Accidental Blogger

post on genetics and population height differences..(omar)

from 3QD.

SCIENCE SHEDS LIGHT ON POPULATION HISTORY AND LIVING STANDARDS

by Omar Ali

In a sense, all modern historiography includes the attempt to find objective facts rather than relying on folklore and opinion. To varying extents, a scientific mindset is part of the intellectual toolkit of all modern people and while no person can be entirely rational and no judgment is as perfectly evidence-based as the idealized models would imply, there is a trend towards greater objectivity and a willingness (at least in principle) to change one’s mind if new facts come to light. There is an assumption among liberals (I self-identify as liberal and spend most of my time with others who do the same) that modern liberals are more “science-minded” than conservatives (the so-called “fact-based community”). Whether this is really true has been challenged  but I will assume that liberals DO prefer a scientific approach to history and will touch on two examples where science brings objective information to bear upon history.  One is genetics, which has transformed our knowledge of the origins and relationships of different human populations. The other is height and what average height can tell us about different populations.

"Save A Mother": Annual Appeal

(Bringing the post to the front as we make a final push before the May event. Many thanks to those who have contributed. Your help will go a long way towards achieving our goals.)

A message from Dr. Shiban Ganju, founder of Save A Mother:

Save A Mother is a non-profit organization working to reduce maternal and infant mortality in India. Since our beginning in 2008, we have grown steadily in our operations in India and in number of supporting chapters in the USA, UK. 

 In 2008, we started working in partnership with local NGOs in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India, which has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. We started in one districts and now expanded to five districts including one in Karnataka. We aim to minimize suffering and death due to pregnancy and childbirth. We are currently working in 854 villages in India and we will expand to 1400 villages by the end of 2011.

Health is not possible in the absence of health literacy. Save a Mother trains health activists from the community to spread health literacy. The trained health activists educate women about pregnancy, nutrition, immunization, delivery and care of the child. The activists not only complement the public and private health delivery system but also amplify their effect. They also educate the population about their rights to hold the health delivery system accountable. Some of the key services include: three day initial health literacy training followed by many one day refresher training sessions. We conduct about 8 training sessions a month and have conducted over 950 training sessions so far.

Save A Mother conducts periodic impact analysis to assess both quantitative data and as quality of life achieved. We collect data on the number of trained health activists, number of mothers registered, number of their prenatal visits, medicines supplied, immunization status and deaths due to pregnancy and delivery. Neonatal deaths are also recorded.

We have trained over 2000 activists so far. We have successfully reduced maternal mortality ratio by 93 % from 645 to 65 and neonatal mortality by 66% from 41 to 9. We spend about $100 per village in one year to achieve these results. Our cost is low because we are a volunteer organization and our administrative cost is zero. All donations go for field work.

Save-a-Mother recognizes the need of an aware, sensitized population, who would consider health care as a collective responsibility. Health care should begin with owning responsibility of personal and community health.  Many other regions in the world are in a similar situation, and we hope to bring this special effort to other countries. 

We believe that one preventable death is one too many. We urge you to support Save A Mother and together we can save millions.

The 3^rd annual fundraiser for Save A Mother, a non-profit organization I am actively involved with is under way. The fundraising gala in Houston is scheduled for May 13, 2011. As I did last year, I am posting an appeal here for donations from readers and also from friends and family in distant locations who may find a secure electronic mode of payment more convenient than sending a check in the mail. As I had indicated before, I am a volunteer for the Houston chapter of this organization that benefits poor women in rural India by educating them about pre and post natal maternal health as also, neo-natal child care.

The bulk of our fundraising is through direct solicitation in the real world from individuals and businesses. We also want to extend our reach into the cyber-world through on-line donations.  One of my roles in the organization is to facilitate the effort by offering this blog as a venue for fundraising.  I request readers to please look over the website of Save A Mother and the brief summary above by Dr. Shiban Ganju about our objectives and the results of the efforts so far. Kindly use the ChipIn widget link on the left hand side column of this blog to make your contribution. Thanks.

 

For further information about the organization’s work and progress please visit the Save A Mother website where you can find out more about the impact the program has made and other news.

(Many thanks to Rahul Singhal for setting up the necessary widget for the donation link and updating the website)

 

Monsoon Wedding Anniversary (Norman Costa)

Monsoon Wedding Anniversary (Norman Costa)

Last Saturday, I attended the first wedding anniversary of a former student of mine, Parvati, and her husband, Bahadur. Circumstances, a year ago, did not allow for a proper wedding party, so throwing a party on their first wedding anniversary seemed a very good idea. It was.

