Gods and earthlings - Los Angeles Times

Gods and earthlings
The 'science of intelligent design' is science fiction.


By Richard Dawkins
April 18, 2008


If we were visited by aliens from a distant planet, would we fall on our knees and worship them as gods? The difficulty of getting here from even our nearest neighbor, the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, constitutes a filter through which only beings with a technology so advanced as to be god-like (from our point of view) could pass. The capabilities and powers of our interstellar visitors would seem more magical to us than all the miracles of all the gods that have ever been imagined by priests or theologians, mullahs or rabbis, shamans or witch doctors.

Arthur C. Clarke, who died last month, said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." If we could land a jumbo jet beside a medieval village, would we not be worshiped as gods? The technology of interstellar travel, and the scientific knowledge on which it would be based, are as far beyond us as our present-day knowledge surpasses that of Dark Age peasants. Parting the Red Sea -- or splitting the moon in two as Muhammad is alleged to have done -- would be child's play to those who command forces powerful enough to propel them from star to star.

But now the question arises: In what sense would the god-like aliens not be gods? Answer: In a very important sense. To deserve the name of God, a being would have to have designed more than just a jumbo jet or even a starship. He would have to have designed the universe. And therein lies a fundamental contradiction. Entities capable of designing anything, whether they be human engineers or interstellar aliens, must be complex -- and therefore, statistically improbable. And statistically improbable things don't just happen spontaneously by chance without an explanation trail. That is what "improbable" means, as creationists never tire of assuring us (they wrongly think Darwinian natural selection is a matter of chance).

In fact, natural selection is the very opposite of a chance process, and it is the only ultimate explanation we know for complex, improbable things. Even if our species was created by space alien designers, those designers themselves would have to have arisen from simpler antecedents -- so they can't be an ultimate explanation for anything. No matter how god-like our interstellar aliens may be, and no matter how vast and wonderful their starships, they cannot have designed the universe because, like human engineers and all complex things, they are late arrivals in it.

Intelligent design "theorists" (a misnomer, for they have no theory) often use the alien scenario to distance themselves from old-style creationists: "For all we know, the designer might be an alien from outer space." This attempt to fend off accusations of unconstitutionally importing religion into science classes is lame and disingenuous. All the leading intelligent design spokesmen are devout, and, when talking to the faithful, they drop the science-fiction fig leaf and expose themselves as the fundamentalist creationists they truly are.

Nevertheless, despite their notorious dishonesty, I sometimes hand an olive branch to these people by pretending to take their "space aliens" political ploy seriously. Unrealistic as the space alien theory is, it constitutes intelligent design's best shot.

The distinguished molecular biologists Francis Crick and Leslie Orgel advanced a version of the notion, probably tongue in cheek, called "Directed Panspermia." Life, they argued, could have been "seeded" on the early Earth by a spacecraft packed with bacteria. Maybe little cellular machines like the bacterial flagellar motor were designed by ingenious nano-technologists from Betelgeuse. But you still have to explain the prior existence of the Betelgeusians and how they became so advanced and god-like. Even if Betelgeusian life was, in turn, seeded by another rocket from Aldebaran 4 billion years earlier, eventually we have to terminate the regress.

We need a better explanation, such as evolution by natural selection or an equally workable account of the painstaking R&D that must underlie complex, statistically improbable things. Gods, if they are complex enough to be capable of designing anything, are, by virtue of their very complexity, not in a position to design themselves.

Theologians attempt two (mutually incompatible and pathetically inadequate) answers to this unanswerable point. Some say their God is not complex but simple. This obviously won't wash. No simple god could design bacterial flagellar motors or universes, let alone forgive sins or impregnate virgins. Presumably recognizing the justice of that, other theologians go to the opposite extreme. They admit that their god is complex but assert that he had no beginning: He was always there and always complex. But if you are going to resort to that facile cop-out, you might as well say flagellar motors were always there. You cannot have it both ways. Visitations from distant star systems are improbable enough to attract ridicule, not least from the advocates of intelligent design themselves. A creator god who had always existed would be far more improbable still.

This technique of arguing against a theory by setting up its most plausible version and dismissing it is commonly used in science and philosophy. The late, great evolutionist John Maynard Smith used it in his 1964 attack on the then-popular theory of "group selection." He set himself the task of devising the best possible argument for group selection. The details don't matter; he called it the Haystack Model. He then proceeded to show that the assumptions that the Haystack Model needed to make were highly unrealistic.

