Though fury at this barbarism, this violation of all things human pulses within me I earnestly hope our society does not take the path of unthinking revenge or constructing an ever more absurd and clumsy security apparatus. Fiery revenge and simplistic security measures have been tried and found wanting over the years as responses to terrorism (I hope India can learn from America's mistakes here). This is not to question resolve or diminish revenge. Justice demands that those who are guilty should be punished, but do we even know who that is?

Reports (though the truth remains enrobed in fog) seem to be coming of a faction within the Pakistani security apparatus
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Arrested_terrorist_says_gang_hoped_to_get_away/articleshow/3771598.cms

These do seem to have been something very close to enemy soldiers, supplied and trained by a components of foreign government. And multiple signs indicate that the democratically elected components of this government were not aware; and do not support this barbarity. Pakistan has always been a state divided along multiple axis. It is not a single actor and cannot be treated as such.

So can we perhaps exercise patience? Talk to the parts of Pakistan amenable to reason, without sacrificing one iota of resolve. This is a state besieged at all levels: militarily from the north, financially, culturally, spiritually. Working with others; careful yet intense pressure can be applied for them to break down the machinery of Jihad that breeds within. If all else fails, other means can perhaps be considered. But patience cannot hurt here, additional knowledge cannot hurt. Dialogue does not imply a lack courage or passion and a rapier is deadlier than a bludgeon.

just some thoughts

Really enjoyed this IAS sponsered arxiv paper/debate by three physicists (Piet Hut, Mark Alford & Max Tegmark). 
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/physics/pdf/0510/0510188v2.pdf

Its a discussion of Roger Penrose's circular triangle:
or "math arises from the mind, mind arises from matter, and matter can be explained in terms of math"

The three authors are divided up into three schools: Fundamentalist, Secular, and Mystic who present independant versions of their triangle then debate. 

An extended version of the fundamentalist's (Max Tegmark of MIT) thesis can be found here where he attempts to construct a 'radically platonist' notion of a multiverse built entirely on math and consisting only of universes which are godel complete and computable.  Not sure I agree
with it, but I found it an interesting construction
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0704/0704.0646v2.pdf

Personally I find the idea of a multiverse a little suspect to be honest.  Its not that its not a cool idea, or that its necessarily false.  The process that was used to arrive at my main hangup, its not that we have anything resembling physical evidence, instead its that certain theories in physics work smoothly with certain categories of multiverses (string theory, etc).   I'm of the opinion that applying occam's razor here necessitates that we must either a. eliminate all simpler possiblities or b. find some empirical clues of alternate universes before jumping off in that direction.

That said I do think there are very far reaching implications of Godels work as well as later work done in information theory on oracle's, computability, etc and it is nice to see some physicists acknowledging that.

Very interesting debate though, and I'd say fairly accessible outside the immediate domain.

Inside Gate, India’s Good Life; Outside, the Slums

This New York Times article really depressed me.  Its written about Gurgaon but the same thing is happening in Bangalore.   Huge self contained gated enclaves functioning almost as city states, rimmed by slums. 

Now I actually do not blame people for wanting this.  People want consistant power, carefully maintained lawns and infrastructure, security, etc.  Its human and natural, some people in India have wealth.  Theres one of these gated communities in Bangalore that is almost an exact replica of California suburbia, quite surreal really.  But I can understand the attraction.  The government of India is either can't or won't manage to provide a lot of basic services in a reasonable way and so people are going to turn to private enterprise.  Before, highly educated Indians would simply go to those California suburbs directly... now they replicate it at home.   So be it.

What gets me upset is not the community, or even the gate per se.  Its whats outside.
Its one thing to have misery among deprivation, that is comprehensible at least.  But to have people living in these conditions amidst an economic boom?  Alongside so much wealth, growth and prosperity?   It strikes at our sense of justice and equality.  It cries out.

Someone told me recently as part of a discussion on rural health "There will always be two Indias".   For a moment I wondered, is this just the way of things?    The British, the Moghuls, countless Maharajas, inequality does seem to have been around for a long time in India.  Perhaps this is why people are so willing to tolerate this latest edition (well except the Maoists in the hills, who should not be ignored).  But then I remembered the Indus Valley Civilization.

