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Boost for ties with US
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Save sheesham, kikar
Sectarian crisis in W. Asia
Remembering
Ashok Kamte
Relations with China
AIDS officially in decline
Monogamy isn’t easy, naturally
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Boost for ties with US
Tuesday’s
talks between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Barack Obama in Washington cleared the doubts, if there were any, about US intentions to continue the process of strengthening its strategic relations with India set in motion by the previous US administration. It is not without reason that Mr Obama expressed his administration’s commitment, in unequivocal terms, to the operationalisation of the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal clinched after considerable efforts. Hopefully, negotiations for a reprocessing and enrichment agreement will be concluded soon to the satisfaction of both sides. “Much progress has been made” on this front, as Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao pointed out, though a number of issues remain to be discussed. The agreement is primarily aimed at ensuring that the nuclear fuel to be supplied to India is not diverted to a weapons programme. The bitterness that was created by the joint statement issued at the end of President Obama’s visit to China has got removed. The US appears to have realised why China cannot be allowed to play the monitoring role in South Asia. Describing India as a “rising and responsible global power”, the US President dispelled all doubts about his commitment to boosting relations with India. Mr Obama made it clear that India has to play a “pivotal role” in Asia and the world. The two countries were, no doubt, “separated by distance”, as Dr Manmohan Singh noted, but they shared values of democracy, rule of law and respect for fundamental human freedoms. Building upon “these values”, they have “created a partnership that is based upon both principle and pragmatism”, the Prime Minister stressed. It is a matter of great satisfaction that India’s stand on resolving disputes between New Delhi and Islamabad without any third-party involvement has been upheld. Mr Obama, who discussed with Dr Manmohan Singh a number of issues, including terrorism, security in South Asia and the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan, highlighted the point that Pakistan has to deal effectively with the terrorists operating from its territory. The US has to continue to put pressure on Pakistan to force it to eliminate all kinds of terrorist networks, including those operating against India. This is essential as Pakistan truly has “an enormous role to play in securing the region”, as President Obama has admitted.
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It’s unparliamentary
Noise
and pandemonium are not exactly unknown in Parliament, but this session has been exceptionally bad, with unparliamentary behaviour being regularly on display right from the word go. First, the sugar issue saw the Houses drowned in the din, with everyone trying to be the benefactor of the sugarcane growers by making bitter comments at the top of their voices. Next, there was chaos over the leakage of the Liberhan Commission report, but the worst came on Tuesday when even the Rajya Sabha witnessed the sorry spectacle of Samajwadi Party (SP) general secretary Amar Singh pulling up the BJP’s S S Ahluwalia by the collar. Such behaviour would be a disgrace even for a village-level function and here an honourable MP indulged in it. Since this happened in the Rajya Sabha, it was far more reprehensible than a similar ugly episode in the Maharashtra Assembly recently where SP MLA Abu Azmi was slapped by MNS workers for daring to take oath in Hindi instead of Marathi. That was not all, both BJP and SP members also raised religious slogans in the House of Elders. If one party wanted to appease its “core constituency”, the other tried to refurbish its “secular” credentials. Both forgot that Parliament was not the forum for such politicking and in the process did considerable damage to the highest law-making body of the country. If this is how the Elders behave, one can well imagine what message goes down the line. It is painful to remind the representatives of the people that they are sent to the august body by the voters to hold discussions in a genial manner and not to indulge in slogan shouting and fisticuffs. In any case, violence is no way to settle scores in Parliament or any other place. Most of the MPs indulge in such unacceptable behaviour for the benefit of the TV which beams pictures of their “bravery” back home. Unfortunately, these videos are also telecast to civilised sections of society within the country and abroad who are appalled at this boorish conduct. Things have gone too far and it is time to restore the parliamentary code of conduct.