Everybody understood that this was an argument against group selection. Nobody twisted it to trumpet to the world, "See? Maynard Smith believes in Group Selection after all, and he thinks it happens in Haystacks, ho ho ho!" Creationists, by contrast, never miss a trick. When I have raised the science-fiction olive branch to try to argue against them, they have twisted it -- most recently in a movie scheduled to open this week -- in order to proclaim loudly, "Dawkins believes in intelligent design after all." Or "Dawkins believes in little green men in flying saucers." Or "Dawkins is a Raelian." It's called "lying for Jesus," and they are completely shameless.

Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, is a professor at Oxford University. His most recent book is "The God Delusion."

17/04/2008

Elétron dividido por quatro

Agência FAPESP – Uma das unidades mais elementares conhecidas é a carga do elétron. Difícil imaginar algo mais básico, mas é justamente o que um novo estudo feito por cientistas israelenses acaba de demonstrar, e em valor inédito.

Em artigo publicado na edição desta quinta-feira (17/4) da revista Nature, o grupo do Departamento de Física da Matéria Condensada do Instituto de Ciências Weizmann observou a carga equivalente a um quarto à do elétron (que tem carga negativa de cerca de 1,6 multiplicado por 10 elevado a -19 coulombs).

No estudo foi utilizado o chamado Efeito Hall Quântico (EHQ), no qual elétrons são confinados em um sistema bidimensional e interagem fortemente uns com os outros. Pelo EHQ, os elétrons, presos em um plano e sujeitos a campos magnéticos muito fortes, percorrem apenas trajetórias quânticas previsíveis, o que representa uma valiosa oportunidade para pesquisas.

Até então apenas cargas fracionais ímpares do elétron haviam sido observadas, como um terço, um quinto ou um sétimo. Merav Dolev e equipe conseguiram observar a chamada “quasi-partícula” com um quarto da carga em uma estrutura semicondutora.

Tais partículas têm grande interesse para a ciência, uma vez que se estima que elas tenham as propriedades certas para permitir o desenvolvimento de computadores quânticos topológicos, muito mais capazes e velozes do que os atuais.

“Com cargas entre 0 e 1, essas quase-partículas obedecem a uma forma intermediária de estatística quântica que reside em algum ponto entre as duas formas conhecidas: as estatísticas de Fermi-Dirac e as de Bose-Einstein”, destacou Eduardo Fradkin, do Departamento de Física da Universidade de Illinois em Urbana-Champaign, em comentário sobre o estudo na mesma edição da revista.

As estatísticas de Fermi-Dirac, que se aplica aos sistemas conhecidos como férmions, incluem elétrons, nêutrons, quarks, neutrinos e átomos constituídos por números pares de partículas. As estatísticas de Bose-Einstein governam os bósons, átomos com números pares de constituintes, como os fótons, glúons e as ainda teóricas (não demonstradas) partículas Higgs.

O artigo Observation of a quarter of na electron charge at the v= 5/2 quantum Hall state, de Merav Dolev e outros, pode ser lido por assinantes da Nature em www.nature.com.

Fundamentos da educação

Por Alex Sander Alcântara
Agência
15/04/2008

FAPESP – Uma pesquisa, feita no campus de Ribeirão Preto da Universidade de São Paulo, investigou a associação entre comportamento e desempenho escolar entre meninos e meninas. O estudo indica como a qualidade das relações estabelecidas na escola de educação infantil pode afetar o aprendizado das crianças.

O trabalho avaliou o comportamento das meninas mais positivamente, ao passo que o desempenho escolar foi mais fortemente associado aos comportamentos interpessoais no grupo masculino. Para ambos os sexos, foram avaliados o comportamento – na relação com a tarefa, com os colegas e com o professor – e o desempenho a partir de sondagem de leitura e escrita.

Segundo a coordenadora do estudo, a professora Edna Maria Marturano, da Faculdade de Medicina, os resultados destacam uma clara associação entre a qualidade dos comportamentos interativos, avaliados pelo professor no fim do ano, e o desempenho em tarefas que envolvem noções básicas de leitura e escrita.

