Too proud to come from apes

Many people I talk to find it hard to believe that the American society in general is a very religious and conservative society too, in many ways like the Indian societies. They simply cannot comprehend this possibility when they are used to imagine America as the land of blonde women, lots of money and yes, gratuitous sex. I can’t debate with them at length, or spend considerable time trying to convince them, but I try to present to them a few examples, such as it not being cool to make out in public, and even if kids smoke weed, they are not as open and brash about it as many college kids I see in India.

Before I descend into my one of my favorite hobbies of deriding the sad state of the youth in India today, let me quickly get to the point of my post. Since I joined Drexel way back in 2001 till today, I can clearly feel a marked rise in the Christian orthodoxy in the United States, maybe perhaps because President Bush came to power (among other means ;-) ) riding on the support of the great red mid-west. I think the hallmark of this rise in religious fundamentalism and even chauvinism, if I may call it, is the subject of evolution.

Many God-fearing, religious Christians in the United States believe that evolution is a hoax, and man is a result of intelligent design. It becomes an issue when people ask for their children’s schools to stop teaching the concept of evolution but teach their children the concept of intelligent design.

First, what is intelligent design? According to many, implying man evolved from chimps is demeaning, and an insult to their human intelligence. How can a human being be comparable to an unintelligent animal? They believe in the truth of the Bible instead, saying that man has not evolved, but is a product of a higher being, obviously referring to God as envisaged in the Bible.

It first began in the American mid-west, as I said earlier, where parents of a school district asked that the school teach Intelligent Design as a theory side by side with the theory of evolution. The Kansas Evolution hearings took place in 2005, when a religious institute posing as a non-profit think tank called “The Discovery Institute” led the Kansas State Board of Education to initiate hearing into teaching intelligent design in their schools. This “institute” calls evolution – Darwinism in a clear attempt to lessen the universalism of evolution and reduce it to the product of one man’s work (or fantasy, as I am sure they believe).

The Board, which was controlled by the Christian right, proposed among several things that evolution be called a theory and not a fact in the school books, say that science is not limited to natural explanations (clearly pointing to their belief that everything in the Bible happened in real) and introduce intelligent design as an alternate theory to evolution. Fortunately, the far right could not succeed in introducing their unintelligent designs in Kansas schools.

Another controversy took place in PA in 2005 when parents of children in the Dover Area School District sued the school district that required its schools to present intelligent design as an alternative to evolution. Fortunately, the fundamentalists lost that case well.

A major part of these fundamentalist scientific posers’ campaign to promote their cause is to discredit evolution. They say it is unproved, or questionable, and that it went against God! Despite all the ID proponents’ desire to mask it with science or philosophy, in the end it comes down to its strong religious connotation – that God created man. The net is full of this story, and this whole situation still evokes strong emotions in my mind. At Drexel, the ridiculousness of this whole “intelligent design” propaganda rattled not just me, but all of my friends. We would laugh our guts out at whoever said that Satan planted dinosaur fossils on Earth to deceive the humans.

Of course since then I think, or at least used to think that, the “theory” of intelligent design has mostly been discredited as a wet dream of the American Christian far right, but this news in The New York Times got me thinking about the subject again. It seems maybe intelligent design is not so dead after all, or perhaps America is getting more and more fundamentalist?

On Evolution, Biology Teachers Stray From Lesson Plan

Researchers found that only 28 percent of biology teachers consistently follow the recommendations of the National Research Council to describe straightforwardly the evidence for evolution and explain the ways in which it is a unifying theme in all of biology. At the other extreme, 13 percent explicitly advocate creationism, and spend at least an hour of class time presenting it in a positive light.

That leaves what the authors call “the cautious 60 percent,” who avoid controversy by endorsing neither evolution nor its unscientific alternatives. In various ways, they compromise.

The survey, published in the Jan. 28 issue of Science, found that some avoid intellectual commitment by explaining that they teach evolution only because state examinations require it, and that students do not need to “believe” in it. Others treat evolution as if it applied only on a molecular level, avoiding any discussion of the evolution of species. And a large number claim that students are free to choose evolution or creationism based on their own beliefs.

Eric Plutzer, a co-author of the paper, said that the most enthusiastic proponents of creationism were geographically widely spread across the country.

It’s actually a very scary thought to imagine these schools teaching children not about evolution but about how God created humankind. Perhaps they will bring an “Introduction to the Bible” at kindergarten level next. That compromise by the biology teachers is sad, implying they are either fundamentalist themselves, or scared of the rabid far right parents who they do not want to cross hairs with. Sad, considering President Obama’s talking about his country’s next sputnik moment. God will help them no doubt to take on the Godless non-WASPs.

Oh my God, Aero India 2011!

The Aero India 2011 defence and Aerospace exhibition at bangalore will be held this week, starting tomorrow! I am so excited that I have very few words to describe how much I am looking forward to the juicy treats of jet fighters, missiles, and a whole lot of India's latest arsenal. I definitely look forward to posting some of them here, with all dues to the copyright owners of course! 