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Save sheesham, kikar
Kikar
(Acacia nilotica) and sheesham (Dalbergia sissoo) trees are a common sight in the land of five rivers, and it comes as a shock that fully grown trees of these varieties are fast diminishing. Excessive tree cutting could have explained the phenomenon, but this is not so. The trees are dying a slow death, but the decline in numbers — 82,183 to 30,000, in Bathinda district alone in eight years — is alarming. The kikar tree tolerates a wide range of soil types and, when used in land reclamation, can be planted onto degraded saline/alkaline soils with a soluble salt content below 3 per cent. It adapts itself to annual rainfall of between 300 and 2,200 mm, and tolerates extremes of temperature, so the assertion by some officers that “this denudation is due to changing climatic conditions and altering soil conditions,” does not hold much ground. Proper investigation is needed to determine the causes and also find a cure to save the remaining lot. In certain areas, water-logging has been blamed for the demise of sheesham or tahli trees. Again, this needs to be investigated and remedial measures taken. The flora and fauna of the state have been given a short shrift for a long time, and now the ill-effects are showing in the way the land has been polluted, as well as the increasingly dangerous level of chemicals in the produce. Forest lands have all too often been encroached upon, and even now dead trees are auctioned by the Punjab Forest Corporation. Punjab once had a great forest cover. Now even indigenous trees are under threat.The Forest Department would hopefully get out of its “can’t see the wood for the trees” attitude and help restore green forest cover to the land of the Green Revolution.
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Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be read once. — Cyril Connolly
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Sectarian crisis in W. Asia Even
as the hapless people of Iraq emerged from the trauma of the American invasion and the consequent ethnic and sectarian violence that engulfed their country, the fledgling democratic government was confronted with new challenges. On August 21 this year the Shia-majority Iraqi Parliament called on its Sunni-dominated neighbour, Saudi Arabia, to “cease funding anti-government terrorists in Iraq”. A senior official of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s ruling Dawa Party, Haidar al-Ibadi, earlier noted on August 20 that “there are regional powers that pay billions of dollars to push for the failure of Iraq’s democracy”. He criticised a “multi-billion dollar plan by Saudi Arabia and other states” to launch terrorist attacks across the country and to undermine public confidence in the elected government. Another leading Iraqi MP who is a member of Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Sami Al-Askari, averred: “Saudi Arabia is not happy that Shias lead this country.” The Iraqis note that three Sunni Arab countries — Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt — are yet to establish diplomatic missions in Baghdad. While Iraq accuses Saudi Arabia of meddling in its internal affairs, Saudi Arabia and Yemen accuse Shia-dominated Iran of promoting unrest in their Shia minorities. In September, Yemen claimed it had seized a vessel carrying weapons from Iran for the rebels belonging to its minority Zaidi Shia sect and detained its Iranian crew. As internal tensions in Yemen spilled across its borders into neighbouring Saudi Arabia, the Saudis joined the fray with their air force striking at rebel bases along the Yemen-Saudi border. On November 11, Saudi Arabia imposed a naval blockade of the Red Sea Coast of Northern Yemen, warning that it will search any suspect ship. The Saudi army is now operating against Shia rebels along its borders with Yemen. But what the Saudis fear most is Iranian instigation of its Shia population in their oil-rich eastern provinces. Responding to Saudi actions, Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki warned, “Regional and neighbouring countries should not interfere in Yemen’s internal affairs”, adding that “those who choose to fan the flames of conflict must know that the fire will reach them”. Iran, in turn, fears that neighbouring Pakistan is joining with Saudi Arabia, with American encouragement, to promote terrorist violence in its Sunni-majority border province of Sistan-Baluchistan. Iran accuses Pakistan of arming and supporting a shadowy Wahabi-oriented Baluchi group, Jundallah, to destabilise Sistan-Baluchistan. On May 28, 2009, the Jundallah struck at the provincial capital Zahidan during ceremonies by the Shia community to mark the death of the daughter of Prophet Mohammed. This terrorist attack left 25 worshippers dead and 125 injured. On October 18, Jundallah again struck at a meeting convened by the Deputy Commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard, killing 42 people, including the Deputy Commander. An outraged President Ahmedinejad accused “certain officials” in Pakistan of cooperating with Jundallah and providing shelter and support to its leader Abdelmalek Rigi. Saudi Arabia and Iran are fighting a proxy war in Pakistan and Afghanistan. While Saudi Arabia has backed the Taliban in Afghanistan and Wahabi-oriented groups like the Jaish-e-Mohammed and the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi in Pakistan, Iran has responded by aiding the Shia minority and other anti-Taliban groups along its borders with Afghanistan and sectarian Shia groups in Pakistan. Superimposed on the rivalries, conflicts and prejudices that have characterised Persian-Arab relations for centuries, matters have been further complicated by the United States and Israel, which significantly influence developments in the region. While the Jews and the Persians have historically been allies in the region, the Iranian government has adopted a policy of unremitting hostility towards