NATURE: AN ECONOMIC HISTORY BOOK
November 27, 2007 at 10:46 am | Posted in Books, Earth, History, Science & Technology | Leave a commentNature: An Economic History
Geerat J. Vermeij (Author)
From humans to hermit crabs to deep water plankton, all living things compete for locally limiting resources. This universal truth unites three bodies of thought–economics, evolution, and history–that have developed largely in mutual isolation. Here, Geerat Vermeij undertakes a groundbreaking and provocative exploration of the facts and theories of biology, economics, and geology to show how processes common to all economic systems–competition, cooperation, adaptation, and feedback–govern evolution as surely as they do the human economy, and how historical patterns in both human and nonhuman evolution follow from this principle.
Using a wealth of examples of evolutionary innovations, Vermeij argues that evolution and economics are one. Powerful consumers and producers exercise disproportionate controls on the characteristics, activities, and distribution of all life forms. Competition-driven demand by consumers, when coupled with supply-side conditions permitting economic growth, leads to adaptation and escalation among organisms. Although disruptions in production halt or reverse these processes temporarily, they amplify escalation in the long run to produce trends in all economic systems toward greater power, higher production rates, and a wider reach for economic systems and their strongest members.
Despite our unprecedented power to shape our surroundings, we humans are subject to all the economic principles and historical trends that emerged at life’s origin more than 3 billion years ago. Engagingly written, brilliantly argued, and sweeping in scope, Nature: An Economic History shows that the human institutions most likely to preserve opportunity and adaptability are, after all, built like successful living things.
Geerat J. Vermeij is Distinguished Professor of Geology at the University of California, Davis. As an evolutionary biologist and paleontologist, he studies shells and the fossil and living animals responsible for building them. His books include Evolution and Escalation: An Ecological History of Life, A Natural History of Shells (both Princeton), and Privileged Hands. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1992.
Product Details:
Hardcover: 464 pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press (September 14, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0691115273
ISBN-13: 978-0691115276
Nature: An Economic History
Geerat J. Vermeij (Author)
SUKUK BONDS: ISLAMIC FINANCE
November 27, 2007 at 2:52 am | Posted in Economics, Financial, Globalization, Islam, Research, United Kingdom | Leave a comment Offshore Investment Magazine
First Sukuk Bond Index Launched
Islamic finance and Sukuk issues
JERSEY – Bill Gibbon discusses Sukuk and Convertible Sukuk and how they have become internationally well recognised structured finance solutions. He also provides an insightful comparison between Sukuk and Conventional Bonds and explores how Jersey is beginning to build on its particular reputation for Islamic finance and Sukuk issues.
Dow Jones Indexes and Citigroup Corporate and Investment Banking, both leading global index providers, this week announced that they intend to launch the Dow Jones Citigroup Sukuk Index, the first index that seeks to measure the performance of global bonds complying with Islamic investment guidelines.
The index, which is intended to launch April 2, was created primarily for use as the benchmark for investors seeking exposure to Shari’ah-compliant fixed-income investments. In addition, the index may serve to increase secondary market trading in this growing asset class and facilitate cross-market relative value trading among different asset classes.
The Dow Jones Citigroup Sukuk Index will include investment-grade, U.S. dollar-denominated Islamic bonds – also known as Sukuk – issued in the global market. At launch, the Index initially will track seven issues: Islamic Development Bank, Solidarity Trust Services Ltd, BMA International Sukuk, Qatar Global Sukuk, Malaysia Global Sukuk, Sarawak Sukuk and Dubai Global Sukuk.
To be included in the Index, an Islamic bond must comply with both Shari’ah law and the Bahrain-based Auditing & Accounting Organization of Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) standards for tradable Sukuk. Once a bond meets these criteria, Dow Jones Indexes and Citigroup will apply market-based criteria such as minimum maturity of one year, minimum issue size of US$250 million, and an explicit or implicit rating of at least BBB-/Baa3 by leading rating agencies.
“Sukuk, or Islamic fixed-income securities, have emerged over recent years as an increasingly important asset class. It can be expected that we will see the issue of a significant number of corporate, quasi-sovereign and sovereign Sukuk in the future, along with the development of a liquid and efficient Islamic capital market,” said Michael A. Petronella, president, Dow Jones Indexes/Ventures. “The co-operation with Citigroup to calculate and market the Dow Jones Citigroup Sukuk Index combines experience in the Islamic bond market with expertise in Islamic finance and indexing.”
Mohsin Nathani, chief executive officer, Citi Islamic Bank, said: “We are delighted to offer our global index and Sukuk capabilities to the Islamic Banking industry in partnership with Dow Jones Indexes. The launch of the Index is in line with our strategy to offer Islamic issuers and investors world-class and innovative products that contribute to expanding the frontiers of Islamic capital markets.”
The Dow Jones Citigroup Sukuk Index follows the same consistent, quantitative methodology as the Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes, which are monitored to ensure their continued compliance with Shari`ah Law. Dow Jones Indexes launched the first Islamic indexes – the Dow Jones Islamic Market Index family – in 1999. Today, the Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes are used by asset managers in 16 countries for a variety of financial products that screen out activities that are incompatible with Islamic investment guidelines. Excluded from the indexes are stocks of companies in these lines of business: alcohol, tobacco, pork-related products, financial services, defense/weapons, and entertainment. Also excluded are companies that fail any of three financial ratios.
Citigroup’s Islamics operation began in 1981 in London, and in 1996 Citigroup was the first international institution to set up a separately capitalized Islamic Bank, Citi Islamic Investment Bank (CIIB). CIIB’s core business has been the origination, structuring and distribution of Islamic banking transactions in structured trade finance, leasing, project financing, advisory services and Islamic securities.
