Prices are up--oil and food, and ...

The economy seems like it is in doldrums, with the persistence of unemployment.  Tyler Cowen argues that it will be a long time before the unemployment rates can significantly decrease; he writes that "high unemployment may be an enduring feature of the United States' economy."

Meanwhile, unlike the Fed's and Ben Bernanke's message to us that deflation is a more a worry than inflation is at this time, well, prices are going up and they seem to be doing so quite rapidly.

Chatter is getting louder that the rising the oil prices will undermine the recovery.  And, food price?

Strained by rising demand and battered by bad weather, the global food supply chain is stretched to the limit, sending prices soaring and sparking concerns about a repeat of food riots last seen three years ago.

Signs of the strain can be found from Australia to Argentina, Canada to Russia.

Crap, why do I have to read these kind of depressing news and analysis! :)

Food prices were on the up and up when I was in India.  Vegetables were becoming way expensive, and onions were selling at prices comparable to the US rates--mere currency exchange, and prices had gotten worse if we looked at in PPP terms.  Overall inflation itself is high in India, and food inflation is even higher.  If the monsoon fails this coming season, India could end up in a whole lot of trouble.

Sudan election in a cartoon :(

I am hoping that at least a few students from a class last term are following the news about Sudan.  I had briefly talked with them about Sudan's long civil war, which had caused extensive destruction of life and property.

It seems to be a foregone conclusion that the South will secede, which by itself will be a good step--to get away from the repressive Khartoum regime.

But, what will happen the day after?

And what about the oil-rich Abyei region?

I often kid with students that most of the world's problems can be placed at the feet of Great Britain.  In the case of Sudan, too, Britain was a major player.  Oh well, old stories that will get us nowhere.  The challenges for now, as the NY Times has wonderfully described it with terrific maps, of which the following is one:

Photo of the day: funeral for Christina Green

The Guardian had this photo of Christina Green's brother Dallas crying during the service

How important are "good teachers" for a "good education?"

How true is it that "no education system is better than the quality of individual teachers?"

The opening paragraph in The Economist makes it clear what that newspaper thinks:

BUDGET, curriculum, class size—none has a greater effect on a student than his or her teacher. Given this, politicians might be expected to do all in their power to ensure that America’s teachers are good ones. For decades, they have done the opposite. The trouble begins long before a teacher enters the classroom. In Singapore, which recently came second in an international ranking of 15-year-olds’ skill in maths (America was 31st), the teacher-training programme accepts only students in the top 30% of their academic cohort. In America, most teachers were mediocre students. Only 23% of new teachers were in the top third of college graduates.

So, having quality teachers is the key, right?
I am not so sure.  (editor: could it be because you feel threatened that it will soon be revealed that you are a lousy teacher?  Awshutup!)

I am a lot more inclined to agree with the writer at Spiked who argues that education systems are increasingly messed up because of "the denigration of the idea of knowledge as an end in itself." There has been a systematic erosion of this notion that education is all about knowledge as an end to itself.  (One can immediately see how, therefore, a testing-centered No-Child-Left_Behind is messed up!)

When I was at school, academic knowledge was more valued than it is today; there was a far stronger belief in the value of education for its own sake. This was the principal central organising principle for educationalists, and it brought parents, teachers and educational elites together in a common endeavour.
In this climate, teachers could actually get on with teaching their specific subjects. There was undoubtedly a wide disparity in the amount of enthusiasm, talent, skill and success with which any individual teacher went about his or her work. And, like most people, I can remember teachers who were inspirational and others who were deathly dull. But the net effect was that school felt like a collective effort where pupils and teachers pursued a common goal. The sum was greater than its parts. So the education system was, and can still be, better than ‘the quality of its individual teachers’.
To look upon teachers as being solely responsible for the quality of education is both incorrect and unhelpful.

Yep, my story as well.  It seems like I had as many awful teachers as there were fantastic teachers.  But, even the awful ones made it abundantly clear that we were in school to learn and appreciate the wonders of knowing.  But, that does not seem to be the case anymore.  Why so?

the most disastrous has been the loss of faith in the pursuit of Truth, without which education starts to lack a point. 