“Mas as associações encontradas não traduzem em si uma relação de causa e efeito. Interpretamos os resultados com base em autores que acompanharam as crianças desde o início até o fim do ano e observaram que a qualidade dos relacionamentos da criança no primeiro momento influenciava o desempenho posterior”, disse Edna à Agência FAPESP.

A pesquisa, que foi publicada na revista Psicologia em Estudo, foi desenvolvida em escolas públicas municipais do interior de São Paulo. Participaram 133 alunos, sendo 68 meninos e 65 meninas, de 5 a 7 anos de idade, e seus professores (sete mulheres e um homem). O trabalho é resultado da dissertação de mestrado da psicóloga Elaine Cristina Gardinal, sob orientação de Edna.

Os professores consideraram os meninos menos respeitosos, tolerantes e controladores no relacionamento com os colegas, mas mais agressivos. Nas atividades escolares, eles são vistos como menos ordeiros e aplicados, mas mais inquietos, salientes, desatentos, retraídos, confusos e descuidados.

Segundo Edna, o fato de a maioria dos professores ser do sexo feminino é uma variável que pode influenciar no resultado. “A pesquisa discute essa possibilidade. Professoras de crianças pequenas tendem a ignorar com mais freqüência os comportamentos inadequados das meninas, prestando mais atenção aos dos meninos. Elas respondem mais, e com mais atenção negativa, aos comportamentos dos meninos.”

“No entanto, não temos conhecimento de estudos comparativos mostrando que os professores homens agem ou agiriam de modo diferente. Eu mesma tive oportunidade de observar um professor de educação infantil que ignorava o choro das meninas e repreendia os meninos quando choravam, dizendo que ‘homem não chora’”, disse.

As autoras aplicaram três instrumentos para avaliar o comportamento, a capacidade intelectual e noções de leitura e escrita, respectivamente: Questionário para Caracterização do Desempenho e do Comportamento da Criança no Ambiente Escolar, Matrizes Progressivas de Raven e o método de Sondagem de Leitura e Escrita Inicial.

Elaine e Edna detectaram que meninos e meninas com melhores resultados em escrita e, principalmente, em leitura, foram avaliados como menos dependentes nos relacionamentos com o professor e com os colegas de classe. A dependência é apontada como prejudicial ao desempenho escolar das crianças na educação infantil.

“Dentre as possíveis interpretações podemos conjecturar, por exemplo, que uma criança mais dependente, pelo fato de tomar menos iniciativas, terá menos oportunidades de fazer descobertas, de enfrentar desafios, de buscar soluções por si mesma e de, portanto, aprender”, afirmou Edna.

Importância dos relacionamentos

Em relação ao relacionamento com os colegas, meninos mais agressivos, provocativos, desrespeitosos, intolerantes e explosivos tiveram desempenho mais fraco na sondagem de escrita e leitura.

As pesquisadoras ressaltam que o estudo tem algumas limitações, como ter sido baseado no julgamento de professores e no fato de ser um correlacional, não havendo, portanto, uma relação direta entre causa e efeito.

Segundo Edna Marturano, os resultados, ainda que estejam alinhados com a literatura internacional, estão longe de ser definitivos e precisam ser qualificados por meio de replicações sistemáticas que explorem fatores associados, como variáveis do contexto e de práticas pedagógicas.

“Consideramos como contribuição da pesquisa o fato de ela propiciar uma reflexão sobre a importância dos relacionamentos na educação infantil. Incluímos apenas alunos que estavam na escola há menos de um ano e que, portanto, tiveram de se adaptar a um ambiente estranho, com colegas e adultos desconhecidos”, disse.

“Sabe-se que problemas relacionais detectados nessa fase tendem a se perpetuar nos anos do ensino fundamental. Cabe, assim, ao professor da educação infantil a importante tarefa de ajudar a criança nessa adaptação e ele precisa ser capacitado para a tarefa, por meio de formação teórico-prática específica”, destacou.

Para ler o artigo Meninos e meninas na educação infantil: associação entre comportamento e desempenho, de Elaine Cristina Gardinal e Edna Maria Marturano, disponível na biblioteca on-line SciELO (Bireme/FAPESP).