I responded, immediately, to my invitation. Parvati and I stayed in touch by email since she finished her graduate program. I had not met Bahadur, but her Facebook photos beamed the with indisputable facts that he was a handsome young man, and that they were very much in love.

India's Pakistan policy (Omar)

Cross posting from Brown Pundits.

Honesty and Language: Is Greg Mortenson resorting to linguistic loopholes?

An interesting follow up to Sujatha's post on Greg Mortenson, his book and his charity. This story in the Economist points to certain liberties that Mortenson may be taking not just with facts but also language.

GREG MORTENSON claims to have tried and failed to climb K2 (the world's second-highest mountain), stumbled into a village alone after being separated from his party on the way down, and been nursed back to health by kind villagers. He also claims to have been kidnapped, years later, by the Taliban in Waziristan. He wrote a book, "Three Cups of Tea", which has become something of a manual for understanding Central Asia, even being given to American troops serving there. And he has started an organisation called the Central Asia Institute that builds schools and offers other services in the region.

Now Mr Mortenson is being accused by CBS News of fabricating some of his stirring tales. (He is also accused of potential financial improprieties regarding CAI money, not the subject of this post.) CBS spoke to two porters who left K2 with Mr Mortenson, contradicting his claim to have stumbled alone into the village of Korphe.

Mr Mortenson's  written response blames the confusion on the Balti language of the people of Korphe:

Even the Balti language — an archaic dialect of Tibetan — has only a vague concept of tenses and time. For example, "now" can mean immediately or sometime over the course of a whole long season. The concept of past and future is rarely of concern.

Calling Balti an "archaic dialect" is odd; it is a full-blown language according to Ethnologue, and no language is any more archaic than any other. But this seems as though it might be an attempt to set up a linguistic defence: Balti, being archaic and a mere dialect and all, doesn't have concepts of time that would allow the villagers to be reliable in contradicting Mr Mortenson.

 

Can Anyone Meditate? (Norman Costa)

The Effect of Meditation on the Brain activity in Tibetan Meditators: 
Frontal Lobes

The Effect of Meditation on the Brain activity in Tibetan Meditators: 
Parietal Lobes

Can Anyone Meditate? (Norman Costa)

This video is an excerpt from an interview of Andrew Newberg, conducted by Robert Wright.

Andrew Newberg teaches at the university of Pennsylvania both in the medical school and in the dept. of Religious Studies. He is a co-author, along with the late Eugene D'Aquili, of "The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience."

Robert Wright ("The Moral Animal," "Nonzero," and "The Evolution of God") interviewed Dr. Newberg at the University Of Pennsylvania Medical Centre and focused mainly on this new book, "Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief," also co-authored by the late Dr. Eugene D'Aquili. 

Here are other video excerpts from the interview.

Can anyone meditate? – 01m:46s 

Is religious experience “real?” - 05m:57s 

Mystical experiences – 02m:34s 

Religion as pathology – 02m:36s 

The biology of religion – 01m:59s 

The Godhead – 01m:34s 

Why meditate? – 03m:00s

For a transcript of the entire interview...

Three Cups of Tea and A Mountain of Salt (Sujatha)

Ho- hum. Another inspirational memoir that isn't. Author/charity tycoon Greg Mortenson, who shot into fame as the climber who was so touched by being nursed back to health by poor villagers after getting lost on a climbing expedition in a remote part of Pakistan, that he founded a trust to build and educate young Pakistani and Afghani girls, narrated to great effect in his bestseller 'Three Cups of Tea', is, according to this CBS exposé, a fraud.

In India, A Struggle To Pass Down Passover (Norman Costa)

In India, A Struggle To Pass Down Passover (Norman Costa)

by Sandip Roy

"Sandip Roy is an editor with New America Media. He recently moved back home to India, and he's discovering some things he wasn't aware of growing up — like the country's tiny Jewish community. There are only 4,000 Jews left in all of India, and just dozens in Calcutta.

"Nahoum and Sons bakery is part of the Calcutta of my childhood. It still has all the goodies I loved as a boy, like brownies, macaroons and plum cake.

