Audio Internet in New Delhi

Empowerment and connection for people who can’t afford a computer, and many of whom can’t read:

Nearly 300 million people now use cellphones in India, up from zero a little more than a decade ago... ‘We asked ourselves: how can we enable this vast population to do things on the phone in a manner that does not assume a PC-based internet?’...

‘While a farmer may not be able to write a memo, or an email, or a summary of his work, he can easily talk about it...this led to the “Spoken Web.”’

Conceptually, the spoken web is a network of VoiceSites, just as the internet is a network of websites. A VoiceSite can only be accessed by a phone, and only requires the user to be able to speak and listen. Callers can create their own VoiceSites or access those of others. They can also surf the spoken web, jumping from VoiceSite to VoiceSite using speech.

New Scientist article

¡El pueblo unido jamás será vencido!

“It doesn’t matter who’s sitting in the White House. What matters is who’s protesting on the streets outside the White House.”

— Howard Zinn

“Political participation does not come to an end when the election results are announced. In many ways, this is just the beginning. Informed and responsible citizens engage their political representatives in ongoing public dialogue on pressing social issues. This is a sign of a healthy community, for which all its citizens should be striving and insisting.”

— Federal Elections Guide 2008, by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops

Why is a raven like a writing desk?

Using Chinese characters to transcribe Korean speech had never been a good fit.  Emperor Sejong the Great (1397–1450) wanted peasants to have a shot at literacy.  Brilliantly concise and intuitive, the modern Korean alphabet was his invention.  14 consonants + 10 vowels are arranged in clusters of 2 or 3 to form syllables that remind you a bit of the Chinese characters that were the standard up until the 15th century.

Sejong’s palace scholar, Choi Manli, opposed the innovation:

Over time, the best ideas always prevail.  In this case, it took less than 500 years for Choi’s wisdom to be finally abandoned in favor of practical advantage.

American Scientist article by Howard Wainer on convention and innovation

“We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.”

Dorothy Day, born this day in 1897, built community out of the hardship of the Great Depression.  She was able to harness resources of the Catholic church to create houses of shelter and, when people were attracted from fear or destitution, to turn them into a supportive community of help for one another.

Day recognized early the moral imperative to reach across the ocean and support European  Jews who were being expelled and exterminated.  She founded the Committee of Catholics to Fight Anti-Semitism.  Later, she decried the insanity of the nuclear arms race, and raised her voice protesting the air raid drills of the Cold War.

“In the name of Jesus, who is God, who is Love, we will not obey this order to pretend, to evacuate, to hide. We will not be drilled into fear. We do not have faith in God if we depend upon the Atom Bomb.”

Catholic Worker web site

“Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, born this day in 1821

You shall meet no monsters, except those you carry in your soul

When setting out upon your way to Ithaca,
wish always that your course be long,
full of adventure, full of lore.
Of the Laestrygones and of the Cyclopes,
of an irate Poseidon never be afraid;
such things along your way you will not find,
if lofty is your thinking, if fine sentiment
in spirit and in body touches you.
Neither Laestrygones nor Cyclopes,
nor wild Poseidon will you ever meet,
unless you bear them in your soul,
unless your soul has raised them up in front of you.

Wish always that your course be long;
that many there be of summer morns
when with such pleasure, such great joy,
you enter ports now for the first time seen;
that you may stop at some Phoenician marts,
to purchase there the best of wares,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber, ebony,
hedonic perfumes of all sorts--
as many such hedonic perfumes as you can;
that you may go to various Egyptian towns
to learn, and learn from those schooled there.

Your mind should ever be on Ithaca.
Your reaching there is your prime goal.
But do not rush your journey anywise.
Better that it should last for many years,
and that, now old, you moor at Ithaca at last,
a man enriched by all you gained upon the way,
and not expecting Ithaca to give you further wealth.

For Ithaca has given you the lovely trip.
Without her you would not have set your course.
There is no more that she can give.

