Separation of Church and State

These days people often say the world is going mad!  With all the wars political debates and endless disagreements I often had this idea:  At times like this we need better leaders!  We need some spiritual guidance of what is right and wrong in this world.  We need inspiration.  It cannot be always about money and power!
Coming from science I'd like to bring a simple illustration of the Bell Curve.  This is the universal statistics of how all options spread.

Now let's us talk about intelligence.  The IQ test examines the intelligence of people.  The results are defined such that IQ of 100 is the average.  If you check the bell curve in the graph below, you can see that most people have an IQ between 85 and 115.  The smartest are the 2% on the right side, and the most unintelligent are the 2% on the left.
 

 

In the simplest terms this means that half the people are smarter than the rest.  The other half are not as smart.  So in general the smarter people have a better chance to succeed in life, get a degree, accumulate wealth and so on.  The other half naturally will not have the same chances.  They maybe trash collectors or menial laborers.
For a rational mind it is obvious that the fortunate smarter people have an inherent responsibility to look after the less fortunate ones.  This idea of the greater good is very basic.  We all benefit when others do well. 

All this rational reasoning hardly works in the world of politics today.  Rich powerful people get richer and control politicians.  In the US we have Citizens United which allows corporations to donate unlimited amounts of money to political campaigns.  The oil rich Arab countries keep funding Muslim organizations around the world.  The largest refugee crisis in the world brings a stream of refugees to the shores of Europe every day.  And there is no end in sight.
We believe in the principle of separation of Church and State, so no one expects any religious leader to rise and preach for goodness.  I kept wondering when will such a leader show up?
And then Pope Francis came to visit and gave a speech to congress.  He said what needs to be said: We should respect each other’s traditions.  We should remember the Golden Rule.  Most important: we should protect the sick and the weak.  Homelessness is our communal failure.  We should protect our earth, our common home.  

I wonder how well we can keep this idea of separating religion from politics.  We can all doubt the existence of God (what god?Jesus?  Allah?)  We can all doubt the legends and superstitions attached to the various religions.  But as history unfolds we can see various leaders arise to guide the human connection: Sometimes it is a military commander, sometimes a philosopher or the Dalai Lama.  This time is it a catholic Pope?

Teaching Math to Girls and Women in Science

Do
boys and girls have different skills and ability to excel in mathematics? 
Most people will intuitively think that boys do better in math than girls.

I
heard an interesting review on NPR describing a study where they had math tests
checked by two sets of teachers.  The first set knew who wrote the test,
and the second set of teachers had no such knowledge so they had no idea if the
test was taken by a boy or a girl.  The surprising result was that the
teachers who did not know who took the test gave the girls a higher
score!!  This means that the first set of teachers had no expectation that
the girls can do well in math and therefore gave them a lower score regardless
of the answer.  Another study came to the
same conclusion:  Gender math gap is cultural not biological:

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/45646131/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/gender-math-gap-cultural-not-biological/#.VejYUXlRHrc

This
is not surprising to me, although as a very shy girl I did excel in math. To
this day I believe that understanding math is essential to any scientific field
and ultimately mathematics holds the answers to all the basic questions of our
existence.  But when I try to convey this to people, I mostly get utter
disinterest. I do not detect any excitement in people about knowledge, or
appreciation of deeper understanding of the biological and physical world
around us and even more so among women.  No wonder that with no
expectations, girls would not even try to grasp any basic concepts of math and
sciences. I find this very regretful.

Thinking
about women in science today, we have to remember that there were practically
no women scientists until the twentieth century. It is only in the past hundred
years that women began to have some equality with men.  We have only just begun to face the
intellectual and physical challenges of this equality.  

These
are some stories I heard from senior career women I was fortunate to work
with.  The late Doctor Jo Anne Brasel, a pediatrician at LABiomed had many
stories of her days at medical school as the only woman in the whole
school.  She had to be strong and persistent in addition to being
intelligent and clever.