"Jagadish Halder, who has worked there for over 30 years, tells me proudly that the decor has not changed since 1911. I believe it. What I never knew as a boy was that Nahoum was a kosher bakery. Halder says once it made a lot of Jewish delicacies. But now, he sees fewer Jewish clients every day."

Read more:

Translating the language of God

Compare the following, a few examples of the new English translation of the Roman Missal, the book of texts used in Mass. The revisions are meant to be more faithful to the liturgical Latin that was used for centuries by the Catholic Church, until recently. The first one represents the language in use currently and the second italicized text is the newer "improved" version.

Nicene creed : Profession of faith

Jesus Christ is..."one in Being with the Father"

Jesus Christ is..."consubstantial with the Father"

Confiteor: The confession of sin at the beginning of the Mass

"I confess to almighty God and to you my brothers and sisters that I have sinned through my own fault in my thoughts and in my deeds, in what I have done and what I have failed to do."

"I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault."

People's prayer: Before communion

"Lord, I am not worthy to receive you."

"Lord, I am not that you should enter my roof."

Second eucharistic prayer: Priest's part

"Let your Spirit come upon these gifts to make them holy, so that they may become for us the body and blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ."

"Make holy, therefore, these gifts, we pray, by sending down your Spirit upon them like dewfall, so tht they may become for us the Body and Blood or our Lord, Jesus Christ.

There is more in this article in the New York Times (hope the firewall doesn't trip you up!) An excerpt:

Throughout much of the English-speaking world, the Roman Catholic Church is preparing its priests and parishes for the most significant changes to the Mass in the more than 40 years since the church permitted English in place of the Latin.

The changes are included in a new English-language translation of the Roman Missal, a translation produced after almost 30 years of labor, intrigue and infighting. The new missal, the book of texts and prayers used in the Mass, is intended to be closer to the liturgical Latin that was used for centuries than the current version. The church officials promoting it say it will bring an elevated reverence and authenticity to the Mass. Many Catholics who prefer a more traditional liturgy are eagerly anticipating the change.

But after getting a glimpse of the texts in recent months, thousands of priests in the United States, Ireland and Australia have publicly objected that the translation is awkward, archaic and inaccessible. Although most are resigned to adopting the new missal, some have mounted campaigns to prevent it from being introduced.

“What we are asking of the bishops is to scrap this text,” said the Rev. Sean McDonagh, a leader of an Irish group, the Association of Catholic Priests, which represents 450 priests — about 1 out of 10 — in that country. “I know people are not going to use it. I wouldn’t use it, because everything I know in terms of theology and anthropology and linguistics, it breaches every one of those.” ...

“The first time I saw some of the texts, I was shocked,” said the Rev. Richard Hilgartner, who as executive director of the American bishops’ Secretariat of Divine Worship is overseeing the introduction of the new missal in the United States.

“But the more time I’ve spent with it, the more comfortable I became with it,” he said. “The new translation tries to be more faithful to the Scriptures, and a little more poetic and evocative in terms of imagery and metaphor.”

One of the most noticeable changes is in the Nicene Creed, the statement of faith that Catholics learn to recite as children. Currently, Catholics say that Jesus is “one in being with the Father,” but in the future they will say that Jesus is “consubstantial with the Father.” This is one of several changes that include unfamiliar vocabulary.

Father Hilgartner said, “We know that people aren’t going to understand it initially, and we’ll have to talk about it. I’ve said to priests, we will welcome and crave opportunities for people to come up and ask us about God. It’s a catechetical opportunity.”

Aside from the internal debate over semantics, archaic expressions and literary flair within the Catholic Church, I have a broader question regarding religious communication in general. Religious texts are meant to be at least in part, words from God(s) and short of every person of faith hearing the divine message with his/her own ears, it must be imparted vicariously through the language of man. Doesn't it then make more sense to facilitate that communication as simply as possible without the average Jane or Joe tripping over esoteric linguistic hurdles? This tendency to hark back to the "original" language is not peculiar to Rome. Non-Arab Muslims all over the world recite the Holy Quran in Arabic without comprehending a word; Hindu prayers chanted in Sanskrit during auspicious occasions wash over the heads of most adherents. Hebrew was essentially a liturgical language until the state of Israel recast it in its role as the lingua franca of a newly created Jewish state. In the case of Christianity, Latin was not even the tongue that Jesus or his apostles used to spread their philosophy. So, why this universal fondness for religious conversations and expressions of piety in ancient or foreign tongues? As long as the message is true and reasonably well constructed to evoke spirituality and a connection to the divine, shouldn't a language that the devotee understands best, serve as the most effective vehicle and constitute the true "Vox Clara?" Or is making religious dialogue linguistically obscure another way of keeping the seat of power firmly in the grasp of a privileged few?

