Take Back The Street

NEW DELHI — On blogs, Facebook and Twitter last month, hundreds of women across India shared their experiences as “Action Heroes” — facing up to sexual harassment on this country’s sometimes terrifying streets. The event organized by Blank Noise, a community art project that fights the abuse of women in public spaces, focused fresh attention on “eve teasing” — the common euphemism for the hostility and violence women experience on the streets in large parts of India, especially in the more patriarchal north.
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In 2006, the then-fledgling Blank Noise, run by Jasmeen Patheja, a young artist, had invited Indian women to emulate the Take Back the Night marches women have staged in other parts of the world to assert their right to walk in public areas without fear. A Reclaim the Night march had been held in 1978 in Bombay, now known as Mumbai, in protest of the rape of a woman on the street, but not repeated. And so, 28 years later, here in the Indian capital, a small group of women went out for a walk at 10 p.m.

Two police vans stood by to ensure their safety, for this was not a “normal” thing to do. In northern India, women don’t step out of their homes for a stroll once it gets dark. It’s not safe. It could get one harassed or molested or raped.

“Blank Noise started as an art project,” Ms. Patheja said recently. “I was experiencing street sexual violence every day, and if not every day it was the threat of it that kept me on guard, hyper and alert. Moreover, it wasn’t being taken seriously by those around me — ‘It happens,’ ‘There’s nothing you can do about it,’ ‘It’s only teasing.”’

Since that early, tentative action in 2006, Blank Noise has grown, drawing in women from across India. From Bangalore, where in 2009 a rightist Hindu party attacked “loose” women for daring to go out to pubs; from Mumbai, rocked in 2007 by a mob assault on two women who had talked back to a group of men who were harassing them; from smaller cities like Lucknow and Patna, where “eve teasing” is a way of reinforcing the message that women are not meant to be in public spaces.

Ms. Patheja’s primary weapon is her blog. In a more rural part of northern India, another woman picked up the humble jhadu, the broom found in every Indian household.

Sampath Pal Devi grew up in Bundelkhand in Uttar Pradesh and, like many of the women in her community, married young — at 12. She witnessed violence against women as an everyday part of life. It was unsafe for women to go to the outdoor bathrooms at night for fear of assault. Domestic violence and beatings were common. At the age of 20, Ms. Sampath Pal fought back, organizing a few women armed with brooms to thrash a notorious wife-beater.

Now in her 40s, she runs the Gulabi Gang. “This country is ruled by men,” she said in her asthma-roughened voice. “No use asking them for help. We women must fight our own battles ourselves.”

Gulabi means “pink” and refers to the color of the saris Ms. Sampath Pal and her band of women wear. The movement has grown from that tiny core of four concerned women to a movement that covers much of rural Uttar Pradesh, one of the most conservative states in India. The brooms have evolved into canes. The Gulabi Gang has thrashed recalcitrant officials and police officers who wouldn’t register cases of domestic violence. It also runs vocational centers that offer practical ways of employment and empowerment for women.

If pink was simply a personal preference of Ms. Sampath Pal, the color was a more pointed choice for Nisha Susan, a journalist in her 30s who started the Pink Chaddi movement. Last year, after Sri Ram Sene, a rightist Hindu party, attacked women in pubs, Ms. Susan began a Facebook group, and the Pink Chaddi movement was born.

Chaddi is slang for underwear, but also for rightist hard-liners. Ms. Susan invited women to send Pramod Muthalik, the head of Sri Ram Sene, pink underwear in protest of his party’s actions and its plans to hold rallies on Valentine’s Day, which it condemns as a foreign holiday that encourages men and women to express their affection in an openly “un-Indian” fashion.

Chaddis poured in from across the country, a deluge of underwear in fuchsia, mauve and rose that forced the hard-liners to cancel their rallies and stop the attacks on women.

Something familiar emerges in the stories the women share, regardless of their ages or class backgrounds. All have experienced fear on the streets, fear when traveling alone. Few use the term “eve teasing” when discussing their own experiences; nothing about sexual harassment has ever felt like “teasing” to them.

This autumn, one of India’s most respected photographers, Gauri Gill, will coordinate an exhibit and Web site called “Transportraits: Women and Mobility in the City.” Working with Jagori, an organization that has drawn up maps of Delhi and other cities marking areas that are safe or dangerous for women, Ms. Gill is asking both men and women to send in photographs and testimonies of their experiences on the streets.

Like most women who have traveled extensively in India, Ms. Gill has experienced her fair share of harassment, even assault.

“We just bury our experiences, we learn how to deal,” she said. “When they asked me to curate this, I thought, I don’t want to be too didactic.”

Instead, she is looking for a more interesting way to tell these collective stories.

“Whatever we’ve gone through, we are relatively privileged because we can speak about it,” she said. “There are so many who don’t have the confidence, or the ability, to even register protest or speak out.”

For Ms. Patheja, the artist behind Blank Noise, breaking the silence has been healing, even empowering.

“Today I think I am far less angry, or aggressive towards the issue, yet am unapologetic about my presence on the street,” she said.

In India, thousands of women like her are becoming Action Heroes. We may not yet be ready to take back the night. But we are making a start on taking back the street.

From the NYT

Iran's professors protest the aggression on students by the regime

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/world/middleeast/05iran.html?hp

NYT's on how Preschoolers learn

Many 4-year-olds cannot count up to their own age when they arrive at preschool, and those at the Stanley M. Makowski Early Childhood Center are hardly prodigies. Most live in this city’s poorer districts and begin their academic life well behind the curve.

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Ryan Collerd for The New York Times

Students at the Stanley M. Makowski Early Childhood Center get an early introduction to math concepts.

Brain Power

Wired for Math

For all that scientists have studied it, the brain remains the most complex and mysterious human organ.

This is the sixth article in a series on some of the insights from the latest research.

Previous Articles in the Series »

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Ryan Collerd for The New York Times

Melissa Hitzges, a teacher at the Stanley M. Makowski Early Childhood Center, working with her students to help them recognize patterns.

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But there they were on a recent Wednesday morning, three months into the school year, counting up to seven and higher, even doing some elementary addition and subtraction. At recess, one boy, Joshua, used a pointer to illustrate a math concept known as cardinality, by completing place settings on a whiteboard.

“You just put one plate there, and one there, and one here,” he explained, stepping aside as two other students ambled by, one wearing a pair of clown pants as a headscarf. “That’s it. See?”

For much of the last century, educators and many scientists believed that children could not learn math at all before the age of five, that their brains simply were not ready.

