Jacques-Yves Cousteau (French pronunciation: [ʒak iv kusto]; 11 June 1910 – 25 June 1997) was a French naval officer, explorer, ecologist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and researcher who studied the sea and all forms of life in water. He co-developed the aqua-lung, pioneered marine conservation and was a member of the Académie française. He was commonly known as “le Commandant Cousteau” or “Captain Cousteau“.

http://www.cousteau.org/

Early life

Cousteau was born on 11 June 1910, in Saint-André-de-Cubzac, Gironde, to Daniel and Élisabeth Cousteau. He had one brother, Pierre-Antoine. Cousteau completed his preparatory studies at the prestigious Collège Stanislas in Paris. In 1930 he entered the École Navale and graduated as a gunnery officer. After an automobile accident cut short his career in naval aviation, Cousteau indulged his interest in the sea.

In Toulon, where he was serving on the Condorcet, Cousteau carried out his first underwater experiments, thanks to his friend Philippe Tailliez who in 1936 lent him some Fernez underwater goggles, predecessors of modern diving masks.^[2] He later worked his way up the ranks as he became more famous and more useful to the navy. Cousteau also belonged to the information service of the French Navy, and was sent on missions to Shanghai and Japan (1935–1938) and in the USSR (1939).^{[citation needed]}

On 12 July 1937 he married Simone Melchior, with whom he had two sons, Jean-Michel (born 1938) and Philippe (1940–1979). His sons took part in the adventure of the Calypso. In 1991, one year after his wife Simone’s death from cancer, he married Francine Triplet. They already had a daughter Diane Cousteau (born 1980) and a son Pierre-Yves Cousteau (born 1982), born during Cousteau’s marriage to his first wife.

Early 1940s: Innovation of modern underwater diving

The years of World War II were decisive for the history of diving. After the armistice of 1940, the family of Simone and Jacques-Yves Cousteau took refuge in Megève, where he became a friend of the Ichac family who also lived there. Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Marcel Ichac shared the same desire to reveal to the general public unknown and inaccessible places — for Cousteau the underwater world and for Ichac the high mountains. The two neighbors took the first ex-aequo prize of the Congress of Documentary Film in 1943, for the first French underwater film: Par dix-huit mètres de fond (18 meters deep), made without breathing apparatus the previous year in Embiez (Var) with Philippe Tailliez and Frédéric Dumas, without forgetting the paramount part played, as originator of the depth-pressure-proof camera case, by the mechanical engineer Léon Vèche (engineer of Arts and Métiers and the Naval College).

In 1943, they made the film Épaves (Shipwrecks): for this occasion, they used the aqua-lung, which continued the line of some inventions of the 19th century (Rouquayrol’s and Denayrouze’s Aerophore) and of the early 20th century (Le Prieur). When making Épaves, Cousteau could not find the necessary blank reels of movie film, but had to buy hundreds of small still camera film reels the same width, intended for a make of child’s camera, and cemented them together to make long reels.^[3]

Having kept bonds with the English speakers (he spent part of his childhood in the United States and usually spoke English) and with French soldiers in North Africa (under Admiral Lemonnier), Jacques-Yves Cousteau (whose villa “Baobab” at Sanary (Var) was opposite Admiral Darlan’s villa “Reine”), helped the French Navy to join again with the Allies; he assembled a commando operation against the Italian espionage services in France, and received several military decorations for his deeds. At that time, he kept his distance from his brother Pierre-Antoine, a “pen anti-semite” who wrote the collaborationist newspaper Je suis partout (I am everywhere) and who received the death sentence in 1946. However this was later commuted to a life sentence, and Pierre-Antoine was released in 1954.

During the 1940s Cousteau is credited with improving the aqua-lung design which gave birth to the open-circuit scuba technology used today. According to his first book, The Silent World: A Story of Undersea Discovery and Adventure (1953), Cousteau started snorkel diving with a mask, snorkel, and fins with Frédéric Dumas and Philippe Tailliez. In 1943, he tried out the first prototype aqua-lung — designed by Cousteau and Émile Gagnan — which finally made extended underwater exploration possible.

Late 1940s: GERS and Élie Monnier

In 1946, Cousteau and Tailliez showed the film “Épaves” to Admiral Lemonnier, and the admiral gave them the responsibility of setting up the Groupement de Recherches Sous-marines (GRS) (Underwater Research Group) of the French Navy in Toulon. A little later it became the GERS (Groupe d’Études et de Recherches Sous-Marines, = Underwater Studies and Research Group), then the COMISMER (“COMmandement des Interventions Sous la MER”, = “Undersea Interventions Command”), and finally more recently the CEPHISMER.

In 1948, between missions of mine clearance, underwater exploration and technological and physiological tests, Cousteau undertook a first campaign in the Mediterranean on board the sloop Élie Monnier,^[4] with Philippe Tailliez, Frédéric Dumas, Jean Alinat and the scenario writer Marcel Ichac. The small team also undertook the exploration of the Roman wreck of Mahdia (Tunisia). It was the first underwater archaeology operation using autonomous diving, opening the way for scientific underwater archaeology. Cousteau and Marcel Ichac brought back from there the Carnets diving film (presented and preceded with the Cannes Film Festival 1951).

Cousteau and the Élie Monnier then took part in the rescue of Professor Jacques Piccard’s bathyscaphe, the FNRS-2, during the 1949 expedition to Dakar. Thanks to this rescue, the French Navy was able to reuse the sphere of the bathyscaphe to construct the FNRS-3.

The adventures of this period are told in the 2 books The Silent World (1953) by Cousteau and Plongées Sans Câble by Philippe Tailliez.

1950–1970s

In 1949, Cousteau left the French Navy.

In 1950 he founded the French Oceanographic Campaigns (FOC), and leased a ship called Calypso from Thomas Loel Guinness for a symbolic one franc a year. Cousteau refitted the Calypso as a mobile laboratory for field research and as his principal vessel for diving and filming. He also carried out underwater archaeological excavations in the Mediterranean, in particular at Grand-Congloué (1952).

With the publication of his first book in 1953, The Silent World, he correctly predicted the existence of the echolocation abilities of porpoises. He reported that his research vessel, the Élie Monier, was heading to the Straits of Gibraltar and noticed a group of porpoises following them. Cousteau changed course a few degrees off the optimal course to the center of the strait, and the porpoises followed for a few minutes, then diverged toward mid-channel again. It was evident that they knew where the optimal course lay, even if the humans did not. Cousteau concluded that the cetaceans had something like sonar, which was a relatively new feature on submarines.

Cousteau won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1956 for The Silent World co-produced with Louis Malle. With the assistance of Jean Mollard, he made a “diving saucer” SP-350, an experimental underwater vehicle which could reach a depth of 350 meters. The successful experiment was quickly repeated in 1965 with two vehicles which reached 500 meters.

In 1957, he was elected as director of the Oceanographical Museum of Monaco. He directed Précontinent, about the experiments of diving in saturation (long-duration immersion, houses under the sea), and was admitted to the United States National Academy of Sciences.

In October 1960, a large amount of radioactive waste was going to be discarded in the Mediterranean Sea by the Commissariat à l’énergie atomique (CEA). The CEA argued that the dumps were experimental in nature, and that French oceanographers such as Vsevelod Romanovsky had recommended it. Romanovsky and other French scientists, including Louis Fage and Jacques Cousteau, repudiated the claim, saying that Romanovsky had in mind a much smaller amount. The CEA claimed that there was little circulation (and hence little need for concern) at the dump site between Nice and Corsica, but French public opinion sided with the oceanographers rather than with the CEA atomic energy scientists. The CEA chief, Francis Perrin, decided to postpone the dump.^[5] Cousteau organized a publicity campaign which in less than two weeks gained wide popular support. The train carrying the waste was stopped by women and children sitting on the railway tracks, and it was sent back to its origin.

A meeting with American television companies (ABC, Métromédia, NBC) created the series The Underwater Odyssey of Commander Cousteau, with the character of the commander in the red bonnet inherited from standard diving dress) intended to give the films a “personalized adventure” style.

In 1973, along with his two sons and Frederick Hyman, he created the Cousteau Society for the Protection of Ocean Life, Frederick Hyman being its first President; it now has more than 300,000 members.

Three years after the volcano’s last eruption, on December 19, 1973, the Cousteau team was filming on Deception Island, Antarctica when Michel Laval, Calypso’s second in command, was struck and killed by a propeller of the helicopter that was ferrying between Calypso and the island.

In 1976 Cousteau uncovered the wreck of HMHS Britannic.

In 1977, together with Peter Scott, he received the UN International Environment prize.

On 28 June 1979, while the Calypso was on an expedition to Portugal, his second son, Philippe, his preferred and designated successor and with whom he had co-produced all his films since 1969, died in a PBY Catalina flying boat crash in the Tagus river near Lisbon. Cousteau was deeply affected. He called his then eldest son, the architect Jean-Michel Cousteau, to his side. This collaboration lasted 14 years.

1980–1990s

In 1980, Cousteau traveled to Canada to make two films on the Saint Lawrence River and the Great Lakes, Cries from the Deep and St. Lawrence: Stairway to the Sea.^[6]

In 1985, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan.

On 24 November 1988, he was elected to the French Academy, chair 17, succeeding Jean Delay. His official reception under the Cupola took place on 22 June 1989, the response to his speech of reception being given by Bertrand Poirot-Delpech. After his death, he was replaced under the Cupola by Érik Orsenna on 28 May 1998.

In June 1990, the composer Jean Michel Jarre paid homage to the commander by entitling his new album Waiting for Cousteau. He also composed the music for Cousteau’s documentary “Palawan, the last refuge”.

On 2 December 1990, his wife Simone Cousteau died of cancer.

In June 1991, in Paris, Jacques-Yves Cousteau remarried, to Francine Triplet, with whom he had (before this marriage) two children, Diane and Pierre-Yves. Francine Cousteau currently continues her husband’s work as the head of the Cousteau Foundation and Cousteau Society. From that point, the relations between Jacques-Yves and his elder son worsened.

In November 1991, Cousteau gave an interview to the UNESCO courier, in which he stated that he was in favour of human population control and population decrease. The full article text can be found online^[7].

In 1992, he was invited to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the United Nations’ International Conference on Environment and Development, and then he became a regular consultant for the UN and the World Bank.

In 1996, he sued his son who wished to open a holiday center named “Cousteau” in the Fiji Islands.

On 11 January 1996 Calypso was rammed and sunk in Singapore harbor by a barge. The Calypso was refloated and towed home to France.

Death

Jacques-Yves Cousteau died on 25 June 1997 in Paris, aged 87. Despite persistent rumors, encouraged by some Islamic publications and websites, Cousteau did not convert to Islam, and when he died he was buried in a Roman Catholic Christian funeral.^[8] He was buried in the family vault at Saint-André-de-Cubzac in France. An homage was paid to him by the city by the inauguration of a “rue du Commandant Cousteau”, a street which runs out to his native house, where a commemorative plaque was affixed.

Honors

During his lifetime, Jacques-Yves Cousteau received these distinctions:

• Commandeur de la Légion d’Honneur
• Grand-Croix de l’Ordre national du Mérite
• Croix de guerre 1939–1945
• Officier de l’Ordre du Mérite Maritime
• Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
• Honorary Companion of the Order of Australia.

Defense of the environment

Jacques-Yves Cousteau superimposed the geonymic vision of the sea and Earth elaborated in the 1930s by Jacques Grob and Philippe Tailliez with a conqueror’s mentality. A cultivated explorer in the spirit of Jules Verne, he fed the public’s taste for wonder. “One protects what one likes.”, Cousteau repeated, “and one likes what enchanted us.” As Cousteau’s oceanographic and cinematographic campaigns took place over more than 50 years (1945–1997), he was able to measure the degradation of the in-situ mediums: the conqueror-explorer, sure of his technical prowess and finding it natural to drive out marine animals gradually morphed into an ardent conservationist who leveraged his worldwide notoriety to promote the idea of the Earth as a limited and fragile spaceship that needed to be preserved. He was the only non-politician to take part in the 1992 Rio Summit.

