Monthly Archives: May 2021

Everything You Need to Know About the 2021 Met Gala and Costume Institute Exhibition – Vogue

Posted: May 4, 2021 at 8:13 pm

Though today is the first Monday in May, we are not rolling out the red carpet on the front steps, says the Metropolitan Museum of Arts Marina Kellen French Director Max Hollein. But that doesnt preclude the release of exciting new information about the Costume Institutes two-part 2021 exhibit In America: A Lexicon of Fashion and In America: An Anthology of Fashion. Hollein was joined by Eva Chen of Instagram and Andrew Bolton, the Wendy Yu Curator in Charge of the Costume Institute, this morning at a virtual press conference that revealed all the details about the upcoming exhibits and galas.

Part one of the exhibition, A Lexicon of Fashion, will open September 18 at the Anna Wintour Costume Center at the Met, marking the Costume Institutes 75th anniversary. An intimate gala to celebrate the exhibits opening will take place on September 13, cochaired by Timothe Chalamet, Billie Eilish, Amanda Gorman, and Naomi Osaka with honorary chairs Tom Ford, Instagrams Adam Mosseri, and Anna Wintour. The exhibit will be organized to resemble a home, with intersecting walls and rooms that will establish what Bolton calls a new vocabulary thats more relevant and more reflective of the times in which were living.

Traditionally American fashion has been described in terms of the American tenets of simplicity, practicality, and functionality. Fashions more emotional qualities have tended to be reserved for more European fashion, Bolton says. In part one well be reconsidering this perception by reestablishing a modern lexicon of fashion based on the emotional qualities of dress. The many rooms in this part of the exhibit will be titled to reflect the personal and emotional relationship we have to fashion: Well-Being for the kitchen galleries, Aspiration for the office, and Trust, the living room, for example.

In pushing the human connections to our clothes, Bolton is writing a new history of American style that focuses less on sportswear and Seventh Avenue dressmakers, instead framing designers as creators, innovators, and artists. Taken together these qualities will compromise a modern vocabulary of American fashion that prioritizes values, emotions, and sentiments over the sportswear principles of realism, rationalism, and pragmatism, he says. Pieces from Christopher John Rogers, Sterling Ruby, Conner Ives, Prabal Gurung, and Andre Walker feature in part one of the exhibition. Rubys Veil Flag, a short film presented at Paris Fashion Week, was recreated at the Met, and its central piece, a denim American flag, will open the show. Director Melina Matsoukas will also create a film for the exhibit that will evolve over the course of its run.

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Cult politics set to return in TN with Stalin’s win – Moneylife

Posted: at 8:13 pm

With the DMK winning Tamil Nadu Assembly elections after crushing the AIADMK-led front, and M.K. Stalin set to become the Chief Minister, the cult politics, which had subsided after the passing away of M. Karunanidhi and J. Jayalalithaa, may as well return.

After M.G. Ramachandran, a matinee idol and superstar of Tamil Nadu entered the state politics, the cadres and sympathisers found in him a new messiah. He was adored and worshipped just like he was in the movies and there were jokes going round in Tamil Nadu that 'if MGR was found falling down during a fight scene in a Tamil movie, the spectators would throw knives at the screen so that MGR could use them and win the fight'. While this may be a joke, the point of adoring MGR as a Tamil icon and saviour of Tamil Nadu was clear. When MGR split the DMK and formed his own party, the AIADMK in 1972, the fans followed him and he won the elections with a comfortable majority.

M. Shivakumar, a political analyst and a former journalist with a Tamil news paper of Madurai told IANS, "While Periyarr and Annadurai gave the ideological moorings to the Dravidian politics in Tamil Nadu, MGR raised it to a cult status and he was adored and worshipped across the spectrum and his movie fans moved on with him as his political fans and there started the cult worship in Tamil politics."

Karunandihi, one of the best lyricists and writers of Tamil Nadu politics had a special gift of the gab and his oratory skills had kept the audience spellbound. He was also worshipped and adored within and outside the Dravidian politics even though the ideology was rationalism.

MGR had carefully picked Jayalalithaa, his one time pair in filmdom as his political successor. But after his passing away, Jaya was kicked out of the party and even from the funeral procession of her mentor. However, Jaya bounced back and became a powerful Chief minister with a huge fan following. She, as Chief minister took the cult politics and image of invincibility to a higher level and even ministers and senior party functionaries were seen prostrating at her feet in public domain. This was considered as a privilege by the political supporters and Jayalalitha silently supported this.

After the passing away of Jayalalithaa and Karunanidhi, the cult politics of Tamil Nadu had taken a back seat and both Palaniswami and Panneerselvam were ordinary leaders who were accessible to the general public, bureaucracy and party office bearers.

However, after the DMK captured power in Tamil Nadu with a sizeable majority and M.K. Stalin is set to become the Chief Minister, the politics of cult worship will find an entry to the political firmament of Tamil Nadu as he has the aura of the political dynasty of Karunanidhi which is being worshipped by the cadres and leaders of the DMK.

C. Rajeev of the Centre for Policy and Development Studies, a think tank based out of Chennai while speaking to IANS said, "With Stalin coming to power, the DMK cadres and leaders will commence the worship culture again which will ultimately lead to cult worship. If Stalin does not fall into this trap and stick to his business of administering the state, there can be a respite but the culture of this politics is not easy to be erased and there is every likelihood that cult politics will continue in the state."

