multilateral action

I've just finished reading "Moral Victories: How activists provoke multilateral action" by Susan Burgerman. It was a very interesting book (although filled with too many acronyms). It discussed the cases of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Cambodia mainly.

El Salvador: the government itself was committing atrocities against the people and the gorilla fighting force, mostly the right wing of the government, and the president claimed to be unable to control them. However, the country was concerned about its international reputation and the military was highly dependent on US aid (the US pumped money into a terrorist government for years!), so when the fighting reached a stalemate and the US finally pulled the plug on aid after some high profile assassinations, the UN was able to come in and set up a peace negotiations process that included a high emphasis on human rights. With the help of the UN, El Salvador was able to establish a civilian police force, build its governmental institutions, and make necessary compromises with the gorillas. It's a much safer place to be now.

Guatemala: similar to El Salvador except the gorilla forces were much smaller so there was no question of fighting reaching a stalemate. The government was abusing human rights by enlisting peasants into the war and other methods. They also didn't care quite so much about an international pariah reputation. However, after thirty something years of bloody civil war and the jabs of economic sanctions and international disdain, they finally agreed to a peace process like in El Salvador but with less of a UN role.

Cambodia: this was an instance of two governments fighting and also grappling with Vietnamese occupation. The Khmer Rouge were fighting Cambodia and the USSR, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Americans were all involved in a big geopolitical fight. The country was very closed off, allowing no NGOs or commission investigations. Also, because the involved parties wouldn't agree to demilitarization, the peace effort was hampered (also, both sides went back on agreements), so its main successes were in building institutions such as the judicial branch.

I just thought these cases were interesting because they give you hope, you know? Even in a place like Cambodia where they had "killing fields" and so many people died, it was possible, via international cooperation, sanctions etc, and local/international NGOs, it is actually possible to get an extremely abusive government to change its ways, or to end a long and bloody civil war. Sometimes it's easy to think that something is so bad that it will never change, but it turns out that you just need enough people working together.

That's how I hope it will be in the Middle East. I guess it's different, though, to stop the civil unrest of millennia, than to stop a 35 year civil war. But if it's possible in South America and Cambodia, maybe someday it will be possible in Israel and Palestine.

:-(

This is so sad.


It is especially sad because I have spent the last three weeks volunteering at a leprosy colony in rural India seeing how much beauty people have inside of them. And I can't really believe we're all the same species and all have that beauty inside of us, even the people that did this, although I believe it in theory. It just doesn't make sense that one human being, thinking, feeling, could do that to another.

No sense at all.

on the other hand...

The microwave works exactly how a MRI works. Just maybe the microwave doesn't get the preception around the axis? Not sure, Wikipedia gets a little hazy on upper level physics. Anyway, Ethan and I decided people don't get cooked in MRI machines because radio waves (used to achieve EM fields in MRIs) are much weaker than microwaves.

I imagine X-rays probably cook people a little bit too.

That's kind of disturbing. Every time you get an X-ray/MRI, you're doing a little bit of what you do the leftover turkey when you put it in the microwave.

Not that I eat turkey. But still.

trying to keep those brain cells alive

1. Word of the day: pundit, which comes from pandit, which is an Indian Sanskrit word meaning teacher. Pundit is someone with great authority on a subject who provides his/her opinion. That's what I gathered.
Also, he/she is erudite (possessing great mental faculty. ish.)

I realized that since my brain became less plastic in high school, even though I'm reading a lot, my vocabulary is extremely static. I don't like that. I want it to grow. Grow, dang it, grow.

Lessons for the day:

HOW FLUORESCENT ANGIOGRAM WORKS: (used in diagnosing ocular diseases in which blood vessels leak like diabetic retinopathy or idiopathic choroidal vitreopathy):
You inject a sodium based eye in the arm which makes its way to the eyes in a matter of *seconds* (super cool). Then you apply a laser with a wavelength such that it excites the sodium electrons to an energy level that interacts with photons at an energy corresponding to wavelengths above the visual spectrum. When the electrons relax, they release the same amount of energy in the form of fluorescence (basic principle of fluorescence). You can then see the early and late characteristics of the blood flow in the eye to identify leaks and the dynamic nature of any leaks.

HOW MICROWAVES WORK: (only slightly related)
The microwaves apply an electromagnetic field which causes any molecules with a dipole to align to it. It's like an MRI machine kind of, but way less strong. (Microwaves are of a pretty long wavelength.) The movement of the dipoles aligning with the induced field produces heat energy. Because water has a dipolar much higher than any other molecules naturally found in food, it will produce the most heat, cooking the food the most.
Good home experiment: (Not perfect since the cups will have moisture/dipoles in them themselves) take a cup of water and a cup of oil and a cup of alcohol and put them in the microwave for like one minute. The alcohol should boil away (maybe not but close), the water should heat up a lot but not boil, and the oil shouldn't heat up nearly as much. Science in action! :-)

two clocks

Say you have a quantum mechanical atomic clock based on entangled particles (there are some articles describing these clocks if you Google it, so it's possible; I don't know the math). Now say we separate the clocks and move lightyears apart. Say you stop with your clock while I continue moving so we are no longer in the same reference frame. Then you observe your clock so that the quantum mechanical properties are set (thus instantaneously setting mine).

1. Even though we are in different reference frames, will my clock instantly follow suit?

2. If we continue this process and use it to establish an absolute time, doesn't that violate both laws against absolute simultaneity and the general laws of relativity about time dilation and lack of an absolute reference frame?

infrastructure

I am currently in Hyderabad, India for reasons which I don't really need to explain on the internet. Anyway, I'm realizing that a lot of my opinions about fixing third world infrastructure were a bit naive. I'm beginning to understand that even attempting to solve the simplest problems in a country like India is much, much more complicated than I initially thought with my idealistic notions about solving world poverty etc.

I'm too tired to really talk about it now, but here's one example:

There is a lot of trash by the side of the roads in India. You could say the government should put up more trash receptacles. The problem is that many people on the streets are homeless and have no reason to throw trash in receptacles. Laws couldn't be enforced. To really effectively solve the trash problem in India, which seems like a simple infrastructure problem, you'd really have to solve Indian poverty first and homelessness, which requires solving unemployment, etc etc etc (etc etc etc).

Nothing is simple.

It's very discouraging. I thought volunteer work would be all sunshine and rainbows. I'm realizing that was a very youthful notion.

I'm still thinking, I swear

I'm just moving really slow.