Idiot wind

What a classy response from Prof. Rashid Khalidi:

We did ask Mr. Khalidi whether he wanted to respond to the [McCain] campaign charges against him. He answered, via e-mail, that "I will stick to my policy of letting this idiot wind blow over."

I was unaware of the roots of the phrase 'idiot wind', until I found out, with some help from the internets, that it's a Bob Dylan song.

In other news, Francis 'The-End-of-History' Fukuyama is voting for Obama. On the other hand, Stephen Colbert has endorsed Obama (video), but he's not voting for him!

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Update: WSJ's desi partner -- Mint -- joins other overseas business media such as The Economist and the Financial Times in endorsing Obama.

But why would Mint get into this endorsement game? Raju Narisetti, its editor, gives us his reasons.

Lilavati's Daughters

Lilavati's Daughters: The Women Scientists of India is a collection of (auto)biographical essays of about 100 women scientists who have worked and are working in India. The name is drawn from The Lilavati, a twelfth century treatise in which the mathematician Bhaskaracharya addresses a number of problems to his daughter, Lilavati. Although legend has it that Lilavati never married, her intellectual legacy lives on in the form of her daughters - the women scientists of India.

Covering a range of disciplines in these essays about 100 Indian women scientists talk of what brought them to science, what kept their interest alive, and what has helped them achieve some measure of distinction in their careers. What makes a successful career in science possible for a woman? Many answers to this question can be found somewhere in the essays written by Lilavati's Daughters.

The book is directed towards the reading public. A young student with research ambitions will find this an important collection where she or he can learn firsthand of women who functioned and achieved their goals in the Indian social and academic environment. Others will also find the essays to be of value and interest for what they say. And as is often the case, also for what they do not say...

From the Press Release (pdf) issued by the Indian Academy of Sciences. This book will be released this Friday (31 October 2008) at IIT-D during the inaugural event of the Academy's annual meeting.

[The Academy's website says that the inspiration for this book is One Hundred Reasons to Be a Scientist (pdf), a collection of essays by leading scientists, and published by the International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy. Given the inspiration, we may expect Lilavati's Daughters to be available online soon].

The Academy and IIT-D are also hosting a Symposium on Women in Science on Saturday (1 November 2008); a panel discussion on this topic will feature, among others, Dr. Vineeta Bal (National Institute of Immunology, Delhi), Prof. Saman Habib (Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow), Prof. Sujatha Ramdorai (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai), and Prof. Indira Nath (Blue Peter Research Centre, Lepra Society, Hyderabad) [see her interview at Nature Medicine].

The Academy's meetings are (usually) open to everyone. So, if this topic interests you, this Symposium should interest you too.

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While on this topic, I should point you to Under the Microscope -- "Where Women and Science Connect" -- a social networking site for women in science and technology.

The site has a "Stories" section where members have answered the question, "What Got You Hooked on Science." The idea is similar to that of Lilavati's Daughters, but with all the contributions online already.

Thanks to Peggy at Women in Science for the pointer.

Quote of the Day

Maybe the most irrational tendency of them all is our belief that we are rational!
-- Dan Ariely

Abstinence-only baby

From a series named "Trying Times": this one fits the topic well, but this one is hilarious. New Yorker rocks!

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On the other hand, do you know how many ideas are generated by Onion's writers before they whittle them down to the eighteen that make it to the website every week?

Stayin' alive in the emergency room

Researchers say the Bee Gees song, from the 1977 hit movie “Saturday Night Fever,” offers almost the perfect pace for performing chest compressions on people who have had heart attacks. Emergency workers doing cardiopulmonary resuscitation are advised to press down on the chest 100 times a minute. “Stayin’ Alive” has 103 beats a minute.

That's from Eric Nagourney's report.

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Audacity of Big Science: Also in today's Science section of the NYTimes, there's another story on a new, 2.7 billion dollar project that will track some 100,000 children from birth all the way up to their 21st birthday.

A desi libertarian party?

While searching for something else, Animesh finds an outfit called Jago Party which, from what appears on the first page, takes a hard line against "the corrupt and rapist" [Hang them!] and reservations [they "are only for trains!"]. When you take a look inside, you get economic libertarianism ["an ideal economic system should promote pursuit of self-interest by all individuals"] combined with an enthusiasm for a police state ["Death sentence for terrorism, corruption, murder & rape. Court judgment in three months"].

Scary stuff!

But it didn't scare Animesh, who wrote to these folks about their free-market ideology, and gets into a spirited conversation over e-mail with one of the party functionaries. And he gets an invitation to join the party!

Here's a bad sign: Jago's a party in a hurry. Well before building a grassroots organization (with real work in the real world), it has gone ahead and fielded a bunch of candidates in the Rajasthan Assembly elections. It reminds me of two other parties which have gone nowhere (or self-destructed) after making a splash in their early days. Going by these sad precedents, I expect Jago will not survive with its present extremist orientation for more than two years.

