Anatomy of Rape

Posted by Gopal Unnikrishna Kurup

Anatomy of Rape 

 According to psychologists, rape is caused by some psychological illness within the offender. That they are either emotionally disturbed or have personality defects, that  they have problems that impair them in relationships when under stress through sexual violence. There is also the view that rape is caused by sexual addiction. But by and large  psychological illness theory has limited value and is the cause of rape only in rare pathological cases.

Sociologists, however, believe that rapists are relatively normal people and do not have psychological problems. They view rape in a couple of different ways. Some believe that rape is due to an expression of gender inequality while some sociologists believe that rape is attributed to permissiveness, sexually, within society. Feminists tend to view rape as an expression of gender inequality, of male dominance over woman and is used to intimidate women to keep them in their place.Some believe that  both sociological explanations of sexual permissiveness and gender inequality provide the best explanation .

.Sociobiologists( Thornhill,Palmer) maintain that rape evolved under some circumstances as a genetically advantageous behavioral adaptation. It has long been noted that behavior resembling rape in humans is widespread in other animals. In Orangutans, a close human relative, half of all matings are of the nature of "rape". It is inferred then that rape in humans is homologous to such animal behaviour. Rape is viewed as a natural, biological phenomenon that is a product of the human evolutionary history.. But it is to be stressed that by categorizing a behavior as "natural" and "biological" we do not in any way mean to imply that the behavior is justified or even inevitable. Like natural calamities, floods,epidemics, it is undesirable.

There may be several different types of rapists or rape strategies. One is rape by disadvantaged men who cannot get sex otherwise. Another is "specialized rapists" who are more sexually aroused from rape than from consensual sex. A third type is opportunistic rapists who switches between forced and consensual sex depending on circumstances. A fourth type is psychopathic rapists. A fifth type is partner rape due to "sperm competition "when the male suspects or knows that the female has had sex with another male. There are varying degrees of empirical support for the existence of each of these types.

Basically, rape is related to sexual desire and if you recognize that, to argue that provocative dress by women will not affect the  risk of rape is fallacious. Scientists cite  research finding that at least one-third of males "admit they would rape under specific conditions" and that other surveys find that many men state having coercive sexual fantasies. They, "propose that rape is a conditional strategy that may potentially be deployed by any man.  Similarly, greater societal freedom amounting to permissiveness wii be fertile ground to produce rapists. An imporant factor in incidence of rape is its cost-gain ratio. In cases of high status men and low status women, the repercussive cost of rape ( fear of legal or familial reprisal) is less, favouring an increase. Other such contexts are riots, war, or anarchist situations. In individuals subjected to extreme sexual repression, thought of sexual gratification may outweigh thoughts of cost.

But the fact remains that even in the study mentioned above, two-third of men will not consider rape in specific conditions. What is that factor that prevents majority of people refraining from rape? Apart from their greater sensibility  to likely costs, it is their higher order of social and cultural mileu that reinforces antipathy to violence, and the inherent goodness in man.

It then becomes abundently clear that the most effective short term measure to combat the menace of rape is to enhanse to the maximum possible or prudent level the cost to be paid by the rapist in terms of punishment and social stigma which should be so severe as to serve as an effective deterrant.The long term measure is to drastically reduce the social permissiveness wherever found and raise the moral and cultural standards of the people by concerted compaigns and awareness programs to instill empathy and rspect for womanhood. It is imminently important that the society no longer proceed to the culmination of a medeaval patriarchal order which in its most sadomasochistic form reduces the women to nothing but an object of pleasure.

The Current Tale of FDI in Multi Brand Retail

Posted by Gopal Unnikrishna Kurup




 The discussion in Parliament on Foreign Direct Investment in Multi-brand Retail Trade and the subsequent vote on it to approve its introduction in the country, became a tell-tale display of the moral bankruptcy of our major political parties. It has, if any thing, laid bare their crass insincerity and hypocrisy. The Congress had opposed the measure when in opposition and Vajpayee govt tried to bring in FDI in Retail, the now PM Manmohan Sing then writing against it and leading a hue and cry in parliament. Since that the tables turned with the change of seats. It is opposition for opposition, it seems. Now you have also seen the spectacle of Akali Dal initially welcoming the bill and then voting against it - the current M-M play in reverse.

We have witnessed the shameful double crossing of the common man by the S.P. and B.S.P, of vehemently opposing the FDI in Retail publicly for the consumption of what they take as  gullible voters, and then selling their souls if they have any, by ushering in the dubious reform, through the perfidy of voting in favor of the measure in Parliament. Who are responsible for  making  the bill get past the Parliament and become legal and thus opening the way for its introduction in the country?  The very same two parties who opposed it tooth nail by mouth and then twisted themselves to put their foot in their mouths by voting for it.

Independent India has never seen this level of deception and duplicity on the part of political parties. Now who can believe in what they say  and where they stand on any issue vitally affecting the progress of this country? Does the Congress believe that it has come out stronger now by buying these two parties and securing a majority in both houses of Parliament and also having ensured its survival till the next general elections? My guess is that the Congress will soon find out that the cost is too high and ominous for the introduction of the rightful reform process in this country. Once these parties have extracted their pound of flesh, the Congress will find that it is their way or highway as far as further governess is concerned. And the Congress  will have only itself to blame then.



The Congress govt. now could claim political victory of sorts which in reality may be rather empty and a moral defeat. Moral defeat in that the sense of both houses of Parliament was strongly and dominantly against the bill. Additionally, and predictably, the ground scenes when it is going to be implemented could indeed be quite muddlesome with significant cold shouldering, bra hua, and even litigation galore.