Disclaimer: Information, facts or opinions expressed in this news article are presented as sourced from IANS and do not reflect views of Moneylife and hence Moneylife is not responsible or liable for the same. As a source and news provider, IANS is responsible for accuracy, completeness, suitability and validity of any information in this article.

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Dan McCaslin: Outdoor Education and New Nature-Based Myths Needed in the Anthropocene – Noozhawk

Posted: at 8:13 pm

Although some young teachers may be willing to take responsibility, the truth is that few schools practice true outdoor education (Midland School near Los Olivos is an exception).

About 220 years ago, German Romantic poets realized that an overdeveloped scientific rationalism threatened their cultural vitality and individual imaginations. Poets likeFriedrich Schiller, the early Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Novalis noticed that the Industrial Revolution and scientism had heavily impacted their epoch in the Germanies (and also in 19th century United Kingdom and United States).

Novalis claimed that the highest form of true culture was music, and later in the century, Friedrich Nietzsche agreed through his adulation of operas by Georges Bizet and Richard Wagner.

Like the English Romantic Lake poets William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, the Germans looked to nature and the green vitality at the core of the cosmos for spiritual sustenance, proclaiming that simply walking in the woods or shrublands creates energy in the human spirit and mind. (Only a few hundred years earlier we would read only negative stories about scary nature [wildeor], vicious wild animals about, with no roads at all.)

Wordsworth memorably wrote: "Knowing that Nature never did betray the heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege, through all the years of this our life, to lead from joy to joy."

Accentuated by rigid COVID-19-based self-quarantining, many of us today remain wary of going farther outside past the local parks and frontcountry to the less populated backcountry trails in federal wildernesses. Like the materialistic central Europeans, we also need new and enchanting nature myths and stories to lift the brain fog and draw us away from town and its many cares.

I know that local Rattlesnake Canyon Trail has been inundated with hikers, hence, as with most of the other local frontcountry trails, there are now parking issues at some trailheads, e.g., along Hot Springs Road and at the Romero Canyon Trailhead.

We can imagine how indigenous people in pre-contact days also might have chosen to head across the local mountains (e.g., past Santa Barbara's Painted Cave site on todays Highway 154 to enjoy the interior areas during bounteous springtime. They might have been drawn by spiritual stories about alapay, petrified mythic boulders, skulking nunasin, coyote tales and the sheer animistic magic of the older times.

UCSB political science professor Tae-Yeoun Keum writes about those late 18th century German idealists and poets (including Friedrich Schlegel), who found themselves in a modern [German] political society so thoroughly dominated by a culture of rationality that it has become impossible to imagine it any other way (see 4.1.1 Books).

I definitely admire and appreciate logical thinking and the scientific method, and happily acknowledge the achievements of the Industrial Revolution.

Yet, it remains that the Holocaust is still the major lesson of the 20th century, and our industries continue to decimate the Earths climate. The growing dystopian worldview, especially the cynicism growing among the young, is partly a result of the mistakes of materialism and just too many humans (and their 1.5 billion cows) on the platform.

Therefore, we really need new stories and poetry to illuminate the positive, to cheer on good solutions-oriented science, and to entice humans to drag their kids farther out of doors for longer sojourns.

UCSBs Keum writes that those German idealist-poets thus made calls on the literary genre of myth to serve as a ground from which individuals can begin to imagine different possibilities for what politics and the society can look like (see 4.1.1).

Honestly, I gain absurd joy from roaming around the backcountry, out past Cachuma Reservoir and into the dry hinterlands beyond Nira Camp. Today, we have some truly depressed children and adults. Vitamin N nature therapy is an infallible cure for such conditions! Despite the driving and gasoline costs, day-hiking and car-camping is pretty inexpensive ($20 a night at Fremont Camp along Paradise Valley Road vs. $200-plus a night at El Capitan Ranch glamping center).

It seems like many local schools, including private schools, have given up leading students out into local wilderness areas or on light backpacking treks anywhere and they gave this up long before the COVID-19 pandemic erupted.

A wonderful 20th century Santa Barbara public school teacher and legend led many students into local nature areas for decades without any issues. Frank Van Schaik taught for several decades at the old Wilson School (since shuttered), eventually becoming principal and retiring in 1982.

In his fascinating 1994 memoir, "Home of the Wilson Wildcats" (see 4.1.1), he eloquently describes repeatedly hauling students into nearby nature areas, much as we did at Crane School when I taught there in the 1980s and 1990s. Thirteen chapters cover outdoor trips he led, some with his pal, the legendary Dick Smith, and the adventures became very exciting for the students and truly educational (and somewhat outlandish).

My gosh, did they take chances back in the day! Yet, some of this camping and rough play was precisely the attraction for the students. I located a dozen activities in Van Schaiks book that simply would not be sanctioned or allowed at any school I know about today.

These are outdoor losses for children in my view, and most of the hikes and regions remain fabulous and enticing today. See below, although the B.B. gun wars (!) would certainly have gotten me fired at any school!

Van Schaik lists these destinations among those he visited with his Wilson Wildcats: We went to Rattlesnake Canyon to Bear Meadow and to Figueroa Mountain to the beach camps at Gaviota and Las Varas to Big Sur to the Monterey coast to Blue Canyon and to Pine Mountain to Mineral King to various spots on the Mojave Desert to Mount Abel and Mount Pinos ... (partial listing).

Intriguing stories about backcountry characters such as the Kansas farmers led by faith-healer Hiram Wheat in the 1880s, or memorable vignettes from the Chumash oral tradition (Blackburn, 4.1.1) including the "Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island" (cf. Scott ODell novel), and scores of semi-mythological tales about the Road to Similaqsa abound.

