Two Wolves

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said, "My son, the battle is between two"wolves" inside us all.
One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility,kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather:"Which wolf wins?"The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

Source: Voices for Peace

Enlightenment - A Classic Haiku

Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water.
The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken.
Although its light is wide and great,
The moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide.
The whole moon and the entire sky
Are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.
Dogen Zenji

Elephant's Memory - A Touching Story

In 1986, Mkele Mbembe was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from college. On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air. The elephant seemed distressed so Mbembe approached it very carefully. He got down on one knee and inspected the elephant's foot, and found alarge thorn deeply embedded in it. As carefully and as gently as he could, Mbembe worked the thorn out with his hunting knife, after which the elephant gingerly put down its foot.

The elephant turned to face the man and with a rather stern look on its face, stared at him. For several tense moments Mbembe stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but being trampled. Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned and walked away. Mbembe never forgot that elephant or the events of that day.

Twenty years later he was walking through a zoo with his teenaged son. As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked over to near where Mbembe and his son Tapu were standing. The large bull elephant stared at Mbembe and lifted its front foot off the ground, then put it down. The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man.

Remembering the encounter in 1986, Mbembe couldn't help wondering if this was the same elephant. Mbembe summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing and made his way into the enclosure. He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder. Suddenly the elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of the man's legs and swung him wildly back and forth along the railing, killing him.

Probably it wasn't the same elephant!

Source: E-mail from my colleague Kristine E.

Indians Devoid of Credit for Mathematical Void?

I was under the impression that India was given the credit for discovering (inventing?) zero, until I read the following on Scientific American.

What is the origin of zero? How did we indicate nothingness before zero? Rolf,
New York, NY

Robert Kaplan, author of The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero and former professor of mathematics at Harvard University, provides this answer:

The first evidence we have of zero is from the Sumerian culture in Mesopotamia, some 5,000 years ago. There, a slanted double wedge was inserted between cuneiform symbols for numbers, written positionally, to indicate the absence of a number in a place (as we would write 102, the '0' indicating no digit in the tens column).

The symbol changed over time as positional notation (for which zero was crucial), made its way to the Babylonian empire and from there to India, via the Greeks (in whose own culture zero made a late and only occasional appearance; the Romans had no trace of it at all). Arab merchants brought the zero they found in India to the West. After many adventures and much opposition, the symbol we use was accepted and the concept flourished, as zero took on much more than a positional meaning. Since then, it has played avital role in mathematizing the world.

The mathematical zero and the philosophical notion of nothingness are related but are not the same. Nothingness plays a central role very early on in Indian thought (there called sunya), and we find speculation in virtually all cosmogonical myths about what must have preceded the world's creation. So in the Bible's book of Genesis (1:2): "And the earth was without form, and void."

But our inability to conceive of such a void is well captured in the book of Job, who cannot reply when God asks him (Job 38:4): "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding." Our own era's physical theories about the big bang cannot quite reach back to an ultimate beginning from nothing--although in mathematics we can generate all numbers from the empty set.

Nothingness as the state out of which alone we can freely make our own natures lies at the heart of existentialism, which flourished in the mid-20th century.

White is Might?

Read this interesting Associated Press' article on MSNBC.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Light-skinned immigrants in the United States make more money on average than those with darker complexions, and the chief reason appears to be discrimination, a researcher says.

Joni Hersch, a law and economics professor at Vanderbilt University, looked at a government survey of 2,084 legal immigrants to the United States from around the world and found that those with the lightest skin earned an average of 8 percent to 15 percent more than similar immigrants with much darker skin.

"On average, being one shade lighter has about the same effect as having an additional year of education," Hersch said. The study also found that taller immigrants earn more than shorter ones, with an extra inch of height associated with a 1 percent increase in income. Other researchers said the findings are consistent with other studies on color and point to a skin-tone prejudice that goes beyond race.

Hersch took into consideration other factors that could affect wages, such as English-language proficiency, education, occupation, race or country of origin, and found that skin tone still seemed to make a difference in earnings. That means that if two similar immigrants from Bangladesh, for example, came to the United States at the same time, with the same occupation and ability to speak English, the lighter-skinned immigrant would make more money on average.

"I thought that once we controlled for race and nationality, I expected the difference to go away, but even with people from the same country, the same race - skin color really matters," she said, "and height." Although many cultures show a bias toward lighter skin, Hersch said her analysis shows that the skin-color advantage was not due to preferential treatment for light-skinned people in their country of origin. The bias, she said, occurs in the U.S.

Economics professor Shelley White-Means of the University of Tennessee at Memphis said the study adds to the growing body of evidence that there is a "preference for whiteness" in America that goes beyond race. Hersch drew her data from a 2003 federal survey of nearly 8,600 new immigrants. The survey used an 11-point scale for measuring skin tone, in which 0 represents an absence of color and 10 the darkest possible skin tone.

From those nearly 8,600 participants, she focused on the more than 2,000 who were working and whose skin tone had been recorded during face-to-face interviews. William Darity Jr., an economics professor at the University of North Carolina, said Hersch's findings are similar to a study he co-authored last year on skin tone and wages among blacks. "We estimate that dark- or medium-skinned blacks suffered a discriminatory penalty of anywhere from 10 percent to 15 percent relative to whites," he said. "This suggests people cue into appearance and draw inferences about capabilities and skills based on how they look."

Darity said it is not clear whether the bias is conscious or subconscious. Hersch said her findings, which will be presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science next month in San Francisco, could support discrimination lawsuits based not on race, but on color. "There are very few color discrimination suits, but they are on the rise," she said. "But these suits can be hard to prove".

I think a similar study in India would result in the same findings, with a greater bias for lighter skin color! I was in Visakhapatnam for three weeks this month, and our (Desi) preference for lighter skin color is quite obvious from advertisements on billboards. Most of the large companies boasted (!) typical western models. And those that were not western were North Indians with lighter skin tone. And the remaining were South Indians with lighter skin tone or heavy light color make up!

Also, most of the Hindu Gods and Goddesses to my recollection are depicted with white complexion. Let us not consider Lord Krishna as he was described and shown in blue color. We see Parvati in lighter skin tone, but her alter ego Kali (Durga), and Yama Dharma Raja are shown with dark complexion - probably because they were destroyers (peace = white, destruction=black!). A classic example of color bias can be seen in the movie Lion King - hyenas, who are bad guys living in ghetto-like dwellings were given African-American accent. I guess always bet on black is only good for movie quips!

I think there are pretty much equal number of racists in all races. But it is sad when a dark skin looks down on another dark skin - like when South Indian models in South India are not considered to be good enough to get on billboards, unless they are heavily made up to mask their skin tone!