Israel and the US. The Israelis, in turn, have covert links with Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Israel has stridently been opposed to Iran’s nuclear programme, claiming, not without justification, that Iran has ambitions to make nuclear weapons. The Obama Administration is frantically trying to find a solution that permits Iran to enrich uranium while, at the same time, ensuring that it neither qualitatively not quantitatively possesses enough highly enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons. Israel, however, continues to warn that if Iran, which has threatened to “wipe Israel off the map”, is not stopped, it will militarily strike at Iranian nuclear facilities. Any such action may well lead to Iran seeking to shut off access to two-thirds of the world’s oil supplies coming from the Persian Gulf, sparking off a global economic crisis. India has a vital stake in the stability of the region, extending from Pakistan and Afghanistan, across the Straits of Hormuz. An estimated four million Indians now live in the six Arab Gulf kingdoms — Oman, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. India gets around 75 per cent of its oil supplies from these countries. Indians living in these countries remit back the bulk of the $55 billion that India gets as remittances from its nationals working overseas. Tensions and conflicts in this region could send global oil prices skyrocketing. This will adversely affect our balance of payments and send our foreign exchange reserves spiralling downwards, as we already have an adverse balance of trade of around $120 billion. Apart from India’s increasing dependence on the Gulf Arab states for its oil supplies, there is now a growing demand for natural gas, for which an agreement was signed with Qatar. While Qatar has fulfilled the terms of the agreement signed with India, Iran has proved to be an unreliable supplier, unilaterally repudiating a contract signed with India in 2005 for the supply of an estimated $40 billion of natural gas over 25 years. Iran, however, remains an important source of natural gas. Given the political situation within Pakistan and growing regional tensions, India will have to secure foolproof guarantees of assured supplies before inking any deal on a pipeline from Iran, which traverses through not only the violence-prone Sistan —Baluchistan province of Iran, but also through the turbulent Pakistani Balochistan. Given the complexities of the emerging situation in its western neighbourhood, India will have to dexterously steer clear of getting involved in Persian-Arab rivalries. But, at the same time, given its close relations with Iran, Israel and the US and as a member of the Governing Council of the IAEA, India should play a more active role in resolving the standoff resulting from Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Samuel Huntington had prophesied a “clash of civilizations” between the Christian and Muslim worlds. What we are seeing in our neighbourhood is a clash between Persian and Arab cultures, superimposed on a deep, sectarian, Shia-Sunni
divide.
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Remembering Ashok
Kamte I
have been attending the annual St.
Stephens College Reunion frequently ever since I passed out of college
in 1987. However, on December 14 last year, it turned into memorial
service for Ashok Kamte and I was entrusted the painful task of paying
tribute to Ashok. It was a tragic personal loss as besides being
his classmate in college, I had the privilege of living with Ashok and
his family at his mother’s flat in Hira Mahal on the Amrita Shergill
Marg for about a year while studying law. Ashok had joined us at
St. Stephens College for his postgraduation after he had graduated
from St. Xavier’s College, Bombay. What stood him apart from the
rest of the Stephanians was the enormity of his physical stature,
which along with his quest for academic excellence was a unique
combination. What surprised many was why the National Power Lifting
Champion was pursuing postgraduation at St. Stephens. Ashok always
strove for excellence, whether in the classroom or the playing field. Power
Lifting is one of the toughest sports and Ashok would train for hours
in complete solitude. He was extremely agile and could sprint quite
fast. He loved swimming, squash and cricket. Ashok was proud of the
fact that he had the blood of two martial races, the Marathas and the
Sikhs. While his father is a retired Colonel, settled in Pune, his
grandfather was in the Imperial Police. His mother, Mrs Paramjit Kamte,
who now lives in Gulmohar Park, is from the well-known Bawa gamily of
Goindwal Sahib and is grand-daughter of Late Bawa Budh Singh of the
Indian Service of Engineers. Bawa Budh Singh was the 14th descendent
of the Third Sikh Guru, Guru Amar Dass. Perhaps he inherited his
fair features from his maternal grandmother, Mrs Surinder Bawa (maiden
name Violet), an English Lady. His sister Sharmila is a model and a
ballet dancer, settled in Dubai. His wife, Vinita, stays at Pune along
with sons Rahul and Arjun. Besides serving the UN Force in Bosnia,
Ashok had also trained in Punjab for some time. Ashok was known for
his high integrity and efficiency which was evident in his earlier
stints in Maharashtra, especially in Solapur, where he had brought an
inflammable communal situation under control within a few hours. It
was his conscientiousness, patriotism and devotion to duty which made
him the target of the 26/11 terrorist attack at Mumbai. He was the
Additional Commissioner, (East) and even though the area around the
Cama Hospital (South) did not fall within his jurisdiction, he had
reached there as he had undergone specialised training in handling
terrorism and hostage situation. He would lead from the front and was not the kind to send subordinates to do risky jobs. He lived for others and had a proactive approach. He made the supreme sacrifice and attained martyrdom in the battlefield and made his family, friends and the nation
proud.