Offshore Investment
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MONEY: EMILE ZOLA NOVEL
November 27, 2007 at 12:55 am | Posted in Financial, Globalization, History, Judaica, Literary, Middle East | Leave a commentL’Argent
Money
A novel by Émile Zola
Book 18 in the Rougon-Macquart
series
(1891)
L’Argent Author Émile Zola
Country France
Language French
Series Les Rougon-Macquart
Publisher Charpentier & Fasquelle (book form)
Publication date 1890-1891 (serial) & 1891 (book form)
Media type Print (Serial, Hardback & Paperback)
Preceded by La Bête Humaine
Followed by La Débâcle
L’Argent (Money) is the eighteenth novel in the Rougon-Macquart series by Émile Zola. It was serialized in the periodical Gil Blas beginning in November 1890 before being published in novel form by Charpentier et Fasquelle in March 1891. It was translated into English (as Money) by Benj. R. Tucker in 1891 and by Ernest A. Vizetelly in 1894 (new edition 1904; reprinted 1991 and 2007).
The novel focuses on the financial world of the Second French Empire as embodied in the Paris Bourse and exemplified by the fictional character of Aristide Saccard. Zola’s intent was to show the terrible effects of speculation and fraudulent company promotion, the culpable negligence of company directors, and the impotency of contemporary financial laws.
Aristide Saccard (b. 1815 as Aristide Rougon) is the youngest son of Pierre and Félicité Rougon. He is first introduced in La fortune des Rougon. L’argent is a direct sequel to La curée (published in 1871), which details Saccard’s first rise to wealth using underhanded methods. Sensing his unscrupulous nature, his brother Eugène Rougon prompts Aristide to change his surname from Rougon to Saccard.
Aristide’s other brother Pascal is the main character of Le docteur Pascal. He also has two sisters: Sidonie, who appears in La curée, and Marthe, one of the protagonists of La conquête de Plassans.
Plot summary
The novel takes place in 1864-1869, beginning a few months after the death of Saccard’s second wife Renée (see La curée). Saccard is bankrupt and an outcast among the Bourse financiers. Searching for a way to reestablish himself, Saccard is struck by plans developed by his upstairs neighbor, the engineer Georges Hamelin, who dreams of restoring Christianity to the Middle East through great public works: rail lines linking important cities, improved roads and transportation, renovated eastern Mediterranean ports, and fleets of modern ships to move goods around the world.
Saccard decides to institute a financial establishment to fund these projects. He is motivated primarily by the potential to make incredible amounts of money and reestablish himself on the Bourse. In addition, Saccard has an intense rivalry with his brother Eugène Rougon, a powerful Cabinet minister who refuses to help him after his bankruptcy and who is promoting a more liberal, less Catholic agenda for the Empire. Furthermore, Saccard, an intense anti-Semite, sees the enterprise as a strike against the Jewish bankers who dominate the Bourse. (In a footnote, Ernest A. Vizetelly, the first British translator of L’argent, draws a distinction between Zola’s depiction of this aspect of Saccard’s character and Zola’s personal pro-Jewish beliefs as manifested in the later Dreyfus affair.)
From the beginning, Saccard’s Banque Universelle (Universal Bank) stands on shaky ground. In order to manipulate the price of the stock, Saccard and his confreres on the syndicate he has set up to jumpstart the enterprise buy their own stock and hide the proceeds of this illegal practice in a dummy account fronted by a straw man.
While Hamelin travels to Constantinople to lay the groundwork for their enterprise, the Banque Universelle goes from strength to strength. Stock prices soar, going from 500 francs a share to more than 3,000 francs in three years. Furthermore, Saccard buys several newspapers which serve to maintain the illusion of legitimacy, promote the Banque, excite the public, and attack Rougon.
The novel follows the fortunes of about 20 characters, cutting across all social strata, showing the effects of stock market speculation on rich and poor. The financial events of the novel are played against Saccard’s personal life. Hamelin lives with his sister Caroline, who, against her better judgment, invests in the Banque Universelle and later becomes Saccard’s mistress. Caroline learns that Saccard fathered a son, Victor, during his first days in Paris. She rescues Victor from his life of abject poverty, placing him in a charitable institution. But Victor is completely unredeemable, given over to greed, laziness, and thievery. After he attacks one of the women at the institution, he disappears into the streets, never to be seen again.
Eventually, the Banque Universelle cannot sustain itself. Saccard’s principal rival on the Bourse, the Jewish financier Gundermann, learns about Saccard’s financial trickery and attacks, loosing stock upon the market, devaluing its price, and forcing Saccard to buy millions of shares to keep the price up. At the final collapse, the Banque holds one-fourth of its own shares worth 200 million francs. The fall of the Banque is felt across the entire financial world. Indeed, all of France feels the force of its collapse. The effects on the characters of L’argent are disastrous, including complete ruin, suicide, and exile, though some of Saccard’s syndicate members escape and Gundermann experiences a windfall. Saccard and Hamelin are sentenced to five years in prison. Through the intervention of Rougon, who doesn’t want a brother in jail, their sentences are commuted and they are forced to leave France. Saccard goes to Belgium, and the novel ends with Caroline preparing to follow her brother to Rome.
Historical Background
Because the financial world is closely linked with politics, L’argent encompasses many historical events, including:
* The 1860 Druze massacre of Maronite Christians in Syria
* France’s invasion of Mexico (1861-1867)
* The construction of the Suez Canal, opened in 1869
* The Austro-Prussian War, including the Battle of Königgrätz at Sadowa in 1866
* The Third Italian War of Independence (1866)
* The Universal Exposition of 1867
* The publication of Das Kapital in 1867 and the advent of Marxism
By the end of the novel, the stage is set for the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) and the fall of the Second Empire
Relation to the Other Rougon-Macquart Novels
Zola’s plan for the Rougon-Macquart novels was to show how heredity and environment worked on members of one family over the course of the Second Empire. All of the descendants of Adelaïde Fouque (Tante Dide), Saccard’s grandmother, demonstrate what today would be called obsessive-compulsive behaviors to varying degrees. Saccard is obsessed with money and the building of wealth, to which everything in his life holds second place. In Le docteur Pascal, Zola describes the influence of heredity on Saccard as an “adjection” in which the natures of his avaricious parents are commingled.
Two other members of the Rougon-Macquart family also appear in L’argent: Saccard’s sons Maxime (b. 1840) and Victor (b. 1853). If his father’s obsession is with building wealth, Maxime’s obsession is with keeping it. A widower, Maxime (who played a central role in La curée) lives alone in opulence he does not share. In Le docteur Pascal, Maxime is described as prematurely aged, afraid of pleasure and indeed of all life, devoid of emotion, and cold, characteristics introduced in L’argent. Maxime is described as a “dissemination” of characteristics, having the moral prepotency of his father and the pampered egotism of his mother (Saccard’s first wife).
