Escuche la banda Las Cafeteras : La Resistencia con Son Jarocho en el siglo 21

Yo escuche a la Banda “Las Cafeteras” por primera vez en el programa de “Alt Latino”. Me gusto su canción “Luna Lovers”, la cual esta en Ingles. Yo tuve suerte en Noviembre de 2013 cuando yo mire por Facebook que esta banda iba a cantar en Portland en Portland State University. Sonya y yo fuimos al concierto de la banda y la experiencia fue inolvidable.

La entrada para el concierto era gratis y casi cincuenta o sesenta personas escucharon la música. Para mí fue la primera vez escuchar la música del estilo Son Jarocho en vivo.

Las Cafeteras combinan Son Jarocho con la música original de los indígenas de las Américas y el sonido moderno y cantan sobre las cosas políticas en español  e inglés. Los miembros de la banda son del este de la gran ciudad de Los Ángeles .L os miembros de la banda se conocieron cuando estaban tomando clases para aprender música de Son Jarocho en el café Eastside en Los Ángeles. Los siete miembros de la banda usan instrumentos como la jarana, el requinto, la quijada del burro y la tarima (una plataforma de madera).  

La banda no solo toca bien la música pero bailan  asombrosamente sobre la tarima. Ellos cambian algunas palabras en las canciones clásicas para dar su mensaje político  de una manera suave e impactante. A la audiencia le gustaron todas las canciones. Al final del concierto la banda invitó a    las personas que forman la comunidad de Son Jarocho en Portland. Casi veinte músicos  subieron al escenario y cantaron junto con la banda - un final espectacular para una noche de música extraordinaria.

Yo he comprado su álbum “It’s Time” que tiene algunas de sus canciones las cuales yo he escuchado en vivo en concierto.  “It’s Time” es el primer álbum del grupo y salió en 2012. Me gustan todas las canciones de la banda. La primera canción del álbum se llama “el Chuchumbé”, y cuando yo la escuche pensé que estaba escuchando una canción de origen de la India- porque el sonido puro de la jarana se parece a la Iktara de la India, la percusión parece como un “dhol” y la voz parece como la voz de la música folklórica de la India. Yo no estaba esperando esto y por eso me sentí emocionado. Quizás mucha música folklórica del mundo tenga una raíz común. El álbum tiene muchas otras canciones que me emocionan, no solo por la música pero por los  temas e  ideas políticas.

Por ejemplo, la canción, “Its Movement Time” nos da información sobre la historia de las personas oprimidas de las Américas. Las personas en los Estados Unidos están felices por  haber elegido al  primer presidente de color en 2008, pero en México tuvieron el presidente de origen indígena en el siglo 19 en Benito Juárez.  La canción tiene otra información sobre los movimientos de resistencia como el ferrocarril oculto que iba  al sur de México y la solidaridad de diferentes comunidades para evitar opresión en su vida. Yo necesitare leer más sobre las cosas históricas de esto y otras canciones del grupo.

Muchas veces cuando yo escuchaba la música a la cual la llamo “la música clásica” en los Estados Unidos, yo nunca escuche la música clásica ni folclórica de este continente. La música clásica no solo es de origen Europeo, porque hay  música clásica en todo el Mundo. La música de Son Jarocho tiene las raíces en la historia del continente Americano -en  partes de África, y e Europa, y es uno de los tipos de la música clásica del mundo.

Ojala que Son Jarocho viva para siempre!

(Escrito con el apoyo de Rafael)

Enlaces:

Son Jarocho 101 : Alt Latino: El programa tiene mucho información sobré la historia de Son Jarocho, y puedas escuchar las canciones clásicas  e inolvidables como “La Bamba” en la versión original.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/altlatino/2014/01/24/264874929/with-guitars-like-machetes-son-jarocho-101

Las Cafeteras: http://lascafeteras.com/

Eastside cafe: http://eastsidecafe.org/

Son Jarocho: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_Jarocho

Commentary on Animated Oscar Shorts nominated for 2014

Spoiler Alert: The article below may contain information that may reveal clues about the shorts that may spoil your first viewing!