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Relations with China
Ironically
enough, the slide in India-China relations began in just days before the November 2006 visit of Hu Jintao, supposedly intended to showcase an upswing in the relations. It began when the then Chinese Ambassador to India, Sun Yuxi, made a rather indiscreet and untimely comment to a TV news channel that the status of Arunachal Pradesh was still an unresolved issue between the two countries. Whether Sun Yuxi made this comment as a mere restatement of the old Chinese position for the record or to deliberately stir the pot will be debated for a long time. Sun Yuxi himself told me that he did not intend it to stir things up and that the partly American-owned TV channel deliberately played it up to blight the improving ties. Sun Yuxi also, quite significantly, added that while he might have been indiscreet, his statement won him a great deal of support from groups in China who favour a hard line with India, ever since it began to draw closer to the USA. Many in China believe that India is now part of a US attempt to encircle it and even Prakash Karat of our CPM has echoed this view. The result of the Sun Yuxi statement was that what had become a mere border alignment issue was once again transformed into a territorial issue. The thaw in our ties was initiated when Deng Xiaoping made an offer to Rajiv Gandhi in December 1988 to settle the border dispute on an as-is-where-is basis. The politically beleaguered Rajiv Gandhi felt that he did have the political capital for a deal to essentially forego claims on Aksai Chin in exchange for an alignment generally corresponding McMahon Line. The two leaders then agreed to keep the issue frozen for settlement "at some future time". Following this and the agreements consequent to the visits of Narasimha Rao and Atal Behari Vajpayee, it was generally believed in India that the Chinese claim on Arunachal Pradesh was now in the past. While releasing my book "India China Relations: The Border Issue and Beyond" earlier this year, in response to a pointed question from a journalist, the then Foreign Secretary strongly hinted that a settlement along the status quo might now be more acceptable to the Indian leadership. As if the border row wasn't enough to heat up relations, other issues too have cropped up. There is the question of the Dalai Lama's continued residence in India which surfaced even as the waters of distrust began receding. China's inability to deal with the increasing Tibetan restiveness also makes it angrily point a finger at India. When in India the Dalai Lama is restricted to just performing his ecclesiastical duties, which include tending to the spiritual needs of a large Indian flock adhering to the Tibetan school of Mahayana Buddhism. The Chinese have now taken umbrage over his visit to the ancient monastery at Tawang. Let alone the Dalai Lama's visit, they were even critical of Dr. Manmohan Singh's visit to the state last month. In the recent days the situation has been further vitiated by stories, many of them false, in the Indian media. The global economic crisis has exacerbated problems within China's rapidly growing economy. With US markets' rapidly shrinking, it needs to find markets elsewhere to sustain its export-led growth model. The rapidly growing Sino-Indian trade, but increasingly tilted in China's favour mostly due to an undervalued Yuan, is yet another festering issue. China derives much of its export prowess due to its undervalued Yuan and exploitative labour practices. The economic profligacy of the USA and China's somewhat naïve hoarding of trillions of dollars as reserves make it the USA's co-equal in causing the global economic mayhem. There is no sign that China has derived lessons from this and will revalue the Yuan. The misuse of business visas by Chinese construction companies to bring in tens of thousands of workers into India is now another issue. On the other hand, the issue of visas on a separate sheet of paper to Indian residents of J&K and Arunachal Pradesh in a bid to highlight their disputed status is seen as deliberately provocative by India. Providing a backdrop to all this is China's rather duplicitous role at the Vienna conference to ratify the IAEA's exemption for India from the stringent provisions instituted after our 1974 nuclear test; and its opposition to the expansion of the UN Security Council's permanent membership and by extension India's entry into it. In the recent days several new publications and books have exposed how extensively China assisted in the development of Pakistan's nuclear programme and their delivery systems. Since Pakistan's nuclear programme is entirely India centric, this is in itself is quite revealing about the intensity of Chinese hostility then towards India. The Chinese have been insisting that it was in the past and China is now committed to improving ties with India. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating and China, despite its much vaunted policy culinary abilities, has not yet put it on the
table! The writer is a well-known commentator and the author of the recently published "Chasing the Dragon: Will India Catch-up with China?"