Just to give a little background on this exhibition which any aviation/defense enthusiast in this country looks forward to every two years, this is the 7th edition of the pretigious show. Well, its become prestigious now, since India's spurred its domestic R&D and production capabilities, and opened its purses to the world's biggest defense manufacturers for wares worth billions of dollars. So yeah, obviously they look forward to making a splash here, and hope to get a pie of India's spending kitty. Given the huge scope in arms deals, not just with India buying but Indian companies showcasing their own wares, the event is now managed by the Confederation of Indian Industry, or CII.

Over the years, the exhibition has moved beyond just a showcase of military hardware, its become a symposium where the industry, the forces and the academia meet and discuss technology and strategy. The visitors are from all over the world, and they include business persons, scientists, military men and women, the media, politicians and the general enthusiasts.

For example, check this photo out of the Light Combat Helicopter developed by the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, or HAL. Its something all of us have been looking forward to for years and finally we will see it perform manoeuvres at the show! woot.

Copyright: Rahul Devnath
Location: Aero India 2011, Bangalore
That sexy thing: LCH











And this is the photo of the second prototype of the chopper, in digital camo!

Copyright: Shiv Aroor, www.livefist.com

spare a thought for the vulture

As a child, traveling across the bad roads of North India was an experience I will always remember, not just for the multitude of experiences, but giving me an opportunity to be outside the city, and get to look at greenery, lots of bovines, peacocks thrown in here and there, and lots of vultures, often crowding around a dead animal (a scene which fascinated me!).  I would enjoy looking at these big birds gliding in circles with their huge wings or simply perched on a tree brooding among each other.

As I grew older, I realized during my travels that I had stopped seeing them anywhere. Initially I let it go, but I realized surely there must be some reason why they have disappeared from the landscape all of a sudden. I looked it up online, and I realized that the vulture population in India had indeed suffered a tragedy in the decade of 1990's, when they were almost wiped out from existance. I often talk to people about this, but for some reason they look at me incredulously and unable to understand why I am so interested in this. I have no answer to that, but I do know that reading about them spurred me to read more about their demise and efforts to breed them again.

There are three species of vultures in the Indian sub-continent. The Gyps Indicus (the Indian long billed vulture), the Gyps Tenuirostris (the slender-billed vultures), and the Gyps Bengalensis (The white backed vulture)

The vulture distribution before the decline; Copyright: Wikipedia.org Commons.











First, a lesson in history - what caused this massive decline in their population.
Diclofenac - In the vast rural landscape of the country, cattle forms an inseperable part of life and livlihood, and the common Indian farmer has been getting more savvy in their upkeep, breeding and health.
Diclofenac is a non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory drug used to reduce pain in a number of conditions. The veterinary version of the drug had been introduced in the sub-continent in the early 1990's, and its use spread throughout.

During this time, the vulture population of India, nearly 40 million in the 1980's, declined to under 100,000. the Bombay Natural History Society first noticed this at a vulture breeding center in Rajasthan.

By 2000, The IUCN had listed these three species as "Critically Endangered", which basically means that the species are very close to extinction.

It was studies done by a number of convervation groups based in India and the UK which realized the cause for their decline. One of the sideeffects of the drug, even in humans, is a possibility of renal failure. This is exactly what caused the death of the vultures as well. The vultures would scavenge on the carcass of a dead animal containing the drug, and it would lead to "dehydration, visceral gout, and kidney failures in vultures within a few days."

The Comeback

The drug has been banned in the country since 2006, and alternative drugs have already been suggested and offered, which though costly, will become cheaper once the awareness and production sets in. Of course, I am speaking purely based on secondary information online which may be old, and I am hoping that the country has fully phased out diclofenac by now.

After the reasons for the decline were established, the scientific and ecological community launched a campaign to urge the government to ban the drug. This started in 2003, and the ban came in 2006. The alternate drug proposed by the scientific community, Meloxicam, was found to have no adverse effect on the vultures, according to BNHS, and thus the government encouraged vets across the country to switch to that, the for the pharma industry to begin producing it in greater quantities.

In fact, the Ministry of Environment & Forests, Government of India came out with an Action Plan in 2006 titled "Action Plan for Vulture Conservation in India". The document first gives a basic outline of the problem, its history, and subsequently gets into the work done so far, the issues being faced in achieving success and the task ahead. India is not working alone on this, but is working with Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

While banning of the drug was an important landmark, it was not enough to replenish the number of vultures that had been lost. According to many reports, in 15 years, more than 99% of the three species of vultures in the subcontinent had vanished!

Fortunately, the BNHS has been running major breeding programs for the vultures at a number of places, including Haryana and West Bengal. The first success at the vulture breeding centers was in 2009 when conservationists were blessed with the first ever vulture chick hatched in captivity. The chick born was of the Slender Billed variety.

According to a BBC newsitem in June 2010, the program yielded further success as more chicks were born, and of all the three species. By June, the news says there were 10 chicks, and 4 of them were the White Backed vultures. Most of these birds were born in Haryana and the rest in West Bengal.

