Some fascinating historical photographs

Execution by cannon, in Shiraz, Iran, mid-late 19th century

i read so many times about how the British blew mutineers apart by cannon, but this is the first time I am actually visualising the act. Quite a gory sight I would guess, and would end up leaving only the extremities intact. The British saved costs (typical) by tying 2-3 chaps at the same time unlike just one in this case.

Major General Horatio Gordon Robley with his collection of tattooed Maori heads, 1895

as one does…and then you wonder why the people hate imperialists..

Georges Blind, a Member of the French Resistance, Smiling at a German Firing Squad, October 1944

apparently USA is bringing back the firing squad. And recently Indonesia executed some drug smugglers by firing squad as well. Same old same old, eh?

Counter-protester with her daughters at a civil liberties rally by black people, Bogalusa, Louisiana, 1965

its good to see that 50 years since this photograph was taken, racism is well and truly still alive.

Philosophy in Early Modern India

Kannu

One of the challenges in studying in a European centric education system, which holds for you and I is that we don't get exposure to other schools of thought. Whether it be Indian or Islamic or meso American or what have you, it's challenging. 

I am still almost zero in the philosophical perspectives of the sinic or Japanese thinkers of yore. Sitting in Asia at the moment and I can literally feel the difference in thinking of the people around me. Despite the outward western trappings, the way people think is different. 

Very important to learn these things. If you wanted to make money or deal with these people, then it's good to learn :)

Love

Baba
Begin forwarded message:

varnam | In Pragati: The Lost Age of Reason: Philosophy in Early Modern India by Jonardon Ganeri

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In Pragati: The Lost Age of Reason: Philosophy in Early Modern India by Jonardon Ganeri

Posted: 25 Apr 2014 10:30 AM PDT

Recently the Society of Biblical Literature published the bookNeo-Babylonian Trial Records (Writings from the Ancient World) by Shalom E Holtz. According to the description of the book, “this collection of sixth-century B.C.E. Mesopotamian texts provides a close-up, often dramatic, view of ancient courtroom encounters shedding light on Neo-Babylonian legal culture and daily life” and 50 cases are documented. Going even back in time, in 2062 BCE, an Indus colony existed in Mesopotamia and we have detailed documentation from that period mentioning the names of the colonists along with grain delivery records and debt notes. When it comes to India during that period, such detailed records are lacking.

Due to this, daily life in the Indus-Saraswati period is documented not from written records, but from archaeological evidence. As scholars get into the history of Indian philosophy, they run into new issues; there is not much biographical detail of the philosophers. In fact a common trend among Indian philosophers was to avoid writing personal details, and not have any mention of the social and political context, as they would be just distractions. While we know about Machiavelli’s childhood from his father’s documents and his personality based on the chronicles from his contemporaries, all we know about the Varanasi philosopher Raghudeva Bhattacharya that he was a student of Harirama, lived in Varanasi and had his work translated by Mahadeva.

Let Them Eat MOOCs

One dissenter on mooc's son. I've just recently started on these and am on my 3rd one. 

I can see the benefits of a mooc but for the life of me, I cannot understand this argument that it's destroying education and it's culturally challenging and and and. And colonialism? Lol. I'm not sure this fellow really understands what it means. The difference is of distance, channel and cost. I teach at universities where students access my lecture via video conference. No difference. Channel same thing. And same with cost. I don't ask to be paid to teach. 

Luddites son. Life is changing. I think your generation is perhaps the last one to have formal education with degrees. By the time your son comes along, technology will have made education in large lecture halls lasting years will be defunct :) fun times

In the meantime, kannu, be a devotee of constant learning. May Saraswati bless you. And I'm proud of what you are son, not because you got into Oxford but because of the fact that you are now a good man. Truly a good man. 

Love

Baba

Let Them Eat MOOCs
http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/10/let-them-eat-moocs/

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One late afternoon last spring I received a visit from a former student and budding entrepreneur. I usually schedule these meetings at the end of the workday. It feels like a treat, witnessing aspiration and insight blend into leadership to create something new.

