Slice of history... and part of the present

King's Final Years from NewsWeek

The Northern campaign went into high gear with a rally at Soldier Field and a march to city hall, where King, like Martin Luther before him, nailed his 14 demands (for things like open housing and jobs in all-white industries) to the door. At first, Daley was conciliatory. He claimed that the problems all predated him and that he had already repaired more than 100,000 apartments. When a summer riot broke out in North Lawndale (Coretta told the children to back away from the windows), the mayor sought a truce with token concessions like fire-hydrant nozzles so black kids could cool off. King held all-night talks with gang leaders and Justice Department officials in the same room, but his commitment to nonviolence was belittled by newer "Black Power" leaders like Stokely Carmichael as "too Sunday-school."

The point of the Chicago campaign was to show race as a national problem, and it did so with a bang when King led an integrated group of marchers into the racist enclave of Marquette Park. "I have never in my life seen such hate," said King, who was hit by a rock there. "Not in Mississippi or Alabama." But unlike the battle with Alabama state troopers the year before at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, marches into Marquette Park (and later into the white suburb of Cicero) led to no national catharsis or landmark legislation. Congress defeated a new civil-rights bill that would have banned housing discrimination (it finally passed in 1968). Although Northern authorities—the National Guard and Daley's police—defended the marchers rather than attack them, a backlash against the movement was setting in. "Don't you find," Mike Wallace asked King on CBS News, "that the American people are getting a little bit tired, truly, of the whole civil-rights struggle?"

...

Yet it is simply inaccurate to say that every period since King has been what he called a "valley moment." The Voting Rights Act transformed American politics, and the growth of the black middle class has changed the lives of millions of families. While New Orleans got worse, Chicago got better. Today it's a much healthier city than it was in Boss Daley's time, thanks in part to his son, Richard M. Daley, who has been mayor since 1989, and his predecessor, Harold Washington, the city's first African-American mayor.

While Chicago's public-school system remains troubled and stubbornly segregated, it now boasts several highly successful schools and realistic hope for more. Housing, too, is still largely segregated by neighborhood and is unaffordable for the poor and working class, with long waiting lists for subsidies. But notorious housing projects like the Robert Taylor Homes and Cabrini-Green have been mostly torn down and replaced by townhouse-style public housing units, a third of them owned by the residents.

BBC classic news clips over the past 50 years

Open News Archives from BBC

Some good but mostly ghastly things in history... but good selection. Refresh your memory but to view the clips you have to download them.

Cute cute cute....

The Cute Factor from NYTimes

If the mere sight of Tai Shan, the roly-poly, goofily gamboling masked bandit of a panda cub now on view at the National Zoo isn't enough to make you melt, then maybe the crush of his human onlookers, the furious flashing of their cameras and the heated gasps of their mass rapture will do the trick.

"Omigosh, look at him! He is too cute!"

"How adorable! I wish I could just reach in there and give him a big squeeze!"

"He's so fuzzy! I've never seen anything so cute in my life!"

A guard's sonorous voice rises above the burble. "OK, folks, five oohs and aahs per person, then it's time to let someone else step up front."

cute isn't it :) However, there is more to read in this article.

Scientists who study the evolution of visual signaling have identified a wide and still expanding assortment of features and behaviors that make something look cute: bright forward-facing eyes set low on a big round face, a pair of big round ears, floppy limbs and a side-to-side, teeter-totter gait, among many others.

Cute cues are those that indicate extreme youth, vulnerability, harmlessness and need, scientists say, and attending to them closely makes good Darwinian sense. As a species whose youngest members are so pathetically helpless they can't lift their heads to suckle without adult supervision, human beings must be wired to respond quickly and gamely to any and all signs of infantile desire.

The human cuteness detector is set at such a low bar, researchers said, that it sweeps in and deems cute practically anything remotely resembling a human baby or a part thereof, and so ends up including the young of virtually every mammalian species, fuzzy-headed birds like Japanese cranes, woolly bear caterpillars, a bobbing balloon, a big round rock stacked on a smaller rock, a colon, a hyphen and a close parenthesis typed in succession.

The greater the number of cute cues that an animal or object happens to possess, or the more exaggerated the signals may be, the louder and more italicized are the squeals provoked.

