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St. Louis native 'honored' to be archdiocese's next auxiliary bishop
March 7, 2017 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0 Print
Vatican City, Mar 7, 2017 / 08:54 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican announced Tuesday that Pope Francis has chosen Msgr. Mark S. Rivituso, currently the archdiocese's Vicar General, to be the next auxiliary bishop of St. Louis under Archbishop Robert J. Carlson.
"I am profoundly touched by the confidence the Holy Father has placed in me," he said in a statement March 7. "I have asked him to keep me in his prayers and I have assured him of my prayers, respect, and obedience."
"At the same time I am honored that I can in some way assist Archbishop Carlson in his pastoral service to the Archdiocese of St. Louis."
Rivituso, 55, was born in St. Louis Sept. 20, 1961, the sixth of eight children. As a child he had a close relationship with his grandmother, who was the influence behind his devotion to the Rosary, the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the St. Louis Review reports.
He told the paper that he had also been an altar server, which is when he "started hearing the call from Jesus to become a priest."
The bishop-elect then attended Catholic grade school and high school in St. Louis, as well as Cardinal Glennon College and Kenrick Seminary, earning a master's degree and a licentiate in canon and civil law from St. Paul University in Ottawa, Canada.
He was ordained to the priesthood in May 1988, and was given the title "monsignor" by Pope Benedict XVI in 2005.
In addition to serving at various parishes within St. Louis, he was also appointed to the Metropolitan Tribunal staff from 1993-1994 and from 1996-2004. He was also acting associate master of ceremonies to the archbishop from 1997-2008.
In 2011, he was appointed vicar general of the archdiocese, sharing the office with Bishop Edward M. Rice until the bishop's appointment as head of the Diocese of Springfield-Cape Girardeau in Missouri, in 2016.
In his statement, the bishop-elect said he has "a great love for the Church in St. Louis, and relying on the example of the previous auxiliary bishops of St. Louis, who served so faithfully, I, too, look forward to serving the Church in this new role."
Archbishop Carlson also reflected on the appointment, saying in his own March 7 statement that on behalf of all the clergy, religious, and laity in the archdiocese, "I want to offer our congratulations and thanks to Bishop-elect Rivituso for accepting the Holy Father's call to continue his service to our local church in this new leadership role as auxiliary bishop."
Msgr. Rivituso will be ordained a bishop May 2 at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis. For his episcopal motto he has chosen the phrase "Caritas Christi Urget Nos," which means, "The Love of Christ Impels Us."
Croatia will soon hold one of the largest Marian statues in the world
"Kids want a story they can sink their teeth into": Raymond Arroyo on writing for young readers
Pope Francis makes surprise visit to Vatican sports camp
July 21, 2020 CNA Daily News 2
CNA Staff, Jul 21, 2020 / 03:30 am (CNA).- Pope Francis made a surprise visit Monday to a sports camp for the children of Vatican employees.
The Holy See press office said July 20 that the pope met with the young people shortly after 9 a.m., while the… […]
Pope Francis meets Christian movement of blind and visually impaired people
February 19, 2022 Catholic News Agency 1
Pope Francis met with members of Voir Ensemble, a Christian movement of blind and visually impaired people on Feb. 19, 2022. / Vatican Media
Vatican City, Feb 19, 2022 / 07:30 am (CNA).
Pope Francis met Saturday with a Christian movement of bli… […]
Vatican cardinal celebrates Mass for peace in Ukraine
Cardinal Pietro Parolin celebrates Mass for Peace in Ukraine at St. Peter's Basilica, March 16, 2022. / Daniel Ibañez/CNA.
Vatican City, Mar 16, 2022 / 12:30 pm (CNA).
Cardinal Pietro Parolin on Wednesday celebrated Mass at the Vatican for peac… […]
Full transcript of Pope Francis' in-flight press conference
CWR Staff September 28, 2015 0
Pope Francis spoke for about 45 minutes with journalists on his return flight to Rome at the end of his ten-day trip to Cuba and the United States. The Holy Father answered questions about clergy […]


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Q: How can I iterate over balanced binary strings? I need to systematically iterate over the set of balanced binary strings of (even) length n, i.e. the binary strings composed of an equal number of 1s and 0s. (This problem can be stated in many equivalent ways; e.g. given the set S = {1, 2, ..., n}, how to iterate over the balanced bipartitions of S, or the subsets of S of size n/2.) What is the most efficient way to do so?
The most naive algorithm is to simply iterate over all binary strings (e.g. in the standard lexicographic order) and then skip all the unbalanced ones. But this is very inefficient: there are 2^n binary strings of length n, but only (n choose n/2) are balanced. By Stirling's approximation, this quantity grows asymptotically as $\sqrt{2/(\pi n)} 2^n$, so only a small fraction ~1/n of the binary strings are balanced.
It seems to me that a more efficient implementation might go something like this: you start with the string 000...0111...1, and then hop the 1's to the left by a sequence of adjacent transpositions 01 -> 10. But I can't figure out a way to organize the transpositions so that every balanced binary string is produced once. For example, if you always transpose the leftmost 01, then you'll miss lots of strings (e.g. 0110), but if at every step you branch every possible transposition into a tree, then you'll overcount many strings (e.g. 0101 -> 1010 can be reached by performing the two transitions in either order).
(It would be nice, but not necessary, if the algorithm easily generalized to be able to iterate over the set of n-bit binary strings with an arbitrary fixed imbalance.)

A: Here's a Python recursion (could easily be converted to a stack iteration; arbitrary fixed imbalance available in the inner g function):
def f(n):
  def g(n, k, s):
    if len(s) == n:
      return [s]

    if len(s) + k == n:
      return [s + (n - len(s)) * '1']

    if k == 0:
      return [s + (n - len(s)) * '0']

    return g(n, k, s + '0') + g(n, k - 1, s + '1')

  return g(n, n / 2, '')

Output:
=> f(6)
=> ['000111', '001011', '001101', '001110', '010011', '010101', '010110', '011001', '011010', '011100', '100011', '100101', '100110', '101001', '101010', '101100', '110001', '110010', '110100', '111000']

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Archive for the 'Anthropology' Category
Quinn Discusses Possible Screen Adaption of 'Hyperion'
This interesting little snippet comes from the 'Quinn's Ideas' YouTube channel. Quinn's a Black American fantasy/ SF writer and graphic novelist with a taste for galaxy-spanning SF that tackles the big metaphysical ideas, like power, responsibility, suffering, the nature of humanity and the possibility of alien life and truly sentient AI. He's a big fan of Frank Herbert's classic Dune, which has now been filmed by Denis Villeneuve and has been playing in cinemas around the country. Quinn's put up a series of videos about Dune, which are well worth watching, as well as other great SF works like Asimov's Foundation. In this video he talks about the news that there are plans to adapt Dan Simmon's Hyperion, but it's not known yet whether this would be for the cinema or TV. He hopes it's TV.
Hyperion is another of his favourite books, and he's also posted videos about it. It, too, is another SF classic. It set in a future in which humanity has expanded throughout the galaxy, united into a type of interstellar UN called the Hegemony. Outside the Hegemony are the Oustlers, a society of nomadic humans, who have adapted themselves to space, who attack and raid vulnerable Hegemony worlds. Also outside the Hegemony is the Technocore, a society of intelligent AIs, who rebelled against their human creators centuries ago and fled into space. Their whereabouts is unknown, but they have established apparently friendly relations with humanity offering advice and technology. Earth was destroyed hundreds of years ago by accident in an attempt to create an artificial Black Hole. Although the humans have FTL spaceships, these are still quite slow compared to the cosmic spaces they traverse, so that it can take months or years to travel from one planet to another. These transit times are offset for the crew and passengers of such ships through a form of relativistic time dilation, so that the subjective time they experience in flight is shorter than that in the outside universe. A more immediate form of travel are the Farcasters, technological portals that allow the user to pass instantaneously across space from one world to another.
Hyperion itself is a sparsely populated agricultural world, threatened with attack from Oustlers. It is home to the mysterious Time Tombs, strange monuments that have appeared to have travelled backwards in time. Haunting them is the Shrike, a gigantic humanoid killing machine, whose body is a mass of cruel spikes and blades. In this future, Christianity has declined to the point where it's a minor sect that survives on only a few worlds. Among the new religions that have replaced it is the Church of the Final Atonement, centred around the Shrike. Six pilgrims are periodically selected to go to Hyperion, journey to the Tombs and meet the Shrike. It is believed that although the creature will kill five of them, it will grant the wish of the survivor. The novel follows six pilgrims, who entertain each other by telling their stories on their way to meet the creature.
The pilgrims include a former Roman Catholic priest, sent to investigate the disappearance of a fellow former cleric while conducting an anthropological study of the Bikura, a mysterious human tribe; a female gumshoe from a heavy gravity world, investigating the murder of the biological and cybernetic reconstruction of the poet Keats; a Jewish academic from a farming world, desperately seeking a cure for his daughter's condition. An archaeologist investigating the Time Tombs, she has started to age backwards after a mysterious event until she reaches infancy. There is also a noted galactic poet and writer of trash historical fantasies about the last days of Earth, a Palestinian Martian colonel and a Templar master. The Templars are another new religion, which worships trees, and the Templars have converted some of the vast trees on their homeworld into spacecraft.
