split pea soup

with hemp seeds

This high-protein soup is packed with benefits, thanks to the addition of hemp seeds! Served with a salad it easily makes a satisfying, balanced meal.

ingredients

2 Tbsp Coconut Oil (can substitute olive oil)
2 Cups yellow Onion, diced
4 large cloves Garlic, finely minced
1 Cup Carrots, diced
1 Cup Celery, diced
2 Bay Leaves
1½ Cups dry Split Peas
3 Tbsp yellow Miso Paste (can remove if allergic to soy)
8 Cups Water
⅓ Cup raw Walnuts, chopped finely
½ Cup Navitas Naturals Hemp Seeds
Sea Salt and freshly ground Black Pepper, to taste

directions

In a large soup pot, heat the coconut oil over medium-high heat. Add the onion and cook for 2 minutes. Add the garlic, carrots and celery, and cook for 3-4 minutes longer, to soften the vegetables. Add the bay leaves, peas, miso paste, and water, and stir to combine. Cover, bring to a simmer, then reduce heat to medium-low. Cook for 50-60 minutes, stirring occasionally, until peas have broken down – add additional water if needed. Add the walnuts and the hemp seeds, and adjust seasonings if desired. Serve warm, with plenty of freshly ground black pepper.

Will keep for several days refrigerated.

yield: 6 servings

submitted to Navitas Naturals by Julie Morris

New York-based textile design company Maharam teams up with premium Danish furniture brand Republic of Fritz Hansen™ and Kvadrat for the European launch of Point by Paul Smith, a new upholstery textile designed in collaboration with the renowned British fashion designer. The launch will take place during London Fashion Week at the Republic of Fritz Hansen Store.

   

Point by Paul Smith is a vibrant upholstery textile. It’s an imaginative evolution of Paul Smith’s signature ‘classics with a twist’ style which distinguishes itself by a fusion of construction and pattern.

“The idea behind this fabric came from traditional Scottish Fair Isle knitting; I love the vibrant mix of colours and patterns that Fair Isle techniques create and have used many variations of it over the years,” says Paul Smith.

Point combines natural tones and accent colours that result in an eye-catching effect. It is available in 7 different geometric patterns, ranging from traditional to modern, which combine unique but related stripes that run from selvedge to selvedge.

See for yourselves!

Carlyn and Company:

Paul Smith:

An unnamed baby girl was, like 330,000 other infants each year, born with HIV (Knox, 2013). She was at high risk for contracting the virus: the mother was HIV-positive, did not receive prenatal care or antiviral drugs for her HIV. Also, the baby was born vaginally (Flynt, 2013). Generally, mothers who have HIV or genital herpes are given a c-section in order to reduce the risk of transmitting these infections to the baby.

When a baby is born to an HIV-infected mother, World Health Organization guidelines call for a modest daily dose of antiretroviral treatment for four to six weeks or until testing determines the baby’s HIV status. If the baby tests positive, a more aggressive treatment is initiated (World Health Organization, qtd in Winslow, 2013).

Under normal circumstances, a prophylactic dose of AZT would be administered immediately after birth (Flynn, 2013). Because doctors did not see the baby until she was 30 hours old, Dr. Hannah Gay, the Pediatric HIV specialist at Batson Children’s Hospital, began with a more aggressive treatment.

The baby was given AZT (Azidothymidine), Neviripine, and Lamivudine at higher doses than what is normally administered before an HIV diagnosis can be confirmed (Flynt, 2013 & Knox, 2013). Test results came back stating that the infant was HIV-positive. The treatment continued with periodic check-ups for the first 18 months of the baby’s life. The infant seemed to be thriving; tests could not detect any sign of the HIV virus in the infant’s blood, which indicates that the antiviral treatment was effective (Knox, 2013).

Then, the mother stopped bringing the baby in for checkups. Nobody knew where she and her daughter were. Dr. Gay had to involve the Mississippi State Health Authorities to locate them and check up on the baby. The mother stated that she had stopped giving antiviral drugs six or seven months earlier. Dr. Gay expected the infant’s viral load to be elevated, which is what generally happens when a patient with HIV stops complying with therapy. Generally, it only takes a few weeks after stopping therapy for an HIV patient to rebound (Winslow, 2013).