After 1975, he briefly considered founding worldwide “Cousteau Clubs” for young people, but eventually abandoned this idea in its original form (which would have involved significant work with few direct rewards) and instead published a few fanzines (Calypso Log, Le Dauphin) and made a documentary film about a trip to the Antarctic with children. Towards the end of his life, he became pessimistic and even misanthropic: An ideal planet, he confided to Yves Paccalet, would be one in which humanity is limited to 100,000 people who are both educated and respectful of nature.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s star power rested not only on his personal image, but on the image of a united team striving towards a common goal. Late in his life, however, highly-publicized intra-family conflicts, internal divisions, and consequent lawsuits chipped away at this image, and that of his successors: Son Jean-Michel and grandson Fabien on one side, and the Cousteau Team with his third wife Francine and their children of the other, do not have the public standing of the 20th century Cousteau Team.

On the other hand, the kind of underwater and adventure film that Jacques-Yves Cousteau launched has never been more popular: Each year, hundreds of increasingly beautiful documentaries are produced, thanks to improvement of photographic techniques. The idea of a fragile planet and sea has not only made its way into the public consciousness, but also affects the political class who were slower to come to environmental awareness.

Legacy

Cousteau’s legacy includes more than 120 television documentaries, more than 50 books, and an environmental protection foundation with 300,000 members.^[9]

Cousteau liked to call himself an “oceanographic technician.” He was, in reality, a sophisticated showman, teacher, and lover of nature. His work permitted many people to explore the resources of the oceans.

His work also created a new kind of scientific communication, criticised at the time by some academics. The so-called “divulgationism”, a simple way of sharing scientific concepts, was soon employed in other disciplines and became one of the most important characteristics of modern television broadcasting.

Cousteau died on 25 June 1997. The Cousteau Society and its French counterpart, l’Équipe Cousteau, both of which Jacques-Yves Cousteau founded, are still active today. The Society is currently attempting to turn the original Calypso into a museum and it is raising funds to build a successor vessel, the Calypso II.

In his last years, after marrying again, Cousteau became involved in a legal battle with his son Jean-Michel over Jean-Michel licensing the Cousteau name for a South Pacific resort, resulting in Jean-Michel Cousteau being ordered by the court not to encourage confusion between his for-profit business and his father’s non-profit endeavours.

In 2007 International Watch Company introduced the IWC Aquatimer Chronograph “Cousteau Divers” Special Edition. The timepiece incorporated a sliver of wood from the interior of Cousteau’s Calypso research vessel. Having developed the diver’s watch, IWC offered support to The Cousteau Society. The proceeds from the timepieces’ sales were partially donated to the non-profit organization involved into conservation of marine life and preservation of tropical coral reefs.^[10]

Pop culture tributes and references

• Wu-Tang Clan member Old Dirty Bastard pays homage to Jacques Cousteau in the song Da Mystery of Chessboxin’ from Wu-Tang Clan’s Enter the 36 Chambers. “Here I go, deep type flow. Jacques Cousteau could never get this low.”
• The song “Nice To Know You” from the American alt-rock band, Incubus, references Cousteau, saying the writer’s current feeling is “Deeper than the deepest Cousteau would ever go.”
• American rapper Canibus mentions Cousteau’s name in his song Bis vs R.I.P.
• American rap group Jedi Mind Tricks uses his name as the chorus, saying “I’m a get deep like Jacques Cousteau; Jacques Cousteau could never get this low”, from the song Get This Low.
• Belgian singer Plastic Bertrand made a song about Jacques Cousteau in 1981, under the title Jacques Cousteau.
• John Denver wrote a song called Calypso as a tribute to Cousteau, the ship, and her crew. The song reached the number-one position on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.
• Cousteau was an inspiration to Stephen Hillenburg, creator of SpongeBob SquarePants, and the French Narrator (played by Tom Kenny) from the series was made in tribute to him.
• Director Wes Anderson has referenced Cousteau a number of times. In his 1998 film Rushmore, the main character Max Fischer finds a Jacques Cousteau quote handwritten in a library book and begins a search for the last person who checked out the book. The quote was “When one man, for whatever reason, has an opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself.”
• The 2004 film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, also directed by Wes Anderson, is regarded as both a homage to and a send-up of Cousteau’s career. It includes an end credit that reads “In memory of Jacques-Yves Cousteau and with gratitude to the Cousteau Society, which was not involved in the making of this film.”
• Two New Age composers, Vangelis (who was heavily involved with Cousteau in the 1990s) and Jean Michel Jarre, released albums including original numbers honoring Jacques-Yves Cousteau: Cousteau’s Dreams (2000) and Waiting for Cousteau (1990).
• The Swedish band Bob Hund performed a tribute to Jacques Cousteau on their album Ingenting, released in 2002, with songs recorded in 1992–93. They refer to him as being “a brave aquanaut”.
• The band The Flight of the Conchords references Jacques Cousteau in their song Foux du Fa Fa, when Bret holds up a fish- referring to Cousteau’s study of the ocean.
• Andrew Bird’s song Lull, on his album Weather Systems, begins, “Being alone, it can be quite romantic/Like Jacques Cousteau underneath the Atlanic.”
• In Star Trek, the captain’s yacht of the USS Enterprise-E is named Cousteau.
• An internet rumour and disinformation which has been running since 1989 says wrongly that Cousteau became a Muslim upon seeing the Koran.^[11]
• Around 1980 a scale model of the Calypso research ship, complete with the marine helicopter was sold to children worldwide, along with leaflets calling for donations to the Cousteau foundation. These models are still being sold as toys.^[12]
• The futuristic novel The Deep Range written by Arthur C. Clarke mentions a research submarine named Cousteau.
• Gwar’s first album, Hell-O, included a song named “Je M’Appelle J. Cöusteaü”.
• The Actionslacks released a song titled “Jacques Cousteau” on their EP “Kids With Guitars.”
• The Swedish jazzband Esbjörn Svensson Trio tributed Cousteau on their album “Seven Days of Falling” with the track “Did they ever tell Cousteau?”. Esbjörn Svensson died in a scuba diving accident on 14 June 2008.
• In the Friends episode ‘The One Where Ross Gets High’, Phoebe mentions that she is ‘in love with Jacques Cousteau’.

See also

• Scuba diving
• Aqua-lung
• HMHS Britannic
• William Beebe
• Precontinent
• Conshelf Two

Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s ships

• Calypso (ship)
• SP-350 Denise (“the Diving saucer”)
• Alcyone (ship)
• Calypso II (planned)

Bibliography

Books by Cousteau

• The Silent World (1953, with Frederic Dumas)
• Captain Cousteaus Underwater Treasury (1959, with James Dugan)
• The Living Sea (1963, with James Dugan)
• World Without Sun (1965)
• The Undersea Discoveries of Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1970–1975, 8-volumes, with Philippe Diole)
  • The Shark: Splendid Savage of the Sea (1970)
  • Diving for Sunken Treasure (1971)
  • Life and Death in a Coral Sea (1971)
  • The Whale: Mighty Monarch of the Sea (1972)
  • Octopus and Squid: The Soft Intelligence (1973)
  • Three Adventures: Galápagos, Titicaca, the Blue Holes (1973)
  • Diving Companions: Sea Lion, Elephant Seal, Walrus (1974)
  • Dolphins (1975)
• The Ocean World of Jacques Cousteau (1973–78, 21 volumes)
  • Oasis in Space (vol 1)
  • The Act of Life (vol 2)
  • Quest for Food (vol 3)
  • Window in the Sea (vol 4)
  • The Art of Motion (vol 5)
  • Attack and Defense (vol 6)
  • Invisible Messages (vol 7)
  • Instinct and Intelligence (vol
  • Pharaohs of the Sea (vol 9)
  • Mammals in the Sea (vol 10)
  • Provinces of the Sea (vol 11)
  • Man Re-Enters Sea (vol 12)
  • A Sea of Legends (vol 13)
  • Adventure of Life (vol 14)
  • Outer and Inner Space (vol 15)
  • The Whitecaps (vol 16)
  • Riches of the Sea (vol 17)
  • Challenges of the Sea (vol 18)
  • The Sea in Danger (vol 19)
  • Guide to the Sea and Index (vol 20)
  • Calypso (1978, vol 21)
• A Bill of Rights for Future Generations (1979)
• Life at the Bottom of the World (1980)
• The Cousteau United States Almanac of the Environment (1981, aka The Cousteau Almanac of the Environment: An Inventory of Life on a Water Planet)
• Jacques Cousteau’s Calypso (1983)
• Marine Life of the Caribbean (1984, with James Cribb and Thomas H. Suchanek)
• Jacques Cousteau’s Amazon Journey (1984, with Mose Richards)
• Jacques Cousteau: The Ocean World (1985)
• The Whale (1987, with Philippe Diole)
• Jacques Cousteau: Whales (1988, with Yves Paccalet)
• The Human, The Orchid and The Octopus (and Susan Schiefelbein, coauthor; Bloomsbury 2007]

Books about Cousteau

• Undersea Explorer: The Story of Captain Cousteau (1957) by James Dugan
• Jacques Cousteau and the Undersea World (2000) by Roger King
• Jacques-Yves Cousteau: His Story Under the Sea (2002) by John Bankston
• Jacques Cousteau: A Life Under the Sea (2008) by Kathleen Olmstead

Films

• The Silent World (1956)
• World Without Sun (1964)
• Journey to the End of the World (1976)
• Cries from the Deep (1981) (Jacques Gagné, director)^[13]
• St. Lawrence: Stairway to the Sea (1982) (co-director)^[14]

Television series

• 1966–68 The World of Jacques-Yves Cousteau
• 1968–76 The Undersea World of Jacques-Yves Cousteau
• 1977–77 Oasis in Space
• 1977–81 Cousteau’s Odyssey Series
• 1982–84 Cousteau’s Amazon Series
• 1985–91 Cousteau’s Rediscovery of the World I
• 1992–94 Cousteau’s Rediscovery of the World II

References

1. ^ Cousteau Society
2. ^ The Cousteau Foundation page about “The Captain” confirms Cousteau biography as written here.
3. ^ The Silent World
4. ^ Sevellec, E.-J.: Naissance du GERS et des premiers plongeurs démineurs, December 1, 2006. URL last accessed 2010-02-18. According to Sevellec, the Élie Monnier was an old German tugboat originally called Albatros and handed over to France as a war reparation, and then re-baptised in honor of the maritime engineer Élie Monnier who had disappeared while diving at Mers-el-Kébir on the wreck of the battleship Bretagne. See also Riffaud, C.: “La règne du scaphandre à casque“, in La grande aventure des hommes sous la mer, ISBN 2-226-03502-8.
5. ^ Jacob Darwin Hamblin, Poison in the Well: Radioactive Waste in the Oceans at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008).
6. ^ Ohayon, Albert (2009). “When Cousteau Came to Canada”. NFB.ca. National Film Board of Canada. http://blog.nfb.ca/2009/10/23/jacques-cousteau-in-canada/. Retrieved 2009-10-25.
7. ^ Widely quoted on the internet are these two paragraphs from the interview: “What should we do to eliminate suffering and disease? It’s a wonderful idea but perhaps not altogether a beneficial one in the long run. If we try to implement it we may jeopardize the future of our species…It’s terrible to have to say this. World population must be stabilized and to do that we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. This is so horrible to contemplate that we shouldn’t even say it. But the general situation in which we are involved is lamentable”. Full interview with UNESCO Courier digital copy
8. ^ Témoignage: La “conversion” du commandant Cousteau à l’Islam (French)
9. ^ http://www.cousteau.org/jyc.html
10. ^ IWC in homage to Cousteau
11. ^ the source for this claim and its official refutation
12. ^ Calypso model ship sold on the Internet.
13. ^ “Cries from the Deep”. National Film Board of Canada Web site. 1981. http://www.nfb.ca/film/Cries_from_the_Deep. Retrieved 2009-06-20.
14. ^ “St. Lawrence: Stairway to the Sea”. National Film Board of Canada Web site. 1982. http://www.nfb.ca/film/st_lawrence_stairway_to_the_sea. Retrieved 2009-06-20.