The book's influenced not just by Keat's poem 'Hyperion', but also by Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. I therefore think Quinn's right in that it would be better as a TV adaptation, as each tale could constitute an individual episode within the overarching story. At the heart of the book is the problem of evil, how the universe can contain such immense pain and suffering. It's an issue that has challenged philosophers and theologians down the centuries. Hyperion is a Science Fictional attempt to examine the problem, as exemplified by the Shrike.
Hyperion was the first in a series of novels completing the story: The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion and the Rise of Endymion, all of which I found similarly worth reading. It would be great if Hyperion was adapted for screen, but I'm afraid that, like some of the Dune adaptations, some of the central ideas which make the book an SF classic might be lost. If, that is, the book's ever adapted at all. Things seem rather tenuous and it may all come to nothing. We shall have to wait and see.
Tags:Artificial Intelligence, Blacks, Canterbury Tales, Chaucer, Christianity, Dan Simmons, Dune, Endymion, Frank Herbert, Hyperion, Isaac Asimov, Jews, John Keats, Mars, Palestinians, Quinn's Ideas, Space Colonisation, Space Travel, The Fall of Hyperion, The Rise of Endymion, Videos
Posted in Anthropology, Arabs, Archaeology, Environment, Film, Judaism, LIterature, Philosophy, Roman Catholicism, Science, Space, Technology, Theology, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
Have Scientists Recovered Fragments of Dinosaur DNA?
I found this fascinating little video on Russian science vlogger Anton Petrov's YouTube channel. Petrov, who characteristically greets his viewers with the phrase, 'Hello, wonderful person' usually covers astronomy and space, but frequently branches out into other areas like biology. In this video, he discusses a scientific paper that claims that fragments of DNA have been recovered from a small dinosaur, Caudipteryx. This was a creature about the size and shape of a chicken, and it's one of the dinosaur fossils found in the Jehol beds of China.
The possibility that dinosaur genetic material may have survived clearly brings us into Jurassic Park territory, and Petrov says that he was so amazed and excited by the movie that it was one of the things that caused him to become a scientist. He originally wanted to be a palaeontologist, and studied a bit of geology and went on digs. He makes a joke about how the viewers will now have to imagine the Jurassic Park music playing in the background. Why can't they have it for real? Copyright, he sighs, it's always copyright.
It's a controversial claim, and one he says will have scientists arguing for some time to come. DNA begins to break down soon after death. It has a half-life of 521 years, meaning that after that period of time, half the DNA in a creature's remains will have vanished. And all of it will be gone after about 6 million years. However, DNA from Greenland plants has been recovered from 800,000 years ago, showing that the country was warmer and greener than it is now. Fragments of DNA from Neanderthal people have been recovered from 100,000 years ago, showing that DNA can survive quite long periods. In the case of the Caudipteryx dinosaur, some of the DNA may have turned into silicates, which may have preserved the rest. The scientists were able to discover the DNA through using the same process of chemical staining that is used to find it elsewhere. It does seem likely that they have discovered individual cells in the animal's fossil, which is itself a major advance.
It's an interesting possibility, but I don't think we have to be afraid of scientists recreating the dinosaurs to create a new theme park just yet. I think the DNA is far too fragmentary for that. I can remember there being similar controversies about the recovery of Neanderthal DNA, which is far more recent. That said, there are people, who'd like to bring back the mammoths by combining ancient mammoth DNA with modern elephants, and there are considerable ethical and environmental issues about this. Not to mention the scientific problems of finding enough surviving mammoth DNA and being able to combine this successfully with its modern, surviving relative.
Tags:Anton Petrov, Dinosaur, Greenland, Jurassic Park, Mammoths, Neanderthals, Palaeontology, Plants
Posted in Anthropology, Archaeology, Astronomy, China, Environment, Film, Russia, Science, Space, Technology | Leave a Comment »
Priti 'Vacant' Patel Plans Nazi Defence for Officials Causing Deaths of Migrants
Okay, my last piece was against anti-White racism and how the media really doesn't like covering race-hate crimes against Whites. Which means that supposed comedienne Sophie Druker is able to get away with a stupid joke about Blacks wanting to kill Whites on a show last year hosted by Frankie Boyle, and has even won the Comedy Award because of it.
But now I have to cover the opposite racism against Blacks, Asians and other ethnic minorities. Mike's put up a piece warning that our wonderful, loathsome foreign secretary, Priti 'Vacant' Patel, wishes to pass legislation making any official causing death to a migrant immune from prosecution. According to the Groan, this specifically means anyone pushing the migrant boats crossing the channel back out to sea. Mike's called this abomination what it is: Nazism. It's the defence used by the monsters who carried out the Holocaust and other atrocities committed by Hitler's Third Reich: 'We wuz only following orders!'
Mind you, what really, really seems to get right up the nose of right-wingers like Patel is when you call them 'Communists'. Well, despite the obvious difference that Stalin had everything nationalised and the Tories would like to privatise everything they can, you can make the same comparison. Stalin killed 30 million Soviet citizens during his purges. This included the deportation of whole nations, such as the Chechens, and Russian minorities like the Cossacks to Siberia. He was a vicious anti-Semite and would have liked to have deported the Jews there as well. He set up a Jewish autonomous oblast (district) out there, but only a small number of Jews actually went. I remember watching a documentary on the deportation of the Cossacks in the 1990s. This was filmed by members of Leningrad University's anthropology department, and simply consisted in a large part of the students and researchers sitting down and talking to the old folks who'd survived. It was understated but harrowing. People described cannibalism during the famine, boys running away from Hannibal Lecter's all too real predecessors. School children dying of starvation en masse. One woman tearfully describes how she was gang-raped by prison camp guards. It was horrific stuff, told in simple conversation over glasses of tea in Soviet peasant homes.
Stalin also used the purges to industrialise the former Soviet Union. Business managers sent the KGB lists of the types of workers, manual and intellectual, they wanted to the KGB, who obliged by rounding them up on false charges of anti-Soviet activity. They were then sent to the gulags, around which whole prison cities grew up with populations of hundreds of thousands.
But no-one responsible for the mass arrests have been charged for their crimes against humanity.
Yes, Khrushchev in his secret speech attached and dismantled Stalin's 'cult of personality', and Lavrenti Beria, the rapist in charge of the KGB responsible for enacting the purges, was arrested by the Soviet army and shot. But other, lesser officials got away with the mass murder of millions. Their membership of the Communist party gave them a 'get out of jail' free card.
Just as it seems, membership of the DWP and the Tory party do the same in 21st century Britain.
Samuel Miller, one of the excellent folks on Twitter Mike quotes in his article, has said that the Tories have already made DWP officials responsible for the deaths of benefit claims immune to similar prosecution for years.
And Mike has also published a long article about the ways Priti Patel intends to pass legislation breaking international laws on refugees. He has also pointed out that such laws don't just affect non-white immigrants. They affect traditional White Brits. Because, as the late, great Tony Benn observed, what the Tories do to native Whites, they start by doing to immigrants. Food banks first appeared under Tony Blair, when he made illegal immigrants illegible for benefit. Then the Tories decided it could also be used to support -just barely-all the indigenous Brits, by which I also include Blacks and Asians, who've been here for generations, who got thrown off benefits due to their genocidal sanction system.
The moral of all this: Don't get pulled in to supporting to this by all the rhetoric against 'dinghy divers' and so on by people like Alex Belfield. 'Cause after PolPotPatel (copyright 'Cleckylad') she and the other walking moral imbeciles will come for you.
Because they have the same contempt and hatred for the White poor, as they have for Black and Asian immigrants.
https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2021/10/14/priti-patels-planned-immunity-for-officials-who-cause-deaths-of-refugees-is-nazism/
https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2021/10/13/priti-patels-borders-bill-is-an-attack-on-national-and-international-law/
Tags:'the Guardian', Alex Belfield, Asians, Benefit Claimants, Blacks, Business, Channel Migrants, Chechens, Children, Comedy Awards, Communist Party, Concentration Camps, Conservatives, Cossacks, Deaths, Deportations, DWP, Ethnic Minorities, Famine, Frankie Boyle, Gulags, Hannibal Lecter, Immigration, Jews, KGB, Khrushchev, Lavrenti Beria, Leningrad University, Nationalisation, Nuremberg, Privatisation, Purges, racism, Rape, Sanctions, Sophie Drukerr, Soviet Union, stalin, Starvation, third reich, Tony Benn, tony blair, Vox Political, Whites, Women
Posted in Anthropology, Charity, Comedy, communism, Crime, Education, Fascism, History, Industry, Judaism, Nazis, Persecution, Politics, Radio, Russia, Television, The Press, Welfare Benefits | 1 Comment »
Missionaries Samuel Crowther and Frederick Schon on the Equal Intelligence of African Schoolchildren
I've reblogged on here several videos from Simon Webb's History Debunked channel, in which Webb, an author, has disputed some of the false history being promoted by Black and anti-racist activists. He's definitely a Telegraph-reading Tory, but much of his material, when he backs it up with relevant sources, appears sound. One issue which I'm not happy about, however, is his embrace of the 'Bell Curve' theory of a racial intellectual hierarchy. This was proposed by an American academic a few years ago, and caused a storm of controversy and outrage. It proposes that the various races differ in their intellectual capabilities. The Chinese and east Asians are the most intelligent, Blacks the least. Whites are somewhere in the middle. Now I remember being told when I was a child that the Japanese had the highest IQs of any people in the world. While 100 was the European average, theirs was 120. And it was considered to be an established biological fact among many mainstream biologists that Blacks were intellectually inferior. This was used as the rationale for limiting Black immigration to the US and was a major part of the eugenics movement. It has also kept Blacks from achieving their full educational potential. Akala in his book Natives, states that some of the teachers who taught him – not all, but some – believed it and so thought that he too must be more stupid than his White classmates.