Luis (not his real name), however, had not come to see me for leadership advice. He had come to pitch his tech startup and ask for my involvement.

The venture, he explained, would contribute to the ongoing disruption and reinvention of business education and allow anyone anywhere — not just those as fortunate as himself — to have access to my teaching and insights online,for free.

Letters of Note: Arkell v. Pressdram

Sometimes kannu one has to respond in this manner. Classic :)

Letters of Note: Arkell v. Pressdram
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2013/08/arkell-v-pressdram.html

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"Messrs Jeffrey Benson and Michael Isaacs of Tracing Services Ltd, currently on bail on charges of conspiracy to create a public mischief, appear to have lost most of the work collecting debts and tracing absconders for the Granada group, to the considerable regret of Mr James Arkell, Granada's retail credit manager. Ever since last June, when Tracing Services got the contract, Mr Arkell has been receiving £20 every month from Tracing Services, but the payment now appears to have stopped."

On April 9th of 1971, much to the dismay of one James Arkell, the brief story quoted above was published in Private Eye, a British satirical news publication founded in 1961 which, thanks to its unflinching commitment to uncovering scandals, is no stranger to legal disputes. Indeed, a few weeks after this particular piece hit the shelves, a letter arrived from Arkell's solicitors which can be read below, as can an uncompromising reply from Private Eye which has since become famous in legal and publishing circles for reasons which will become clear.
Never ones to miss an opportunity, Private Eye published the exchange very quickly, and almost immediately Arkell withdrew his complaint. The magazine have since used the dispute as shorthand when responding to threats, e.g. "We refer you to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram."
Note: 'Pressdram Ltd' is Private Eye's publisher. Also, there was no "case" legally, despite the name by which the dispute is now known.
(Source: Private Eye, via Jon Jenkins — huge thanks to Stephen Bailey.)

29th April 1971
Dear Sir,
We act for Mr Arkell who is Retail Credit Manager of Granada TV Rental Ltd. His attention has been drawn to an article appearing in the issue of Private Eye dated 9th April 1971 on page 4. The statements made about Mr Arkell are entirely untrue and clearly highly defamatory. We are therefore instructed to require from you immediately your proposals for dealing with the matter.
Mr Arkell's first concern is that there should be a full retraction at the earliest possible date in Private Eye and he will also want his costs paid. His attitude to damages will be governed by the nature of your reply.
Yours,
(Signed)
Goodman Derrick & Co.
------------------------------
Dear Sirs,
We acknowledge your letter of 29th April referring to Mr. J. Arkell.
We note that Mr Arkell's attitude to damages will be governed by the nature of our reply and would therefore be grateful if you would inform us what his attitude to damages would be, were he to learn that the nature of our reply is as follows: fuck off.
Yours,
Private Eye

Drugs, brothels, al-Qaeda and the Beyonce tax: the Green Party plan for Britain

When I read this and posted it on Facebook son, one of my friends posted a photo of a multi coloured kitten with unicorn horn and butterfly horns. As an allegory to how greens see their world. It's not just rose tinted spectacles. It's like they are completely zonked out of their heads.

Some of the policies I agree with. Like drug legalisation or prostitution decriminalisation.  That's for individual rights. But most of the rest? I was just gaping at the list. And thinking. 1 in 10 Brits support this party.

And the people who are authoring these kinds of documents aren't stupid. I'm guessing they are educated and have a modicum of economic sense. Or do they?

in a strange way, it makes sense. Tax everything so every economic activity will be stupidly reduced. Wealth creation will drop. Educational diversity and standards will be buggered up. So people will be progressively stupider and stupider. And therefore the first objective of consuming less and less will be achieved as they will turn into drooling idiots who cannot handle complicated modern equipment.

Classic.

But they will influence policy going forward. Countries where the green movement is strong have dozens of policies like Australia and Germany.

We are in for interesting times son.

