Scientillating!
By Rekha Dixit, January 14, 2012, The Week
` `
Nothing, they say, is more constant than change. Science, being a dynamic subject, is regularly witness to changes, as old theories periodically get discarded and new ideas regularly pop up. We are living in very interesting times. The scientific temper, having lain quiescent for some years, is getting charged with a slew of new discoveries tumbling out of laboratories around the globe. In the recent past, most of the research findings that were served to the media had to do with health, fitness and sex: for instance, what causes libido to increase or attraction to flag, which is the healthier diet—Mediterranean or Japanese—and the various factors that contribute to a higher chance of acquiring some lifestyle disease.
The last one year has broken this boring mould, as physicists, astronomers and even emotional numerists have put across some path-breaking ideas. Do away with the number pi, claims a splinter group of mathematicians while a group of scientists bombarding neutrinos say they’ve just about proved Einstein wrong. One group is very close to encountering the physical ‘God’, while another proposes a home away from home somewhere in the galactic wilderness. READ….
` `
God in the details
by LISA VAN WYK, January 24, 2012, Mail & Guardian
` `
“Breathtaking” is a word that is overused, but if you have been fortunate enough to visit one of Ottoman architect Sinan’s masterpieces, such as the Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul, you will know exactly what that word can mean.
Everything about the building, from the dizzying scale of its elaborately decorated central dome, to details such as the hand-painted Iznik tiles which seem to adorn every available surface, takes one’s breath away. Upon entering the mosque for the first time, I gasped.
The Süleymaniye Mosque was built nearly 500 years ago, and it is rare to find modern buildings that demonstrate the same meticulous and time-consuming craftsmanship. South Africans will soon be able to experience first-hand the attention to detail and proportion that is so characteristic of Classical Ottoman design. READ…
` `
Norway: Cultural ignorance or cultural arrogance? Nay, it’s cruelty
by Akshaya Mishra Jan 23, 2012, FirstPost.com
` `
Is it cultural ignorance or cultural arrogance? Whatever it is, the attitude of the Norwegian authorities towards the Indian couple fighting for the custody of their two children stretches the boundaries of cultural insensitivity.
Since May last year, the Indian couple — Anurup and Sagarika Bhattacharya — has been fighting a bleak battle against the Norwegian authorities to get their kids, Avigyan,3, and Aishwarya,1, back from a foster home.
The Norwegian Child Protective Services had separated the kids from their parents after discovering, during an inspection, that they were being fed by hand. That according to the Child Protective Services, was force feeding. Also, they shared bed with the parents, which was deemed unacceptable behaviour, as the boys are expected to have separate beds. READ…
` `
Born in Unity, South Sudan Is Torn Again
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN, January 12, 2012, New York Times
` `
PIBOR, South Sudan — The trail of corpses begins about 300 yards from the corrugated metal gate of the United Nations compound and stretches for miles into the bush.
There is an old man on his back, a young woman with her legs splayed and skirt bunched up around her hips, and a whole family — man, woman, two children — all facedown in the swamp grass, executed together. How many hundreds are scattered across the savannah, nobody really knows.
South Sudan, born six months ago in great jubilation, is plunging into a vortex of violence. Bitter ethnic tensions that had largely been shelved for the sake of achieving independence have ruptured into a cycle of massacre and revenge that neither the American-backed government nor the United Nations has been able to stop. READ…
` `
China Expanding Influence, One Student at a Time
by Chris Rickleton , January 4, 2012, EurasiaNet
` `
Among its Central Asian neighbors, China these days is more often feared than loved. This attitude is perhaps most apparent in Kyrgyzstan, where despite an overwhelming dependence on Chinese imports, Chinese-owned malls and mining pits have been the subject of attacks in recent years; nationalist editorials in the local press play on fears of the Middle Kingdom. But all the negative press isn’t deterring Beijing’s efforts to win friends and promote Chinese culture in the region.
Increasingly, the students are looking to China when they graduate. Many don’t come back, says Vladimir Lu, Dean of the Kyrgyz-Chinese Faculty at Bishkek Humanities University, who estimates 100 of his graduates head to China every year, either to perfect their language skills or pursue graduate degrees. “They stay there, make contacts and find work for themselves in international firms. Some of them speak four languages, so they understand their market value. Working in Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou they can earn 10 times as much as a dean does here,” said Lu, who is ethnically Korean-Chinese from eastern Russia.
According to Wang at the National University, the opportunities for his students are not limited to China. In an increasing number of cases, local students with a strong command of Mandarin find work in third countries. Wang cites Ilyas Sabirov, the faculty’s star graduate this year, who found work at a Kazakhstan-based steel firm trading between China and Russia. READ…
` `