Does music impede studying and thinking?

Studies conclude that it does, and the best working condition is silence. 

Was the Flint Water Contamination a National Disaster?

President Obama declared the incident a National Disaster and channeled very large funds to the City of Flint. For all the scandal and accusations of systematic racism, and the jailing of eight EPA professionals, I am still wondering what was the real damage if any of the whole media carnival. From a professional magazine's comments column:


Dear Ms Jerome, It is not true that hundreds of children had high blood levels/ Please stop repeating that myth and falsehood. Read the CDC and other reports of thousands of blood leads taken before during and after the switch back. About 2 % were temporally raised by about 2 ug/dl. There were no "brain damaged "children! 

The magazine refers to a study that found 5 ug/dl - I am not qualified to evaluate the difference, but seems to me that the differential damage must have been minimal as no follow up studies have been published. According to the Wiki, one in forty American children have more than 5 ug/dl, which makes me think that Flint's lead levels were "normal" in the American context. The fact is that I am not alone in suspecting that the whole thing was made up for political reasons. May be I am wrong. 

Meeting my neighbors

My little daughter has to write an essay on visual messages and sent me out to take pics of her elementary school. In the last ten years, school children became scarce in our neighborhood while the population of lunatics increased. So the school was closed and the building became a Psychological Clinic. I dutifully took pics of the graffiti and sign posts but when trying to enter though the front door with my camera, I was attacked by a Moorish receptionist shouting it was forbidden to enter with cameras and loudly called security. The lobby was full of sad, depressed women looking at the floor. Thanks to my fast reflexes, my camera escaped unharmed.  

Merhavia Investments enters the Marijuana Business

This note is to register my astonishment how things evolve. Having lived long, I can compare the past with the present. The changes - physical and ideological, are incredible.

 Kibutz Merhavia, founded in 1910 or so, in the malaria infested swamps of the Yezre'el Valley, not only did not fail as all utopic initiatives and communist revolutions, but it is prospering and mutating into a Stock Exchange capitalist business that invests in the profitable field of medical marijuana.

The pic is from their website, from the early years when they lived in tents. Merhavia itself is on the Le Fave Cruzader Fort and its surrounding fields, abandoned following the Arab conquest. The only durable stone structures in this country are Cruzader (European) buildings. Since then, nothing. The Arab pastoralists built nothing in 900 years since then. 

The Great American Baby Bust

I am commenting a note by Lyman Stone. He writes about the yet unnoticed baby bust in America: "The important thing to understand here is these are big changes in your friends’ lives, and they happened really fast. This is not some gradual easing into lower fertility, but a pretty speedy change." American population is changing its reproductive behavior to resemble other Western nations. He debates the absurd notion of overpopulation and untypically, he understands the implications of subreplacement and is emotional about his people dying off. 

Bravo!

Social Anthropoids vs University of Ariel

The European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) has ratified a motion to boycott Israeli academic institutions in the West Bank. This decision follows a letter from the Israeli Anthropological Association (IAA), Prof. Nir Avieli, urging to boycott three institutions in the settlements: Ariel University, Orot College in Elkana, and Herzog College in Alon Shvut. The motion was overwhelmingly ratified this month by the organization’s members, passing by a vote of 830 in favor, 21 opposed and 37 abstentions. 

Disgraceful! 

Dulcinea del Toboso

Y diciendo esto, se adelantó a recebir a las tres aldeanas, y apeándose del rucio, tuvo del cabestro al jumento de una de las tres labradoras, y hincando ambas rodillas en el suelo, dijo:
—Reina y princesa y duquesa de la hermosura, vuestra altivez y grandeza sea servida de recebir en su gracia y buen talente al cautivo caballero vuestro, que allí está hecho piedra mármol, todo turbado y sin pulsos de verse ante vuestra magnífica presencia..."

I am hearing through Librivox the reading of Don Quixote in Spanish. Fifty years ago I had a copy in the Sopena edition, in the original medieval Spanish, and it was quite frustrating. Now they are reading a contemporary Spanish edition, perfectly comprehensible and clear. The second part is very different from the first part, in this sequel the fact of lineage is present in every second sentence, like Sancho's "I am Cristiano Viejo, Catolico Romano and hate the Jews to death". And "my Father Panza and all the Panzas were Old Christians, labradores (peasants), etc." Cervantes, obviously, needs the Church's permission to print this work, but it is surprising that in 1600 (the last Jew left Spain a hundred years before) he feels the need of a constant emphasis in not having Jewish blood and being good old Catholics. In addition to the references to Jews, in every occasion the rank and the wealth of the personages is clearly defined. Those were times of ethnic cleansing in Spain, and Cervantes is sympathetic to the Moor expulsees. When Don Quixote is hosted by the Duke, he sends a servant girl to his bedroom "to help him undress", which puritanical Quixote rejects - he wants to be faithful to his Dulcinea. Anyway, it is very entertaining.