The end of November means it is time to shave?

Not for me, of course!

If I shaved, I will look like this:

Yep, behind the furry mask hides a baby-face ;)

To those men who are thinking about shaving off the beard, well, a reminder that facial hair plays a significant role in a man’s love life:

women said the sexiest men were those sporting heavy stubble, followed by short stubble. Men with full beards and clean-shaven men were rated the lowest on the overall sexiness scale.

Mine is a well-trimmed full beard, which rates well among women choosing a long-term partner ;)

Men with heavy stubble and full beards were the clear winners on this question, suggesting that men who are ready to commit might do better if they shave less often.

So, what is going on?

Barnaby Dixson, a human behavioral ecologist at the University of Queensland and a co-author of the beard length study, has been researching mate preferences for a decade. He explains that both sexes judge men with beards as older and more masculine, and describe them as generous, sincere, industrious and self-confident.

You are perhaps thinking, "hey, don't be heteronormative."  Here's the response for you, too:

It’s not just women who prefer bearded alpha males — men also prefer men with facial hair.
Dr. Dixson and colleagues asked 1,577 men and women from Brazil and the Czech Republic about facial hair. Compared to heterosexual women, gay men had stronger preferences for men with more facial hair.

So, throw away that razor, men.  Get yourself a beard-trimmer, and have a great time!

But, what about men who cannot grow beards naturally?  SOL, as my students would say ;)

What have I done?

Imagine a bunch of talented kids who are very good in math and science.  They go to college where they learn more about science, and delve deep into science.  They then begin to apply that science and assist in the development of products.

So far, so good, right?

Are you sure?

What if they are not developing products that help humanity, but hurt humanity?

Especially if they do this in democratic societies. Scientists and technologists being pressured by dictators is an entirely different topic.

So, in free societies, if these talented kids grow up and then voluntarily assist in the development of products that hurt humanity, then ... isn't there something wrong with this picture?

Yes, of course, plenty of people have thought about this, written about this, talked about this.  But, I am always at a loss imagining how individuals willingly choose to participate in something that they know will not be the best for humanity.

When I saw photographs of women and children also being tear gassed at the US-Mexico border, I couldn't stop wondering what makes people develop such tools. 

Source

And then the nerd in me wondered what tear gas is; the oracle that the internet is delivers right away: "they’re not gases; they’re powders that billow into the air as a fine mist."

I had no idea.  I thought they literally shot gas into the crowds!

So, what happens when one is on the receiving end?

Before the tearing, the choking and the pouring mucus, tear gas burns. It causes searing pain in the eyes, skin, lungs and mouth—or anywhere it touches. “It can be overwhelming and incapacitating. You can be forced to shut your eyes and cannot open them,” says Sven-Eric Jordt, an anesthesiologist at Duke University. And then comes the coughing and the nausea and the vomiting.

Now, think about this: These are not found naturally, but are manufactured by humans.  A bunch of talented nerds had nothing better to do than to create tear gas?

Tear gas agents activate one of two pain receptors, TRPA1 or TRPV1,

The first category, TRPA1-activating agents, includes the chemical called 2-chlorobenzalmalonitrile or CS gas. This is one of the agents used by U.S. law enforcement and, according to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesperson, is what CBP officers fired into crowds of men, women and children at the U.S. southern border on Sunday. “A lot of children fainted. My daughter also got hit. There were pregnant women there and a lot of older men, too,” a witness told the Washington Post on camera on Monday. 

It affects children a lot worse.  Why?

Children are particularly at a high risk for injuries from these agents, Jordt says, because they are so small. “They are shorter, and there are increased concentrations are near the ground. They also have a smaller body surface and lungs so the potential for injury is higher,” he says.

Apparently such a chemical ain't enough!

“More and more, there’s a higher-level version called CS2 or sometimes CX,” she says. “They [contain silicon] so that they can last longer in the environment and don’t disintegrate as quickly.” The result is a more harmful tear gas that can continue to affect an area for several days.

How awful!

Keep in mind the two pain receptors, TRPA1 or TRPV1.  Before we learn about the other one, anything else?

There are two other TRPA1-activating agents used for riot control: CR gas (dibenzoxazepine) and CN gas (chloroacetophenone, also used in bear spray). Both are more potent than CS gas, Jordt says.

Ok, can we move on to the other one?

There are two compounds in common use in this category: OC gas, a concentrated solution of natural capsaicin, and PAVA, a mix of synthetic capsaicin also used by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “This has fewer chemical or allergic reactions, but it’s also an oil so it’s much harder to get off and can last longer,” Haar says. “It can also cause corneal abrasions if you’re shooting it directly into someone’s eyes.”

This is insane!  "Haar says that there are almost no scenarios where the use of tear gas makes sense for controlling crowds."

But, worryingly, this is perhaps the new normal :(

The end of history

Nope, I am not referring to Francis Fukuyama's best seller from nearly three decades ago.  it is the end of History as a subject that we study that I am worried about now.

Back in the old country, if ever a 18-year old said that she was studying history, well, the immediate--and only--interpretation was that she was an academic weakling who could not get into anything better and so was stuck in the condemned majors like history.

Whatever history I have learnt about India or anything has been despite the virulent anti-history educational framework back there.  It has been quite a struggle to learn history on my own, to learn to write on my own, to appreciate poetry on my own, to read up on philosophy on my own, to appreciate the arts on my own ... This listing adds up to something, right?  That something is liberal education, dear reader!

Liberal education is under attack on all fronts, and all over the world.  In this attack, even history is rapidly bleeding students.  As I noted in my reply there, the story is not just about history, but about liberal education.  Apparently, we, too, want to become like China, where higher education is not about the dangerously subversive liberal education.

My, and our collective, failure in understanding history came about in a rather interesting way last night when we watched a Netflix show.  Yes, a show on Netflix.  It was about the history of the people in the present Americas and the Caribbean: John Leguizamo's Latin History for Morons

There were lots that I was already familiar with.  But plenty that I had no idea about.  Especially these two: The repatriation of Mexican-Americans when Hoover was the President, and the lynching of hundreds of Mexican-Americans.

This was a well-prepared one-man show.  I was, therefore, confident that he was not making things up.  How come I never knew about those two things, which are not trivial footnotes by any means?

Late into the night, I read up.  I was shocked.  Mitt Romney's comment during his presidential campaign that the undocumented should self-deport took on a new meaning.

This essay begins with an eerie comparison of the current President with Hoover:

It was a time of economic struggle, racial resentment and increasing xenophobia. Installed in the White House was a president who had never before held elected office. A moderately successful businessman, he promised American jobs for Americans—and made good on that promise by slashing immigration by nearly 90 percent.
He wore his hair parted down the middle, rather than elaborately piled on top, and his name was Herbert Hoover, not Donald Trump. But in the late 1920s and early 1930s, under the president’s watch, a wave of illegal and unconstitutional raids and deportations would alter the lives of as many as 1.8 million men, women and children—a threat that would seem to loom just as large in 2017 as it did back in 1929.

And that is just the beginning!

Now to understand the lynching of Mexican Americans.

Americans are largely unaware that Mexicans were frequently the targets of lynch mobs, from the mid-19th century until well into the 20th century, second only to African-Americans in the scale and scope of the crimes.

I was one those unaware.  Not anymore.

From 1848 to 1928, mobs murdered thousands of Mexicans, though surviving records allowed us to clearly document only about 547 cases. These lynchings occurred not only in the southwestern states of Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas, but also in states far from the border, like Nebraska and Wyoming. 

Who cares about history, right?  Close down all the history departments, and put an end to liberal education.  Teach students programming and be done!