Professor Joan Valentine from the chemistry department in UCLA was the first
female chemistry PhD in her class and the first female UCLA professor in
chemistry.

Most these women scientists came from a family of scientists.   
They had a father or brothers who were doctors or chemists.

One
of my favorite pioneer woman scientist is Marie Curie.  Check out all her firsts:

Marie Skłodowska Curie was a Polish and naturalized- French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel
Prize, the first person and only
woman to win twice, the only person to win twice in multiple sciences, and was part of the
Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. She was also the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris, and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in
the Panthéon in Paris.

Check
my post on Intellectual curiosity and women:

The young women doctors I know are amazing people.  They are caring hard
working and very sensitive to their patients.

All I have accomplished in my life was due to my education.  I was encouraged to study despite my background where there were no academics in the family.

I
would like to see a world where young girls everywhere are encouraged to pursue
any knowledge that they imagine they would like to have.  I believe with the advances of computers and
the internet all areas of knowledge will be available to all who want to learn.
Boys and girls anywhere around the world.

Family traditions and homelessness

Imagine these three women:  A young mother who is an aspiring author, a young mother who is homeless and a Persian lady who is a recent immigrant to California.

The author is visibly troubled by the sight of the young mother sitting on a bench in the promenade next to her baby carriage for over two hours.  She approaches the mother on the bench with an offer to help.  The young mother has no job and no place to go.  So the author arranges for her to stay one night in a motel.  This small episode brings the author to write her next novel on shelters.  There are plenty of homeless shelters  in Los Angeles.

Laura Nicole Diamond:

Shelter Us book cover:

A Santa Monica shelter for homeless women-Ocean Park Community Center:

I attended the Author Talk at my local library and that is where I met the Persian lady.
(I prefer the term Persian and not Iranian which was invented by the British in the past Century.)  The Persian lady seems just as gentle and caring as the young author.  She heard us talk about different shelters across the city and she was incredulous: “Why do people have to be homeless?  How come they have nowhere to go?  Whatever happened to the parents, there must have been grandparents, aunts or uncles?  What kind of society is it when parents tell their kids: You are eighteen and you are out?” 

My extended family all came from Mashhad in the North Est part of Persia.  I understood what the Persian lady was talking about.  No one is left homeless.  The mentally ill, the physically challenged all find a home with the extended family.  They are rarely put away in any sort of institution.  The bright and able take care of the weak and feeble.  But the other side of this scenario is that sometimes young people feel trapped.  They have to follow the family structure and “orders”.  Some dominant mothers will insist on picking spouses for their children, and after the wedding there are the orders: You need to have a kid.  And it is time for another one.  Freedom and imagination can hardly flourish.  So here in the area family structure and tradition there is a fine balance.
A typical table in a Persian home: Always hot water and tea in a samovar, a bowl of fruits, nuts and cakes.  Welcoming everyone with warm hospitality:

The idea of extended family is very well established in other societies.  I have read this from one of my favorite authors, Isabel Allende who was a refugee from Chile:

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/sep/13/isabel-allende-my-family-values

“I have been a foreigner all my life, first as a daughter of diplomats, then as a political refugee and now as an immigrant in the US. I have had to leave everything behind and start anew several times, and I have lost most of my extended family. Here in California, I have tried to recreate a sense of extended family with a few chosen loyal friends. I call them "my tribe". It works better than a real family because we are together by choice not obligation. My grandchildren have grown up in this little tribe and I don't think they are aware that we are not even blood-related.”

I feel strongly that churches, synagogues, mosques and monasteries by and large served their communities by taking in widows and orphans.  The universal sermon is to be kind to the poor and needy.

If we want to live in a society with all these freedoms to pursue happiness and get education and marry our heart’s desire, then I believe we should all work on a policy to prevent homelessness.  

Culinary East meets West

The main news item this past week was the 70th anniversary of the dropping the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.  There were memorials, apologies, and all signs of soul searching.  Were we right to do this?  Was it worth the life of another million soldiers?  Where do we go from here?  How do we stop Iran from building an atom bomb?

