that has kept jazz fresh.

Even his final album, a reimagining of his Weather Report output as performed by the WDR Big Band of Cologne, is less of a retrospective than it might first appear. Why? Because it reminds us that in spite of a lot of negative critical ballast, Weather Report, with its complex, interwoven musical lines, was kind of like a little big band, that replaced the traditional brass and woodwind sections with keyboards, a single, incomparable saxophone player, and the various brilliant rhythm sections. It was like a big band, as played by a rock band.

Not all experiments work, but it’s only when artists take risks that the music can continue to be interesting. That’s why he scorned the bebop imitations that predominate on the jazz radio format today. It’s not that such players are incompetent, it’s just that what the possibilities of their style have been so thoroughly explored, over the past sixty years. Let’s hope the musically-gifted jazz players out there will take heart from his example, rather than from the mimics, or those certain someones inhabiting the third circle of Hell known as smooth jazz.

Anyhow, if you’re interested in hearing the radio documentary that we did with the interview and his October 2006 concert at Lincoln Center, you can click here: http://www.jalc.org/jazzcast/program.asp?programNumber=257

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