But recent research has turned that assumption on its head — that, and a host of other conventional wisdom about geometry, reading, language and self-control in class. The findings, mostly from a branch of research called cognitive neuroscience, are helping to clarify when young brains are best able to grasp fundamental concepts.

In one recent study, for instance, researchers found that most entering preschoolers could perform rudimentary division, by distributing candies among two or three play animals. In another, scientists found that the brain’s ability to link letter combinations with sounds may not be fully developed until age 11 — much later than many have assumed.

The teaching of basic academic skills, until now largely the realm of tradition and guesswork, is giving way to approaches based on cognitive science. In several cities, including Boston, Washington and Nashville, schools have been experimenting with new curriculums to improve math skills in preschoolers. In others, teachers have used techniques developed by brain scientists to help children overcome dyslexia.

And schools in about a dozen states have begun to use a program intended to accelerate the development of young students’ frontal lobes, improving self-control in class.

“Teaching is an ancient craft, and yet we really have had no idea how it affected the developing brain,” said Kurt Fischer, director of the Mind, Brain and Education program at Harvard. “Well, that is beginning to change, and for the first time we are seeing the fields of brain science and education work together.”

This relationship is new and still awkward, experts say, and there is more hyperbole than evidence surrounding many “brain-based” commercial products on the market. But there are others, like an early math program taught in Buffalo schools, that have a track record. If these and similar efforts find traction in schools, experts say, they could transform teaching from the bottom up — giving the ancient craft a modern scientific compass.

Beyond Counting

In a typical preschool class, children do very little math. They may practice counting, and occasionally look at books about numbers, but that is about it. Many classes devote mere minutes a day to math instruction or no time at all, recent studies have found — far less than most children can handle, and not nearly enough to prepare those who, deprived of math-related games at home, quickly fall behind in kindergarten.

“Once that happens, it can be very hard to catch up,” said Julie Sarama, a researcher in the graduate school of education at the University at Buffalo who, with her colleague and husband, Doug Clements, a professor in the same department, developed a program called Building Blocks to enrich early math education.

“They decide they’re no good at math — ‘I’m not a math person,’ they say — and pretty soon the school agrees, the parents agree,” Dr. Clements said.

“Everyone agrees.”

In a Building Blocks classroom, numbers are in artwork, on computer games and in lessons, sharing equal time with letters. Like “Sesame Street,” Building Blocks has children play creative counting games; but it also focuses on other number skills, including cardinality (how many objects are in a set) and one-to-one correspondence (matching groups of objects, like cups and saucers). Teachers can tailor the Building Block lesson to a student’s individual ability.

On a recent Wednesday afternoon at the Makowski center, Buffalo’s Public School 99, Pat Andzel asked her preschool class a question:

“How many did you count?”

She had drilled them on the number seven. She held up a sign with “7” and asked her students what number they saw (“seven!”); had the group jump seven times, counting; then had them touch their nose seven times. As the class finished counting seven objects on a poster, she asked again:

“How many?”

Dreams Tuneups for the brain

Nyt has an interesting article about the usefulness of dreams
MIND
A Dream Interpretation: Tuneups for the Brain

By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: November 9, 2009
It’s snowing heavily, and everyone in the backyard is in a swimsuit, at some kind of party: Mom, Dad, the high school principal, there’s even an ex-girlfriend. And is that Elvis, over by the piñata?


Dreams are so rich and have such an authentic feeling that scientists have long assumed they must have a crucial psychological purpose. To Freud, dreaming provided a playground for the unconscious mind; to Jung, it was a stage where the psyche’s archetypes acted out primal themes. Newer theories hold that dreams help the brain to consolidate emotional memories or to work though current problems, like divorce and work frustrations.

Yet what if the primary purpose of dreaming isn’t psychological at all?

In a paper published last month in the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Dr. J. Allan Hobson, a psychiatrist and longtime sleep researcher at Harvard, argues that the main function of rapid-eye-movement sleep, or REM, when most dreaming occurs, is physiological. The brain is warming its circuits, anticipating the sights and sounds and emotions of waking.

“It helps explain a lot of things, like why people forget so many dreams,” Dr. Hobson said in an interview. “It’s like jogging; the body doesn’t remember every step, but it knows it has exercised. It has been tuned up. It’s the same idea here: dreams are tuning the mind for conscious awareness.”

Drawing on work of his own and others, Dr. Hobson argues that dreaming is a parallel state of consciousness that is continually running but normally suppressed during waking. The idea is a prominent example of how neuroscience is altering assumptions about everyday (or every-night) brain functions.

“Most people who have studied dreams start out with some predetermined psychological ideas and try to make dreaming fit those,” said Dr. Mark Mahowald, a neurologist who is director of the sleep disorders program at Hennepin County Medical Center, in Minneapolis. “What I like about this new paper is that he doesn’t make any assumptions about what dreaming is doing.”

The paper has already stirred controversy and discussion among Freudians, therapists and other researchers, including neuroscientists. Dr. Rodolfo Llinás, a neurologist and physiologist at New York University, called Dr. Hobson’s reasoning impressive but said it was not the only physiological interpretation of dreams.

“I argue that dreaming is not a parallel state but that it is consciousness itself, in the absence of input from the senses,” said Dr. Llinás, who makes the case in the book “I of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self” (M.I.T., 2001). Once people are awake, he argued, their brain essentially revises its dream images to match what it sees, hears and feels — the dreams are “corrected” by the senses.

These novel ideas about dreaming are based partly on basic findings about REM sleep. In evolutionary terms, REM appears to be a recent development; it is detectable in humans and other warm-blooded mammals and birds. And studies suggest that REM makes its appearance very early in life — in the third trimester for humans, well before a developing child has experience or imagery to fill out a dream.

In studies, scientists have found evidence that REM activity helps the brain build neural connections, particularly in its visual areas. The developing fetus may be “seeing” something, in terms of brain activity, long before the eyes ever open — the developing brain drawing on innate, biological models of space and time, like an internal virtual-reality machine. Full-on dreams, in the usual sense of the word, come much later. Their content, in this view, is a kind of crude test run for what the coming day may hold.

None of this is to say that dreams are devoid of meaning. Anyone who can remember a vivid dream knows that at times the strange nighttime scenes reflect real hopes and anxieties: the young teacher who finds himself naked at the lectern; the new mother in front of an empty crib, frantic in her imagined loss.

But people can read almost anything into the dreams that they remember, and they do exactly that. In a recent study of more than 1,000 people, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Harvard found strong biases in the interpretations of dreams. For instance, the participants tended to attach more significance to a negative dream if it was about someone they disliked, and more to a positive dream if it was about a friend.

In fact, research suggests that only about 20 percent of dreams contain people or places that the dreamer has encountered. Most images appear to be unique to a single dream.