First of all, I have to be thankful to my friend who invited me to watch these animated shorts in Portland, Oregon. I did not know about the existence of these shorts till he told me about the films last year. If you want to see the full list of awards given for the Oscars, you can do so at the official website (http://oscar.go.com/nominees).

These animated shorts are usually not released at the theater like most full length feature films. We were lucky to get to watch these at the Living Room Theaters in downtown Portland, OR. You can watch them through Thursday, 06 Feb 2014 at Living Room Theaters. They are also being shown at Hollywood Theatre. In the age of the internet, some of them are also available for viewing and purchase through other avenues like Netflix, Itunes, Amazon Video


The shorts are produced by countries in the industrialized well-off first world- which goes to show that film-making, even an animated short is an expensive venture. We were discussing after the movie how for even a small 5 minute short film, the credits contained more than a hundred people. It shows that whereas something like a book or a piece of art can be produced by a single person, a film takes a lot of resources and thus cannot easily be produced by someone in a poor country with limited resources. There are many places in the world that have exquisite murals- but there is no way for an artist from a marginalized place to produce a short.

Perhaps in the future, computers will help level the playing field and allow us to hear stories from far-away places. In the same way that I feel happy that we went to see the Oscar nominated animated shorts, which is something that not a lot of people see, perhaps we should be also be mindful of things that we do not get to see on the big screen for reasons of economics and politics. Perhaps, we should all engage in a mental exercise of creating an animated short when we see a work of art that moves us.

A mural from Los Baños, Ecuador, 2012. There are tons of beautiful murals in Ecuador and other places in the world. What would a short produced by this artist look like?

The movies being considered for the Oscar awards in the category Animated Short Film for the year 2014 are

Feral (USA)
Daniel Sousa and Dan Golden

The animated  minimalist art work for this film deals with the subject of a "feral" kid rescued by a hunter in the woods, and the eventual failure of the kid to be integrated into "civil" society, and his escape back to the woods after not being able to "fit" into society. It is a simple story that asks questions about what we consider to be civilization, about the prevalence of bullying in USA and how the Procrustes story continues to play out in our daily lives. As a person of colour, it was interesting for me to note the subtle way in which a US American town in the days when horses were used for transport was portrayed as all white. It asks questions about the reality of the acceptance of rugged individualism in US American society in the past and the current era, where even children can be mean and bully someone seen as different.

Get a Horse! (USA)
Lauren MacMullan and Dorothy McKim

Technically this Disney production is a meta-narrative of cartoons which does interesting twists of questioning what is shown on film, and makes one question reality with characters jumping in and out of the screen onto a vaudeville stage- layering time in an interesting manner and making the familiar seem unfamiliar.

Thematically, it was revolting for me to see human relations portrayed in a crude manner through the eyes of a male-dominated perspective. Mickey and Minnie mouse are of the same size, yet as a female character Minnie needs the protection of a male, Mickey, in order to be saved from the clutches of a violent male villain. It perpetuates the myth of male-dominance and the idea that a female needs a male father figure in order to ensure her safety in a world where men are not able to control their lust. It also shows that the only thing that works in the world is violence, and the only way to counter it is by violence.

Mr. Hublot (France)
Laurent Witz and Alexandre Espigares

Thematically, this was the visually most interesting film of the bunch with hints of steam-punk. I liked the virtual world dreamed up the creators, and their portrayal was a commentary on how life in the current era has become mechanical and sans emotion.

I wonder if the name "Hublot" in any way refers to "Monsieur Hulot" a character created by Jacques Tati to show the idiocies of life in the current era. Perhaps, there is some pun in the French language that links this connection. The characters of Hublot and Hulot are not too dissimilar; they are an ill-fit in the "modern" world that they live in. I loved the many touches to detail- some of which I have not been able to decode- like the counter on the forehead of all the characters. Does the counter refer to a clock, blood pressure, some vital sign of the body, a counter of things done in the day? Perhaps it is an open question asked by the creators to make us question gadgets that we use in our daily like clocks and counters, which is not needed by co-domesticated animals like dogs. For me the film raises the question, if we should be investing in relationships, even relationships with non-humans like dogs in order to come in touch with our inner human in a soul-less mechanical world.