Indeed!  I tell students that we pursue the truth--not there there is a magical book that reveals the truth. But, I am not sure even if university faculty convey and practice this message anymore.  Most of us merely Bullshit.  But, I digress.
I liked the following paragraphs even better than the first few:

We do need to accept that not all pupils will understand all subjects at school. While the government’s aim to help children ‘achieve much more than they may ever have imagined’ is laudable, this outlook is often mixed up with the idea that every child should achieve the same results. The idea that education should somehow create wider social equality is erroneous. Social equality is a complex political issue that can only be solved in adult society, not in schools.
The idea that education determines all later life chances is now widespread. Within the education system it has encouraged a focus on the assessment of common skills in order to allow for the most superficial kind of equality of outcomes.
However sincere the wish, education cannot, and should not, be thought of as ‘an engine for social mobility’. Past attempts to burden education with this task have failed and it has led to a degraded view of the value of knowledge, the consequences of which the Lib-Con coalition seems to underestimate.
Having a good education does not guarantee a comfortable adult life, with a nice house and an interesting, well-paid job. Social and material inequalities are neither entirely created, nor remediable, in the sphere of education. In fact, the paradox of education is that it is likely to be of greatest benefit when we afford it the greatest autonomy and insulation from the concerns of wider society.

College sports and the lack of critical thinking

So, finally, the BCS national championship hoopla is over.  But, we have very little time to get some badly needed rest--the March Madness will soon be upon us!  Of course, I have already landed in hot water for comments about that one :)

The following letter to the editor shows how messed up our thinking has become when it comes to sports:

Shame on Oregonians who rooted for Auburn
I didn't attend OSU or U of O and neither did my kids. My husband was a professor at Western.
Monday night I was in front of the TV rooting for the Ducks not because I'm fond of green and yellow or I like Eugene better than Corvallis, but because that team was representing Oregon where, except for a trip to the Rose Bowl (which is no small feat), nothing amazing has happened sports-wise since the Blazers won the championship in the '70s.
For those who were spitefully cheering for Auburn, shame on you. This was about more than a game. This was the Whos from Whoville shouting, "We are here! We are here!"
We were people rallying together for a team who was representing our beautiful state. Yeah, it would have been great if they had won, but they played with great sportsmanship, class and heart right down to the last second.
They showed the country that we Oregonians are about more than just spotted owls and rust. I'm a proud webfooted hillbilly.

Says a lot about critical thinking, which is supposedly the reason why universities exist in the first place.  Increasingly though, it appears that universities are merely the convenient physical framework to offer non-stop sports and keep people entertained.

One commenter in the newspaper's site has this to offer:

Out of 120 kids on their roster about 25 come from Oregon High Schools.

Almost 50 come from California.

Another 45 come from other states.

Tell me again why I should be ashamed of myself for not rooting for them?

:)

Don't simply give foreign aid. Give Micronutrients

Bjorn Lomborg writes:

Billions of dollars are given and spent on aid and development by individuals and companies each year. Despite this generosity, we simply do not allocate enough resources to solve all of the world's biggest problems. In a world fraught with competing claims on human solidarity, we have a moral obligation to direct additional resources to where they can achieve the most good. And that is as true of our own small-scale charitable donations as it is of governments' or philanthropists' aid budgets.

So, where will be the largest return on investment?

Micronutrient deficiency is known as "hidden hunger." This is a fitting description, because it is one of the global challenges that we hear relatively little about in the developed world. It draws scant media attention or celebrity firepower, which are often crucial to attracting charitable donations to a cause.

"It is a ponzi scheme"--universities, that is

I have been blogging about this for such a long time that I might as well yawn away at such reports:

The United States' educational and research pre-eminence is being undermined, and some of the chief underminers are universities themselves, according to articles this week in Science and Nature magazines.
Universities are aggressively seeking federal dollars to build bigger and fancier laboratory facilities, and are not paying an equal amount of attention to teaching and nurturing the students who would fill them, scientists say in the articles.
"It's a Ponzi scheme," said Kenneth G. Mann, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Vermont, whose concerns were described by Nature. "Eventually you'll have a situation where you're not even producing the feedstock into the system."

If only people listened to me; but, not only do they not listen to me, they believe I am incompetent.  The university president says I am not fit even to be an Assistant Professor, and the faculty union presidents ruled that I don't have a right to opinions.  Wait a minute, the fact that these otherwise opposing camps are united means that, aha, I am right :)

The health of universities, and the overall U.S. economy, depends on finding that right balance, he said. "There's a real risk at the present time to have a system that's not stable."

Yep :(

India, like the US, is a country of immigrants

Thus spake India's Supreme Court:

While North America (USA and Canada) has new immigrants who came mainly from Europe over the last four or five centuries, India is a country of old immigrants in which people have been coming in over the last ten thousand years or so. Probably about 92 per cent of the people living in India today are descendants of immigrants, who came mainly from the North-West, and to a lesser extent from the North-East.

