The Politics of Religion

The Changing World Population

Key findings from a study published by Pew Research,

• Muslims are the fastest-growing major religious group
• By 2050, the study projects India to be the country with the largest number of Muslims
• Muslims and Christians will be roughly equal in number around 2070
• Nearly four-in-ten Christians (38%) are projected to live in sub-Saharan Africa in 2050
• In the United States, Christians will decline from more than three-quarters of the population in 2010 to two-thirds in 2050
• Buddhists will decline as a share of the world’s population

Pew Research group  is one of the few institutes funded by a charitable trust devoted to freely disseminating research data via internet. The charitable trust was set up by founder of US Sun Oil Company Joseph Pew. An entry from Wikipedia sums it up,

"Although today the Pew Charitable Trusts is non-partisan and non-ideological, Joseph Pew and his heirs were politically conservative. The mission of the J. Howard Pew Freedom Trust, one of the seven funds, was to "acquaint the American people with the evils of bureaucracy and the values of a free market and to inform our people of the struggle, persecution, hardship, sacrifice and death by which freedom of the individual was won". Joseph N. Pew, Jr. called Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal "a gigantic scheme to raze U.S. businesses to a dead level and debase the citizenry into a mass of ballot-casting serfs"."

BTW, Roosevelt started the "Fire Side Chats" where he communicated with the US public directly via radio on government policies and social change. They were hugely popular and successful. That should put Narendra Modi's "Man Ki Baat" in context. 

American Families

Interesting way in which the American family has undergone a change over the last 50 years.

1) More than 34% of children below the age of 18 are staying with single parents. In 1960 this was 9%.
2) Almost 41% of children today are born outside of marriage - in 1960 this was less than 5%.

You can read more at pewresearch.

Fascinating Plants

Some of the oldest Plants

The Judean date palm (previously extinct) at Kibbutz Ketura, Israel was grown from a 2000 year old seed and is the oldest verified human-assisted germination of a seed.  The seeds were found in a jar during excavations in Israel around 1965. Of the 3 seeds which were planted in 2005, one grew into a healthy plant. More details can be found here.

However, the oldest plant ever to be regenerated is from a 32,000 year old fruit tissue buried in Siberian permafrost. It is a flowering plant - Silene stenophylla- that was successfully regenerated by Russian scientists in 2012. Read more here.

The oldest living tree is around 5000 years old - a bristle cone pine - found in the White mountains, California, US. Its exact location is kept a secret to avoid damage from enthusiastic tourists!! More here. 

The Maha Bodhi Tree at Anuradhapura, Srilanka is the oldest living human-planted tree in the world, with a definitive planting date – 288 BC! The sapling was brought to Srilanka by Sanghamitra the daughter of the Indian King Ashoka and is a branch of the original tree under which the Buddha attained enlightenment. 

Finally, from Wikipedia, a list of the oldest tree.

A Lamb Chop in Space

Spectacular View from the Camera with the Lamb Chop

How do you promote your new book? Send a Lamb Chop in to space!! That’s exactly what the Author of the book Meatspace did. According to the Urban Dictionary, Meatspace refers to the real (that is, not virtual) world, the world of flesh and blood. Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, the opposite of cyberspace.

The author and his friend stuck a GoPro camera on a helium filled balloon with the lamb chop on a fork and let it fly.  Here is the original account by the author on how and why he did it. Interesting to read. You can directly jump to the video of the flying lamb chop here.

On a similar note, here is a good Sci-fi story by Terry Bisson on - MEAT!! 

Mangalyan – An Indian Space Odyssey

Indian scientists at ISRO created history on 24th September 2014 by becoming the first in the world to successfully deploy a satellite around Mars on their very first attempt at the lowest cost. However, the New York Times published a cartoon that drew a lot of criticism for depicting stereotypes. Indian cartoonist gave one back a month later when a NASA rocket exploded!!

It is interesting to look back at the tremendous progress made by ISRO since its inception in 1969, when even as late as 1980’s, they used bullock carts for transporting their equipment.

Photos by ISRO 

ISRO was not without its share of scandals when 2 of its scientists were falsely implicated in a spy scandal in 1994, what many believe to be the handiwork of the US spy agency the CIA and its many moles in the Indian bureaucracy. It is a sordid tale of how the powerful - police, bureaucrats, the media and the politicians will go to any lengths to satisfy their egos and settle scores against one another; and get away with it - even if it means sacrificing the innocent and selling your country. The sad part, none of those guilty of cooking up this tale have been punished to this day.

More on it at the following links,

An account of the ISRO spy scandal by Madhu Kishwar.

An Interview with Mr. Nambi Narayanan, one of the scientists accused of espionage.

A book written by Mr. Rajasekharan Nair on the spy scandal. Makes a great read.

A reference to the ISRO spy scandal is made in this post.

Wanted: A Computer

Image courtesy Wikipedia

It feels weird today that the word “Computer” was used to describe humans who performed computing tasks!

From Wikipedia:

The first use of the word “computer” was recorded in 1613 in a book called “The yong mans gleanings” by English writer Richard Braithwait –

I haue read the truest computer of Times, and the best Arithmetician that euer breathed, and he reduceth thy dayes into a short number. 

It referred to a person who carried out calculations, or computations, and the word continued with the same meaning until the middle of the 20th century. From the end of the 19th century the word began to take on its more familiar meaning, a machine that carries out computations.

BTW, that US $1000 of 1892 would be worth about US $25540 in 2013 as per this calculator.

The Google Doodle

Google does a wonderful job with its doodles. They have evolved it into an art form and have been successful in capturing the imagination of the kids worldwide. The above doodles are from India for children’s day. All the entries are beautiful and the judges must really have had a tough time selecting the winner.

You can see all the entries here.

Kudos to Google for this great initiative. The only other organization that successfully gets the school kids to participate is NASA. One celebrates Art and the other Science!!