There was a fantastic series of articles on the latest research on the Indus Valley Civilization in the latest issue of Science AAAS
(sadly not availible to non-subscribers  this page seems pretty decent though)  The latest archeological studies have revealed more detail, but do not seem to have changed the core picture.  An extraodinarily advanced society of exquisitely planned roads and the worlds first urban sanitation system.  A society without the gaudy temples and palaces of parallel ancient civilization, it instead seems to have invested in roads, sewage, and huge public spaces.  There do seem to have been the somewhat wealthy in this ancient civilization of traders, they were buried within additional beads and so forth.  Some houses were slightly bigger than others, the Science article reports.  Ok, we get it, it was still a civilization of human beings... not aliens ;)  But what great human beings!

The connection between modern Indian civilization and this civilization is complex and disputed.  I personally do not feel that this is a particularly useful argument to have.

What matters is they were here, they are part of our heritage, and they were a truly great people.    I think in many ways legacy is something a people/culture can choose.  A model exists for a humanistic, egalitarian, technological advanced, and secular India.   Why not hold it up high? 

Realities will not change in a moment.  Dreams do not put food on peoples tables or get children the antibiotics they need.  But at least they are a beginning.  At least they give us a common goal.  At least they let us believe that what is before us is not all that can ever be.

Obama has a definite flair with words and oratory, and there exists a critique of his candidacy that thats all thats really going on.  The other thing I've run into is the critique that he's trying to have it both ways: lofty rhetoric, but calculated politics.  In an ideal world his recent speech on race should have destroyed these doubts for good, that doesn't seem to have happened however (though it may have brought Richardson over:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y62jhStuawA

One example that truly irritated
me was the harping on Obama's line about his grandmother being afraid of young black men, as though this represented some sort of calling out or family betrayal.  I actually remembered the line from the book  "Dreams of my Father".   There he is discussing his disjointed feelings about being a young black man (an entity that is viewed with a certain level of distrust in much of America) being raced by his white grandparents...  and how to resolve that essential dichotomy.   Race is a complex and emotion laden quality in America (and India as well quite frankly) and deserves better than media driven driven soundbitism.

What is unique and exciting about Obama, in my opinion, is not necessarily his charisma, his life experience, his name, his particular political leanings, or even his race.  Rather its the nuance and appreciation for the complexity of real world problems he seems to have.   I actually disagree with quite a lot of his political views, but am personally beginning to believe that issue driven politics is inadequate and frequently dangerous.

Reading his two books (Dreams of my Father and the Audacity of Hope) what struck me the most was the fact that he seemed to genuinely spend time and effort considering complex problems and honestly admit that he didn't know exactly where the truth lies.  The United States (and in many ways the rest of the world as well) seems to be entering a phase of history in which simple truths are just not good enough. The problems we face are complex, and cut across traditional boundaries. 

Its become increasingly apparent, I believe, that Iraq is not just a military engagement its also a cultural, religious, economic, and ethnic nexus and minefield. A genuine solution there will require a systems level understanding of all of these components.  To me the Bush administrations failure was not necessarily one of military execution... but rather a failure of imagination and scope.  The idea that soldiers can go into a place, defeat an enemy and the rest will essentially just sort it out.  

Other global problems: global warming, an increasingly baroque and possibly unhinged financial system, religious extremism in its many manifestations are similarly complex, multifaceted, and morally ambiguous.  (will try to go into greater detail/back up that statement in a bit)

http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2007/05/the_china_experiment.php
An interesting article from Seed on China's plan's to go green.  It seems like
some positive steps are being made, which is quite frankly good news for the entire planet.
(with China passing the US in greenhouse gas emissions this year, its about time!)

