Yet another QOTD

The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we have of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.
-- Quentin Crisp

Sepia Mutiny on Smita Narang's Web Vastu

Update: I found the Wired story online, and I thought it would be fun to submit it to Slashdot. To my surprise, it made it to the main page almost immediately, and slash-dotters are having a lot of fun ridiculing Web Vastu and trashing Narang's website.

Check it out; it already has 201 comments.

Dr. Smita Narang -- yes, she has a doctorate in Vastu, the "ancient science of direction" -- is going places. She and her work were covered by IBN-Live sometime ago; now, Siddhartha informs that she is featured in the print edition of the magazine Wired [Update: it's available online]; in the article, she even gets to analyze SlashDot's Vastu!

Thanks to Guru for the link to Siddhartha's post.

Quote of the Day

Today's quote dished out by Google's QOTD:

Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.
-- Robertson Davies.

Desi filter-blogs

Between Patrix's announcement about DesiPundit's death and a later one about its rescue, the land of desi filter-blogging attracted several new residents.

Krish and Shivam have put together a group for running BlogBharti.

An anonymous blogger has started Desiblogging, and she (?) has chosen to specialize in highlighting what she calls "wicked" posts from desi bloggers.

Are there any others?

Oh, BTW, I'm now a part of the rescued, revitalized and expanded DesiPundit gang.

Happiness != Welfare

Robert Frank of Cornell says happiness is not the same thing as welfare. More importantly, while increasing GDP may not increase happniness much (his focus is on rich countries), it certainly contributes to a greater welfare; therefore, GDP growth is good. QED.

Many critics of economic growth ... argue that if money buys happiness, it is relative, not absolute, income that matters. As incomes grow, people quickly adapt to their new circumstances, showing no enduring gains in measured happiness. Growth makes the poor happier in low-income countries, critics concede, but not in developed countries, where those at the bottom continue to experience relative deprivation.

All true. But these statements do not imply that economic growth no longer matters in wealthy countries. The reason, in a nutshell, is that happiness and welfare, though related, are very different things. Growth enables us to expand medical research and other activities that clearly enhance human welfare but have little effect on measured happiness levels.

All this is quite appealing, but one of Mark Thoma's readers raises a valid point (do read the other comments there as well):

Well, I still think that growth as such is the wrong target. The author says that some growth promotes welfare, while some harms it, yet concludes that we should be aiming for growth, albeit intelligently managed growth, because that would have some positive correlation with welfare.

Then why not rather aim at welfare?

Bengaluru ...

My own comment on an earlier post in this blog led to my views being sought a while ago on the almost-imminent change in the name of this great city of ours. Now, Ken Moritsugu of USA Today has quoted some of what I said in this story:

T.A. Abinandanan, a professor at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore and a transplant from the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu, says such concerns are exaggerated. Besides, he adds, Bangalore has a bad image among Americans whose jobs have been outsourced to India.

"When 'getting Bangalored' has acquired a strong negative connotation," he says, "becoming Bengaluru can only be a good thing for this city."

That concludes yet another episode of My 15 nanoseconds of fame. Not just any old type of fame; we're talkin' International Fame!

* * *

Now, for those 15 nano-persons who are still reading this post, here's what I wrote to Ken:

While I'm not enthused by the name change, I don't have any strong reason to oppose it, nor do I find the opponents' arguments persuasive or convincing. So, I guess I 'm with the supporters of the name change !

Sure, the name change is a result of our politicians' desire to gain some short term advantage by claiming to take the city to its (linguistic) roots. However, if it makes the Kannada-speaking people happy without affecting the others -- like me -- much, we can't complain, can we?

Some people see grave dangers (to the city's identity, brand image, etc), but such concerns appear to me to be exaggerated. Quite a few cities in India have gone through such changes without a hitch (and in spite of similar warnings of similarly grave dangers): Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai (where I grew up), Thiruvananthapuram .... I'm sure Bangalore's new name will become the norm within a short time.

I also see another small positive in the name change: when 'getting Bangalored' has acquired a strong negative connotation, becoming Bengaluru can only be a good thing for this city!

Anatomy of a scientific fraud

Cross-posted at nanopolitan 2.0.

Just drop everything, and read the NYTimes story about Eric Poehlman's fraud which made him "only the second scientist in the United States to face criminal prosecution for falsifying research data." Here's the opening paragraph:

On a rainy afternoon in June, Eric Poehlman stood before a federal judge in the United States District Court in downtown Burlington, [Vermont]. His sentencing hearing had dragged on for more than four hours, and Poehlman, dressed in a black suit, remained silent while the lawyers argued over the appropriate sentence for his transgressions. Now was his chance to speak. A year earlier, in the same courthouse, Poehlman pleaded guilty to lying on a federal grant application and admitted to fabricating more than a decade’s worth of scientific data on obesity, menopause and aging, much of it while conducting clinical research as a tenured faculty member at the University of Vermont. He presented fraudulent data in lectures and in published papers, and he used this data to obtain millions of dollars in federal grants from the National Institutes of Health — a crime subject to as many as five years in federal prison. Poehlman’s admission of guilt came after more than five years during which he denied the charges against him, lied under oath and tried to discredit his accusers. By the time Poehlman came clean, his case had grown into one of the most expansive cases of scientific fraud in U.S. history.

