Over at Muslim Under Progress there has been a series of posts by a "traditionalist" (my words) Pakistani visiting the mother country. His post on East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) is interesting. More below....

Observations, and family hearsay....

1) the old people (my grandparents' generation) mourned the passing of Pakistan. They remembered when Hindu bhadroloks ("gentlemen") dominated Bengal. As Haroon (the poster linked to) notes, the Muslim League started in Bengal, and that was where its strength lay. The 1870 census which showed that Muslims were the majority in Bengal shocked many people. The Bengali elite was Hindu. The Muslim elite in Bengal were Urdu speakers, or if they were of Bengali origin assimilated to that culture. The 19th century saw the rise of a Bengali & Muslim middle and upper-middle-class.

2) my parents, like many Bangladeshis, don't seem to have much animosity toward Pakistanis for the "genocide" of 1971. That topic never came up during all the social events that my family attended where Pakistanis were a significant presence, though they would object whenever someone asserted that Urdu should be the lingua franca of Muslims. My mother herself was shot by mistake during the war, but I've never heard her say many negative things about Pakistanis-aside from their practice of over-creaming their tea, which she finds disgusting. I know many Bangladeshi's born & raised in the US are marrying Pakistanis born & raised in the US.

3) my parents admitted that the "Biharis," Urdu speakers from India, behaved as if they were the ruling caste in East Pakistan. My mother told an acquaintance once how Biharis would always insist on sitting at the front of buses, and start shouting at people in Urdu whenever they were irritated. Pakistan refuses to admit many of these people, and the Bengali populace has negative feelings toward them, at least according to what I've read (think of them as the Sudetanland Germans). But within my own family this does not seem to be prominent. My own paternal grandfather came from an Urdu-speaking family (though he was Bengali identified by his death, and his children picked up Urdu from school, not home). Several of my relatives have married Biharis, though they speak perfect Bengali, and mention of this only comes up obliquely and without any negative connotation[1].

4) I can believe that West Pakistanis were racist, because many Pakistanis seem to express racism today. It is subtle and not explicit, but I remember hearing several times of the "vigor of the northern races" at parties, about how 1 Pakistani equals 10 Indians. Of course, Bangladeshis are to the east and south of Pakistan, so the implication is clear. There is also a perception that Bengalis are "less Muslim" than Pakistanis (I think somewhat rightly), and sometimes people would joke about Bengali jadhu ("magic").

Postcript: OK, I have to add that I find the contention that the genocide targeted Hindus plausible. The reason my family evinces little resentment of the 1971 killings is likely because they felt little direct repercussions. My mother does recall that Hindu servants were specifically sought out-and one of my mother's nanny's (she was pretty muched retired by this time) was shot in the head because she was excessively disputatious when Pakistani soldiers tried to figure out who the Hindus were in my grandfather's employ (this is what I have heard).

fn1. My family's mixed origins might explain of their lack of hostility toward various ethnic groups that dominated Muslim Bengalis. My father is by ancestry half Bengali Brahmin (his mother's father converted to Islam) and half non-Bengali Muslim. But, he is probably a far more vocal Bengali Muslim nationalist than my mother....

NEJM just published an article concerning research that should be familar to all those who read Bailey's The Man Who Would be Queen. Here is the link: Discordant Sexual Identity in Some Genetic Males with Cloacal Exstrophy Assigned to Female Sex at Birth

Here is a news report:

In a new twist on the age-old question of nature vs. nurture, Johns Hopkins scientists following 14 boys who were surgically altered as infants and raised as girls found that the majority grew up identifying strongly as males.

Some of the patients spontaneously took on boys' names and began wearing male clothing before anyone told them the circumstances of their births - while others decided to live as boys once they found out.

Warning against sweeping conclusions about the foundations of gender identity, the researchers noted that the study was limited to boys who were "assigned" to the female gender because of a severe birth defect involving the abdominal organs and penis.

But the doctors said their finding casts further doubt on a theory, made popular in the 1960s by a Hopkins sex researcher, that gender is largely a function of how you look and how you're raised....