In truth, uttering a few tales around a tiny campfire at Nira Camp with 15 students, all enjoying a mug of hot chocolate, strumming a few guitar chords and singing, may be worth any five or six algebra classes (especially if the class has been on Zoom!).

Make every effort to go over into Santa Ynez or Matilija Creek or Manzana Creek areas and entice your children to come along and enjoy the greenery, too. Good nutrition and gear make it more enjoyable, of course.

We all desperately need Vitamin N and new backcountry tales told after hiking and climbing around. As Wordsworth chants, Nature leads us from joy to joy as we tread the shrubland path beside the flowing creek.

Tae-Yeoun Keum, "Plato and the Mythic Tradition in Political Thought" (Harvard, 2021); Frank Van Schaik, "Home of the Wilson Wildcats" (Capra, 1994), p. 169 for BB gun wars and pp. 333-334 for partial list of places he camped with fifth-grade students; Thomas Blackburn, "Decembers Child" (UC Press, 1975); I discuss the Road to Similaqsa in "Autobiography in the Anthropocene" (2019), pp. 139-147 and rock art pictograph N-1, p. 133.

Dan McCaslin is the author of Stone Anchors in Antiquity and has written extensively about the local backcountry. His latest book, Autobiography in the Anthropocene, is available at Lulu.com. He serves as an archaeological site steward for the U.S. Forest Service in Los Padres National Forest. He welcomes reader ideas for future Noozhawk columns, and can be reached at [emailprotected]. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.

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The five Rays of Satyajit – Deccan Herald

Posted: at 8:13 pm

May 2, 2021 marked the birth centenary of Satyajit Ray. Mostly known for his highly acclaimed films, Ray was a remarkable polymath whose contribution is not restricted to just filmmaking.

Ray the Writer: Ray had said, My family runs on royalty from my books. Among Bengalis, is Satyajit Ray more popular as a writer or as a filmmaker? Perhaps, most are proud of his films, while he is dearer for his books. Feluda, Rays detective, is a household name, and Feluda books have been sitting atop bestseller charts for five decades now. Amitabh Bachchan had said that his one regret is never having played Feluda on screen, which his compatriot Shashi Kapoor did.

Science fiction is another genre of Rays expressive best. His protagonist, Professor Shonku, the inventor of Evolutin a drug that makes people evolve ten thousand years in a jiffy and such wonder products, is as comfortable in the rarified academic circles of Germany and Sweden, as in his adventures in Bolivia and Congo, chasing inexplicable phenomena or fighting evil forces.

Rays short stories, other than detective and sci-fi ones, are both fascinating and intriguing. Interestingly, while rationalism and realism reign in his films, many of his stories explore the occult and the supernatural.

Ray has also written a few weighty books on films.

Master Filmmaker:Award-winning director Rituparno Ghosh said Satyajit Ray showed us how to create poetry with the camera. There are volumes written and reels of films shot on Rays filmmaking. From Shyam Benegal to Adam Low to Goutam Ghose, acclaimed film and TV producers across the globe have captured Ray the filmmaker.

Starting from Pather Panchali to his last film Agantuk (The Stranger), Ray has received countless awards,including the Oscar for LifetimeAchievement. Akira Kurosawa, one of the greatest filmmakers, said, Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon.

Insightful Artist:Ray was lucky. After graduating in Economics from Presidency College, on Rabindranath Tagores insistence he reluctantly enrolled in Shantiniketans Art Department Kala Bhavan. During his brief stay, his artistic finesse sharpened under some of the greatest modern artists of India Nandalal Bose, Ramkinkar Baij and Benode Behari. Ray acknowledged the lasting effect of this serendipitous twist in his life, how Shantiniketan shaped his way of looking at nature and his understanding of human sensibility. On a lighter note, Nandalal Bose, the departmental head, got a longer cot made in the dorm for the 6 foot 4 inch Manik Satyajits nickname to family and friends.

Rays artistic manifestation spattered wide from being a visualiser in advertising to designing posters for his films, delightful illustrations for his stories, and book covers for Signet Press, which revolutionised printing and publishing in 1940s India.

Ray learnt calligraphy from Benode Behari while in Shantiniketan, which he applied extensively in Bengali fonts. He eventually created his own font of Roman alphabets, internationally known as Ray Roman.

Rays Music:Satyajit Ray had one international and two national awards for music under his belt. Artist Annada Munshi said Ray was Beethoven in his previous life. He could identify any Western Classical piece by listening to any part for a moment. While in Shantiniketan, Ray and Alex Aronson, professor of English Literature, spent countless evenings listening toBach and Tchaikovsky, Brahms and Vivaldi. Sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, who scored music for four of Rays films, said Rays mastery over music has no parallel in the world of film direction.

From the trilogy of Teen Kanya (Three Girls), filmed in 1961, Ray started scoring music for his own films. He also scored music for Merchant Ivorys Shakespeare Wallah. Ravi Shankar profusely praised Rays music in Piku, a film Ray made for French Television. In his penchant for realism, Ray made Kishore Kumar untrained in Tagore-Songs sing one in Charulata, arguably Rays finest film.

In his long spell in film music, Ray created two full-scale musicals in which he wrote the lyrics too. Songs of Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (GGBB), a fantasy adventure, and Hirak Rajar Deshe (Land of Diamond King), a political satire in the form of a childrens film, are still sung in carefree and concerned moods.

Using a mix of western and Indian musical instruments, Ray created a signature genre for himself. Which music would he carry to a remote island? Ray had quipped, Mozarts opera, The Magic Flute.