Scientists know this because some people have the ability to watch their own dreams as observers, without waking up. This state of consciousness, called lucid dreaming, is itself something a mystery — and a staple of New Age and ancient mystics. But it is a real phenomenon, one in which Dr. Hobson finds strong support for his argument for dreams as a physiological warm-up before waking.

In dozens of studies, researchers have brought people into the laboratory and trained them to dream lucidly. They do this with a variety of techniques, including auto-suggestion as head meets pillow (“I will be aware when I dream; I will observe”) and teaching telltale signs of dreaming (the light switches don’t work; levitation is possible; it is often impossible to scream).

Lucid dreaming occurs during a mixed state of consciousness, sleep researchers say — a heavy dose of REM with a sprinkling of waking awareness. “This is just one kind of mixed state, but there are whole variety of them,” Dr. Mahowald said. Sleepwalking and night terrors, he said, represent mixtures of muscle activation and non-REM sleep. Attacks of narcolepsy reflect an infringement of REM on normal daytime alertness.

In study published in September in the journal Sleep, Ursula Voss of J. W. Goethe-University in Frankfurt led a team that analyzed brain waves during REM sleep, waking and lucid dreaming. It found that lucid dreaming had elements of REM and of waking — most notably in the frontal areas of the brain, which are quiet during normal dreaming. Dr. Hobson was a co-author on the paper.

“You are seeing this split brain in action,” he said. “This tells me that there are these two systems, and that in fact they can be running at the same time.”

Researchers have a way to go before they can confirm or fill out this working hypothesis. But the payoffs could extend beyond a deeper understanding of the sleeping brain. People who struggle with schizophrenia suffer delusions of unknown origin. Dr. Hobson suggests that these flights of imagination may be related to an abnormal activation of a dreaming consciousness. “Let the dreamer awake, and you will see psychosis,” Jung said.

For everyone else, the idea of dreams as a kind of sound check for the brain may bring some comfort, as well. That ominous dream of people gathered on the lawn for some strange party? Probably meaningless.

No reason to scream, even if it were possible.

Indian Economy and Investments booming

Vikas Bajaj discusses the Indian economy and how investing in the Indian economy might lead to an 8 or 9% growth in the economy. But this is causing inflation at 11% and exports in garments and gems are suffering, since Indian prices are no longer competitive.

MUMBAI — Six months ago, it looked as if India was in for a bumpy recession. Factories were laying off workers and construction sites were grinding to a halt as foreign investment slowed to a trickle.

But in the last few months India has hit a gusher, as investors around the world have turned away from the dollar, the global refuge during the crisis, and rediscovered their optimism in the world economy and India’s place in it.

There is palpable optimism here. Major stock indexes have roughly doubled from their March lows. Companies are advertising initial public offerings on television. And articles about bonuses and corporate expansion plans have started replacing news about layoffs and deferred projects on the front pages of newspapers.

Nearly $7 billion more foreign direct investment flowed into India than left the country in the second quarter, from April through June, nearly twice as much as in the previous six months combined.

Including cash invested in the stock and bond markets, India received about $15 billion in foreign investment, the most it has received in any quarter except the last three months of 2007, according to Macquarie Securities.

If the current surge continues — and skeptics doubt that it can — the Indian economy could start growing at 8 to 9 percent a year as early as 2010, far sooner than forecasts by the International Monetary Fund and many independent analysts.

“Clearly after the big shock of last year, things are back on track,” said Surjit S. Bhalla, who runs Oxus Research and Investments, based in New Delhi. “People are seeing the recovery to be lot more robust than what many of the naysayers are saying.”

While many say the good times are here to stay, some analysts worry that the renewed ebullience will be fleeting if global financial markets take another turn down.

Confidence in India’s potential could also falter if the government does not address some long-standing problems, namely, improved infrastructure, investment in education and economic reforms, as it has promised to do to lift hundreds of millions out of poverty.

Another big concern is that the foreign money might re-inflate bubbles in stock and real estate markets. Indian stocks are less than 20 percent shy of their 2008 peak, even though corporate profits and the economy as a whole are growing more slowly now.

“Because we are a fairly large attractor of capital, the possibilities of bubbles building up in sectors like real estate are very real,” said Abheek Barua, chief economist at HDFC Bank, who is nonetheless upbeat about the economy. “It has clearly happened in China and there is some of that sort of problem here, as well.”

For a country that quarantined its economy from the rest of the world for much of the last 60 years, India has increasingly relied on foreign investment in recent years. It has helped bridge the gap between domestic savings and the growing capital needs of the private sector and the government, which is borrowing money to pay for welfare programs and subsidies.

In the India’s fiscal year, which ended in March, growth slowed to 6.7 percent, from 9 percent a year earlier, in part because of lower foreign cash flows. Most analysts estimate the economy will grow more than 6 percent this year, but some like Mr. Bhalla say growth will be as high as 8 percent.

Rising foreign investment should help offset some of the economic impact of erratic monsoon rains. The agricultural sector makes up about 17 percent of India’s economy but sustains more than half its population.

India’s economy lacks some of the handicaps present in other countries. For instance, domestic demand never collapsed to the extent it did in the United States, and yet consumer spending is picking up now. Car sales were up 13 percent in the five months that ended in August, compared with the same period last year. Builders say sales of affordable apartments — priced from $10,000 to $30,000 — are up, too. Even retailers, who were forced to close hundreds of stores last year after overexpanding, are talking about opening new outlets.

Some Western companies are eager to get a piece of this market. Last month, Ford Motor said it would build and sell a new hatchback here. McDonald’s announced that it would open 120 more restaurants. And Baltimore-based T. Rowe Price, according to local news reports, is in talks to buy a stake in an Indian mutual fund firm. T. Rowe Price declined to comment.

At the same time, thanks to strong overseas demand for Indian stocks and bonds, companies here are raising billions of dollars. In a recent initial public offering for Oil India, a government-owned company, demand outstripped available shares by 31 times.

“There is a large amount of liquidity in the world,” said A. Murugappan, executive director at Icici Securities. The money is flowing here, because “people see that India and China are the two growth areas.”

Still, the rising flow of foreign funds poses challenges.

India’s currency has appreciated 11 percent since early March, to 46.13 rupees to the dollar, because of rising demand for rupees and the broad decline in the dollar. That will make Indian garment and jewelry exports less competitive on the world market at a time when those industries are still recovering.

“That is a cause of worry,” Vasant Mehta, chairman of India’s Gem and Jewelry Export Promotion Council, said about the appreciating rupee. “Profit margins are being squeezed, and in such a period we cannot expect to raise prices.”