As a group, the patients ranged in age from 5 to 16.

Five of the patients were happily living as girls when questioned. Three were unclear about their sexual identity, though two had declared themselves as male. The remaining six had reassigned themselves, taking on boys' names and dressing in masculine clothes.

"Even though mom and dad had told them they were girls and they had girls' names, they still always felt they were male," Gearhart said. In two cases, the patients had begun to live as boys before their parents told them the truth.

One child who had grown up feeling like a boy fought the doctor who tried to inject him with estrogen, a treatment designed to spur development of breasts, soft hair and other feminine traits.

"They tried to hold her down but that wasn't possible," said Reiner. "The endocrinologist was exasperated and said, 'Why are you making it so difficult to give you these estrogen shots?' "

"I'm not a girl. I'm a boy," was the patient's reply.

This should be good, check out this press release, HUMAN MIGRATION TRACKED IN STANFORD COMPUTER SIMULATION (via Randall Parker). A picture is worth a thousand words, an "Atlas of Genes," would be real cool (perhaps 10 years on when we have many more studies out).

Here is the abstract over at PNAS, though the press release is more fleshed out....

Hey, check out this site that lists famous Jews. The weird thing, under "Science & Engineering," there are 2 Jews listed under "Programmers" (a new field) and "Engineers & Inventors," as opposed to several dozen under "Math & Philosophy" and "Researchers."

(for purists, half-Jews are included)

I know of a guy who got his undergrad degree at Portland State University, his medical degree at Imbler Health Sciences University (class rank #1) and now is doing his residency in anesthesiology at Harvard. Though he is an extreme case, I know plenty of people like this. What interests me, what about the people who move down in prestige? I think that this sort of transition is a good clue as to how important being a legacy, or person of privilege, is. Note below that New England blue-bloods Dean & Kerry went to one of the elite institutions in the country as undergrads, but made the transition for graduate level (professional) work at schools of lesser status. Contrast this with Wes Clark, who went from the US Military Academy (good) to Oxford (great). Edwards went from NC State (OK) to UNC (good). Lieberman, unlike Kerry or Dean the product of public schools, went to Yale, but stayed on to get his legal degree from Yale Law School.

John Kerry
Undergrad: Yale
Law School: Boston College

Howard Dean
Undergrad: Yale
Med School: Albert Einstein

Wes Clark
Undergrad: US Military Academy
Master's: Oxford

John Edwards
Undergrad: North Carolina State
Law School: University of North Carolina

Joe Lieberman
Undergrad: Yale
Law School: Yale

A month ago David B posted More Medical Experts, which detailed the problems with one famous doctor who gave overblown testimony that has distorted the legal process. A friend tried to post a reply, but the "8 day period of posting" has expired, so I have cut & pasted his response below (must read if you hate a certain profession)....

A warning not to treat doctors as infallible or to treat medical or
other experts as always right doesn't go far enough. The real scandal of the criminal trials in which Meadow's evidence was critical is that the
legal profession - solicitors, barristers, prosecution and defence and judges - are all so poorly educated or lacking in elementary logical ability and independence of mind that they could not use the rudiments of statistical probability to question Meadow's gross but persuasive fallacy.

Apparently hundreds of parents of children who died of unexplained causes were given no proper protection by cross-examination of the phoney expert or by the calling of competent statisticians or biologists to give corrective evidence. I get the impression that one might do better - or worse - in America. If one had enough money for a full blooded defence you would have a good chance that your lawyers would find almost every intellectual hole in the prosecutions case and attack it.

One wonders what the average lawyer would say if you took him to a
two-up game where the spectators bet against the coin tosser on whether the two coins come up odd or even heads or even tails. You hand the coin tosser two coins to toss and twenty times running the coins fall as two tails. Would the lawyer conclude, as the juries in England were effectually invited to, that the coin tosser was cheating? Or would he at least speculate that you might have handed him coins which had tails on both sides? You shouldn't have to be a biologist to wonder whether the genetic lottery or some other common factor was often to blame for unexplained infant deaths.