But while many anthropologists and biologists did believe Blacks were intellectually inferior, others made it very plain they thought the reverse was true. The missionaries Samuel Crowther and Frederick Schon were two of them. Crowther was a 'man of colour', a man of mixed African and White European heritage, who went to bring Christianity to Africa, for which he became the first Anglican bishop of Africa outside the British empire. He held this post until racists in the Anglican church had it taken away from him. His fellow missionary, Frederick Schon, was a Swiss Protestant pastor. During the 19th century they were called up to testify about slavery and the Christian mission to Africa before the parliamentary commission of inquiry tasked with overseeing Britain's attempt to exterminate slavery and the slave trade. The gentlemen of the committee asked them if the African pupils in the schools they set up were intellectually inferior to White, British children. They responded that they weren't. Indeed, they felt they were actually rather more intelligent than White Brits. That is until they hit 14 or 15, when they became dull and uninterested. To prove that Black Africans were intellectually equal, they submitted various essays on Divinity, as RE was called back then, discussing God and Christianity, which had been written by these pupils. The good reverend gentlemen's experience of teaching in Africa does rebut the claims by the supporters of the Bell Curve that Blacks are somehow less intelligent than Whites.
I admit, however, that their statement that the children lose interest and appear to become less intelligent when the hit their mid-teens is a problem. But this could well be due to cultural factors. Nigel Barley's book anthropological novel, The Coast, certainly suggests this is the case. Set in the 19th century, this about a British Christian missionary to west Africa, who utterly fails to convert the locals. In one episode, the missionary sets up a school for the local children, who are utterly uninterested in what he tries to teach them, until he starts talking about money. The African state in which the missionary is attempting to spread the Gospel, Akwa, is a very mercantile culture and its people are keenly interested in trade, including the local schoolchildren. Barley states in his introduction that Akwa is based on a number of historical states in that region of Africa. He's a professional anthropologist, who has written a number of books, including his hilarious account of trying to do research among the Dowayo people of Cameroon, The Innocent Anthropologist. I've no doubt that, although fiction, The Coast is based on historical and anthropological fact. And it may have been similar cultural forces that resulted in Crowther's and Schon's school pupils similarly losing interest in the European schooling they were receiving when they entered puberty.
There is a problem with Black educational underachievement in the UK, for which a number of explanations have been suggested, including institutional racism in British society and the school system. Other factors may also include the breakdown of the Black family in particular, and the growth of urban gang culture.
Crowther's and Schon's experience of actually teaching in Africa, as well as Barley's book, suggests that Black academic underperformance is almost certainly due to cultural and social factors, rather than biology.
Tags:Akala, Anglican Church, anti-racism, Asians, Blacks, Christianity, Eugenics, Frederick Schon, Gangs, History Debunked, Immigration, Intelligence, Missionaries, Nigel Barley, Parliament, Protestantism, Race, racism, Samuel Crowther, Schools, Simon Webb, The Coast, The Family, The Innocent Anthropologist, Trade, Whites
Posted in Africa, America, Anthropology, Cameroon, China, Crime, Education, Evolutionary Theory, History, Industry, Japan, LIterature, Persecution, Politics, Science, Slavery, Switzerland | 2 Comments »
Video of Bonobo Learning to Make Stone Tools
I really don't know if it's a good idea to teach apes to make edged weapons – they're physically much more powerful than we are as it is without giving them the knowledge to make stone blades. This is a video I found on the Cornell Arts and Sciences Channel on YouTube. It's of a bonobo, Kanzi, being encouraged to make flint blades by one of the scientists, Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh. The blurb for the video on its YouTube page runs
In the 1990s, paleo-anthropologists Nick Toth and Kathy Schick taught Kanzi the bonobo to produce stone tools using techniques that were adopted by our early ancestors. In this 7-min excerpt, primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh is using language to encourage Kanzi to produce a certain number of tools—seizing the opportunity to consolidate his counting capacities. Near the end of the excerpt, Kanzi is trying to vocalize some numbers. (copyright Sue Savage-Rumbaugh).
Savage-Rumbaugh lines all nine of the bonobo's flakes up in a row, and then tries to get him to count them. She tries and fails to get Kanzi to say the numbers, but all the animal can do is screech. However, he points and taps the flakes that correspond to that number. It also looks like they've devised a means for the creature to communicate in English using a computer. The video shows a computer screen with tiny thumbnail pictures, and at one point a synthesised voice can be heard saying 'rock', 'knife' and other words. It looks to me – and I might be wrong – that the computer is touch sensitive and says the name of whichever object the bonobo touches, thus allowing it to communicate vocally in English with the experimenters.
Kanzi making stone tools – YouTube
Kanzi is clearly a very intelligent creature. There's another video about him on YouTube, which calls him an 'Ape of Genius', so he's obviously a bit brighter than the hacks writing for the Scum. Primatologists are interested in finding out just how intelligent our nearest ape relatives – chimps and gorillas – really are. There was considerable interest in Koko the gorilla, who was taught sign language. I've heard it said that at hear peak she had a vocabulary of 900+ words. Kanzi is just one of a number of bonobos, whom the researchers tried to teach to make stone tools. I think the aim of these experiments was to see if they could make the type of stone tools crafted and used by Homo Habilis, one of the very early hominid ancestors. From what I've read, the tools they produced were inferior to those made by Habilis. I suppose we shouldn't be disappointed, though, and expect too much. It's perhaps enough that Kanzi and his friends understand what's being said to them, and that they're able to do it and communicate back.
Tags:Apes, Bonobos, Chimpanzees, Computers, Cornell University, E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Gorillas, Homo Habilis, Kanzi, Kathu Schick, Koko, Nick Toth, The Sun, Youtube
Posted in Anthropology, Archaeology, Education, Languages, Science, Technology, The Press | 2 Comments »
Jama'at-i Islami – The Pakistani Islamic Party Pushing for Theocracy
Pakistan was founded as an explicitly Muslim country. It's a democracy, but there is a section of its parliament, if I remember correctly, that's made up of Muslim clergy, who scrutinise legislation passed by the lower house to make sure it accords with Islamic law. Since the 1970s and the regime of the dictator, Zia al-Haqq, Islam has become increasingly powerful in Pakistani politics. I believe the current president, Imran Khan, is the leader of an Islamic party. Pakistan was one of the nations that experienced protests against France over the Charlie Hebdo cartoons and there have been official denunciations of the cartoons and President Macron's attempts to combat Muslim radicalism.
The force behind the growth of political Islam in Pakistan appears to be the Jama'at-i Islami, whose name translates as 'The Islamic Society.' The article about them in The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions runs as follows
A highly disciplined and well-organised Muslim political party, founded in 1941 by Abul al-A'la Mawdudi. it aims at establishing an observant Islamic state in Pakistan. The Jam'at's political platform offers an alternative to teh secularists and modernists, and in this lies its appeal (especially since 1977). The Ja'amat advocates that Pakistan should be a theocratic state, ruled by a single man whose tenure of office and power are limited only by his faithfulness to Islam. The ruler should be assisted by a shura (advisory council), with no political parties and no provision for an opposition. General Zia al-Haqq, the military leader after the overthrow of Z. Bhutto (1977)., used the Jama'at as a political prop for his 'back to Islam' campaign. The Jama'at has influence among the military, the middle classes, and the college and university students. It publishes a monthly magazine, Tarjuman al-Quran, in Lahore that has a high circulation. On the international level, the Jama'at was on good terms with Imam Khumayni and the oil rich Arab states; the Saudis have supported the movement since the early 1970s. (p. 489).
This looks like an attempt to create a kind of caliphate, and the Dictionary notes that there is considerable support for its return in Pakistan. I also wonder about the movement's influence in British Islam, as there has been a problem with fire-breathing radicals immigrating to Britain to supply the shortage of imams for British mosques. Which is why moderate Muslims in this country have demanded government assistance in training Muslim Brits, who have grown up in our ostensibly democratic culture, as imams and community leaders.
I'm not a secularist, and believe that people of faith have a right to have their voices heard in politics and parliament, but this is just a movement for religious tyranny. In Pakistan as it is there's persecution, including violence and pogroms against religious minorities. We've seen Christians murdered and imprisoned following accusations of blasphemy. There have also been riots and murders of the Ahmadiyya. Apparently even pious Muslims have been murdered because of comments they have made, which have been interpreted by others as blasphemous. There are 200 people on Pakistan's Death Row accused of blasphemy. Many of these accusations are spurious, cynically levelled because of other disputes between the parties concerned. If a theocracy was established in Pakistan, it would only cause more oppression and violence.