Victor, on the other hand, brought up in squalor, is the furthest extreme Zola illustrates of the Rougon family’s degeneracy. Like his great-grandmother Tante Dide, Victor suffers from neuralgic attacks. Unlike Jacques Lantier (his second cousin, see La bête humaine), he is unable to control his criminal impulses, and his disappearance into the streets of Paris is no surprise. Victor is described as a “fusion” of the lowest characteristics of his parents (his mother was a prostitute).
In Le docteur Pascal (set in 1872), Zola tells us that Saccard returns to Paris, institutes a newspaper, and is again making piles of money.
Rougon is the protagonist of Son Excellence Eugène Rougon, the events of which predate L’argent. Saccard’s daughter Clotilde (b. 1847) is the main female character in Le docteur Pascal.
Les Rougon-Macquart
La Fortune des Rougon | La Curée | Le Ventre de Paris | La Conquête de Plassans | La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret | Son Excellence Eugène Rougon | L’Assommoir | Une Page d’amour | Nana | Pot-Bouille | Au Bonheur des Dames | La Joie de vivre | Germinal | L’Œuvre | La Terre | Le Rêve | La Bête humaine | L’Argent | La Débâcle | Le Docteur Pascal
The House of Rothschild
The World’s Banker 1849-1999
By Niall Ferguson
Perhaps paradoxically, in view of his later role as a Dreyfusard, few writers did more to give this idea currency than the novelist Emile Zola. Although set in the Second Empire, his novel L’Argent—part of his vast Rougon Macquart cycle—was obviously inspired by the Union Générale debacle (with occasional allusions to the Crédit Mobilier). And although the character of Gundermann was plainly not based on Alphonse, there is no doubt whatever that it was based, with one or two modifications, on his late father James. There is an eerie quality to this unflattering resurrection, for Gundermann lacks the redeeming humanity of Balzac’s Nucingen, the other great literary creation James inspired. The best explanation for this is that Zola had not known James as Balzac had; over a decade after his death, he had to turn for inspiration to the memoirs of others—indeed, passages of L’Argent are lifted more or less verbatim from Feydeau. Gundermann is introduced early on as: the banker king, the master of the bourse and of the world … the man who knew [all] secrets, who made at his beck and call the markets rise and fall as God makes the thunder … the king of gold … Gundermann was the true master, the all-powerful king, feared and obeyed by Paris and the world… One could already see that in Paris a Gundermann reigned on a more solid and more respected throne than the emperor.
He is cool, calculating, dyspeptic (a fictional touch), ascetic, workaholic. Saccard, by contrast, is an impetuous young would-be financier with clerical sympathies who dreams of financing projects in the Balkans and Middle East which might eventually lead to the purchase of Jerusalem and the re-establishment of the Papacy there. In the hope of winning his support, he goes to see Gundermann in his “immense hôtel” where he lives and works with his “innumerable family”: five daughters, four sons and fourteen grandchildren. Once again we enter the thronged offices of the rue Laffitte, where queues of brokers file past the impassive banker, who treats them with indifference or—if they dare to address him—outright contempt; where art-dealers vie with foreign ambassadors for his attention; and where (the debt to Feydeau is unmistakable) a small boy of five or six bursts in, riding a broomstick and playing a trumpet. This bizarre court confirms in Saccard’s eyes “the universal royalty” of Gundermann.
Saccard wants Gundermann’s backing—yearns, in fact, to make money on the bourse just as he has. Yet as he contemplates “the Jew” he instinctively imagines himself “an honest man, living by the sweat of his brow” and is overwhelmed with an “inextinguishable hatred” for that accursed race which no longer has its own country, no longer has its own prince, which lives parasitically in the home of nations, feigning to obey the law, but in reality only obeying its own God of theft, of blood, of anger … fulfilling everywhere its mission of ferocious conquest, to lie in wait for its prey, suck the blood out of everyone, [and] grow fat on the life of others.
As Saccard sees it, the Jew has a hereditary advantage over the Christian in finance, and he foresees—even as he enters Gundermann’s office—“the final conquest of all the peoples by the Jews.”
When, inevitably, Gundermann dismisses his proposal, Saccard’s antipathy becomes positively violent: “Ah the dirty Jew! There’s one it would be a decided pleasure to chew between one’s teeth, the way a dog chews a bone! Though certainly it would be too terrible and too large a morsel to swallow.” “The empire has been sold to the Jews, to the dirty Jews,” he cries:
All our money is doomed to fall between their crooked claws. The Universal Bank can do nothing more than crumble before their omnipotence … And he gave vent to his hereditary hatred, he repeated his accusations against that race of traffickers and usurers, on the march throughout the centuries against the peoples [of the world], whose blood they suck … [bent on] the certain conquest of the world, which they will possess one day by the invincible power of money … Ah! that Gundermann! A Prussian at heart … Had he not dared to say one evening in a salon that if ever a war broke our between Prussia and France, the latter would be defeated!
In the end, of course, Gundermann triumphs: the Banque Universelle collapses and Saccard ends up in jail, leaving in his wake a trail of broken hearts and empty purses.
No one could accuse Zola of having failed to do his homework: not only was the portrayal of James’s office carefully based on an eyewitness account, but the rise and fall of the Union Générale was described with some precision—the mopping up of clerical and aristocratic sayings, the bidding up of its own shares and the eventual débâcle. But what Zola had also done was to give literary credibility to the idea that the Union Générale really had been destroyed by the Rothschilds, as well as to the canard that the French Rothschilds had pro-German sympathies. That such notions struck a chord in the France of the Third Republic is all too apparent. Guy de Charnacé’s Baron Vampire is as wretched a book as L’Argent is powerful; but its message is not too different. The character of Rebb Schmoul, like Gundermann, is a German Jew with a distinctively racial gift for financial manipulation. A “bird of prey,” he profits from the horrors of war, then metamorphoses into Baron Rakonitz, advising impecunious baronesses in return for their social patronage. Such stereotypes were given added currency by the publication of Bontoux’s own memoirs in 1888. Although Bontoux did not mention the Rothschilds by name, there was little doubt about whom he meant when he denounced “la Banque Juive,” which, “not content with the billions which had come into its coffers for fifty years … not content with the monopoly which it exercises on nine-tenths at least of all Europe’s financial affairs,” had set out to destroy the Union Générale.