Ray for Children:The intellectual halo and the baritone voice obfuscate the voluminous work Ray has done for children. To think of it, most of his writings are for children. He resurrected the children magazine Sandesh, and wrote, edited and drew for it amid hectic film shootings. Four if his films are for children, and in one of them, GGBB the musical fantasy, Ray lent his deep voice, singing as Bhuter Raja (King of Ghosts).

Satyajit Ray wore his laurels lightly and remains an icon reflecting the finest flavours of a modern man.

(The writer is a Bengaluru-based software entrepreneur)

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100 reasons to love Ray: His love of microcosms – Livemint

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Rabindranath Tagore said that the world can be seen in the reflected convexity of a dewdrop. As I write this in Edinburgh, Scotland, 5,000 miles away from Kolkata, it makes me think of the films of Satyajit Ray. So many of them are microcosms. So many of them are small worlds in which we can see the world reflected. The English title of his film Ghare Baire is The Home And The World, which describes his approach to his art. The small and the large in the same place.

Also read | 100 reasons to love Ray: The full list

The village in the Apu trilogy was his first contained place. Though it was full of specifics about Bengali life, people around the world could see elements of their existence in it. The mansion in Devi is another microcosm. In it, a man dreams that his daughter-in-law is a goddess, people flock to her and the universe seems to become centred on their home. In Charulata, the lonely wife seems confined to the home but looks outside with binoculars. Days And Nights In The Forest is about going on a trip, so at first sight it doesnt seem to be about confinement. But the trip centres on a forest, the film becomes a temporary village and, in its famous game of word- play, the feeling of microcosm intensifies. As the layers of memory build, we feel that we are in a kind of whirlpool.

Rays most intense and haunting whirlpool is, for me, Jalsaghar. At its centre is an ageing landlord. Outside his home, society is changing, the elite way of living is being challenged by new economies but like a crab in a rock pool, he wants to stay in his own music room. The famous visual moment in the film is when he sees a chandelier reflected in his drink. It is confined, just like him.

Of course great film-makersRobert Bresson, Ingmar Bergman, etc.were interested in closed worlds, but theres a particular sense of the camera obscura, the huis clos, in Rays films, I feel. Where Hindi cinema, for example, is all about escape and travelogue and often doesnt have what the French call terroir, the specific ground on which a vine grows that gives its grapes flavour, Rays confinements enrich his work. Centrifuges spin things outwards but Rays was in part a centripetal imagination.

Also read | 100 reasons to love Ray: His bag of tricks

There are dangers in this. Such films can feel claustrophobic or insular but his usually dont because focusing on small places deepened his stories. It pushed him to metaphor and psychology. Confinement led to thematic density and layering. We often talk about Hindi cinema as masala cinema, by which we mean a generic mix. In Rays microcosms, we get an existence mix. On the most obvious level there is the human drama, the conflict. But beneath that surface we can see the landscape of Bengali society. Within that we hear the melody of feminism. And beneath thatharmonising with thatwe get the recurrent threat (or opportunity) of modernity, capitalism and rationalism. And indistinctly above all this, hanging in the air, is the question of the sacred.

I value the films of Ray so much because his microcosms dont feel far away from my European, Celtic one. I have still so much to learn from Satyajit Ray (and I have a tattoo of one of his drawings on my arm!).

Mark Cousins is a film-maker and writer based in Edinburgh.

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UNZA disowns intellectualism and academic freedom! The Mast Online – themastonline.com

Posted: at 8:13 pm

A university is ordinarily a reservoir of intellectualism and rationalism. It is a marketplace of knowledge derived from reason, not only in the process of imparting knowledge to their students but also in all its interactions with the public.

To effectively play its role in society, a university should jealously guard its autonomy and must never see itself as a mere adjunct or servant of any other entity.

It therefore comes to us with a deep sense of shock that the University of Zambia management seeks to disown and discard intellectualism in the manner envisaged by their latest press statement flagged off by Dr Brenda Bukowa, Acting Head Communications and Marketing. In avowing to expressly disassociate itself from the opinions and views expressed by Dr Sishuwa Sishuwa in an article entitled, Zambia may burn after the August elections: Heres how to prevent this, published in the Mail & Guardian of South Africa on 22nd March 2021, the UNZA management has shown that intellectualism is not a hallmark that they are keen to uphold. Two reasons are apparent; first, a reading of the article in question reveals that at no place does Dr Sishuwa state that he was expressing his views for and on behalf of UNZA, its management or his fellow academics. It is therefore troubling that the entire communications and marketing machinery of the countrys oldest university can swing into swift action in this manner. Secondly, this article was published on 22nd March, 2021 in the Mail & Guardian. Why was the UNZA Acting Head Communications and Marketing, intellectually dormant on this issue between 22nd March, 2021 and 27th April, 2021? It is anyones guess that something drastic happened, eliciting the ill-conceived statement which in itself, now actually diminishes the intellectual and professional standing of the author of the UNZA press statement, UNZA management and all academics associated with UNZA!

To put these matters into perspective, acclaimed scholars are settled that the concept of academic freedom is the freedom to pursue truth in the course of teaching and research activities wherever it seems to lead, without fear of punishment or termination of employment for having offended some political, religious or social orthodoxy. A close reading of the views that Dr Sishuwa expressed reveals that he had a deep reflection of ideas on the democratic future of this country, as ought to be done by any seasoned academic; ready to face the temerity of his thoughts. The least any other person chosen to a contest of ideas could do is respond with ideas to discount those held by Dr Sishuwa, thereby enhancing liberties of conscience and expression. The move by the UNZA management to disown Dr Sishuwas views, to which they were not invited, anyway, spells doom for intellectualism at UNZA.

