Accidental Blogger

Critical thinking may lead to misogyny!

Coming from a seemingly intelligent woman, the assertion that logic, rationality and empiricism may be at the root of misogyny, is a bit unsettling.  Kathryn Lofton, in her post So you want to be a new atheist, over at The Immanent Frame blog seems to be implying exactly that.

Lofton finds the New Atheists annoying - a bunch of know-it-all loudmouths whose style may be even more obnoxious than the substance they promulgate. She finds them arrogant, cynical, evangelical in their fervor and also curiously enough, perfectionists who want to help people. She however does not consider their social conscience an entirely wholesome trait. Lofton suspects that there is a conquest like quality to their outreach and beneath their desire to help may lurk an intention to persuade. (What a surprise!)  

If you want to be a New Atheist, first and foremost, you need to possess an unrelenting desire to help. The desire may seem at times cruel, but you have to start focusing on a higher good: the goal here is to get the cannibals to put down their wafer and wine glass. It’s not for your wellness, but for the good of mankind. As Georgetown University professor John Haught wrote in his diagnosis of the New Atheists, “To know with such certitude that religion is evil, one must first have already surrendered one’s heart and mind to what is unconditionally good.” The New Atheists may wrap themselves in torn one-liners and haggard scientism, but beneath their cynical swaddle there lies a charming Perfectionism.

The main target of Lofton's derision and despair seems to be the comedian Bill Maher and his anti-religion movie, Religulous. It is not that hard to rip apart a stand up comic who opposes organized religion as well as vaccination. But in pointing to Maher's loose lips and fuzzy logic, Lofton also takes a swipe at Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens whose arguments against faith based social and political systems are a little better thought out and substantive. It is perfectly alright for Lofton or anyone else for that matter, to take issue with the tone that many among the so called New Atheists adopt while making their case. But it would better help the cause of the religionists to also point out the flaws in their arguments and not just in their character. 

The nature of the conversation between the religious camp and the New Atheists has by now become quite familiar and predictable to those who have been paying some attention. It reminds me of the different agenda that a restaurant critic and a nutritionist bring to the table when talking about food. One focuses on the mouth watering quality of a 16 oz steak, the butter dripping crab legs, the fatty lamb biriyani and the decadent dessert immaculately prepared and presented by expert chefs and polished waiters. The other comes across as an earnest killjoy who urges you to eat your whole grains and veggies and then alarms you by warning that overindulgance in the delicious fare recommended by the gourmet foodie, poses the risk of developing clogged arteries, a sluggish liver, a ravaged kidney and extra pounds around your midriff. And the pleasurable torpor you feel after that rich meal is actually a sign of reduced energy. I have so far not heard a fine food aficionado clash with a nutritionist on the grounds that the latter has a shrill, strident style and wants to deprive others of the joys of feasting. But defenders of religion like Lofton and Karen Armstrong and the not-quite-pro-religion-but-getting-there types like Terry Eagleton invariably attack atheists for their lack of charm, style, empathy and another nebulous quality (I think of it as *mysterianism*) which keeps them from fully appreciating the true nature of religion. In the first part of her article Lofton sticks to that formula. Toward the end  however, she introduces a new accusation that I have not until now seen hurled at the new (or old) atheists.

What is religion? The New Atheists reply, with clarion diagnostic consistency: Religion is something that sells you something invisible so you may feel that which you cannot find elsewhere. It is something for which there is insufficient evidence. It is something people do because they have always done it, not because they know how to think about it. Religion is irrational, it is emotional, and it is instinctual. Religion enslaves you with its wiles, then forgets to remove the handcuffs. It is the fortune teller reading entrails, not the captain consulting his compass. It massages and preys and toys and plays and screws you over, time and again, with a promise it won’t keep because of its irrationality and its whimsy. Religion is a know-at-all with no knowledge. It makes “a virtue out of not thinking.” Religion is cutting the hedge repeatedly around an erection. Religion is, it turns out, a lot like a girl.

Religion as effeminacy is nothing new. Nor indeed is the accusation that religion is socially sanctioned lunacy. Treating it as a neurological disorder, however, sets the New Atheists within a long tradition of critical misogyny. Under the guise of protecting your children, in the effort to best serve your sweet flock of idiots, if you want to be a New Atheist you have reclaimed a New Virility to counter your post-industrial emasculation. This virility plays out in demonstrations of protective strength, plowing away at the big two nemeses (Christianity and Islam) in the interest of protecting the little guy. It is also exhibited in grand tours of scientific proof, or plodding expulsions of religious duplicity. 

Wait a minute!  Have atheists and skeptics ever said that religion is like a girl? (Not that there is anything wrong with being a girl)  Or that believing in unverifiable myths for comfort is exclusively a womanly quality? Have atheists refused to admit women into their fold? Do they claim that women are genetically incapable of possessing rational minds? On the other hand, organized religion has diligently kept women out of leadership roles through much of history. So, the charge of misogyny from a defender of "faith" sounds strange.  

Unless the New Atheists have categorically called religion a girlish pursuit or religious males girly men, (Lofton does not say that they have) it is plausible that it is Lofton herself who conflates irrationality and emotionalism with feminine traits and critical thinking and reason with manly characteristics. She may have again confused style with substance. After all, the majority of the high profile and vocal atheists in the public square are all males. Most of them also assume a combative stance while arguing their points of view.  Even if Lofton considers the New Atheists arrogant, self absorbed and boorish, based on her opinion of their discursive temperaments, where did she get misogyny? Perhaps in her eagerness to condemn, Lofton uses the red herring of misogyny without any supporting evidence because it fits the rest of her perception of the atheists. Are some atheists women haters? Of course. Could there be a few among the ones she names? Possible. But it has nothing to do with critical thinking which does not bar women from becoming practitioners. And what is the score in the department of misogyny on the religious side? Start your count with the priestly class and the orthodox. 

Whom does Lofton think she is kidding with her innuendo about misogyny and atheism? It is particularly galling coming from someone who is presumably a spokesperson for religion. The sacred bastion of virility, organized religion, is thickly populated by misogynistic power hungry males and at least in the Abrahamic tradition, god too is a masculine deity whose behavior is akin to that of an old fashioned patriarch - one who protects, smites and slays at whim. Whereas misogyny can often be a product of politics, commerce and other secular cultural traditions, I doubt that women have been more systematically and ritually degraded within the realm of any other human enterprise than that of organized religion. Only religion explicitly sanctions misogyny. Think Adam's Rib, eater of the forbidden fruit, the temptress, the virgin who is to be alternately worshiped and sacrificed, the ideal of the Sati, stoning to death of an adulteress, the unclean half of the population which menstruates and undergoes messy child birth... on and on ad nauseum. Now Lofton tells us that the source of misogyny actually lies in empiricism and scientific enquiry. Well, you could have knocked me down with a feather!  

[thanks to Prasad for the pointer]

Not even a lump of coal

As is the custom around this time of the year, Houston is gearing up for the festive season. Christmas decorations are going up in private homes, city streets, public buildings and of course, retail stores. The city is even expecting a smattering of snow later this week - a rare weather phenomenon around these parts. Amidst the seasonal cheer, the grim effects of the recession plague many individuals, businesses and even charities. Demand for charitable services is up this year. Philanthropic organizations are feeling the pressure of the increasing demands and some have set out to monitor the eligibility of potential recipients. Tough times require a cold eye even in the season of warm hearts. Some of the charities that are doing background checks to determine who gets a gift this year, also happen to be  sponosors of popular children's toy drives. A few of those plan to check the immigration status of the parents to ensure that Christmas toys go only to kids who are legal residents of Houston. I guess in hard economic times the spirit of the season must be limited by political borders.

They don't claim to know who's been naughty or nice, but some Houston charities are asking whether children are in the country legally before giving them toys.

In a year when more families than ever have asked for help, several programs providing Christmas gifts for needy children require at least one member of the household to be a U.S. citizen. Others ask for proof of income or rely on churches and schools to suggest recipients.

The Salvation Army and a charity affiliated with the Houston Fire Department are among those that consider immigration status, asking for birth certificates or Social Security cards for the children.

The point isn't to punish the children but to ensure that their parents are either citizens, legal immigrants or working to become legal residents, said Lorugene Young, whose Outreach Program Inc. is one of three groups that distribute toys collected by firefighters.

“It's not our desire to turn anyone down,” she said. “Those kids are not responsible if they are here illegally. It is the parents' responsibility.”

The idea of a charity turning away children because of decisions made by their parents unsettled some immigration activists.

“It is very disturbing to think a holiday like Christmas would be tainted with things like this,” said Cesar Espinoza, executive director of America for All, a Houston-based advocacy group. “Usually, people target the adults because the adults made the decision to migrate, where the children are just brought through no fault of their own.”

Other groups don't require specific documentation, relying instead on outside groups to recommend families.

“When you distribute toys to 10,000 to 12,000 kids, it's impossible to background (check) every child,” said Fred Joe Pyland, a Houston police officer who oversees the Blue Santa program. Blue Santa doesn't consider immigration status but collects names from police officers, schools and churches.

Those who do check immigration status or other qualifications say they are trying to ensure they make the best decisions about whom to help.

“We want to be good stewards, so the people that are donating to us trust we're going to do the right thing,” said Sonya Scott, manager of care ministries at West Houston Assistance Ministries. The group does not check immigration but requires identification, including birth certificates for children, and proof of income.

