On the evolutionary roots of religion

Suppose religion is something to do with the supernatural, then what does studying the evolutionary roots of religion mean?

As we have already seen, it definitely does not mean that human brains universally and naturally come up with the ontology dividing the world into the natural and supernatural.  We have seen the arguments already that the ancient Greeks, ancient Romans and ancient Indians had no such ontology.

We can think deep and hard about it - I will simply present the conclusion, which is what is to be explained is the human tendency to create intentional agents - entities with intentions that they act upon - where there are none.  Yes, that seems to be everywhere, and may be something seeking an explanation.  But what does that have to do with religion?   It is not clear to me how we distinguish Herbie, The Little Engine that Could or Belldandy from Thor or Athena or Ganesha - per science, these are all non-existent intentional agents that do not exist in nature -  without smuggling in the concept of supernatural. 

The other human quality is that of having "mystical experiences" that might be ripe for an explanation from evolution.  Of course, I don't know whether "mystical experience" is problematic, so I'm just guessing.

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Another try - as you may know, Islam teaches that Allah sent many prophets to humankind, prophets being entirely human messengers of God.  Muhammad was the final and best of them, and we've lost the names of most of the couple of hundred thousand of them; but Adam, Moses and Jesus were also prophets.   Now, as per Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God, more than just a human.  If you recognize that "Jesus is a prophet" is the claim of a particular religion, then I say that you should likewise recognize that "the world is divided into natural and supernatural" is the claim of a particular religion.  At least, as it stands today.   Can this claim be made universally intelligible?  Either one has to do some hard work to make it so, or else one can perhaps count on globalism to uniformize humanity so much that there is no one left to assert that it is not intelligible.  Extinct cultures cannot talk back, and so we can safely assume anything.

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Wolpertisms, etc.

 In response to a question from Vishal in the comments:

1.  An account of the events around the Cabinet Mission Plan is here.  Scroll to the bottom of the page for the author of the site.  It is a collection of primary and secondary sources and some commentary.   Of course, the selection of source material quoted can be biased - but you can make up your own mind.  A summary take is here.

2.  Wolpert has a habit of dramatizing history to make it more interesting, and in that he creates fiction, in my opinion.   Here are some examples, you can judge for yourself:

a. Gandhi-Jinnah 1915
b. Gandhi-Mountbatten-Nehru 1947 -1
    Gandhi-Mountbatten-Nehru 1947 - 2
c. Gandhi's nervous breakdown, 1915
d. Gandhi and All-Parties Conference, 1928

This might seem minor.  But Wolpert constructs out of them things he makes out to be fundamental to the characters he describes:

Nehru was shocked to learn that his Mahatma was quite ready to replace him as premier with the Quaid-i-Azam......But Nehru had tasted the cup of power too long to offer its nectar to anyone else - last of all to that "mediocre lawyer", the "reactionary-Muslim Baron of Malabar Hill" as so many good Congress leaders thought of Jinnah.

Or for instance, the supposed snub Gandhi delivered to Jinnah in 1915.  Taking Wolpert seriously at that point would obscure the real Gandhi-Jinnah difference.  Gandhi was for mass participation in politics.  Jinnah was republican in the sense of many of the American founding fathers, namely the affairs of the nation and politics were to be run by a wealthy, educated class only.

US programmer outsources own job

Via a friend, this CNN story.

"Bob" outsourced his own job to China, paying a fifth of his salary.  Bob's contractors would log-in under his credentials and do his work for him.

Bob received excellent performance reviews of his "clean, well written" coding. He had even been noted as "the best developer in the building."

Bob was fired.  Bob should instead be commended.  His outsourcing overhead is lower than the usual outsourcing, and without the long chain of managers in between; and he got good code out it, which is just as rare.

 

Swaraj versus Independence

One needs to understand Swaraj, Gandhi did what he did for Swaraj, not for Independence.  What is the difference?  Swaraj goes beyond independence.

Gandhi had published a book in 1909,  "Hind Swaraj".

As Pinto explicates, "The principal theme of Hind Swaraj is the moral inadequacy of western civilization, especially its industrialism, as the model for free India."

Gandhi could not have known about global warming, but it is true, as we know today:  if Indians seek and achieve living like the West, it means ecological catastrophe, not just of India, but for the world.  Industrialism has to reform its basis or else people have to reform their ideas of what it means to live well. 

PS: "The moral inadequacy of industrialism" - may provoke some raised eyebrows.  What is the connection between morality and industrialism?  Isn't industrialism morally neutral?  The answer to that is, yes, it doesn't translate well,  dharma is very much concerned with sustainability.  

Gandhi's reply to Why non-violence?

Gandhi:

India could have won freedom about ten years earlier than it did through some violence against the British. But we were not only fighting the British, but also our own causes of poverty, unemployment, and untouchability. A nation becoming free after a violent struggle is bound to capture power in few hands and the suffering of India's large masses would not have changed if we became free by violent means.  I wanted people of India to partner with the English people after independence, so a peaceful transfer of power was necessary.