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AIDS officially in decline The
HIV pandemic which started 28 years ago is officially in decline, two of the world's leading health organisations said yesterday. The number of new HIV infections peaked in the mid-1990s and has since declined by almost a third, according to the annual update on the pandemic for 2009, published yesterday by the Joint United Nations programme on HIV/Aids (UNAids) and the World Health Organisation. It is the first time that UNAids and the WHO have confirmed that the pandemic is on a downward trend and represents a landmark in the history of the disease. In their 2008 report, they said suggestions the epidemic had peaked were "speculation" and that it was "difficult to predict the epidemic's future course". That report warned: "The HIV epidemic has repeatedly defied predictions... HIV is likely to have additional surprises in store that the world must be prepared to address." But the 2009 update throws scientific caution to the winds and instead states clearly that the pandemic has passed its zenith: "The latest epidemiological data indicate that globally the spread of HIV appears to have peaked in 1996 when 3.5 million new infections occurred. In 2008 the estimated number of new HIV infections was approximately 30 per cent lower than at the epidemic's peak 12 years earlier." It says that, in sub-Saharan Africa – the worst-affected region – new infections in 2008 were "approximately 25 per cent lower than at the epidemic's peak in the region in 1995". It adds: "Asia's epidemic peaked in the mid-1990s and annual HIV incidence has subsequently declined by more than half. Regionally, the epidemic has remained somewhat stable since 2000." The annual report from UNAids and the WHO is the official record of the progress of HIV/Aids, and confirmation that the worst disease of modern times is in decline will be widely welcomed. Two years ago the organisations admitted that they had overestimated the numbers affected and revised the total down from 40 million to 33 million. Despite the fall in new infections, the number living with HIV increased last year to 33.4 million as people are surviving longer with the roll-out of antiretroviral drug treatment. Greater access to drugs has helped cut the death toll by 10 per cent over the past five years. There are now 4 million people on the drugs worldwide, a 10-fold increase in five years. The report says 2.9 million lives have been saved since effective treatment became available in 1996 but less than half the patients who need them are currently getting them. The reasons for the decline in new infections are disputed. UNAids said prevention programmes involving sex education, HIV awareness campaigns and distributing condoms had had an impact. Critics said the pandemic was already in decline before prevention programmes were widely implemented and the disease was burning itself out. Ties Boerma, a WHO statistics expert, said countries whose HIV prevalence declined dramatically, like Zimbabwe, were not always those that got the most HIV cash. Experts at UNAids said new infections had fallen 17 per cent since 2001, when the UN Declaration of Commitment on HIV/Aids was signed, triggering a global push to deliver anti-retroviral drugs and prevention programmes to the hardest hit parts of the world. Michel Sidibe, executive director of UNAids, said: "We have evidence that the declines we are seeing are due, at least in part, to HIV prevention. However, the findings also show that prevention programming is often off the mark and that, if we do a better job of getting resources and programmes to where they will make most impact quicker, progress can be made and more lives saved." But Philip Stevens of International Policy Network, the London-based think-tank, said with HIV declining it was time to rethink global spending priorities and switch funds currently being spent on HIV to other conditions that kill more people. Globally, HIV causes about 4 per cent of all deaths, but gets 23 pence in every pound spent on development aid for health ($21.7bn in 2007, or £13.1bn). Mr Stevens said: "In most countries HIV is a relatively minor problem compared with other conditions such as malaria and diarrhoeal disease. The exception is sub-Saharan Africa. South Africa has a 23 per cent prevalence but in many other countries [in the region] it's 3 to 5 per cent. “They have a problem but it is not the huge problem that UNAids is claiming. We shouldn't let this single disease continue to distort overall global funding, especially