It has registered 686 children to provide with gifts this year, up from 613 last year.

At the Salvation Army, 30,000 children have registered for the Angel Tree program, which allows children to request the gifts they want most. That's up 20 percent from last year, spokesman Juan Alan said.

The rest of the story here.

Professor (Mrs.) Dasgupta (*) (prasad)

The Daily Princetonian has a story about percentages of female faculty, which are neither particularly high nor rising rapidly. The article doesn't do either sexism or the Larry Summers stuff, and instead focuses on the lifestyle difficulties inherent in obtaining tenure, at least as currently structured:

Director of the Women’s Center Amada Sandoval said she was “surprised that we are not on par with our peers,” adding that she thinks the gender gap is a significant problem at the University. One of the biggest obstacles for women is the way the timeline for the tenure system is structured, she explained.

“The way the tenure system works, if you were hired in the tenure track, you would first be an assistant professor,” she said. “After six years, your position would be associate professor if you received tenure, and after a certain amount of time after that, you might be promoted to a full professor. This tenure structure is really hostile to people who anticipate having a family or people who are trying to have a family.”

The tenure system is not keeping up with social changes that have occurred in the past several years, Sandoval noted.

“I think the tenure system really hasn’t changed since most of the tenured faculty were men and most of the women stayed at home with the children,” she said. “That’s not the kind of world that we live in any more … I would say the system needs to get more flexible. It’s not just women that want to spend time with their children. It’s men, too, and they’re getting more and more able to admit that as our gender norms are softening up a bit.” (emphases added)

To zeroth order, one wins tenure at a top university (in addition to being smart and working on the right topics and making the right networking moves and all that jazz) by working all the time and not having a life. This isn't too conducive to success in family related pursuits, especially if the pursuits in question involve babies.

To the extent that, as Ms. Sandoval seems to think, female Assistant Professors are less willing to forego rich family lives, it's not clear to me that this is a problem a university either could or should fix, at least if the commodity it is most interested in maximizing is research output. A six-month or year long stop in the tenure clock for infant-tending seems decent, but it's not my understanding that baby-work falls off rapidly after the first year. Delayed / flexible tenure tracks are especially problematic in the sciences or in engineering, where the expectation is that a researcher's best work will have been done by age 45.

If the problem instead is that male junior faculty find it rather easier to find stay-at-home wives, no university has the ability to provide ambitious female professors desirous of home comforts with men who enjoy pushing baby-strollers and are willing to maintain the household. That change presumably comes about via societal changes in mores about about work in and out of home, supported by Scandinavian-style governmental legislation about paternity leave etc. I'm not claiming a university do nothing - CERN has a nice daycare center, for example; but to the extent that parity is the goal and the problem isn't of the sexist-hiring-committee variety, I doubt an individual university can make dramatic improvements or even lead industry.

(*) A form of address I came across once

World AIDS Day 2009 and the promise of an HIV vaccine

More than a year ago I had highlighted my husband, Sudhir Paul's research in developing a vaccine against HIV. The HIV / AIDS epidemic which in the west was confined almost exclusively within the male gay community and IV drug users in the early days, has now extended its lethal reach well into the heterosexual population. In fact in less developed nations, AIDS is now  mostly a disease of straight men and women.  Currently there is no viable vaccine against the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. 

Today marks the 21st anniversary of World AIDS Day, a reminder that the scourge of AIDS is still with us. On this occasion, Mary Carmichael, the editor of the Health / Life section of Newsweek has an interesting and provocative report about the promise and the challenges of Professor Paul's efforts in developing an effective vaccine against HIV. In the article, Carmichael also describes the role of CIF, a foundation launched by a group of young enthusiasts who wish to see the putative vaccine traverse the successful path from the test tube to a medicine vial.  

Please read the full article, enjoy the video and let me know what you think. (Another more technical article about the research in last summer's Washington  Post)

Last summer, while watching a news program about a possible AIDS vaccine, Zach Barnett had a "Eureka!" moment. The show was describing a Texas scientist's unorthodox approach to vaccine-making, a strategy that involved superantigens and covalent bonds and a lot of other words that weren't in Barnett's vocabulary. That didn't matter; the science turned him on anyway. "It was just so cool," he says. "I was like, 'lightbulb!' "

For years, Barnett, a fashion publicist, had been trying to get involved in AIDS activism, but mainstream organizations had told him there wasn't much for him to do, save passing out brochures. "That was a waste of my talent," he says. Here he saw a use for his skills. He wrote to the scientist, Dr. Sudhir Paul of the University of Texas, to tell him that "if what he was saying was true, he was doing a bad job of publicizing it." To show he was serious, he offered Paul $50 out of his own pocket to support the research.

In the past decade, private groups have started funding not just causes but specific researchers. The phenomenon may have started with autism—private organizations raise $78 million each year, or 35 percent of the country's funding, some of it for research that isn't completely in line with mainstream thinking—but it's seeping into other fields too, including AIDS research. It's tempting to write off Paul's supporters: what makes them think they know something the NIH doesn't? On the other hand, if they're right and Paul really does have a way to vaccinate against HIV, they're funding one of the most important projects in contemporary medicine. The question they have to ask themselves is whether they're wasting their money or shifting a paradigm.

The AIDS vaccine field could use a shift. For more than two decades, scientists have mounted campaigns to vaccinate against the virus, only to lose each one, watching as their vaccine candidates have failed (and, in one case, may have made people more susceptible to the disease). In September, researchers announced some of the most encouraging results in years, but even that success was quickly undercut by an argument over how the data were analyzed. "It's been so tough to solve this problem," says David Montefiori, director of the Laboratory for AIDS Vaccine Research and Development at Duke University. "That may be because a lot of the approaches have just been the same old, same old. People keep repeating the same tactics over and over again with minor variations."

At first glance, Paul's HIV vaccine looks familiar; it uses the "neutralizing antibody" strategy, which calls on the body's B cells to make proteins that fight the virus. This approach is how all existing vaccines for other diseases work, but it hasn't succeeded against HIV. The virus is too smart to fall victim to the human immune system. It hides many of the identifying proteins on its outer coat, cloaking them from the prying eyes of B cells, and thus no antibodies are made.

A few proteins on the outside of the HIV virus remain naked and exposed. They have to, in order to bind to human cells and kill them. Paul has his eye on one of these proteins, called gp120. According to his theory, it is a superantigen, a protein related to a fragment of a retrovirus that wormed its way into the human genome hundreds of thousands of years ago and stayed there.
 

 

Direct Democracy - Unintended(?) Fallouts

While direct democracy is an enticing concept, it is always troubling when the fate of minorities is left to the decision of the majority - think recent voter initiatives on gay marriage in several US states.  Here is another, from Switzerland, the directest democracy in today's world.

GENEVA — In a vote that displayed a widespread anxiety about Islam and undermined the country’s reputation for religious tolerance, the Swiss on Sunday overwhelmingly imposed a national ban on the construction of minarets, the prayer towers of mosques, in a referendum drawn up by the far right and opposed by the government.

The referendum, which passed with a clear majority of 57.5 percent of the voters and in 22 of Switzerland’s 26 cantons, was a victory for the right. The vote against was 42.5 percent. Because the ban gained a majority of votes and passed in a majority of the cantons, it will be added to the Constitution.

The Swiss Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, but the rightist Swiss People’s Party, or S.V.P., and a small religious party had proposed inserting a single sentence banning the construction of minarets, leading to the referendum.

The Swiss government said it would respect the vote and sought to reassure the Muslim population — mostly immigrants from other parts of Europe, like Kosovo and Turkey — that the minaret ban was “not a rejection of the Muslim community, religion or culture.”

Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, the justice minister, said the result “reflects fears among the population of Islamic fundamentalist tendencies.”

Is putting the kibosh on minaret building in any way comparable to the head scarf ban in France? The French threw in all conspicuous religious symbols in the mix to deflect attention from the fact that Muslim head scarves were probably the only real target.  So, what were the Swiss thinking? That allowing Islamic architectural symbols will gradually lead to the spread of the Islamic dress code, demand for Sharia laws and if not granted, to domestic terrorism in pristine Heidiland? I don't know. But it sure appears that the propaganda of the rightist  Swiss People’s Party, or S.V.P. may have led voters to fear just that.  My two years stay in northern Germany taught me the extent to which the Teutonic races worship and enforce uniformity and order. I was wondering if the Swiss are merely objecting to the aesthetics of culturally alien structures among the Alpine landscape. But the right wing poster depicting minarets as missiles tells a different story, more like the Danish cartoon showing Prophet Mohammed with a bomb ticking in his turban.

On the other hand, in today's virulent "sauce for the goose and the gander" style global religious tensions, here is a similar story from a different part of the world (link: Louise Gordon). I want to know how many Islamic countries (granted, most are not democracies) allow the building or the exhibition of non-Islamic symbols, icons or architecture? Forget Saudi Arabia, Iran and other theocratic / totalitarian Islamic nations.  Malaysia is supposedly a democracy. So is Pakistan.  At least, they have parliamentary elections. I know they tolerate Christian churches somewhat grudgingly although bombing them from time to time is commonplace in Pakistan.  But can one easily (or at all) build a Hindu/ Buddhist / Sikh / Jewish temple in Pakistan today? I would like to know. What about in Malaysia, Egypt, Iraq or Turkey?