Wikipedia®

Dorothy Irene Height (March 24, 1912 – April 20, 2010) was an African American administrator, educator, and social activist. She was the president of the National Council of Negro Women for forty years, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994, and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2004.

Early life

Height was born in Richmond, Virginia. At an early age, she moved with her family to Rankin, Pennsylvania, a steel town in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. Height was admitted to Barnard College in 1929, but upon arrival, she was denied entrance because the school had an unwritten policy of admitting only two black students per year. She pursued studies instead at New York University, earning a degree in 1932, and a master’s degree in educational psychology the following year.

Career

Height started working as a caseworker with the New York City Welfare Department and, at the age of twenty-five, she began a career as a civil rights activist when she joined the National Council of Negro Women. She fought for equal rights for both African Americans and women, and in 1944 she joined the national staff of the YWCA. She also served as National President of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority from 1946 to 1957. She remained active with Delta Sigma Theta Sorority thoughtout her life. While there she developed leadership training programs and interracial and ecumenical education programs.

Dorothy Height

In 1957, Height was named president of the National Council of Negro Women, a position she held until 1997. During the height of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, Height organized “Wednesdays in Mississippi“,^[5] which brought together black and white women from the North and South to create a dialogue of understanding.

American leaders regularly took her counsel, including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and Height also encouraged President Dwight D. Eisenhower to desegregate schools and President Lyndon B. Johnson to appoint African American women to positions in government. In the mid 1960s, Height wrote a column entitled “A Woman’s Word” for the weekly African-American newspaper, the New York Amsterdam News and her first column appeared in the March 20, 1965 issue on page 8.

Height served on a number of committees, including as a consultant on African affairs to the Secretary of State, the President’s Committee on the Employment of the Handicapped, and the President’s Committee on the Status of Women. In 1974, Height was named to the National Council for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, which published The Belmont Report, a response to the infamous “Tuskegee Syphillis Study” and an international ethical touchstone for researchers to this day.

Later life

In 2004, Height was recognized by Barnard for her achievements as an honorary alumna during its commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision.

The musical stage play If This Hat Could Talk, based on her memoirs Open Wide The Freedom Gates, debuted in the middle of 2005. It showcases her unique perspective on the civil rights movement and details many of the behind-the-scenes figures and mentors who shaped her life, including Mary McLeod Bethune and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Height was the chairperson of the Executive Committee of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the largest civil rights organization in the USA. She was an honored guest and seated on stage at the inauguration of President Barack Obama on January 20, 2009.

She attended the National Black Family Reunion, celebrated on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., every year until her death in 2010.^{[citation needed]}

On March 25, 2010 Height was admitted to Howard University Hospital in Washington D.C. for unspecified reasons. Her spokeswoman issued a statement stating that at that time she was in a “very serious, but stable” condition but that they were remaining optimistic about her recovery. On April 20, 2010, Height died at the age of ninety-eight. Her funeral service at the Washington National Cathedral on April 29, 2010 was attended by President and Mrs Obama plus many dignitaries and notable people.^[6] She was later interred at Fort Lincoln Cemetery.

Awards and honors

• Presidential Citizens Medal (1989)
• Spingarn Medal from the NAACP (1993)
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt Freedom From Want Award (1993)
• inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame (1993)
• Presidential Medal of Freedom (1994)^[1]
• 7th Annual Heinz Award Chairman’s Medal (2001)^[7]
• Listed on Molefi Kete Asante’s list of 100 Greatest African Americans (2002) ^[8]
• Congressional Gold Medal by President George W. Bush on behalf of the United States Congress (Approved, 2003) (Awarded, 2004)^[1]
• Flag Half-Staff Day for Death of Dorothy Height, observed on April 29th, 2010. Ordered by President Barack Obama on April 26th, 2010, to mourn her death.

References

Links

• National Council for Science and the Environment
• Dorothy Height – Daily Telegraph obituary
• African Events Congressional Gold Medal Award for Dorothy Height
• Dorothy Height’s oral history video excerpts, The National Visionary Leadership Project
• Dorothy Height’s Videos
• Legacy: Black and White in America, a documentary featuring Dorothy Height
• Flag Half-Staff Day Order by President Barack Obama

• Height, Dorothy. Open Wide the Freedom Gates: A Memoir.
• Tracey A. Fitzgerald, The National Council of Negro Women and the Feminist Movement, 1935–1975, Georgetown University Press, 1985.
• Judith Weisenfeld, “Dorothy Height”, Black Women in America: Profiles, MacMillan Library Reference USA, New York, 1999, pp. 128–130.
• [Legacy: Black and White in America], a documentary featuring Dorothy Height.

Thanks to Wikipedia®

In the perspective of A parliamentary election held in Iraq on 7 March 2010 and the Oscars 2010 best original screenplay for the  movie “The Hurt Locker” (which gives a perspective of the Iraq war)

Here is a comment I made back in 2007 on Mark Joyner’s

blog post:

March 13, 2007

Dear Bill O’Reilly (About The 600,000 in Iraq Bill Maher Mentioned)

A comment from Sunny Sudden FRANCE

-Earth Citizens sin- “indifference”

Thank you Mark for opening the issue on “disinformation.” Everyone seems very passionate: “O”Reilly, Maher, politics, facts, truth”… In the meantime “Earth Citizens” (God’s creatures if you believe there is a “Higher Power”) are still dying daily in Iraq. (lost Iraqi, American lives… many being innocent people= Earth Citizens)…

Is the debate about “disinformation”?...

We live in a global “fear” based society. We are becoming increasingly “indifferent”… to “others” suffering.

Gandhi said: “in the midst of death, life persists, and in the midst of darkness, light perists…We can say “no” to violence, and “yes” to life.”

If we really felt the weight of our own individual actions, and responsability… Instead of spending so much time “arguing with words.” We would strengthen our life daily by our personal “acts”…

Noone can be “neutral” and “indifferent” to what’s happening to Planet Earth, its Earth Citizens (specialy in Iraq)… certainly NOT because we’ve got 3 meals a day, a job, a fat bank account, or because we have too much responsability or are too poor to “care”…

In a fear based society, Earth Citizens are being daily bombarded by GIGABITS of “disinformation” and crippled with “information overload” In this context what should Mark Joyner have said? “For God’s sake, don’t disturb me…leave me alone…with your “true lies…Let’s keep it simple…Let me mind only Simpleology Training”…

My friend as you have a “fight with words”: “disinformation”, “white lie”, “true lie”… let me remind you that Earth Citizens are dying DAILY in Irak…

So I ask you Earth Citizen: “Are you blind”… and “is your heart made of stone”?…that you do not SEE what’s at stake (LIVES: HUMAN LIVES)…

We have right here and right now a crisis of: Truth, Honesty, Courage, and LUCIDITY…

This is not just about “disinformation”…and O’Reilly… It’s foremost about “indifference”…and “fear“… The higher we are socialy the more we seek security… no disturbance…”leave me alone”… “I have enough of my own problems”

And slowly “inertia” takes place in our lives… (physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual inertia) while EVERYTHING is constantly changing in this dynamic universe…

As we are “debating” Earth Citizens in Irak give their last breath on Planet Earth…

Albert Schweitzer*, le “Grand Docteur” who fought for growth of brotherhood among races was right when he said: “Men do not think”…

In fact the last thing “WE”… YOU and I…want to face is that YOU and I are responsible for this violence...

- FIAT LUX -

*Albert Schweitzer: His whole life and all of his work are a message addressed to all men regardless of nationality or race…

Note: “In these troubled and uncertain times men are searching for something which will allow them to believe that mankind will one day enjoy the reign of peace and goodwill. “If altruism, reverence for life, and the idea of brotherhood can become living realities in the hearts of men, we will have laid the very foundations of a lasting peace between individuals, nations, and races.”

Presentation Speech by Gunnar Jah for: -Dr. Albert Schweitzer NOBEL PEACE PRIZE RECIPIENT 1952-

NOTE FROM MJ: Beautiful! Read my “constructs” and you’ll see we’re very much on the same page. It’s one thing to think it, another to do something about it. Look at “Construct One” for the first step …

A 2,500-year-old clay cylinder bears what has been called the world’s “first human rights charter” and was inscribed under the direction of the Persian ruler Cyrus the Great in 539 BCE. In the Greek Bible (Isaiah 45:1), Cyrus is called “Christ” (“…τῷ χριστῷ μου Κύρῳ…”) or “the Lord’s anointed” for his role in rescuing the Jews out of the “Babylonian Captivity.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Cyrus Cylinder

(Photo by Marco Prins and Jona Lendering)

In addition to that alleged good and godly deed, Cyrus committed to writing what is believed to be the earliest charter establishing human rights so far found. Thus, Persia – or Iran - is ironically and tragically the birthplace of a remarkable tradition of human rights. Contrast that amazing fact with the state in which the ancient and noble Persian people live today, under Islamic fanaticism, with a severe restriction of many basic rights we take for granted.

Iran made to wait for loan of ancient treasure after ‘remarkable’ discovery

THE “remarkable” discovery of two small fragments of inscribed clay at the British Museum will cast vital new light on a 2,500-year-old cylinder bearing what is often described as the world’s first charter of human rights, it has been claimed….

The cylinder was written in 539BC on the orders of Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian empire, after he conquered Babylon and freed the Jews and other peoples held captive there, while ushering in religious freedom.

Here an ancient Persian man deemed “Messiah” and “Christ” by a group of people is likewise renowned for “ushering in religious freedom” and inscribing one of the world’s first known documents addressing human rights. Meanwhile his modern heirs are infamous as some of the worst human-rights abusers in the world, with little to no religious freedom under their tyranny. Who can honestly contend that human creation progresses linearly rather than cyclically?

It is time for a resurgence of the Persian spirit, as exemplified in the legends of Cyrus the Great and his civilized charter for human rights.

Acharya S

January 19, 2010 9:05 | by Jacques Attali

As often, a natural event can be used as a metaphor for a social phenomenon.
And, to describe and understand crises, nothing is better than the metaphor
of an earthquake.

First, an economic crisis, like any earthquake, is the result of an
accumulation of imbalances, consequence of long movements, followed by a
sudden break. In the case of geology, the long trend is the continental
drift; in the case of the economy, it is the fall of the centers of power,
from one ocean to another. Both of these trends bring about accumulations of imbalances (in one case, geological; in the other, financial) being
translated by breaks (in one case, earthquakes; in the other, crises).

In both cases, there is very often before the disaster, a lack of concern
for the risks involved and a refusal to take seriously the alarmist
predictions, there is also extreme inequality in the treatment of victims,
there are countless replicas, shaking or relapses, extending the initial
chaos, there is still a chaotic management of relief and support, and
finally a quasi immediate loss of memory, once the situation returns back to
normal, of the underlying reasons of the disaster.

The metaphor goes even further, because earthquakes have an economic impact.

Not only because they destroy everything they are called to reconstruct, and
provide opportunities for public expenditure, so necessary, according to
Keynes, for the resumption of growth; but above all because living in an
earthquake zone is a constant call to newness, change, inventivity. This
leads to the emergence of a culture of vigilance, of the precarious, of
being light, nomadic, of the short-lived; to an acceptance of modernity,
the condition for progress.

No wonder that among the most creative lands of humanity, we find at the
forefront some of the most seismically active lands: Greece, Italy,
Flanders, California, Japan, all have, each in turn, experienced the threat
of earthquakes as an incentive to change, as an appeal to what the Greeks
called "the tyranny of the new." And Haiti has done better than anyone else
in the world, demonstrating the only creativity that it could afford,
cultural creativity, one that puts everything into perspective, in a
constant search for surpassing oneself and the beautiful.

It would be wise to learn this lesson from the current tragedy: the wealth
of humanity comes from its capacity to imagine the coming changes and to
live them the best way possible; and for this to admit that can only survive
those who are capable of giving meaning to the destruction of the past; and
to understand that wealth always comes from "creative destruction" of which
Joseph Schumpeter, the greatest 20th century economist spoke, far more
discerning than John Maynard Keynes.