Possessions (Japan)
Shuhei Morita

This film explores the concept of what happens to objects when they get old- do we simply discard them or can they be fixed and made anew? It does so by transporting us in a time-capsule to a time in Japan when presumably there were repairmen who used to roam around the countryside fixing things. All they had with them was a wooden box, the size of a large shoe-box carried on a bamboo pole- a magical box which opens to reveal all sorts of tools arranged elegantly in small drawers inside the box. The box itself had hinges to be able to function as a work-stand to allow the easy access of all the tools. The tool kit contained tools for repairing any number of household objects like paper, glue and gilding knives to repair umbrellas, or a simple needle to repair torn cloth.

Mattress repairmen in India: From Ranchi, India- 2003

 I wondered about similar people in the Indian sub-continent and other places in the world. It made me think about people who come by in India to re-fluff old mattresses and people who come by on bicycles to sharpen knives. How does their livelihood get affected if we all buy use and throw mattresses like we do in the USA now? Are there people like the repairman in Japan today? Why not?

Room on the Broom (UK)
Max Lang and Jan Lachauer

Based on a children's book, this book explores the idea of how much are we willing to accommodate a stranger and shows off the English penchant for rhyming words (room/broom, be/me, cat/hat/plait). It is a story of a witch with a broom who has a cat, and how other animals, a dog, a frog and a bird join her family when they help her find things that she has lost. It shows us that as individuals our contribution to a cause may be small, but when we unite we can fight off a big danger (in the story symbolically represented by a dragon).


Links:-

Oscar Website containing list of nominations: http://oscar.go.com/nominees

Living Room Theaters: http://pdx.livingroomtheaters.com/

Hollywood Theatre: http://hollywoodtheatre.org/

Procrustes Legend: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrustes
  

Finding the Phainopepla

It was a hot December afternoon in Clark County Wetlands Park. We’d been in Las Vegas a few days, taking day trips to surrounding national and state parks, but a little searching had revealed a sanctuary, right within the city limits where we could watch birds.This park, located on the eastern outskirts of Las Vegas, was much closer than the Mojave National Preserve or Death Valley which we had yet to explore. Here, Yellow-rumped warblers swooped above the river. Coots and mallards dabbled in the quiet pools near the shoreline. And to our delight, two Great Blue herons lighted on the bridge rail just in front of us. Still, after nearly an hour of wandering the intricate weave of trails, we had not seen the famed desert bird whose name and description had piqued our interest since its first mention: Phainopepla.

I had heard of warblers, fly-catchers; but what was this exotic-sounding thing? Nancy, a friendly employee of the park, who we met a few hundred meters into our walk had first mentioned the name. When we inquired further about the strangely-christened bird, Nancy told us it looked “like a black cardinal with a bad hair day.” That day, however, we were not fated to find a Phainopepla.

Sugata and Deep, early morning in Clark County Wetlands Park

We returned the next morning. This time we caught a first, distant glimpse of a slim bird with a long tail. Though it looked nothing like a chunky cardinal-type, through the binoculars we could just make out the tell-tale crest on its head. Fortunately this would not be our last meeting with a Phainopepla.

Male Phainopepla. The name means "shining robe". 

“You’re in luck,” said the receptionist at the Shoshone Inn. We’d reserved a room there for my birthday and had just inquired about bird watching in the area. “The guy who knows all the birds around here is working in the café tonight. He built the bird trails.” We decided to forgo our usual meal of canned beans with bread, and splurge on dinner at the restaurant. After all, it was my birthday.

Our waiter was tall and thin with a lined and tan face. He had a ready smile and a casual demeanor. When he came to take our order, he turned straight toward me, the only female at the table, pencil poised. “Ladies first” seemed to be etched into his character. It wasn’t until the end of the meal that I mentioned what we all wanted to hear him talk about. “I hear you know something about birds,” I said.

“Birds and girls,” he answered, “that’s about all I know and all I think about.” He didn’t elucidate further what he knew about girls, but began to regale us with tales of birds in the area, especially the Phainopepla, his favorite. “I’d be happy studying just that one bird, all of my life,” he told us. It was from this man (who gave us his youtube handle, Superbirdman88) that we learned about the fascinating lifestyle of the Phainopepla.