Bow Wow!

For some people nothing President Obama does can pass leadership muster. To paraphrase Hillary Clinton, "If Barack Obama walks on water, some will criticize him for not knowing how to swim."  
 
Okay, okay, so Obama bowed  a bit too deeply before the emperor of Japan.  May be he wasn't coached properly by the White House protocol office. Or perhaps, he is just too polite. Whatever. At least he didn't hold hands and do a silly dance with the Saudi royals. And since when is Dick "shoot your friend in the face" Cheney the model of courteous behavior? 

 


 

Grave Concerns & Paw Prints (a Halloween Post)

To the English, a grave is like their second home (or castle). Dead Londoners do not want to share graves with the previously dead, even though London is running out of space for the dead. (Why has cremation not caught on as a perfectly private and hygienic option in the thoroughly modern British capital?)

LONDON | The city's largest cemetery is having a tough time convincing Londoners to share a grave with a stranger.

"A lot of people say, 'I'm not putting my dad in a secondhand grave,' " said Gary Burks, superintendent and registrar of the City of London Cemetery, final resting place of close to 1 million Londoners. "You have to deal with that mind-set."

The problem is a very British one. Many other European countries regularly reuse old graves after a couple of decades. Britain does not, as a result of Victorian hygiene obsession, piecemeal regulation and national tradition. For many, an Englishman's tomb, like his home, is his castle.

That view is also common in the United States, which like Britain tends to regard graves as eternal and not to be disturbed - although the United States has a lot more space, so the burial crisis is less acute.

In much of Britain, reusing old graves remains illegal, but the City of London cemetery is exploiting a legal loophole that allows graves in the capital with remaining space in them to be reclaimed after 75 years.

Mr. Burks points to a handsome marble obelisk carrying the details of the recently departed man buried underneath. The name of a Victorian Londoner interred in the same plot is inscribed on the other side. The monument has simply been turned around for its new user - whose family, Mr. Burks says, got a fancy stone monument for much less than the market price by agreeing to share.

On to animals. Not the scary vampires and spiders of Halloween but the cute cuddly ones frolicking in and around our homes. A report in the New Scientist rates household pets for the relative size of their carbon foot prints. Owning a mid to large size dog is apparently as eco-unfriendly as owning an SUV. Not surprisingly, the smaller and self cleaning average cat leaves a paw print that is slightly smaller than that of a Volkswagen Golf. Both are hazardous to wild life and can spread infections.

SHOULD owning a great dane make you as much of an eco-outcast as an SUV driver? Yes it should, say Robert and Brenda Vale, two architects who specialise in sustainable living at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. In their new book, Time to Eat the Dog: The real guide to sustainable living, they compare the ecological footprints of a menagerie of popular pets with those of various other lifestyle choices - and the critters do not fare well.

As well as guzzling resources, cats and dogs devastate wildlife populations, spread disease and add to pollution. It is time to take eco-stock of our pets.

To measure the ecological paw, claw and fin-prints of the family pet, the Vales analysed the ingredients of common brands of pet food. They calculated, for example, that a medium-sized dog would consume 90 grams of meat and 156 grams of cereals daily in its recommended 300-gram portion of dried dog food. At its pre-dried weight, that equates to 450 grams of fresh meat and 260 grams of cereal. That means that over the course of a year, Fido wolfs down about 164 kilograms of meat and 95 kilograms of cereals.

It takes 43.3 square metres of land to generate 1 kilogram of chicken per year - far more for beef and lamb - and 13.4 square metres to generate a kilogram of cereals. So that gives him a footprint of 0.84 hectares. For a big dog such as a German shepherd, the figure is 1.1 hectares.

Meanwhile, an SUV - the Vales used a 4.6-litre Toyota Land Cruiser in their comparison - driven a modest 10,000 kilometres a year, uses 55.1 gigajoules, which includes the energy required both to fuel and to build it. One hectare of land can produce approximately 135 gigajoules of energy per year, so the Land Cruiser's eco-footprint is about 0.41 hectares - less than half that of a medium-sized dog.

The Vales are not alone in reaching this conclusion. When New Scientistasked John Barrett at the Stockholm Environment Institute in York, UK, to calculate eco-pawprints based on his own data, his figures tallied almost exactly. "Owning a dog really is quite an extravagance, mainly because of the carbon footprint of meat," he says.

Then there are all the other animals we own. Doing similar calculations for a variety of pets and their foods, the Vales found that cats have an eco-footprint of about 0.15 hectares (slightly less than a Volkswagen Golf), hamsters come in at 0.014 hectares apiece (buy two, and you might as well have bought a plasma TV) and canaries half that. Even a goldfish requires 0.00034 hectares (3.4 square metres) of land to sustain it, giving it an ecological fin-print equal to two cellphones.

This kind of analysis appeals to David Mackay, a physicist at the University of Cambridge and the UK government's new energy adviser. He believes we should put as much thought into choosing a pet as we do into buying a car. "If a lifestyle choice uses more than 1 per cent of your energy footprint, then it is worthwhile reflecting on that choice and seeing what you can do about it," he says. "Pets definitely deserve attention: by my estimates, the energy footprint of a cat is about 2 per cent of the average British person's energy footprint - and it's bigger for most dogs."

 

Putting the caste system on notice

The United Nations high commissioner on human rights has decided to target India's caste system.

Navi Pillay, the South African judge who became the United Nations high commissioner for human rights last year, is moving to the forefront of a campaign to free more than 250 million people from the indignities and horrors of caste discrimination. No previous commissioner has dared to openly take on this pernicious system, the majority of whose miserable victims live in India.

"This is the year 2009, and people have been talking about caste oppression for more than a hundred years," Pillay says. "It's time to move on this issue."

For Pillay, who is of Indian descent, the subject of caste has been hidden too long by obfuscation on the part of governments, not only in India, that have successfully argued in UN conferences that existing international conventions against human rights abuses do not apply. Caste did not figure in the official conclusions of a conference on racism and other forms of intolerance in Durban in 2001, after intense lobbying by India, and remained on the periphery of a review of that conference earlier this year.

That being the case, Pillay said in an interview in her New York office on a visit from her headquarters in Geneva, there may well have to be a new international convention written to apply directly to caste.

The campaign is gathering momentum among a wide range of global nongovernmental organizations, religious groups and, lately, a few governments working from a draft document on eliminating discrimination based on work or descent--in other words, being born into predestined deprivation, assigned to the most menial of jobs and segregated socially from the better born.

Pillay would like to see this draft endorsed by the member nations of the Human Rights Council and by all governments, many of which are in denial over the harmful effects of the caste system.

She relayed a story about a group of women who came to her in Geneva recently with a brick from a latrine they had torn down in protest against being forced to carry away human excrement in their bare hands. They wanted to make the point that despite India's frequent assertions that "untouchables," who call themselves Dalits ("broken people"), were no longer condemned by birth to do this job, there were still tens of thousands of such latrines in the country, and the filthy, soul-destroying work continues.

"They have good laws in India, and they have media; they have well developed civil society organizations," Pillay said. "So how come there is no implementation of these good laws, these good intentions?" Discrimination by caste is unconstitutional in India, which also has affirmative action programs for Dalits and others at the bottom of society. Dalits have risen to high office through politics, though even democracy has not helped most of them.

The UN Human Rights Council has sometimes correctly and successfully campaigned against rights violations in many oppressive countries. But the world body's resolutions and proceedings are often riddled with politics of the day. Some nations which deserve to be humiliated are rightfully condemned while egregious misconduct by some others are swept under the rug by intense lobbying and the all powerful veto of interested parties. I am sure Pillay's move against India's racist culture as practiced against its own citizens of "lower" castes will face stiff opposition from the Indian government and its allies. It will be interesting to see the American government's position, now that India is its vital ally in the "war against Islamic terrorism."  

“Religious, superstitious, nonsense” and other harsh words.

As Dean pointed out in this post, "A lot of discussion concerning A.B. over the years has taken place "under the radar," via email between the authors, usually with Ruchira at the hub of the network. We get caught up in a topic, have at it among ourselves, and then--oops, sorta accidentally--we end up publishing the proceedings as a post and comments." So it happens once again.

I must point out that Dean, who finds little time to publish his thoughts on the blog, has detailed discussions with me behind the scenes on all sorts of topics.  And frequently, he sends me links to interesting articles on the web. Just yesterday, he forwarded this piece in the WSJ Law Blog and naturally, we got to talking.

Here’s a strange little constitutional riddle for you: When can a spoken statement constitute a violation of the First Amendment?

Answer: When the speaker is a government employee and the spoken statement amounts to an “establishment” of one religion over another.

Granted, it’s a bit of a trick question, as the First Amendment violation involves the Establishment Clause rather than the Free Speech Clause, but we still think it’s kind of fun.

We came across this little quirk earlier today while reading about an interesting lawsuit heading up to the Ninth Circuit.

The backstory: In 2007, a public high-school teacher in Orange County, Calif., made some provocative statements in an AP history class slamming religion pretty hard.

The teacher, James Corbett of Capistrano Valley High School in Mission Viejo (which graduated former Los Angeles Raider Todd Marinovich) referred to Creationism as “religious, superstitious nonsense” during a 2007 lecture. Corbett made a host of other controversial statements as well. One of his students, Chad Farnan, sued Corbett and the school district, alleging a violation of his First Amendment Rights.