The following paragraph, which appears in the second part of the long article, sums up the problem:

The scientific process is meant to be self-correcting. Peer review of scientific journals and the ability of scientists to replicate one another’s results are supposed to weed out erroneous conclusions and preserve the integrity of the scientific record over time. But the Poehlman case shows how a committed cheater can elude detection for years by playing on the trust — and the self-interest — of his or her junior colleagues.

Two other high profile cases of fraud in recent times -- Hendrik Schön and Hwang Woo Suk -- also make an appearance in the NYTimes story:

Most people involved in Poehlman’s case say that fraud as extensive as his represents an uncommon pathology, similar to what drove the South Korean scientist who claimed to have cloned human stem cells or the Lucent Technologies physicist who falsified extensive amounts of nanotechnology data. More frequent, according to a study published in Nature in June 2005, are smaller lapses in ethical judgment, like failing to present data that contradicts your previous research or inappropriately assigning author credit. Brian Martinson, who conducted that study with colleagues from the University of Minnesota, suggests that those gray areas, which many scientists inhabit at one time or another during their careers, portend a greater ailment for the scientific process. Minor transgressions, largely undetected and easily rationalized, can build up like plaque, compromising scientific integrity over time.

Do read the whole thing. It's long, but well worth it.

QOTD

Dished out by Google Personal Page's QOTD feature:

Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.
-- Bertrand Russell.

Peter Singer on gay sex and motorbikes

From this essay:

Anyone who has visited India and seen the sexually explicit temple carvings there will know that the Hindu tradition has a less prudish attitude to sex than Christianity. India's prohibition of homosexuality dates to 1861, when the British ruled the subcontinent and imposed Victorian morality upon it. It is ironic that Britain long ago repealed its own similar prohibition.

Fortunately prohibition of sodomy in India is not enforced. Yet it provides a basis for blackmail and harassment of homosexuals, and has made it more difficult for groups that educate people about HIV and Aids. Vikram Seth, the author of A Suitable Boy, recently published an open letter calling for repeal of the law that makes homosexuality a crime. Many notable Indians, including the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, have given it their support. A challenge to the law is before the high court in Delhi.

Pittsburgh Powerhouses

Having studied in a university named after these two sons of Pittsburgh, I just have to link to Matthew Price's review of Andrew Carnegie and Andrew Mellon: An American Life:

... [T]hese Pittsburgh powerhouses helped define and shape an epoch of American capitalism when this country actually made things (who’s the Chinese Carnegie?), when Steel Town was true to its name—a belching, soot-covered mess otherwise known as “hell with the lid off.” Carnegie, a bumptious little Scotsman who swaggered as if he were twice his size, soared with iron and steel, smashing unions along the way—Carnegie’s tactic was to conciliate, then crush—as he piled up a vast fortune; when he sold Carnegie Steel to J.P. Morgan in 1901, he walked away with $120 billion (in 2006 dollars), which he used to underwrite a hodgepodge of philanthropic causes, foundations and charitable trusts. (Next time you walk by a branch of the New York Public Library, thank Mr. Carnegie). A self-taught, self-righteous know-it-all, he lectured the world—like George Soros, he wouldn’t ever shut up—in his voluminous writings on many topics, counseled the rich to give away their money, and embarked on a quixotic campaign to bring about world peace, even if part of the Carnegie fortune came from the U.S. Navy, which bought armor plates manufactured in Carnegie mills.

The life of Andrew Mellon offers a prim study in contrast with his fellow western Pennsylvania capitalist. Whereas Carnegie was a sunny extrovert, Mellon was a shy, pallid, unfunny, emotionally stunted man who loathed the spotlight. He was no activist, nor was he, as Mr. Nasaw writes of Carnegie, a “moral philosopher of industrial capitalism.”

An entrepreneur of genius, Mellon let his endeavors speak for themselves. Mellon money helped kick-start everything from Alcoa to Gulf Oil, and flowed through almost every sector of the American economy, from banking to gas, metals and mining. A discerning, indefatigable art collector, he was the driving force in the creation of the National Gallery. In his three terms as a tax-cutting Secretary of the Treasury, he saw the 20’s roar (even if he didn’t), then crash. ...