First of all, Phainopeplas are great mimics. They imitate the calls of other birds, even red-tailed hawks. They might also mimic other mimics, such as the Crissal Thrasher, which lives in the same area. Superbirdman88's work had involved tracing the different calls that Phainopeplas mimicked.
“Isn’t that confusing for other birds or birders?” I asked.

“You bet it is,” he said. “But after a while, you get familiar with their sound. The Phainopepla has a softer voice.”

Far more juicy was the story of the bird’s courting behavior.

“Out of 10,000 species of birds in the world,” he said, “the Phainopepla is the only one that breeds in two different places each year. They have summer homes and winter homes.”

Mistletoe berries

Each male and female guards its own territory which contains its personal clump of mistletoe berries, the Phainopepla’s main source of food. The fruit of these berries is sticky and when the seeds pass through the bird’s gut and exit, the seeds catch easily on vertically planed surfaces, such as the trees where the Phainopeplas sit. These seeds grow into more mistletoe with more berries, and the circle of parasitic life continues.

Mistletoe seeds sticking to the side of a post

When mating season begins, the birds start their romances slowly with group dates, eventually leading to exclusive dating. In time, the male is so won over by one of the females that he feeds her berries (wedding cake) from his own personal stash. They seal their commitment, for the season.

Superbirdman88 found us on the birding trail the next day and said he’d be happy to bird with us for a little while. We’d already taken one turn around the trail, but when he joined us we were able to learn so much more, not only about this single species of desert bird, but about how everything else connected. The coyotes that travel through the paths, leaving honey mesquite pods in their scat. We saw nests of Crissal Thrashers, listened for sage sparrows, and heard stories about the mating habits of side blotched lizards.

We also saw a lot of Phainopeplas and watched a female chase a male back to his own territory. They’ll probably become lovers, that gray female, and her neighboring black male, when the season for love comes along.

Female Phainopepla in the setting sun.

Culture, Cheating and Corruption: views from Dan Ariely

OMSI has an event called "Science Pub" in the Portland metropolitan area and other places in Oregon. In Hillsboro, this event is held once a month. This past Monday, the speaker was a professor of psychology and behavioural economics called Dan Ariely . He is famous as the author of books on human behaviour that would be deemed as "irrational" by economists. Dressed in a ferrari-red jacket and matching red shoes, he gave a fantastic and engaging talk to a packed audience at the Venetian Theater in downtown Hillsboro. 

Among the things he talked about was how people cheat across different cultures. He first asked the members of the audience to raise hands if they were from outside the USA. There was a smattering of foreign people in the audience, and I was one of them, and we raised our hands. He asked the audience to keep their hand raised if we felt that people in our country cheated more than US Americans. It was not a surprise that most, if not all people in the audience who had previously raised their hand,  kept their hand raised.

Next, he described a study done in a laboratory setting ( I don't remember if it was his group which did the study or if he was talking about research done by some other group), where people were given a number of mathematical problems to solve. None of the problems were too difficult. The test was designed so that no could get all the answers done in the short amount of time allocated to solve the problem. After the test, the test-takers were asked to shred their answer-sheet in a paper-shredder so that no one would really know how they had done (or so they thought!). The test-takers had to simply report the number of questions they had solved and would get paid for each answer solved correctly.

In reality, the experimenters were using a special shredder that only shred the margins of the paper, and kept the central portion intact- allowing the tallying of the actual number of problems solved with that reported by the test-taker. On average it was found that people inflated their scores from 4 to 6, and that 60-75% of people cheated. This held across many different countries where this test was administered-Israel, USA, Italy, China, Turkey, Colombia, Portugal, Germany!

Dan Ariely's explanation for this is that in an abstract situation people cheat in roughly the same manner across different cultures, and feel good about it. But then how does one explain the differences one sees when travelling in different places or the differences in corruption index for different countries?

According to him, cheating depends on the cultural context. He had the audience in splits with the mention that for the French, infidelity is not a moral question. In a similar vein, Japanese are thought to be paragons of self-control- a behaviour which is seen when they are standing in line, but in a Japanese bar, they do not exhibit the self-control and indulge in behaviour that would shock people from most other countries. The cultural aspects of the situation overrides the behaviour that would be expected from the person in an abstract setting.

