Genome; by Matt Ridley

Worth reading for its subject matter and informational content, the book is not as faultless as one would expect a treatise on science to be, that too on so sensitive a topic touching on every aspect of life, no matter that the book is for lay readers.

For one thing a few diagrams would have made the subject more accessible and easily understood for the intended readership - scientists are unlikely to read it except to see if it is any good, and grade it. For another there are mistakes that easily could and certainly ought to have been avoided.

A comparatively distant mistake relates to the colonial mindset of the author, when he compares an indigenous language of a formerly occupied colonial nation to the one that took root due to the colonial occupation; this mindset has been carefully nurtured and deliberately spread by the said colonial ex-ruling power, and easily taken root in US since the latter would like to forget that the nation of US is formed by occupying and pushing back the indigenous population of the land, the indigenous people deliberately obscured and forgotten by such psychological weapons as speaking of US independence when in reality the occupational settlers enslaved, killed, murdered the real indigenous people as well as the kidnapped and enslaved forcibly brought ones from yet another continent, and giving them - the indigenous people - false names (i.e., Indian, when they have nothing to do with India, thus the very word Indian acquiring connotations other than that of people of India, and coming to conveniently mean people of less progress and so forth, an entirely falsified final meaning and usage of the stupid mistake and false nomenclature deliberately made by Columbus who did not discover the land in the first place but knew his mistake and silenced his sailors on pain of death) instead of calling them by at least the name given to the land by occupiers, i.e., American. An honest way of naming the populations of US would be Native American for the indigenous people, Euro Americans (on the lines of African American), Asian American and so forth. But this would clear up the fact that European settlers have no more right than the African slaves they forcibly brought to work for them, and hence the false nomenclature not only continues but gets aided by similar falsehoods spread through such nomenclature applied to distant lands and other ex colonial nations.

A far more serious mistake of similar nature but one dealing with the very subject matter of the book and therefore far less ignorable is due to yet another facet of the writer's colonial slaver mindset that this time applies to half the world across the world. After much discussion about the nature vs nurture debates of the last three centuries or so, when it comes to x and y matters the writer glibly quotes his own daughter gurgling at a baby doll while his son had merely done so for trucks, and concludes that this implies irrefutable proof of nature making women for the purpose of bearing and caring. He fails to take into account the very arguments and facts he has quoted for this and fails to see they might apply here too. That is, he does not see that while it is possible he did not see the difference of bringing up his children had - most people do not see their own biases - he also failed to take into account the genetic inheritance of the children, and the mindset the parents and other ancestors (not to mention the social setting around) had imprinted on the children whether at the genetic level or at the psychological, in all probability both.

I have personally known several women who had other interests even though they were far beyond excellent as mothers, and the fact that they had daughters who were therefore further along in such interests even as infants while they lacked in no way as women; and I have also known men, several, who were nurturing people rather than the usual image of the macho hunter or remote fisher preferred and imposed in US as a cultural stereotype. I have known sibling groups where the sisters were into reading, and brothers avoided it to begin with; I have known sibling groups where a sister was a destructive character and a brother played longest with dolls with elaborate stories and characters (he did not grow to acquire a career in any of the expected feminine professions either, he is qualified as an electrical engineer - having had interests along this plain enough in toddlerhoood as well - and has successful career in management and finance, which does not deter him from baking cakes for parties he throws, in spite of being entirely straight like his caring ancestors and just as stably married), far beyond the sister who played most with dolls (who had professional career in science); I have known men who not only did not mind cooking but did so naturally and for their girlfriends too; and I have known women who would not stop shy of holding a philandering suitor by his collar in the middle of a street and asking him point blank if his intentions were less than honourable, something men don't always do for daughters or sisters.

It is not that this sort of examples proves anything of a rule, merely that given an equal opportunity and an unbiased mindset from parents and ambient society the children inherit less of blinkers or rails to run on even at genetic or gestational level, and might develop and blossom to their own true selves, more like a garden rather than a forest of trees carefully planted at regular intervals for harvesting at regular intervals to feed a factory or a season of decoration. Given a fair chance a girl might grow up to read and write seriously and think well, and a boy might not be emotionally dead.

If they stick to the stereotypes in unusually large numbers and proportions it is due to the stereotypes being imposed in subliminal ways and reinforced. When everything from magazines to books to television programs are either labeled for women and filled with stupid content or labeled for men and filled with equally stupid different content, all for sale of this or that bunch of industries, the only freedom really is in professional journals, and those are heavily biased - toddlers might not know yet that girls who read are unpopular but they get to be told soon enough, and boys are pushed away from being anything but jocks with steroids. This destroys a chance at even a human life - forget anything more progressive in evolution - for most children of both genders especially when they know they have to form their own homes with no help from anyone else.

One wishes this writer had thought more before writing mistakes in. This subject, this book would be worth a painstaking correctional rewrite.

SOLD; by Patricia McCormick

Even before reading the book one fact is clear from looking at the cover - the writer, the publisher, et al, none of them have either visited Nepal or got over a subconscient racism they do not realise they have, ingrained deep in their psyche.

People of Nepal, fact is, are not dark. And this face on the cover is hardly distinguishable from her hair or the dark cover overhead, a really dark shade of skin that does not usually come from a suntan when skin begins as light as in Nepal.

And what is more, Nepal is poor enough that the white slavery racket sources from, rather than supplies into, Nepal. Come to think of it the terminology "white slavery" is, of course, doubly false. For one thing the racket is about luring young women under false pretenses into slavery for profit of pimps with torture and physical abuse heaped on multiple rape until they are all but dead within and often dead in fact, and the women so abused and cheated being "white" is true about a small proportion in the world; for another, no humans are white - what humans are is pale skinned when generations and millennia of living in a dark continent forces nature to make the skin light enough that the little sun one gets might in fact give sufficient vitamins and so forth for health.

This is very reminiscent of seeing a painting titled "An Arab" in one of the two top museums in Amsterdam, and when pointed out that Arabs are not dark - the painting showed a male darker than this face on cover of "SOLD" - the host said the value of the painting was in the art and it did not matter if facts were right. He was completely unaware of his level of racism (and for that matter gender attitude too) - but he was also unaware of his level of ignorance, and of lack of thought on matters not directly related to his everyday needs. Of German origin few years post war, this was not very surprising.

This book though is not that old, and hence one expects better.