Love

Baba

Drugs, brothels, al-Qaeda and the Beyonce tax: the Green Party plan for Britain - Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/green-party/11356354/Drugs-brothels-al-Qaeda-and-the-Beyonce-tax-the-Green-Party-plan-for-Britain.html
(via Instapaper)

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They are on the cusp of an electoral breakthrough - and an examination of Green Party policy reveals a extraordinary list of demands

By Matthew Holehouse, Political Correspondent

6:30AM GMT 20 Jan 2015

Six months ago, they were on the very edges of British politics. Now, they are within touching distance of dictating terms to the future government.

A surge in support has seen the Green Party overtake the Liberal Democrats in the polls, with support at 11 per cent. Membership is now greater than Ukip’s.

And, with hopes of winning three seats in the general election, Natalie Bennett believes her party will take part in a “confidence and supply” arrangement, propping up a fragile minority administration in exchange for key policies.

What might they demand?

The party is often dubbed the “Ukip of the left”. But an examination of the party’s core priorities - in a document called Policies for a Sustainable Society, set at the party’s annual conference - reveals they are far more radical in their aims than Nigel Farage’s outfit.

In the short term, a Green administration would impose a string of new taxes, ramp up public spending to unprecedented levels and decriminalise drugs, brothels and membership of terrorist groups.

In the long term, they want to fundamentally change life as we know it.

Turkey, USA are the exceptions

a gun in the home is associated with a threefold increase in the risk of a homicide.

this is bloody amazing…..

“[Our research] underwent peer review and was thought to be very solid and worthwhile research,” says Dr. Fred Rivara, who was part of the team that researched gun violence. “The CDC stood by our research — they had funded it and they stood by it. Unfortunately, it raised the attention of the National Rifle Association, who then worked with pro-gun members of Congress to essentially stop funding firearm research.”

Rivara, a professor of pediatrics and epidemiology at the University of Washington at Seattle Children's Hospital, discovered that having a gun in the home is associated with a threefold increase in the risk of a homicide.

“The most common reason that people have a gun is because they have it for home protection,” he says. “Unfortunately, the data indicates that having a gun is associated with both an increased risk of homicide, but even more importantly, an increased risk of suicide. We know that, for example, if there’s a gun in the home, the risk of suicide among adolescents and young adults increases tenfold.”

Another d’oh study?

So this study basically says that if you sleep for the usual 7 hours, you will be ok, but if you sleep for an hour more, you will be happier. well, excuse me, Captain Obvious.

 

Sleep is an important part of life, with an individual spending an estimated 32 years of her life asleep. Despite this importance, little is known about life satisfaction and sleep duration. Using German panel data, it is shown that sleep is an important factor for life satisfaction and that maximal life satisfaction is associated with about eight hours of sleep on a typical weekday. This figure represents, on average, an hour more than people currently sleep suggesting that more sleep would lead to a higher reported satisfaction with life.

Ants and Crickets

So here’s the basic story.

  Once upon a time... one hot summer, a cricket sang cheerfully on the branch
of a tree, while down below, a long line of ants struggled damely under the
weight of their load of grains; and between one song and the next, the cricket spoke to the ants. "Why are you working so hard? Come into the shade, away from the sun, and sing a song with me." But the tireless ants went on with the work... "We can't do that," they said, "We must store away food for the winter.
When the weather`s cold and the ground white with snow, there's nothing to eat, and we'll survive the winter only if the pantry is full."
   "There's plenty of summer to come," replied the cricket, "and lots of time to fill the pantry before winter. I'd rather sing! How can anione work in this heat and sun?"
   And so all summer, the cricket sang while the ants laboured. But the days
turned into weeks and the weeks into months. Autumn came, the leaves began to
fall and the cricket left the bare tree. The grass too was turning thun and
yellow. One morning, the cricket woke shivering with cold. An early frost
tinged the fields with white and turned the last of the green leaves brown:
winter had come at last. The cricket wandered, feeding on the few dry stalks 
left on the hard frozen ground. Then the snow fell and she could find nothing
at all to eat. Trembling and famished, she thought sadly of the warmth and her
summer songs. One evening, she saw a speck of light in the distance, and
trampling through the thick snow, made her way towards it.
   "Open the door! Please open the door! I'm starving. Give me some food!" An
ant leant out of the window.
   "Who's there? Who is it?"
   "It's me - the cricket. I'm cold and hungry, with no roof over my head."
   "The cricket? Ah, yes! I remember you. And what were you doing all summer
while we were getting ready for winter?"
   "Me? I was singing and filling the whole earth and sky with my song!"
   "Singing, eh?" said the ant. "Well, try dancing now!"