The governor of the Reserve Bank of India recently said that to control inflation, his central bank might have to raise interest rates before developed countries , where rates are at historic lows. But he said that doing so could encourage overseas investors to move even more money into India, driving the rupee even higher.

And that could be too much of a good thing.

101 Salads for Summer

SUMMER may not be the best time to cook, but it’s certainly among the best times to eat. Toss watermelon and peaches with some ingredients you have lying around already, and you can produce a salad that’s delicious, unusual, fast and perfectly seasonal.

That’s the idea behind the 101 ideas found in this section. In theory, each salad takes 20 minutes or less. Honestly, some may take you a little longer. But most minimize work at the stove and capitalize on the season, when tomatoes, eggplant, herbs, fruit, greens and more are plentiful and excellent.

This last point is important. Not everything needs to be farmers’ market quality, but it’s not too much to expect ripe fruit, fragrant herbs and juicy greens.

Salt, to taste, is a given in all of these recipes. Pepper, too (if I want you to use a lot of pepper, I say so).

Herein, then, are enough salad ideas to tide you over until the weather cools down.

MOSTLY VEGAN SALADS

1. Cube watermelon and combine with tomato chunks, basil and basic vinaigrette. You can substitute peach for the watermelon or the tomato (but not both, O.K.?). You can also add bacon or feta, but there goes the vegan-ness.

2. Mix wedges of tomatoes and peaches, add slivers of red onion, a few red-pepper flakes and cilantro. Dress with olive oil and lime or lemon juice. Astonishing.

3. A nice cucumber salad: Slice cucumbers thin (if they’re fat and old, peel and seed them first), toss with red onions and salt, then let sit for 20 to 60 minutes. Rinse, dry, dress with cider vinegar mixed with Dijon mustard; no oil necessary.

4. Shave raw asparagus stalks with a vegetable peeler. Discard the tough first pass of the peeler — i.e., the peel — but do use the tips, whole. Dress with lemon vinaigrette and coarse salt. (Chopped hard-boiled eggs optional but good.)

5. Grate or very thinly slice Jerusalem artichokes; mix with pitted and chopped oil-cured olives, olive oil, lemon juice and a sprinkling of coarsely ground cumin. Unusual and wonderful.

6. Sichuan slaw: Toss bean sprouts, shredded carrots and celery, minced fresh chili, soy sauce, sesame oil and a bit of sugar. Top with chopped peanuts and chopped basil, mint and/or cilantro. (The full trio is best.)

7. Grate carrots, toast some sunflower seeds, and toss with blueberries, olive oil, lemon juice and plenty of black pepper. Sweet, sour, crunchy, soft.

8. Chop or slice radishes (or jicama, or the ever-surprising kohlrabi) and combine with chopped or sliced unripe (i.e., still crunchy) mango, lime juice and mint or cilantro.

9. Chop or slice jicama (or radishes or kohlrabi) and mango and mix with coconut milk, lime juice, curry powder and cilantro or mint.

10. Cook whole grape tomatoes in olive oil over high heat until they brown lightly, sprinkling with curry powder. Cool a bit, then toss with chopped arugula, loads of chopped mint and lime juice.

11. Chop and steam baby or grown-up bok choy until crisp-tender, then shock it in ice water. Drain, then toss with halved cherry tomatoes, capers, olive oil and lemon juice.

12. Combine sliced fennel and prune plums; serve with vinaigrette spiked with minced ginger. Nice pairing.

13. A red salad: Combine tomato wedges with halved strawberries, basil leaves, shaved Parmesan and balsamic vinegar.

14. A classic Moroccan thing: Thinly slice carrots, or grate or shred them (the food processor makes quick work of this). Toss with toasted cumin seeds, olive oil, lemon juice and cilantro. Raisins are good in here, too. There is no better use of raw carrots.

15. Cut cherry or grape tomatoes in half; toss with soy sauce, a bit of dark sesame oil and basil or cilantro. I love this — the tomato juice-soy thing is incredible.

16. Slice fennel and crisp apple about the same thickness (your choice). Combine, then dress with mustardy vinaigrette and chopped parsley. Come fall, this will be even better.

17. With thanks to Szechuan Gourmet restaurant: Finely chop celery and mix with a roughly equal amount of pressed or smoked tofu, chopped. Dress with peanut oil warmed with chili flakes and Sichuan peppercorns, then mixed with soy sauce.

18. Roughly chop cooked or canned chickpeas (you can pulse them, carefully, in a food processor) and toss with olive oil, lemon juice, lots of chopped fresh parsley and mint, and a few chopped tomatoes. Call this chickpea tabbouleh.

19. Mix cooked cannellini or other white beans, chopped cherry or grape tomatoes and arugula or baby spinach. Lightly toast sliced garlic in olive oil with rosemary and red pepper flakes; cool slightly, add lemon zest or juice or both, then pour over beans.

20. Shred Napa cabbage and radishes. The dressing is roasted peanuts, lime juice, peanut or other oil, cilantro and fresh or dried chili, all whizzed in a blender. Deliciousness belies ease.

From Here.

Perseverence and Drive

Nicholas Kristoff says that Jews, Asian Americans and West Indian Blacks have been unusually successfull in America, and he credits that to their high academic achievements.

In the mosaic of America, three groups that have been unusually successful are Asian-Americans, Jews and West Indian blacks — and in that there may be some lessons for the rest of us.

As for Jews, they have received about one-third of all Nobel Prizes in science received by Americans. One survey found that a quarter of Jewish adults in the United States have earned a graduate degree, compared with 6 percent of the population as a whole.

West Indian blacks, those like Colin Powell whose roots are in the Caribbean, are one-third more likely to graduate from college than African-Americans as a whole, and their median household income is almost one-third higher.

These three groups may help debunk the myth of success as a simple product of intrinsic intellect, for they represent three different races and histories. In the debate over nature and nurture, they suggest the importance of improved nurture — which, from a public policy perspective, means a focus on education. Their success may also offer some lessons for you, me, our children — and for the broader effort to chip away at poverty in this country.

Richard Nisbett cites each of these groups in his superb recent book, “Intelligence and How to Get It.” Dr. Nisbett, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, argues that what we think of as intelligence is quite malleable and owes little or nothing to genetics.

“I think the evidence is very good that there is no genetic contribution to the black-white difference on I.Q.,” he said, adding that there also seems to be no genetic difference in intelligence between whites and Asians. As for Jews, some not-very-rigorous studies have found modestly above-average I.Q. for Ashkenazi Jews, though not for Sephardic Jews. Dr. Nisbett is somewhat skeptical, noting that these results emerge from samples that may not be representative.