 PS: This appears to be a composite statement, rather than a direct quote.

Niall Ferguson and India

If people want to learn about India from Niall Ferguson, perhaps criticisms like this one should be kept in mind as well. ("Niall Ferguson's ignorant defence of British rule in India : Oddly for a historian, Ferguson doesn't appear to have taken much notice of history", by Paul Cotterill, in the New Statesman, August 16, 2012.)

Or this. (The truth? Our empire killed millions. I've been told I should 'check my facts'. I have. Many times. And the truth is still there", by Johann Hari, The Independent, June 19, 2006.) The commentary on this latter piece by Eric Zuesse reads:

On 19 June 2006, a lengthy commentary by Johann Hari appeared in Britain's Independent, headlined "The Truth? Our Empire Killed Millions. A Reply to Niall Ferguson." Ferguson was at the time a Cambridge University educated professor teaching at (simultaneously) Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford, and the world's leading apologist for both the British and the American empires. Columnist Hari ripped his work to shreds, specifically citing Ferguson's benign portrayal of Britain's treatment of India during the 1800's. "When I criticised Ferguson for dedicating almost as much space in his revisionist history of Empire to the slaughter of 29 million people as he gives to a description of a statue of the Prince of Wales, ... he responded primarily with personal abuse."

Or this. (Warning: I greatly dislike Pankaj Mishra.) London Review of Books, Vol 33 No 21, November 3, 2011.  Per the NY Times,  Mishra's "blistering takedown of the historian Niall Ferguson in The London Review last November prompted extensive coverage in the British news media — and threats of a libel suit from Mr. Ferguson."

Natural versus Supernatural - 2

In the comments, dwc points me to a student of Balu, Jakob de Roover, on the absence of the supernatural in the Indian traditions, who points us to Dale B. Martin in  Inventing Superstition: from the Hippocratics to the Christians (Harvard University Press, 2004).

“One of the basic arguments of this book is that, contrary to many modern assumptions, the category of “the supernatural” did not exist in ancient culture as a category. Neither popular notions, held by the vast majority of inhabitants of the ancient world, nor philosophical notions (we could say “scientific” with due consideration for the possible anachronistic connotations of the term) assumed that reality was split up into two realms, one “natural,” containing things like “matter” and “natural forces” such as gravity or electricity, and another “supernatural,” to which gods and similar beings (demigods, angels, demons, ghosts) could be assigned…

What is important for this post is that the category was not available, either explicitly or by assumption, for persons in the classical Greek and Roman worlds. The Greeks and Romans certainly had no word that was equivalent to the modern English “supernatural.”

…I do not, however, want just to quibble about words. Classical Greeks and Latin had not term for what passes in the modern world as “the supernatural” precisely because the ancients did not separate out divine forces and beings from “nature” and relegate them to a separate ontological realm that could designated by its own label. Generally, for ancient people whatever does exist exists in “nature.” Almost without exception the Greek term physis (nature) refers to “all that is.”

People might argue that the gods did not exist or that some particular daimon or god or superhuman being did not exist (I know of no ancient author who argued for actual atheism in the modern sense). But in that case, they said that the disputed entity simply did not exist, not that it might exist in some other realm of reality, such as the “supernatural.” Ancient philosophers might argue that lightning was not caused by a god, but they did not do so by pointing out that lightning occurs in the “natural” realm and that the gods exist in the “supernatural” realm and that the two realms are not supposed to interact with one another. Ancient people took the gods and all other beings we would think of as “supernatural” to be part of nature if they existed at all.” (pp. 13-15)  

Natural versus Supernatural

What is supernatural depends on what is natural.  In the context of Newtonian physics instantaneous action at a distance is natural.  With Einstein's special relativity,  the instantaneous action at a distance is supernatural.

One should distinguish supernatural from super-human.  Certainly the Vedic devas were superhuman in that they had powers ordinary humans did not have.  Were they supernatural?  Well, as per the story, by the power of his tapasya, the Rishi Vishwamitra created the southern skies, the antipodes.   (Vishwamitra had promised the disgraced king Trisanku that he would get to heaven. So when Indra barred Trisanku, Vishwamitra extended the heavens.)  So these powers were not seen to be supernatural, only superhuman, and humans, by dint of effort, could achieve these powers.  The power of tapasya accrued to both what we would call morally good (such as the rishis) as well as what we could call morally bad (such as the asuras and rakshasas) and thus, like nuclear power, was morally neutral, not granted by gods and simply a part of nature.  In fact, there are many stories of the devas feeling threatened by someone or other's tapasya.

I'd say that for most part, the ancient Hindus did not attribute supernatural powers to their gods, only superhuman powers.  When Lord Rama ordered the ocean to make a passage to Sri Lanka, the Ocean deva pleaded with him,  that he (the ocean) could not go against his fundamental nature; that all he could do was that if Rama built a causeway, he could refrain from washing it away.  If Hindus were Biblically inclined, the sea would have parted, as it did for Moses, a miracle.