In May, a federal judge in Santa Ana, Calif., James Selna, granted summary judgment, partly in favor of Farnan and partly in favor of the defendants. Click  herefor the opinion. Specifically, Judge James Selna ruled that the “superstitious nonsense” comment violated Farnan’s rights, but ruled that nearly two dozen statements did not. Both sides appealed to the Ninth Circuit.

The exchange between Dean and me on this matter went like this: (seems like neither of us is much of an authority on the First Amendment and I don't agree with Stanley Fish as often as Dean does)

Ruchira: Great!  Did the student also sue his chemistry, physics and biology teachers? I am sure what they teach may also constitute "harsh" words (or at least summary judgment) against religion. Yeah, teachers need to be careful to temper their language.  But "superstitious nonsense" doesn't sound particularly abusive to me. But then, I guess it might if it was directed against something I held dear to my heart.
 
BTW, do parochial religious schools say "harsh" things about other religions or against atheists? Can one sue?

Dean: Your first remark echoes one of the comments to the story.

Not being religious, I can't quite figure just how insulting "superstitious nonsense" might strike me. Let's say I love the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, which I do, religiously. If a professor in a music course decided to announce that Bach's piddling and diddling can't hold a light to the masterful work of Elvis Costello, whose music I abhor, I'd just think the professor's crazy. It's easy to chalk this one up to the loony tunes in OC, of course, among them the teacher, who ought to have known better! I suspect that a rarely occasional critical remark about creationism would not amount to establishment of religion, but I can also see how a teacher who insists on trashing it--when, face it, the whole argument against it is that it's irrelevant to the course--might cross a line.

This gets to an issue Stanley Fish has been addressing much lately, namely, the injection of personal beliefs and agendas into the professional forum of the classroom. I like Fish's take if only because it's so damn sensible. Sure, all teaching imports a political or potentially religious message, but it's one thing to let it (if "let it" is the right phrase, since it's unavoidable) drip in through the vagaries of linguistic play and insidious ideological discipline, another to present it center stage at every opportunity. Of course, it's also possible the teacher was simply refuting, albeit in an imprudent manner, some student's suggestion that the creationism deserved a place on the course syllabus. The answer to that, of course, is that that's up to the State of California and, to some extent, the teacher himself. But my gosh, history teachers teach a lot about "religious, superstitious nonsense"! That's history! I'm reading a biography of Anne Boleyn right now. QED.

Parochial schools are free to say anything they care to about other religions, I imagine, short of hate speech. The First Amendment applies to state actors. Of course, parochial schools enjoy tax-exempt status, so there are avenues available to attack egregiously unconstitutional behavior. There is the Bob Jones University case as an instance of that particular dynamic

I do believe that it makes no difference that the remarks were critical of religion, and not affirmative efforts to establish any particular creed. I don't think that's how the FA works. I also know that I know little about the FA. It's one of those purportedly interesting law school topics that I have always found a little dull, scholastic, contrived, superfluous. But that's me.

People, Places and Things

When culture influences grammar. (Link: Dean)

Everybody knows that a noun is the name of a person, place, or thing. It's one of those undeniable facts of daily life, a fact we seldom question until we meet up with a case that doesn't quite fit the way we're used to viewing things.

That's exactly what happened to a student in Ohio when his English teacher decided to play the noun game. To the teacher, the noun game seemed a fun way to take the drudgery out of grammar. To the student it forced a metaphysical crisis. To me it shows what happens when cultures clash and children get lost in the tyranny of school. That's a lot to get from a grammar game.

Anyway, here's how you play. Every student gets a set of cards with nouns written on them. At the front of the classroom are three buckets, labeled "person," "place," and "thing." The students take turns sorting their cards into the appropriate buckets. "Book" goes in the thing bucket. "city" goes in the place bucket. "Gandhi" goes in the person bucket.

Ganesh had a card with "horse" on it. Ganesh isn't his real name, by the way. It's actually my cousin's name, so I'm going to use it here.

You might guess from his name that Ganesh is South Asian. In India, where he had been in school before coming to Ohio, Ganesh was taught that a noun named a person, place, thing, or animal. If he played the noun game in India he'd have four buckets and there would be no problem deciding what to do with "horse." But in Ohio Ganesh had only three buckets, and it wasn't clear to him which one he should put "horse" in.

In India, Ganesh's religion taught him that all forms of life are continuous, interrelated parts of the universal plan. So when he surveyed the three buckets it never occurred to him that a horse, a living creature, could be a thing. He knew that horses weren't people, but they had more in common with people than with places or things. Forced to choose, Ganesh put the horse card in the person bucket.

Blapp! Wrong! You lose. The teacher shook her head, and Ganesh sat down, mortified, with a C for his efforts. This was a game where you got a grade, and a C for a child from a South Asian family of overachievers is a disgrace. So his parents went to talk to the teacher.

I have a hard time referring to animals (birds and mammals especially) as "it."

"Nobel" does not always equal "Noble"

The Nobel Prize is awarded for extraordinary achievement, not for special wisdom or emotional maturity. One of this year's three Nobel laureates in chemistry is Venkatraman Ramakrishnan. Ramakrishnan is the seventh Indian born person to win this honor. Although he was born in India and received his early education there, he did his graduate studies and the subsequent research that led to the prize, in the US. The scientist is currently working in Cambridge, UK. Indians are understandably thrilled that a desi born scientist has been awarded the world's most famous prize. Congratulations have been pouring in from all over India, including a message from the country's president.

But instead of being pleased,the neo-Nobelist has complained bitterly about the outpouring of good wishes emanating from the country of his birth. Ramakrishnan is particularly miffed that the valedictory messages have "clogged up" his email account and that people he doesn't ever remember knowing are making up fictitious personal connections with his early life. The scientist is very annoyed that winning the Nobel Prize has opened the door for Indians to claim him as their native son, based just on the "accident of birth."

NEW DELHI: Nobel laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan has expressed disenchantment with people from India "bothering" him "clogging" up his email box and dubbed as "strange" their sudden urge to reach out to him.

"All sorts of people from India have been writing to me, clogging up my email box. It takes me an hour or two to just remove their mails," he said. He said the deluge of emails had buried important communications from colleagues or from journals concerning papers we have in press.

"Do these people have no consideration? It is OK to take pride in the event, but why bother me?" the 57-year-old Indian-American scientist wondered in an email interview said.

"There are also people who have never bothered to be in touch with me for decades who suddenly feel the urge to connect. I find this strange," said Ramakrishnan, who shared this year's Nobel Prize for Chemistry with two others.

He expressed anguish over "all sorts of lies" published about him in a section of the media that he went to school and pre-Science in Chidambaram, the Tamil Nadu temple town where he was born in 1952.

 "People I don't know, for example a Mr Govindrajan, claim that they were my teachers at Annamalai University which I never attended, since I left Chidambaram at the age of three," Ramakrishnan clarified.

Ramakrishnan said that it was a good thing if his winning the Nobel Prize encouraged people to read about the work, read books and take interest in science.

"But I, personally, am not important. The fact that I am of Indian origin is even less important. We are all human beings, and our nationality is simply an accident of birth," he said.

Ouch! Yeah Venky, pretty pathetic, those hero worshiping Indians. I am not a great fan of chest thumping patriotism and nationalistic pride myself and I admire you for rising above a narrow ethnic identity. But come on, haven't you seen any other group of people seeking allegiances with successful stars? Kenya (sometimes all of Africa) calls President Obama its own. Colin Powell's relatives in Jamaica proudly pointed out his ancestry when he became Secretary of State. And those two were born in the US. Isn't a celebration due when a native son or daughter does well on the world stage? Or is that too gauche a sentiment? Anyway, not to worry. The excitable Indians will soon forget you and your achievement in due time and latch on to some other celebrity. Fame is an ephemeral commodity. Too bad, you could not be gracious enough to enjoy it while it lasts.

A question to the linguists: Is it appropriate to call the good scientist a curmudgeon? Or at least a surl or a churl?  (Narayan indicated that the last two may be acceptable words)   

Return; Reinstate; Refund

We have discussed this topic a couple of times here, the last time was not so long ago. What do modern nations owe each other regarding the return of or restitution for art and artifacts (some of them very ancient and invaluable) removed from their place of origin by way of sale, stealth or superior military  power?  In the current climate of globalization, international trade and treaties and resurgent nationalistic feelings, the debate can be long and heated. Usually the demands for restoration come from less wealthy nations whose ancient religious and cultural relics often adorn the glittering halls of museums in far away countries, some of them, past conquerors and colonizers. In recent days Egypt has demanded the return of the priceless (and gorgeous, I should add) bust of Queen Nefertiti which has been in German hands for more than a century.  It also wants some items housed in the Louvre to return home from France.  Ostensibly, as Egypt’s chief archaeologist, Zahi Hawass has claimed, the wish to regain control of these objects of art arises from Egypt's pride in its national history.  But as it turns out, it may also have been influenced to a large extent by a recent political skirmish with the host nations.

BERLIN — As thousands lined up to catch a glimpse of Nefertiti at the newly reopened Neues Museum here, another skirmish erupted in the culture wars. Egypt’s chief archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, announced that his country wanted its queen handed back forthwith, unless Germany could prove that the 3,500-year-old bust of Akhenaten’s wife wasn’t spirited illegally out of Egypt nearly a century ago....