There are no simple solutions for any of these questions.  Instead of dealing with these questions I will tell you my life stories of food!  The stories of cooking and eating in my life are one example of how East meets West on this earth.  These are stories of people coming together and celebrating their differences.
We all need nutrition and anyone can read about the agricultural revolution .  How humans discovered cooking and found that cooked foods are easier to digest.  Different cooking traditions evolved around the world depending on climate and local culture.
I grew up in Israel with the traditions of the Jews of Mashad!  The basic food is rice with many variations served with a number of colorful flavorful sauces.  Every Friday night each family has Nochodav!  A soup with a variety of meat such as soup bones, chicken, meat balls and beef.  The base of the soup is white bean and crushed chick peas. These vegetables were added gradually: onion, cabbage, kohlrabi, and greens: parsley, cilantro and dill.  Every young girl had to be taught how to wash all these greens and chop them for the soup before she could be eligible for marriage.  The current flavorful sauce that is spreading around the world is a similar sauce called chorme sabzi: green stew.

Chorme sabzi served with rice and saffron rice:

Moving to California we have been celebrating holidays with my longtime friend who grew up with Ashkenazi cooking.  For the Passover Seder we had these “must haves:” Gefilte fish, kneidalach soup.  Many people were surprised to hear that I never had any of these foods growing up.  Watching my friend cook I learned all these minute details.  For the unmatched gefilte fish you show up at the fish market at 6 am and pick the best white fish or pike.  The merchant grinds it for you and sends you home with all the bones.  There are various traditions for spicing the ground fish, more onions, sometimes sugar. sometime fresh greens.  Children grow up loving this dish.  Even my own sons enjoy it when it comes in a jar.  For me, the fried fish steaks that my mother used to make still taste best.  The fish cakes are served with horse radish, another European dish.  Grind the fresh horseradish and add ground beats.  This is divine!

Gefilte fish with horseradish:

Kneidalach soup is served in any Deli along with cold cuts: roast beef, pastrami, turkey.  Rye bread is from the west.  The East offers pita bread, humus, eggplant salad. 

Matza ball soup: 

I took a three day trip to Paris with my mother and sister.  We each came from another direction and our taxi driver took us to the district offering all culinary traditions.  It was very appropriate for the occasion.  European style desserts downstairs.  Baklava and gas upstairs, served on round metal table tops from Morocco.

Gas: Candy from Iran:

Flat fried dough, dessert from Iran:

These stories of east and west food traditions make me believe that humans can get together and cooperate on any level.

A Fine Balance

Reposting this.  I feel it is the basis of all my writing.

I have strong convictions about achieving balance in our universe, our world, in every aspect of our personal lives.

Googling fine balance today I find a book by Rohinton Mistry.  This is a story from life in India, a single woman, untouchables.  A major quote from the story: "Life is a fine balance between hope and despair."

There is a documentary that I love to recommend to all my friends: "Particle Fever". It is the physical evidence of the fine balance in our universe.  The best physicists in the world got together and built the particle accelerator in CERN, Switzerland.  They tried to recreate the big bang, the event where we all have come to exist.  The physicists had two theories about the nature of our universe: one theory predicted that the universe is symmetric, predictable, ordered.  The second theory predicted the opposite: our universe is all random and chaotic.  To find out which theory is correct they performed the experiment with the smallest atoms that makes our bodies and our world: hydrogen.  They accelerated these hydrogen atoms to extremely high speeds and then smashed two beams together to recreate the big bang.  That is how it all started.  It is the origin of all the matters in our lives.  The physicists then studied all the resulting particles.  They analyzed the immense amount of data and came to this conclusion:  our universe is neither all symmetric nor all chaotic.  They now have to refine each theory: what is the order in the chaos in one case or what is the randomness in the symmetry.  It is a fine balance.

Philosophers have a similar debate: Are events in our lives all predestined, or do we have control over them?  Is there free will?  You will find volumes written and descriptions of the fine balance between the two states.