when bigger killers like pneumonia and diarrhoea in developing countries are far easier and cheaper to treat." Mr Stevens said the "single issue advocacy" by UNAids, which existed solely to draw money to the disease, had distorted global health priorities. "Governments are now talking about placing a bigger emphasis on primary care and building up public health systems." Dr Karen Stanecki, senior adviser to UNAids, said repeated studies in different parts of the world, comparing the reduction in new infections with what happened where there was no intervention, had demonstrated the effectiveness of prevention programmes. "The decline was over and above the natural decline in the epidemic. They showed it could only have been explained by behavioural change." She denied that too much was being spent fighting HIV/Aids. "We are facing a great many challenges. There are still 7,400 new infections a day. For every five people who become infected, two start on treatment. So we still have a long way to go."n — By arrangement with
The Independent
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Monogamy isn’t easy, naturally
Right-wing pro-marriage advocates are correct: Monogamy is definitely under siege. But not from uncloseted polyamorists, adolescent "hook-up" advocates, radical feminists, Godless communists or some vast homosexual conspiracy. The culprit is our own biology. Researchers in animal behavior have long known that monogamy is uncommon in the natural world, but only with the advent of DNA "fingerprinting" have we come to appreciate how truly rare it is. Genetic testing has recently shown that even among many bird species – long touted as the epitome of monogamous fidelity – it is not uncommon for 6 percent to 60 percent of the young to be fathered by someone other than the mother's social partner. As a result, we now know scientifically what most people have long known privately: that social monogamy does not necessarily imply sexual monogamy. In the movie "Heartburn," the lead character complains about her husband's philandering and gets this response: "You want monogamy? Marry a swan!" But now, scientists have found that even swans aren't monogamous. (Nor are those widely admired emperor penguins, whose supposed march to monogamy was misconstrued from another popular movie; their domesticity lasts only for the current breeding season – next year, they'll find new mates.) For some, findings of this sort may mitigate a bit of the outrage visited on the current and future crop of adulterers du jour, recently including but assuredly not limited to Eliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford, John Ensign and John Edwards. For others, it simply shows that men are clueless, irresponsible oafs. The scientific realty, however, is more nuanced, and more interesting, especially for those looking to their own matrimonial future. First, there can be no serious debate about whether monogamy is natural for human beings. It isn't. A Martian zoologist visiting planet Earth would have no doubt: Homo sapiens carries all the evolutionary stigmata of a mildly polygamous mammal in which both sexes have a penchant for occasional "extra-pair copulations." But natural isn't necessarily good. Think about earthquakes, tsunamis, gangrene or pneumonia. Nor is unnatural bad, or beyond human potential. Consider writing a poem, learning a second language or mastering a musical instrument. Few people would argue that learning to play the violin is natural; after all, it takes years of dedication and hard work. A case can be made, in fact, that people are being maximally human when they do things that contradict their biology. "Doing what comes naturally" is easy. It's what nonhuman animals do. Perhaps only human beings can will themselves to do things that go against their "nature." Add to this the fact that people have big brains, and hence, an ability to rescue monogamy from monotony, as well as the capacity to imagine the future and a visceral dislike of dishonesty, and the effect of biology on monogamy becomes complex indeed. Not to mention the adaptive significance of that thing called love. To be sure, monogamy isn't easy; nor is it for everyone. But anyone who claims that he or she simply isn't cut out for monogamy misses the point: No one is. At the same time, no one's biology precludes monogamy either. As Jean-Paul Sartre famously advised (albeit in a different context): "You are free;
choose." The writer is a professor of psychology at the University of Washington
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