This observation comes in its ruling on a horrible case that was an atrocious treatment of a "tribal" woman by upper caste folks

The case related to Nandabai, 25, belonging to the Bhil tribe, a Scheduled Tribe in Maharashtra. She was beaten, kicked and stripped, and then paraded naked on the village road, over an alleged illicit relationship with a man from an upper caste.

The Court underscores the importance here:

it is the duty of all people who love our country to see that no harm is done to the Scheduled Tribes and that they are given all help to bring them up in their economic and social status, since they have been victimised for thousands of years by terrible oppression and atrocities. The mentality of our countrymen towards these tribals must change, and they must be given the respect they deserve as the original inhabitants of India.

And that:

It is time now to undo the historical injustice to them.

Yes.  One of the many troubling aspects of India.  But, by and large everybody seems to accept their respective places in society, even if it is a harshly unequal treatment.

My freshman year roommate in engineering college told me that he was not keen on going home for the break, which puzzled me.  He explained--back in his village, even the kids of upper-caste folks would call his father by name and order his father around.  Calling somebody by their first name is an enormous sign of power in India.

Am reminded of an NPR segment from a few days ago.  If the Indian court referred to the country as a land of immigrants, now it is the land of opportunity as America was/is.  But,

"In India, you're eternally a master and eternally a servant," Giridharadas tells NPR's Steve Inskeep. "Servants in many ways have been seen — and [have] been taught to see themselves — as being not someone who is situationally inferior, but someone who is eternally, intrinsically inferior."

It is a country that is very hard to understand.

Mystery solved: why boys like sticks!

I have always been tempted to pick up a stick when I see one while walking/hiking.  Sometimes to fling them. Sometimes to simply carry.  And sometimes to simply poke the plants :)  If Will Rogers thought that there was never a dollar bill he didn't like, I suppose there are very few sticks that I have never liked!

And my non-random observation right from when I was young was that boys in general liked sticks, and girls did not.  I thought it was merely a gender thing.

Turns out that this was the number one question that intrigued Slate readers too, and am mighty glad that there is an answer as well :)

The question of the year (2010) that Slate's Explainer examines is:

I've always pondered why boys like having sticks. Whether it be walking down a hiking trail with a stick they picked up or running a stick across a white picket fence, boys (including me when I was small) seem to have a knack for having a stick. Is there some kind of explanation for this behavior?

What is the answer you ask?  Click here for the explanations, where you will also find out how porcupines use sticks.  Am not kidding ...

Haiti: the only good news is about frogs?

It is a year since the devastating earthquake.  Last night PBS' Frontline was about Haiti.  Dutifully I turned in, and shut it off when I could not handle the horrible stories of rape.  For now, denial is working for me.

National Geographic Reports:

Scientists searching for long-lost frogs in Haiti’s forests came face to face with the critically endangered La Hotte glanded frog, which sees the world through unusual, sapphire-colored eyes.

The frog is among half a dozen newly rediscovered Haitian species, which had not been seen for nearly two decades and occur nowhere else in the world, found by researchers from Conservation International (CI) and IUCN’s Amphibian Specialist Group

“All we hear from Haiti is bad news and we wanted to highlight something unique that Haiti has and really should be proud of,” said Conservation International’s Robin Moore, an amphibian conservation specialist and co-leader of the expedition.

More on the terrorist attack in Arizona

From the Washington Post:

The weapon used in the shooting was a Glock 19 semiautomatic handgun, with an extended magazine of 9mm bullets.

Adds Slate:

So will the incident dampen sales of the Glock guns? Unlikely. In fact, Bloomberg cites Federal Bureau of Investigation data showing that in Arizona, one-day gun sales were 60 percent higher on Monday than on the Monday before the incident. Several other states showed a significant sales bump. And national sales increased about 5 percent. All in all, Americans—not military or police, mind you, but private citizens—own more than 270 million firearms, about 85 guns per 100 people. No other country has such high rates of gun ownership, or absolute numbers of guns in the general population.

Stoned Pakistan and harsh punishments

The graphic says it all (ht):

Christina Green: life book-ended by tragedies

The nine-year old, who died at the terrorist assassination attempt in Arizona, was born on 9/11/2001.  One of the many tragic and ironic coincidences in life.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Click here for profiles of the other victims of this horrendous act of terrorism.