I also believe that it wouldn't be good for Islam either. Atheist sites on the web have reported that there has been a massive increase in atheism in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and Iran. Six years or so ago Saudi news reported that a large number of Qurans had been found thrown into a sewer. A few days ago Iranian media reported that this had also happened in their country. A poll conducted of 50,000 Iranians found that 38 per cent of the population is either atheist or has no religion. If this is true, then it's probably the result of people becoming fed up of the repression they are experiencing from their theocratic governments. The religious violence of the Islamist extremists, al-Qaeda and Daesh, are undoubtedly another factor. A few years ago I read a book by a French anthropologist, who came to the conclusion that the Islamist movements were the response of Muslim societies as the experienced the transition to modernity. This was comparable to the way radical, militant Christian movements had appeared in Europe in the 17th century, such as those in the British Civil War. Now Islam was experiencing the same.
My guess is that if the Jama'at ever succeeded in creating a theocracy in Pakistan, it would be massively unstable as the various sects excluded from the regime's view of what was properly Islamic were oppressed and rebelled. I don't believe that the Jama'at and other extreme, theocratic movements have anything to offer Muslims or anyone else anything except more oppression and violence.
Tags:Ahmadiyya, al-Qaeda, Armed Forces, Ayatollah Khomeini, British Civil War, Caliphate, Charlie Hebdo, Christians, Daesh, Dictatorship, Emmanuel Macron, Imran Khan, Islamism, Jama'at-i Islami, Lahore, Murder, Muslims, Opinion Polls, Parliament, Protests, Riots, Students, The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, Theocracy, Universities, Z. Bhutto, Zia al-Haqq
Posted in Anthropology, Arabs, Atheism, Comics, Crime, Democracy, Education, France, History, Islam, Law, LIterature, OIl, Pakistan, Persecution, Politics, Saudi Arabia, Secularism, Terrorism | 1 Comment »
Thunderfoot Attacks Black South African Student Who Claims Western Science Is 'Racist'
Thunderfoot is another YouTube personality like Carl Benjamin aka Sargon of Akkad, the Sage of Swindon, whose views I categorically don't share. He's a militant atheist of the same stripe as Richard Dawkins. He's a scientist, who shares Peter Atkins' view that science can explain everything and leaves no room for religion or mysticism. He's also very right wing, sneering at SJWs (Social Justice Warriors) and attacking feminism. So he's also like Sargon on that score. But in this video, he does make valid points and does an important job of defending science against the glib accusation that it's racist.
Thunderfoot put up this video in 2016 and it seems to be his response to a video circulating of part of a student debate at the University of Cape Town. The speaker in this video, clips of which Thunderfoot uses in his, is a Black female student who argues that western science is racist and colonialist. It arose in the context of western modernity and excludes indigenous African beliefs, and if she had her way, it would be 'scratched out'. One of the African beliefs it excludes is the fact, as she sees it, that sangomas – African shamans – can call lightning down to strike people. She challenges her debating opponent to decolonise their mind and explain scientifically how the sangoma is able to do that. Her interlocutor is not impressed, and laughs out loud at this assertion, which gets a sharp response from the moderator who claims that the debate is supposed to be a circle of respect and they should apologise or leave. The anti-science student states that western science is totalizing, urges her opponent to decolonize their mind, and calls for an African science. She also rejects gravity because Isaac Newton sat on a tree and saw an apple fall.
Thunderfoot answers these assertions by pointing out, quite rightly, that science is about forming models of reality with 'predictive utility'. It is the ability of scientific model to make useful predictions which shows that the model is an accurate description of reality. Science's discoveries are true for everyone, regardless of whether they are male or female, Black or White. He shows a clip of militant atheist Richard Dawkins talking to another group of students, and explaining that the proof that science works is that planes and rockets fly. The equations and scientific models describing them have to, otherwise they don't. Dawkins is another personality, whose views I don't share, and this blog was started partly to refute his atheist polemics. But the quote from Dawkins is absolutely right. Thunderfoot goes on to say that if African shamans really could call lightning down on people, then surely someone would have used it for military purposes. And to demonstrate, he shows a clip of Thor getting hit with a lightning bolt from an Avengers movie.
As for African science, he then hands over to another YouTuber, who talks about an attempted scam in Mugabe's Zimbabwe. A women claimed that she had a rock which produced refined diesel oil, and called on the government to see for themselves. Which they did. If the woman's claim was genuine, then Zimbabwe would be entirely self-sufficient in diesel. However, such hopes were dashed when it was revealed that the rock had a hole bored into it from which diesel was being pumped.
The video goes on to make the point that such 'science denialism' is dangerous by pointing to the claim of the former South African president, Thabo Mbeki, that HIV didn't cause AIDS. He tried to stop people using the retroviral drugs used to treat HIV in favour of herbal cures that didn't work. As a result, 300,000 people may have lost their lives to the disease.
Thunderfoot concludes that this is the situation this student would like to create: an African science which rejects gravity, asserts shamans can strike people with lightning, and in which hundreds of thousands of people die unnecessarily from AIDS. Here's the video.
Racism and the Rejection of Conventional Science
Thunderfoot is right in that one current view in the philosophy of science is that science is about forming models of reality, which can make predictions. This is the view I hold. He is also correct in that science's findings are valid regardless of where they are made and who makes them. And I'd also argue that, rather than science, it is this young Black woman, who is racist. She rejects science on the racist grounds that it was created by White Europeans. This is also the genetic fallacy, the logical mistake that a statement must be wrong because of the nature of the person who makes it. The Nazis, for example, made the same mistake when they rejected Einstein's Theory of Relativity because Einstein was Jewish. They also believed that science should reflect racial identity, and so sacked Jewish mathematicians and scientists in an attempt to create a racially pure 'Aryan' science.
Science and the Paranormal
I don't believe, however, that science automatically excludes the supernatural. There are very many scientists, who are people of faith. Although it's very much a fringe science – some would say pseudoscience – there is the discipline of parapsychology, which is the scientific investigation of the paranormal. Organisations like the Society for Psychical Research and ASSAP have existed since the 19th century to carry out such investigations. Their members do include scientists and medical professionals. I don't think it would be at all unreasonable for parapsychologists to investigate such alleged powers by indigenous shamans, just as they investigate appearances of ghosts, psychic powers and mediumship in the west. And if it could be demonstrably proved that such shamans had the powers they claim, then science would have to accommodate that, whether it could explain it or not.
On the other hand is the argument that science shouldn't investigate the paranormal or supernatural, not because the paranormal doesn't exist, but because it is outside the scope of scientific methodology to investigate it as different field altogether. Thus science can ignore the general question of whether tribal shamans are able to conjure up lightning bolts as outside its purview and more properly the subject of metaphysics or theology. In which case, it's left up to the individual to decide for themselves whether these shamans are able to perform such miracles.
Muti Witchcraft and Murder
Thunderfoot and his fellow YouTuber are also right to point out the harm that bad and fraudulent science can do. And there are very serious issues surrounding the promotion of indigenous African magic. Years ago a South African anthropologist defended African muti at an academic conference here in Britain. Muti is a form of magic in which someone tries to gain success and good luck through acquiring amulets made of human body parts. These include the fingers and the genitals. It's believed they are particularly powerful if they are cut off the victim while they're still alive. There's a whole black market in such body parts and amulets in South Africa, with prices varying according to the desired body party. Way back in 2004-5 the police found the remains of a human torso in the Thames. It had been wrapped in cloth of particular colours, and it was believed that it had belonged to a boy, who'd been killed as part of such a ritual.
Indigenous Beliefs and the Politics of Apartheid
Years ago the small press, sceptical UFO magazine, Magonia, reviewed a book by the South African shaman Credo Mutwa. This was supposed to be full of ancient African spiritual wisdom. In fact it seems to have been a mixture of South African indigenous beliefs and western New Age ideas. The Magonians weren't impressed. And one of the reasons they weren't impressed was Mutwa himself and the political use of him and other African shamans by the apartheid government.
Before it fell, apartheid South Africa had a policy of 're-tribalisation'. This was the promotion of the separate identities and cultures of the various indigenous peoples over whom the White minority ruled. This included the promotion of traditional religious and spiritual beliefs. These peoples had intermarried and mixed to such an extent, that by the 1950s they had formed a Black working class. And it was to prevent that working class becoming united that the apartheid government promoted their cultural differences in a policy of divide and rule. Mutwa was allegedly part of that policy as a government stooge.
Attacks on Science and Maths for Racism Dangerous
I've put up several videos now from Sargon attacking the assertion that western education and in particular mathematics is racist and somehow oppressed Blacks. I'm putting up this video because it does the same for the assertion that western science is also racist.
Not only are science and maths not racist, it is also very definitely not racist to reject some forms of African magic. Killing and mutilating people for good luck is absolutely abhorrent and should be condemned and banned, and those who practise it punished, regardless of its status as an African tradition. At the same time it does need to be realised that the South African government did try to keep Black Africans down and powerless partly through the promotion of indigenous spiritual beliefs. It's ironic that the young woman shown arguing against science does so in an apparent belief that its rejection will somehow be liberating and empowering for Black Africans. And Thunderfoot has a chuckle to himself about the irony in her arguing against science, while reaching for her ipad, one of its products.
Belief in the supernatural and in the alleged powers of indigenous shamans should be a matter of personal belief. Disbelieving in them doesn't automatically make someone a racist bigot. But this young woman's rejection of science is racist and potentially extremely dangerous, because it threatens to deprive Black South Africans like her of science's undoubted benefits. Just like Mbeki's rejection of the link between HIV and AIDS led to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of desperately ill men, women and children.