In the International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences, academic freedom has also been defined as the freedom claimed by a college or University Professor to write or speak the truth as he sees it without fear of dismissal by his superior or by authorities outside his college or University. The revolutionary, Kwame Nkrumah is on record too, as having noted that there was sometimes a tendency to use the phrase academic freedom to assert the claim that a University is more or less an institution of learning having no respect or allegiance to the community or the country in which it exists and which it purports to serve. According to a Ghanaian scholar, Collins Owusu-Ansah, this assertion is unsound in principle and objectionable in practice. Universities and distinguished constituent intellectuals like Dr Sishuwa have a clear duty to the community which maintains and trains them at great expense to the national treasury. The views that Dr Sishuwa expressed in his original article in the Mail & Guardian may have rattled the powers that be, excited their fanatical supporters to lose concentration, and commit legal wrongs such as defamation; but that does not make it criminal or an affront to the values of intellectualism and academic freedom that UNZA must embrace if it must remain relevant.

Against the sound practices of academic freedom and intellectualism, UNZA management deemed it correct to launch an attack on the person of Dr Sishuwa by crying out to the world that the intellectual is not in their active employment for the reason that since the year 2018, he has been and continues to be on an unpaid leave of absence outside the country and therefore, his opinions and views in the mainstream and social media do not represent the official position of the University of Zambia. As fallacious and untrue as these views may be, we would imagine that the individual views of academic staff at UNZA do not bind the University. Why does UNZA feel duty bound to stress the obvious?

Falling short of explaining how Dr Sishuwas well thought out views are an abuse of academic freedom, UNZA management asserts that they would not be party to the abuse of academic freedom to advance personal agendas while using the name of the University to give credence to such abuses. UNZA remains committed to its motto of Service and Excellence. It is common knowledge that universities are unique institutions in democratic societies charged with the tasks of conducting critical and original research in the pursuit of knowledge and of training and educating students. Universities provide a forum in which both academic staff and students are encouraged to think for themselves and not through proxies. Academic freedom is the idea that universities should be subject to no external authority in the matter of critical reflection. Academic freedom is a sub-set of freedom of expression protected under the Republican Constitution. It includes not only information or ideas that are favourably received or regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of indifference, but also includes those ideas that may offend, shock or disturb. The fact that a section of the public finds some intellectual discourse offending on account of their political inclination should not sway a reputable institution of higher education to be cowed into disowning their bona fide academic member of staff, whatever disowning means in this context. Every citizen has recourse to impartial arbiters and UNZA must not see itself as that arbiter in the circumstances of this case.

Like other accepted freedoms, academic freedom requires individuals, authorities and government to not only allow scholarly work without restraint, but also prevent any interference with this freedom; new ideas must be generated, nurtured and freely exchanged. Historic examples show the need for academic freedom. Socrates opted to be put to death for corrupting the youth of Athens with his ideas. Galileo (1564-1642), was sentenced to imprisonment for advocating the Copernican view of the solar system. Descartes (1596-1650), suppressed his own writing to avoid similar trouble. Teachers were fired for teaching their students about Darwins views.

Does the UNZA management seek to take the country back to pre-medieval times by maintaining their unfounded views seeking to disown Dr Sishuwa, academic freedom and intellectualism?

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COVID-19 Risk-Based Guidelines Updated to Factor in Vaccination – AustinTexas.gov

Posted: at 8:12 pm

Austin, Texas Austin Public Health (APH) updatedthe COVID-19 Risk-Based Guidelinestoday, May 4, to clarify personal behavior recommendations for those who are fully vaccinated versus those who are partially or not vaccinated.

Individuals who are vaccinated may:

Individuals who are partially or not vaccinated may:

Regardless of vaccination status or stage, individuals need to continue to follow the additional requirements of local businesses, venues and schools, as theHealth Authority Rulesremain in place through May 18.

We want people to getvaccinated, said Dr. Mark Escott, Interim Austin-Travis County Health Authority. Now andcertainly in the future asthe vaccination rate improves,there will be improved freedom associated withvaccination. In other words, the need to continue masking and the other necessary precautionswill continue to decrease for those who are vaccinated.

Additionally, the threshold to enter Stage 2 has been updated to 5-14 new hospital admissions on the 7-day moving average. The threshold to enter Stage 1 has also been updated to less than 5 new hospital admissions on the 7-day moving average or 70%-90% herd immunity is achieved through vaccination.

While APH monitors the 7-day moving average of COVID-19 new hospital admissions as the primary key indicator for the Risk-Based Guidelines, additional key indicators, including positivity rate, the doubling time of new cases and current ICU and ventilator patients, are monitored to determine the current staging.

As a result of both declining length of hospital stays and declining mortality rates, we feel comfortable reassessing the transition of stages, added Dr. Escott. We expect that there isgoing to be a long tail interms of achieving vaccine herdimmunity or completely getting COVID-19 out of our community. So, we expect that we may seea slow decliningplateau of cases, and as thevaccination rate improves inthe community, and we hit70% to 90% vaccinated we could lookat transitioning to Stage 1 safely.

Austin-Travis County remains in Stage 3 of the Risk-Based Guidelines, with acurrent 7-day moving average of new hospital admissions of 17.

For additional COVID-19 information and updates, visitwww.AustinTexas.gov/COVID19.