Links: US elections edition

1. Anant wonders what's with the Indian blogosphere and the US election.

2. Pipa wants Sarah Palin to read Alison Davis's article: Fruit Fly Research Illuminates Human Health (2000).

3. Jane Mayer: The Insiders: How John McCain came to pick Sarah Palin.

4. Rahul catches a great video: Obama-McCain dance-off.

5. Lekhni on the Presidential Elections: "And then I wonder / if this is how he is now / when he is not even a citizen / how much worse / it would be when he / actually gets to vote?"

Bonus: George W. Bush endorses John McCain and Sarah Palin. On Saturday Night Live! Watch it:

Indian Science Congress: A waste of time?

Over at Lab Rats, Mint science reporter Jacob Koshy asks: Is the Indian Science Congress "a waste of time"? He links to this Indian Express story which quotes Prof. C.N.R. Rao (Scientific Adviser to the Prime Minister) as saying, "“I am sorry to say so but the Science Congress has become more of a mela. ... I have become frustrated with it. I have my research to attend to and decided to stay away.”

I have never been to the ISC, but I know a few people who have. Here are some impressions (please add your perspectives in the comments):

1. ISC lacks focus. Take, for example, ISC-2008 [pdf] held in Visakhapatnam. Its scientific agenda runs from transport systems to traditional and complimentary [sic] medicine to nanotechnology to linkages with social sciences to training the trainers. With such a broad coverage, you are lucky to find a few scientists whose work is of some relevance to yours. When travel money is so scarce, you would rather go to more focused conferences in your own field.

2. It lacks focus in other ways, too. It tries to serve too many constituencies: politicians, researchers, college teachers, school teachers, and all kinds of students (graduate, undergraduate, high school, and in some cases, even primary school). I'm not even including journalists and the general public. There's no way it can please everyone; I get the impression that it manages piss everyone off!

3. Since the Prime Minister attends this event (and makes a keynote speech), it attracts a whole bunch of science administrators and politicians. Their presence, in turn, attracts a bigger bunch of toadies people whose primary interest is in being seen in the company of biggies at the ISC. Science gets sidelined.

4. ISC does have a few scientifically focused sessions, put together by leading scientists who lean on their friends to come and present their work. But these sessions are a sideshow.

5. All of which are different ways of saying ISC privileges politicians -- of the regular kind and of the science kind -- over scientists and science. The conference organizers' primary interest is in pleasing the former. In the process, scientists get slighted -- for example, their lectures take place not in the posh plenary auditorium, but in shabby halls with poor audiovisual facilities -- and come away with strong feelings of disgust.

ISC does serve a useful function: ceremony and celebration. It's a platform for recognizing scientists through awards and prizes. But even this crucial function is not being done well. Consider, for example, the India Science Prize, which is like a science Bharat Ratna with cash. Given the prestige associated with it, you might think that this Prize would be taken seriously. Well, you would be wrong: the first Prize went to Prof. C.N.R. Rao in 2004; and then, um, it went into a coma!

Bottomline: It's true that many serious scientists avoid going to the ISC. Even those who do go, do so because of pressure from administrators or because they are among the prize-winners. Over the years, I think even the politicians have caught on to the growing irrelevance of the ISC; the PM's participation appears half-hearted. I cannot recall any major science policy speech made at the ISC in the past decade.

Links ...

1. Michael Nielsen looks at the most remarkable graph in the history of sport to show why Don Bradman is so truly, so fantastically special. Here's something from the comments thread:

   Bradman was famously interviewed in 1980, and asked how he thought he’d perform against contempoary opposition.

   “Oh, I reckon I’d average 50 or 60″, he replied.

   “But you averaged nearly a hundred in your career, and you played against some of the best bowlers in history!” said the reporter.

   “Yeah,” said Bradman, “But you’ve got to remember I’m 72 years old now.”

   Nielsen has another interesting post on the pre-history of the World Wide Web:

   "Berners-Lee didn’t succeed because CERN was doing fundamental research. He succeeded in spite of it."

2. Rahul has a wonderful tribute to his doctoral thesis adviser, Prof. Sriram Sastry, who has won the 2009 2009 Lars Onsager Prize awarded by the American Physical Society.

3. Malcolm Gladwell on University of Chicago economist David Galenson's work on two kinds of genius: Why do we equate genius with precocity?

4. John Hawks on the utility of theoretical models in biology, excerpting six key ideas from a book by Peter Turchin.

5. Doug Natelson: What's interesting about condensed matter physics?

6. Sunil Mukhi, his father, and a budding passion for rock and roll.

7. Finally, a wicked cartoon from XKCD.

Fun links ...