The GoI Action Plan also lists establishment of more breeding centers across India. This newsitem from the Mumbai Mirror interviews the head of the breeding program for the BNHS, Dr. Vibhu Prakash, also one of the first scientists to notice the rising deaths among the Indian vultures.

I do hope the future is brighter, and the vultures released from these centers spread out and multiply. It takes time, because as Dr. Prakash says, the vultures don't start reproducing before 4-5 years of their lives.

The Indian Vulture's status as a critically endangered species.
Copyright: Ganesh Shankar, taken from IUCN












This is just the story of the Indian vultures. There are hundreds of big species that will probably be wiped out form this planet because we have taken gratuitous consumption as a sign of modernity. Our consumption of the earth's natural resources is only going to grow, and despite what we say or try to do, till that changes, the future of the rest of the species on this planet will always be bleak in my mind.

I am glad I made this post for my own sake. I've been meaning to write about this for a long while, and now that I have blogging again, I am glad I put in the time into this post to make it worthwhile, and maybe even create awareness among whoever stumbles across this post.

Nice day on the locals today

Today was quite an outdoorsy day. Went to two landmarks of the city today, three actually, because two are adjacent to each other. I've been meaning to not spend my Sunday staying indoors like i've been doing lately, and I was fully determined to do something about it for real this time. So my first stop was Kala Ghoda, which is an art street in Colaba, adjacent to the historical South Bombay buildings and armed forces establishments. The second place was the Byculla Zoo, and the Mumbai City Museum next to it. While reading up on the zoo, I found out that Byculla was the name of the Portuguese King who once held that land.

The Kala Ghoda festival is on these days and it was a delight to walk on that street surrounded by wares from a multitude of small scale industries and NGO's, and a greater delight to see the brilliant sculptures there. However, I will leave this for the next post. So what comes in between the landmarks is the travel, and that was accomplished by the Western and Central railway locals. I always enjoy traveling on the locals on the weekends, when there isn't a large crowd, and there's no work for me to think about for that day. I've clicked photos of the locals before, and I think I should post them here in the future as well. Today I just want to post some photos I clicked today.

The one above is of two Western line trains crossing each other. I am on the one on its way to Churchgate.

The one above is of the Victoria Terminus, or the CST, as its known now.

and another of CST above.....

and the fast local we didn't end up taking, above. 

This one above is of the Churchgate station. Beautiful everytime I look at it.

Of sons and daughters

Ha ha, in my blog post yesterday, I had talked about how these protests have at least led to the end of
dynastic politics in these countries, with Mobarak’s son Gamel out of the picture in Egypt, and Ali Saleh’s
son in Yemen. It is quite a story within a story in itself, and international media has been writing about it
too.

I came across this news item in The Slate magazine, a sort of young, humorous, but very insightful
publication of the Washington Post. They had linked the story from the New York magazine, and its
titled, in a very tragicomic way – “The Biggest Victims of Unrest in the Middle East: Dictators’ Sons”

Allow me to take the liberty of posting a few nuggets here….

Up until a few weeks ago, life as a dictator's son in the Middle East was pretty fantastic. In addition to
the unlimited power and wealth, you knew that you would never once need to fill out a résumé or grab
networking drinks with your friend's cousin — your next job was the presidency, whenever your aging
father decided he had finally tired of ruling the country for decades. You had all sorts of grand plans for
how you'd take everything you learned at that elite British university you attended and finally modernize
your ancient society (in ways that did not threaten your reign). But now, with the commoners causing a
ruckus across the region, that unique job security, and those dreams, have vanished.

In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak's son, Gamal, who had been groomed as his father's successor, has fled to
London, and it's safe to say that a seamless transfer of power shan't be occurring anymore.

A similar fate has befallen Ahmed Saleh, the son of Ali Abdullah Saleh, the president of Yemen since
1978. The elder Saleh had long planned for his son, the head of the nation's Republican Guard, to
take over for him. But today, with a wary eye on Egypt and hoping to quell unrest in his own country,
President Saleh announced that he wouldn't run for president again in 2013, and neither would Ahmed.
Now how about starting something in our country to put an end to this sycophantic and patronage
based politics in our country? The Congress is holding the cards tightly to its chest on when and how the
Prince of the Gandhi family will be India’s next Prime Minister. I think they have taken it for granted that
it will happen, and it’s not a question of if but when.

I somehow fail to understand the psyche of the common party activist, may he/she be from any
party. What drives them to worship their politician so blindly that they choose to overlook the latter’s
incompetence, greed and the fact that dynastic politics is as undemocratic as it can get.

Rahul’s not the only princeling standing in line for something big, but the Parliament today is filled with
young MP’s who are their more illustrious parent’s children. Be it a Sangma, Yadav, Scindhia, Deora,
or Singh, they definitely didn’t have to work very hard to earn their chops in politics. In a way, India’s
politics mirrors the Bollywood of today, where today’s famous actors did not need to slog it out to
be famous or at least get a break. I believe most of these activists do not have the power to think for
themselves. I think they are happy just to be a part of something big, which gives meanings to their lives,
hence they will follow their politician blindly.