Varieties of Conspicuous Consumption

In Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, bridegrooms
are expected to pay not only for their weddings, but also all the
related expenses, including several huge pre-wedding parties and money
for the bride's family, a kind of reverse dowry.

NY times article

Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey for 1986-2002,
economists Kerwin Charles, Erik Hurst, and Nikolai Roussanov find that
blacks and Hispanics indeed spend more than whites with comparable
incomes on what the authors classify as "visible goods" (clothes,
cars, and jewelry). A lot more, in fact—up to an additional 30
percent. The authors provide evidence, however, that this is not
because of some inherent weakness on the part of blacks and Hispanics.
The disparity, they suggest, is related to the way that all
people—black, Hispanic, and white—strive for social status within
their respective communities.

Slate article

What makes a world class university

Alison Richard, vice-chancellor of University of Cambridge writes in ET
..

But what makes a university world class? [...] In my view, four factors make a university world class. First, it must show a commitment to breadth and excellence in all fields of human inquiry, not simply in a particular niche. Uniform excellence across all fields is an ideal that no university achieves in practice, but it is a fine ambition. One senses that universal, high ambition in great universities, coupled with real excellence in most fields, most of the time.

Second, world class universities engage in cutting-edge research whilst at the same time teaching the next generation, their students. Teaching and research are intrinsically bound together, with top researchers inspiring and mentoring their students. In turn, students themselves inspire and challenge their teachers.

Third, great universities must allow their researchers the freedom to experiment, succeed, and sometimes fail. They must be able to make grand mistakes as well as grand discoveries. It is often through making those mistakes that the grand discoveries are made.

This implies a degree of inefficiency, but it is a necessary inefficiency and a corollary of greatness. A university operating with a completely utilitarian mindset will forego the opportunities that a more open-ended system allows.

Finally, world class universities have permeable boundaries. This means encouraging interdisciplinary research and teaching; it means working with the private sector, for example, fostering and encouraging partnerships with industry; and it means encouraging international collaboration.

Sadly none of the Indian universities or institutes pass this criteria.

In India's north, the worst place to be born a girl

Amelia Gentleman writes in IHT

A five-hour drive along ill-maintained roads from Lucknow, the capital of the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, the surrounding district of Shravasti is, according to calculations by Unicef, the worst place in India to be born a girl.

....

The ambivalence that women here feel toward their daughters is rooted in the traditional Indian marriage system, which dictates, first, that girls leave the homes of their parents permanently on their wedding day for their new husband's family and, second, that they do so accompanied by a large dowry.

In private, the village women explain that the mothers' sense of resentment toward their newborn girls comes as the result of a hard financial calculation.

The Secret to Raising Smart Kids

Carol S. Dweck writes in SciAm

• Many people assume that superior intelligence or ability is a key to success. But more than three decades of research shows that an overemphasis on intellect or talent—and the implication that such traits are innate and fixed—leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unmotivated to learn.
• Teaching people to have a “growth mind-set,” which encourages a focus on effort rather than on intelligence or talent, produces high achievers in school and in life.
• Parents and teachers can engender a growth mind-set in children by praising them for their effort or persistence (rather than for their intelligence), by telling success stories that emphasize hard work and love of learning, and by teaching them about the brain as a learning machine.

Downgraded to pop psychology level

Patricia Cohen writes in NY times
PSYCHOANALYSIS and its ideas about the unconscious mind have spread to every nook and cranny of the culture from Salinger to “South Park,” from Fellini to foreign policy. Yet if you want to learn about psychoanalysis at the nation’s top universities, one of the last places to look may be the psychology department.

.....

The humanities and social sciences have welcomed psychoanalysis without caveats. But the report complains of the wide gulf between the academic’s and the psychoanalyst’s approach and vocabulary, which has made their respective applications of Freud’s theories virtually unrecognizable to each other.

Scholars in the liberal arts have tended to use Freud as a springboard to examine issues and ideas never dreamt of in his philosophy — like gender studies, post-colonial studies, French postmodernism, Queer theory and so on.

Faithfully Confused

Cosmologist Paul Davies in his NY Times op-ed seems to be confused with faith. Here is the response by others in scientific community.

Interviewing America's one of the brainiest couple

Salon interviews America's one of the brainiest couple (Steven Pinker and Rebecca Goldstein)