Perils of Web 2.0: Virtual hubby gets murdered in Second Life. [via Fabio Rojas].

Very quick advice for students applying to graduate school.

Gawker on a guy in New York "who ... [managed] to cultivate the Hindu God Ganesha in his backyard."

From the folks who gave us this novel and funny version of "12 Days of Christmas" two yeas ago, we now get Single girls, single girls set to the tune of "Jingle bells, jingle bells." While not novel (by definition), it's also not as funny as the first one. [Link via Neha].

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At some level, it could be a bit of fun to watch an Ayn Rand worshipper squirm -- during Congressional testimony, no less! But, on balance, I think disgust overwhelms shadenfreude.

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On the other hand, this (in praise of white racism, by Ta-Nehisi Coates), and this (on the socialist conspiracy to destroy capitalism, by Barbara Ehrenreich; via Cosma Shalizi and Henry Farrell) are great fun.

Links ...

1. Doctorate degree at the age of 91. Wow!

2. Kenneth Chang: Man Who Set Stage for a Nobel Now Lives a Life Outside Science [Thanks to Pipa for the link].

3. Dan Ariely: Who enjoys humor more? conservatives or liberals?. Here's one of the jokes used in this academic study:

   Husband: When I get mad at you, you never fight back. How do you control your anger?

   Wife: I clean the toilet bowl.

   Husband: How does that help?

   Wife: I use your toothbrush.

4. Michael North: Oxbridge interviews: expect the unexpected. Don't be fazed by weird questions - they're there for a reason. [Her's an example: "Would you rather be a novel or a poem?"]

5. Blue: Phone-banking for Obama: The undecided voter.

PanIIT-2008: One day conference on Women in Science and Technology

Women in Science and Technology (WIST) is the title of a day-long event at the PanIIT-2008 this December. [Thanks to Prof. Neelima Gupte, Department of Physics at IIT-M, for the alert].

I knew about a session devoted to attracting women to technical fields (and I did mention this in passing in a previous post), but I was unaware that the session is a part of a bigger event that's going to run for an entire day.

Prof. Gupte and her colleagues have lined up a very impressive list of speakers. I was very happy to see quite a few familiar names in the list: Prof. Rohini Godbole (High Energy Physics, IISc), Prof. Chanda J. Jog (Physics and Astronomy, IISc), Prof. Rama Govindarajan (Engineering Mechanics, JNCASR), Prof. Shobhana Narasimhan (Theoretical Sciences, JNCASR), and Prof. Charusita Chakravarty (Chemistry, IITD).

* * *

Interestingly, a part of the day-long event will be devoted to under-representation of women in the IITs among both students and faculty. As it happens, I have expressed my strongly held view that JEE has a bias against women. Very briefly, here's the argument: even though women do as well as (or even better than) men in higher secondary exams, they don't manage to get through JEE in large numbres. This is because JEE's so freaking tough that it requires intensive coaching to which women do not have easy access. For example, the famed Bansal classes in Kota, Rajasthan, has a student body in which women form just 13 percent. Thus, I don't expect any improvement in women's enrollment in the IITs unless JEE's goal is re-oriented towards standardizing across India's school education boards.

* * *

Coming back to WIST, the program looks very promising. It'll be great if someone could blog about these events. If you are attending but don't wish to blog about it, perhaps you could e-mail me with your report, views and/or impressions?

Colin Powell redeems himself

Some 5+ years after mouthing all those lies to the world (at least to the UN) for a horrible war in Iraq, Colin Powell redeems himself. Not (just) because he endorses Barack Obama, but because of this:

I'm also troubled by, not what Sen. McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said, such things as, "Well, you that know Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is: What if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some 7-year-old Muslim American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, "He's a Muslim and he might be associated with terrorists." This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

Lessig calls his monologue "the most important, most profound, more powerfully argued 7 minutes of this campaign."

Quite a few bloggers that I respect have picked up on this already: Rahul, Swarup, and Dilip.

Immediately after he said the stuff quoted above, Powell talks about a picture that he saw in a recent photo essay. You can see that picture here.

Loser?

Let me be frank: In the blogospheric comments about Paul Krugman's Nobel, this made me wince:

Who are the big losers? Avinash Dixit and Elhanan Helpman and Maurice Obstfeld have to feel their chances for the prize went down significantly. [Bold emphasis added by me]

And this one, too:

Krugman wins Nobel, 2 desis lose it. [Bold emphasis added by me]

Avinash Dixit is one of the two desis (Jagdish Bhagwati is the other).