Globalization, it turns out, has only intensified, not diminished, cultural differences among nations. The forces of nationalism love to exploit culture because it’s symbolic, economically potent and couches identity politics in a legal context that tends to pit David against Goliath.

Mr. Hawass also recently fired a shot at France, demanding the Louvrereturn five fresco fragments it purchased in 2000 and 2003 from a gallery and at auction. They belonged to a 3,200-year-old tomb near Luxor and had been in storage at the museum. Egypt had made the demand before, but this time suspended the Louvre’s long-term excavation at Saqqara, near Cairo, and said it would stop collaborating on Louvre exhibitions.

France got the message. It promised to send the fragments back tout de suite.

It didn’t go unnoticed in Paris, Berlin or Cairo that Mr. Hawass pressed his case about Nefertiti and suspended the excavations by the Louvre just after his country’s culture minister, Farouk Hosny, bitterly lost a bid to become director general of the United Nations’ cultural agency, Unesco. The post went late last month to a Bulgarian diplomat instead. Mr. Hosny would have been the first Arab to land the job, and Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, had banked a not insignificant amount of his own prestige on the minister’s getting it.

Also, a feud has begun between India and Albania (Macedonia may enter the fray soon) about the rightful resting place for a more recent relic - the remains of Mother Teresa who was born in a town that was once  part of Albania but which now belongs to Macedonia. As everyone knows, from the age of eighteen onwards, Mother Teresa lived and worked in India, where she also died.

India has rejected a demand by the Albanian government for the return of the remains of Nobel laureate Mother Teresa, buried in the city of Calcutta.

"Mother Teresa was an Indian citizen and she is resting in her own country, her own land," Foreign Ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash said.

A spokeswoman for the nun's Missionaries of Charity described the Albanian request as "absurd".

Mother Teresa, an ethnic Albanian, was born in Skopje, now part of Macedonia.

Correspondents say that the row over her resting place could develop into an ugly three-way squabble between India, where she worked most of her life, Albania where her parents came from and Macedonia where she lived the first 18 years of her life.

The row is expected to intensify by August next year - the 100th anniversary of Mother Teresa's birth - by which time many commentators expect her to have been canonised as a saint.

 

And then there is the report of a refund. It is taking place quietly without much fanfare. It seems that a highly touted "educational" merchandize did not quite do what it had promised eager consumers.   

Parent alert: the Walt Disney Company is now offering refunds for all those “Baby Einstein” videos that did not make children into geniuses.

They may have been a great electronic baby sitter, but the unusual refunds appear to be a tacit admission that they did not increase infant intellect.

“We see it as an acknowledgment by the leading baby video company that baby videos are not educational, and we hope other baby media companies will follow suit by offering refunds,” said Susan Linn, director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, which has been pushing the issue for years.

  

A Diplomatic Diary: Maddening Nigerians, Dishonest Nicaraguans, Lewd Thais, Unimpressive Canadians ...

And bloviating bureaucrats! Recently disclosed letters from UK diplomats to their home office in London reveal the contempt and exasperation they harbored for their foreign hosts. To their credit, the supercilious officials sniffed equally impatiently at cocktail parties and the "stuffiness" of their own ministry.

LONDON - It's not exactly diplomatic - details of what British ambassadors really think about their foreign hosts were disclosed Sunday following the release of a series of frank, and sometimes outright rude, letters to London from embassies around the world.

Canadians are deeply unimpressive, Nigerians are maddening, Nicaraguans often dishonest and the Thais commonly lewd, British diplomats claim in notes sent to Britain's Foreign Office over the past five decades.

The letters were disclosed to the BBC under Freedom of Information laws.

Lord Moran, high commissioner in Ottawa between 1981 and 1984, claimed Canadians had limited talents.

"Anyone who is even moderately good at what they do - in literature, the theatre, skiing or whatever - tends to become a national figure. And anyone who stands out at all from the crowd tends to be praised to the skies and given the Order of Canada at once," Moran wrote in his letter, according to files released to the BBC.

The letters also reveal how diplomats were bored by endless rounds of cocktail parties, and exasperated by the British government's failure to shake off its stuffy image overseas.

Until 2006, ambassadors retiring from their post or moving country traditionally sent a valedictory dispatch to London, offering their candid personal assessment of the country in which they had served.

In a 1967 memo, Roger Pinsent, Britain's outgoing ambassador to Nicaragua, was scathing in his criticism.

"There is, I fear, no question that the average Nicaraguan is one of the most dishonest, unreliable, violent and alcoholic of the Latin Americans," Pinsent wrote.

Two years later, David Hunt - then high commissioner to Nigeria - said the West African country's leaders had "a maddening habit of always choosing the course of action which will do the maximum damage to their own interests."

"Africans as a whole are not only not averse to cutting off their nose to spite their face; they regard such an operation as a triumph of cosmetic surgery," Hunt claimed in his letter.

Anthony Rumbold, Britain's ambassador to Thailand from 1965 to 1967, mocked his hosts for an apparent lack of culture. "They have no literature, no painting and only a very odd kind of music; their sculpture, ceramics and dancing are borrowed from others, and their architecture is monotonous and interior decoration hideous," Rumbold wrote.

"Nobody can deny that gambling and golf are the chief pleasures of the rich, and that licentiousness is the main pleasure of them all," he said.

Other diplomats used their letters to criticize British bureaucracy, and the sometimes dull world of international relations.

The rest of the diplomatic report card here.  I guess bureaucrats are  the same everywhere - always pompous and mostly contemptuous of what they are in charge of overseeing.  The Brits I suspect, are especially jaded.  Although Nicaragua, Nigeria (and other African countries) and Thailand bear the brunt of bitter and hostile criticism, I find the condescending assessment of Canada as a nation satisfied with utter mediocrity, a withering low blow.  Wonder if it will prompt Ottawa to opt out of the Commonwealth.

Praising with a forked tongue

Gotta love the GOP ignoramuses.  I mean, what would we be doing here without the endless stream of gaffes, Freudian slips and calculated outrages that emanate from the right wing corridors of power? This one comes from South Carolina:

After his words attracted national attention and drew condemnation from a Jewish state senator, a South Carolina Republican official is now apologizing for co-writing a newspaper op-ed that described Jews as penny-pinchers.

James Ulmer, chairman of the Orangeburg County GOP, said he made a "great error" in the op-ed, which he penned along with Bamberg County GOP chairman Edwin Merwin.

The piece, which ran Sunday in the Orangeburg Times & Democrat, was meant to defend South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint's position against congressional earmarks.

"There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves," the piece read. "By not using earmarks to fund projects for South Carolina and instead using actual bills, DeMint is watching our nation's pennies and trying to preserve our country's wealth and our economy's viability to give all an opportunity to succeed." (emphasis mine)

Oops! At least he didn't go into the subject of the powerful international banking cabal that controls the world through invisible financial strings. 

Where has he been?

An interracial couple has been denied a marriage license by a justice of peace in Louisiana.  Keith Bardwell, the man refusing to issue the license, claims he is not a racist but that he is concerned for the well being of any future children the couple may have.

HAMMOND, La. — A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have.

Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

Neither Bardwell nor the couple immediately returned phone calls from The Associated Press. But Bardwell told the Daily Star of Hammond that he was not a racist.

"I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house," Bardwell said. "My main concern is for the children."

Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.

"I don't do interracial marriages because I don't want to put children in a situation they didn't bring on themselves," Bardwell said. "In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer."

If he does an interracial marriage for one couple, he must do the same for all, he said.

"I try to treat everyone equally," he said.

So what does Bardwell fear may happen to the children?  Why, one of them might become the president of the United States, for one thing!

Midweek Linkery

Swine Flu Once Again:

This came to me via e-mail - a doctor's guide to protect against the influenza virus, H1N1included. The doctor is Indian born and you will note that his pointers are almost identical to my own advice, posted here a couple of months ago.  

The only portals of entry of the H1N1 virus are the nostrils and mouth/throat. In a global epidemic of this nature,  it’s almost impossible not coming into contact with H1N1 in spite of all precautions. Contact with H1N1 is not so much of a problem as proliferation is.

While you are still healthy and not showing any symptoms of H1N1 infection, in order to prevent proliferation, aggravation of symptoms and development of secondary infections, some very simple steps, not fully highlighted in most official communications, can be practiced  (instead of focusing on how to stock N95 or Tamiflu):

Texas Governor Rick Perry's Arson On Decency and Compassion:

Rick "Goodhair" Perry, the governor of my state has chalked up several despicable antics on his right wing resume. He opposes health care reform, federal subsidies for job creation (although he used federal dollars to repair the governor's mansion) and Obama's speech to school children. He supports teaching creationism in science classes, prayer in public schools, every gun law favored by the NRA and paranoid vigilantes and had at one time threatened to secede from the nation. These days however, Perry is feeling a bit hot under the collar. An investigation is currently under way to determine whether the governor is culpable in the wrongful execution of a man. Even in execution-happy Texas, the case is drawing a lot of attention. Perry has impeded the investigation by firing three members of the panel looking into the charges.  

A report concluding a faulty investigation led to a Texas man's execution won't be reviewed by a state board as planned Friday after Governor Rick Perry abruptly removed three people from the panel, forcing the meeting's cancellation.