Well, so now you know the basic story, its obviously a metaphor and life lesson so that people should work hard and save. I used to be a cricket but with kids and the wife, its a bit ant(sy) now. Sometimes one uses the grasshopper instead of the cricket. Check out the link, its fascinating, I never understood so many angles to this story. I loved this indian take…

An Old Story – The ant and the grasshopper story

The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The Grasshopper thinks the Ant is a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away.

Come winter, the Ant is warm and well fed. The Grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.

——————–

Indian Version:

The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The Grasshopper thinks the Ant’s a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering Grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the Ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering Grasshopper next to a video of the Ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

The World is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this poor Grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the Ant’s house.

Medha Patkar goes on a fast along with other Grasshoppers demanding that Grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter.

Mayawati states this as `injustice’ done on Minorities.

Amnesty International and Koffi Annan criticize the Indian Government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the Grasshopper.

The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the Grasshopper

Opposition MPs stage a walkout. Left parties call for ‘Bengal Bandh’ in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a Judicial Inquiry.

CPM in Kerala immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among Ants and Grasshoppers.

Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to Grasshoppers on all Indian Railway Trains, aptly named as the ‘Grasshopper Rath’.

Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the ‘ Prevention of Terrorism Against Grasshoppers Act’ [POTAGA], with effect from the beginning of the winter.

Arjun Singh makes ‘Special Reservation ‘ for Grasshoppers in Educational Institutions & in Government Services.
The Ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, it’s home is confiscated by the Government and handed over to the Grasshopper in a ceremony covered by NDTV.

Arundhati Roy calls it ‘ A Triumph of Justice’.

Lalu calls it ‘Socialistic Justice ‘.

CPM calls it the ‘ Revolutionary Resurgence of the Downtrodden ‘

Koffi Annan invites the Grasshopper to address the UN General Assembly.

Many years later…

The Ant has since migrated to the US and set up a multi-billion dollar
company in Silicon Valley, 100s of Grasshoppers still die of starvation despite reservation somewhere in India,

AND

As a result of losing a lot of hard working Ants and feeding the lazy grasshoppers,

India is still a developing country…!!!

And the american version.

With what looks like imminent passage of the Mother of All Bailouts (following on the heels of a year’s worth of government-funded rescues of private homeowners, lenders, insurers, and the automakers), Washington has turned Aesop’s famous fable about prudence and hard work on its head. The time is ripe for a revised 2008 edition of “The Ant and the Grasshopper:”

In a meadow on a hot summer’s day, a Grasshopper was chirping and carousing his time away. He watched scornfully as an Ant nearby struggled to store up large kernels of food and build a secure nest. The Ant pulled overtime shifts to pay off his loans and accumulate retirement funds for the future.

“Give it a rest,” the Grasshopper said. “Why bother saving and slaving and toiling and moiling? Let’s party!” The Ant demurred: “I am planning ahead for winter and you should do the same.” The Grasshopper blew off the Ant, squandered his supplies the rest of the season, and abandoned his home while on vacation (paid for by tapping every last cent of his home equity gain) instead of holding down a job.

When winter came, the Grasshopper’s pantry was empty and his shelter ruined from neglect. The Ant, weary from planting, harvesting, and stocking up for months, was dining comfortably in his nest.