A case of bad physics, no doubt, with the ancient Hindus; and no doubt what was seen as natural back then should now be understood to be supernatural; but those who want to find a religion within a Hindu belief in the supernatural, will have to think quite a bit about that.

Balu on Hinduism

Balu writes that Hinduism is an imaginary entity.  This series of postings may help explain his point of view:

1.   The claim.
2.   Hinduism contrasted to Hipkapi.
3.   Answers to my objections. (pay attention to 3. and understand it)

Conspiracy theorists

These days I keep seeing parallels between the right-wing/Republicans and Pakistanis.  Pakistanis love conspiracy theories.  All the Musulmans who blow up fellow-Musalmans in their country are really CIA-Mossad-RAW.  Just as no "true" Muslim could ever commit such crimes, likewise the gun-lovers in the US think that "true" gun-lovers could never do something like the Newtown, CT. school massacre.  Therefore, the Newtown shooting must have been staged, by a government or other party that is seeking a pretext to separate Americans from their guns.  Therefore, anyone whose existence contradicts this conspiracy theory is to be attacked.

Hence the story of Gene Rosen.  He found six children in his driveway, who told him, they had fled from school, their teacher was dead.  

Rosen took the four girls and two boys—students of slain teacher Victoria Soto—into his home, gave them toys and comforted them while he tried to reach their parents. He spent the days following the massacre telling his story to the swarming media that invaded the small Connecticut town in the wake of the shootings. “I wanted to speak about the bravery of the children,” Rosen told Salon. “I guess I kind of opened myself up to this.”

Now Rosen is receiving piles of nasty calls and emails, accusing him of lying or of being paid for acting.

 

Another view of Pakistan

N.V. Subramanian

Four rump states is a tolerable proposition for India than a united, nuclear terror state. It will be a project that will require the best minds, treasure, executive audacity, and implicit national political consensus.

India needs to cleanse the sub-continent of Pakistan, and it must begin now.

An insight into the intellectual culture of Delhi

This Tavleen Singh article should be read, not for its defense of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, but for an insight into the intellectual environment in Delhi.

Colonial Consciousness

Here is my attempt to explain colonial consciousness stripped of much of the academic jargon (and nuance) that surrounds it. None of this is original and the mistakes are all mine.

Around the first war with Iraq, Americans were reminded of the fact that most of the political boundaries of the Middle East and Africa were drawn arbitrarily by the European colonial powers.  That is, the Europeans created a map that was not well aligned with the reality on the ground.   Their doing so had significant consequences.  Reality itself began changing because of the map.  So maybe there was no Syrian identity and no Iraqi identity before the map, but only after.  People divided by boundaries or peoples united who preferred to be apart resulted in political turmoil, wars and even genocide.  Such is the power of the map.

Extend the map metaphor to the humanities.  Based on their experience and to suit their purposes, the Europeans applied their concepts and categories to the cultures they encountered.  Often these do not align with reality, but were driven by Europeans' theological and ideological predilections.  For instance, they looked for and found holy books, priests, God, religion and so on in other cultures because that is what their cultural experience led them to look for.  One should remember that the encountered cultures did not participate as equals in the European/rest-of-world encounter, they were only informants, not contributors.  Nor did the encountered cultures have any knowledge of European culture, and they generally blindly accepted the isomorphisms that the Europeans came up with.  We have exactly the same problem as with the map.   The subject cultures start changing because of the map.  The mismatch of the map and reality results in various problems in the subject cultures.

Most seriously, since the metaphorical map is (supposed to be) a description of a culture, the more the people of a culture, say Indian culture, get enmeshed in the European map, the less intelligible the experience of their own culture becomes to them.   This is the phenomenon of colonial consciousness.

The description of cultures becomes distorted.  For instance, whatever it is that evangelist Christians want to replace in an Asian culture is what becomes the religion of that culture. The very category of "religion" in the humanities is based on Christian theological ideas.  This next is a difficult point and I don't yet have a simple way to deliver it - I believe that the existence of "Hinduism" as a "religion" requires one to implicitly accept some of the truth claims of Christian theology.  The natural description of classical Indian culture would not be in terms of "religion".   Certainly classical India never described itself as having "religion".  But like the political map, the colonial map is now imposed on us.  Just as we would now be at a loss as to how to describe Iraqis even accepting the fact that Iraq has arbitrary borders,  we are now at a loss of how to describe Indian culture; and Asian culture in general.

So we are stuck, and perhaps the way to get unstuck is to first undo the isomorphism.  Classical Indian culture had "dharma" and classical Europe had "religion" and they are rather different things - the reason we even make them comparable is because both have an ethical dimension.

As I've noted, students of cuisine have no problem in retaining the names of food preparations from different cultures   Students of culture should be so wise.