At least, may this terrible tragedy serve this purpose. And may Haiti be
rebuilt (who would dare talk about "rebuilding" when it comes to such
slums?). So Haitians can finally make their art not a refuge in their misery
but a way to live with dignity their brilliant contribution to History.

j@attali.com

© L’Express

Note: Conversation avec Jacques Attali

http://blogs.lexpress.fr/attali/

Jacques Attali (born 1 November 1943 in Algiers, Algeria) is a French economist and scholar. From 1981 to 1991, he was an advisor to President François Mitterrand.

Foreign Policy’s First Annual List of the 100 Top Global Thinkers | Foreign Policy: http://bit.ly/8aLXLi

#86 Jacques Attali French Economist

© Matthieu Ricard (born 1946) is a Buddhist monk who resides at Shechen Tennyi Dargyeling Monastery in Nepal.

Recently the Dalai Lama Center Canada organized a Peace Summit in Vancouver with the Dalai Lama and other Nobel Prize winners and speakers. One evening the rock singer and humanitarian Bob Geldof, whose Live Aid concerts have raised 100s of millions of dollars for Africa, made this passionate plea:

“For most of us, all we can do when witnessing suffering is to put our hand in our pocket. If a million of us do that, it is a lot of people, a lot of help, and governments should take note. We need to keep children alive long enough so that they can become the doctors and engineers of tomorrow. Without that something will wither and die inside of us.

Many of these children don’t have parents because of man-made mistakes like wars. In my life I have met extraordinary people such as Mother Theresa. She would tell me that she saw the suffering of Christ on the broken backs of the poor. I don’t see that. I don’t see God. I see the malignant hand of man laid bare. And if that is so, it can be remedied, because it we have done it and we can undo it. We can say: “Enough!” All this is the symptom of poverty revealed in lack of education and in ill health.

In terms of global wealth, the need is infinitesimal if the political will would be there. How many times do we have to manifest the will of the people to the politician and say: “GET-THIS-DONE!” How many times do we have to create African children’s choirs and pop concerts in order to convince human beings to join in the glory of humanity? What are we – a circus or a society?

In truth, the real need represents only a tiny proportion of national budgets.

In the case of America, it is 0.16% of the national economy. It is not that Americans are selfish. Surveys show that when asked what percentage of their GDP do they believe goes into foreign aid, Americans say: “10%”. And when asked “it that enough”, they say “no”. But when they actually find out that it is only 0.16%, they are dismayed.”

The Commission for Africa has requested a doubling of aid by 2010 that will total 50 billion US dollars. Three months ago, one private bank in Britain was given 75 billion pounds within 30 minutes to save it from going under.

Yet a billion people will go down, and the cost is less that one private British company, in an economic system representing more than 50 trillion per annum. And one of the world’s richest economies can’t find a fraction of that.

We really are a joke.

When we break our promise to the poor, we break the most sacred promise, because breaking this promise kills people.

About Matthew Ricard

Walter Mischel

Columbia University

Paul Meehl, in one of his last public speeches, memorably noted that most clinical psychologists select their methods like kids make choices in a candy store: They look around, maybe sample a bit, and choose what they like, whatever feels good to them.

New report in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, the result of a major two-year analysis that lays out the ugly truth behind this shady industry.

“Many clinical psychologists today, perhaps the majority, are deeply ambivalent about the role of science in informing their practice,” the authors write.

This report wasn’t written by some unhappy fringe or radical group looking to discredit psychology. It was written by a group of top psychologists, some of the few rays of light who see the darkness engulfing their profession.” William Campbell Douglass II, M.D.

Connecting Clinical Practice to Scientific Progress

by Walter Mischel (pdf file)

Copyrights: http://www.psychologicalscience.org

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Walter Mischel

Walter Mischel (1930- ) is an American psychologist specializing in personality theory and social psychology. He is the Robert Johnston Niven Professor of Humane Letters in the Department of Psychology at Columbia University.

Early life

Mischel was born in 1930 in Vienna, Austria, from which he fled with his family to the United States after the Nazi occupation in 1938.^[1] He grew up in Brooklyn, New York and studied under George Kelly and Julian Rotter at Ohio State University, where he received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology in 1956.

Professional career

Mischel taught at the University of Colorado from 1956 to 1958, at Harvard University from 1958 to 1962, and at Stanford University from 1962 to 1983. Since 1983, Mischel has been in the Department of Psychology at Columbia University.

Mischel was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2004 and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1991. In 2007, Mischel was elected president of the Association for Psychological Science. Mischel’s other honors include the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association, the Distinguished Scientist Award of the Society of Experimental Social Psychologists, the Distinguished Contributions to Personality Award of the Society of Social and Personality Psychologists, and the Distinguished Scientist Award of American Psychological Association’s Division of Clinical Psychology. He is past editor of Psychological Review and past president of the American Psychological Association Division of Social and Personality Psychology and of the Association for Research in Personality.

Contributions to personality theory

In 1968, Mischel published the now classic monograph, Personality and Assessment, which created a paradigm crisis in personality psychology that changed the agenda of the field for decades. Mischel showed that study after study failed to support the fundamental traditional assumption of personality theory, that an individual’s behavior with regard to a trait (e.g. conscientiousness, sociability) is highly consistent across diverse situations. Instead, Mischel’s analyses revealed that the individual’s behavior, when closely examined, was highly dependent upon situational cues, rather than expressed consistently across diverse situations that differed in meaning.

Mischel made the case that the field of personality psychology was searching for consistency in the wrong places. Instead of treating situations as the noise or “error of measurement” in personality psychology, Mischel’s work proposed that by including the situation as it is perceived by the person and by analyzing behavior in its situational context, the consistencies that characterize the individual would be found. He argued that these individual differences would not be expressed in consistent cross-situational behavior, but instead, he suggested that consistency would be found in distinctive but stable patterns of if-then, situation-behavior relations that form contextualized, psychologically meaningful “personality signatures” (e.g., “she does A when X, but B when Y”).

These signatures of personality were in fact revealed in a large observational study of social behavior across multiple repeated situations over time (Mischel & Shoda, 1995). Contradicting the classic assumptions, the data showed that individuals who were similar in average levels of behavior, for example in their aggression, nevertheless differed predictably and dramatically in the types of situations in which they aggressed. As predicted by Mischel, they were characterized by highly psychologically informative if-then behavioral signatures. Collectively, this work has allowed a new way to conceptualize and assess both the stability and variability of behavior that is produced by the underlying personality system, and has opened a window into the dynamic processes within the system itself (Mischel, 2004).

In a second direction, beginning in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, Mischel pioneered work illuminating the ability to delay gratification and to exert self-control in the face of strong situational pressures and emotionally “hot” temptations. His studies with preschoolers in the late 1960s, often referred to as “the marshmallow experiment“, examined the processes and mental mechanisms that enable a young child to forego immediate gratification and to wait instead for a larger desired but delayed reward. Continuing research with these original participants has examined how preschool delay of gratification ability links to development over the life course, and may predict a variety of important outcomes (e.g., SAT scores, social and cognitive competence, educational attainment, and drug use), and can have significant protective effects against a variety of potential vulnerabilities.^[1] This work also opened a route to research on temporal discounting in decision-making, and most importantly into the mental mechanisms that enable cognitive and emotional self-control, thereby helping to demystify the concept of “willpower” (Mischel et al., 1989; Mischel & Ayduk, 2004).

References

External links

• Columbia University Department of Psychology: Walter Mischel

elected bibliography

Media reports

• Lehrer, Jonah. “Department of Science: Don’t!” May 18, 2009. The New Yorker. [1]

Scientific publications

• Mischel, W. (1968). Personality and assessment. New York: Wiley.
• Mischel, W. (1973). Toward a cognitive social learning reconceptualization of personality. Psychological Review, 80, 252-283.
• Mischel, W., Shoda, Y., & Rodriguez, M. L. (1989). Delay of gratification in children. Science, 244, 933-938.
• Mischel, W. & Shoda, Y. (1995). A cognitive-affective system theory of personality: Reconceptualizing situations, dispositions, dynamics, and invariance in personality structure. Psychological Review, 102, 246-268.
• Metcalfe, J., & Mischel, W. (1999). A hot/cool system analysis of delay of gratification: Dynamics of willpower. Psychological Review, 106, 3-19.
• Mischel, W., & Ayduk, O. (2004). “Willpower in a cognitive-affective processing system: The dynamics of delay of gratification”. In R. F. Baumeister & K. D. Vohs (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation: Research, Theory, and Applications (pp. 99-129). New York: Guilford.
• Mischel, W. (2004). “Toward an integrative science of the person”. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 1-22.

Autobiography

• Mischel, W. (2007). “Walter Mischel”. In G. Lindzey & W. M. Runyan (Eds.), A History of Psychology in Autobiography (Vol. IX, pp. 229-267). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Money, Power, Wisdom:

September 20, 2009

Before you read any further, let me warn you. This blog post is not typical of what I usually write – and is DEFINITELY NOT for everyone!

If the “existential dilemma” leaves you cold (you lucky dog, you!), or your “search for meaning” rarely surfaces, and (when it does) is easily sublimated by a bar of chocolate in the fridge, then you won’t find this interesting.

I’ll go further. You may find it shocking, disturbing and scary. Stop. You have been warned!

(But no, I’m not joking!)

Still with me. Ok. Let’s start at the very beginning (the very best way to start, sings Julie Andrews in “The Sound of Music”, by the way!)

Late last night, I was reading a blog called TECHNIUM. It’s by Kevin Kelly, the guy who wrote the awesome “1,000 True Fans” post I reference often.

This post had the intriguing title “The Unabomber Was Right”. I started reading – and found myself instantly pulled into the narrative. And (gasp!) nodding my head in agreement with some of Kaczynski’s theory!

Look, I’m no Luddite. In fact, I work in TWO of possibly the most technologically sophisticated industries in the world today – a very specialized branch of medicine (pediatric cardiac surgery), and the cutting-edge, rapidly advancing, constantly evolving arena of Internet business.

And I love what I do, and how I do it – and realize it would be impossible to do without technology.

Yet I found myself AGREEING with some quoted excerpts of the manifesto (which, by the way, I haven’t read fully – though I might at some point, to see what else is in there).

As I wended my way through the very long post on Technium’s blog, my mind recalled a similar article (from April 2000) by Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, and for a long time, it’s chief technology officer and software architect. That provocative piece, published in WIRED magazine, was titled “Why The Future Does Not Need Us”.

That article moved me to deep thought, and even resulted in a letter in response that I emailed to Wired, though I’m not sure if it was ever published in the magazine. (I’ve included it below, if you’re interested in reading it)

It also led me to study the work of futurologist Ray Kurzweil, and I read his paradigm shifting book, “The Age of Spiritual Machines” which first introduced me to the concept of a “downloadable consciousness”! (And with such relentless logic, damn it!) If you want your socio-technological foundations shaken to their roots, read that book – and be prepared to be surprised.

Anyway, the parallels AND THE DIFFERENCES came to mind – because where Bill Joy ended his essay on a more or less nihilistic tone of hopelessness, Kevin Kelly chose (like me) to see the ‘positive’ – and highlighted the expanded range of choice that technology has permitted us all.

So even if technology is evil and all-pervasive to the point of killing off all alternative (non-technology based) options in the long run (and no one can say that will happen, though logically it does appear likely), at least in the process enormous advantages/benefits will have been conferred on humanity.

Today, I believe, we have already crossed the Rubicon. Realistically, we can no longer tune out technology. Tell me… can we shut down the Internet? Can we run stock exchanges without computers? Heck, most of us can’t even make our early morning brew without extensively using ‘technology’!

So are we on the slippery slope of self-annhilation and subservience to a nameless, faceless force called TECHNOLOGY, the Darth Vader of our Milky Way galaxy?

I went to bed with that thought lurking under the surface of my awareness, mildly disturbing but not too worrisome (you’ll see why if you read my reply to Bill Joy’s article below)

Anyway, what happened today was kind of cool. Events like this make me wonder about the role (and reality) of serendipity, coincidence and chance in our lives.