In any case, he says, the evidence is overwhelming that what is distinctive about these three groups is not innate advantage but rather a tendency to get the most out of the firepower they have.

One large study followed a group of Chinese-Americans who initially did slightly worse on the verbal portion of I.Q. tests than other Americans and the same on math portions. But beginning in grade school, the Chinese outperformed their peers, apparently because they worked harder.

The Chinese-Americans were only half as likely as other children to repeat a grade in school, and by high school they were doing much better than European-Americans with the same I.Q.

As adults, 55 percent of the Chinese-American sample entered high-status occupations, compared with one-third of whites. To succeed in a profession or as managers, whites needed an average I.Q. of about 100, while Chinese-Americans needed an I.Q. of just 93. In short, Chinese-Americans managed to achieve more than whites who on paper had the same intellect.

A common thread among these three groups may be an emphasis on diligence or education, perhaps linked in part to an immigrant drive. Jews and Chinese have a particularly strong tradition of respect for scholarship, with Jews said to have achieved complete adult male literacy — the better to read the Talmud — some 1,700 years before any other group.

The parallel force in China was Confucianism and its reverence for education. You can still sometimes see in rural China the remains of a monument to a villager who triumphed in the imperial exams. In contrast, if an American town has someone who earns a Ph.D., the impulse is not to build a monument but to pass a hat.

Among West Indians, the crucial factors for success seem twofold: the classic diligence and hard work associated with immigrants, and intact families. The upshot is higher family incomes and fathers more involved in child-rearing.

What’s the policy lesson from these three success stories?

It’s that the most decisive weapons in the war on poverty aren’t transfer payments but education, education, education. For at-risk households, that starts with social workers making visits to encourage such basic practices as talking to children. One study found that a child of professionals (disproportionately white) has heard about 30 million words spoken by age 3; a black child raised on welfare has heard only 10 million words, leaving that child at a disadvantage in school.

The next step is intensive early childhood programs, followed by improved elementary and high schools, and programs to defray college costs.

Perhaps the larger lesson is a very empowering one: success depends less on intellectual endowment than on perseverance and drive. As Professor Nisbett puts it, “Intelligence and academic achievement are very much under people’s control.”

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The sudden charm of Public Schools..

NYT's has an article on the popularity of public schools and parents moving to the school district that has the best public schools.

FOR some young families who bought during the housing boom, having it all meant an affordable brood-sized apartment in possession of a good public school zone. But other parents in pursuit of real estate never even thought about schools. They assumed they would send their children to private school, often because they too had followed that route.

That was before the economic crisis. Now, as many would-be private school parents scramble for a good public school, there is a despairing recognition that in this respect, geography is destiny: With odds of being accepted into a popular school in another zone slimmer than ever, they either live in a neighborhood with a decent elementary or they don’t.

Renters and first-time buyers are in the best position to light out for better school zones with their young offspring. Meanwhile, landlocked owners — unable or unwilling to sell in a down market or to spend around $33,000 a year to send their child to private school — are panicking.

Trapped by their real estate, these parents are swallowing a bitter pill: had they sold their apartments a year ago, their profits might have financed an entire private school education.

Some parents are considering renting an apartment in a desirable zone — at least for the time it takes to prove residency. And some otherwise law-abiding parents plan to flout the system by establishing a fake residency in their school zone of choice.

“I can tell you I hear it all the time on the playground — whether you’re moving or ‘moving,’ ” said Claudia Knafo, 47, a concert pianist and music professor who lives with her husband, Alexander Yagupsky, 44, and 4-year-old son, Joshua, on West 110th Street and Riverside Drive.

She says her family’s situation is common in her neighborhood.

“We bought our apartment in 2004,” she said, “and like most new parents we never even thought about the public school zoning issues. We just assumed our son would go to private school.”

But when it came time to apply last fall, she and her husband, a music teacher, felt they could no longer commit to the expense because of the change in the economic climate. They applied to three private schools asking for financial aid, even though they were advised by other parents that this would undermine their son’s chances. He was turned down by one and put on the waiting list at the others.

“At that point,” Ms. Knafo said, “we decided with the economy being what it is, we had to adjust our heads and think about public school.”

There is no way of knowing just how many would-be or current private school parents are turning to the public schools. But there is no question that the city’s public kindergartens are experiencing a groundswell of interest.

Late last month, the Department of Education said that several popular schools — Public Schools 6, 59 and 290 on the Upper East Side, and P.S. 87 on the Upper West Side — were putting children from their own zones on waiting lists because of a surfeit of applications. Many of the wait-listed children may be admitted eventually, as a change in the application process this year requires declarations of interest by parents before they hear from private schools or gifted and talent programs at public schools.

“I would say I’ve given out about a third more applications,” said Michele Farinet, the parent coordinator at P.S. 41 in Greenwich Village, another sought-after school. While P.S. 41 and its sister school, P.S. 3, have traditionally been able to take all zoned kids, Ms. Farinet is less sure about this year: “I never want to be negative about it. We’re doing the best we can to accommodate all the families.”

Ms. Farinet said that private school parents had been calling about transferring their children to P.S. 41 this fall; the number of such calls is usually zero.

Margaret Raphaelson, the parent coordinator at the highly regarded P.S. 321 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, said she, too, had received several of these calls.

Meanwhile, parents are beating the pavement online.

A must read on Gaza

Rashid Khalidi writes in the NYT, about What you dont know about Gaza.

NEARLY everything you’ve been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip.

Israel | Palestinians | Hamas THE GAZANS Most of the people living in Gaza are not there by choice. The majority of the 1.5 million people crammed into the roughly 140 square miles of the Gaza Strip belong to families that came from towns and villages outside Gaza like Ashkelon and Beersheba. They were driven to Gaza by the Israeli Army in 1948.

THE OCCUPATION The Gazans have lived under Israeli occupation since the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel is still widely considered to be an occupying power, even though it removed its troops and settlers from the strip in 2005. Israel still controls access to the area, imports and exports, and the movement of people in and out. Israel has control over Gaza’s air space and sea coast, and its forces enter the area at will. As the occupying power, Israel has the responsibility under the Fourth Geneva Convention to see to the welfare of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.

THE BLOCKADE Israel’s blockade of the strip, with the support of the United States and the European Union, has grown increasingly stringent since Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in January 2006. Fuel, electricity, imports, exports and the movement of people in and out of the Strip have been slowly choked off, leading to life-threatening problems of sanitation, health, water supply and transportation.

The blockade has subjected many to unemployment, penury and malnutrition. This amounts to the collective punishment — with the tacit support of the United States — of a civilian population for exercising its democratic rights.