Cuteness is distinct from beauty, researchers say, emphasizing rounded over sculptured, soft over refined, clumsy over quick. Beauty attracts admiration and demands a pedestal; cuteness attracts affection and demands a lap. Beauty is rare and brutal, despoiled by a single pimple. Cuteness is commonplace and generous, content on occasion to cosegregate with homeliness.

First non-depressing post of the year :)

New seven wonders: Taj in contention from HT

Here is the list:
Taj Mahal, India
Acropolis, Greece;
Alhambra, Spain
Angkor Wat, Cambodia
Chichen Itza, Mexico
Christ Redeemer, Brazil
Colosseum, Rome
The statues of Easter Island
Eiffel Tower, Paris
Great Wall, China
Hagia Sophia, Turkey
Kiyomizu Temple, Japan
Kremlin, Moscow
Machu Picchu, Peru
Neuschwanstein Castle, Germany
Petra, Jordan
Pyramids of Giza, Egypt
Statue of Liberty, New York
Stonehenge, Britain
Sydney Opera House, Australia
Timbuktu, Mali.

Domino effect

RR Package: A 'tribute' to minister from bar girls pushed into one-night stands from The Telegraph [via India Uncut]

Caste cruelity

Woman, 5 children burnt alive in Bihar from The Hindu

RAGHOPUR: A woman and her five minor children, including two girls, were burnt to death in Rampur-Shyamchak village of Vaishali district early on Sunday, after her husband refused to withdraw a police complaint about the theft of a buffalo. The complainant, Bijendra Mahto, belonging to the extremely backward Kahar caste, with 90 per cent burns, is battling for life at the Patna Medical College Hospital.

According to the police, about 10 persons tied up Bijendra Mahto and set fire to his thatched hut past midnight. When Mahto lodged the complaint, Jagat Rai, his son and nephew were arrested and later let off on bail. Mahto charged that Rai had been insisting that he withdraw the complaint.

According to witnesses, Rai led the mob that torched the house and also fired in the air to prevent others from coming to the rescue of the family.

Fascinating facts

Why I'm Happy I Evolved from NYTimes

Organisms like the sea slug Elysia chlorotica. This animal not only looks like a leaf, but it also acts like one, making energy from the sun. Its secret? When it eats algae, it extracts the chloroplasts, the tiny entities that plants and algae use to manufacture energy from sunlight, and shunts them into special cells beneath its skin. The chloroplasts continue to function; the slug thus becomes able to live on a diet composed only of sunbeams.

Still more fabulous is the bacterium Brocadia anammoxidans. It blithely makes a substance that to most organisms is a lethal poison - namely, hydrazine. That's rocket fuel.

And then there's the wasp Cotesia congregata. She injects her eggs into the bodies of caterpillars. As she does so, she also injects a virus that disables the caterpillar's immune system and prevents it from attacking the eggs. When the eggs hatch, the larvae eat the caterpillar alive.

It's hard not to have an insatiable interest in organisms like these, to be enthralled by the strangeness, the complexity, the breathtaking variety of nature.

Just think: the Indus River dolphin doesn't sleep as you or I do, or indeed as most mammals, for several hours at once. Instead, it takes microsleeps, naps that last for a few seconds, like a driver dozing at the wheel.

Or consider this: a few days after its conception, a pig embryo has become a filament that is about a yard long.

Or: the single-celled parasite that causes malaria is descended from algae. We know this because it carries within itself the remnants of a chloroplast.

Female Infanticide

Lajja [via Times of India]

Today after a looooong time I went to Times of India site and came accross this blog. DO TAKE TIME TO READ... also go through the comments.

Welcome 2006!!!!

Assamees -- Rongaali Bihur xubhessaa lobo
Bengali -- Shuvo Nabo Barsho
Farsi -- Sal-e no mubarak
Gujarati -- Natal ni shub kaamnao & Saal Mubarak
Hindi -- Naye Varsha Ki Shubhkamanyen
Kannada -- Hosa Varushadha Shubhashayagalu
Marathi -- Nveen Varshachy Shubhechcha
Malayalam -- Puthuvatsara Aashamsakal
Oriya -- Sukhamaya christmass ebang khusibhara naba barsa
Punjabi -- Nave sal di mubarak
Sindhi -- Nayou Saal Mubbarak Hoje
Tamil -- Eniya Puthandu Nalvazhthukkal
Telugu -- Noothana samvatsara shubhakankshalu
Thai -- Sawadee Pee Mai
Turkish -- Yeni Yiliniz Kutlu Olsun
Urdu -- Naya Saal Mubbarak Ho

One year...

