2 of 3
- To understand the hostility between India and Pakistan (see fourth item here in earlier weblog), you have to understand the politics of water, RAND says. The two countries' struggle over the Indus River was eased by the Indus Water Treaty in 1960, but increased pollution and falling water levels in the Indus have left the treaty shakier than ever. India has already threatened to break the treaty and choke off Pakistan's water supply. Unlike the countries' tussle over Kashmir, a sparsely populated and seemingly insignificant region (see fifth item here from Wired), the future of the Indus Water Treaty affects the lifeline of people in both countries.
Related:
-Map of Pakistan from CNN
-Elsewhere in this issue of the Atlantic, see a map of the world's water crisis, unavailable online
From the Washington Post:
TEHUIPANGO, Mexico—As the temperature dipped below freezing in these long forgotten mountains, Justo Chipahua Panzo, 11, sat in his unheated classroom and worried about tomorrow. The fifth-grader had just eaten a school breakfast of watery soup and beans, which he bought with a spare peso—the equivalent of about a dime. But he said that kind of luck never happens two days in a row. In places such as Tehuipango, in Veracruz state, breakfast, lunch and dinner sometimes consist of little more than tortillas and salt. Although there are new government relief efforts, children often live with chronic diarrhea or other stomach ailments, which undermine attempts to improve nutrition. … Life here has continued in quiet isolation, much as it has for centuries, since the Spanish drove indigenous peoples off the flat, fertile lands and into the deserts or these craggy mountains. … Tehuipango has been identified by the government as one of the 10 poorest places in the country for as long as anyone can remember, but little ever has been done about it. Full story
For years, the site called Double Ditch, above the Missouri River in North Dakota, was known mostly as a spot where Meriwether Lewis and William Clark stopped in 1804 during their storied journey across the continent. They took note of the place, where an unusual pair of defensive trenches ringed the site of an old native village. … It had been abandoned in the 1780s after a smallpox outbreak decimated its inhabitants. But last year archaeologists discovered a second pair of trenches about 50 yards outside the first set, enclosing a total of 22.5 acres. Not only had Double Ditch doubled its ditches, but it suddenly became one of the largest Native American sites on the northern plains—strongly suggesting that warfare and social organization in pre-Columbian America had dimensions that scholars had not previously recognized. Full story
DIGEST- Yale professor Robert Sternberg, so-called "scholar of intelligence," has had much to say about the importance of creativity, people skills and street smarts in evaluating people's intelligence. His latest interest is the study of stupidity, says the Boston Globe. Why do smart people do stupid things? Why do those who should best understand the cost of stupid mistakes, from Bill Clinton to Enron's Jeff Skilling, make so many themselves? As editor of a book called Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid, Sternberg has not, the Globe says, "come up with a Grand Unifying Theory of Denseness, but [his contributors] do emerge from the psychology labs with some unstupid first stabs at the problem." Full story It should be noted that these stabs do not (as far as the Globe indicates include a) an articulation of who has the authority to define smartness and stupidness and how, and b) what the moral element of behavior has to do with it. Reducing wrongdoing to poor decision-making comes from a view of human beings as essentially rational machines and not inherently sinful beings.
share this page
RSS Feed