THE CEASE-FIRE Lifting the blockade, along with a cessation of rocket fire, was one of the key terms of the June cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. This accord led to a reduction in rockets fired from Gaza from hundreds in May and June to a total of less than 20 in the subsequent four months (according to Israeli government figures). The cease-fire broke down when Israeli forces launched major air and ground attacks in early November; six Hamas operatives were reported killed.

WAR CRIMES The targeting of civilians, whether by Hamas or by Israel, is potentially a war crime. Every human life is precious. But the numbers speak for themselves: Nearly 700 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed since the conflict broke out at the end of last year. In contrast, there have been around a dozen Israelis killed, many of them soldiers. Negotiation is a much more effective way to deal with rockets and other forms of violence. This might have been able to happen had Israel fulfilled the terms of the June cease-fire and lifted its blockade of the Gaza Strip.

This war on the people of Gaza isn’t really about rockets. Nor is it about “restoring Israel’s deterrence,” as the Israeli press might have you believe. Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”

Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia, is the author of the forthcoming “Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East."

Pondicherry in the Times

Here is an article on Pondicherry, as a shopping haven.

Cat got your tongue?

Time magazine describes the reasons that India is so silent on the saffron revolution that is threatening the power of the dictators. Here are the geo-political reasons why.

Delhi's strategy is threefold. Its initial overtures to Burma's military leaders came as India faced a growing insurgency in its northeast. Many of the rebel groups in that region are based and train across the border in Burma. As India has grown friendlier with Burma's generals the two countries have worked together — with some limited success — on eradicating the northeastern insurgents.

Like China, power-hungry India is also keen on exploiting Burma's huge oil and gas resources. This month it signed a production deal for three deep-water exploration blocks off the Rakhine coast. It is also searching for gas in two other blocks. Access to Burma's resources will help boost India's power supplies but it is important for geopolitical reasons as well. The new production deal comes only months after Beijing beat Delhi on securing a deal to build a pipeline through to Burma's gas fields. The race for resources has helped make Burma the frontline in a larger struggle for influence in Southeast Asia. The threat of unfettered Chinese influence in Burma is one of Delhi's main ripostes when western allies question India's ties with Rangoon.

Will such a stance hurt India's democratic credentials? India's former Defense Minister George Fernandez, a longtime supporter of Burmese democracy activists, thinks so, calling such quiet diplomacy "disgusting." "This government is not concerned with what is happening in its own neighborhood," he says. In one of the few Indian newspaper opinion pieces to question India's stance Karan Thapar asked in the Hindustan Times last week whether a "Cat got our tongue?" "Indian democracy has shrunk because of its unwillingness to speak out," he wrote.Modern Love section in the NYT has a funny story about a family that a woman thought she was part off, but then wasn't.

NOW, I wished that my East Coast parents would adopt some aspects of my Western parents’ infuriating impartiality: search for balance, look at it from my point of view. I felt like a squalling sibling, tugging on their sleeves, crying: “Not just my fault! Not just my fault!”

When a friendship ends, you start to measure time by what your friend has missed. In the two years that have passed, I broke up with some boyfriends, I was mugged at knife point, my sister married. I wrote one unpublished book review, then another.

Through all of the changes that a couple of years bring, both monumental and ridiculous, I missed my friend. I missed her sarcasm, her insight. Her mother. Her father. Oh, how they would have worried about me. How they would have laughed at my stories. How they would have understood my frustrations, fed me potatoes and tortes to assuage my boy-grief, expressed indignation at the rejection slips that kept piling up next to my computer.

Without my East Coast family’s Mafioso loyalty, my achievements seemed less shiny, my disappointments more foreboding.

I thought about sending them a card: “Have you sat shiva for me yet?”

I worried that they would not think it was funny. I worried that they would not answer. I imagined dinner parties, trays of canapés being passed. I imagined someone bringing my name up at the table. I could see my friend’s mother stop chewing, narrow her eyes. A wagging finger: Not in this house.

It was too much; I never wrote. In the end, I realized that I adored my friend’s parents for the exact reason that I would not hear from them: because they loved their daughter so fiercely, so actively, so unswervingly. Theirs was a glaring and glorious spotlight of love with a sharp, defined edge.

And I had stepped out.

Men and Women

NYT has a wonderful article on rich women dating men who earn less than them.

Ms. Rowland, like some other women interviewed, said that she has come to the conclusion that it would be easier to date someone in the same economic bracket.

“I love traveling, going to the opera and good restaurants,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be Per Se, but good food is important in my life. It’s sometimes hard to maintain the lifestyle I’m used to when I’m in a relationship with a guy who makes less than me, since I don’t want to be paying for the guy I’m with all the time.”

The discomfort over who pays for what seems to be not really about money, plain and simple. Instead, it is suggestive of the complex psychology of what many of these women expect from their dates (for him to be a traditional breadwinner) and what they think they should expect (Oh, I just want him to be a nice guy).

On a first date at a lounge in Hell’s Kitchen, Thrupthi Reddy, 28, a brand strategist in Manhattan, watched her date down several cocktails to her one, then not even flinch when she handed the waitress her credit card. Initially miffed, she recognized her own contradictions.

“You wonder if you’re being a hypocrite,” she recalled, “because all date long I’m telling him how independent I was, and how annoying it was that men wouldn’t date strong independent women.” (The relationship ended after six months.)

Michael R. Cunningham, a psychologist who teaches in the communication department at the University of Louisville, conducted a survey of college women to see if, upon graduation, they would prefer to settle down with a high school teacher who has short workdays, summers off and spare energy to help raise children, or with a surgeon who earns eight times as much but works brutal hours. Three-quarters of the women said they would choose the teacher.

The point, Professor Cunningham said, was that young professionally oriented women have no problem dating down if the man is secure, motivated in his own field and emotionally supportive.

At least, that’s what their responses are in surveys. Talk about the subject with women a bit older — those who have been out of college long enough to be more hardened — and what you hear is ambivalence, if not downright hostility, about the income disparity.

Jade Wannell, 25, a producer at a Chicago ad agency who lives in a high-rise apartment building, started dating a 29-year-old administrator at a trucking company last year. “He was really sweet,” she said. But “he didn’t work many hours and ended up hanging out at home a lot. I was bored and didn’t feel challenged. He would finish work at 3 and want to go to the bar. The college way of life is still in them at that age. All they want to do is drink with the boys on Saturday. I was like ‘Let’s go to an art gallery’ and all he wanted to do was go to the bars.”

TO her, his lack of income masked a greater problem: a lack of drive.

“I have to say that I didn’t like his career, I didn’t think he had the goals of someone I would eventually like to be with or have respect for,” she said, adding, “It wasn’t the job, it was the passion.”