Now, go read this enthusiastic, warm, and very classy tribute by Avinash Dixit, Krugman's colleague at Princeton and current President of the American Economic Asoociation:

I concluded my appreciation of Paul Krugman’s research on the occasion of his winning the Clark Medal by saying: “I am sure the Clark Medal is but one milestone of many to come in his career.” Now I can write this short article of continued appreciation on the occasion of his winning the Nobel Prize with the confidence and delight of a man whose forecast has come true.

The main new theme in Paul Krugman’s scientific contributions since the Clark Medal is of course the fulfilment of what was then a promising start of research on economic geography. This work has now transformed that subject from a somewhat arcane sideline into a flourishing research field.

Here's another quote from Dixit's post:

Krugman was the undisputed leader of the group that took on this task. To quote and paraphrase Stephen Jay Gould (The Flamingo’s Smile, pp. 335, 345), Krugman has won his just reputation because he grasped the full implication of the ideas that predecessors had expressed with little appreciation of their revolutionary power. [...]

And, another:

...[M]y delight at the recognition of the scientific achievements of this friend and colleague of over three decades is great. In fact it is doubled by the joy of my having played a part in creating the tools that are proving their worth – models of monopolistic competition and product diversity, and of entry deterrence.

Avinash Dixit may not have won a Nobel. But he's got great grace, style and class! Too bad there's no Nobel for these wonderful qualities.

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The Sepia Mutiny post has an update on Jagdish Bhagwati -- the other desi who it claimed lost the Nobel. Here's he is, in NYTimes:

“Lots of people are saying to me, ‘Why didn’t you get it?’” said Jagdish Bhagwati, an economics professor at Columbia who helped Mr. Krugman publish one of his seminal papers when other academics thought it was too simple to be true. “Given the fact that I didn’t get it, this is the next best thing.”

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This (not winning = losing) equation may work in sports where winning and losing depends directly on your own moves, and your own counter-moves against your opponent's moves. In the context of a prize, it just doesn't make sense, because the prize depends not just on what you do on the field, but (really) on the perceptions of a bunch of dudes and dudettes about your work's worth and importance. I have seen a lot of (real) losers who perceive an intentional insult when a jury selects someone else for a prize/award they covet. These people have a lot to learn from Prof. Avinash Dixit.

Restructuring UG programs in the sciences

The three science academies of the country have issued a position paper entitled Restructuring Post-School Science Teaching Programmes (pdf, 770 kB). The most far-reaching, and definitely the most important among its recommendations is the creation of a four-year BS program in the sciences. In fact, the paper follows up on the discussion meeting in May 2008 on this very topic.

But there are several other recommendations as well, which explicitly take into account the need for diverse and flexible undergraduate programs in science. Thus, the paper recommends retaining the current 3-year BSc + 2-year MSc model, but suggests that "these courses ... be restructured to provide integrated learning, rather than making the students specialise too early." It also has two other new and noteworthy recommendations which will provide interesting options for 3-year BSc graduates: (a) a 2-year professional degree (BTech) option, and (b) vocational courses in such job-oriented fields such as bio-medical lab techniques and computer applications.

The BTech option is a rehash of a program that IISc used to run up until the late sixties! [Interestingly, this program was converted into a 3-year BE degree program, which was replaced with a 4-yaer 'integrated' ME program, which died in 2000!]

I guess the target audience of this position paper is the UGC. But can UGC take a decision as important as the creation of a 4-year BS program (which, presumably, will be taught, at least in the beginning, in IISERs and Central universities) just in the sciences? Wouldn't it want to extend this program to humanities and social sciences?

Let me end this post with an excerpt that highlights the limitations of the current system, and articulates the need for a new regime:

The rigid bifurcation insisted upon at the first non-professional science degree course (B.Sc.), is severely limiting the competence of our country’s science graduates in the current global scenario of interdisciplinarity. An extreme of this compartmentalized education is the introduction of specialized courses like those in biotechnology, genetics, bioinformatics, nanotechnology etc., at B.Sc. level. In most of these programmes, the students hardly learn the basic science part and thus remain incompetent for basic as well as technological applications.

It is clear that the contemporary cutting edge questions in life sciences cannot be solved without knowing the concepts, tools and techniques employed by professional physicists and chemists and without developing adequate computational and mathematical skills. It becomes extremely difficult to demarcate specific subject boundaries in many emerging areas of science and technology, like those in smart materials, nanomaterials, micro (molecular) electronics, biotechnologies, biosensors, etc,. More broadly, it is difficult to distinguish between electronics and physics, materials science and chemistry, and between biology and biomaterials. Without understanding the basics of one field, it is no longer possible to exploit the possibilities offered by another. One of the major reasons for the relative poor innovative R&D activity in the country indeed is the lack of in-depth interdisciplinary teaching and the required level of flexibility in moving from one discipline to another.

Thanks to my colleague Prof. Ranganathan for alerting me about the position paper.