Perry replaced the head of the Texas Forensic Science Commission and two of its eight other board members Wednesday. The upheaval on the commission came just 48 hours before it was to consider a report critical of the arson finding leading to Cameron Todd Willingham's execution for the deaths of his three daughters in a 1991 fire.

Baltimore-based arson expert Craig Beyler, who was hired by the commission, concluded the arson finding was scientifically unsupported and investigators at the scene had "poor understandings of fire science." His report has bolstered arguments from advocacy groups that Willingham was innocent and wrongly executed.

The Flushing Brides of India:

In the northern Indian state of Haryana, some prospective brides are calling the shots in what used to be a wholly male dominated marriage market. The power reversal may have come to pass partly due to the fact that Haryana is also one of the states which now has an unnaturally skewed male : female ratio (males outnumbering females) due to widespread selective abortions of female fetuses. No, it is not about dowry. The young women are concerned about personal hygiene and convenience - they want to marry men who can provide them with indoor plumbing. The girls' serious battle cry is, "Show us the loo, before I say 'I do.'"

Courtship can be an intricate business in India, but the mothers of the northern state of Haryana have a simple message for men who call on their daughters: “No toilet, no bride.”

The slogan - often lengthened in Hindi to “If you don't have a proper lavatory in your house, don't even think about marrying my daughter” - has been plastered across villages in the region as part of a drive to boost the number of pukka facilities. In a country where more households have TV sets than lavatories, it is one of the most successful efforts to combat the chronic shortage of proper plumbing.

That is probably partly because of the country's skewed sex ratio, with 8 per cent more men than women, leading to a “bride shortage”. Woman generally have also become more vocal in their resentment at having to relieve themselves outside, giving brides more leverage in premarital bargaining.

The Supercollidor That Is Saving Us From A Terrible Fate By Shutting Down:

I will let D explain this one. (But read it anyway)

The Texas marriage trap

Divorce is good for marriage!  At least, that is proving to be true for a gay married couple in Texas, as a current court case here illustrates.

HOUSTON — A judge in Texas paved the way for a court battle over the state’s ban on same-sex marriage when she ruled this week that two men married in another state can get divorced in Dallas.

The state attorney general said Friday that he would appeal the decision, even as gay rights advocates applauded the judge, Tena Callahan of Family District Court, for declaring that the state’s four-year-old ban on same-sex marriages and civil unions violated the right to equal protection under the 14th Amendment.

The case highlights a subtle way gay men and lesbians often face complications when it comes to marriage: gay couples who have managed to marry in the few states where it is legal have trouble divorcing and dividing their property if they move to a state where it is not.

The case in Texas involves two men who married in Cambridge, Mass., in 2006, then moved to Dallas the following year when one of them was transferred by his company, a lawyer for the couple, Peter A. Schulte, said.

The men decided to divorce in January and reached an amicable agreement about splitting up their house, cars and other property. But they had to file for divorce in Texas, because, like most other states, Massachusetts allows only residents to sue for divorce, Mr. Schulte said.

The Texas attorney general, Greg Abbott, a Republican, took the unusual step of intervening in the divorce proceeding last January. Mr. Abbott asserted that the state court could not dissolve the marriage because the Texas Constitution, as amended in 2005, did not recognize any marriage unless it was between a man and a woman.

But Mr. Schulte said his clients, who were identified in court documents as J.B. and H.B., had not sought to challenge the state’s ban on same-sex marriage. They were asking only to split up without having to return to Cambridge, as a heterosexual couple would have been able to do.

“It’s not fair to make them uproot their lives, move back to another state, wait a year and then file for divorce,” Mr. Schulte said.

What a perfect case of Catch 22! The gay couple could not have married in Texas but having got married in another state where the nuptials were legal, they cannot dissolve the marriage in the Lone Star State where they now reside, when things have fallen apart in their relationship. The non-recognition of the marriage makes a divorce impossible - a painful paradox to say the least.  Naturally, many other right wing Texas law makers, Governor Rick Perry and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison included, have climbed on to the attorney general's "no divorce" band wagon.  The funny thing is that H.B. and J.B., as the two petitioners are named in the case, are not challenging Texas' ban on gay marriage. They just want out of their own union but are being forced to stay in a state of perpetual wedded "non-bliss" by those who wouldn't have allowed them to marry in the first place.

Professor Andrew Koppelman of Northwestern University School of Law has warned of exactly such a scenario in his book Same Sex, Different States.

Must a state in which gay marriage is not legal recognize such a marriage performed in another state? The Constitution does not require recognition in all cases, but it does forbid states from nullifying family relationships based in other states, or from making themselves havens for people who are trying to escape obligations to their spouses and children.

So if Abbott and company have their way in denying J.B and H.B. a divorce, Texas could become a haven for gay men and women who walk away from a legal marriage in another state and default on spousal or child support. And to make matters even more complicated, they could even enter into  heterosexual marriages in Texas  without the fear of being charged with the crime of bigamy!   

 

The Nobel President

President Barack Obama is this year's surprise winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. It was a surprise for me too when I woke up this morning and saw the news. It is unusual for world leaders to win this honor so early in their career without much of a political or social legacy to their credit.

OSLO — The Nobel Committee announced in Oslo that it has awarded the annual peace prize to Barack Obama, just nine months into his presidency, “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

The award cited in particular Mr. Obama’s effort to reduce the world’s nuclear arsenal. “He has created a new international climate,” the committee said.

The announcement shocked people from Norway to the White House. “There has been no discussion, nothing at all,” said Rahm Emanuel, the president’s chief of staff, in a brief telephone interview.

Mr. Emanuel said that he had not yet spoken directly to the president. A senior administration official said in an e-mail message that his press secretary, Robert Gibbs Mr. Gibbs called the White House shortly before 6 a.m. and woke the president with the news.

The president was humbled to be selected by the committee,” the official said, without adding anything further.

The White House has made no official comment.

Well, the news must be particularly heartening for the president. What with things getting rather messy in Afghanistan, on health care and in Copenhagen, he must have been feeling beleaguered lately. Even Saturday Night Live has turned on him.

So, congratulations to President Obama for becoming a Nobelist. Hope this energizes him to go out and fight for the promises he made during the campaign. Otherwise, I feel like Glenn Greenwald is feeling - a bit skeptical.  

Desperately seeking happiness

I don't want to come across as cynical or grumpy. In fact, I am for the most part a happy person and have nothing against other happy people. After all, most human enterprises, be it work, pleasure or leisure, are geared toward increasing the happiness quotient in our life's ledger book. Civilizing efforts through the ages - family, community, religion, philosophy, scientific and technological advances, medicine and government were organized and operated around the notion that we should employ these entities to identify what is "good" for us and what make us happy.

In recent years, the concept of happiness has spilled over from the confines of philosophy, literature, religion and the psychologist's office - from the merely personal to a collective concept. I first wrote about the broader definition of happiness when I introduced here a very interesting book by Anthony and Charles Kenny a few years ago. Government agencies too are now concerning themselves with happiness, going beyond economic indicators such as the GDP or the magic of the free market. Cut and dried number crunching is giving way to assessing the more nebulous Well Being Indices.  Leading the way in diagnosing national cheer was the tiny country of Bhutan. I wrote about it here and the New York Times had a four page article on Bhutan's attempt at redefining prosperity based not merely on wealth but also the happiness co-efficient and coining the new political phrase Gross National Happiness.  

Bhutan, the king said, needed to ensure that prosperity was shared across society and that it was balanced against preserving cultural traditions, protecting the environment and maintaining a responsive government. The king, now 49, has been instituting policies aimed at accomplishing these goals.

Now Bhutan's example, while still a work in progress, is serving as a catalyst for far broader discussions of national well-being.

Around the world, a growing number of economists, social scientists, corporate leaders and bureaucrats are trying to develop measurements that take into account not just the flow of money but also access to health care, free time with family, conservation of natural resources and other noneconomic factors.

The goal, according to many involved in this effort, is in part to return to a richer definition of the word happiness, more like what the signers of the Declaration of Independence had in mind when they included "the pursuit of happiness" as an inalienable right equal to liberty and life itself.

It is not surprising that Bhutan, a Buddhist country, is astute enough to appreciate that happiness  goes beyond personal material wealth. Now French president Nicolas Sarkozy is seeking the help of three Nobel winning economists to educate his own country on what constitutes a healthy and happy society.

So far so good. But what about the quest for individual happiness? Americans have for long relentlessly pursued personal fulfillment (gratification?) as defined by religious leaders, inspirational speakers, media personalities, financial institutions and peddlers of products and services. Do happiness seeking individuals add up to a happier society overall?  Not necessarily, says an article in Newsweek. Paradoxically, the obsessive pursuit of personal happiness may in the end, prove to be an obstacle to the very state of over all bliss people seek, say some observers of social trends. The anxiety to be happy (Oprah style) may in fact make us somewhat self obsessed and detract from collective contentment. The article makes some good points but I am afraid that in comparing Americans to Europeans or other "happy" people, there may be some risk of conflating complacency with good spirits.  I am copying Julie Baird's article in its entirety below the fold because Newsweek items have a tendency to "disappear" after a while. The most cogent point about happiness appears at the very end. It is attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, a remarkable woman, who obsessed very little about her own happiness and made improving the happiness index of others her life's mission. She is said to have observed that happiness "is not a goal, it's a byproduct."