I’m halfway through reading the “Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin”, but sought out a different book to read over dinner. We had bought seven new books a few days back at the bookstore, and the one I picked today was Isaac Asimov’s.

Now, this book has two stories – “The Caves of Steel” and “The Rest of the Robots” – and for some reason, I selected the second one to read first!

Flipping over to page 8, I read the introduction, which included this passage – and was stunned at the relevance and congruity with the line of thinking that had been occupying my mind subliminally since last night!

Here’s what Asimov says about robots (in the context of why he started writing about them in his sci-fi novels):

“In the 1930s, I became a science-fiction reader, and I quickly grew tired of this dull hundred-times-old tale. Robots were created, and destroyed their creator. As a person interested in science, I resented the purely Faustian interpretation of science.

“Knowledge has its dangers, yes, but is the response to be a retreat from knowledge? Are we prepared then to return to the ape and forfeit the very essence of humanity? Or is knowledge to be used as itself a barrier against the danger it brings?

“In other words, Faust must indeed face Mephistopheles, but Faust does not have to be defeated!

“Knives are manufactured with hilts so that they may be grasped safely, stairs possess banisters, electric wiring is insulated, pressure cookers have safety valves – in every artifact, thought is put into minimizing danger. Sometimes, the safety achieved is insufficient because of limitations imposed by the nature of the universe or the nature of the human mind. However, the effort is there.

“Consider a robot then, as simply another artifact. It is not a sacrilegious invasion of the domain of the Almighty, any more (or any less) than any other artifact is. As a machine, a robot will surely be designed for safety, as far as possible. If robots are so advanced that they can mimic thought processes of human beings, then surely the nature of those thought processes will be designed by human engineers and built-in safeguards wil be added. The safety may not be perfect (what is?), but it will be as complete as men can make it.”

WOW!

Asimov’s philosophy regarding technological advances so closely parallels mine (as reflected in the letter below) that I cannot help but wonder if I had read this passage many years ago (and forgotten about it), and then re-surfaced it in my own paper… with the tinge of fatalism that my cultural upbringing has inculcated in many facets of my thinking.

Anyway, what are your thoughts (if any) on this subject? Read my letter below, and then (if you feel like it), leave a comment on the blog.

My email to WIRED magazine, after reading Bill Joy’s article:

THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY IS …… ‘HUMANOIDITY’ ?!

As a paediatric cardiac surgeon working with children’s heart defects, almost every issue Bill Joy brought up in this article is related what I do on a day-to-day basis. Technologic advances, ethical issues related to such developments, interfering with Nature’s course, exploring new frontiers of science, are all an integral part of my professional work. And hence, areas which I’ve thought about in depth, time and again.

Joy’s article brought up many debatable issues. Here are some of my comments and thoughts.

I agree with the basic premise. Technology will soon advance to the level where machines will become intelligent – even more so than the average human – and will do things better. Maybe someday soon, we’ll come to look upon machines as indispensible to our lives.

I also accept that such progress comes at a price, and an enormous risk. But feel the benefits derived on an everyday basis, as also on an evolutionary level, outweigh the dangers.

While the possibility that the future might see us humans get integrated with an intelligent robot is unsettling, once you get used to the concept, it becomes increasingly acceptable. Especially if, as Joy thinks, it will happen slowly, universally, painlessly. Why worry about it? Like Death, after all, it will be upon you before you realize – and then you won’t need to!

Are we constructing tools that may replace our species? Well, I’d prefer to think the tools we are working on are enhancing our species, helping it evolve into a more powerful, extinction-proof form.

As more and more computing and processing power becomes available to us, that itself will act as an impetus to unleash more of our own brain-power in a synergizing and snow-balling manner. And when you consider that barely 5% of our cerebral capacity has been tapped, you begin to realize that all isn’t lost with the human race. In fact, we might have barely scratched the surface in terms of species/intelligence evolution.

Certainly, there is the uncomfortable risk that we might destroy ourselves in the process. But isn’t that true about any revolutionary development in history?

I believe the human species is innately pre-programmed to survive – and in the process evolve to become ever better, albeit, maybe, losing what is today its essential *humanity*

Looked at in this sense, work on today’s cutting edge technology is a step in that evolutionary process that ensures survival of the fittest species – OURS.

Shouldn’t we be proceeding with caution ?

We are. Nature’s built-in safety valve makes certain that we come up with the most fascinating, innovative advances and breakthroughs ONLY when we are ready for them.

Not much has changed in the basic processes of the human brain or mind in the past century. But look at the advances it has been able to think up, create and implement over the same period. Why didn’t they happen earlier? Surely, humans *could* have thought up the same discoveries and inventions earlier than they did. I prefer to believe there is an inherent timetable that everyone conforms to, knowingly or not, which determines the speed of our evolution.

If an intelligent, self-replicating robot does indeed come into existence in 2030, it is perhaps because human-kind will then be ready for it. We will not survive an encounter with such super-human robots.

But are we sure humankind will try and engage in a battle of wits or strength with such robots? Or even if we do, isn’t it also a possibility that our own intelligence – aided by our harnessing of the *intelligence* of such robots – would have grown to the level that we can do so with a reasonable chance of success?

I’m convinced we’ll have ways to integrate the strengths of both, maybe in the process merge humans with robots in a manner hard to imagine today. The result may be, as Danny Hillis suggests, robotizing of humans. I personally feel it will be the reverse, and we’ll find ‘humanoid’ robots, humans with the processing power of robots but essentially, in all non-technical aspects – emotions, feelings, intuition – human.

And far from being dystopian, that would be utopian, wouldn’t it ? Because it would retain what is the essence of *man*, while also retaining whatever is the upside of mechanization – intellectual superiority, immortality, technical excellence, productivity.

As I see it, this scenario is infinitely preferable to the one created by dabbling in genetic manipulations. After all, how much more dangerous to mankind could a destructive, super-intelligent robot be when compared to incarnations of evil in human form, as for instance the German Chancellor Adolf Hitler?

In genetics, as in Nature, no rules are concrete, knowledge of the whole is miniscule, and dabbling with one aspect could have immeasurable effects on many others. That is a cauldron which, if stirred wrong, could throw up nightmare situations I don’t even dare imagine.

Inequality among humans is an unpleasant fact of life. Trying to correct this by genetic manipulation is not the best answer. And so, if indeed such genetic engineering results in another species with unequal groups, would we have significantly altered the status quo in its very basic sense? No.

As regards using genetic engineering, I’m worried irrespective of the purpose – military, scientific, terrorist or accident. Because we don’t have the slightest idea of the impact on the entire ecosystem, or even in isolation on a particular species alone, over time.

Any modification or manipulation of Nature can be put to the best possible use. And truly enough, this is the motivation of the scientists seeking to unlock these secrets. And just as inevitably, there is the certainty that those very developments will be perverted by a minority to suit their narrow minded needs.

In the well publicized race to decode the human genome, you see evidence of this trend. While the Human Genome Project researchers followed a plodding, methodical process, maverick geniuses like Dr.Venter short-circuited the system rushing to decode only the functional genes with commercial potential. Therein lies the danger – as the silent, non-functional codons and genes just might hold the secret of Life. And we’d never know – until it was too late.

Nature, or God if you will, has planned for such variety – and built in the safeguards that will protect humanity – or as it might become known later, ‘humanoidity’.

While we can but plan for *foreseeable* dangers of technology and evolution, how can we predict what we don’t know about? For instance, how many would have imagined, just 10 years ago, the impact of the Internet on mankind? Robotics, nanotech and bioengineering are today what the Internet was to mankind a couple of decades earlier – wonders of the future with enormous potential for good and bad, of which we know but little, and can only hope the best.

There are far too many potential situations that could wipe out humanity as we know it, many of them eerily current, and dependent on such insecure safeguards as one man’s (or a small group’s collective) ego or intelligence. A lab accident could release the small-pox virus. A temporarily unbalanced President could hit the nuclear trigger. Lazy computer programmers avoided typing four digits for a year and scared the world into believing in a doomsday as the new millenium rolled in.

Yet they didn’t happen. And – most probably – won’t ever. Why? I’d like to think because Nature ordains it that way!

Business covets a stable, peaceful environment more than does a military or government. It is more likely that a technological innovation with commercial benefits, developed by corporate enterprise, would be used for peaceful purposes than those invented by a military research lab for defensive, or as is more common, acquisitive intent.

Perhaps the marketplace, with its competitiveness and scope for enormous profits, will be the best safety check to prevent harmful application of the new technology. So let’s just ensure enormous business profitability from those technologies! And as for governments, the destructive potential itself will be the most effective deterrent against its damaging deployment, just as detente evolved as a direct consequence of the atomic bomb blasts.

While it is true that the ease of availability of this technology to the common man is disconcerting, is there any reason to believe Joe-next-door finds the prospect of annhilating human-kind any more exciting a prospect than leaders of nations?

As to the question of tampering with and altering the *awareness of Nature and the order of life*, doesn’t almost any scientific advance do just that, in a sense ?

Take for instance the treatment of a serious heart birth defect called Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome or HLHS. While initial efforts at cure resulted in over 95% mortality, it is perseverance that has brought about current survival figures in excess of 90%. Naturally, left alone, these patients would ALL have died within one year of life. Now if that isn’t tampering with the *order of life*, I don’t know what is!

Yet no one today criticizes the efforts of those early pioneers. Their initial efforts were just as inefficient, the systems they built were just as fragile to begin with, as today’s efforts with robotics and software are. But over time, these systems and processes become robust, stable, effective.

Do you know what is scary about this? No one seems to condemn these efforts as strongly as they did the first nuclear explosion, or cloning, or experiments at creating intelligent robots. Why? Because, on the surface, we are restoring health to a human life. No one pauses to wonder why, and indeed if, we should try and influence Nature’s course as it affects that one patient. It is taken for granted. Indeed to REFUSE to offer this treatment would be consider unethical!

What if there were some other, hitherto unknown, yet enormously serious *other* reasons for which that particular patient wouldn’t have survived *naturally* ? And what if those very other reasons – of which we do not know anything – could be harmful to the ecosystem, in a broader sense?

There are too many unknowns in the biologic arena, much more than the relatively better controlled area of robotics and automation technology. Yet we dabble uncaringly in these bio-spheres, indeed are even encouraged to continue doing so – simply because we see no harm in the near term. The same might be true of other tech fields – nanotechnology and robotics. And the trend will continue – until disaster strikes. And then, it will be too late to worry!

Yet we talk about shielding ourselves from the terrible consequences of these exciting new technologies. But the truth is we cannot shield ourselves, or hide from them by abandoning the planet or covering it with a star-wars style barrier. There is only one sure-fire way to *protect* ourselves, and that is to abandon any efforts at developing such technologies.

And that is absurd, on the face of it. Maybe even more dangerous as well, since a lack of progress can be construed as regression, and could reduce the survival advantage our species has built up over centuries.

Indeed, many of the advances made in earlier years by our forebears might have been viewed as *threatening* by their peers, been conceived as likely to annhilate the species at the time. Yet we are still alive to tell the tale, and none the worse for wear – indeed better off in many ways.

We live in an imperfect world. Yet that world hasn’t ended. Despite many predictions to the contrary, we have survived and thrived. Yes, I believe we are pre-programmed to survive, no matter what we need to do, how we need to change and evolve to do so.

And it is naive to assume that we can hold back now. Put the genie back into the bottle and throw it out to sea. Throttle the progress that has been made already.

Maybe that was possible a few decades ago. Now that Dolly has been cloned, Venter has patented significant chunks of Man’s genetic make-up and molecular electronics has risen on the horizon of techno-research, we have embarked on a journey of no return. The only relinquishment possible will be when one or many parties have achieved their ends.

But we still hold the rudder. We can navigate within safe seas, discover new lands, explore uncharted waters, play safe and do good. Or instead we could become the Grand Pirates of the ocean of life, attacking innocent passers-by, spreading death and destruction, and ultimately pay the supreme price of self-annhilation.

As always, the choice is ours.

——————————————————————————–

A Message From My Heart..