I.Q.'s and birth order

NYT had an article on a Norwegian study on I.Q's and birth order. Most first born children were quite excited about their higher I.Q.'s compared to their siblings. Above is a link to NYT readers questions on the study. I have never been strong on the view of I.Q.'s as being determinats of intelligence.

1.June 24th,
2007
1:00 am What about differences between the second and third or fourth child? Does this three-point gap also apply to the subsequent children?

— Posted by V. Nhan
2.June 24th,
2007
2:00 am One of the most interesting features of the new Norwegian study is that birth-order differences in I.Q. become smaller with increasing birth rank. The difference between a firstborn and a second-born in a family of two children is about 2.3 I.Q. points. The difference between a firstborn and a second-born in a family of three children is 2.1 I.Q. points. By contrast, the difference between a second-born and a third-born in the same family is only 1.1 I.Q. points. In a family of four children, the I.Q. difference between siblings is reduced to only 1 I.Q. point per birth rank, and the difference between the third-born and the last sibling drops to only 0.2 I.Q. points. In general, then, the largest birth-order differences are observed between firstborn siblings and second-born siblings in small families. Children with successively higher birth ranks suffer relatively smaller deficits in I.Q. because of their birth orders.

These intriguing results might be explained by niche partitioning within the family, although this is not the only possible explanation. In two-child families, the firstborn and the second-born may be partitioning their roles into that of the mature and studious achiever and that of the less mature, perhaps more athletic, younger sibling who pursues other types of interests in order to be different (a process called “deidentification”). As other siblings are added to the family system, they appear to position themselves somewhere between these two extremes. Hence the overall difference in I.Q. in a family of five children, between the eldest and the youngest offspring (a total of about 2.7 points), is not much greater than the difference we observe between a firstborn and a second-born in a family of two children (2.3 points).

Theories about the dilution of family resources might also explain why birth order makes less of a difference with higher birth ranks. As more children are added to the family, the relative disparity decreases between the intellectually rich environment of a firstborn, with exclusive access to parental attention before the arrival of other siblings, and the intellectual environment of a family that includes many offspring competing for parental attention.

— Posted by Dr. Frank Sulloway
3.June 24th,
2007
2:01 am Why do some psychologists make such a fuss over a few I.Q. points? In this instance, I think we’re talking about a little more adult attention producing a slightly higher level of verbal and mathematical ability, which might help in school. A pinch of creativity dwarfs that in importance.

— Posted by P. Dorell
4.June 24th,
2007
4:00 am As I noted in the Science Perspective that accompanies publication of the new study by Petter Kristensen and Tor Bjerkedal, the 2.3 I.Q. points that differentiate the average Norwegian firstborn from the average Norwegian second-born in a two-child family is equivalent to the firstborn having a 13 percent greater chance of getting into a better college. This difference is also equivalent to the firstborn having 1.3 times the odds of getting into a better college, compared with the second-born.

It is also worth noting that 2.3 extra I.Q. points (the advantage enjoyed by a firstborn over an immediately younger sibling) is approximately equivalent to scoring an extra 15 points on each SAT test, or a combined 45 points on the three current tests, which have a mean combined score of about 1,500 points. The cutoffs for acceptance to the best colleges, based on SAT scores, often hinge on where one stands within a range of just 40 to 50 points on the three tests combined.

Seen in this perspective, these documented differences in I.Q. by birth order are hardly negligible. However, as I said in a recent interview published in Nature, if I had the choice of having 2.3 extra I.Q. points or having the “enlarged curiosity” that Charles Darwin’s uncle, Josiah Wedgwood, recognized in his nephew on the eve of Mr. Darwin’s departure on the Beagle to circumnavigate the globe, I would unhesitatingly choose the latter.

So, yes, I.Q. is hardly everything, and much that makes people successful in life has to do with how people use their intelligence rather than with their intelligence per se. In addition, there is considerable evidence suggesting that siblings born later use their intelligence differently from the way firstborns use theirs. Indeed, later-born siblings would appear to have 2.3 extra points of one difficult-to-measure intellectual skill, associated with unconventional thinking, that firstborns sometimes lack.

— Posted by Dr. Frank Sulloway
5.June 24th,
2007
5:37 am The problem I have with this study is that it was done in a very homogeneous population. Should not this hypothesis first be tested in other populations before drawing any firm conclusions?

— Posted by P Penko
6.June 24th,
2007
6:55 am This reader raises a very interesting point. Yes, the Norwegian population is probably more homogeneous than, say, the American population. However, one must keep in mind that many well-designed studies of birth order and intelligence — studies that have controlled at minimum for differences in family size and socioeconomic status — have been conducted in America, the Netherlands, France and Israel, among other countries. These studies have consistently shown that firstborn siblings have higher I.Q. scores than second-born siblings, that second-born siblings have higher I.Q. scores than third-born siblings, and so forth.

This newest study from Norway uses a marvelous within-family study design, in which brothers were all compared with other brothers from the same families. It obtains essentially the same results that were found in another large Norwegian sample of individuals who grew up in different families. In short, the results strongly suggest that the findings from previous between-family studies were actually giving us an accurate portrait of birth-order differences in intelligence, as long as these previous studies adequately controlled for differences in family size and socioeconomic status. So we do have reasonably convincing data, from many different countries, that confirm the relationship between birth order and intelligence.

— Posted by Dr. Frank Sulloway
7.June 24th,
2007
7:00 am Is age of the parents a factor?

— Posted by R. Doherty
8.June 24th,
2007
8:00 am Studies have shown the mother’s age at the birth of her first offspring to be a significant predictor of the child’s I.Q. More educated mothers and mothers with higher I.Q. scores tend to have smaller families, and these mothers also tend to bear their first children at later ages than other mothers. As shown in the Norwegian study, differences in I.Q. between firstborns and second-borns were largest among the most highly educated mothers. Hence we would expect birth-order differences in I.Q. to be larger among mothers who have their first child at a later age, since such mothers are likely to be more educated than other mothers.

— Posted by Dr. Frank Sulloway

NYT criticizes Musharaff of Pakistan

If Gen. Pervez Musharraf were the democratic leader he indignantly insists he is, he would not be so busy threatening independent news outlets, arresting hundreds of opposition politicians and berating parliamentary leaders and ministers from his own party for insufficient loyalty to his arbitrary and widely unpopular policies.

But nobody takes General Musharraf’s democratic claims seriously anymore, except for the Bush administration, which has put itself in the embarrassing position of propping up the Muslim world’s most powerful military dictator as an essential ally in its half-baked campaign to promote democracy throughout the Muslim world. Washington needs to disentangle America, quickly, from the general’s damaging embrace.