Doctors were surprised to find that the virus could not be detected in the child’s blood. It was as if the baby had been taking the antiviral drugs all this time. Dr. Gay’s first reaction was to think that she had been treating a child who did not have HIV. However, she reviewed the earlier bloodwork and found five different tests confirming the presence of HIV in the child in the days and weeks following her birth. So, the doctor assumed that the lab must have made a mistake with the new blood samples. She had the lab run the tests again and got the same results.

Dr. Gay and a colleague, Dr. Katherine Luzuriaga, ran more sensitive blood tests on the infant. These tests found pieces of HIV DNA and RNA but found no evidence that the virus was replicating. The baby had been HIV-positive, but now the virus was lying dormant, rather than spreading through the body cells. For this reason, even when the child stopped receiving medication, the disease still did not worsen. Doctors have referred to this as “a long-term remission” or “a functional cure” (Flynt, 2013).

Doctors attribute the miraculous cure to the aggressive- rather than lighter prophylactic treatment- that the infant received soon after birth. Scientists believe that the early, aggressive treatment prevented the disease from forming viral reseviors, or hideouts for the virus within the body’s T cells. Previous research has shown that once these hideouts are built in the T cells, it can take 70 years or more of continual treatment to eliminate them (Siliciano, 1997). So, we can see that early aggressive treatment is important in young patients with HIV.

The infant is the first child, and second person, to receive a functional cure from HIV. The other case involved a San Francisco man named Timothy Brown who received a bone marrow transplant, which gave him the immune system of a person without HIV. The bone marrow transplant was effective but not something that can easily be duplicated (Knox, 2013).

This case is remarkable, not only because it is the first case of a pediatric patient being cured, but also because she was treated with medications that were already available. Further research on early, aggressive treatment for infants at high-risk for HIV are being planned, although doctors say it will be difficult to know when the antiviral therapy should be stopped in these cases (Knox, 2013).

I feel like we’re on the brink of something huge. Assuming everyone who reads my blog is fairly young, the standard treatment for infants born to HIV-infected mothers may change dramatically within our lifetimes.

This case was very interesting to read about, but there’s still some things that I’m wondering:

* For several months, the mother did not give her daughter antiviral medications or take her to checkups. The doctor had to involve the authorities just to bring her to the hospital. Even though the child miraculously suffered no ill effects from this, would this count as medical neglect on the mother’s part? In any other situation, the child would have been endangered by the mother’s actions. What if the child relapses, but the mother once again doesn’t bring the child back to checkups for an extended period of time? If the child does relapse and is prescribed antiviral drugs, can the mother be trusted to make sure the child complies with therapy? The mother also has HIV. Is she able to even comply with her own medication therapy? The doctor first saw the baby in 2010- anyone else thinking that if this were a Lifetime movie, Dr. Gay would have adopted the baby by now?

* If this treatment is repeated, how high a risk for HIV would an infant have to be for doctors to initiate the aggressive therapy before the test results even came back? Or would they eventually start this therapy with any baby born to an HIV-positive mother?

* If doctors end up utilizing the early, aggressive treatment and the infants are able to grow up without having to take drugs or suffer from the effects of HIV, will heavy doses of antiviral drugs as a baby have side effects later in life. Will it be like when a bunch of people thought that vaccines caused Autism? If that’s the case, can HIV positive mothers ethically refuse the heavy antiviral treatment for their babies out of fear of the medication causing their child to develop Autism or something similar later in life?