Right Ho and Toodle-oo! (Why India still loves P.G. Wodehouse)

Although he may no longer be eagerly sought out by the reading public in the country of his birth, P.G. Wodehouse enjoys an enviable degree of popularity in India. Every so often I come across reports and articles puzzling over why a long dead British humorist from a long lost era continues to charm a couple of generations of modern Indians who have very little fascination (outside the academic world of literature and history) with the likes of Kipling or the culture of colonial England. Here is an excerpt from the transcript of a report on NPR that I found while searching for Wodehouse: (Do listen to the audio recording of Mandy Cunningham eavesdropping on a group of Wodehouse fans in Bangalore, India)

CUNNINGHAM: These people have gathered to share their love of the works of the comic novelist and satirist P.G. Wodehouse. Each person have adopted the name of their favorite Wodehouse character.

RAHM(ph): My name is Rahm, and I go by the name of Smith, Rupert Smith. Smith preferred to use big, long words. You know, he would use 20 words in a sentence when five would suffice. It's an eccentricity of sorts, but I felt that it's something that I would like to talk myself.

CUNNINGHAM: The group, like many others around India, knows everything there is to know about Wodehouse. They know that he was born in England, that he spent most of his years in the United States, becoming an American citizen, and that he wrote short stories, lyrics for musicals and almost a hundred novels. The reason they're so well informed is that most of them, like Narupa(ph), was introduced to Wodehouse at a very tender age.

NARUPA: When I was about nine or 10, there was this Indi series on TV, and I remember my father was so disgusted with the adaptation that from his office library, he handed out a copy of "Leave it to Smith" and made my sister and me read it.

CUNNINGHAM: Most of the group cut their teeth on stories about Wodehouse's most-famous characters, the erudite gentlemen's gentleman Jeeves and his affable but buffoonish aristocratic boss Bertie Wooster, depicted here in a BBC adaptation.

(Soundbite of BBC program)

Then there was this article I read more than three years ago, attempting to analyze Wodehouse's peculiar hold on middle class India's imagination.  

Up on the eighth floor of a concrete high-rise, I find the retired history lecturer at St Stephen’s College, part of Delhi University, and staff advisor to its Wodehouse Society, smoking a beedi, a pungent roll-up cigarette.

The apartment has a lingering odour of lunchtime curry. It’s a dashed rummy place to be talking about Bertie Wooster. I have come to explore the curious Indian obsession with P. G. Wodehouse.

Nearly 60 years after the nation’s British rulers packed their bags and legged it home, his books are on sale in most bookshops, sometimes nestling nervously between Jeanette Winterson and Virginia Woolf.

Wodehouse never wrote about India, but sells better on the subcontinent than in Britain, with pirated copies in common circulation. He is one of the most heavily requested authors at the British Library in Delhi and there are clubs and internet chatrooms devoted to him. ....

....The club’s [St Stephen’s Wodehouse Society] president in the mid-1980s, Thomas Abraham, is now president of Penguin Books India, the country’s largest Wodehouse publisher. “We’ve all grown up with Wodehouse,” he says. “It’s a phenomenon here. When one of his books goes out of print, everyone goes ballistic. My publishing counterparts in the UK are very amused.”

In a country where most books in English sell fewer than 1,000 copies and 5,000 constitutes a bestseller, the corduroy-suited Abraham estimates that his company sells up to 70,000 Wodehouses a year: part of a thriving “retro-market” that ranges from Agatha Christie to Modesty Blaise. Most Wodehouses are bought by middle-class Indians whose public school-like “English-Medium” education arguably equips them to appreciate the author’s verbal virtuosity and literary allusions better than many Brits.

“Wodehouse’s appeal is a pure sense of linguistic delight,” says Abraham, who has read “about 82” of his 85 books. “In the 1980s there was a debate about whether he was ‘literary’ or not, but the fact is that the books are a great read, laugh-aloud funny.

“It’s a whole world of clean, wholesome, escapist fun and parents here like to hand it down to their children. Today’s humour is fairly dark, but the appeal of these books for parents is: ‘No sex please, we’re Indian’.”

Back in 1945, George Orwell noted the books’ moral uprightness in his celebrated essay In Defence of P. G. Wodehouse: “Most of the people whom Wodehouse intends as sympathetic characters are parasites, and some of them are plain imbeciles, but very few of them could be described as immoral . . . Not only are there no dirty jokes, but there are hardly any compromising situations.”

Orwell recalled meeting a young Indian nationalist who saw Wodehouse as a satirist of English society, “an anti-British writer who had done useful work by showing up the British aristocracy in their true colours . . . On the contrary, a harmless, old-fashioned snobbishness is perceptible all through his work.”

I don't know that one can accurately point to a national trait, history or culture to explain why Wodehouse is loved by Indians. I happen to be a long time Wodehouse fan but not for some of the reasons described in the Times article. The nostalgia for the Raj, the butler, the pucca sahib culture of the gymkhana etc., none of them works for me.  I think I know what I find so charming about P.G.W. - mainly his extraordinarily adept linguistic calisthenics, for sure. And perhaps also what Orwell said.  Although I am perfectly at home with dark brooding humor, searing satire, biting badinage and cutting edge cleverness, there may indeed be something oddly comforting about a prodigious body of literary work which has no sex, no serious love, little existential angst and very few moral dilemmas. One of my favorite posts here is on Wodehouse, one that I wrote soon after I launched this blog. I am bringing it to the front  for new readers.

Has the wired age made us more uncivil?

Two newspaper articles about the decline of public etiquette in the age of Internet caught my eye - one about students behaving rudely with teachers and the other describing the increasingly frequent display of incivility by public figures. I have seen similar lamentations before, some recently and others from my own teachers and parents during the 1960 - 70s when drugs, rock and roll and student revolts began to shake the middle class world although there was no Internet to chip away at our niceness. My co-blogger Dean and I had a short but candid exchange about one of the articles, drawing from the memory of our own youthful experiences.

It's been decades since I faced a class room full of energetic teenage boys. I wonder how I would have handled the new student-teacher rules of etiquette. But although my students did not carry laptops or Blackberries to class, rude notes were passed behind my back and salacious novels were often on the knees under the desk while I labored to transmit the beauty and simplicity of the Periodic Table. I don't remember even the boldest of mischief makers among my pupils ever saying, "Hey Ruchira" to my face or in writing although I am sure a few probably said much worse things out of my ear shot. The overwhelming majority of students I had encountered during my teaching years were courteous and sweet in their interactions with me and other teachers. However, that is not quite the same as pretending that teachers in my era dealt strictly with a room full of Emily Posts during school hours.

Lee Shumow doesn't want to text her students, or be their friend on Facebook, but to their chagrin prefers an old-fashioned way to communicate: e-mail.

The educational psychology professor at Northern Illinois University appreciates when students take the time to reply. It's an extra treat when they don't begin their message with, "Hey, Lee."

She and many of her colleagues believe such informality has seeped into the college classroom environment, citing student behavior that's best described as rude or oblivious. As students begin a new semester this month, instructors bracing for yet another onslaught blame technology for creating a disengaged generation whose attention is constantly diverted by laptops, phones and iPods.

Others point to the unruly classroom as a reflection of an increasingly ill-mannered society. Nearly 70 percent of Americans polled in 2005 said they believe people are more rude than they were 20 to 30 years ago.

"I literally cannot imagine having addressed any teacher I had in my career as 'Hey' and then their first name,' " said Shumow, who has a doctoral degree and has taught 15 years at NIU. "I love them. I won an award for undergraduate teaching in 2005. But man, the world has really changed from when I was a student."

To their credit, most students are respectful and more inquisitive than ever, faculty members say.

About public figures behaving badly, the recent outbursts by tennis star Serena Williams, rapper Kanye West and of course, South Carolina congressman Joe "You Lie" Wilson illustrate the second article. I like Serena, do not know anything about Kanye West and I feel that Congressman Wilson's finger wagging condemnation of the president was inappropriate. I agree that all three behaved quite outrageously. But were they very much worse than some of their predecessors in history to warrant the kind of harrumphing that the media and the public are indulging in?  Or do we feel more unsettled because the explosion in the communications tools at our hands enables us to see and experience the ugliness instantaneously and endlessly? For example, was Serena any more out of control than John McEnroe, Ilie Nastase or Jimmy Connors in their heyday? Aren't most rockers and rappers wild and uncouth?  But are they especially naughty compared to the sexist, racist and self absorbed media stars of earlier eras?  Did Wilson do more harm to Obama than another congressman from South Carolina once did to a senate member of his day? Or is our sense of public propriety really going down the slithery tube?

Is this a nation of loudmouth brats?

It's difficult to imagine Theodore Roosevelt or James Madison coaxing along the country as President Obama did Sunday on 60 Minutes, saying “the loudest, shrillest voices get the most attention. And so, one of the things I'm trying to figure out is, you know, how can we make sure that civility is interesting?”

Obama was, of course, referring to U.S. Rep Joe Wilson's highly uncivil “You lie!” outburst during a joint session of Congress last week (interesting, yes; civil, no). But who knew on the very weekend Obama cited loud, shrill voices of dissent that other uncivil voices, just as loud and shrill, were making themselves heard?

Incivility was working overtime Sunday night when hip-hop artist Kanye West interrupted 19-year-old country-pop singer Taylor Swift's acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards to insist Beyoncé made a better video, and Saturday night when Serena Williams broke into an expletive-laced tirade against a line judge at the U.S. Open semifinals.