The full article is here

Death by Veganism

NYT has a sad article on the obsessiveness of some vegan parents who fed there new born apple juice and soy milk.

Protein deficiency is one danger of a vegan diet for babies. Nutritionists used to speak of proteins as “first class” (from meat, fish, eggs and milk) and “second class” (from plants), but today this is considered denigrating to vegetarians.

The fact remains, though, that humans prefer animal proteins and fats to cereals and tubers, because they contain all the essential amino acids needed for life in the right ratio. This is not true of plant proteins, which are inferior in quantity and quality — even soy.

A vegan diet may lack vitamin B12, found only in animal foods; usable vitamins A and D, found in meat, fish, eggs and butter; and necessary minerals like calcium and zinc. When babies are deprived of all these nutrients, they will suffer from retarded growth, rickets and nerve damage.

Responsible vegan parents know that breast milk is ideal. It contains many necessary components, including cholesterol (which babies use to make nerve cells) and countless immune and growth factors. When breastfeeding isn’t possible, soy milk and fruit juice, even in seemingly sufficient quantities, are not safe substitutes for a quality infant formula.

Yet even a breast-fed baby is at risk. Studies show that vegan breast milk lacks enough docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA, the omega-3 fat found in fatty fish. It is difficult to overstate the importance of DHA, vital as it is for eye and brain development.

A vegan diet is equally dangerous for weaned babies and toddlers, who need plenty of protein and calcium. Too often, vegans turn to soy, which actually inhibits growth and reduces absorption of protein and minerals. That’s why health officials in Britain, Canada and other countries express caution about soy for babies. (Not here, though — perhaps because our farm policy is so soy-friendly.)

Day Care Wars

The NYT
has an article on a study conducted on the effects of day care on children''s behaviour. It is interesting that effect is so slight 1%, but the headlines, "poor behaviour is linked to time in day care" try to depict a much larger percentage. It's a great way to make working mothers feel guilty about sending their kids to day care. Not one of these articles has spoken about the high cost of day care, Bright Horizons for instance costs $1200 a month, making it unaffordable for most working parents Another concern that I have heard parents speak about is the high rate of infections susceptible infants pick up while at day care.

A much-anticipated report from the largest and longest-running study of American child care has found that keeping a preschooler in a day care center for a year or more increased the likelihood that the child would become disruptive in class — and that the effect persisted through the sixth grade.

The effect was slight, and well within the normal range for healthy children, the researchers found. And as expected, parents’ guidance and their genes had by far the strongest influence on how children behaved

The L.A. Times put it all in more perspective.

At least, that's the message I took from a recent USA Today article about "Alpha Moms" — "educated, tech-savvy, Type-A moms with a common goal: mommy excellence." The Alpha Mom "views motherhood as a job that can be mastered with diligent research." Who'd want to be a Beta or Gamma Mom when Alpha Momhood is within reach? So I dug deeper into the day-care story.

My scrutiny paid off. Way down in paragraph 15 of the Times story, we finally get to the nitty gritty: "Every year spent in [day-care] centers for at least 10 hours per week was associated with a 1% higher score on a standardized assessment of problem behaviors completed by teachers."

At first, I thought, 1%? 1%? That's a story?

But I quickly realized that I was thinking about things the wrong way. From the perspective of an Alpha Mom, that 1% difference in problem behaviors wouldn't be written off as within the margin of error. That 1% could be the critical difference between a kid who eventually goes to Harvard and a kid who ends up in juvenile lockup.

Mira Nair

NYT has an overview of Mira Nair's career in films. Her next project is an adaptation of the book Shantaram.

Beneath its starry high profile, though, “Shantaram” engages issues that have obsessed Ms. Nair throughout her career. For immigrants and their children, what is home? What is family? How do you forge a new cultural identity?

“He is a man who disappears into the fabric of another place,” Ms. Nair said about the Depp character in a recent conversation. Explaining the lure of the novel, she added: “The theme I’m most interested in is, can a foreigner be a native? I’m interested in the seesaw of it, because I’m not sure that in the deepest way that’s possible. Ultimately you have to understand where you came from. Otherwise you’re lost.”

Harvard has a Woman President

Harvard has a woman president. Quite ironic, considering ex President Larry Summers statements.

Catharine Drew Gilpin was born on Sept. 18, 1947, and grew up in Clarke County, Va., in the Shenandoah Valley. She was always known as Drew. Her father, McGhee Tyson Gilpin, bred thoroughbred horses.

Dr. Faust has written frankly of the “community of rigid racial segregation” that she and her three brothers grew up in and how it formed her as “a rebellious daughter” who would go on to march in the civil rights protests in the 1960s and to become a historian of the region. “She was raised to be a rich man’s wife,” said a friend, Elizabeth Warren, a law professor at Harvard. “Instead she becomes the president of the most powerful university in the world.”

The Financial Times writes about her appointment here.

When she took over Radcliffe, which is the smallest of Harvard’s 10 schools, with no full-time faculty or students, the institute faced a budget shortfall of more than $3m. Ms Faust laid off staff members and transferred training programmes to other institutional homes, while closing down others.

Ms Faust has also undertaken considerable fundraising. Radcliffe’s endowment for the 2002 fiscal year totalled $49.3m, and it is now worth over $473m. While some of that growth is attributable to Harvard’s money managers, it is also a clear testament to her fundraising ability.

Mr Houghton on Sunday highlighted Ms Faust’s reputation as a “collaborative” and “open-minded” leader. This could be viewed as a not-so-subtle reference to the approach of her predecessor, Lawrence Summers, whose outspoken views and sometimes overly direct manner made it difficult for him to connect with a substantial portion of Harvard’s faculty. Mr Summers stepped down a year ago to pre-empt a second consecutive vote of no confidence by the faculty.

Wine and Yoga anyone?

The NYT has an article on Yoga retreats combining wine drinking as part of them. I don't think it works for me, but i guess as long as people are moderate in drinking it is ok.

Annie Leibovitz at the Brooklyn Museum

Annie Leibovitz’s photos feature in an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. The work encompasses her personal and professional photographs. For me the personal photographs of her mother, her father’s death and her partner Susan Sontag’s deterioration due to cancer were very powerful. Her celebrity portraits include Johnny Cash, Nicole Kidman, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Patti Smith and William Burroughs. Her image of a pregnant Demi Moore’s belly with her and her husband Bruce Willis, masculine hands over her belly was inspiring.

Even though the NYT panned her exhibit, I found her family portraits, some of her celebrity images and her photographs of Jordan very strong and moving.