*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***

Sources

Flynt, Stephanie. HIV infection cured in infant at Batson Children’s Hospital. March 3, 2013. http://www.msnewsnow.com/story/21448429/hiv-infection-cured-in-infant-at-batson-childrens-hospital

Knox, Richard. Scientists Report First Cure of HIV In A Child, Say It’s A Game-Changer. March 3, 2013. http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/03/03/173258954/scientists-report-first-cure-of-hiv-in-a-child-say-its-a-game-changer

Siliciano, Robert. HHMI Scientist Bio. 2002. Date viewed: March 3, 2013. http://www.hhmi.org/research/investigators/siliciano_bio.html

Winslow, Ron. Baby Cured of AIDS for the First Time, Researchers Say Success With Aggressive Drug Regimen Could Spur Wider Use of Such Treatment March 3, 2013. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324539404578338300521959748.html

So, see for yourself:

If you would like to tour the space please contact JoAnn McInnis at 703-750-0155 x 31 or at jmcinnis@carlynco.com 

I am so amazed at the comments at the end of this seminar, from both adult therapists new to Pediatric video swallow studies, and from seasoned pediatric therapists!

I think the variety of videos that we watch really helps. Luckily I have captured over the years some great examples of more rare etiologies such as TEF, but also great demonstrations of the evolution of the pediatric swallow. The videos of preterms, then infants then toddlers then young children, help you to see the progression of the swallow. That is so fundamental to understanding what you see radiographically, what it means in the context of the developmental process, and then problem-solving what to recommend.

You’ll have the chance to learn from those attending as well. I often learn something new or gain new insights from the discussions we have as a group, especially with the many case studies with their videos that we problem-solve.

Hope to see you this year!

Catherine

The Harvard Business Review Journal is not in my tribe. The advertisements in their magazine are directed towards people who make 5-10 times what I make. Most of the articles are written by people who were in school twice as long as I was.

The Harvard Business Review Journal gives me priceless insight into how to lead and manage my church. The articles written in the HBR give me cutting edge information about how brilliant leaders are leading ahead of the curve. Not everything in HBR is gold, but there is gold in every issue.

If I’ve learned anything, it is that connecting to those outside my tribe will give me an advantage that I would never have if I was only looking from within for examples of great leadership.

“I waited for something, but something died. 
So I waited for nothing, and nothing arrived.“

Na het beluisteren van het tweede album van de Ierse band Villagers, zijn het de bovenstaande regels die door je hoofd blijven zinderen. Catchy as hell. Maar deze meezinger-in-wording ontstond niet moeiteloos. Tussen de release van het eerste album ‘Becoming A Jackal’ (2010) en het maken van ‘{Awayland}’, kampte frontman Conor O’Brien met een kwalijke writer’s block. Maar dat deerde hem niet: ”Ik geloof dat zo’n tijdelijk gebrek aan inspiratie erg waardevol kan zijn, in die zin dat het je ertoe dwingt iets anders te gaan doen.”

NAÏEVE VERWONDERING

Conor O’Brien: ”Ik overwon mijn writer’s block door me een synthesizer en een sampler aan te schaffen en leerde vervolgens hoe ik ze moest gebruiken en hoe ik ze samen kon toepassen. Dat was het eigenlijke begin van ‘{Awayland}’. We experimenteerden volop met geluid. Veel van de toen gecreëerde klanken hebben nu subtiel hun weg gevonden naar onze nummers. Ik heb maandenlang geen woord op papier gekregen, maar enkel klanken en thema’s geproduceerd. Ik geloof dat die zoekperiode noodzakelijk was. Mijn writer’s block maakte deel uit van het ontstaansproces van ‘{Awayland}’, wat ergens logisch is.”

CE: Je koos er voor het album een erg dromerige naam te geven. Vanwaar de titel ‘{Awayland}’?
O’Brien: “Ik had het volledige album geschreven en wou een titel bedenken die de emoties die de nummers bij mij teweegbrachten representeerde. Ik beluisterde alle demo’s en realiseerde me dat er een soort thema was dat de nummers verbond. Iets wat me tot voordien niet eerder opgevallen was. De rode draad leek de verwondering en de nieuwsgierigheid ten opzichte van de wereld te zijn. De songs zijn niet vooringenomen en dat maakte een kinderlijke indruk op mij. Dus bedacht ik een neologisme dat perfect aansloot bij die gewaarwordingen. Ik koos voor ‘{Awayland}’ omdat het woord recht tegenover ‘homeland’ staat en dus niet onderhevig is aan connotaties als nationaliteit en sociaal onderscheid. De nummers van het album komen van een naïevere plaats.”