BERNARD MACHINES IN THE TINKERER’S ACCOMPLICE BOOK
November 26, 2007 at 11:06 am | Posted in Books, Philosophy, Research, Science & Technology | Leave a comment
THE TINKERER’S ACCOMPLICE
THE TINKERER’S ACCOMPLICE:
“I also introduce an important conceptual tool – the Bernard machine – named for the great French physiologist Claude Bernard, who first pointed to homeostasis as a central feature of living systems. Bernard machines are agents of homeostasis, and I discuss how design emerges from the action of Bernard machines that create new environments and impose homeostasis on them. Generation of design by Bernard machines contrasts in some fundamental ways from the Darwinist explanation for design, in which good design arises from selection for “good function genes.”
Most people, when they contemplate the living world, conclude that it is a designed place. So it is jarring when biologists come along and say this is all wrong. What most people see as design, they say—purposeful, directed, even intelligent—is only an illusion, something cooked up in a mind that is eager to see purpose where none exists. In these days of increasingly assertive challenges to Darwinism, the question becomes acute: is our perception of design simply a mental figment, or is there something deeper at work?
Physiologist Scott Turner argues eloquently and convincingly that the apparent design we see in the living world only makes sense when we add to Darwin’s towering achievement the dimension that much modern molecular biology has left on the gene-splicing floor: the dynamic interaction between living organisms and their environment. Only when we add environmental physiology to natural selection can we begin to understand the beautiful fit between the form life takes and how life works.
In The Tinkerer’s Accomplice, Scott Turner takes up the question of design as a very real problem in biology; his solution poses challenges to all sides in this critical debate.
From the Prologue …
This book is about why organisms work well, or to put it another way, why they seem to be “designed.”
Before I elaborate, I should mention two things the book is not. First, it is not about Intelligent Design (ID). Although I touch upon ID obliquely from time-to-time, I do so not because I endorse it, but because it is mostly unavoidable. ID theory is essentially warmed-over natural theology, but there is, at its core, a serious point that deserves serious attention. Before your hackles rise too much, let me hasten to say that the serious point is not the one that ID enthusiasts would like it to be. ID theory would like us to believe that some overarching intelligence lurks at the heart of the evolutionary process: to say the least, that is unlikely. Nevertheless, how design arises remains a very real problem in biology. This would be a good point to note the second thing the book is not: it is not a critique of Darwinism, which, as Dr Seuss might have put it, is about as true as any thought that has ever been thunk.[1]
Which brings us back to what this book is about …
My thesis is quite simple: organisms are designed not so much because natural selection of particular genes has made them that way, but because agents of homeostasis build them that way. These agents’ modus operandi is to construct environments upon which homeostasis can be imposed, and design is the result. This is largely the same idea I applied to the problem of animal-built structures in The Extended Organism, but here the focus is on more conventional “inside-the-skin” physiology. We do venture outside the skin, though, to explore what the link between homeostasis and design might mean for how we think about evolution.
——————————————————————————–
[1] The Glunk that got Thunk from Dr Seuss (1969). I Can Lick 30 Tigers Today!
Chapter summaries:
Chapter 1. Cleanthes’ dilemma
Chapter 2. Bernard machines
Chapter 3. The joy of socks
Chapter 4. Blood river
Chapter 5. Knowledgeable bones
Chapter 6. Embryonic origami
Chapter 7. A gut feeling
Chapter 8. An intentional aside
Chapter 9. Points of light
Chapter 10. Pygmalion’s gift
Chapter 11. Biology’s bright lines
Chapter 1. Cleanthes’ dilemma
The first chapter introduces the book’s theme, which is to resolve a seeming contradiction in current evolutionary biology. On the one hand, the living world appears to be a designed place, in which there is seeming foresight, intelligence, and craftsmanship in the structure and function of organisms. On the other hand, our modern conceptions of evolution do not admit concepts seemingly essential to design, like planning and foresight. This issue has traditionally been resolved by likening evolution to “tinkering”, the cobbling together of contrived solutions to immediate adaptive problems, most of which fail, but some of which work and are naturally selected. This “solution” to the problem is unsatisfactory, though, because it cannot be used to resolve the essential difference between a structure that is designed versus one that is only “apparently designed.” I illustrate this through a discussion of the “evolution” of packaging of frozen orange juice. I conclude with the theme that will be developed in the book, namely that the tinkerer needs an accomplice, to wit, the physiological mechanisms which integrate genome and phenotype into an integrated and well-functioning whole.
Chapter 2. Bernard machines
In Chapter 2, I sketch out the working theory for design that I will develop in the book. It is a personal chapter, telling how I came across the remarkable structures built by the fungus-growing termites of southern Africa, and some of the trials and tribulations I faced in trying to understand how these structures act as designed organs of physiology. I outline several crucial concepts that will be developed later in the book, including the concept of embodied physiology: dynamic structures that can be shaped to adjust to physiological demands. I also introduce an important conceptual tool – the Bernard machine – named for the great French physiologist Claude Bernard, who first pointed to homeostasis as a central feature of living systems. Bernard machines are agents of homeostasis, and I discuss how design emerges from the action of Bernard machines that create new environments and impose homeostasis on them. Generation of design by Bernard machines contrasts in some fundamental ways from the Darwinist explanation for design, in which good design arises from selection for “good function genes.”
Chapter 3. The joy of socks
Multicellular organisms are held together by webs of fibrous proteins known collectively as the connective tissue. Connective tissue is not simply a collection of collagen fibers; it is a dynamic living system that is continually being remodeled by agents of homeostasis, fibroblasts in this instance. These cells weave and continually re-weave webs of collagen, seemingly to the end of regulating tension in the fibers. When tension in collagen fibers falls outside of set limits, remodeling of the collagen network ensues: excessive strain prompts adding fibers, while unstrained fibers tend to be pruned. At the organism scale, this tension homeostasis produces highly organized collagen meshworks, cable-like tendons connecting muscles to bone, or “socks” of collagen fibers that envelop the body in helically-wound wraps. The interesting twist here is how a supposedly conservative force like homeostasis can nevertheless generate functional versatility, as reflected in the diversity of helical windings of collagen fibers that are found among animals.