If Ithaca seems then too lean, you have not been deceived.
As wise as you are now become, of such experience,
you will have understood what Ithaca stands for.

— Constantine P. Cavafy tr.  Memas Kolaitis

RNA interference

The central dogma of biochemistry says that a gene is transcribed from DNA into messenger RNA, and the strand of messenger RNA travels to a ribosome where it is translated into a protein.

DNA is double-stranded; RNA is single-stranded.  Just a decade ago, biochemists learned to engineer strands of RNA that are the perfect complements to some particular messenger RNA, encoding a particular protein.  This strand has such a tremendous affinity for its complementary sister that it will find it in the cell and bind to it, forming a double-stranded RNA.  Thus it ties up the messenger RNA and derails it from its mission. 

This process is called RNA interference, or RNAi.  With it, we can turn off any gene with a tiny quantity of a substance that has no side-effects.  So far, RNAi has been used in lab experiments to learn about the effects of particular genes.  But potential medical applications beckon.  Most promising are to fight viral infections by turning off their genes, and to disable certain cancers.

Science Times article

American Summerhill

American education has moved inexorably toward more standardization, more ‘accountability’, meaning more testing and less local control of the curriculum.  Meanwhile a small, thriving school in the Boston suburbs has operated for over 40 years with no tests at all and a curriculum chosen moment to moment by the students themselves.

The Sudbury Valley School is a free and democratic community, where students can choose to spend their time playing football or playing video games or studying algebra.  The result of this radical experiment is that they all come out knowing how to read and write and figure, that their basic knowledge of the world is far superior to that of most students who graduate from American public schools.

Mixed age groups are an essential ingredient.  Students learn from each other more than they learn from their teachers.  Faculty are pulled in as resources when the students so choose.

‘Democracy’ extends to all.  Hiring and firing decisions are made by community meetings, in which every faculty member and every pre-schooler has an equal vote.  School rules are decided in the same way.

Everything follows from freedom and democracy.  Adults attend to process, preserving the community and its values, while motivation to take on projects and to learn and to mature come from community interactions.

The Sudbury model has been replicated in dozens of independent schools across the country and beyond.  Admission is open, and costs are not high.

‘Cutting through our sophistries’

I did not then understand that you could over-prepare for experience, grinding to powder your sense of encounter, building in a cosmic letdown as sturdy as a masonry ramp. This would not be the day I found out about that... Matthias Grunewald’s paintings, reviewed by Elatia Harris at 3QD Art is the direct language of the human condition, cutting through our stupefactions and sophistries with its matchless power to surprise.

It will show you the pain beyond naming and the love beyond love, and show you that you already know these things — and feel them, and are made of them — no matter what you think.

I am in need of music

There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.

— Elizabeth Bishop

Today we celebrate the feast day of St Cecilia, patron saint of music.

“We’ve begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.”

— Gloria Steinem, born this day in 1935

Count your blessings.  If you finish early, count your curses as blessings.

Marcel Proust’s reminder to be grateful for loving connection is frequently cited:

«Soyons reconnaissants aux personnes qui nous donnent du bonheur, elles sont les charmants jardiniers par qui nos âmes sont fleuries.»

“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”

Less commonly do we read the sentence that follows:

«Mais soyons plus reconnaissants aux femmes méchantes ou seulement indifférentes, aux amis cruels qui nous ont causé du chagrin.»

“But we should be more grateful for women who are wicked or merely aloof, for cruel friends that cause us pain.”

So much for trusting your instincts...

‘Common sense is simply the residue of prejudice and misconceptions that have accumulated over centuries of ignorance and have yet to be clarified and corrected by scientific progress.’
— Bennet B. Murdock,  “Human Memory: Theory and Data” (1974)

‘Common sense is the residue of those prejudices that were instilled into us before the age of seventeen.’
— attributed to Einstein (in Henry Crapo’s math text)