On the flipside the chinese may be jumping in rather fast on some of this stuff as this quote from the article illustrates:
For the Olympics, a designated weather modification office will reduce air and ground pollution before the Games by shooting rockets filled with silver iodide into the sky to make rain. Beijing's Science and Technology Department has been experimenting with hormone therapy and crossbreeding to produce flowers that can withstand a Beijing August. "I'm sure that during those three weeks it will be crystal-clear in Beijing," energy analyst Brock says. "They're playing with all sorts of things."

Ah well, at least we're starting to see something...

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20040501faessay83307/phillip-longman/the-global-baby-bust.html

A fascinating (though long) article on the massive global decline in fertility rates.
A couple interesting facts from the article:
1. Mexico will be older than the US by 2050
2. In addition the worlds overall fertility rate may be below the replacement level by that point.
3. Japan's population peaked in 2005 and is about to crash.
4. The greatest recent fertility declinces have been in the Middle East (I found this very surprising)

How populations cope with ever smaller workforces and ever greater numbers of elderly will
not be a straightforward thing.  The author also contends (with some evidence) that aging populations tend to be much less entrepeneurial and innovative than younger populations.

 On the bright side: the author suggests that the dramatic aging could also coincide with a fall in extremism and violence as middle aged societies tend to be more concerned with the immediate and the practical

http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/

Nature (probably the most reputed scientific journal there is) has just started a blog on climate change and its very nicely done.

http://www.slate.com/id/2164996/

Fascinating Slate article on the 5 biggest neuroscience developments of the year.  I've been tracking some of this, but put together an astonishing and in many ways terrifying picture emerges.  Moving through the article:

1. "Scientists in Germany used pattern recognition software to predict, from functional magnetic resonance imaging of people's brainw hether each person had secretly decided to add or subtract two numbers he was looking at. The computer correctly predicted the decision 71 percent of the time "
This isn't a huge deal yet.  fMRI is not really a mature technology and numbers would probably be much lower outside lab conditions, in addition this is a much simpler problem than some sort of general mind reading.  This is a rapidly improving field however and my suspicion is that within a decade a certain level of mind reading will be technologically possible.  How we resolve this with issues of privacy, how authoritarian regimes use this, strikes me as a terribly intricate ethical problem.

2. "Six people with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex were presented with moral dilemmas (e.g., would you smother a baby to prevent bad guys from finding and killing people in hiding) and were found to be two to three times more willing to kill than people without brain damage"
To what degree is good and evil simply a product of brain chemistry?  Can 'evil' individuals be 'fixed'.  Can normal people be made 'better'?  What else can be altered?  We already use drugs to alter happiness levels, what about enthusiasm, creativity, rebeliousness vs. conformity, discipline, the list goes on.  Who controls things like this? Governments, parents, individuals, communities, teachers?  Do we create limits on how far we change people?  What happens when we gain the ability to change people beyond the limits of what we understand as human?  i.e. not just better, faster, stronger... but happier, more disciplined, or even more naturally altruistic? 

3. Sexual Orientation
Can different sexual orientations be 'cured' in the womb.  I find it surprising, though not astonishing that some conservatives are already thinking of technology along those lines and see it as something good.  Should parents be allowed this 'choice' (I think it will be very interesting to see how party lines fall on this issue as it places a great deal of cognitive dissonance on traditional views).  Is this akin to allowing some sort of genocide? 

4. The discovery of vegetative consciousness.
I don't have much to say here other than that it makes doctor assisted suicide quite a bit trickier. 

5. The progress of artificial intelligence
I'm taking more of a wait and see attitude on this.  If it happens we'll all have to deal with
it, but all AI research seems to have done is shown us that some problems we thought were very hard aren't (i.e. Chess) and some we consider trivial (listening to someone speak, cooking, walking around) are incredibly tricky.  Personally I think real AI is a while away.

Oh and if you really want to dive into neuroscience, theres a special issue in Slate on the brain here: http://www.slate.com/id/2165001/
very nice roundup of whats going on.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/15/opinion/web-0415edgreen-full.php

Above is quite a nice (if a bit long) article by Thomas Friedman in the International Herald Tribune about his vision of a new green ideology.  Its well written and integrative, addressing the petrodollars aspect of energy politics as well as the China problem.