What is particularly irritating is that this young woman and her fellow students are affluent and, as students, highly educated. If the woman was poor and uneducated, then her views would be understandable. But she isn't. Instead, she uses the language and rhetoric of postmodernism and contemporary anti-colonialism. It does make you wonder about what is being taught in the world's universities, arguments about academic freedom notwithstanding.
In the past, there has been racism in science. Eugenics and the hierarchy of races devised by 19th century anthropologists as well as the Nazis' attempts to create an Aryan science are examples. But attacks on conventional science and mathematics as racist, based on no more than the fact that modern science and maths have their origins in contemporary western culture is also racist and destructive.
Glib attacks on science by people like the young student in the above video not only threaten its integrity, but will also harm the very people, who most stand to benefit. They should be thoroughly rejected.
Tags:AIDS, Albert Einstein, anti-semitism, Apartheid, ASSAP, Avengers, Blacks, Carl Benjamin, Colonialism, Credo Mutwa, Deaths, Eugenics, Fraud, Isaac Newton, Jews, Magonia, Mediums, Murder, New Age, Parapsychology, Postmodernism, racism, richard dawkins, Robert Mugabe, Sargon of Akkad, Shamans, Society for Psychical Research, Students, Thabo Mbeki, Thunderfoot, UFOs, Universities, University of Cape Town, Witchcraft, Working Class, Youtube
Posted in Africa, Anthropology, Atheism, Crime, Education, England, Evolutionary Theory, Film, Judaism, Medicine, Nazis, OIl, Persecution, Philosophy, Politics, Science, South Africa, Technology, Theology, Uncategorized, Zimbabwe | 4 Comments »
'I' Review of Book on the Alma Fielding Poltergeist Case
Last Friday, 9th October 2020, the 'I' published a review by Fiona Sturges of the book, The Haunting of Alma Fielding, by Kate Summerscale (Bloomsbury, £18.99). Fielding was a woman from Croydon, who in 1938 found herself and her husband haunted by a poltergeist, the type of spirit which supposedly throws objects around and generally makes itself unpleasant. The review states that she was investigated by the Society for Psychical Research, in particular Nandor Fodor. Summerscale came across the case while going through the Society's files.
I'm putting up Sturges' review as I've friends, who are members of the Society and very involved in paranormal research, as are a few of the great peeps, who comment on this blog. Ghost hunting is also very big at the moment, and there are any number of programmes on the satellite and cable channels, as well as a multitude of ghost hunting groups across the UK, America and other countries. Despite its popularity, there's a big difference between serious paranormal investigation of the type done by the SPR and ASSAP and the majority of ghost hunting groups. The SPR and ASSAP contain professional scientists as well as ordinary peeps from more mundane professions, and try to investigate the paranormal using strict scientific methodology. They contain sceptics as well as believers, and are interested in finding the truth about specific events, whether they are really paranormal or have a rational explanation. They look down on some of the ghost-hunting groups, because these tend to be composed entirely of believers seeking to confirm their belief in the paranormal and collect what they see as evidence. If someone points out that the evidence they show on their videos actually is no such thing – for example, most researchers believe orbs aren't the souls of the dead, but lens artefacts created by floating dust moats – then the die-hard ghost hunters tend to react by decrying their critics as 'haters'. Many of the accounts of their encounters with the supernatural by the ghost hunters are extremely dramatic. They'll describe how members got possessed or were chased by the spirits on their home. I'm not saying such events don't happen at all. I do know people, who have apparently been possessed by spirits during investigations. But the stories of such supernatural events put up by the ghost-hunters seem more likely the result of powerful imaginations and hysteria than genuine manifestations by the dead.
Academic historians are also interested in spiritualism and supernatural belief in the past because of what they reveal about our ancestors worldview and the profound changes this underwent during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Psychical research emerged in the 19th century at the same time as spiritualism, and was founded partly to investigate the latter. Both can be seen as attempts to provide concrete, scientifically valid proof of the survival of the soul after death at the time science was itself just taking shape and religious belief was under attack from scientific materialism. As the review says, spiritualism and psychic research were particularly popular in the aftermath of the First World War, as bereaved relatives turned to it for comfort that their loved ones still lived on in a blessed afterlife. One famous example of this is Conan Doyle, the creator of the arch-rationalist detective, Sherlock Holmes. Doyle was a spiritualist, who helped, amongst other things, popularise the Cottingley Fairies in his book, The Coming of the Fairies. Another of his books in this area was Raymond, an account of his contact with the spirit of his son, who was one of those killed in that terrible conflict.
But the history of spiritualism is also interesting because of what it also reveals about gender roles and sexuality, topics also touched on in the review. Mediums stereotypically tend to be women or gay men. At the same time, historians have also suggested that there was an erotic element to seances and investigations. More intimate physical contact between the sexes was permitted in the darkness of the séance room that may otherwise have been permitted in strictly respectable Victorian society. At the same time, there is to modern viewers a perverse aspect to the investigation of the mediums themselves. In order to rule out fraud, particularly with the physical mediums who claimed to produce ectoplasm from their bodies, mediums were tied up, stripped naked and examined physically, including in their intimate parts. Emetics could be administered to make sure that their stomachs were empty and not containing material, like cheesecloth, which could be used to fake ectoplasm.
The review, 'Strange but true?', runs
In February 1938, there was a commotion at a terraced house in Croydon. Alma and Les Fielding were asleep when tumblers began launching themselves at walls; a wind whipped up in their bedroom, lifting their eiderdown into the air; and a pot of face cream flew across the room. The next morning, as Alma prepared breakfast, eggs exploded and saucers snapped.
Over the next few days, visiting journalists witnessed lumps of coal rising from the fireplace and barrelling through the air, glasses escaping from locked cabinets and a capsizing wardrobe. As far as they could tell, the Fieldings were not responsible for the phenomena. One report told of a "malevolent, ghostly force". The problem, it was decided, was a poltergeist.
Fast-forward to 2017 and the writer Kate Summerscale, best known for the award-winning The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, was in the Society for Psychical Research Archive in Cambridge looking for references to Nandor Fodor, a Hungarian émigré and pioneer of supernatural study, who investigated the fielding case.
She found a dossier of papers related to Alma, compiled by Fodor, containing interviews, séance transcripts, X-rays, lab reports, scribbled notes and photographs. The file was, says Summerscale, "a documentary account of fictional and magical events, a historical record of the imagination."
The Haunting of Alma Fielding is a detective novel, a ghost yarn and a historical record rolled into one. Blending fact and fiction it is an electrifying reconstruction of the reported events surrounding the Fieldings, all the while placing them in a wider context.
The narrative centres of Fodor, who at the time was losing faith in spiritualism – the mediums he had met were all fakes, and the hauntings he had investigated were obvious hoaxes. He was increasing convinced that supernatural occurrences were caused "not by the shades of the dead but by the unconscious minds of the living".
But he was intrigued by Alma, who now experiencing "apports" – the transference of objects from one place to another. Rare stones and fossils would appear in her hands and flowers under her arms. Beetles started to scuttle out from her clothes and a terrapin appeared in her lap. She would later claim to be able to astrally project herself and give herself over to possession by spirits.
Summerscale resists the temptation to mine the more comic aspects of the story. She weaves in analysis on class, female emancipation and sexuality, and the collective angst of a nation. At the time, spiritualism was big business in Britain, which was still suffering the shocks of mass death from the First World War and Spanish flu. Seances to reach the departed were as common as cocktail parties. There was dread in the air, too, as another conflict in Europe loomed.
Alma became a local celebrity, released from domestic dreariness into the gaze of mostly male journalists, mediums and psychiatrists. Chaperoned by Fodor, she made frequent visits to the Institute of Psychical Research, where she submitted to lengthy and often invasive examinations.
We come to understand how Fodor stood to benefit from the cases, both in furthering his career and restoring his faith in the possibility of an afterlife. You feel his pain, along with Alma's, as the true story is revealed.
It sounds very much from that last paragraph that the haunting was a hoax. There have been, unfortunately, all too many fake mediums and hoaxers keen to exploit those seeking the comfort of making contact once again with deceased relatives and friends. There was even a company selling a catalogue of gadgets to allow someone to take a séance. But I don't believe for a single moment that all mediums are frauds. There is a psychological explanation, based on anthropologists study of the zar spirit possession cult of one of the African peoples. This is a very patriarchal culture, but possession by the zar spirits allows women to circumvent some of the restrictions of women. For example, they may be given rings and other objects while possessed through the spirits asking, or apparently asking, through them. It's been suggested that zar possessions are a form of hysteria, in which women, who are frustrated by societal restrictions, are able to get around them. The same explanation has also been suggested for western mediumship and alien abductions. Many of the women, who became mediums and who experience abductions by aliens, may do so subconsciously as these offer an escape from stifling normal reality.
I also believe that some supernatural events may well be genuine. This view was staunchly defended by the late Brian Inglis in his history of ghosts and psychical research, Natural and Supernatural, in the 1990s. As an Anglican, I would also caution anyone considering getting involved in psychical research to take care. There's fraud and hoaxing, of course, as well as misperception, while some paranormal phenomena may be the result of poorly understood fringe mental states. But I also believe that some of the supposed entities contacting us from the astral realms, if they exist, are deliberately trying to mislead us. The great UFO researchers, John Keel and Jacques Vallee, came to the same conclusion about the UFO entities. One of Keel's books was entitled, Messengers of Deception. There's also the book, Hungry Ghosts, again written from a non-Christian perspective, which also argues that some of the spirits contacting people are malevolent and trying to deceive humanity for their own purposes.