I learnt a lot from his lecture, and will possibly blog about other areas covered by him in a different blog entry. I am grateful to my friend who told me about the lecture. If you are really interested in his works, you can read the books mentioned below.



Dan Ariely: wikipedia link: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Ariely)
OMSI Science Pub: https://www.omsi.edu/sciencepubhillsboro/01272014

Books written by Dan Ariely:

-Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. 
-The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home

-The Honest Truth about Dishonesty

Los Autos de Guatemala

Los Guatemaltecos celebran la Independencia del país el 15 de Septiembre, 2012 en San Pedro de La Laguna, Lago Atitlán, Guatemala.

Soy de la India y he visto este tipo de autos desde mi niñez. Cuando llegué a Guatemala por primera vez estuve sorprendido porque vi los mismos autos en Guatemala. En Guatemala se llaman "Tuk-tuk", pero en la India los llamamos "Auto-rickshaw" o "Auto" en corto.

Cada persona de la India tiene bastantes memorias de estos autos. Cuando tenía más o menos diez años yo iba a la parada del bus en un auto con cuatro muchachas. Cuando estaba en la ciudad de Ranchi mi familia tomaba los autos para ir a la estación de trenes. En mi universidad los tomaba para ir a la estación de tren y para ir a los cines con mis amigos. En la India los autos forman una gran parte de la vida así como el agua para los peces y nosotros no pensamos en la existencia de los autos en la vida cotidiana.

El color del auto es el mismo de la pluma de los sombreros de la banda de una escuela que participa en la celebración de la  independencia en San Pedro de la Laguna, Guatemala

Nunca pensaba que yo iba a ver los mismos autos en un lugar lejano a más de diez mil millas de la India. En las primeras noches cuando yo estaba en San Pedro para estudiar español en el otoño del 2012, yo no podía dormir en la noche. Un auto pasaba por las calles- cada dos o cinco minutos, y una parte de mi mente pensaba que yo estaba en la India y otra parte decía que yo estaba en un lugar extranjero. La parte de mi mente que decía que yo estaba en la India, llenó mi mente con las imágenes de la India- los autos en las calles, los sonidos de las calles, una escena cuando yo llegué a la ciudad de Hyderabad con mi abuela y vimos tantos autos amarillos que parecían  grandes insectos en la estación de los trenes, los autos que yo tomaba para ir al “Main Road” en Ranchi. Con estas memorias yo extrañaba la India mucho, y quería regresar para ver los autos de verdad. Me tomó casi dos semanas para olvidar los sonidos de los autos que pasaban por la noche.

Quizás este fenómeno no era una sorpresa, porque según los científicos las sentidos del olfato y del oído primero llegan a la parte de la cabeza reptil, y los humanos responden a estas señales de manera involuntaria.

Un Auto tiene la habilidad para cambiar la direccion en una calle estrecha. Piensa sobre el problema de un coche grande en dar vuelta  aquí. San Pedro la Laguna, Guatemala.

Pero la verdad es que los autos en Guatemala son hechos en la India. Son de la misma marca. El nombre de la marca es "Bajaj", y los Guatemaltecos los importan desde la India. Por esta razón no me sorprende que los sonidos de los autos me parecen los mismos. Los Guatemaltecos importan muchos de sus coches de Los Estados Unidos y de México. Los buses usados en las escuelas en los Estados Unidos se convierten en autobuses para pasajeros. Se pintan de una manera colorida y parecen lindos, pero no hay misterio en esto. Los Estados Unidos es parte del mismo continente. Las leyes de los Estados Unidos no permitirán la construcción de un coche frágil como los autos. Pero para llevar hasta Guatemala los autos de la India necesitan viajar por mucho tiempo en los barcos. Y también lo que es interesante para mi es que el origen de los autos no es de México o de China u otro país en Latinoamerica. Sera posible que solo un país en el mundo manufacture este tipo de transporte?

Este vehículo tiene una maquina pequeña - de 145 cubos centígrados, que absorbe gasolina y no tiene mucho poder- solo 5 kilo watts. Y en un auto pueden caber 7 personas sin problema- tres en frente y cuatro atrás!