CE: Het creatieproces van het tweede album verliep moeizaam. Zijn er invloeden die je geholpen hebben om ‘{Awayland}’ te maken?
O’Brien: ”Toch wel. Ik las Kurt Vonneguts ‘Slaughterhouse-Five’ tijdens het maken van het album. Dat werk beïnvloedde mijn schrijven enorm. Als ik er nu op terugkijk, schreef ik de meeste nummers uit het perspectief van Vonneguts protagonist, Billy Pilgrim. Ik creëerde mijn eigen innerlijke versie van het personage: een verloren reiziger omgeven door een enorme puinhoop; een naïef iemand te midden van een oorlog. Er zit ook veel humor in dat boek, ondanks de verschrikkelijke dingen die er gebeuren. Die geestigheid wilde ik overdragen naar het album. Daarnaast las en bekeek ik video’s van mensen zoals Carl Sagan en Neil deGrasse Tyson. Zij hebben het over het universum en het begin en de evolutie van de mensheid. Kortom: grote dingen. Ik denk dat deze onderwerpen hun weg gevonden hebben naar de nummers in de vorm van sterfelijkheid, vleselijkheid en de dood.”

WOORDEN ALS MUZIEKDRAGERS

CE: Je werd eerder, wegens je schrijfcapaciteiten, al vergeleken met Leonard Cohen. Bekijk je jezelf naast muzikant ook als auteur?
O’Brien: ”Dat weet ik niet. Ik ben niet zo goed in woorden schrijven, los van de muziek. Ik geraak makkelijk geïnspireerd door akkoordwisselingen en melodieën. Daarop volgen de woorden. Maar of er echt gedichten gaan volgen? Dat is een andere manier van werken in je brein, toch? Ik denk niet dat ik dat zou kunnen. Ik apprecieer wel dat mensen mij soms als dichter beschouwen. Ik probeer er ook altijd voor te zorgen dat woorden werken op papier. Ik wil zeker zijn dat je de songteksten kan lezen. We traden recent op in Tokio en ik was me er bewust van dat een groot deel van de aanwezigen weinig of geen Engels spraken. Daarop benadrukte ik elke klinker en medeklinker meer dan anders, om de boodschap van het lied duidelijk te maken. De woorden zijn belangrijk voor mij omdat ze fungeren als emotionele dragers van de muziek.”

CE: Het eerste ‘{Awayland}’-nummer dat jullie uitbrachten was ‘The Waves’. Dat lijkt niet meteen een representatief nummer voor de rest van het album.
O’Brien: ”Ik wou een nummer uitbrengen dat verschillend zou zijn van alles wat we ervoor gedaan hadden, gewoon om het eens anders aan te pakken. Ik vind het best leuk om de dingen af en toe eens om te gooien, ook voor mezelf en de groep. We willen voelen dat we steeds blijven zoeken, blijven groeien. ‘The Waves’ zorgde ervoor dat mensen dachten dat ons hele album zo zou gaan klinken. Daarom ben ik zo gesteld op het nummer. Het brengt zoveel emoties naar boven wanneer ik het zing.”

CE: Het nummer ‘Judgement Call’ heeft een interessante tekst: ‘No I don’t need to think for myself. No I don’t need to think at all. When the team says go, I go. It’s a judgement call’. Waarover gaat het?
O’Brien: ”Ik schreef dat nummer vanuit het perspectief van een fundamentalistisch geloof: het christendom (lacht). Ik probeerde de Randy Newman-truc en kroop in een personage waarop ik niet erg gesteld ben. Ik baseerde me daarbij op de figuur van Mitt Romney. Ik verdiepte me in zijn geschiedenis en religieuze waarden en wou deze vatten in een nummer. Op het einde van ‘Judgement Call’ blijkt dat het personage niet zo geapprecieerd wordt. De ik-persoon in het lied zegt: ‘I made your world a living hell. I’ve lost the will to judge myself’. Het was een interessant experiment met een verachtelijk personage in de hoofdrol. Iemand die zijn geloof gebruikt met als doel de mensheid te verdelen.”