Chapter 4. Blood river
The vascular systems of vertebrates seem to be very well-designed, constructed to minimize work of transport while maximizing efficiency of exchange. The arterial system is a good example of a “self-designed” structure, in which broad patterns of development are influenced by local feedback controls which sense and regulate the local flow environment. This chapter explores the principles behind such “self-designed” systems, and explores the specific mechanisms that generate and adjust the architecture of the vertebrate arterial vascular system. The chapter also traces the genesis of a “well-designed” vascular system during embryogenesis, and makes the point that the embryo must make two tries at building its circulatory system. The first, genetically driven try, produces a basic layout that is nevertheless a poorly designed system. The second try, which produces a well-designed system, is the product of endothelial cells acting as agents of homeostasis, modifying their environment to produce a “comfortable” strain environment throughout the system.
Chapter 5. Knowledgeable bones
Skeletal structures show many features of optimal design, for example in the dimensions of bones. Bones are also dynamically constructed by networks of embedded cells known as osteocytes, derived from the same lineage as fibroblasts. Like fibroblasts, osteocytes are exquisitely sensitive to the strain environment, and they can act as Bernard machines, adjusting architecture to maintain strains within set limits. Bone design is the product of an ecological interaction between the osteocytic agents of homeostasis and another cell line, osteoclasts, which act as agents of disturbance. Bone design is something more, though, because bone strains are actively monitored by the central nervous system, which can feed back and alter bone structure in seemingly intentional ways. This is illustrated by the phenomenon of shape memory in antlers, in which a well-designed osseous structure, antlers, are grown anew each year, yet are not “trained by strain” as locomotory bones are. This means that bone design is under a form of intentional control by the nervous system.
Chapter 6. Embryonic origami
This chapter takes up the question: what is it that makes animals uniquely adaptable creatures? I argue that the real innovation that sets apart animals from other creatures is not their unique embryogenesis, as many have argued, but the invention of the epithelium. Organizing cells into epithelial sheets enables assemblages of cells to impose homeostasis on environments at a massive scale, a capability that evades single-celled and other multicultural creatures that lack epithelia. Among other things, this gives a rationale for the complicated folding maneuvers – embryonic origami – that characterizes animal embryogenesis. Using the evolution of the unique body forms of the Precambrian Vendozoa and Ediacaran animals, I argue that epithelia conferred a kind of “value-added” physiology that has propelled the animals on their spectacular evolutionary arc.
Chapter 7. A gut feeling
Intestines and digestive systems are a major epithelium-delimited interface between an organism and its environment. The space contained within the intestine is also an important site of imposed environmental homeostasis. As bones and circulatory systems do, intestines have objectively definable attributes of good design, which they often meet. Remarkably, the genetic determinants of gut architecture do not produce a structure that functions well. Gut architecture is brought to good design by agents of homeostasis that rebuild the genetically-determined foundation structure. Unlike bones and circulatory systems, however, optimal guts are restructured by an interaction with a “foreign” agency, a “bottom-up” control by the microbial communities within the gut. Good design of intestinal systems, therefore, subverts the pursuit of disparate genetic interests to the support of common physiological interests, a “physiological conspiracy” that subverts the “top-down” control of architecture by the organism’s genes.
Chapter 8. An intentional aside
The distinction between design and “apparent design” reflects a broader philosophical question, namely the proper place of doctrines of ends and purposes – teleology – in biology. That biologists draw the distinction between actual and apparent design is therefore as much a philosophical question as it is a scientific one. This chapter considers the philosophical roots of the problem of teleology, and outlines some of the historical framework behind modern biology’s rejection of it. I argue that biology has rightly divorced itself from teleological interpretations of biological history – evolution, but that rejecting it for the adaptation that drives the process of evolution may have been less wise. Our common way to divorce teleology from biological design has been to distinguish between the “good” teleology of physiological systems, which lack intention or foresight, and the “bad” teleology of forward-looking intentional systems. These distinctions are not really useful, however, and they have been drawn mostly as a way of avoiding, rather than confronting, the uncomfortable question of purposefulness in biology,. In the absence of any robust distinctions between “good” and “bad” teleology, the main legacy of the division has been to divide biology into a series of independent subdisciplines, not the unified science it should be.
Chapter 9. Points of light
Homeostasis often involves managing flows of matter and energy, but it also involves managing flow of information. Animals are among the most sophisticated managers of information, and they are able to do so largely because of another aspect of the “value-added” physiology conferred by epithelia. Most sensory structures are based upon sheets of cells that map information about the three-dimensional world onto two dimensional images, which are then used to reconstruct a mental representation of the “real world.” I explore this process using the mammalian visual system, introducing the principle that vision is built upon “many retinas”, multiple representations of the world built upon sensible sheets of cells in the eyes, diencephalon and cerebral cortex. I argue that the real design problem for eyes is not their marvelous optical contrivances, as Victorian critics and supporters of Darwinism supposed, but in the complex computational architecture of vision. Remarkably, this architecture is largely a product of assemblages of competing and cooperating cells, striving for stability in a complex “brain ecosystem.”
Chapter 10. Pygmalion’s gift
Intentionality is at the heart of the phenomenon of biological design. This chapter looks at the neural architecture of intentionality, with the aim of answering the question: how could unintentional purposeless natural selection produce intentional purposeful beings like us? I pose the question in terms of a metaphor: is cognition computation or is it ecology? I explore this in the framework of understanding various cognitive deficits, like addiction and schizophrenia. These all point to the conclusion that cognition is, at root, a phenomenon of brain ecology more than the product of a brain “supercomputer.” Cognition has evolved because there is selective value in the cognitive brain ecosystem building accurate mental representations of the world. Intentionality is the process of cognition in reverse, driven by brain homeostasis. New mental images of the world can arise without reference to the “real world”, which sets up a disparity between the mental world and the sensory representation of the “real world.” Intentionality is a form of homeostasis where the world is manipulated to bring it into conformity with the brain’s novel mental representation of it, actively “making a future happen.” I conclude by suggesting that the divorce of Darwinism from frank intentionality may have been a mistake, and that Darwinism can become a fully credible theory of evolution only if it embraces intentionality again.