What a difference a name makes? Mohammed v. Loughner

The 19-year old Oregon male versus the 22-year old Arizona male.  Same age group.  One had plans to kill, but was apprehended before the act was carried out.  The other shoots at quite a few, and kills.
But, the only terrorist is the Oregonian?  All because of the differences in skin color, name, and religion?
Here is Peter Beinart:

Had the shooters’ name been Abdul Mohammed, you’d be hearing the familiar drumbeat about the need for profiling and the pathologies of Islam. But since his name was Jared Lee Loughner, he gets called “mentally unstable”; the word “terrorist” rarely comes up. When are we going to acknowledge that good old-fashioned white Americans are every bit as capable of killing civilians for a political cause as people with brown skin who pray to Allah? There’s a tradition here. Historically, American elites, especially conservative American elites, have tended to reserve the term “terrorism” for political violence committed by foreigners.

Congressional Comedy: the reading of the Constitution

What a farce that was!  Political theatre--an expensive production that was a dud!!!

Tweedledum and Tweedledee :(

Office Hours at Juniper College, not at WOU :)

I suppose the comedy is getting better; I find the previous episodes a lot less funny ...

Click here for info about this series

Gabrielle Giffords reads the First Amendment

And, the horrendous graphic with "targets" (ht) ... not that this graphic was the cause, but, politicians need to be ultra careful about their rhetoric that employs violent metaphors; it is not that difficult to imagine that some among the audience might not see the distinction between metaphors and real ...

Pakistan's spiraling descent

Reacting to the brazen assassination of Salman Taseer, the governor of Pakistan's populous and influential province, Christian Caryl writes in the NY Review of Books:

I can’t help feeling that the killing of Salman Taseer is a calamity for everyone who lives in the country—including the people who are now strewing flowers at the feet of the man who allegedly pulled the trigger. Those who support the takfiri worldview don’t seem to understand that this is an ideology that cedes the definition of “true Islam” to the self-declared defenders of religion—and that these definitions shift according to the political wind, to selfish agendas and narrow factional interests, rather than to the uncorrupted dictates of faith. And that means that those who consider themselves right-minded believers today can easily find themselves on the wrong end of a Kalashnikov tomorrow.

Taseer's son writes in the NY Times:

According to the authorities, my father’s stand on the blasphemy law was what drove Mr. Qadri to kill him. There are those who say my father’s death was the final nail in the coffin for a tolerant Pakistan. That Pakistan’s liberal voices will now be silenced. But we buried a heroic man, not the courage he inspired in others.

And he concludes thus:

It may sound odd, but I can’t imagine my father dying in any other way. Everything he had, he invested in Pakistan, giving livelihoods to tens of thousands, improving the economy. My father believed in our country’s potential. He lived and died for Pakistan. To honor his memory, those who share that belief in Pakistan’s future must not stay silent about injustice. We must never be afraid of our enemies. We must never let them win.

I worry that "they" are winning.  Back to Caryl:

The West, and especially the United States, should also take notice. It is time for policymakers in Washington to understand that Pakistan is not simply a vexing sideshow to the war in Afghanistan. Pakistan—populous, chaotic, and nuclear-armed—needs to be taken seriously in its own right. An imploding Pakistan promises immense pain and turmoil to itself and the world at large. Let’s hope that this realization doesn’t come too late.

Poem for today: "Spellbound" by Emily Brontë

The neighboring roofs are all frosted.  We are getting deeper into winter, and weather forecasts suggest that if the conditions are right, we might get a sprinkling of snow.  Because snow is rare in this part of the world, we make a big deal of it when it happens, much to the amusement of those who live in snow country.  Within a couple of minutes of snow falling, we also begin to complain about the problems it creates.

It is all a reflection of how much we are impressed by the forces of nature.  Robert Frost famously wrote about stopping by the woods on a snowy evening.  Expressing similar emotions is Emily Brontë in her poem:

Spellbound  by Emily Brontë

The night is darkening round me, The wild winds coldly blow; But a tyrant spell has bound me And I cannot, cannot go. The giant trees are bending Their bare boughs weighed with snow. And the storm is fast descending, And yet I cannot go. Clouds beyond clouds above me, Wastes beyond wastes below; But nothing dear can move me; I will not, cannot go.

Of course, Brontë preceded Frost by more than a hundred years.  I bet even a few hundred years ago, humans--poets and otherwise--found themselves spellbound by nature, and then forced themselves to keep moving because of the various promises to keep.