Neotenia: esta es la tendencia de retener las características de la infancia hasta la edad adulta. A los humanos y a los animales también les gustan las características de neotenia. Esta es la razón por la cual a los humanos les gustan los coches que parecen lindos como el Beetle de Volkswagen. El Auto también tiene las características de neotenia, los ojos grandes, las ruedas pequeñas y la forma redonda. Una persona piensa que este vehículo no sube las colinas ni  rompe los records de velocidad, pero estos autos tienen más poder de lo que parece. Ellos no tienen ningún problema para subir las colinas- pero con una velocidad lenta!

Los Gemelos!

Otro caso que es interesante, es que nadie quiere tener un “Tuk-tuk” como un auto privado- ni en la India ni en Guatemala. Que piensas que sea la razón?

El uso del Tuk-tuk como medio de transporte:

El auto es un buen coche para usarlo en lugares pequeños y es una forma de transporte que no cuesta mucho. Las personas usan autos para transporte en un lugar donde no hay otro tipo de transporte. Por ejemplo, un bus no puede navegar las calles pequeñas y no llega frecuentemente. Un coche o un taxi cuesta más dinero. Por eso un auto es una solución buena si los niños necesitan ir a la escuela que esta lejos o cuando una persona quiere llevar las verduras desde el campo hasta al mercado o un turista quiere viajar en la ciudad.

Cuando yo estaba en San Pedro, un viaje en San Pedro cuesta cinco quetzales (más o menos setenta centavos de dólar). A veces las maestras de la escuela de español donde yo estudiaba tomaban los autos, y a veces los estudiantes tomaban los autos para llegar al otro lado de San Pedro- un viaje de 10-20 minutos. Los niños de la maestra de mi escuela de español tomaban un auto para llegar a la escuela en la mañana-  como los millones de niños en la India.

Las cosas del transporte y la comunicación son esenciales para el turismo y para mejorar la vida de la población. Según yo, los autos forman una gran parte de esto así como los teléfonos celulares que mejoran la situación de la vida cotidiana.

Que equipo apoyas tu? Si me sigues, cuídate del fuego de las ruedas!

En realidad, cada cosa es como el dios Janus. Una parte buena y otro parte mala. Lo malo de los autos es que hay el problema de congestión con los autos cuando la cantidad de los autos aumenta demasiado. En muchas ciudades de la India, el gobierno no permite el acceso de los autos en el centro de la ciudad- por que los autos no siguen las leyes de tráfico, se mueven al azar e impiden el suave movimiento del tráfico. En San Pedro de la laguna, el gobierno de la ciudad no da más licencias para operar los autos- la ciudad tiene más o menos cien autos.

El gobierno también no permite que los autos de otras ciudades  trabajen en San Pedro. Cada dia yo veía los autos de las ciudades cercanas, de San Juan y de San Pablo, que esperan por mucho tiempo en el centro del mercado por los viajeros quienes quieren ir afuera de San Pedro. Las ciudades de San Juan y San Pablo son vecinas de San Pedro y no tienen una fuente de turismo grande como San Pedro y por eso ellos no tienen muchos pasajeros en su ciudad original, y esperan por mucho tiempo en el mercado de San Pedro. Asi es la vida de los choferes de San Juan y San Pablo.

Y la discusión sobre el impacto del transporte en la salud de las personas (porque muchas personas eligen las ruedas sobre los pies), el calentamiento global y la vida cuando no haya más petróleo, sería muy deprimente discutirlo aquí!

Finalmente, para mi los autos forman una parte y un pedazo de la India en un país extranjero que me hizo sentir como estar en la India.

Evolution and Fat: Internal versus External Storage

Nature All Around Us: A Guide to Urban Ecology
by Beatrix Beisner , Christian Messier , Luc-Alain Giraldeau (Editors)
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; First Edition edition (September 21, 2012)

Another book I chanced upon at the local library is titled, "Nature All Around Us: A Guide to Urban Ecology", edited by Beatrix Beisner, Christian Messier and  Luc-Alain Giraldeau. It is a short book of around 160 pages which contains little snippets about the nature one sees in the urban environment around us. It has a focus on the living things one is likely to see in North America. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to find out fascinating information about animals and plants which we see around us; and pause to wonder why they look the way they are, and if we can find out what the evolutionary and social strategies favoured by the creature. 