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Inside Indias COVID-19 Surge – The New Yorker

Posted: at 8:12 pm

Rajat Arora, an interventional cardiologist, is the managing director of the Yashoda Hospital and Research Centre, a medical system that operates several hospitals in and around New Delhi. For the past year, Arora and his team have designated two specific hospitals for their systems COVID-19 patients. Situated in the city of Ghaziabad, just east of Delhi, the hospital that Arora looks after is large and modern, with a full range of subspecialties; it has two hundred and forty COVID beds, including sixty-five in the adult I.C.U. and fifteen in a pediatric I.C.U.

India, like the rest of the world, has struggled with the coronavirus. The number of patients at the COVID hospital reached a hundred and thirty in the fall. Still, by December of 2020, life in Delhi had almost returned to normal. Temples had been opened for worship, political rallies had resumed, and Indias famously large wedding celebrations were back on. Aroras COVID hospital was never stretched beyond capacity and was always flush with supplies and medications; in February, it was caring for fewer than ten coronavirus patients at a time, and many had symptoms of long COVID, not acute infection. The rest of the hospital provided cardiac care, elective surgeries, and labor and delivery services. It came as a surprise to Arora, therefore, when he contracted the virus, in late January. Everyone said, COVID is gonewhere the hell did you get COVID? This is such a random time to get COVID, he told me. All around him, he recalled, a sense of triumph had settled in: people asked, Are we immune to this disease? and Did we win the war?

For Arora, as for many Indians, the apocalyptic COVID-19 surge the country now faces was unexpected. In March, cases started to rise in the western state of Maharashtra, home to Mumbai. We thought it would be like the first wave, Arora said. We thought things would pick up but pretty much be manageable. You always reason from your past experience. Today, India is home to the worst coronavirus outbreak in the worlda medical and humanitarian crisis on a scale not yet seen during the pandemic. Though the reported case numbers are in the hundreds of thousands, some experts estimate that millions of Indians are infected each day; thousands are dying, with more deaths going uncounted or unreported. More than one in every five coronavirus tests returns positivea marker of insufficient testing and rampant viral spread. Hospitals are running out of oxygen, staff, and beds; makeshift funeral pyres burn through the night as crematoriums are flooded with dead bodies.

Arora, like leaders at other Indian hospitals, now regularly hears that critical supplies and medications could run out at his hospital in days or hours, if they havent already. He is constantly working the phones to procure whats needed for basic COVID-19 care: oxygen, ventilators, immunosuppressive medications, antiviral drugs, and the like. Day and night, these calls are interspersed with pleas from increasingly desperate patients or their families, who ask and sometimes beg for admission. Almost always, Arora has to refuse. His hospital can admit around thirty patients per day, based on the number of discharges and deaths; he estimates that he and other hospital administrators receive upward of a thousand requests daily. Aroras cousin, a woman in her thirties, is currently admitted. After arriving, she required escalating doses of oxygen and needed I.C.U.-level care, but Arora was unable to get a bed for her until nearly half a day had gone by. Theres nothing we can do until someone gets better or someone dies, he said. If I put up a thousand-bed hospital today, it would be full in an hour.

Not infrequently, Arora receives messages from families of patients to whom he refused admission and who later died. The other day, a loved one of a previously healthy, thirty-nine-year-old man texted Arora that if he had given her just two minutes of his time the man would have survived. Not long afterward, Arora received a message from another mans son: My father left us, he wrote. I begged you Doctor. Last week, a young girl called him in the middle of the night on behalf of her father, whose breathing was rapidly deteriorating. The I.C.U. was filled past capacity, and Arora couldnt admit him. The next day, the girl told Arora that her father had died and that now her mother was struggling to breathe. Arora treated the mother in the emergency room, and she survived.

In addition to a shortage of beds, Aroras hospital doesnt have enough medications. Supplies of the immunomodulator drug tocilizumab, which is given to patients to treat the immune-system storm that can devastate the lungs and other organs, are in short supply. The scarcity of the antiviral drug remdesivir has given it an almost mythic status. Some studies have found that the medication confers a modest benefitshortening the duration of COVID-19 symptoms by a few daysbut others suggest that its no better than a placebo. (Its routinely given in the U.S., but the W.H.O. recommends against it.) Nonetheless, everyone is desperate for it, Arora said. We dont have much else in our armamentarium. He estimates that his hospital has enough remdesivir for about a fourth of eligible patients. At some Indian hospitals, patients are ableeven encouragedto bring in scarce medications and supplies, if they can procure them. Some of Aroras patients have turned to the black market, paying thousands of dollars for a vial of remdesivir, only to learn that its counterfeit. Families buy these vials, desperate to save their loved ones, Arora said. Then we find out theyre filled with coconut water and milk.

The tale of the Indian pandemic is both mysterious and familiar. For much of the past year, the worlds largest democracywith a population of some 1.4 billion living on a landmass a third the size of the U.S.escaped the worst. Researchers have advanced all sorts of theories to explain this outcome. They point out that India is a young country, with a median age of twenty-eight; that it instituted an early and strict lockdown; that it has undercounted cases and deaths; and that Indians may have had some level of prexisting immunity to the novel coronavirus, owing to exposure to similar viruses in the past. Studies have indicated, perplexingly, that more than half of the residents in some dense urban centers had previously been infected, even though their hospitals hadn't filled up. None of these explanations have been fully proved, and, separately or in combination, they may not account for why India was spared last year. That debate will likely continue for a long time to come.