HERSCHEPPEN EN GROEIEN

CE: Naar welke muziek luister je de laatste tijd?
O’Brien: ”Ik luister nu voornamelijk naar oudere muziek zoals die van de minimalistische componist Terry Riley. Vooral zijn album ‘A Rainbow in Curved Air’ is prachtig, een echte ontdekkingsreis. Daarnaast luister ik naar ‘The Man-Machine’ van Kraftwerk en de muziek van Julee Cruise, die de soundtrack voor Twin Peaks maakte. En de nieuwe van My Bloody Valentine is ook echt goed.”

CE: Laten we tenslotte terugkeren naar de essentie. De debuutplaat ‘Becoming A Jackal’ werd als folkmuziek bestempeld. In ‘{Awayland}’ komen jullie met subtiele elektronische invloeden voor de dag. Vanwaar die wending?
O’Brien: ”Het is noodzakelijk om jezelf voortdurend uit te dagen, om je in nieuwe manieren uit te drukken. Ik sta nooit stil als het op mijn muziek aankomt. Ik zal steeds willen herscheppen en groeien. De – zogenaamde – folkmuziek is vandaag een té veilig oord geworden. Het is bijna een bedrijf. Wanneer je enkel aan dat genre blijft vasthangen, heb je niet de intentie om de wereld van je potentieel publiek open te trekken. Het is beter om de deur te openen voor nieuwe invloeden. Dat zal de folkfans misschien irriteren, maar ze zitten te comfortabel in hun genre. Dat is iets dat van tijd tot tijd een beetje door elkaar geschud moet worden(lacht)!”

Villagers schudt op 5 maart het publiek van de Brusselse Botanique door elkaar in het gezelschap van Luke Sital-Singh en Aidan & the Italian Weather Ladies. 

Robert Heilbroner

Throughout my undergraduate years of studying economics, I got to see a staunch unwillingness, both among my peers and instructors, to patiently reflect on the foundations, the basis of the discipline (allowing, of course, for exceptions). Having gotten accustomed to the idea that reflection is hardly considered a part of the economics profession/vocation, I was very excited when, while working on a major research project, I came across some passage by Prof. Robert Heilbroner in an essay titled “Economics as a ‘Value-Free’ Science”:

“Like the natural scientist, the economist (or for that matter, any social scientist) is expected to keep his journal, recording as best as he can his starting points, his successive steps, his final conclusions. He records, with all the honesty and fidelity of which he is capable, not only his data and his processes of reasoning, but his initial commitments, hopes, and disappointments.”

…

“Rather, I want economics to make a virtue of necessity, exposing for all the world to see the indispensable and fructifying value-grounds from which it begins its inquiries so that these inquiries may be fully exposed to—and not falsely shielded from—the public examination that is the true strength of science.”

While the standard described in the passages above is very high and I cannot possibly hope to live up to it, it is in this spirit of self-evaluation and reflection that I will be writing a few posts on some of my own previously published pieces. This post is the first of such posts. The text of the article follows, which is then following by a review of/reflection on the piece.

Reforming Economics

The following text was submitted for publication in Cutting Edge, Vol#7, Issue#5, September 22-28, 2011. It was accordingly published in the said issue with some editorial changes. I am posting this version here since I am no longer able to access the online version of the article. The links and pictures were also not given in the published version, but I have added them here.

In the current state of the country’s economy there is absolutely no dearth of economic analysis and commentary, whether in the print or electronic media. The fact that Pakistan’s economic problems are deeply connected with political interests does not make economic analysis and commentary any easier. It should be stated at the very outset that the purpose of this article is not to demean the people offering the said analysis, nor to challenge the empirical claims on which their analyses are based. That being said, it ought to be pointed out that the analysis is severely constricted by the limitations inherent in orthodox economics and its theoretical framework. This is both a global and national concern.