Chapter 11. Biology’s bright lines
This chapter deals with the “bright lines” that divide modern biology into multiple disciplines – molecular, physiological, zoological, botanical, and so forth – and explores why they exist. The principal thesis advanced here is that the fracturing of biology is a consequence of an essentially atomist mind-set that places “atoms of heredity” – genes – as the central players in evolution and physiology. This chapter reviews various new findings on the nature of the gene and the challenges these new findings pose for biology’s central dogma: that “function radiates like light from the central sun of DNA.” The chapter introduces the crucial concept of “persistors”, physiologically competent environments, which are the physiological counterpart to replicators. The chapter also introduces the hypothesis that evolution plays out not as a selection of replicators, but as interplay between persistors and replicators. The chapter contains several examples to illustrate these concepts, ranging from prion-like replication factors to broad scale modifications of the environment by termites that serves as a kind of ecological inheritance that complements the genetic inheritance through lineages.
Comment on The Tinkerer’s Accomplice, Chapter 2. Bernard machines.
Claude Bernard in “The Brothers Karamazov”/Dostoyevsky
(“It’s chemistry, brother, all chemistry!
What can you do?… move over a bit and make room for chemistry!”)
But by far the most fascinating passage occurs in “The Brothers Karamazov,” Book 11, Chapter iv, “A Hymn and a Secret,” in a conversation between Dmitry and Alyosha. On the eve of the trial the opportunistic Rakitin visits Dmitry’s cell in order to collect some information for an article which he is writing, one that he hopes will establish his career. Alyosha’s arrival hastens Rakitin’s departure. Thereupon Dmitry suddenly asks his brother, “Who was Karl Bernard?” Alyosha can’t answer, even after Dmitry gets the name (and the nationality) right. Dmitry replies:
‘Well, damn him, then! I don’t know either… A scoundrel of some sort, most likely. They are all scoundrels. And Rakitin will make his way. Rakitin will get on anywhere; he is another Bernard. Ugh, these Bernards! They are all over the place.’
‘Just imagine: inside here, in the nerves, inside the head, that is, these nerves are inside the brain (devil take them!)… there are a kind of little tails, the nerves have little tails, and as soon as they begin to quiver… that is, you see, say that I look at something with my eyes, like so, and they start to quiver, these little tails… and as soon as they do, then an image appears, not immediately, but after an instant or so, a second passes, and there appears something like a moment, that is not a moment (devil take the moment) –but an image, that is an object or an event, devil take ’em, and that’s why I perceive and then think… because of those little tails, and not because I have a soul or that I am some sort of image and likeness — all that’s nonsense! Mikhail [Rakitin] explained all of this to me yesterday, and it really overwhelmed me. It’s magnificent, Alyosha, this science! A new man is emerging — that I understand… And yet, I feel sorry for God.’
Dmitry appears to be completely persuaded by Rakitin’s rhetoric (“It’s chemistry, brother, all chemistry! What can you do?… move over a bit and make room for chemistry!”) The vision appears to be magnificent: science is the future and a new man will emerge. Here Dmitry echoes the rhetoric of the enemy — for Rakitin is in the same camp with the Devil, Brother Ivan, Kolya Krasotkin, and a host of others. Indeed, the passage reaches a climax not unlike that in Ivan’s nightmare where it was Lyell’s geology instead of Bernard’s physiology which was threatening the idea of God, the soul, and immortality (man as “image and likeness”) and which would result in the emergence of the new man, the mangod, destined to rule the earth through science and will. Dmitry has arrived at exactly the same conclusion, having come under the spell of the new ideology through Rakitin’s original interpretation of Claude Bernard’s physiology.
The Tinkerer’s Accomplice: How
Design Emerges from Life Itself
J. Scott Turner (Author)
Product Details:
* Hardcover: 304 pages
* Publisher: Harvard University Press (January 1, 2007)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 0674023536
* ISBN-13: 978-0674023536
AUSTRALIA FINANCIAL SYSTEM
November 26, 2007 at 1:48 am | Posted in Economics, Financial, Globalization, Research | Leave a commentRBA News:
Release of 2007 Conference
Volume
The Structure and Resilience of the
Financial System
Reserve Bank of Australia
Sun 11/25/07
RBANEWS@EMAILSERVICE.RBA.GOV.AU
The 2007 Conference Volume, The Structure and Resilience of the Financial System, has been released today on the Bank’s website.
http://www.rba.gov.au/PublicationsAndResearch/Conferences/2007/index.html
Media Office
Reserve Bank of Australia
26 November 2007
http://www.rba.gov.au/PublicationsAndResearch/Conferences/
WEBInfo (Webinfo@RBA.GOV.AU)
RBA News:
Release of 2007 Conference Volume
The Structure and Resilience of the Financial
System
WEBInfo (Webinfo@RBA.GOV.AU)
RBANEWS@EMAILSERVICE.RBA.GOV.AU
Sun 11/25/07
BANK FOR INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENTS REVIEW NO. 136 2007: FINANCIAL TURMOIL
November 24, 2007 at 5:39 am | Posted in Africa, Economics, Financial, Globalization, Research, Third World | Leave a commentBIS Review
Bank for International Settlements
BIS Review No 136 available
Fri 11/23/07
Please find BIS Review No 136 attached as an Adobe Acrobat (PDF) file.
Alternatively, you can access this BIS Review on the Bank for International Settlements’ website.
What’s included?
BIS Review No 136 (23 November 2007)
Savenaca Narube: Fiji’s financial system – sound and more efficient
L Wilson Kamit: Papua New Guinea’s new banknote series
Emmanuel Tumusiime-Mutebile: The sub-prime banking crisis in the USA and its impact on the East African financial system
Emmanuel Tumusiime-Mutebile: Introduction of a CHOGM commemorative banknote in Uganda
Caleb M Fundanga: Central bank independence – a Zambian perspective
Rachel Lomax: Current monetary policy issues
Lars Nyberg: The financial market turmoil
_______________________________
please e-mail press.service@bis.org.