 

Labor law abuses in the Gulf Coast ... again.

In 2008, I had reported on the unlawful exploitation of foreign workers during the rebuilding efforts in Louisiana following Katrina. It seems that the practice is quite common and the financial and physical abuse  is sometimes aided by the governments of the countries from where the workers are imported by US companies.

GALVESTON — A lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court seeks more than $200 million in damages from companies accused of the human trafficking of Vietnamese laborers to the United States to unknowingly work as indentured servants.

Attorneys Anthony Buzbee and Tammy Tran filed the lawsuit in Galveston federal court to “expose an international human trafficking conspiracy,” the lawsuit claims.

Nine of the 12 men named as plaintiffs live in Galveston County. The others, including 43 unnamed men, reside in Louisiana and Texas.

The lawsuit accuses Hanoi, Vietnam, companies International Investment Trade and Service Group, known as Interserco, and General Automotive Industry Corp. of Vietnam, known as Vinamotors, of engaging in a human trafficking ring with U.S. “co-conspirators,” Coast to Coast Resources and ILP Agency.

Coast to Coast and ILP were sued in March 2009 in Harris County district court after two years of litigation, and an agreed judgment of $60 million was entered, the lawsuit claims.

 The full story from Houston.

"If you want to succeed in business, don’t get an M.B.A. Study philosophy instead"

Matthew Stewart, author- philosopher- business manager, explains:

During the seven years that I worked as a management consultant, I spent a lot of time trying to look older than I was. I became pretty good at furrowing my brow and putting on somber expressions. Those who saw through my disguise assumed I made up for my youth with a fabulous education in management. They were wrong about that. I don’t have an M.B.A. I have a doctoral degree in philosophy—nineteenth-century German philosophy, to be precise. Before I took a job telling managers of large corporations things that they arguably should have known already, my work experience was limited to part-time gigs tutoring surly undergraduates in the ways of Hegel and Nietzsche and to a handful of summer jobs, mostly in the less appetizing ends of the fast-food industry.

The strange thing about my utter lack of education in management was that it didn’t seem to matter. As a principal and founding partner of a consulting firm that eventually grew to 600 employees, I interviewed, hired, and worked alongside hundreds of business-school graduates, and the impression I formed of the M.B.A. experience was that it involved taking two years out of your life and going deeply into debt, all for the sake of learning how to keep a straight face while using phrases like “out-of-the-box thinking,” “win-win situation,” and “core competencies.” When it came to picking teammates, I generally held out higher hopes for those individuals who had used their university years to learn about something other than business administration.

After I left the consulting business, in a reversal of the usual order of things, I decided to check out the management literature. Partly, I wanted to “process” my own experience and find out what I had missed in skipping business school. Partly, I had a lot of time on my hands. As I plowed through tomes on competitive strategy, business process re-engineering, and the like, not once did I catch myself thinking, Damn! If only I had known this sooner! Instead, I found myself thinking things I never thought I’d think, like, I’d rather be reading Heidegger! It was a disturbing experience. It thickened the mystery around the question that had nagged me from the start of my business career: Why does management education exist?

More here.  (via Leiter Reports)

Hyperbole and a Half: Read It (Joe)

Apropos of the recent birth of Dean's daughter -- which, if I recall, now makes two kids -- here's a hilarious illustrated story about kids frightening themselves by telling scary stories to themselves and their younger siblings.

He was Gandhi's boyfriend. (Norman Costa)

He was Gandhi's boyfriend. (Norman Costa)

Here is a very interesting take on the new biography of Mahatma Gandhi's life, by Joseph Lelyveld.  Paul Rudnick writes a humor piece in the Shouts & Murmurs column of "The New Yorker," April 11, 2011.  His column, "I Was Gandhi's Boyfriend," begins:

"I know that some people still don’t buy that Gandhi was gay, but let me tell you, from experience, Gandhi liked guys. I first met him when he came to see my ice show in Nepal, which was called “Holiday on Dirt.” Gandhi came backstage and he told me, “I very much enjoyed watching you pretend to ice-skate, in your tight pants.” I asked him, “Um, so why are you wearing a diaper?” And he explained that his outfit was a traditional Indian dhoti, and I said, “Well, you look like the New Year’s baby.” And he said, “You are so handsome when you are not speaking.""