Ernst Schumacher

Critique of economics has been around for quite some time now. The fact that such critique has come from economists themselves makes it all the more significant. Let us take a look at a few examples from recent decades. In the mid-1970s, Ernst Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered called the discipline to take a long, hard look at itself and consider the possibilities which were being overlooked, among other things, by failing to move beyond economic jargon. Two successive philosophical essays from the book set about showing how orthodox economics is merely one kind of economics. Having assessed the foundations of the economic discipline in “The Role of Economics”, he then showed how a consideration of different foundations could drastically change the nature of economic analysis. This was illustrated in the following chapter titled “Buddhist Economics”.

A more recent example is that of Steve Keen’s book Debunking Economics: The Naked Emperor of the Social Sciences, published in 2001. Keen’s work begins by striking at the heart of orthodox economics by counter-arguing the selfish, greedy and individualistic view of human nature that is the very basis of the discipline. Consequently, he too explores the possibilities of moving beyond conventional economic thinking. Even more recently, an article in The Economist written last year by Anatole Kaletsky reported the creation of the Institute of New Economic Thinking (INET). According to its website, the institute has been set up in order to “broaden and accelerate the development of new economic thinking that can lead to solutions for the great challenges of the 21st century.”

Despite all of these developments, why is it that economics continues to be taught at school and university levels in its despicable state? Part of the reason is the political and cultural atmosphere of academia across the world (allowing for the existence of exceptions of course). The article from The Economist quoted earlier correctly identified this problem: “Like any monopoly, the economic establishment will try hard to suppress competition”. According to an article published on the INET website by Tiago Mata (a research fellow at Duke University’s Center for the History of Political Economy) this very month, “economists have never thought hard about conflicts of interest and the role that patrons play in knowledge production.” In Mata’s view, “historians do not yet understand a research environment where industry and finance, in direct and indirect ways, have become the hegemonic patrons of social science.”

Then, the question facing us – students and teachers of economics and policy makers in Pakistan – is whether we are going to wait for significant change to be brought around elsewhere in the world so that we should follow suit or are we going to take the initiative ourselves. It could be said the question is redundant from a certain point of view, since the country struggles with the provision of basic necessities such as food, health care and education – in the presence of these challenges, are the problems marring economics even a concern? However, a certain perspective makes this question all the more critical, for it is exactly a matter of reforming a deeply flawed discipline which in turn seeks to reform these empirical conditions.

If we choose to wait to follow suit, the result will be that probably the aforementioned limitations of our analysis shall remain where they are. Till the time we wrestle with the problems of our discipline – and we will surely have to, for the only ones we cannot fool are ourselves – we will have to live contently with the limits which it currently imposes on us. Though choosing to take the initiative ourselves seems like a better choice, it is easier said than done. The problem is made worse because it persists in those academic institutions of international repute whose names now inspire awe in us and which we often wish to emulate. Furthermore, anyone familiar with the culture of academia knows how it, like other institutions, frustrates and isolates non-conformists. Besides overcoming the awe that we have come to feel, we will have to walk a very fine line between conformity and non-conformity in order to make our discipline move in a meaningful direction.

The bare minimum that is right now required of economists and students of economics is acquaintance with economic history as well as with those studies from other disciplines which say as much about economics as they do about their own discipline. The options are plenty and include (but are not limited to) anthropology, sociology, philosophy and history. This scribe has found Robert Heilbroner’s work to be a good place to start. Before reforming economic conditions, we ought to look to the work that needs to be done to reform our discipline.

[The article ends here]

Review

From the opening paragraph and from my own memory, I gather that the salient purpose of the article was to talk about the state of economics because I could not remember seeing anything in the Pakistan print media about the issue. Here I was coming across heaps of written material on the state of economics – a troubled state – and reading a small part of it, and yet with all the concern about economic matters in the country, I could not see any mention of an issue which was being discussed across the world in many different forms and on a variety of forums. The ‘point’ of the article was far from being original. The purpose was, in a way, merely to say “look, here’s something which a lot of people are discussing, so you guys might want to look into this aspect of things too; an aspect which often goes unnoticed.”