If you are interested in psychical research, therefore do it properly using scientific methodology. And be aware of the possibility of deception, both natural and supernatural.
Tags:'Natural and Supernatural', 'I' Newspaper, Alien Abductions, Alma Fielding, Anglicanism, Arthur Conan Doyle, Brian Inglis, Christianity, Fairies, Feminism, Fiona Sturges, Gays, Gender, Ghosts, Hungry Ghosts, Institute for Psychic Research, Jacques Vallee, John Keel, Kate Summerscale, Les Fielding, Materialism, Messengers of Deception, Nandor Fodor, Paranormal, Parapsychology, Sherlock Holmes, Society for Psychical Research, Spiritualism, The Haunting of Alma Fielding, UFOs, Women, World War One
Posted in Africa, America, Anthropology, England, History, LIterature, Mental Illness, Psychology, Science, Space, Television, The Press | 1 Comment »
History Debunked Refutes Ethnomathematics/Rehumanizing Mathematics
This is another video from History Debunked. In it, youtuber and author Simon Webb attacks Ethnomatics, sometimes also called Rehumanizing Mathematics. This is a piece of modern pseudo-scholarship designed to help Black children tackle Maths. The idea is that Blacks perform poorly compared at Maths compared to other ethnic groups. This is held to be because Maths is the creation of White men, and this puts Blacks off studying and mastering it.
The solution has been to scrutinise African societies for their indigenous Maths, especially the Dogon of Mali. They have been chosen as the chief model for all this, as they possessed extremely advanced astronomical and mathematical knowledge. In the 1970s there was a book, The Sirius Mystery by Robert K.G. Temple, which claimed that they owed this advance knowledge to contact with space aliens. Apparently this claim was subsequently dropped 10 – 15 years later, and the claim made instead that they were just superlative astronomers and mathematicians themselves. But Dogon Maths is held to be different from White, western Maths because it's spiritual. History Debunked then goes on to demonstrate the type of pseudo-scientific nonsense this has lead to by providing a link to an Ethnomathematics paper and reading out its conclusion. It's the kind of pretentious verbiage the late, great Jazzman, Duke Ellington, said stunk up the place. It's the kind of postmodern twaddle that Sokal and Bricmont exposed in their Intellectual Impostures. It's deliberately designed to sound impressive without actually meaning anything. There's a lot of talk about expanding cognitive horizons and possibilities, but History Debunked himself says he doesn't understand a word of it. And neither, I guess, will most people. Because it doesn't really mean anything. It's just there to sound impressive and bamboozle the reader into thinking that somehow they're thick because they don't, while the fault is entirely the writers.
I think History Debunked is a man of the right, and certainly his commenters are Conservatives, some with extremely right-wing views. He's produced a series of videos attacking the pseudo-history being pushed as Black History, and apparently Seattle in America is particularly involved in promoting this nonsense. But he expects it to come over here in a few years. Given the way Black History month has jumped the Atlantic, I think he's right.
There's been a particular emphasis on find ancient Black maths and science for some time I know. For a brief while I got on well with a Black studies group when I was a volunteer at the slavery archives in the former Empire and Commonwealth Museum. That was before I read their magazine and got so annoyed with it and its attitude to Whites that I sent them a whole load of material arguing to the contrary, and pointing out that in places like the Sudan, Blacks were being enslaved and oppressed not by White Europeans, but by the Arabs. I also sent them material about the poor Whites of South Africa, who also lived in grinding poverty thanks to Apartheid. This was stuff they really didn't want to hear, and I was told that if I wanted to talk to them further, I should do so through someone else. They were also interested in finding examples of Black maths and science. I sent them photocopies and notes I'd made of various medieval Muslim mathematicians. These were Arabs and Persians, like al-Khwarizmi, who gave his name to the word algorithm, Omar Khayyam, best known in the west for his Rubayyat, but who was also a brilliant mathematician, al-Haytham, who invented the camera obscura in the 12th century and others, rather than Black. But they were grateful for what I sent them nonetheless, and I thanked me. This was before I blotted my copybook with them.
I'm reposting this piece because, although it comes from the political, it is correct. And you don't have to be right-wing to recognise and attack this kind of postmodern rubbish. Sokal and Bricmont, the authors of the book I mentioned early attacking postmodernism, were both men of the left. Sokal was a physicist, who taught maths in Nicaragua under the left-wing Sandinista government. They wrote the book because they took seriously George Orwell's dictum that writing about politics means writing clearly in language everyone can understand. And even if you believe that Black people do need particular help with maths because of issues of race and ethnicity, Ethnomathematics as it stands really doesn't appear to be it. It just seems to be filling children's heads with voguish nonsense, rather than real knowledge.
I also remember the wild claims made about the Dogon and their supposed contact with space aliens. Part of it came from the Dogon possessing astronomical knowledge well beyond their level of technology. They knew, for example, that Sirius has a companion star, invisible to the naked eye, Sirius B. They also knew that our solar system had nine planets, although that's now been subsequently altered. According to the International Astronomical Association or Union or whatever, the solar system has eight planets. Pluto, previously a planet, has been downgraded to dwarf planet, because it's the same size as some of the planetoids in the Kuiper Belt. Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince discuss this in one their books,The Stargate Conspiracy (London: Little, Brown & Company 1999), which claimed that the American intelligence agencies were secretly preparing a fake UFO landing in order to convince everyone that the space gods really had arrived, and set up a one-world dictatorship. This hasn't happened, and I've seen the Fortean Times and other weird magazines trying to explain their book as a high-level hoax which people took too seriously. I don't believe this, as they seemed very serious at the time. The Dogon believe that the first human ancestors, and some of their gods, came from the sky. Hence Temple's claim that they were contacted by space aliens. Picknett and Prince, however, sided with sceptics like Carl Sagan. They argued instead ithat the Dogon owed it to a French priest, anthropologist or colonial administrator, I've forgotten which, who visited them in the 1920s and who was extremely interested in astronomy. This seems to me to be far more likely than that they either got it from space aliens or that they far better mathematicians and astronomers than they could have been at their level of development.
The Dogon are fascinating as their homes and villages are laid out to be microcosms of the male and female human body and the universe. The book African Mythology by Geoffrey Parrinder, London: Hamlyn 1967, describes the layout of a Dogon house thus:
The shape of the Dogon house is symbolical. The floor is like the earth and the flat roof like heaven. The vestibule is a man and the central room woman, with store rooms at her sides as arms. The hear at the end is her head. The four posts are the man and woman entwined in union. So the family house represents the unity of man and woman and God and the Earth. This is accompanied by the elevation and ground plan of a typical Dogon house. (p. 49).
There's also this diagram of an idealised Dogon village:
The caption for the diagrame reads:
Like the house, the Dogon village represents human beings. The smithy is at the head like a hearth in a house. The family houses in the centre and millstones and village represent the sexes. Other altars are the feet. (p. 51).
Truly, a fascinating people and I have no problem anybody wanting to study them. But it should be in anthropology, ethnography or comparative religion, not maths.
But it struck me that if teachers and educators want to enthuse and inspire young minds with what maths Africans were studying, they could start with ancient Egypt and the great Muslim civilisations of the Sahara and north Africa, like Mali. Aminatta Forna in one of her programmes on these civilisations was shown an ancient astronomical text from the medieval library of one of these towns, which she was told showed that Muslims knew the Earth orbited the sun before Copernicus and Galileo. I doubt that very much. It looks like a form of a combined helio-and geocentric system, first proposed by the ancient Greeks, and then taken up by some medieval astronomers not just in Islam, but also in Christian Europe. In this system, all the other planets when round the Sun, which orbited the Earth. Close to the modern system, but not quite. But it showed that the Black citizens of that civilisation were in contact with the great currents of Muslim science, and that they would have had learnt and taught the same kind of Maths that was being investigated and researcher right across the Muslim world, from India to Morocco and further south to Mali. One of the Black educationalists would like to translate one of these books from Arabic, the learned language of Muslim civilisation, and use it as an example of the kind of maths that was also taught in Black Africa.
Or you could go right back to ancient Egypt. Mathematical texts from the Land of the Nile have also survived in the Moscow and Rhind mathematical papyri. These have various maths problems and their solution. For example, problem No. 7 of the Moscow papyrus is about various calculations for a triangle. This runs
Example of calculating a triangle.
If you are told: A triangle of 2 thousands-of-land, the bank of 2 of 2 1/2;
You are to double the area: result 40 (arurae). Take (it) 2 1/2 times; result [100. Take its square root, namely] 10. Evoke 1 from 2 1/2; what results is 2/5. Apply this to 10; result 4. It is 10 (khet) in length by 4 (khet) in breadth. From Henrietta Midonick, The Treasury of Mathematics: 1 (Harmondsworth: Pelican 1965) p. 71.