I could write a blog based on each chapter in the book. I wish when I was a kid, I was taught from something like this- to help build a greater appreciation in me about nature that I saw around me. If we stop and think about it, even common creatures  like crows, sparrows, squirrels and pigeons have an evolutionary advantage for living in around an urban human environment.

One fascinating chapter is called a "A Life of Extremes", and discusses an important difference between a squirrel and its cousin, the marmot. I saw both these creatures while doing the "Highline Trail" in Glacier National Park, Montana on a sunny day in late July 2013. It did not enter my mind to think why these creatures are the way they are; a relatively thin chipmunk, the size of a squirrel, (I do know which was the exact sub-species I saw in the picture below), and a pudgier slightly larger marmot.

Chipmunk: External Storage of energy in fats in nuts. Picture taken at Glacier National Park, Montana, USA, in July 2013

The reason for the difference in their shape turns out to be related to the diet of the two creatures. Chipmunks eat a diet rich in energy dense nuts, which are not bulky and easy to store as far as volume is concerned. During winter they sleep in their burrows- but do not sleep all the time. They sleep for up to six days, wake up, gorge on stored nuts and sleep again, continuing the cycle throughout winter.

Marmot: Internal Storage of energy in body fat: Picture taken at Glacier National Park, Montana, USA, in July 2013

Marmots in contrast have a diet of grass and other plants like clovers, buttercups and dandelions. It would take around 50 cubic feet to store all the energy needs in grass for a winter for a single marmot- which can be quite problematic for a small creature the size of a human infant. It is not simply a problem of finding storage space, but grass does not store as readily as nuts, and can get infested by bacteria and fungi. The strategy chanced upon by evolution for them is to store their energy reserves for winter in brown body fat- which is the same kind of fat that newborn human infants have! The presence of a lot of brown fat in human infants helps to keep them warm, and the brown fat for the marmot serves the dual purpose of keeping them warm and providing a source of fuel for the body when nothing grows in winter.

For some creatures storing fat internally is the only option. An extreme case is that of the ruby-throated hummingbird. Some of them fly across the Gulf of Mexico, a distance of 800 km from the Yucatan to Texas in a single non-stop flight. This is possible because the birds weighing about 3 grams double their weight by storing the extra energy in fat for the journey.

It is amazing to think how evolution shapes things in creatures like chipmunks, marmots, humans and hummingbirds. On the surface, we as humans are quick to jump to a hasty conclusion calling an animal cute, fat or slim. In reality the reason for the animal's shape has a lot to do with survival in the external environment, and nothing to do with our perceived aesthetic tastes.

Book Review: "War Play" by Corey Mead

War Play: "Video Games and the Future of Armed conflict"

by

Corey Mead (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt , 2013)





War Play: "Video Games and the Future of Armed conflict"

by

Corey Mead (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt , 2013) 

I chanced upon this book in the new book section at my local public library. It is a fascinating well written book that discusses the US American context of how video games and simulations are playing an increasing role in the US Army.

In one of the earlier chapters in the book, the author discusses the history of how this came to be, and how many technologies which are part of our daily lives now were originally developed for a military purpose. These technologies had received their initial funding from a defense source in the USA and were kept in production by the military even when they were not commercially viable. To quote from the book: "digital computers, first version of the Internet, semiconductors, radar, sonar, jet engines, portable phones, transistors, microwave ovens, GPS - the list goes on".

From other sources, I have read that chemical weapons which were developed for the Second World War effort by many countries-  morphed into pesticides after the war ended. For me the interesting thing to learn from this is that many technologies are hard to develop without having the money to investigate various options- and as can be expected most of the options explored will not result in a success. It also makes one realize why a country like India could not come up with these inventions- it is not that any people lack intelligence, but that one needs a lot of resources for doing research. In addition, many countries in the West and Japan were able to divert a lot of their resources to war efforts, which lead to the development of many different kinds of technologies. They also invested a lot of money in educating people so that they could both develop and use new technology.