In mentioning sources, I overlooked a lot of important ones, partly because I was only slowly becoming aware of more important work (which reminds, me, I have to post a bibliography of some of the more interesting and helpful readings I have a chance to look at). But like I said before, the point of the piece was not to make an original contribution in an academic sense, but only bring up an issue which I didn’t see being discussed in the Pakistani print media. Also, two of the sources mentioned, Schumacher and Keen, were kinds of turning points for me in my own “intellectual journey.” Schumacher’s book, especially the two essays mentioned in the article was probably my first exposure to alternative approaches to economics. Keen’s book was important because his book led me to have a conversation with an instructor which made it clear to me as to what the priorities of the profession were. “Yes, he is right in his critique of the discipline, but if we openly accept it then we will have to start over again, laying to waste the work of many decades,” I was told in my sophomore year.

This unwillingness to accept mistakes and start over again was critical in my view. It was the exact opposite of the need for self-evaluation stressed in Heilbroner’s work. This conversation was a critical point in shaping my self-perception that perhaps I was no longer a student of the discipline, having just had a terrible realization. This article, then was a return to the idea of being a student of the discipline at the start of a fifth year of undergraduate study, which came through a rough process of looking at other disciplines and what they had to offer, and then being encouraged by one of my teachers to return to a study of economics.

To me, the article now reads almost like a statement of intent or “mission statement,” if you will, of a young, naive, idealistic and enthusiastic student of the discipline. Note the sense of ownership, belonging and commitment in the conclusion: “we ought to look to the work that needs to be done to reform our discipline.” This was the view of someone who had studied economics in one form or another for a good 6 years (2 of A levels and another 4 at college) and was gearing up for at least another year of economics – though with a different approach, this time a properly philosophical and interdisciplinary one – with renewed vigor. Perhaps the same sense of “mission” is not there anymore, at the very least because of a realization of what other social sciences and the humanities [anthropology, sociology, political economy (particularly of the British kind)] have to offer to a study of economies and economic society; but the sense of attachment, created through many years of interest, perseverance and study, is still there.

Lastly, I would stand by the suggestion that Heilbroner’s work is worth a look or a good place to start. However, having had the opportunity to study a lot of his ideas in detail, I have reached the conclusion that his work is not without its shortcomings. Yes, Heilbroner’s work is a good place to start, so much so that I would probably make his work recommended reading (if not compulsory) for students of economics studying for O and A levels, when some very basic ideas are being set in the minds of students. That being said, there is a world of other scholarship to which students should graduate very soon at the beginning of their undergraduate years. Maybe I’ll post that bibliography I mentioned earlier.

I think this has been at least a half-decent exercise in self-evaluation; as always, comments and criticism are most welcome and encouraged.

The Philadelphia Orchestra is in rehearsals for “The Rite of Spring” with the cutting-edge Ridge Theater Company of New York at Verizon Hall. The presentation will include aerialists, multiple scrims for video opportunities, and onstage dancers. (Katherine Blodgett)

Yannick Nézet-Séguin announced his second Philadelphia Orchestra season Wednesday in a climate of acclaim so intense that a less sturdy musician might be braced for the cyclical backlash that the likes of Lang Lang and Gustavo Dudamel have experienced before him. But he says he’s just happy word is circulating that the Philadelphia Orchestra is back.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin announced his second Philadelphia Orchestra season Wednesday.

*     *     *
His energy, plus a diminutive but muscular physique, prompted mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato to dub him “Mighty Mouse” in a New York Times profile.

Until then, the Montreal-born conductor knew nothing about the American cartoon character. “Joyce wrote me a message immediately and said ‘Oh God! I’m so embarrassed!’ I went online, saw what Mighty Mouse was, and thought, ‘Why not?’ I find this cute and funny.”

He also didn’t know that Mighty Mouse’s catchphrase – “Here I come to save the day!” – was so appropriate to his Philadelphia Orchestra tenure. But he does now.

Read more>> Orchestral innovations