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1413-73722007000300011&lng=pt&nrm=iso&tlng=pt

Gabeira is the super woman of surfing - Los Angeles Times

Gabeira is the super woman of surfing
After a turbulent childhood, the 21-year-old Brazilian is conquering the male-dominated world of big waves.
April 11 2008

A significant turning point for Maya Gabeira -- one of many in her turbulent life -- occurred Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 5., 2006.

She'd moved from Brazil to Hawaii and had become passionately addicted to surfing large waves.

"Waimea was the first huge wave I ever saw, and I just felt that was what I wanted to do for my life," she says.

She'd ridden Waimea Bay, but not during one of those epic swells, when Oahu's entire North Shore falls under a booming assault that separates men from boys and transforms virtually all women into spectators.

She arrived in time to witness a gigantic set of waves breaking clear across the bay, blitzing the paddling channel. This occurs only when wave faces surpass 50 feet.

Gabeira was terrified. But friends told her the closeout sets were 30 minutes apart, so off she hustled, eventually gaining the lineup, where she bobbed like a tiny cork astride her 10-foot-4 gun.

"I caught four waves in four hours," she boasts. "And one was my very best wave, and I remember when I came in I was so high. And I think I was high for like 10 days."

The striking Gabeira had, at 18, become a bona fide big-wave surfer. She went on to tackle Maverick's near Half Moon Bay and Dungeons off South Africa.

Last summer she graduated to the daredevil sport of tow surfing, where jet-skis and ropes are used to pull surfers onto larger and faster waves, with fellow Brazilian Carlos Burle as partner and mentor.

That led to a trip to Teahupoo in Tahiti, where she overcame a savage wipeout to conquer some of the most dangerous waves on earth.Tonight Gabeira, who turned 21 on Thursday, will be one of three women honored during the Billabong XXL Global Big Wave Awards at the Grove of Anaheim. Gabeira is heavily favored to win the Women's Overall Performance award for the second consecutive year.

"She's shattered every barrier women's surfing has known when it comes to big waves," says Bill Sharp, director of the yearlong contest. "She routinely rides waves bigger than 99.9% of the men in the surfing world would ride."

And to think hers is a story that might not be told, were it not for a turbulent life as a child.

Her father, Fernando Paulo Nagle Gabeira, is a longtime Brazilian politician best-known for writing the 1979 book, "O que e isso companheiro?" or "What are you doing, comrade?"

It chronicles the armed resistance to the South American nation's military dictatorship and specifically the 1969 kidnapping of American ambassador Charles Burke Elbrick, by the revolutionary movement MR8, of which Gabeira was a member.

It became a popular English-language movie, "Four Days in September," and Gabeira, the daughter, says she cried while watching it. "He has always been an inspiration," she says of her father, now a Rio de Janeiro congressman running for governor.

Gabeira's mother, Yame Reis, is a renowned fashion designer.

Her parents divorced when she was 11, leaving her angry and depressed. "That's the worst time," she says, "because you're not young enough to not notice it, and not old enough to be able to manage it."She struggled in school and argued often with her mother, then moved in with her father, who was away often because of his career. Gabeira lacked enthusiasm and direction, until giving surfing a try when she was 14. "It made me feel so happy and so stoked to be able to conquer something," she recalls.

The next year she was sent to Australia on a student-exchange program and discovered better waves and a surfing culture that embraced girls. She decided she'd move there after high school but moved instead to Hawaii, got a job as a waitress and discovered Waimea.

"My mom was against it and my dad was too, but he just wanted to see me happy," Gabeira recalls. "So I left and then they both realized, 'Wow, she's not coming back.' Nobody could visualize where I was headed."

So she surfed by day and worked by night. Bravado combined with beauty helped her land sponsorship deals with Red Bull and Billabong. A career was launched.

Last August she hooked up with Burle, a fellow Red Bull team rider, and new doors were open -- behind which lay snarling, spitting and potentially maiming beasts such as those that surfaced Nov. 1 at Teahupoo.

Burle was eyed suspiciously by some who believed, perhaps, he was leading a lamb to slaughter.

"What do you say about a woman going out there and doing it? I'd say women, men . . . at the end of the day we've all got a shot," says Laird Hamilton, a legendary waterman, non-judgmentally. "If you've got a calling to go and ride waves like that, then more power to you."