The reasons for the countrys current surge, on the other hand, appear straightforward. Since the New Year, theres been a substantial relaxing of public-health precautions. Mask-wearing declined; sporting events, political rallies, and religious festivals brought large numbers of people close together. Lacking a sense of urgency, the countrys vaccination campaign proceeded slowly: India is the worlds leading manufacturer of vaccines for a wide range of diseases, but has fully immunized roughly two per cent of its population against COVID-19.

Many assume that the rise of more contagious variants is accelerating the damage. Almost certainly, B.1.1.7originally identified in the U.K. and now dominant in many countries, including the U.S.is contributing to Indias viral spread. But a new variant, known as B.1.617, has also captured headlines and the attention of scientists and the general public. The predominant form of the variant, misleadingly referred to as the double-mutantit has at least thirteen mutationswas first detected in December. B.1.617 has several mutations on its spike protein, including E484Q and L452R, which seem to increase the viruss ability to bind to and enter human cells, and which may improve its capacity for evading the immune system. Some scientists have hypothesized that another mutation, P681R, could improve the variants ability to infect cells.

Still, the role played by B.1.617 in Indias crisis is uncertain. India has sequenced only about one per cent of positive coronavirus tests, rendering claims about the relative contribution of variants hard to disentangle from other factors, such as a rise in unrestricted gatherings in a densely populated country with limited health-system capacity. In any case, CovaxinIndias domestically developed COVID-19 vaccineappears to work against both B.1.1.7 and B.1.617. Arora told me that, although several fully vaccinated clinicians at his hospital have recently contracted the virus, none went on to develop severe diseaseexactly the kind of protection the vaccines are designed to deliver.

Last week, the Biden Administration announced that the U.S. would send a hundred-million-dollar aid package to India, including testing kits, ventilators, oxygen cylinders, and P.P.E. The U.S. has also removed restrictions on exporting raw materials for vaccines so that India can increase its production. Last weekend, syringes, oxygen generators, and ventilators poured in from across Europe, and a hundred and fifty thousand doses of Sputnik V, Russias vaccine, landed in Hyderabad. The Indian diaspora has committed tens of millions of dollars in aid.

Whether these interventions will be enough remains to be seen. In a country as large, diverse, and bureaucratically complex as India, the logistical challenges of converting aid into impact cannot be overestimated. Meanwhile, the Indian experience holds a deeper lesson for the worldespecially for wealthy countries that have hoarded vaccines and supplies. The constellation of forces that led to Indias crisispandemic fatigue, the premature relaxation of precautions, more transmissible variants, limited vaccine supplies, weak health-care infrastructureis not unique; its the default in most of the world. Absent a paradigm shift in our approach, theres no reason to believe that whats happening in India today wont happen somewhere else tomorrow.

When we spoke, Arora told me that most patients arrive at his hospital in taxis or in vehicles driven by their families. Few can afford the luxury of an ambulance, either because none are available or because private companies have raised prices amid endless demand. When they arrive, many patients linger in emergency rooms, where they can receive some oxygenand a modicum of reliefeven if they are ultimately refused admission to the hospital. At other hospitals, people have died in the parking lot.

As hospitals, emergency rooms, and the streets fill with younger and younger COVID-19 patients, Arora said, an all-consuming, unrelenting despair has taken hold among health-care workers. At Aroras hospital, even the pediatric I.C.U. is now full, with children as young as six struggling to breathe. (In India, more children than in the first wave now seem to be falling ill; data is limited, and its not clear whether there is a higher proportion of children getting sick or just a higher over-all number.) Many of the deceased are people middle-aged or younger.

Our staff is struggling, Arora said. Many are on the brink of a complete breakdown. Every day, they come to work and see nothing but death. They go home, and their own family has gotten COVID and cant breathe or have died. This is the situation. Theres no end in sight.

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Inside Indias COVID-19 Surge - The New Yorker

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Supply vs Demand: Which States are Reaching their COVID-19 Vaccine Tipping Points? – Kaiser Family Foundation

Posted: at 8:12 pm

We recently estimated that the U.S. was close to its COVID-19 vaccine tipping point that is, the point at which vaccine supply may start to outstrip demand. We also noted that national averages may mask important differences by state. We therefore sought to understand where states fall along this spectrum; such differences are important for understanding how best to target efforts to increase vaccine coverage throughout the country.

To do so, we looked at the share of adults with at least one vaccine dose by state, daily rates of first doses administered (using a 7-day rolling average), and how this rate has changed in the last week (see methods). We were particularly interested in identifying states that may still have relatively low vaccine coverage (i.e., below 50% of adults 18 or older) coupled with evidence of a decline in the uptake of first doses, as these states may present the biggest challenges for achieving sufficient vaccine coverage in the U.S.

As of April 29, among the 50 states and DC, we find that:

The share of adults who had received at least one vaccine dose was 55% overall, and ranged significantly across the country from a low of 41% (Alabama) to a high of 74% (New Hampshire). In addition, there is evidence of a decline in the pace of new uptake in most states. The daily rate of first dose administration at the national level is 451 per 100,000, ranging from 136 per 100,000 (Mississippi) to 889 (Rhode Island). Most states (31 of 51) are vaccinating below the national rate, reflecting the fact that vaccination rates are generally higher in larger states (e.g., California and Pennsylvania). Furthermore, the rate of first dose administration per 100,000 in the last week dropped for the U.S. overall (-27%) and for almost every state (45 of 51) (see Table 1).