PS: What can the Indian infected with a colonial consciousness do?  He can try to be European, but never can really be one,  no more than in the American context a black man can be white; and he is doomed to frustration and worse, stagnation and a loss of creativity - all his creations will have a second-hand quality to it.  The other is to be well-rooted.  This does not mean rejection of European ideas.  For instance, the tomato, potato, green pepper, eggplant are not of Indian origin - they came from the New World,  but they are incorporated in Indian cuisine consonant with the values of Indian cuisine; and of course, the Indian can enjoy Italian or Mexican or whatever other cuisine incorporates these foodstuffs.  The current situation (in the description of culture) is as though marinara sauce is the canonical tomato preparation, and everything is measured against it.

MJ Akbar on Manmohan Singh's cravenness

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/TheSiegeWithin/entry/the-habit-of-bending-over-backwards

Untitled

A quote of Max Mueller

Via Wiki:

In a letter to his wife, he said:

The translation of the Veda will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India and on the growth of millions of souls in that country. It is the root of their religion, and to show them what the root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last 3000 years.

 CIP thinks that Max Mueller studied Sanskrit and translated the Vedas out of scientific curiosity or as a student of culture.  As PT Barnum said, in America, a sucker is born every minute.

In another letter:

 As to religion, that will take care of itself. The missionaries have done far more than they themselves seem to be aware of, nay, much of the work which is theirs they would probably disclaim. The Christianity of our nineteenth century will hardly be the Christianity of India. But the ancient religion of India is doomed — and if Christianity does not step in, whose fault will it be?"

It is clear Max Mueller studied India to destroy it.

PS: And the Hindu has become so stupid that he is so honored to be studied by the white-skinned European and holds Max Mueller in high regard.

US Blueland plays tribute to Redland

Via a comment on Paul Krugman's blog, this excellent blog post, that shows the red states command a higher per capita Congressional influence than the blue states, and that ends up in the United State of moochers, where Congress takes more from blue states than it gives to them in taxes, and gives more to red states than it takes from them in taxes.

It's evident that congressional influence is a large factor. Notably, each of the five most underrepresented states, regardless of political lean, all give more than they contribute. Over-represented red states are more likely to take more (all 18/18), while over-represented blue states are split evenly between givers and takers (5/10). This plot is perhaps the most damning of all for Republicans: it suggests that the only reason that any red states contribute more than they take is just because they don't have the congressional influence to grab more money from the Federal Trough, while blue states exercise fiscal restraint, even when they have the congressional influence to grab more money. Again, the implications are clear: Republican politicians greedily rake in as much money as they can for their states, while Democratic politicians govern toward some other goal, perhaps "the best interest of the country"? In the background of the figure we again see "Redland" and "Blueland", where Blueland has more people but less congressional influence, and therefore pays tribute every year to Redland. In fact, each citizen of Redland has 26.4% more congressional influence than a citizen of Blueland, which corresponds quite closely to their 26.4% higher Mooch Factor.

Americans For Responsible Solutions

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, survivor of a mass shooting, launches a new organization as a counter-weight to the NRA.  Join one, join all!

USA Today OpEd

What he said

He said that one cannot change mindsets by lighting candles. "You have to help people on the road when they need help,” he added.

Here.

Steubenville, India

It can't be Ohio, because misogyny, patriarchy, official and social indifference to rape is, per recent news reports, uniquely Indian.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/03/1176096/-The-Steubenville-Gang-Rape-A-Timeline

Lead and crime

At motherjones.com, Kevin Drum draws up the case implicating the chemical element lead (Pb) in crime.  No, not in the form of bullets.

America's real criminal element: lead
The prison population is falling: can you guess why?

100 billion planets in our galaxy

So Caltech estimates.

Singer's Rules of Indian Traffic

Singer's rules were posted on this blog in 2007, and remain applicable today.

Highway Code of India

Article I: The assumption of immortality is required of all road users.

Article II: Indian traffic like Indian society, is structured on a strict caste system. The following precedence must be accorded at all times. In descending order, give way to: cows, elephants, heavy trucks, buses, official cars, camels, light trucks, buffalo, jeeps, ox-carts, private cars, motorcycles, scooters, auto-rickshaws, pigs, pedal-rickshaws, goats, bicycles (goods-carrying), handcarts, bicycles (passenger-carrying), dogs, pedestrians.

Article III: All wheeled vehicles shall be driven in accordance with the maxim: to slow is to falter, to brake is to fail: to stop is defeat. This is the Indian drivers’ mantra.

Article IV: Use of horn (also known as the sonic sender or aural amulet.)

Cars: Short blasts (urgent) indicate supremacy, i.e. in clearing dogs, rickshaws and pedestrians from path. Long blasts (desperate) denote supplication, i.e. to oncoming trucks “I am going too fast to stop, so unless you slow down we shall both die” In extreme cases this may be accompanied by flashing of headlights (frantic).

Single blast (casual) means: “I have seen someone out of India’s 870 million whom I recognize", “There is a bird in the road which at this speed could go through my windscreen", or “I have not blown my horn for several minutes.”

Trucks and Buses: All horn signals have the same meaning, “I have an all-up weight of approximately 12.5 tons and have no intention of stopping, even if I could” This signal may be emphasized by the use of headlamps.

Article IV remains subject to the provision of Order of Precedence in Article II above.