I just realsized that it is one year since I started blogging.

quote

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
-- from movie "Coach Carter" [The passage quoted from Marianne Williamson]

Exploring FireFox

I never really got hooked to firefox...

But today I have done some exploring and liked these few listed here

Wizz RSS
IE Tab

Let me see maybe I will switch to Fire Fox(I have done this before and end up going back to Opera)

Cartoonist take on 2005

And many more from NPR.org

A positive move...

Stigma bogs down pre-marital HIV screening from The Hindu

But what about other states????

Most brides-to-be still shy away from seeking a pre-marital health screening of their suitors for HIV/AIDS, despite growing evidence about women being infected by their spouses.

A strong undercurrent of stigma and little power to decide about their life are preventing young women from insisting on a health report of the prospective groom before agreeing for marriage.

...

There are already 275 such centres across Tamil Nadu where anyone can get their blood tested for Rs. 10 besides free counselling.

Quantum Theory

Quantum Trickery: Testing Einstein's Strangest Theory from NYTimes

I just can't sum up this article. Full article is must read.

Nary a week goes by that does not bring news of another feat of quantum trickery once only dreamed of in thought experiments: particles (or at least all their properties) being teleported across the room in a microscopic version of Star Trek beaming; electrical "cat" currents that circle a loop in opposite directions at the same time; more and more particles farther and farther apart bound together in Einstein's spooky embrace now known as "entanglement." At the University of California, Santa Barbara, researchers are planning an experiment in which a small mirror will be in two places at once.

Niels Bohr, the Danish philosopher king of quantum theory, dismissed any attempts to lift the quantum veil as meaningless, saying that science was about the results of
experiments, not ultimate reality. But now that quantum weirdness is not confined to thought experiments, physicists have begun arguing again about what this weirdness means, whether the theory needs changing, and whether in fact there is any problem.

...

The Silly Theory

From the day 100 years ago that he breathed life into quantum theory by deducing that light behaved like a particle as well as like a wave, Einstein never stopped warning that it was dangerous to the age-old dream of an orderly universe.

If light was a particle, how did it know which way to go when it was issued from an atom?

"The more success the quantum theory has, the sillier it seems," Einstein once wrote to friend.

The full extent of its silliness came in the 1920's when quantum theory became quantum mechanics.

In this new view of the world, as encapsulated in a famous equation by the Austrian Erwin Schrödinger, objects are represented by waves that extend throughout space, containing all the possible outcomes of an observation - here,
there, up or down, dead or alive. The amplitude of this wave is a measure of the
probability that the object will actually be found to be in one state or another, a suggestion that led Einstein to grumble famously that God doesn't throw dice.

Worst of all from Einstein's point of view was the uncertainty principle, enunciated by Werner Heisenberg in 1927.

Certain types of knowledge, of a particle's position and velocity, for example, are
incompatible: the more precisely you measure one property, the blurrier and more
uncertain the other becomes.

In the 1935 paper, Einstein and his colleagues, usually referred to as E.P.R., argued that the uncertainty principle could not be the final word about nature. There must be a deeper theory that looked behind the quantum veil.

Imagine that a pair of electrons are shot out from the disintegration of some other particle, like fragments from an explosion. By law certain properties of these two fragments should be correlated. If one goes left, the other goes right; if one spins clockwise, the other spins counterclockwise.

That means, Einstein said, that by measuring the velocity of, say, the left hand electron, we would know the velocity of the right hand electron without ever touching it.

Conversely, by measuring the position of the left electron, we would know the position of the right hand one.

Since neither of these operations would have involved touching or disturbing the right hand electron in any way, Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen argued that the right hand electron must have had those properties of both velocity and position all along. That left only two possibilities, they concluded. Either quantum mechanics was "incomplete," or measuring the left hand particle somehow disturbed the right
hand one.

But the latter alternative violated common sense. Such an influence, or disturbance, would have to travel faster than the speed of light. "My physical instincts bristle at that suggestion," Einstein later wrote.

Bohr responded with a six-page essay in Physical Review that contained but one simple equation, Heisenberg's uncertainty relation. In essence, he said, it all depends on what you mean by "reality."