BIS Review
Bank for International Settlements
BIS Review No 136 available
Press, Service (Press.Service@bis.org)
Publications, Service (Publications@bis.org)
Fri 11/23/07
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN UNKNOWN INDIAN: NIRAD CHAUDHURI
November 24, 2007 at 2:47 am | Posted in Arabs, Asia, Books, Globalization, History, India, Literary, Third World | Leave a commentThe Autobiography of an Unknown
Indian
The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian
Author Nirad C. Chaudhuri
Country India
Language English
Subject(s) comparative – historical, cultural and sociological analysis of early 20th century India and the British colonial encounter in India
Genre(s) autobiographical, non fiction
Publisher MacMillan, Jaico
Publication date 1951
Published in English 1951
Media type book
Pages 535
ISBN 094032282X
Followed by A Passage to England (1959)
The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian is an autobiographical work of one of the most controversial writers of India — Nirad C. Chaudhuri, the last imperialist. He wrote this when he was around fifty and records his life from his birth at 1897 in Kishorganj, a small town in present Bangladesh. The book relates his mental and intellectual development, his life and growth at Calcutta, his observations of Vanishing Landmarks, the connotation of this is dual — changing Indian situation and historical forces that was making exit of British from India an imminent affair.
Nirad, a self-professed Anglophile, is in any situation an explosive proposition and in the book he is at his best in observing as well as observing-at-a-distance and this dual perspective makes it a wonderful reading. His treatment of his childhood, his enchantment, disillusionment and gratitude to the colonial capital Calcutta is highly factual as well as artistic to the extent highly readable.
Arguably, his magnum opus considering his literary output that he could generate as late age as ninety years, Autobiography is not a single book, it is many. Consciously or unconsciously he has left traces of all his erudition, his spirit and learning. Declaring himself a cartographer of learning, the book is also a cartographic evidence of the author’s mind and its varied geographies, of the map as well as of the mind.
The dedication of the book runs thus:
“ To the memory of the British Empire in India,
Which conferred subjecthood upon us,
But withheld citizenship.
To which yet every one of us threw out the challenge:
“Civis Britannicus sum”
Because all that was good and living within us
Was made, shaped and quickened
By the same British rule. ”
RUSSIAN SECURITIES DATA
November 23, 2007 at 12:18 pm | Posted in Economics, Financial, Germany, Research, Russia | Leave a commentRenaissance Capital
Fixed Income EXPRESS – 23
November 2007
(See charts and tables in the
attachment)
Fri, 23 Nov 2007
23 November 2007
(See charts and tables in the attachment)
KEY LIQUIDITY INDICATORS
Indicator Current
Value Previous
value Change
Credit institutions’ balances on correspondent accounts with CBR (Russia), bln RUB 442.9 467.9 -25.0
Credit institutions’ balances on correspondent accounts with CBR (Moscow), bln RUB 286.2 317.8 -31.6
Bank deposits with CBR bln RUB 91.9 93.5 -1.60
Balance of CBR transactions involving supply/withdrawal of liquidity, bln RUB -76.5 -93.4 16.9
Russia’s Foreign Reserves Assets (bln. USD) 455.8 455.2 0.60
Monetary base, bln RUB – weekly 3,743.3 3,743.5 -0.20
MONEY MARKET
Overnight Rate, % * 4.5/5.0 4.5/5.5 n/a
EUBOR – 6 month 4.66 4.63 0.031
LIBOR – 6 month 4.86 4.85 0.0025
MosPrimeRate – 1 month 7.08 7.07 0.0100
MosPrimeRate – 2 month 7.22 7.24 -0.020
MosPrimeRate – 3 month 7.14 7.15 -0.010
MosPrimeRate – 6 month 7.14 7.13 0.0100
REPO
Central bank reverse modified REPO rate (weighted average, %)*** 5.10 5.07 0.030
Direct REPO – (weighted average rate, %)** 6.03 6.03 0.00
Direct REPO Volume – bln. RUB** 89.0 99.7 -10.7
FOREX
EUR/USD 1.4847 1.4855 -0.0008
EUR/RUB(CBR) 36.0895 36.0584 0.0311
USD/RUB (CBR) 24.3174 24.3391 -0.0217
FOREX market traded volume (MICEX) – value today (in mln USD) 0.0 1,079.0 -1,079.0
FOREX market traded volume (MICEX) – value tomorrow (in mln USD) 1,497.7 2,727.7 -1,230.0
NDF, rate (180 days) %* 6.27 / 6.44 6.25 / 6.42 n/a
Ruble debt market – micex – Volume of Trade
Corporate and Municipal Bonds (including OTC Market), bln. RUB* 11.7 12.0 -0.30
Sovereign Ruble Debt, bln. RUB* 2.17 1.64 0.53
UPCOMING EVENTS
Date Event
23.11.2007 Coupon payment of Sportmaster-1
Coupon payment of EnergoStroy-1
Coupon payment of Master-Bank-2
Coupon payment of Republic of Komi-7
Coupon payment of OFZ 26178
Put option on Gazbank
* All data except when indicated as of last trading day’s close
** Last REPO auction – 22 Nov 2007
***Last OBR auction – 22 Nov 2007
JP MORGAN CHASE EMBI+ INDEXES & SPREADS
Country EMBI+ Change, % EMBI+
Spread Day chg,
bps
1-Day 1-Week YTD
EMBI+ Global 425.4 -0.57 -1.03 4.44 259 12
Argentina 107.9 -2.97 -6.70 -15.05 441 28
Brazil 623.9 -0.68 -1.09 7.54 234 13
Mexico 372.0 0.01 0.06 6.54 154 5
Russia 470.8 -0.38 -0.17 4.80 177 10
RUBI CORP 193.6 -0.77 -1.28 1.73 376 22
South Africa 152.0 -0.01 -0.13 6.57 162 8
Turkey 279.5 -0.46 -0.68 8.06 261 11
Ukraine 225.8 -1.11 -2.21 3.43 304 31