At the higher end of the vaccine coverage spectrum, more than 60% of the adult population has received at least one dose in 12 states. These states are primarily in the Northeast (8 of 12). Seven have vaccination coverage of at least 65% and all but 2 (New Hampshire and New Mexico) are administering first doses at well above the U.S. rate. Eight of the 12 states have seen declines in first dose administration rates over the past week, suggesting that these states may be approaching or have reached demand saturation, albeit at relatively high vaccination coverage levels and rates of administration.

At the lower end of the vaccine coverage spectrum, less than 50% of the adult population has received at least one dose in 13 states, including 6 that are below 45%. Nine of these states are in the South and in all, the daily rate of first vaccination per 100,000 is below the national rate. Moreover, most are experiencing declines in the rate of first doses administered. This suggests that these states may not only be approaching or have reached their tipping points, they have done so at relatively low levels of vaccine coverage.

The remainder of the states, which fall in between these two extremes, are primarily in the Midwest and, to a lesser extent, the South and West. In about half of these states, between 55% and 60% of adults have received at least once dose. All but one experienced declines in the rate of first doses administered in the last week.

States that demonstrate a combination of low overall vaccination coverage along with slow and declining vaccine uptake raise the greatest concerns. There are the 13 states with less than 50% coverage with at least one dose, all of which are vaccinating their adult populations below the national rate. Twelve of these states also saw declines in the rate at which they were vaccinating adults over the past week. These include 3 states (Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi) with vaccination coverage at or below 42%, the lowest in the nation, each of which is vaccinating at about half the rate of the U.S. overall. These are the states that are potentially the greatest distance from reaching sufficient levels of vaccine coverage and might be at risk for future outbreaks if levels are not increased significantly.

As with the U.S. overall, most states appear to be at or near their COVID-19 vaccine tipping points the point at which their supply is outstripping demand. While this may not be as big a concern for states that have already vaccinated large shares (> 60%) of their adult populations with at least one dose, about one in four states have not yet reached 50%, which is well below coverage levels likely to be needed to drive down the risk of outbreaks going forward. Furthermore, in these states, the pace of vaccination is below the national rate. The fact that most of these states are also seeing declines in the rate of first dose administration suggests that they will be important targets for focused efforts to generate increasing vaccine demand.

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Don’t skip your second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, health experts warn – The Texas Tribune

Posted: at 8:12 pm

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On Friday, White House health adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci had a vital message for Americans who have gotten their first dose of the Moderna or Pfizer coronavirus vaccine: Don't skip your second shot.

About 8% of people nationwide who have received one dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine have not returned for their second dose, Fauci said Friday. That's normal compared to what health experts have seen with other multidose vaccines. But skipping a second dose will not be as effective in preventing the spread and providing the complete protection needed against the virus that has killed more than 576,000 people in the U.S. and more than 49,000 people in Texas.

"Bottom line of my message: Get vaccinated. And if you're having a two-dose regimen, make sure you get that second dose, too," Fauci said.

A lower percentage of people vaccinated in Texas are skipping their second dose relative to the rest of the country. As of April 25, about 5% or 570,399 of Texans who had received the first dose were 43 days or more past due for their second dose, according to data from the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Health experts say fears of side effects, an inability to take time off of work or incorrectly thinking that a single dose is enough all might be contributing factors to why some are skipping their second dose.

A recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are 64% effective at preventing hospitalizations in the elderly after the first dose. But they are 94% effective after two doses.

"Everything is showing us that you need two doses to get good protection against the virus," said Dr. John Carlo, CEO of Prism Health North Texas and a member of the state medical association's COVID-19 task force.

Carlo said another issue some Texans had earlier this year was finding a second dose, as the number of people eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine surpassed the number of vaccines available. However, he said, that's no longer an issue.

Texas is seeing its first dip in vaccine demand and a surplus in supplies since the states vaccinations began last winter, leading local and state officials to brainstorm ways to get people to their regional vaccination hub. Strategies have included trucks driving through small rural towns with LED signs, a $1.5 million TV and digital ad campaign and even possibly offering bobblehead or gift card incentives.

Since skipping second doses isn't unique to any part of Texas, both state and local officials are trying to spread the word of the second dose's importance, said DSHS spokesperson Douglas Loveday.

"DSHS has launched new TV, radio and digital ads about these important issues, but we're not the only ones carrying the message," Loveday said in an email. "The governor posted a new video ... on his Twitter account about the importance of getting a second vaccine dose, and our region and local partners continue to message about getting fully vaccinated."

Loveday said the second vaccine dose is also essential in preventing the creation and spread of new COVID-19 variants a mutation of the original virus.

While new variants have not yet been identified as deadlier than the original coronavirus strain, according to the CDC, they can be more contagious. This can lead to more cases, more hospitalizations and, potentially, more deaths.

Dr. Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist with UTHealth School of Public Health in Houston, said the first dose primes your immune system. The second dose cements the protection.

"The first dose of the vaccine may protect you from the original virus, but there are variants out there," Troisi said. "Because your immune response isn't as strong without your second dose, variants can replicate and spread. The second dose lowers the odds of that happening."

Health experts say Texans who have missed an appointment for a second dose shouldn't worry about having to start the process over again. While getting the second dose should happen within two to six weeks after the first one and not any sooner than that it's always better to get it late than never. If someone has missed their appointment for their second vaccine dose, they can contact their vaccine distributor to reschedule their appointment.

"There isn't going to be any shaming if you get the vaccine months later," said Dr. Diana Cervantes, assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth. "I know people might be hesitant if they missed their second dose. But it's never too late."

Disclosure: The University of North Texas and UTHealth School of Public Health have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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