Article V: All maneuvers, use of horn and evasive action shall if be left until the last possible moment.

Article VI: In the absence of seat belts (which there is) car occupants shall wear garlands of marigolds. These should be kept fastened at all times.

Article VII: Rights of way: Traffic entering a road from the left has priority. So has traffic from the right, and also traffic in the middle.

Lane discipline: All Indian traffic at all times and irrespective of direction of travel shall occupy the centre of the road

Article VIII: Roundabouts: India has no roundabouts. Apparent traffic islands in the middle of crossroads have no traffic management function. Any other impression should be ignored.

Article IX: Overtaking is mandatory. Every moving vehicle is required to overtake every other moving vehicle, irrespective of whether it has just overtaken you. Overtaking should only be undertaken in suitable conditions, such as in the face of oncoming traffic, on blind bends at junctions and in the middle of villages/city centers. No more than two inches should be allowed between your vehicle and the one you are passing — one inch in the case of bicycles or pedestrians.

Article X: Nirvana may be obtained through the head-on crash.

Article XI: Reversing: no longer applicable, since no vehicle in India has reverse gear.
Article XII: The 10th incarnation of God was an articulated tanker.

Can't get enough of Thomas Friedman?

Thomas Friedman OpEd generator (found via twitter)

Commentary on a Greenwald statement

One should strive to see the world and prioritize injustices free of pure self-interest - caring about grave abuses that are unlikely to affect us personally is a hallmark of a civilized person - but we are all constructed to regard imminent dangers to ourselves and our loved ones with greater urgency than those that appear more remote. Ignoble though it is, that's just part of being human - though our capacity to liberate ourselves from pure self-interest means that it does not excuse this indifference.

From here, by Glenn Greenwald.

I rather disagree.  I think this is wrong at several points.

Under Greenwald's prescription,  I can "prioritize" some grave injustice in a faraway land above a lesser injustice around me, that I might *actually* be able to do something about, and still retain the hallmarks of a civilized person. By focussing on the high priority items, and thereby doing nothing.

Under Greenwald's prescription, I can support an imperial mission to civilize others, the blood and treasure involved can be justified by a suitably high priority. In fact, most of the current injustices that bother Greenwald so much are in conflicts that have their historical roots in the colonial powers' mission to civilize the world.

There is also the question of what does it mean to care?  Surely, merely proclaiming that "I care about it" is meaningless.  Care has to manifest itself in appropriate actions.  Trying to keep track and prioritize every injustice out there will leave nothing for actual actions.  Far better to make some headway in one small problem, than to be helplessly aware of all the injustices six billion humans inflict on each other.

This next objection is more philosophical, I do not think that there is any set of beliefs that makes one into a moral person.  I think this delusion has come from religions where it is required to believe in some savior or doctrine in order to be a moral person.  I have examined the teaching of dharma in my tradition.  In the epics of Mahabharata and Ramayana, which are said to be teaching dharma, the protagonists and antagonists both "believe in" the same things.  The difference is in conduct.  Conduct alone makes one virtuous or otherwise.  Therefore "caring" about something which does not lead to better conduct is fruitless.

Doing everything that you can, balancing it with all your other responsibilities in life, to end injustice around you, and far away when possible, is the hallmark of a civilized person. If the injustice is grave enough, it may call for shedding or abeyance of other responsibilities.  Thus, for instance, one might become a freedom fighter.

An account of the Delhi protests of December 23

Read and weep!
http://kafila.org/2012/12/26/an-i-witness-account-of-delhi-police-and-raf-violence-at-india-gate-on-23-12-2012-guest-post-by-sangeeta-das/

The pleasant side of Churchill

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/not-his-finest-hour-the-dark-side-of-winston-churchill-2118317.html

The Lost Generation

It’s strange to think that the housing crisis that caused the financial meltdown most negatively affects the one age demographic that didn’t own a home.

The young adults who graduated during the past several years of economic mess are the so-called lost generation, unable to start a career, a family.  Looking for stable, full-time employment.

The Lost Generation blog

US - declining standards in mathematics

 http://cue.caltech.edu/documents/22-core_with_tables_appendix.pdf

The proof of falling standards comes from looking at the best schools:

The transition from high school to college presents problems for all students, but for some students it is particularly challenging. At Caltech, many newly admitted students lack the background in mathematics that is necessary to succeed in Ma 1a. Unfortunately, few of them are even aware that their background in mathematics is deficient. This is not their fault. The mathematics curriculum in high schools is less rigorous than it was even a few decades ago. In conversations with Caltech students who have struggled with freshman mathematics, most report that they were star math students in high school, which of course is a major reason why they were offered admission to Caltech in the first place. Many of them, however, have never seen mathematics as it is taught at Caltech.

Those who struggle in Ma 1a usually continue to struggle in the rest of the core mathematics classes. They earn relatively low GPA’s during their first two years or so at Caltech, and when they graduate their GPA’s are significantly lower than those of other students. And not all who struggle with freshman mathematics succeed; such students are also less likely than their counterparts to graduate from Caltech. The students often report that, in the end, they have also not learned very much math, as too much of the material was beyond their ability to comprehend at the time it was presented. Currently Caltech attempts to assist such students in a number of ways but this assistance may be too little, too late.