Teahupoo, like Waimea, has killed and seriously injured surfers. Its waves are not as towering but contain just as much water. Fast-moving swells are compressed into the reef. Long walls jack swiftly upward and heave lips that are frighteningly thick.

Barrels are literally round enough to fit a bus and those lips smash upon water only four to six feet deep.

"I was scared. Of course I was scared," Gabeira recalls.

Her first try was from behind a jet-ski driven by Raimana Van Bastolaer, a local legend. It was a large set wave, though, and Van Bastolaer, sensing his partner was too deep, tried to abort.

But Gabeira had already let go of the rope and was on the shoulder, and found herself too high on the face, getting sucked upward.

A ledge had formed in the face and she managed to air-drop onto her back, whereupon she was quickly sucked over like a clump of lifeless kelp and smashed anyway.

"I was just hoping for the best, and ready for the worst," says Hamilton, who raced to her rescue.

"You don't know what you're going to get, or if it's going to come up in chunks or in one piece."

Finally, she was able to tuck nicely into several blue barrels to further establish herself as a budding star in this male-dominated universe.

She's honored to be part of tonight's awards ceremony, she says, but her brown eyes sparkle and her smile widens when she reveals the real reason she's looking so happy.
"My mom is coming all the way from Brazil," she says. "She's going to be with me. I can't wait."

pete.thomas@latimes.com

Stephen Hawking na CalTech

Caltech crowd basks in Stephen Hawking radiation - Los Angeles Times

Caltech crowd basks in Stephen Hawking radiation
Stephen Hawking
Email Picture
John Raoux / Associated Press
LOOKING AHEAD: Any extraterrestrial colonies we develop need to become self-sufficient, Hawking said: “Only then will the future of the human race be safe from disasters on Earth.”
The celebrated physicist delivers a talk and answers questions before more than 2,000 admirers.
By John Johnson Jr., Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
April 12, 2008
Stephen Hawking is the last of the 20th century's celebrity scientists. As did Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan and a handful of others, he has the rare gift of being able not only to think deeply about the mysteries of the cosmos, but also to capture the imagination of the public with his ideas.

That celebrity was on full display Wednesday night, when more than 2,000 people, some of whom waited in line for hours in lawn chairs, showed up at the Caltech campus in Pasadena to hear him speak.

Related Stories
- 'God Particles: Poems' by Thomas Lux
- 'Physics of the Impossible' by Michio Kaku

Hawking, 66, delivered a prerecorded talk about black holes, sprinkled liberally with humor about his failure to win a Nobel Prize for his theory about Hawking radiation, a leakage of radiation from the massive gravity of a black hole.

At the end of his talk, he answered five questions submitted by Caltech students.

Hawking's close friend Kip Thorne, a Caltech physicist, described the painstaking process by which the British theoretician, who has Lou Gehrig's disease, programs his computer to speak for him.

According to Thorne, it took Hawking several days to program answers to the students' questions. "He is about the most patient, stubborn man I know," Thorne said.

Everyone depicts black holes as round objects, but are doughnut- or pretzel-shaped black holes possible?

One of the results I obtained when I was a [postdoctoral student] was that a black hole in four dimensions has to be round. There are no doughnut-shaped black holes in four dimensions. However, one of my former students found there could be doughnut-shaped black holes in five dimensions.

Given that any extraterrestrial colonies that we develop would likely be wholly dependent on Earth for support, do you think we should be involved in manned space exploration?

Any extraterrestrial colonies we establish will depend on Earth for support at first. However, the aim should be to make them self-sustaining before too long. Only then will the future of the human race be safe from disasters on Earth. It would certainly be necessary for the colonies to be self-sustaining as we go to other stellar systems. Just to send a message to Earth that more supplies were needed would take at least four years. And it would take hundreds or thousands of years to actually send the supplies.

Could the cosmic microwave background radiation be a form of Hawking radiation?

[The context to this question is Hawking's radical prediction in 1974 that black holes could emit thermal radiation, thereby allowing some black holes to ultimately shrink and disappear. The cosmic microwave background radiation is the remnant radiation left over from the Big Bang.]

In the slow inflationary scenario, the cosmic microwave background radiation is not Hawking radiation. However, the fluctuations in the microwave background detected by WMAP [a NASA spacecraft] can be regarded as Hawking radiation from the inflationary period. Thus, in a sense, Hawking radiation has already been observed. So maybe I should get a Nobel Prize.