From Dr.Mani Sivasubramanian

Reader's Digest magazine influenced my life - twice.

In 1977, with a story about a living God.  A heart surgeon
named Denton A.Cooley.  He was glamorous, a pioneer and
entrepreneur.  Operated on princes, presidents and prime
ministers.  In all, over 75,000 operations.  Founded the
world-famous Texas Heart Institute in Houston.  

I wanted to be like him.

A 1989 issue I read during my medical internship featured
a neurosurgeon named Tom Peters.  One sentence in his
interview remains burned into my mind:

"I don't accept children dying."

This time, I didn't just *want* to be like him.

I LIVED LIKE HIM.

I too won't accept a child dying.  I made myself a promise.

Anything... ANYTHING that is within my power to prevent it
happening, I will do.

   = = = = = 

1989 - It was the year I grew up.

When I realized - and accepted - that life is unfair.

1989 was when a 22-year old held my hand as his life ebbed away

1989 was when I lost a loved 8-year old niece to an untreatable
kidney ailment

1989 was when I watched helplessly as a teenager succumbed to
a terrible severe viral infection.

It hurt.  Terribly.  Deeply.

And proved beyond doubt that life isn't fair.

But that's ok.

We just need to tweak the odds - in our favor.

That's what technological advances, evolution - indeed survival
itself - is all about.

Tweaking the odds in our favor.

   = = = = = 

A child's life is precious.  VERY precious.

It's loss - crushing.  Mind numbing.

It may be Nature's law - but I don't like it.

Never will.

I won't accept a child dying.

Many forms of heart birth defects make survival impossible.

Unless they're repaired.

That's one reason I became a pediatric heart surgeon.

Apart from the challenge, the technical, intellectual and
emotional puzzles the speciality poses its practitioners.

The latter, sadly, creates robots.  Unemotional automatons
that get caught up in their craft, forgetting or ignoring
the human element.  The stress, pain, trauma, helplessness
associated with the problem.

The COST.

Heart birth defects have a unique social dimension.  Young
families, just starting out on their careers and settling
down, with little if any financial cushion, suddenly are
confronted with a daunting choice...

Raise the money - often paralyzingly huge sums - or watch
your child suffer... or worse.

Most of my work online aims to tackle this facet of the
complex problem.

I can - and do - handle the medical and emotional elements.
But alone, I can't help with the financial ones.

That's why I need YOU.

The children do.

And thanks to the heartwarming generous outpouring from a
group of amazing folks, at least 23 children will live.


Without you, they may not have.

YOU have made a difference.

YOU are special.

I'm honored to consider you my friend!

Thank you -- from my heart!

Dr.Mani Sivasubramanian

Thank you for supporting the Heart Kids Blogathon.
http://www.HeartKidsBlogathon.info

If you'd like to contribute, there's still time. Go to:


http://www.CHDinfo.com/howdonate.htm

-------------------------------------------------------

MORE ABOUT Dr. Mani:

Dr. Mani: An Internet Mogul With a Heart

Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian has been compared to Mother Theresa, especially by
poor families in India that have a child living with a congenital heart
defect.

Dr. Sivasubramanian, better known simply as "Dr. Mani," is a well known
author that handles health-related topics online. His first calling in life
was cardiology. He has performed lifesaving heart operations for numerous
children.

Already impacted by the work of heart surgeon Dr. Denton A. Cooley, founder
of the Texas Heart Institute, Dr. Mani had made a decision to become a heart
surgeon himself. In 1989 Dr. Mani read a quote in a medical journal by a
neurosurgeon named Dr. Tom Peters, who said: "I don't accept children
dying." Dr. Mani realized he didn't accept children dying either.

In fact, that same year Dr. Mani lost his own eight year old niece to kidney
disease. He regularly watched other children and young people die from
illness. He had watched as doctors that he worked with became hardened to
death and suffering. He vowed that, even though he witnessed suffering every
day, death would not become just a routine part of his job as a physician.

Dr. Mani knew he that, as a heart surgeon, he could make a tremendous impact
on the lives of children with congenital heart defects. But he wasn't
satisfied with simply staying in the hospital and wielding a scalpel. He
wanted to get involved with the families of the children, real human beings,
whose lives were turned upside-down by the misfortune of being born with a
heart defect.

So, in 2003, he launched the Dr. Mani Children Heart Foundation. Dr. Mani
also became a well known and award winning Internet and business
entrepreneur. He has raised over $84,000 to provide life saving heart
operations for children whose families could not otherwise afford the
operations. The children helped by Dr. Mani's foundation would likely have
died without his intervention.

Dr. Mani continues to raise awareness about congenital heart disease around
the world. His foundation maintains a growing base of supporters, currently
at approximately 700 members. He also sponsors major fundraising events. One
of these is The Heart Kids Blogathon, an annual event which was started in
2003. He and his foundation are also an integral part of "A Day for Hearts,"
a fundraising event that falls on February 14 each year. The day is
dedicated to raising awareness of, and generating support for, congenital
heart disease.

Dr. Mani accepts that life isn't always fair. But he also knows that it only
takes a little bit of dedication to "tweak the odds in our favor."

Copyright © 2009 www.dr-mani.com inc. All rights reserved.

——————————————————————————————-

Curriculum Vitae

Dr. Mani

Hans Rosling:

Global health expert;

data visionary

© Gapminder Foundation

As a doctor and researcher, Hans Rosling identified a new paralytic disease induced by hunger in rural Africa. Now he looks at the bigger picture of social and economic development with his remarkable trend-revealing software.

Gapminder is a non-profit venture promoting sustainable global development and achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by increased use and understanding of statistics and other information about social, economic and environmental development at local, national and global levels.

TED and Reddit’s 10 questions to Hans Rosling

Posted September 11, 2009

10 questions to HansThe Internet community Reddit.com got to ask questions to Hans Rosling. Here is his answers.

Watch this Video

TED-talk: Let my dataset change your mindset

Posted September 11, 2009

TED-talk at the US State Department, summer 2009.Global trends over the last 200 years, the development of the HIV/AIDS-epidemic and how China is catching up.

 

 

Watch this Video

Crisis narrows China-UK gap

Posted June 2, 2009

200 years ago, United Kingdom was a leading nation of the world. See UK’s journey to present time – and how China is closing in.

Watch this Video

HIV: New facts and stunning data visuals

Posted May 13, 2009

25 years of the HIV epidemic in easily understood graphics.Showing the big differences within Africa.

Watch this Video

Swine flu alert! News/Death ratio: 8176

Posted May 8, 2009

News/Death ratio for Swine flu and TB. Shows media hype and neglect, respectively!

Watch this Video

Human rights & democracy statistics

Posted May 8, 2009

Human Rights & Democracy statisticscorrelates poorly with progress in Health and Wealth.

Watch this Video

200 years that changed the world

Posted May 7, 2009

200 years of history in 4.5 minutes.Let Hans Rosling guide you through the developments of the last two centuries.

Watch this Video

Lung Cancer Statistics

Posted May 7, 2009

Iceland “leading” march towards gender equity in lung cancer.

Watch this Video

Prostate Cancer Statistics

Posted May 7, 2009

Prostate cancer most common in the US. Overdiagnosis or not?

Watch this Video

Breast Cancer Statistics

Posted May 7, 2009

Breast Cancer increases with incomeBut so does the chances of saving women with cancer.

Watch this Video

Liver Cancer Statistics

Posted May 7, 2009

Vaccination, but not high-income,can prevent liver cancer.

Watch this Video

Colon Cancer Statistics

Posted May 7, 2009

High-income ’cause’ and may cure colon cancer!

Watch this Video

Stomach Cancer Statistics

Posted May 7, 2009

Stomach cancer highest in middle income countries.

Watch this Video

Cervical Cancer Statistics

Posted May 6, 2009

Cervical Cancer can be prevented and treated.Today it is most common among women in low-income countries.

Watch this Video

Shanghai, New York, Mumbai

Posted April 2, 2009

Is Shanghai healthier than New York?And how do Washington D.C. and Mumbai rank?

Watch this Video

Yes they can!

Posted February 16, 2009

Swedish students say: “They can never live like us”Time to rethink!

Watch this Video

Poor beat rich in MDG race

Posted February 16, 2009

See how Bangladesh, Brazil, and Egyptreduce child mortality faster than Sweden!

Watch this Video

What stops population growth?

Posted January 25, 2009

Poor children may as well die?Watch this presentation to learn what population growth really is.

Watch this Video

Debunking myths about the “third world”

Posted November 14, 2008

You’ve never seen data presented like this. Hans Rosling’s presentation at the TED-conference in 2006 has been seen by millions over the internet.

Watch this Video

The seemingly impossible is possible

Posted November 13, 2008

Hans Rosling’s 2007 TED-speech makes the seemingly impossible possible. See complex global trends turned into lively animations.

Watch this Video

Reducing Child Mortality

Posted November 6, 2008

Nearly 10 million children under five die every year.How can child mortality be cut by two thirds by 2015?

Watch this Video

Chimpanzees know better?

Posted October 16, 2008

An acclaimed lecture from Google Zeitgeist 2007.Hans Rosling uses Gapminder World to shed light on differences in the way we live around the world.

Watch this Video

A Slum Insight

Posted April 14, 2008

Urbanization will continue, can slum be made history?Insight into the needs of slum dwellers.

Watch this Video

Carbon dioxide (Energy)

Posted January 24, 2008

CO2 emissions in USA and China compared.How to produce electricity cheaper than from coal.

Watch this Video

Public services

Posted January 17, 2008

To have a fair chance in life, everyone needs public services.Good information is needed in order to provide good public service.

Watch this Video

Turkey meets France

Posted December 3, 2007

Turkey is definitely catching up in a public health perspective.See how it compares to France.

Watch this Video

Maternal mortality

Posted November 19, 2007

How many women die every year during pregnancy and childbirth? Do we even know?

Watch this Video

Chile, a developing country?

Posted November 15, 2007

What’s the difference between Chile, Cuba and the USA?Another reason why “developing/developed” is an outdated concept.

Watch this Video

10 Years In, 10 Years Out

Posted November 5, 2007

OIL, HIV, CO2, USD.Four topics, four acronyms.

Watch this Video

Bangladesh Miracle

Posted October 26, 2007

Have you heard about the miracle that has happened in Bangladesh?Watch the video to find out.

Watch this Video

Globalization

Posted October 24, 2007

The eradication of poverty is within human range.The percentage of people living in “extreme poverty” has gone down.

Watch this Video

Human Development Trends

Posted October 13, 2007

Human Development from 1960 to 2001.In focus: Life Expectancy and Income

Watch this Video

Urbanization

Posted September 17, 2007

The urban challenge. Hans Rosling shows the last 40 years of development of urbanization.

Watch this Video

Health, Money & Sex in Sweden

Posted June 26, 2007

300 years of Swedish history.How economic growth, public health and sexual rights have changed.

Watch this Video

 

About

We are a modern “museum” that helps making the world understandable, using the Internet. Gapminder was founded in Stockholm by Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund and Hans Rosling on February 25, 2005.

Gapminder is registered as a Foundation at Stockholm County Administration Board (Länstyrelsen i Stockholm) with registration number (organisationsnummer) 802424-7721. (The constitution can be found here) Economic administration Gapminder Foundation c/o Ekonomi Klara Papper AB (att: Johanna Englund) Box 22 312 SE-104 22 Stockholm Office c/o Karolinska Institutet, Division of Global Health Nobels väg 9 SE- 171 77 Stockholm Sweden Organisation number 802424-7721 Gapminder does not award any grants.

It is an operating foundation that provides sevices as defined by the board, sometimes as collaborative projects with universities, UN organisations, public agencies and non-governmental organisations.

The initial activity was to continue development of the Trendalyzer software. This software unveils the beauty of statistical time series by converting boring numbers into enjoyable, animated and interactive graphics. The current version of Trendalyzer is available since March 2006 as Gapminder World, a web-service displaying time series of development statistics for all countries.

n March 2006 Google acquired Trendalyzer from the Gapminder Foundation and the team of developers who formerly worked for Gapminder has joined Google in California since April 2007. (History of Gapminder) Gapminder Foundation now fills the Trendalyzer with statistical content and use the resulting animations to fulfill our aim by: Making time series freely available in Gapminder World and Gapminder Countries.