In order to understand the specific reasons why many of our freshman struggle in Ma 1a, the undergraduate Academics and Research Committee conducted an online survey that asked a series of specific questions about the difficulties they encountered in Ma1a. From the survey results, the most common area of weakness that students identified was that of formal reasoning, writing proofs, and common proof techniques. The results thus corroborate what most people connected with Ma 1a have known anecdotally—that many Caltech freshmen, though computationally skilled, struggle with basic proof concepts. Moreover, a corollary obstacle to students thriving in Ma1a is that, because it is a “calculus” course, students feel like they should be mastering the topic with ease. They are thus reluctant to go to classmates, TA’s, or professors when they encounter difficulties. 

CIP pointed out the the Caltech core curriculum is revised down from five terms each of math. and physics, to three terms each. There appear to be a variety of reasons.

Anyway, for all the IQmetricians' (idiotic) claims that we are getting smarter, what with the Flynn Effect, and such, our high school achievement level is dropping. The higher IQ (supposedly) best students of today come out of high school knowing less math than their counterparts from a generation ago.

Making the NRA sound reasonable

Read this, and the comments, too.
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2012/12/httphomenraorgpdftranscript_pdfpdf.html

Empire and Gun Rights

Over on his blog, CIP regretted the excesses of empire, but essentially endorsed their "civilizing" mission.  Only half-tongue-in-cheek, I pointed to the collective insanity that is the United States and its worship of guns, as requiring the civilizing yoke of an empire.  Little did I know how far the insanity has progressed, it appears to be easier for a convicted, mentally disturbed felon to get his gun ownerships reinstated, than to get his voting rights reinstated.  The Republic after all needs more gun-toting, non-voting citizens! so the lunatics that run the asylum believe! Where is the jackboot of an empire when it could do some good  CIP for one, thinks (seems to, at least) that the human cost might be worth it, what was good for India should be good for the USA, no?

Understanding Newtown, CT

Nancy Lanza, the mother of Adam Lanza, the accused dead perpetrator of the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre, was not just the usual gun enthusiast, we are told.

She wasn’t just into guns. She was apparently stocked up for when the economy collapses and when everyone’s on their own with their guns.

That area of Connecticut is apparently an enclave of such people, we are told.

The gun enthusiasts in Newtown, CT., were out of control, we are told.  TPM provides the summary of a New York Times article, along with some commentary:

But the gist is that over recent years the town of Newtown, CT. tried to place some limits on the rise of what might be called extreme gun-owning and shooting in the community. It wasn’t a fight between gun-owners and non-gun-owners but traditional gun owner and hunters versus people shooting close to other people’s homes, shooting at unlicensed firing ranges, firing military style weapons, even firing into explosives.

In short, the opposition of the extreme gun owners and the National Shooting Sports Foundation (the country’s second largest gun-rights organization, which happens to be located in Newtown) prevented anything from happening.

Newtown was not (yet) a typical US town.

Guns, the N.R.A., and the politicians that enable them

The American Academy of Pediatrics  has some statistics they would like Americans to be aware of:

1.  Every two hours, someone's child is killed with a gun, either in a homicide, a suicide or as a result of an unintentional injury.

2. An unmeasured but large number of children are seriously injured - often irreversibly disabled - by guns but survive.   One in every twenty-five admissions to pediatric trauma centers in the United States is due to gunshot wounds.

( Please read their rules for gun safety.)

The pediatricians' research has found that talking to parents about guns and gun safety is a good practice; the parents may wise up and improve the safety of the guns they have at home.  E.g., a recent paper is referenced here.  Pediatricians regularly talk to the parents of their patients about  safety issues surrounding automobiles and swimming pools.

Which is why pediatricians have to be so nosy. They ask all sorts of personal questions, delving into family diets and discipline and urging caution around swimming pools and street crossings. They remind parents to make their kids wear helmets when biking and stay in booster seats even when big kids complain they’re too babyish. They also ask whether parents keep guns at home and whether they’re stored safely — with the ammunition and the firearm kept separately in locked cabinets, the key tucked away from children.

But the N.R.A. took offense, and in Florida, the state of some of the craziest Republicans that the N.R.A. has in their pocket, they had a law passed in 2011, that penalizes physicians from inquiring about gun ownership.  A doctor could lose his license and face a fine of upto $10,000.   The Florida Medical Association originally opposed the legislation, and then caved, and supported the bill.

Fortunately, the Florida chapters of three physicians' organizations (the American Academy of Family Physicians , the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Physicians, with support from the American Medical Association),   and the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence challenged the law in court, and won a stay from a federal judge.

“Despite the State’s insistence that the right to ‘keep arms’ is the primary constitutional right at issue in this litigation, a plain reading of the statute reveals that this law in no way affects such rights,” wrote U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke. “A practitioner who counsels a patient on firearm safety, even when entirely irrelevant to medical care or safety, does not affect nor interfere with the patient’s right to continue to own, possess, or use firearms.”