Whether it's Levi Johnston's unflattering tell-all about his almost-mother-in-law Sarah Palin in the October issue of Vanity Fair or University of Oregon running back LeGarrette Blount's sucker punch of a Boise State defensive end on national television, it seems like high season for bad behavior.

The only good take-away from these well-publicized acts of incivility? That they're not generally tolerated, said Lizzie Post, a spokeswoman for the Emily Post Institute of etiquette experts.

“The public's reaction to these things is an indicator to us that people want etiquette, appreciate etiquette and want to stand up for good behavior,” said the great-great-granddaughter of Emily Post. “It affirms for us that people don't appreciate Kanye jumping up on stage or Joe Wilson blatantly calling the president a liar. They don't appreciate those outbursts.”

Those outbursts may seem to be happening more often and in more ugly ways. Or perhaps we just get to watch.

“There are more ways for us to see it,” television and pop culture expert Robert Thompson of Syracuse University said of outbursts from West or Wilson, both of which easily broke through “the clutter of 300 channels of television and an infinity of Internet.”

It's not that we're more uncivil; it's just that there are more ways for us to witness it, Thompson said.

Labor without love

I am a day late for this Labor Day post at 3 Quarks Daily by Manisha Verma. Having returned from my trip yesterday, I only saw the essay this morning. Manisha writes about child labor and in that context she has interviewed Bangladeshi photographer G.M.B. Akash who has taken some stunningly moving photographs of children engaged in hard, sometimes hazardous jobs. Manisha's article in 3 QD here.  A portfolio of Akash's photographs here and the gallery Born to Work, pertaining to child labor here.

 photo: G.M.B. Akash

Much Ado about A Speech (Sujatha)

From school districts all over the country, we have been seeing the likes of this statement from school boards and school administrations.

"We have been receiving many anxious phone calls from parents concerned about the content of the President's proposed speech to schoolchildren on September 8, so we will not be telecasting it live to the students for XYZ reasons. We will review the speech later to determine if it will fit in with our curriculum requirements and possibly incorporate later showings of the speech in the classroom. Rest assured that parents can opt out of their children having to view this speech at the time."

or similar.

Oh, the horror of having an actual live breathing African-American president actually address the schoolchildren of the US on the importance of staying in school, working hard, not dropping out and improving grades.

Whatever rationales these districts and schools come up with for a ban or semi-ban on the speech, they have just guaranteed a superhit on the internet and Youtube for a speech that might otherwise have been yawned through by groups of glassy-eyed sleep-deprived adolescents all over the country. Kids who wouldn't pay attention to all the boring utterances of a sitting president will now be combing and parsing the speech for any possible 'secret messages' that they suspect their parents of hiding from them under the pretext of preventing their being 'brainwashed'.

The varying shades of racism

A recent chance conversation with an Indian friend and Dean's comment on class and meritocracy, reminded me that although I have discussed racism in America and Europe on several occasions, I have probably never addressed the same issue vis-a-vis India in particular and Asia in general. Rampant racism, casteism, privilege by virtue of *high birth* and family connection is an unsavory fact of life in many parts of the world. In south Asia skin color plays a major role in determining social status, at least superficially.

It is not very well known that amidst the widely heterogeneous racial admixture that makes up the population of the Indian subcontinent, a tiny minority is of African descent. A couple of years ago, on his blog Amardeep Singh had written briefly about the Afro-Pakistani poet Noon Meem Danish. Amardeep's post contains a  link to an interesting account of the contrast between the modern Pakistani intelligentsia's political solidarity  with the distant continent of Africa and the sad plight of Pakistani citizens whose ancestors had been brought to the region as slaves from Africa centuries ago (scroll down to the last three paragraphs). The derogatory word for blacks in northern India and Pakistan is "Habshi." It packs a punch not quite as vicious as the N-word in the US, but the disdain built into the pejorative is unmistakable.

Faiz Muhammed Sheeddi and his organization have been in the forefront of advocating this community's causes. Indeed, the treatment of the sheeddis in Pakistan -- an example of which is the murder in police custody of the Afro-Sindhi youth, Mashooq Sheeddi, in 1994 at the hands of the Hyderabad police -- is reminiscent of racist police brutality against black youth in the US.

These communities closely follow events in Africa, and an example of both the interest and the identification is the fact that Faiz Muhammed Sheeddi and his fellow sheeddi tribesmen proudly say that Nelson Mandela has the same origins as themselves.

These currents of influence -- sometimes paradoxical, even contradictory -- between the continent of Africa and the region that is now Pakistan give the lie to the self-contained vision of the nation projected by the state. Instead, they bear witness to the histories of the wretched of the earth, and their struggles for solidarity. It is high time that the third world state began to reflect these histories and these realities of power, and took on again, with more seriousness than the last time, the project of solidarity.

I had left the following comment on Amardeep's post - a litany of casual observations describing what I had encountered as a young person growing up in a multi-ethnic society where color consciousness and judging people by physical attributes are ingrained.  Africans were not the only targets of derison.  

Two Indians of African descent that I was familiar with in childhood (although I only realized that fact when I was a bit older) was Siddhi, as he was commonly known, and Prakash. Siddhi was my father's favorite fishmonger who came to our home early every morning during the first ten years of my life bearing the *best catch of the day* for my father. He belonged to the Siddhi community of coastal Gujarat whose members trace their ancestry to Africa. Siddhi was dark skinned but looked not much different from many other Indians. Prakash, my uncle's motorcycle mechanic who too came to our home to do the repairs on the Royal Enfield, was a true blue African. A Kenyan by birth, he had been adopted in his infancy by a Punjabi couple in Nairobi who later moved to India when Prakash was a toddler. Well over 6' 3", he was an extremely handsome, gentle giant who spoke fluent Hindi and Punjabi. Given Prakash's size and build, I doubt that anyone called him a Habshi .... at least surely not to his face.

Habshi doesn't mean "slave" technically. It is derived from the word Abyssinian but does have a derogatory connotation in India and Pakistan. In my native language Bengali, I don't recall an equivalent word. But among my Hindi and Punjabi speaking friends, the word was common parlance. Some of my Punjabi friends' mothers would gently chide their fair complected daughters to stay out of the sun lest they start looking like "Habshis." And that extremely kinky hair that Narayan refers to, I have seen that trait mostly among dark complexioned Keralites and fair skinned Punjabis. 

By the time I was in college, (late sixties - early seventies) there were quite a few students from Africa in Delhi university. The way some students behaved with them was deplorable. They also found more difficulty in renting rooms around the university campus than other foreign students did. But then most foreign students (Thai, Arab, Indonesian, European) faced insulting conduct frequently. Even diasporic Indians from Fiji, east Africa, Mauritius etc. and genuine Indians from the northeast (Assam, Nagaland, Manipur), as also Tibetan and Sikkimese students faced rude behavior at the hands of local toughs. Most groups swallowed the insults and went about their business, sharing their discomfort with their more sympathetic Indian friends. Except the well built and fleet of foot, soccer & hockey playing Tibetan boys. I witnessed some truly blood curdling retributive justice meted out to those who made the mistake of calling them "Chinks."

The question of race is muddled and external appearances misleading but we just can't let go of it. South Asians are as obsessed with it as anyone else. Race being such an inexact category it is best not to make too much of it as James Watson has probably realized now.

Amardeep, please forgive me for two rapid links to self promotion. We have discussed the race / IQ / genetic trait controversy extensively at our blog. Please see what my co-blogger Anna wrote regarding something else Malcom Gladwell has said about IQ, this time Jewish IQ specifically.

Drive In Libraries (for Dean)

The Houston Public Library system's newest plan for distributing books is a modern twist on the book mobile where books were deliverd on wheels to eager readers. This time, the reader is the driver and  librarians act as car hops. Love the idea. Anything that makes it easier to lay one's hands on books gets my vote.

There'll be no carhops on roller skates. And if you're hankering for a burger and fries, forget it. But if it's food for the mind you crave — books, music or movies — staffers at some of the Houston Public Library's most congested branches will be happy to deliver your order right to your car.

The library's new curbside service, HPL To Go, is being tested at the Looscan Neighborhood Library and the McGovern-Stella Link Library. If trials go well, the service will be extended to other “parking challenged” branches.

HPL To Go joins Info Quest, a program that allows users to text message queries to reference librarians, as the latest additions to the public library's growing roster of services designed to engage 21st century library patrons.

Other recently added services include the HPL Mobile Express — a van loaded with computers that visits under-served neighborhoods — and Info 24/7, which allows users to query reference librarians via the Internet.

Library Executive Director Rhea Brown said she has challenged library workers to find ways to remain relevant in the iPhone era.

“The library is no different from any other business organization,” she said. “For you and I in society, technology is the way of the world.”

Brown said the library, whose 41 locations drew more than 5 million visitors in the last fiscal year, relies on surveys and focus groups to guide improvement efforts. The curb service project grew out of complaints from customers weary of searching for scarce library parking.

“The parking lots are small and their business is very large,” neighborhood library chief Regina Stemmer said of the test sites. Puzzled for a solution, Stemmer said her “eureka moment” came as she spied a card advertising a food delivery service while dining with friends at an area restaurant. What works for chicken fried steaks, she concluded, might work for books.

The rest of the report here.