Cold, hungry, jobless, facing foreclosure, and up to his two pairs of eyeballs in debt, the Grasshopper limped to the Association of Community Winged Insects for Rescue Now and demanded recourse. The office was swamped with thousands just like him. ACWIRN immediately put the Grasshopper to work registering dead ants as new voters.

Funded with tax dollars from the rest of the meadow’s residents, ACWIRN organized mass protests at the Bank of Antamerica, ambushed its top officials at their private homes, harassed their children, and demanded that the meadow’s politicians halt all foreclosures (“We must keep Grasshoppers in their houses!”) and outlaw discriminatory lending practices against starving, homeless Grasshoppers (“Well-stocked shelters are basic insect rights!”)

The banking industry capitulated; the Orthoptera Lobby secured hundreds of millions of dollars in housing earmarks and grants and counseling subsidies to support the Grasshoppers with the shadiest credit and employment histories. Antie Mae, the meadow’s government-backed home lending giant, fueled the push for increased insect homeownership in the name of biodiversity. Its executives cooked the books and headed for the hills. Katie Cricket and the Mainstream Meadow Media joined the grievance-for-profit circus, profiling Grasshopper sob stories and drumming up ratings as bewildered Ants wondered who was looking out for them.

The banks drowned in toxic debt. More Grasshoppers fell behind on their mortgage payments. Bailout mania and panic gripped the meadow.

Our little Ant, minding his own business, heard a knock on his door one late winter night a year later. It was his old, sneering Grasshopper neighbor. With ACWIRN’s presidential candidate, Barack Cicada, now in office, the Grasshopper had been hired by the meadow as a tax collector.

“I’m here to take your provisions,” the Grasshopper cackled.

But it was the Ant who had the last laugh. “I’ve learned my lesson,” he told his shiftless friend. “Why bother saving and slaving and toiling and moiling? I’ve spent all my savings. I’m walking away from my mortgage. Thrift is for suckers,” the Ant said as he headed out the door, leaving the Grasshopper empty-handed.

But there’s this rather interesting economics paper on how we still keep on seeing grasshoppers and ants.

Savings behaviour seems to exhibit heterogeneity across nations, and within nations, too. Large changes in saving rates have been observed in the last decades that can be viewed as signs of the arbitrariness of saving. There is a long tradition in the savings literature that separates people into two groups: those who behave soberly (ants), and those who act in an extremely short-sighted fashion (crickets). A puzzle remains: why does an apparently inferior behavioural pattern persist? Our aim is to provide a model that exhibits the arbitrariness of savings by exploring the two-types idea, and also makes intelligible why both types can coexist in the long run. Our approach consists in setting up an agent-based model starting from a traditional production and factor market framework. The model features an evolutionary mechanism that promotes the behaviour conducive to the highest satisfaction of the consumption goal. Our main findings include the prevalence of non-ergodicity, and the genericity of non-stationarity. The model becomes stationary when the selection pressure is very high, and crickets are eliminated. Though in general ants have somewhat higher per capita consumption than crickets, and are less indebted, we have found cases where the total average consumption is higher with many crickets than without them.

So if you want people to save, crank up the selection pressure…funny, eh?

If your country is heterogeneous, then you have less social capital

Makes sense, doesn't it? Here’s the abstract.

Motivated by theoretical arguments (see e.g. Putnam, 2007) that assert a negative impact of ethnolinguistic diversity on social capital, this paper aims to provide some empirical evidence on the relationship between the two variables. In particular, using a cross section sample of 68 developed and developing countries, this paper has found a significant negative effect of ethnolinguistic diversity on social capital. Countries with fractionalized ethnic and linguistic groups as captured by both log number of languages and Desmet et al. (2012) and La Porta et al. (1999)’s measures on linguistic diversity tend to have lower levels of social trust, fewer memberships in social organizations, deteriorated social norms and structure, hence, lower overall social capital stock.

if you look at successful countries with high social capital, then they were more homogenous…interesting evidence.