Just how insane the N.R.A. and the politicians it has in its pocket should be evident by now.   The N.R.A. does have members who seem sane, (e.g., here ) but because they do not reign in their organization, they are culpable for its insanity, and the insanity of gun violence in the U.S.A.

PS:  In India, people weep over the violence in the 1990s and later in the Jammu & Kashmir insurgency.  But on a per capita basis,  Thomas A. Marks (Low Intensity Conflict & Law Enforcement, Vol 12, No. 3 (Autumn 2004), pp. 122-143) makes the observation:

Indeed, the internal war in J&K, when scaled, does not begin to approach the levels of criminal violence present in those US metropolitan areas best known for their murder rates. The ‘death count’ in Jammu & Kashmir for 2003 stood at 836 civilians, 1,447 militants, and 380 security personnel.  If this violence is aggregated (2,663), which is unorthodox but certainly presents the worst possible statistical picture, it scales out at 24.5:100,000 population.  This would place Jammu & Kashmir between Memphis (24.7:100,000) and Chicago (22.2:100,000), in the 2002 murder rankings when examining American cities with populations greater than 500,000, well off the pace established by the likes of Washington, DC (45.8:100,000) or Detroit (42.0:100,000).

Think about it, it really opened my eyes:  the level of violence that led to fears of the break-up of India is tolerated as a normal phenomenon in the US of A.  A national emergency it is not!

Kieran Healy @Duke University made this graph of deaths due to assault in the USA and other OECD countries (read about it here), which shows that while the US is much improved, it still is incredibly violent compared to its peer group of countries.  (It may well be that the violence leads people to cling on to their guns out of fear, thus enabling perpetuation of the cycle of more violence and more fear).

 
There is no easy solution, but we cannot shrug away this problem.

The US economy in the 21st century

Year	Federal Receipts Percentage of GDP	Federal Outlays Percentage of GDP	Median Household Income (inflation-adjusted dollars)
2000	20.9	18.4	$54,481
2001*	20.4	19.1	$53,646
2002*	17.5	19.0	$53,019
2003	16.4	19.9	$52,973
2004	16.3	19.8	$52,788
2005	17.6	20.2	$53,371
2006	18.5	20.4	$53,768
2007	18.8	20.0	$54,489
2008	17.7	20.9	$52,546
2009	14.9	25.0	$52,195
2010	15.1	24.1	$50,831
2011	15.4	24.1	$50,054
2012	15.8	22.8

Barrier to the adoption of solar power

David Crane and RFK Jr. write in the NYT:

... state regulatory agencies and local governments impose burdensome permitting and siting requirements that unnecessarily raise installation costs. Today, navigating the regulatory red tape constitutes 25 percent to 30 percent of the total cost of solar installation in the United States, according to data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and, as such, represents a higher percentage of the overall cost than the solar equipment itself.

Elizabeth Warren is on the Senate Banking Committee!

Yay, it just happened!

LED lighting

An global warming & energy-conscious colleague gifted me and others a Philips EnduraLED light bulb each, and my initial impression is very positive.

You can read more about it here.
(Please note: ordering from that page is restricted to New Jersey.)

The strange case of Joyce Carol Vincent

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Carol_Vincent

As noted here

Many people were stopped in their tracks by the story. Was it possible in London, in a building of flats, for a person, an attractive woman, to fade into oblivion, so that no one thought to ask, "Where’s Joyce?" For nearly three years? So many people live alone in a big city, and some are old, less vivid, and without next of kin. They may be missing before they’re gone. But Joyce Vincent did not seem to fit that description. A tremor of anxiety, a fear of societal malfunction, went through London. It seemed like a warning, a measure of the times.

Explore the Andromeda Galaxy

In your spare time, explore the Andromeda Galaxy, and identify star clusters, for the sake of science.

On dieting

This from the NYTimes:

Two years ago, an overweight nutrition professor at Kansas State University went on a diet that was low in calories but consisted mostly of Twinkies and other junk food. In two months, he lost 27 pounds, lowered his bad cholesterol and raised his good cholesterol. His point was that for weight loss, calories mattered more than the actual content of the diet. Twinkie lovers rejoiced, but the nutrition world put its collective head in its hands.

The Silence of the Liberals

(via a Tarek Fatah tweet: http://standpointmag.co.uk/television-december-the-cowardice-of-the-liberal-press-nick-cohen-deeyah )

Deeyah Thathaal, chased by fundamentalists from Oslo to London to Atlanta.  Liberals are silent apparently because of who the fundamentalists are.