Israel's Roguish Response

Posted by Gopal Unnikrishna

 

 Less than 24 hours after the vote on Palestinian status was held at the UN, a caviling Israel in an angry response announced the augmentation of its settlement plans in the strategically sensitive area of occupied land near east Jerusalem. Israel authorized 3,000 additional housing units a day after the UN voted to upgrade Palestinian status. About 500,000 Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.The settlements are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.

  In a separate development the petulant Israeli government also said that it would be stopping a $100m (£62m) transfer of tax revenues that it collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. The ostensible pretext given out for this stand was that  the Palestinians had not settled a $200m debt to an Israeli electricity firm.

 Israel's knee-jerk reaction has aroused widespread indignation. The move was seen as one that would represent an almost fatal blow to remaining chances of securing a two-state solution. In a strong admonishment of Israel, UN head Ban Ki-moon warned Israel that the settlement plans would deal "an almost fatal blow' to peace hopes. He pointed out that  Palestinians in East Jerusalem could be completely cut off from the rest of the West Bank. The UK government lost no time in summoning Israeli envoy to express its concern and told him that Israel should expect a "strong reaction" if it went ahead with its plans. Agence France-Presse quoted an Israeli embassy spokesman in Paris as saying that the ambassador there had also been summoned over the issue. The US said earlier, the expansion plan was counter-productive and would make it harder to resume peace talks, and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said she was extremely by prospects of large-scale construction. Mahmoud Abbas returning from UN told a flag waving crowd that Palestinians have a land now and called for an end to settlement building and a return to peace talks.

However, Israel's reaction to rest of the world's condemnation was characteristically defiant. It held out that Palestinian campaign was in gross violation of earlier agreement with Israel and that it will carry on building in Jerusalem and in all the places that are on the map of Israel's strategic interests.

Israel's intransigence and such defiance of international opinion will only serve to further isolate that nation. It is obvious that it's continued occupation of the West Bank and its untenable developmental efforts there cut at the very roots of settlement chances of the long simmering dispute, and peace hopes in the region.  Such development will prevent the creation of a contiguous Palestinian state. It destroys the two-state solution, (establishing) East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine and practically ends the peace process and any opportunity to talk about negotiations in the future.

Israel should realize that the time has come to rethink its hawkish attitude which it could no longer afford to maintain and that sooner it has to play a constructive role in securing its own security not through aggressive postures but by sagacious cooperation with world opinion.

The Half-Life of Facts : How Knowledge Changes

Posted by Gopal Unnikrishna

  
The Half-Life of Facts : How Knowledge Changes
       Scientometrics: The Science of Science

  In early Astronomy there were nine planets in the solar system. None were known to exist outside it. Since then, astronomers have spotted over 800 planets around other stars  and demoted Pluto to a mere "dwarf planet". Even a cursory glance at other fields of science reveals similar patterns.
    Samuel Arbesman, a mathematician at Harvard, calls this "The Half-life of Facts", He explains that this churn of knowledge is like radioactive decay: you cannot predict which individual fact is going to succumb to it, but you can know how long it takes for half the facts in a discipline to become obsolete. Such quantitative analysis of science has become known as scientometrics.
    Put simply, scientometrics is the science of science. It grew out of bibliometrics, the science of books and research papers. In bibliometrics the unit of measurement is a research paper. Librarians were some of the first people to do this They had to grapple with the question what to carry on their shelves. They had to calculate which fields get overturned really rapidly, in other words, which papers and books people were unlikely to care about in the future.
    But bibliometrics is only one sub field of scientometrics. There are all kinds of ways that you can quantify science: you can measure the number of discoveries that are occurring within a particular field, the number of elements in the periodic table, etc. Broadly, scientometrics is about quantifying and understanding how science occurs. That includes both the social aspects of science and the relationship between science and technology. It is about how the facts of the world—the stuff we know—grow in number, and how they change.
   In saying that a fact has a half-life, one is trying to illustrate how knowledge changes and this is best done by making an analogy to radioactivity. When you have a big chunk of uranium, you can graph out the decay; you can say it takes 4.47 billion years for half of the atoms in a chunk of uranium to break down. You aren't going to know which half, but you know the overall rate of the decay. And the same thing is true for science, and for knowledge in general. For example, in the area of medical science dealing with hepatitis and cirrhosis, two liver diseases, researchers actually measured how long it takes for half of the knowledge in these fields to be overturned. What they found is that there is a nice, smooth rate of decay; you can predict: that every 45 years, half of this particular sort of knowledge gets outdated.
    What scientific fields decay the slowest—or the fastest—and what drives that difference?Well it depends.  Medicine still has a very short half-life; in fact it is one of the areas where knowledge changes the fastest. One of the slowest is mathematics, because when you prove something in mathematics it is pretty much a settled matter unless someone finds an error in one of your proofs. Social sciences have a much faster rate of decay than the physical sciences,
    The whole concept calls attention to the human habit of becoming accustomed to whatever state of affairs is true when a situation is initially examined. By showing how knowledge about the world shifts systematically, you seem to be suggesting a renewed vigilance against growing complacency about knowledge of the world.
    It  shows people how knowledge changes. But at the same time It wants to say, now that you know how knowledge changes, you have to be on guard, so you are not shocked when your children coming home to tell you that dinosaurs have feathers.


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