I am, in a representative capacity, defending a case which, as I conceive
it, involves a good deal of actuarial type reasoning. Fortunately I am
able to call on the kind of counsel that wouldn't have been available
in Australia when I began practice myself over 40 years ago. E.g. a
former nuclear physicist, fellow of an Oxbridge college, turned to the law and now a leader of the Australian intellectual property bar. Curiously the English bar and bench used to have a good sprinkling of Oxford and
Cambridge mathematics graduates in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries.

Now???

Opportunity lands, sends new Mars pictures.

Randall Parker of ParaPundit linked to an interesting (and troubling) article called "The Recipient Class."

Troubling is the fact that single mothers (in addition to unskilled immigrants and the elderly[1]) are a growing population and a substantial net drain on the tax system, and their being a net drain goes beyond that they are more likely to be uneducated, poor, and have low IQs.

Interestingly, Asians contribute more in terms of taxes paid minus benefits received ($1730 per capita) than whites ($651 per capita), in spite of lower per capita incomes[2] and only marginally higher household incomes. The main reason for this seems to be that Asians are less likely to be single mothers than whites, in spite of having slightly lower incomes.

To me, our whole system seems unsustainable. In addition to importing huge numbers of dependent unskilled workers (and GWB wants to import more), we are subsidizing unwed motherhood and promoting its growth, and Congress just passed a Prescription Drug bill when we already know that taking care of the elderly is likely to be a major burden down the road even without any new benefits.

[1]I am not bashing old people here or suggesting that there should be major cuts in benefits, but old people are a growing portion of the population and are dependent. Also, Bush and Congress have made the problem worse with the Prescription Drug bill. I think old age benefits, and our welfare state in general, would be perfectly bearable were it not for the constant expansion of benefits, as well as mass unskilled immigration and perverse incentives such as rewarding unwed motherhood. Unfortunately, George W. Bush has been spending irresponsibly, promoting mass unskilled immigration, and has vastly expanded old age benefits...and the Democrats want to spend even more than Bush does and want an even more liberal illegal alien amnesty plan than Bush's plan.

[2]It is often stated that Asians have higher incomes than whites, but their per capita income is lower than that of whites.

For South Asian readers, I suggest this article on the nuances of caste, culture and history (yes, I know it is on a site that promotes Hindutva, but whatever the intent of presenting this article [Hindu unity], the facts, or at least the caution thrown over age-old preconceptions, seem correct from my readings of history & genetics).

I missed Vietnam by a few years, so I am clueless on this, but it struck me as interesting. Peter Robinson recently posted to NRO's Corner:

VIETNAM REDUX? [Peter Robinson]
From a reader:

"Watching Kerry respond to the throwing of medals question turned my stomach. I know there are ten times the number of Vietnam War vets who wholly disagree with him. I believe that if he is nominated the country will, and should, 're-fight' the Vietnam War. This time, however, the left has not a monopoly on the media, and the outcome will be different, as well as truthful."

This hadn't occurred to me before, but of course the reader is absolutely right. This Corner, Rush, Fox News--we'll all be around this time to argue a) that our undertaking in Vietnam was born of a noble impulse, not some sort of twisted imperialist dream, b) that we lost only because of a failure of national will that John Kerry, among others, helped to precipitate, and, c) that despite its ultimate failure the war repesented a holding action that helped to make possible the rise of the "Asian tigers," including Thailand and Taiwan, whose example even Vietnam itself is now attempting to follow.

The debate will be different, all right.

Unlike what seems to be the rest of the world, I thought that the Return of the King movie was fairly boring. It is hard to find reviews by people who felt the same way. (The above has some links to David Elliott's reviews in the middle of the text. Here is a review that Kunstler just put up.) Rotten Tomatoes gives Return of the King a 96%. I have the sneaking suspicion that there are more heterodox views out there than have made themselves known. Then again, maybe I am just crazy.

Head over to Paddy O' Tater-tot to cast your vote for your favorite bloggers in the Blogger Animal House casting call.

Here is an interactive guide to help you determine which Democratic or Republican candidate best matches your preferences. Fun little tool.