The men who persecuted Deeyah in Norway and Britain were every bit as prejudiced and violent as neo-Nazis, but as it happens, they rallied under the banner of radical Islam rather than the swastika. A tiny difference, you might think. A mere trifle. But that tiny difference made all the difference in the world. No one came to Deeyah's defence. Not liberal-left or compassionate conservative politicians. Not the BBC or liberal press. Not Amnesty International or the "concerned" artists who take up so many leftish causes. No one cared. To defend an Asian woman from unprovoked attacks by Asian men was to their warped minds a racist or Islamophobic act. Unprotected and unnoticed, Deeyah slunk off to live in an anonymous suburb of Atlanta, and begin the long task of pulling herself together.  

Indianomix

http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/12/05/indianomix-mythical-or-modern/

....excerpt from Vivek Dehejia and Rupa Subramanya’s book “Indianomix,”....

Devdutt refutes this narrow vision. He defines a myth as ‘subjective truth’. Any belief which someone subjectively holds potentially classifies as a myth. Equally, he critiques the standard Western assumption that scientific knowledge is rational and all other traditional knowledge, including mythological, is non-rational. As he sees the world, all beliefs are fundamentally irrational at their root. It’s just that the Western scientific view of the world has become so dominant, or ‘hegemonic’ in the jargon used by cultural theorists, that everyone assumes by default that this is the only correct way to view the world and all other ways must be inferior and irrational. Devdutt turns this idea on its head and argues that the apparently secular capitalism of the West in fact is a thinly veiled descendent of the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian mythological traditions that have dominated Western civilization.

While this is a controversial hypothesis, the close relationship between economic and political ideologies on the one hand and religion on the other shouldn’t be. After all, it was Max Weber, the founder of modern sociology, who famously theorized that capitalism could arise in northern Europe because of the spirit of thrift and discipline embodied in the Protestant work ethic. Devdutt in a sense is taking Weber head on by suggesting, to the contrary, that capitalism really is only a disguised version of Protestant Christianity and not a logical outgrowth of it.

Solar cell breakthrough?

This story on dailykos explains the working of solar cells and a breakthrough in their design in a very readable way.

Another lie from the Catholic Church

Down at the southern tip of India, the Catholic Church is in the process of manufacturing a totally imaginary martyr, making him a saint, and setting his saint day on the same day as the Tamil festival of Pongal.  Students of religion can now study live the process by which the European pagan festivals were absorbed into Christmas and Easter.  

The fictitiousness of 'Martyr Devasahayam Pillai' is outlined here.

Koenraad Elst on AAR

Impressions from the American Academy of Religion conference.

...Indologists in the panel ignored the book’s challenge to their guild, viz. that unlike specialists in any other field, they actively desired and worked for the demise of their subject, Hinduism. 

Some Notes on the Federal Budget

 

The debates about the Federal Budget get to be pretty confusing.  The absolute magnitudes of money mentioned have little context.  For instance, this year’s budget deficit is $1.089 trillion. It is good to know that this amounts to 7% of  the $15.6 trillion US GDP.  Obama’s revenue proposal will raise $1.6 trillion over 10 years, I have to remind myself that a $15.6 trillion/year economy would have generated $156 trillion over that period (not accounting for growth in the economy) and so Obama’s proposal amounts to about 1% of the economy.

Fortunately, the US government issues documents that lay out the financial situation in some detail.   I will use primarily the following three to try to gain a quantitative understanding of the issues.

[1] Monthly Budget Review (Nov 2012) issued by the Congressional Budget Office (look under “Topics” at http://www.cbo.gov)

[2] The 2012 Social Security Report (THE 2012 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE FEDERAL OLD-AGE AND SURVIVORS INSURANCE AND FEDERAL DISABILITY INSURANCE TRUST FUNDS) found via Google.

[3] The 2012 Medicare Report (2012 ANNUAL REPORT OF
THE BOARDS OF TRUSTEES OF THE FEDERAL HOSPITAL INSURANCE AND FEDERAL SUPPLEMENTARY MEDICAL INSURANCE TRUST FUNDS) found via Google

What I want to understand are:

1.     What are the federal revenues, now and projected into the future?

2.     What are the required federal expenditures, now and projected into the future?  Social Security and Medicare, the two paid benefit programs are the chief required federal expenditures.

I think if we understand these, the choices we have will be clarified.

Blue Brain

(via dailykos) The Blue Brain project.

The Blue Brain project represents an essential first step toward achieving a complete virtual human brain. The researchers have demonstrated the validity of their method by developing a realistic model of a rat cortical column, consisting of about 10,000 neurons. Eventually, of course, the goal is to simulate systems of millions and hundreds of millions of neurons.

The amazing Riemann zeta-function

In a more intuitive language, the Riemann zeta-function is capable of fitting any arbitrary smooth function over a finite disk with arbitrary accuracy, and it does so with comparative ease, since it repeats the performance like a good actor infinitely many times on a designated set of stages. - from here.

Macroeconomics - IS/LM model

Economist and columnist Paul Krugman advises us to think in terms of models.  One of the simple and important models for Keynesian economists is the IS-LM model.  CIP began a discussion of it.  Fortunately, it is simple enough to understand, there is an excellent exposition here.  The four youtube videos take just under a half-hour to watch, but after that you are equipped to think about the economy in terms of this simple model.