Producing videos, Flash presentations and PDF charts showing major global development trends with animated statistics and colorful graphics.

All with the intention of being a “fact tank” that promotes a fact based world view.

© Gapminder Foundation

Discrimination and abuse wrongly backed by doctrine are damaging society, argues the former US president.

o Jimmy Carter
o CopyrightThe Observer, Sunday 12 July 2009
o Article history

“Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status …” (Article 2, Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)

I have been a practising Christian all my life and a deacon and Bible teacher for many years. My faith is a source of strength and comfort to me, as religious beliefs are to hundreds of millions of people around the world.

So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when th e convention’s leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be “subservient” to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service. This was in conflict with my belief – confirmed in the holy scriptures – that we are all equal in the eyes of God.

This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. It is widespread. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths.

Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women’s equal rights across the world for centuries. The male interpretations of religious texts and the way they interact with, and reinforce, traditional practices justify some of the most pervasive, persistent, flagrant and damaging examples of human rights abuses.

At their most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.

The impact of these religious beliefs touches every aspect of our lives. They help explain why in many countries boys are educated before girls; why girls are told when and whom they must marry; and why many face enormous and unacceptable risks in pregnancy and childbirth because their basic health needs are not met.

In some Islamic nations, women are restricted in their movements, punished for permitting the exposure of an arm or ankle, deprived of education, prohibited from driving a car or competing with men for a job. If a woman is raped, she is often most severely punished as the guilty party in the crime.

The same discriminatory thinking lies behind the continuing gender gap in pay and why there are still so few women in office in Britain and the United States. The root of this prejudice lies deep in our histories, but its impact is felt every day. It is not women and girls alone who suffer. It damages all of us. The evidence shows that investing in women and girls delivers major benefits for everyone in society. An educated woman has healthier children. She is more likely to send them to school. She earns more and invests what she earns in her family.

It is simply self-defeating for any community to discriminate against half its population. We need to challenge these self-serving and out-dated attitudes and practices – as we are seeing in Iran where women are at the forefront of the battle for democracy and freedom.

I understand, however, why many political leaders can be reluctant about stepping into this minefield. Religion, and tradition, are powerful and sensitive area to challenge.

But my fellow Elders and I, who come from many faiths and backgrounds, no longer need to worry about winning votes or avoiding controversy – and we are deeply committed to challenging injustice wherever we see it.

The Elders have decided to draw particular attention to the responsibility of religious and traditional leaders in ensuring equality and human rights. We have recently published a statement that declares: “The justification of discrimination against women and girls on grounds of religion or tradition, as if it were prescribed by a Higher Authority, is unacceptable.”

We are calling on all leaders to challenge and change the harmful teachings and practices, no matter how ingrained, which justify discrimination against women. We ask, in particular, that leaders of all religions have the courage to acknowledge and emphasise the positive messages of dignity and equality that all the world’s major faiths share.

Although not having training in religion or theology, I understand that the carefully selected verses found in the holy scriptures to justify the superiority of men owe more to time and place – and the determination of male leaders to hold onto their influence – than eternal truths. Similar Biblical excerpts could be found to support the approval of slavery and the timid acquiescence to oppressive rulers.

At the same time, I am also familiar with vivid descriptions in the same scriptures in which women are revered as pre-eminent leaders. During the years of the early Christian church women served as deacons, priests, bishops, apostles, teachers and prophets. It wasn’t until the fourth century that dominant Christian leaders, all men, twisted and distorted holy scriptures to perpetuate their ascendant positions within the religious hierarchy.

I know, too, that Billy Graham, one of the most widely respected and revered Christians during my lifetime, did not understand why women were prevented from being priests and preachers. He said: “Women preach all over the world. It doesn’t bother me from my study of the scriptures.”

The truth is that male religious leaders have had – and still have – an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter.

Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world. This is in clear violation not just of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul, Moses and the prophets, Muhammad, and founders of other great religions – all of whom have called for proper and equitable treatment of all the children of God. It is time we had the courage to challenge these views.

• Jimmy Carter was US president from 1977-81. The Elders are an independent group of eminent global leaders, brought together by Nelson Mandela, who offer their influence and experience to support peace building, help address major causes of human suffering and promote the shared interests of humanity.

Excerpts from

The Mind in the Making by

James Harvey Robinson (June 29, 1863–February 16, 1936) was an American historian.

Robinson was born Bloomington, Illinois. He taught history at the University of Pennsylvania (1891–95) and Columbia University (1895–1919), becoming a full professor in 1895.

In 1919, he was one of the founders of the New School for Social Research, of which he was the first director. Through his writings and lectures, in which he stressed the “new history” — the social, scientific, and intellectual progress of humanity rather than merely political happenings — he exerted an important influence on the study and teaching of history. An editor (1892–95) of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, he was also an associate editor (1912–20) of the American Historical Review and president (1929) of the American Historical Association.

——————————————————————

The truest and most profound observations on Intelligence have in the
past been made by the poets and, in recent times, by story-writers.
They have been keen observers and recorders and reckoned freely with
the emotions and sentiments. Most philosophers, on the other hand,
have exhibited a grotesque ignorance of man’s life and have built up
systems that are elaborate and imposing, but quite unrelated to actual
human affairs. They have almost consistently neglected the actual
process of thought and have set the mind off as something apart to be
studied by itself. _But no such mind, exempt from bodily processes,
animal impulses, savage traditions, infantile impressions, conventional
reactions, and traditional knowledge, ever existed_, even in the case
of the most abstract of metaphysicians. Kant entitled his great work
_A Critique of Pure Reason_. But to the modern student of mind pure
reason seems as mythical as the pure gold, transparent as glass, with
which the celestial city is paved.

The fatherhood of God has been preached by Christians for over
eighteen centuries, and the brotherhood of man by the Stoics long
before them. The doctrine has proved compatible with slavery and
serfdom, with wars blessed, and not infrequently instigated, by
religious leaders, and with industrial oppression which it requires a
brave clergyman or teacher to denounce to-day. True, we sometimes have
moments of sympathy when our fellow-creatures become objects of tender
solicitude. Some rare souls may honestly flatter themselves that they
love mankind in general, but it would surely be a very rare soul
indeed who dared profess that he loved his personal enemies–much less
the enemies of his country or institutions. We still worship a tribal
god, and the “foe” is not to be reckoned among his children. Suspicion
and hate are much more congenial to our natures than love, for very
obvious reasons in this world of rivalry and common failure. There is,
beyond doubt, a natural kindliness in mankind which will show itself
under favorable auspices. But experience would seem to teach that it
is little promoted by moral exhortation. This is the only point that
need be urged here. Whether there is another way of forwarding the
brotherhood of man will be considered in the sequel.

NOTES.

[1] George Bernard Shaw reaches a similar conclusion when he
contemplates education in the British Isles. “We must teach
citizenship and political science at school. But must we? There is no
must about it, the hard fact being that we must not teach political
science or citizenship at school. The schoolmaster who attempted it
would soon find himself penniless in the streets without pupils, if
not in the dock pleading to a pompously worded indictment for sedition
against the exploiters. Our schools teach the morality of feudalism
corrupted by commercialism, and hold up the military conqueror, the
robber baron, and the profiteer, as models of the illustrious and
successful.”–_Back to Methuselah_, xii.

6. OUR ANIMAL HERITAGE. THE NATURE OF CIVILIZATION

There are four historical layers underlying the minds of civilized
men–the animal mind, the child mind, the savage mind, and the
traditional civilized mind. We are all animals and never can cease to
be; we were all children at our most impressionable age and can never
get over the effects of that; our human ancestors have lived in
savagery during practically the whole existence of the race, say five
hundred thousand or a million years, and the primitive human mind is
ever with us; finally, we are all born into an elaborate civilization,
the constant pressure of which we can by no means escape.

[13] “If the earth were struck by one of Mr. Wells’s comets, and if,
in consequence, every human being now alive were to lose all the
knowledge and habits which he had acquired from preceding generations
(though retaining unchanged all his own powers of invention and memory
and habituation) nine tenths of the inhabitants of London or New York
would be dead in a month, and 99 per cent of the remaining tenth would
be dead in six months. They would have no language to express their
thoughts, and no thoughts but vague reverie. They could not read
notices, or drive motors or horses. They would wander about, led by
the inarticulate cries of a few naturally dominant individuals,
drowning themselves, as thirst came on, in hundreds at the riverside
landing places, looting those shops where the smell of decaying food

Nous etions deja si vieux quand nous sommes nes.–ANATOLE FRANCE.

Full Book:

The Mind in the Making
The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform

Original date of publication (French) June 3d 2009 7:21 | by
JACQUES ATTALI

Contrary to what they want us to
believe, the crisis deepens: in the United
States, all deficits are rising; banks defaulting are worsening, and even if
Wall Street is up, its value is still 40% lower than that of October 2007.
In addition,everyone whispers within informed circles, that we should expect
many more tsunamis: on private real estate loans, on credit cards, and on
commercial real estate.

It’s not a new recovery plan that we need, but a true awareness of the
cultural and political urgencies. And in particular a radical questioning of
the division of powers between those who create and those who finance, the
condition, once again, of our survival.

————————————————————————————————————
Translation from French made possible with permission of Mr. Jacques Attali

http://blogs.lexpress.fr/attali/

————————————————————————————————————

Mr. Jacques Attali Jacques Attali (born 1 November 1943 in Algiers, Algeria)
is a French economist and scholar. From 1981 to 1991, he was an advisor to
President François Mitterrand, In April 1991 he became the first President
of the London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the
financial institution established by western governments to assist the
countries of eastern and central Europe and the former Soviet Union in their
transition to democratic market economies. He worked at the bank until 1993.
In 1998 Attali founded the French non-profit organization PlaNet Finance
which focuses on microfinance. Attali is perhaps best known in America as
the author of Noise: The Political Economy of Music. More Info:

http://blogs.lexpress.fr/attali/

—————————————————————————————

Passer aux choses sérieuses

3 juin 2009 7h21 | par JACQUES ATTALI

j@attali.com
 

A RETRO-GOVERNMENT

IN NEED OF IRAN

PROMISES OF THE SUBURBS

OPTIMISMS

THREE YEARS

En version originale par Jacques Attali:

OPTIMISMES

TROIS ANS

Les 8 Secrets de la Réussite

pour sous titrage en Français, prière de
cliquer sur”view subtitles” et
faire le choix France (French) .

© CNN -December 27, 2007 -(AP)

– The message flickered into Cindy Fleenor’s living room each night: Be faithful in how you live and how you give, the television preachers said, and God will shower you with material riches.

And so the 53-year-old accountant from the Tampa, Florida, area pledged $500 a year to Joyce Meyer, the evangelist whose frank talk about recovering from childhood sexual abuse was so inspirational. She wrote checks to flamboyant faith healer Benny Hinn and a local preacher-made-good, Paula White.

Only the blessings didn’t come. Fleenor ended up borrowing money from friends and payday loan companies just to buy groceries. At first she believed the explanation given on television: Her faith wasn’t strong enough.

“I wanted to believe God wanted to do something great with me like he was doing with them,” she said. “I’m angry and bitter about it. Right now, I don’t watch anyone on TV hardly.”

All three of the groups Fleenor supported are among six major Christian television ministries under scrutiny by a senator who is asking questions about the evangelists’ lavish spending and possible abuses of their tax-exempt status.

The probe by Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, has brought new scrutiny to the underlying belief that brings in millions of dollars and fills churches from Atlanta to Los Angeles — the “Gospel of Prosperity,” or the notion that God wants to bless the faithful with earthly riches.

All six ministries under investigation preach the prosperity gospel to varying degrees.

Proponents call it a biblically sound message of hope. Others say it is a distortion that makes evangelists rich and preys on the vulnerable. They say it has evolved from “it’s all right to make money” to it’s all right for the pastor to drive a Bentley, live in an oceanside home and travel by private jet.
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* Televangelist refuses to turn over more financial documents

“More and more people are desperate and grasping at straws and want something that will alleviate their pain or financial crisis,” said Michael Palmer, dean of the divinity school at Regent University, founded by Pat Robertson. “It’s a growing problem.”