For example, after World War II, India did not have a car industry, and it was not until the 1990s and 2000s that we started designing and producing our own modes of transportation. In the early 1990s, the only motorcycles we had in India were Japanese motorbikes produced under a license. Now, we have companies like Bajaj and TVS, which are no longer beholden to Japanese technology, and introduce new motorcycles in the market which have been designed in house. [How the Japanese copied technologies from cars to cameras was not unlike the more recent efforts of some Indian firms] Even in Japan, there are numerous cases of companies like Toyota which were propped up by the government- when they were not doing well financially. Compare India's case with German companies like BMW and Mercedes, which benefitted immensely from World War II- they were able to train people and learn about car technology because of the war effort. This lead they had in technology continues to this day. [Not that producing cars and motorbikes is good for the environment in the long run, - but that is a different story]

He cites a book which discusses this in more detail. "From Sun Tzu to Xbox" - by Ed Halter. (this book discusses how many of the games we play today have an origin in the culture of the military, to take chess for an example.)

"War Play" goes on to describe the first person shooter game called "America's Army", developed by the army in conjunction with the entertainment and the video game industry. He discusses the role played by key figures in bringing to the market- and  the surprising bureaucratic hurdles faced by many people in the Pentagon in this process. One of the reasons for the introduction of the game was that the US military (which no longer had the draft after the Vietnam War) was facing a shortage of military personnel, and traditional media like advertisements in newspapers and magazines were no longer working.

 A decision was made to not depict the bad guys simply as "Arab" looking- but to include different ethnicities from Europe, Africa and Asia. In his analysis, the author points out that "America's Army" is not a simple first person shooter game where one just goes out and kills people; one first has to undergo basic training, and only then can one advance to the next stages in the game, and that one loses points- or can even be kicked out for killing people on one's team. At the end of the book, the author mentions how the success of "America's Army" is being copied by countries all over the world: the UK, Iran, South Korea and China, all of which have developed similar video games. An interesting thing about the Chinese game called "Glorious Mission", is that in the game there is only one type of enemy- the US military!

Another interesting thing mentioned by the author is how things like standardized testing and even exams which survive to this day like GED (high-school diploma for students in the USA who do not finish high school ) and SAT (scores from this test are used for undergraduate admissions) have origins in the needs of the military during the first World War. The author cites the case of a SAT question which makes the link obvious, "A certain division contains 5,000 artillery, 15,000 infantry, and 1000 cavalry. If each branch is expanded proportionately until there are in all 23,100 men, how many men will be added to the artillery?"

The standardized test came about because during the draft years of the first World War, the army needed a way to quickly compute the intelligence of a person, and assign them to tasks based on their aptitude. The author quotes the work of the famous scientist Stephen Jay Gould from his book "The Mismeasure of Man". Gould points how the data analysis had concluded that whites were more intelligent than blacks, and that darker people of southern Europe were less intelligent than the fairer people of northern European. This continued to shape US immigration policies for decades, and led to the continuation of cultural and racial prejudices. More recently, people have shown that it is wrong to assume that a certain people are "primitive" and lack intelligence- there are many cultural and social factors, (like access to education), which influence the outcome of the test results.

There are many criticisms of standardized tests- but they are still pursued to this day- not just in the USA- but all over the world- just because they are cheap to administer- another logic from the military which has been imported wholesale into the corporate and education world!

The author discusses a lot of other fascinating details in the well written book about the history of the military and education ( how George Washington wanted his troops to be educated to read the Bible for greater spiritual awareness, how the GI Bill sent lower class people to college dispelling the notion that blue collar people were not intelligent, how the video games are being introduced in the class-rooms, the rise of the military-entertainment-education complex). He also discusses how video games are being used to not only train soldiers, but are also being used to treat returning veterans suffering from PTSD.

All in all it is a fascinating book that makes me re-think about the connections and availability of resources in the world, and how society chooses to go about things.

You can get a snapshot of the book by reading this article by the author Corey Mead in the USA magazine Time, titled "Military recruiters have gone too far" : http://ideas.time.com/contributor/corey-mead/