It's amazing to think that the boys at the scribal school were being taught all this millennia ago. It gives you a real sense of connection with the ancient schoolkids reading it. You can imagine them, hunched over with their pen and ink, busily cudgeling their brains while the teacher prowls about them. The Babylonians were also renowned as the pioneers of early mathematics. They even uncovered a school when they excavated Ur of the Chaldees in the 1920s, complete with the maths and other texts the schoolboys – female education didn't exist back then, but I'm willing to be corrected – were required to learn. As a schoolboy character in the Fast Show used to say: 'Brilliant!' You don't need to burden modern African societies like the Dogon with spurious pseudo-history and pseudo-science, when the real historic achievements of ancient Egypt and medieval Africa are so impressive.
It struck me that even if you don't use the original Egyptian maths texts to teach maths – which would be difficult, as their maths was slightly different. Their method of calculating the area of a field of four unequal sides yields far too high a figure, for example – you could nevertheless inspire children with similar problems. Perhaps you could do it with assistance of a child or two from the class. You could bring them out in front of everyone, give them and ancient Egyptian headdress, and then arranged the lesson so that they helped the teacher, acting as pharaoh, to solve it. Or else pharaoh showed them, his scribes, and thus the class. This is certainly the kind of thing that was done when I was a kid by the awesome Johnny Ball on the children's maths and science programme, Think of a Number. And every week, as well as showing you a bit of maths and science, he also showed you a trick, which you could find out how to do by dropping him a line. It was the kind of children's programme that the Beeb did very, very well. It's a real pity that there no longer is an audience for children's programmes and their funding has subsequently been cut.
Here's History Debunked's video attacking Ethnomathematics. He also attacks a piece of ancient baboon bone carved with notches, which he states has been claimed is an ancient prehistoric African calendar. He provides no evidence in this video to show that it wasn't, and says its the subject of a later video. If this is the one I'm thinking of, then that is a claim that has been accepted by mainstream archaeologists and historians. See Ivor Grattan-Guinness, The Fontana History of the Mathematical Sciences (London: Fontana Press 1998) p. 24.
If you want to know more about ancient and medieval maths, and that of the world's many indigenous cultures, see the book Astronomy before the Telescope, edited by Christopher Walker with an introduction by the man of the crumpled suit and monocle himself, Patrick Moore (London: British Museum Press 1998).
This has chapters on astronomy in Europe from prehistory to the Renaissance, but also on astronomy in ancient Egypt, Babylonia, India, Islam, China, Korea and Japan, North and South America, traditional astronomical knowledge in Africa and among Aboriginal Australians, Polynesia and the Maori. It can be a difficult read, as it explores some very technical aspects, but it is a brilliant work by experts in their respective fields.
Tags:'Intellectual Impostures', 'The Stargate Conspiracy', 'The Treasury of Mathematics:1', African Mythology, al-Haytham, al-Khwarizmi, Aliens, Aminatta Forna, Ancient Egypt, Apartheid, Astronomy Before the Telescope, Australian Aborigines, Bablyonia, BBC, Black History Month, Blacks, carl sagan, Christopher Walker, Clergy, Clive Prince, Colonialism, Conspiracy Theories, Copernicus, Dictatorshps, Dogon, Duke Ellington, Ethnomathematics, Galileo, Geoffrey Parrinder, George Orwell, Henrietta Midonick, History Debunked, Indigenous Peoples, Intelligence Agencies, Ivor Grattan-Guinness, Jazz, Jean Bricmont, Johnny Ball, Korea, Kuiper Belt, Lynn Picknett, Maori, Michael Sokal, Muslims, Omar Khaiyyam, Patrick Moore, Physics, Pluto, Postmodernism, R.K.G. Temple, racism, Rubaiiyat of Omar Khaiyyam, Sandinistas, Schools, Solar System, The Fast Show, The Fontana History of the Mathematical Sciences, The Sirius Mystery, Think of a Number, Ur, Whites, Youtube
Posted in Africa, America, Anthropology, Arabs, Architecture, Astronomy, Australia, Comedy, Democracy, Education, Egypt, France, Greece, History, India, Iran, Islam, Japan, LIterature, Mali, Mathematics, Morrocco, Music, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Philosophy, Politics, Polynesia, Popular Music, Poverty, Roman Catholicism, Science, South Africa, Sudan, Television | 5 Comments »
Video on My Model of the Neolithic Mortuary House at Loftus in Britain
A bit more archaeology now, for those interested. Four years ago in 2015 I made this video about the model I'd made of the Neolithic mortuary house and palisade around its forecourt discovered beneath a long barrow, also from the Neolithic, at Loftus in Cleveland, Britain by Blaise Vyner during excavations from 1979 to 1981. The Neolithic was the period c. 4,000 BC when hunter-gatherers were settling down into settled communities and farming. The built long barrows to house the remains of their dead. The remains come from many different skeletons, and are often sorted according to body part. Long bones, for example, may be stored in one chamber while other parts of the skeleton were kept in another. Many of the barrows also have forecourts, some of which have traces of burning dating from the time they were built and used. From this archaeologists have suggested that the barrows were also the centres of religious ceremonies in which parts of the skeletons were handled in order to commune with the ancestors.
Mortuary houses are structures in which the bodies of the dead are kept during decomposition, after which they are buried for a second time with appropriate rituals. It's a funerary practice found in many different society throughout the world, including North American First Nations and the people of Madagascar.
Incidentally, today is the winter solstice, which some archaeologists believe was the real time the stone circle at Stonehenge was built to mark. This is the shortest day of the year, after which the sun returns and the days start lengthening again. This would be seen by the monument's ancient builders as the return of warmth, light and the revival of life after the cold of winter, and so an important event for early agricultural communities.
But considering how cold and miserable it's been, I think it'll be a very brave set of pagans, druids and hippies, who would go down there to celebrate it today. But I've no doubt some hardy souls will do it.
Tags:Amerindians, Blaise Vyner, Cleveland, Druids, Hunter-Gatherers, Loftus, Long Barrows, Madagascar, Mortuary House, Neolithic, North America, Pagans, Religion, Shamanism, Stonehenge, Winter Solstice
Posted in Africa, Agriculture, America, Anthropology, Archaeology, Architecture, England | Leave a Comment »
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The Graduate Degree Program in Ecology celebrated its 25th anniversary earlier this month, which included events reflecting on the program's past and future, student presentations, and a reception. The three-day celebration was jointly hosted with the Front Range Student Ecology Symposium.
Professor Joe von Fischer speaks during 25th anniversary events.
"We say the 25th loosely," said John Weins, former professor of ecology, conservation and landscape ecology, and an early program founder. "This anniversary is hard to pinpoint because the foundation of this program has been in the works for much longer." Weins and Beatrice Van Horne, another early founder, were among the invited speakers at the celebration.
The Graduate Degree Program in Ecology (GDPE) includes master's and doctoral students. It is a designated Program of Research and Scholarly Excellence by the Office of the Vice President for Research, and is a special academic unit within the Graduate School.
The program is considered an early success in cross-departmental collaboration. Students within represent 23 departments and eight colleges. According to its leaders, it is a truly interdisciplinary effort that offers a fresh perspective within a university system.
Cara Steger with Abebe, one of her primary collaborators in her Ethiopia field work.
Over the past 25 years, GDPE has achieved a national reputation, setting a standard for excellence in research, teaching, and service. There are 120 students in the program and over 200 faculty members.
Cara Steger, doctoral student in GDPE, is working on a collaborative conservation project in Ethiopia together with plant biologists, local resource users and government officials.


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Adfactors PR in the News
"They are committed to our mission as much as we are… that surpassed my expectation."
Dr. Nomal Chandra Borah
Chairman & MD, GNRC Hospitals
Adfactors PR constitutes The Millennial Board
Mumbai, January 14, 2021: Adfactors PR, India's largest public relations consultancy, has constituted a 'Millennial Board,' a 16-member shadow board of directors comprising millennials under 30 years, to support its senior leadership with Gen-Y perspectives in shaping organizational agenda of the new decade.
The Millennial Board of Adfactors PR is a transformational initiative to enrich the organisation's decision-making with the mindset of new age thinking from an empowered group of young leaders. The board will provide perspectives on issues ranging from growth strategies to digital transformation, from learning & development programs to diversity & inclusion, and from organizational culture to fostering an environment for innovation.
The creation of the board followed a rigorous process. Each business unit nominated three individuals for the selection process, which included presentations and interviews by a panel including the Head of HR, the Chief Operating Officer and the Managing Director of the firm. In addition to the nine selected through the aforesaid process, seven additional members are specially appointed to represent the desired diversity on the board, including representations of different cultures, regions and orientations.
Speaking on the initiative, Madan Bahal, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Adfactors PR, said, The Millennial Board is one more in a series of transformational initiatives to prepare Adfactors PR for the next decade. It will not only enrich us with novel perspectives of the young generation, it will also provide a voice to the largest constituency in the decision and policy making process in the firm. We hope the millennial perspectives will further help our clients achieve a common strategic agenda across businesses - that of empathising and connecting with the new generation of stakeholders.
The Millennial Board will be headed by a Chairperson and have a tenure of eighteen months. It will have five sub-committees focusing on digital transformation, innovation, learning & development, organisational culture and growth.
©2016 Adfactors PR Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, India. All rights reserved. Terms and Conditions
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Nigel Farage, the British politician who masterminded the exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union appeared last night at a rally in Jackson, Mississippi telling the crowd "America needs to take back control of logic and reason and doesn't need scientists to tell you how to do it".
"In Britain, we built a wall of sorts around our great country – a wall made from the sea", said Mr. Farage.