Listen to your unhappiness

We need to listen to our unhappiness, rather than to ease it with shopping or chocolate. This is because unhappiness is an early-warning system and ultimately a spur to change. Perhaps this is why politicians have become so keen on happiness: a happy electorate is not going to ask difficult questions or rock the boat.

Ultimately, nobody can deliver us happiness, not Tony Blair, not David Cameron and not our partner — that remains in our own hands (see box). Certainly the science of positive psychology has some guidelines to happiness but nothing revolutionary. When we ask today “What will make us happy”, it is basically the same question posed by Aristotle more than 2,000 years ago: “What makes life meaningful?” Maybe politicians should use this as benchmark for future legislation; it would certainly work better than economic prosperity.

From this essay by Andrew G. Marshall.

Demolition job

... his book is all too easy to put down.

And, that's one of the nicer things Scott McLemee says in his review of Jean-Noël Jeanneney's book Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge.

European universities

Here's the NYTimes story about the many ways the German higher ed system resembles its American counterpart. This caught my eye:

Classrooms have been overcrowded — and standards have slipped — since the 1970’s, when Germany began guaranteeing that any graduate of a gymnasium, the more academically rigorous part of the high school system, was entitled to a place in a university, paid for entirely by the state. [Emphasis added]

While on the subject of universities, here's something about universities in Sweden.

... Oxford and Cambridge have always compared themselves with one another, just as have American universities like Harvard, Yale, Colombia and Princeton. In many European countries the universities have, however, primarily been judged on the basis of age and distinction, and here the opposition to quality assessments has been stronger.

In Sweden too there are examples of hierarchies. Establishment and positioning has occurred in fits and starts, which is demonstrated by the progress of Stockholm University within advanced scientific research, at the expense of Uppsala. Linköping University has over recent years, and against a background of weaker resources and repute than the older universities, developed new forms of teaching and research.

Hmmm. Why stop with Germany and Sweden. Here's another NYTimes story from May 2006. This time, its about the French university system.

... The country's university system guaranteed a free — or almost free — college education to every high school graduate who passed the baccalauréat exam. University enrollment soared. The value of a bachelor's degree plummeted.

But the state failed to invest much in buildings, facilities and professors' salaries to make the system work. Today the French government allocates about $8,500 a year to each university student, about 40 percent less than what it invests in each high school student.

Most students are required to attend the universities closest to their high schools. ...

Coming back to the article about the Swedish universities, it has this (among much else) to say on American universities:

... American universities, especially the private universities, have almost endless resources to make their own major investments in new fields of science. The American state, which has otherwise sold itself to laissez-faire, has always had a generous relationship to technological and scientific development, as support of this kind has favoured defence and security interests (and acted as a concealed support for industry). This knowledge mercantilism has, in combination with a generous donation culture, created the prerequisites for an extremely strong and dynamic university sector. ...

Agastya Foundation

Will paralysis be cured if you eat white pigeons? Why do human beings, plants and animals grow vertically and not horizontally?

Just a couple of questions posed by some 250 students to a team of scientists from IISc, reports the Hindu. This interaction was organized by Agastya Foundation. Here's an earlier story in the Business World, that describes Agastya's mission, its 'Mobile Lab' and its flagship program: training primary school teachers.

Invisible (to microwave radiation)

For an object to be truly invisible, it should neither reflect (scatter) nor absorb light. Instead, it should let light "slide around [it] like water flowing around a smooth rock in a stream". Today's NYTimes reports that an object has been rendered invisible to microwave radiation:

The system, a set of concentric copper circles on fiberglass board, deflects electromagnetic waves of a specific frequency that strike it, without much of the scattering and absorption that make reflections and shadows. [...]

The exact structure of the circles was described in an earlier paper by Sir John Pendry of Imperial College in London, who worked with the Duke group to see his theory etched into a working model by means of the process used to print circuit boards. In the recent paper, researchers said they had successfully cloaked a copper cylinder.

The Scientific American has some more details, including a picture of the 'copper cylinder' (it's actually copper etchings on fiberglass), and another showing the comparison between simulations and experimental results on how the microwave 'flows around' the cylinder.

Forget invisibility for a moment. In the NYTimes article, what is highly visible -- and very admirable too -- is the unwillingness of the Duke team's leader Prof. David Smith to hype their work to beyond what it really is about:

But Dr. Smith warned against getting ahead of the day’s announcement and envisioning the disappearing Romulan warbirds of “Star Trek” on the horizon. The work “is really a scientific explanation,” he said, adding, “Whether it’s useful is always a question.”

Creating a cloaking device in the visible spectrum would be vastly more complex, he said, since the device would have to warp all of the wavelengths of light. The chance of creating such a device is “dim,” he said, but, “The theory doesn’t prevent it from an electromagnetic point of view.”