It is certainly humor.  But who or what is the object of the humor?  Is it Gandhi?  The critics?  Is it another way of saying, "So what!"?  Or is it direspectful?  Be sure to read our own Sujatha's "Seizing the Truth," for another view on the book and the reactions in India.

Read more:

 

Fafblog on Libya (Joe)

In case you were wondering how our increasingly silent blog friend feels, here's The Medium Lobster:

But if there are several dozen things America loves, they are war, torture, genocide, chattel slavery, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, assassination, poverty, institutionalized bribery, remote-controlled flying death robots and somewhere down the list, between prison labor and lagoons of toxic pig shit, there is almost certainly a special place in our national heart for freedom.

And so it is that the United States is fighting to free the Libyan people from the Libyan people by killing the Libyan people. The situation is fairly straightforward, after all - Libya faces a humanitarian crisis, and the only way to address a humanitarian crisis is to bomb it with hundreds of cruise missiles. I'm told that the Red Cross still delivers bottled water and medical supplies by duct-taping them to the nose cone of an outgoing Tomahawk.

That's just an excerpt; click over to read the whole thing.

Another Baby on A.B. :-)

If you stick around long enough, interesting things happen on the blog. This is the second time we are announcing the news of a baby being born to one of the A.B. bloggers. A little girl was welcomed by our own Dean's family recently, exactly a week ago to be precise. Olivia Valero Rowan was born on March 27, 2011 in perfect health, weighing in at 6 lbs., 2 oz. and measuring almost 18" in height / length. Olivia's proud parents and older brother Sebastian are thrilled. Many good wishes and hearty congratulations to the Rowan family from Accidental Blogger(s).  

 

Another piece of good news from Dean's quarters, a follow up to his recent post, The Reach of Resonance where he described the work of his friend, musician and film maker Steve Elkins. Dean has just informed me that Elkins' film won the award in the category of "Best Essay" at The 29th International Festival of Films on Art held in Montreal last month. Congratulations to Steve too!

FDA's remorse: too little, too late?

A couple of weeks ago I posted the news about KV Pharmaceutical's price gouging tactics involving a common  drug used to prevent premature labor in pregnant women. The FDA, which gave exclusive manufacturing license for the drug Makena to KV, has now reacted to the massive bad press generated by the extortionist ways of the pharmaceutical company. Frank Pasquale has a wrap up on the FDA aided KV fiasco as well as other pertinent issues regarding price fixing, ineffectual cost control and cost shifting in the US health care system.

Seizing the Truth (Sujatha)

The sanctification of a human being is a slow process, taking months or even years to accomplish. It begins with careful wordings and rewordings of the early life stories, followed by more scholarly but carefully culled compedia as the years and paper trails grow in number and intricacy. The end point is inevitably the post-mortem, momentously uttered and universally acknowledged,  "He was a Great Soul, indeed". Hushed silences accompany any future invocation of the now sanctified leader. Howls and resistance meet any attempt to move away from this paradigm, even decades or centuries later. While the eyes farthest from the events may see the clearest, this clearer vision is not always welcome, especially to those who are now ensconced in their comfortable positions by benefitting from the original premise.

I had thought that the new biography of Gandhi  by Joseph Lelyveld, alluded to in my 'From Crushed to Whole" post was no more than one such examination of the myth of Gandhi, using it as a segue into my own book review of a memoir/biography from the Dalit community in India. But events have taken the book "Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India"  into a limelight of its own.

Mob Attack in Mazar Sharif

Over 10 killed as mob attack UN office in north Afghan city.

Some were reportedly beheaded. The beheading meme is really peculiar to Islamist terrorism these days; any theories about why this may be so?

I am sure that as we learn details, we will find that it was not exactly a "spontaneous beheading". Determined Islamist agitators were probably involved in the hardcore violence. But what is equally clear is that Muslim populations do tend to provide a safe haven and supporting cover for such agitators when they use the ever useful "blasphemy" meme. Which is one reason why I believe the blasphemy law is not going to go away. It is really very useful for mobilizing mobs and enforcing religious orthodoxy. Its downside is that any group can use it, so it tends to be used for a lot of internecine warfare between Muslim groups....Two-edged sword.

which brings us back to beheading. What's the fascination with that?