"I know nothing about America", said Mr. Farage, to a roar of approval from an audience who were not sure why he spoke so strangely, "But what matters", said Mr. Farage, "is that I use reassuring tones and tell you simple trite concepts using small words", to which the crowd erupted in chants of "U.S.A., U.S.A".
"The liberal agenda is to use logic, reason and science in order to make decisions, but in Britain we have shown that there is something much more effective than any facts".
"In the UK, we used confusion and name calling. This is much better than logic".
"We didn't need any facts to win in the UK, and you don't need facts to influence your vote here", said Mr. Farage.
"That Canadian guy sure made sense. I couldn't be happier right now if I was a tornado in a trailer park, or a tick on a fat dog".


The Drill Lock Decoder utility is used primarily for designers selling drills online. Drills can be locked with a password so they can be viewed but not edited or printed. After a customer downloads and previews a drill, the customer can then contact the drill designer to purchase and unlock it. This decoder creates unique keys for unlocking a drill, so a key used by one customer cannot be used by another.
Open the drill and select Document Options from the File menu.
In the Author Information box, type your contact and/or sales information.
Under the Properties tab, pick your restriction options such as Cannot be printed and/or Cannot be edited.
Choose to Lock the properties with a Master Password and enter it. The Master Password is the password that only you know. When your customer contacts you to unlock the drill, don't give them your Master Password. Instead, use this decoder to create a unique key that will only work for this customer and no one else. Remember the Master Password because you will need it to create the unique key for your customer.


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2nd T20I (N), Pallekele, September 03, 2019, New Zealand tour of Sri Lanka
New Zealand won by 4 wickets (with 2 balls remaining)
Player Of The Match
Tim Southee, NZ
Spotlight on Sri Lanka's youngsters with series on the line
The relatively modest performances of New Zealand's fringe fast bowlers places them under some scrutiny as well
The Preview by Andrew Fidel Fernando
Kusal Mendis went after the bowlers in the Powerplay • Associated Press
There are no certainties when it comes to the T20 captaincy, but for now Lasith Malinga is the man entrusted with the build up to the T20 World Cup next year, and he's clearly in a mood to experiment. In the first T20I, Malinga wanted to have a look at the batting. So although he acknowledged that bowling first might have been smarter (given the difficulty involved in defending a score with a wet ball), he wanted to give his young batting order a free hand. The results were hit-and-miss. Kusal Mendis' re-ascension to the top of the batting order clearly worked, with the batsman producing the best innings of the evening. Others, such as Kusal Perera and Avishka Fernando, though, failed to fire.
Malinga is unlikely to make wholesale changes after just one loss, but the batsmen in particular, who failed to make a significant impact on Sunday, will be on notice. The likes of Danushka Gunathilaka await a chance to get into the XI.
New Zealand, meanwhile, showcased the depth in their batting order - Ross Taylor, Colin de Grandhomme, Mitchell Santner and Daryl Mitchell all providing important innings, after the top order had allowed the required rate to near 11 as early as the eighth over. While their established bowlers - Tim Southee, Ish Sodhi and Santer - all produced good performances, the relatively modest performances of the fringe fast bowlers will place them under some scrutiny. Seth Rance, in particular, leaked 58 runs in his four overs, and didn't take a wicket.
New Zealand WWLWW (completed matches, most recent first)
Sri Lanka LLLLL
Ever since Ross Taylor moved to the lower-middle order in T20Is, he has been both more prolific, and more explosive. Where he had struck at 117 and averaged 23.22 at No. 4 for example (where he has most-often batted), he has struck at 131.39 at Nos. 5 and 6, and averages 38.18. On Sunday, hitting 48 off 29, he played exactly the kind of innings he's in that lower position for. If the top order fails, New Zealand still have a player of the explosive power and calibre of Taylor to come. He is, essentially, their middle-order insurance.
Ross Taylor keeps his eyes on the ball•AFP
Isuru Udana has just been named one of the marquee players for South Africa's Mzansi Super League, and with the bat on Sunday, he showed exactly why, hitting two sixes off the first two balls he faced, in the last over of Sri Lanka's innings. Having first emerged in 2009, Udana spent years out of the Sri Lanka side but used that time wisely, honing not just his batting, but also his fielding. Even in a match against New Zealand, who have some of the best fielders on the planet, Udana can count himself among the best on the field. He is primarily chosen for his bowling however, so if he is to firm up his place in the side for that T20 World Cup, he will need to shake off his 0 for 38 off 3.3 overs from Sunday and show himself to be a more capable fast-bowling ally to Malinga.
Sri Lanka may be tempted to bring Danushka Gunathilaka into the side. But they'll likely go with the same XI.
Sri Lanka (possible): 1 Kusal Mendis, 2 Kusal Perera (wk), 3 Avishka Fernando, 4 Niroshan Dickwella, 5 Shehan Jayasuriya, 6 Dasun Shanaka, 7 Wanindu Hasaranga, 8 Isuru Udana, 9 Akila Dananjaya, 10 Lasith Malinga (capt), 11 Kasun Rajitha
With only 13 players available since a thumb fracture ruled Lockie Ferguson out of the series, New Zealand don't have a lot of options. They will likely play the same side as well.
New Zealand (possible): 1 Martin Guptill, 2 Colin Munro, 3 Tim Seifert (wk), 4 Colin de Grandhomme, 5 Ross Taylor, 6 Daryl Mitchell, 7 Mitchell Santner, 8 Scott Kuggeleijn, 9 Seth Rance, 10 Tim Southee (capt), 11 Ish Sodhi
Pitch and conditions
The Pallekele surface on Sunday had substantial turn, so expect that to be the case again. That wasn't to say there was nothing for the quicks though, with Tim Southee and Lasith Malinga the two best bowlers from either side. Rain may again interrupt.
Stats and trivia
Ross Taylor averages 39.28 and strikes at 135 in Sri Lanka - better numbers than any other country he's played in, including New Zealand.
Isuru Udana has scored 147 runs at a strike rate of 184 this year. He's played four innings and been dismissed only once.
Lasith Malinga needs one more wicket to become the first bowler to 100 T20 international wickets. The next-closest active player is Shakib Al Hasan, who has 88 wickets.
Sri LankaNew ZealandSri Lanka vs New ZealandNew Zealand in Sri Lanka
Andrew Fidel Fernando is ESPNcricinfo's Sri Lanka correspondent. @afidelf
Injury rules Martin Guptill out of final T20I, Ross Taylor fit to play
Worcestershire opener Hamish Rutherford pulled out of Vitality Blast to be with the squad as cover
De Grandhomme, Bruce star as New Zealand clinch thriller
Mitchell Santner hit the winning runs for the visitors in a dramatic final over
New Zealand Innings
C Munro caught 13 7
TL Seifert lbw 15 9
SC Kuggeleijn lbw 8 5
C de Grandhomme caught 59 46
TC Bruce run out 53 46
DJ Mitchell caught 1 3
MJ Santner not out 10 2
TG Southee not out 0 0
Extras (lb 2, w 4)
Total 165(6 wkts; 19.4 ovs)
SL Malinga 4 0 39 0 9.75
A Dananjaya 4 0 36 3 9
GSNFG Jayasuriya 2 0 22 0 11
PADLR Sandakan 4 0 16 0 4
I Udana 3 0 18 1 6
PWH de Silva 2.4 0 32 1 12
1st 19 Colin Munro Tim Seifert
2nd 17 Scott Kuggeleijn Tim Seifert
3rd 2 Colin de Grandhomme Tim Seifert
4th 109 Colin de Grandhomme Tom Bruce
5th 8 Daryl Mitchell Tom Bruce
6th 0 Daryl Mitchell Mitchell Santner
7th 10 Tim Southee Mitchell Santner


Hyundai is not messing around anymore. They have the big luxury marques – Lexus, BMW and Mercedes Benz – firmly in their sights. And if you saw the commercial during the Superbowl, you know they also have a 2 door coupe version coming.
These kids are not playing. They are gunning for the number one spot.
CJ Miles raises pulses in this videoshoot for Recon Videos. Does anyone even notice the Mercedes in the picture?


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Home > Child, Youth, and Family Studies > CYAF Faculty Publications > 45
Child, Youth, and Family Studies, Department of
Faculty Publications, Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies
Attrition Bias
Richard B. Miller
Cody S. Hollist, University of Nebraska LincolnFollow
Published in Encyclopedia of Measurement and Statistics. Ed. Neil Salkind. 3 vols. Thousand Oaks: Sage Reference, 2007. Vol. 1. Pages 57-60. Copyright © 2007 Sage Publications, Inc. Used by permission.
Attrition bias is one of the major threats to multiwave studies, and it can bias the sample in two ways. First, attrition bias can affect the external validity of the study. If some groups of people drop out of the study more frequently than others, the subsequent longitudinal sample no longer resembles the original sample in the study. As a result, the remaining sample is not generalizable to the original population that was sampled. For example, a longitudinal sample examining the grieving process of women following the death of a spouse may fail to retain those participants who have become too distraught to fill out the questionnaire. The nonparticipation of this group may bias the findings of the study toward a minimization of depressive symptomatology as a component of the grieving process. In other words, the composition of the sample changes to the point that the results are no longer generalizable to the original population of widows.
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Child, Youth, and Family Studies Website