According to general relativity, white holes, the opposite of black holes [and] which spew matter into the universe, can exist. But we've never found them. What would we see with our telescopes if we did?

When black holes are large, things fall in. But they give off very little Hawking radiation. So they are essentially black. But when they are very small, they radiate more than they accrete. So they are essentially white. Black and white holes are the same, just with different boundary conditions. If the boundary conditions are that particles are going in but nothing is coming out, we call it a black hole. On the other hand, if the boundary conditions are that particles are going out but nothing is coming in, we call it a white hole.

If black holes are created in the Large Hadron Collider, will we be in danger of getting eaten up by them?

[This question refers to the construction outside Geneva, Switzerland, of the world's most powerful collider, which is expected to begin operations this summer. Some skeptics fear it will generate such powerful energies that it could create mini-black holes.]

The LHC is absolutely safe.

There is no danger that collisions between particles at the LHC will cause a rip in space-time and destroy the universe.

Particles from collisions far greater than those in the LHC occur all the time in cosmic rays, but nothing terrible happens.

------

After his talk, Hawking was wheeled out of Beckman Auditorium to a standing ovation. He then took a victory lap in his wheelchair around the building, while the crowd snapped pictures and shouted: "We love you, Stephen."

john.johnson@latimes.com

'Phantom Sightings:

Art After the Chicano Movement'

Delilah Montoya, Juan Capistran and Ruben Ortiz Torres reflect on their work, the show and what it means to be a Chicano artist.

April 6, 2008

DELILAH MONTOYA
Born in Fort Worth, 1955
Lives and works in Houston and Albuquerque

AS a teenager in Omaha, I remember going to my high school teacher and very defiantly telling her, "I'm a Chicana artist!" She looked at me and said, "There's no such thing." So I was going to prove to her that yes there is. Later when I entered the academic world and tried to find Chicano art, I was coming up really empty-handed. I found that we were in the process of inventing ourselves. So my art had a lot to do with the self-inventive nature of the Chicano Movement.

I always feel like I'm still emerging, like I'm just breaking out of the gate somehow. It has to do with the way creativity works. You always have to question yourself and the things around you. It keeps you on the edge of always trying to understand.

What is occurring now is that we're getting this new [immigrant] generation that is bringing more
life into the culture. They're re-Hispanicizing us. It's our otro yo [other self] that is coming to join us. That means the culture is always changing; it's a living culture.


JUAN CAPISTRAN
Born in Guadalajara, 1976
Lives and works in Los Angeles

Ipersonally have never called myself Chicano, which to me was like a dated term. It seemed to be something that happened in the '60s and '70s but didn't have anything to do with me because of where I was growing up and how I grew up. It just seemed like something far away from me. I grew up in South-Central L.A., pretty much around African Americans, and I had an affinity toward black culture as opposed to my own culture. My parents are a traditional Mexican family, but I gravitated toward other cultures just to find my place here.

A lot of my work references popular forms of music, and subcultures that surround music. I'm also a DJ, so I'm interested in the art of remixing or appropriation. The music allows me to have these multiple points of view, where I'm not tied down to one singular identity. It kind of opens up the dialogue.

Being in this show is like a homecoming. I've had more success outside of L.A., so it's always good to be part of a big historical show in your hometown.


RUBÉN ORTIZ TORRES
Born in Mexico City, 1964
Lives and works in Los Angeles

WE navigate treacherous waters because there seems to be this binary model where you have, on the one hand, international globalized art and, on the other, a regionally specific notion of what art and culture could be. Artists have been forced to choose one or the other. Either you participate in the art world and show in fancy galleries, or you show in the community and represent where you're coming from. But there's a new generation of artists who refuse to play that game. They want to have it both ways. We want to be international but we want to be local as well.

"Art After the Chicano Movement" is not negating the Chicano movement. It reaffirms it, but it wants to engage those issues with the notion of art at large. We're not trying to choose between one position or the other, but somehow negotiate between both.

This show makes me feel part of a scene. I've never been so proud to be in a show with a bunch of my students. My hope is that it will break with stereotypes about the possibilities and limitations of artists of color, in particular Mexican and Mexican American artists.

--

Agustin Gurza