Some visual examples of fine balance:

Metabolic pathways in our bodies: All the processes in our bodies are in a very delicate balance.  From fat buildup to prepare for famine to utilization of oxygen energy in the mitochondria, all are interconnected.

 A spider web:
It could be pulled a bit one way or the other without disturbing the balance, but if you pull too hard it will collapse, turning into chaos.

A Forest fire in Yosemite: Chaos amidst the majestic redwood trees.

The fire facilitates germination of seeds deep in the earth.

 

In closing I would state that you will find my writing about any subject striving to find the fine balance.  It could be on health and diet.  It could be on the very topics that divide us: Politics and religion.  

Jimmy's Hall, Art, Culture and Religion

This is the story of a wonderful movie I just watched at Laemmle Cinemas: "Jimmy's Hall."  This movie is based on a true story from Ireland in the thirties.  I am telling this story to show one small example of what the ruling class and the church could do in order to stay in power.  Is there any justice or compassion in this story?

These are highlights of the true story: In 1933, Jimmy Gralton, as he was known locally, became the only Irish citizen ever to have been deported from the country when he was forcefully removed and put on a boat to America. He would never set foot in his native land again.

Such severe punishment for his ‘crimes’ seems improbable 81 years on. A dissident voice, Gralton was victimized by the political and religious establishment after daring to establish a dance hall in rural Ireland. A self-educated, community-serving man, Gralton’s hall was built to serve as a venue for the local people of Leitrim.

The youth in the village begging Jimmy to reopen his Hall.

Community dances, singing lessons, poetry appreciation sessions, boxing classes, and debates about workers’ rights were held there. It sounds innocuous. But for the Catholic Church and the Irish ruling class, the hall and the man who built it represented something dangerous and subversive — the fact that the people were beginning to think and act for themselves.

Jimmy and the orchestra

The movie clearly visualizes the story: The church continuously sabotaged Jimmy’s group.  Jimmy’s Hall was burned twice.  When the police came to deport him, his lovely old mother said: “What did I do?  I just gave him books!?”  The lady was running a mobile library.
I think all religions are guilty of ruling societies based on ignorance.  They are stuck in the ideas of tradition and orthodoxy.
I see no other way but for all religions to modernize.  We need to accept the fact that people should be educated.  That knowledge is accessible to all.  That women are equal to men.
Jimmy was talking about jazz and dancing with black people in NY.  "They actually have two legs!!"  I advocate separation of state and religion in Israel.  Although I know that the religious establishment has control over many of the personal laws.  This is despite the fact that 60% of the citizens would like the freedom in making their choices.
The Catholics have the most change to go through.  I know I am very naïve, but there needs to be an end celibacy for priests.  I read that the whole practice came about because they didn't want any land belonging to the church to be divided among the heirs.  This was pointed out clearly in Dan Brown's best seller The Da Vinci Code.
I cannot say how Islam is going to adapt to these modern times of every kid holding a cell phone with knowledge and information right at the tip of their fingers.  But I truly wish to see more justice and equality. 

I’d like to hear more voices like Jimmy’s for progressive politics.  For allowing people to use their creativity and imagination to paint and sing and dance.

Jimmy Gralton represented that alternative voice and finding a space for dissidents — and also seeing them as important alternative arguments — is a major question of our time.

Highlights from the Neues Museum, Berlin

I had two goals when I visited the Neues Museum in Berlin.
The first was to see the bust of Nefertiti, who is considered the most beautiful ever:

She is presented in a glass case and I could walk around and appreciate the perfect features.

The second item was upstairs and was very surprising: The Gold Hat:
מצנפת זהב

The gold hat is a Late Bronze Age 1000- 800 BC artefact made of thin gold leaf. It served as the external covering on a long conical brimmed headdress, probably of an organic material.  Modern scholarship has demonstrated that the ornamentation of the gold leaf cones represent systematic sequences in terms of number and types of ornaments per band. The object would have permitted the determination of dates or periods in both lunar and solar calendars.

Only four of these hats were found and this was the most preserved.