The modern-day prosperity movement can largely be traced back to evangelist Oral Roberts‘ teachings. Roberts’ disciples have spread his theology and vocabulary (Roberts and other evangelists, such as Meyer, call their donors “partners.”) And several popular prosperity preachers, including some now under investigation, have served on the Oral Roberts University board.

Grassley is asking the ministries for financial records on salaries, spending practices, private jets and other perks. The investigation, coupled with a financial scandal at ORU that forced out Roberts’ son and heir, Richard, has some wondering whether the prosperity gospel is facing a day of reckoning.

While few expect the movement to disappear, the scrutiny could force greater financial transparency and oversight in a movement known for secrecy.

Most scholars trace the origins of prosperity theology to E.W. Kenyon, an evangelical pastor from the first half of the 20th century.

But it wasn’t until the postwar era — and a pair of evangelists from Tulsa, Oklahoma — that “health and wealth” theology became a fixture in Pentecostal and charismatic churches.

Oral Roberts and Kenneth Hagin — and later, Kenneth Copeland — trained tens of thousands of evangelists with a message that resonated with an emerging middle class, said David Edwin Harrell Jr., a Roberts biographer. Copeland is among those now being investigated.

“What Oral did was develop a theology that made it OK to prosper,” Harrell said. “He let Pentecostals be faithful to the old-time truths their grandparents embraced and be part of the modern world, where they could have good jobs and make money.”

The teachings took on various names — “Name It and Claim It,” “Word of Faith,” the prosperity gospel.

Prosperity preachers say that it isn’t all about money — that God’s blessings extend to health, relationships and being well-off enough to help others.

They have Bible verses at the ready to make their case. One oft-cited verse, in Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians, reads: “Yet for your sakes he became poor, that you by his poverty might become rich.”

Critics acknowledge the idea that God wants to bless his followers has a Biblical basis, but say prosperity preachers take verses out of context. The prosperity crowd also fails to acknowledge Biblical accounts that show God doesn’t always reward faithful believers, Palmer said.

The Book of Job is a case study in piety unrewarded, and a chapter in the Book of Hebrews includes a litany of believers who were tortured and martyred, Palmer said.

Yet the prosperity gospel continues to draw crowds, particularly lower- and middle-income people who, critics say, have the greatest motivation and the most to lose. The prosperity message is spreading to black churches, attracting elderly people with disposable incomes, and reaching huge churches in Africa and other developing parts of the world.

One of the teaching’s attractions is that it doesn’t dwell on traditional Christian themes of heaven and hell but on answering pressing concerns of the here and now, said Brian McLaren, a liberal evangelical author and pastor.

But the prosperity gospel, McLaren said, not only preys on the hope of the vulnerable, it puts too much emphasis on individual success and happiness.

“We’ve pretty much ignored what the Bible says about systemic injustice,” he said.

The checks and balances central to Christian denominations are largely lacking in prosperity churches. One of the pastors in the Grassley probe, Bishop Eddie Long of suburban Atlanta, has written that God told him to get rid of the “ungodly governmental structure” of a deacon board.

Some ministers hold up their own wealth as evidence that the teaching works. Atlanta-area pastor Creflo Dollar, who is fighting Grassley’s inquiry, owns a Rolls Royce and multimillion-dollar homes and travels in a church-owned Learjet.

In a letter to Grassley, Dollar’s attorney calls the prosperity gospel a “deeply held religious belief” grounded in Scripture and therefore a protected religious freedom. Grassley has said his probe is not about theology.

But even some prosperity gospel critics — like the Rev. Adam Hamilton of 15,000-member United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in suburban Kansas City, Missouri — say that the investigation is entering a minefield.

“How do you determine how much money a minister like this is able to make when the basic theology is that wealth is OK?” said Hamilton, an Oral Roberts graduate who later left the charismatic movement. “That gets into theological questions.”

There is evidence of change. Joyce Meyer Ministries, for one, enacted financial reforms in recent years, including making audited financial statements public.

Meyer, who has promised to cooperate fully with Grassley, issued a statement emphasizing that a prosperity gospel “that solely equates blessing with financial gain is out of balance and could damage a person’s walk with God.”

© CNN -December 27, 2007 — Updated 2211 GMT (0611 HKT) -

http://www.cnn.com

Localization:

Roquefort la Bédoule is a commune in the Bouches-du-Rhône department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region in southestern France.

It’s located north of Cassis, east of Carnoux-in-Provence and west of Castellet.

Village  old names :

- 1079 : ROCCA FORTIS
- 1212 : CASTRUM ROCHEFORTIS
- 1220 : CASTRUM DE ROCAFORT
- 1246 : CASTRUM DE RUPEFORTI

Geography of this commune :

Roquefort-la-Bédoule benefits from a marked relief, whose altitude varies from 158 m to 567 m. Its culminating point, Montounier, offers an imposing view on the gulf of Marseille up to 20km, the creeks and bays of Cassis and La Ciotat, to the Cap Sicié.

In the north, the culminating point is the Head of Douard (496m), not far away from an important stone quarry along the A50 ( Highway connecting Marseille to Toulon).

The commune has 3,225 hectares with more than half of its surface listed as protected mounts . The land of Roquefort-the-Bédoule represents 31.15 km ², with a density of 152.2 inhabitants per km ².

Geographical coordinates : 43° 14 ′ 54 ″ N – 5° 35 ′ 29 ″ E.

Administration: List of successive mayors

1945 to 1983: Marius Aimonaito (mayor – PC)

1983 to 2008: Francis Giraud (Senator mayor – UMP)

Learn more about… “Roquefort Bédoule Environment”

Maryline

I was born in Marseilles and lived there till my first birthday, and then moved to Roquefort-the-Bédoule.

I graduated with a B.Sc degree in Biology (Physiology and Genius Biology) at the University of Provence, Marseilles.

Currently, I am working on my Master’s Degree in Biology and Marine Ecology at the COM (Marseille Oceanology Center)

———————————–

Original work in French

———————————–

ROQUEFORT LA BEDOULE

Situation :

Roquefort-la-Bédoule est une commune française, située dans le département des Bouches-du-Rhône et la région Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur. Ce village est situé au nord de Cassis, à l’est de Carnoux-en-Provence et à l’ouest du Castellet.

Anciens noms de la commune :

- 1079 : ROCCA FORTIS
- 1212 : CASTRUM ROCHEFORTIS
- 1220 : CASTRUM DE ROCAFORT
- 1246 : CASTRUM DE RUPEFORTI

Géographie :

Roquefort-la-Bédoule bénéficie d’un relief marqué, dont l’altitude varie de 158 m à 567 m, de la plaine au sommet. Son point culminant, constitué par le Montounier, offre une vue grandiose sur le golfe de Marseille à 20km, les calanques et les baies de Cassis et de la Ciotat, jusqu’au Cap Sicié. Au nord, le point culminant est la Tête de Douard à 496m, non loin d’une importante carrière en exploitation le long de l’A50.

La commune s’étend sur 3 225 hectares dont plus de la moitié de collines soigneusement protégées. La surface de la commune de Roquefort-la-Bédoule représente 31,15 km², soit une densité de 152,2 habitants par km².

Les coordonnées géographiques sont de 43° 14′ 54″ de latitude Nord et 5° 35′ 29″ de longitude Est.

Administration : Liste des maires successifs

1945 à 1983 : Marius Aimonaito (maire – P.C)
1983 à 2008 : Francis Giraud (Sénateur maire – UMP)

Apprendre plus sur...“Environnement Roquefort la Bédoule”

Maryline

Je suis née à Marseille et vis à Roquefort-la-Bédoule depuis mes 1 an.

Je suis titulaire d’une Licence en Physiologie et Génie Biologique.

Actuellement en Master 2 recherche (Biologie et Ecologie Marine) au Centre d’Océanologie de Marseille.

In one word it is brilliant!

There is a crystal clear decision to Give Value First to your customers that will EXPLODE your results…

For I have witnessed Dr. Mani’s high ethical and business standards for over a decade now.

And so I felt compelled to read his soul power “Value First Manifesto,” meditate upon it and translate it into my own language (French)!

The word “Manifesto” (from Italian, “denunciation”) means a “public declaration of intentions, motives“…

The word “Value” is from the Old French “to be worth” (Latin valēre) with an Indo- European root “wal“- “to be strong.”

For you have to be strong like Dr. Mani to find might & worth within your soul to dare call ALL entrepreneurs to make an “oath” for “VALUE FIRST” & Commit to Success “even before the money changes hands.”

So ACT today!

Share Dr. Mani’s power principle found in “Value First Manifesto”with your loved ones, friends, and clients.

And let “VALUE FIRST” become your new mantra and motto!

Merci Dr.Mani de partager ce “Manifeste“

VALUE FIRST will be of great benefit to European/French Infopreneurs.

- Joel Bomane from Sunny Southern France

http://www.joelbomane.com

VALUE FIRST MANIFESTO by Dr. Mani in original language

(English) can be found here:

http://ezinemarketingcenter.com/valuefirst/

ValueFirst.pdf

The problem is not new from: Ross Perot’s in 1992 presidential election… Mr. “r-e-a-d m-y l-i-p-s” and raising taxes…

Bill Cliton in 1993...(where they first lost the Congress in 30 years…)

David Walker, Comptroller General of the United States (2007) thinks USA have four deficits:

1) Debt/Budget
2) Balance payment,
3) saving,
4) Leadership

Americans have a vague sense of their government’s long-term fiscal prospects… Young people worry more about the war in Iraq, terrorism, jobs than the bad shape of the economy.

By 2030 Medicare will be about $5 trillion in the hole. Isn’t this an unfair burden on future generations? David Walker has planned a fiscal wake-up tour for 2008?

Here is a short video on this topic from David Walker, Comptroller General of the United States:

N.B: Lucidity...bring together…the recent “An Inconvenient Truth” by Al Gore with “USA growing fiscal imbalance” by David Walker, Comptroller General of the United States What is at stake? …

It’s not just the future of the USA…

“whenever America sneezes…rest of the world…flue”

I let you make your own conclusions.

“What we’re doing is all about transforming the very concept of poverty among the poor themselves”

Muhammad Yunus, winner of Nobel Peace Prize 2006 and co-founder of Grammeen bank

“They [social entrepreneurs] are rebelling against the idea that the problems that surround us are so big that ordinary men and women can’t make a difference,”

said Jeff Skoll, co-founder of eBay and the moneybags behind the Skoll Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship.

MEET THE PRINCIPAL VOICES:

http://www.principalvoices.com/

Principal Voices gathers together a series of the world’s foremost thinkers in their respective areas. For 2007 this is in social entrepreneurship, technology and innovation, and alternative energy.

Principal Voices is a project aimed at stimulating discussion on some of the major challenges facing our world today. In 2006 we explored environmentalism, urbanization, economic development and collaborative corporation with views from renowned experts, and just as importantly, your own comments.

Again in 2007 TIME, FORTUNE and CNN, in association with Shell, will be bringing together a group of globally-renowned experts – Principal Voices – in a series of videos, articles and round-table discussions.

Social Entrepreneurs:

Kailash Satyarthi is India’s foremost leader in abolishing bonded labor.

Rick Aubry is one of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs. For over 21 years he has lead Rubicon Programs, a social enterprise in the San Francisco Bay Area that helps people

Technology and Innovation:

Neil Gershenfeld is the Director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms.

Jimmy Wales is the revolutionary luminary who founded Wikipedia in 2001

Alternative Energy:

Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran is an award- winning journalist for The Economist and environmental commentator.

Jeremy Leggett has been described by Time Magazine as “one of the key players in putting the climate issue on the world agenda.” An award-winning scientist and oil-industry consultant…

More info:

http://principalvoices.com/index.2005.html

More about:

Muhammad Yunus, winner of Nobel Peace Prize 2006 and co-founder of Grammeen bank