CDS MARKET
Instrument Last Value Change, bps
1-Day 1-Week 1-Month YTD 52-Week
iTraxx Index 338.9 -8.14 32.12 66.70 n/a n/a
Russia 5 years 116.6 0.16 30.31 44.67 72.71 64.47
Gazprom 5 years 192.9 -2.66 55.18 77.44 116.69 100.25
BTA 5 years 809.9 -5.38 73.24 217.78 573.42 569.30
BENCHMARK EUROBONDS
Security Price YTM Day chg,
bps Week chg,
bps Duration Date of
Maturity
UST 10 101.9 4.02 0.00 -23.80 8.24 11/15/2017
BUND 10 99.8 4.03 -0.60 -10.80 8.50 1/4/2018
Russia 30 112.4 5.72 0.14 4.57 6.90 3/31/2030
RUSSIAN BENCHMARK ROUBLE BONDS
Security Price YTM Day chg,
bps Week chg,
bps Duration Date of
Maturity
OFZ 25061 99.4 6.23 4.61 11.53 2.30 5/5/2010
OFZ 46020 102.3 6.83 2.01 3.95 12.6 2/6/2036
Gazprom 9 101.3 7.09 1.47 9.66 5.04 2/12/2014
RC INDEXES
Index Last Value Change, %
1-Day 1-Week 1-Month YTD 52-Week
EUROBONDS 123.4009 0.00 -1.24 -0.67 2.66 4.02
RUB BONDS 131.3407 0.19 -0.22 0.92 6.48 7.82
COMMODITIES
Commodity Last Price Change, %
1-Day 1-Week 1-Month YTD 52-Week
BRENT, USD/barrel 94.5 -0.49 4.11 12.30 57.20 60.40
URALS, USD/barrel 92.6 -0.45 4.42 14.80 65.50 69.10
WTI, USD/barrel 98.0 0.00 4.20 10.70 60.60 69.00
Cold Rolled Steel, USD/Ton 635.0 n/a n/a 0.00 9.50 9.50
Hot Rolled Steel, USD/Ton 587.5 n/a n/a 0.00 16.30 16.30
Nickel, USD/Ton 28,850.0 -2.85 -8.98 -9.10 -13.40 -7.40
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Renaissance Capital
Fixed Income EXPRESS – 23 November 2007
(See charts and tables in the attachment)
Fri, 23 Nov 2007
PALESTINE: ECONOMIST MAGAZINE
November 23, 2007 at 5:25 am | Posted in Arabs, Globalization, History, Judaica, Middle East, Palestine, USA, Zionism | Leave a commentThe Economist –
North America Edition
Nov 24th 2007
The Palestine issue is the ultimate microcosm of the “global traffic jam” which is caused by the Zionist takeover of Washington as well as of the American mind which senses that Zionism is some kind of cushion or brake against globalization.
For example:
Karl Rove was on the “Charlie Rose” PBS TV show, Wednesday, November 21, and quotes his guru, Professor Bernard Lewis of Princeton who is a well-known Zionist operative of Jewish origin, with extensive links to neocons such as the entire Cheney entourage as well as to many of the Israeli superhawks on the Right.
It doesn’t occur to Karl Rove that the Zionist framework is precisely what’s blinding him to the way the world works and to the way the global system is evolving. Bernard Lewis Zionism is the ultimate “bum steer” and that’s what Bush-Cheney-Rove can’t grasp.
At the center of the world’s “traffic jam” is the Zionist “lie factory” distorting, blocking and convulsing everything and cowing Washington, the media, academe, Hollywood.
Olmert’s Annapolis strategy will be of course to wait covertly for a potential Giuliani presidency as of January 2009, since Giuliani is under the thumb of Podhoretz and the other radical “Orwello-Zionist” agents. Hillary Clinton is also under this thumb and Olmert will ultimately stall till one of his poodles takes office. Zionism is a cancer on world politics and the world as a system cannot emerge from the current gridlocked “traffic jam” until this blockage is identified and understood.
NBK CAPITAL MENA RESEARCH: KUWAIT
November 23, 2007 at 1:59 am | Posted in Arabs, Economics, Financial, Globalization, Middle East, Research | Leave a commentNBK Capital MENA Research
Please find attached
NBK Capital MENA Daily
Publication
This is a daily NBK Capital publication that tabulates the performance of each of the MENA region’s twelve markets.
Thank you,
NBK Capital MENA Research
Ahmed Al-Jaber Street, Sharq
P.O. Box 4950 Safat 13050
Kuwait City, Kuwait
Tel.: +965 224 6663
Fax: +965 224 6984
www.nbkcapital.com
_________________________________________________________
Please find attached NBK Capital Qatar
Technical Analysis.
Thank you,
NBK Capital MENA Research
Ahmed Al-Jaber Street, Sharq
P.O. Box 4950 Safat 13050
Kuwait City, Kuwait
Tel.: +965 224 6663
Fax: +965 224 6984
www.nbkcapital.com
_________________________________________________________
Please find attached NBK Capital Kuwait
Technical Analysis.
Thank you,
NBK Capital MENA Research
Ahmed Al-Jaber Street, Sharq
P.O. Box 4950 Safat 13050
Kuwait City, Kuwait
Tel.: +965 224 6663
Fax: +965 224 6984
www.nbkcapital.com
_________________________________________________________
NBK Capital MENA Research menaresearch@nbkcapital.com
Kuwait Technical Analysis – 22 Nov. 2007
Thu, 22 Nov 2007
Attachments: NBK Capital-Kuwait Technical-22Nov2007.pdf,
Size: 120926 bytes.
NBK Capital MENA Research menaresearch@nbkcapital.com
Qatar Technical Analysis – 22 Nov. 2007
Thu, 22 Nov 2007
Attachments: NBK Capital-Qatar
Technical-22Nov2007.pdf,
Size: 114036 bytes.
Please find attached NBK Capital MENA Daily Publication.
This is a daily NBK Capital publication that tabulates the performance of each of the MENA region’s twelve markets.
Thank you,
NBK Capital MENA Research
Ahmed Al-Jaber Street, Sharq
P.O. Box 4950 Safat 13050
Kuwait City, Kuwait
Tel.: +965 224 6663
Fax: +965 224 6984
www.nbkcapital.com
_________________________________________________________
Watani Investment Company (NBK Capital)
NBK Capital MENA Research
NBK Capital MENA Daily
22/11/2007