Cornelia Dean in the New York Times:

Some scholars study the atomic age by researching the bomb makers. Others delve into the physics of the nucleus, or the relations between East and West in the cold war.

Dr. Charles K. Wolfe listens to country music. In fact, he is a leading scholar of the country music of the atom bomb, a genre that flowered almost immediately after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II and faded away by the early 50’s.

For Dr. Wolfe, the bomb songs are a “bizarre” expression of a major theme in American folk music, the relationship of people and technology.

More here.

Since our last post on her, Maya Arulpragasm’s only gotten more exposure.  Her very limited tour in North America (LA, New York and Toronto) was well received.  At the same time, her LTTE sympathies are getting more exposure.  Does it help to make the Tigers more acceptable or is it, as one review of her new album Arular implies (registration required), serving to moderate the politics behind it?

“[A]s good as it is, Arular lacks something vital, though perhaps amorphous: danger. Sure, ‘Sunflowers’ is a sympathetic portrait of suicide bombing, but its poppy singsong chorus and overwhelming charm leads one to envision Harry himself getting down to it with Wills and the other inbred aristocrats at some London hotspot. As the similarly subcontinent-rooted Gayatri Spivak might say, M.I.A. is perilously close to becoming a native informant, spilling the secrets of her culture (and all ‘culture’ for mass consumption (and conception).”

Even if the song is great, and I do think it’s great, it’s hard not to read the lyrics to Sunshowers as an apology for indiscriminate suicide bombing and Tiger terrorism. (On reconsideration: maybe not so clearly an apology.)

“its a bomb yo
so run yo
put away your stupid gun yo
‘cos we see through like a protocol call
thats why we blow it up ‘fore we go

the sunshowers that fall on my troubles
are you over my baby
and some showers I’ll be aiming at you
‘cos i’m watching you my baby

semi-9 and snipered him
on that wall they posted him
they cornered him
And Then Just Murdered Him

he told them he didn’t know them
he wasn’t there they didn’t know him
they showed him a picture then
ain’t that you with the muslims?”

This Sunshowers video plays up the LTTE theme.

From The Daily Telegraph:

What fascinated me about English was what I later recognised as its hybrid etymology: blunt Anglo-Saxon concreteness, sleek Norman French urbanity, and polysyllabic Greco-Roman abstraction. The clash of these elements, as competitive as Italian dialects, is invigorating, richly entertaining and often funny, as it is to Shakespeare, who gets tremendous effects out of their interplay. The dazzling multiplicity of sounds and word choices in English makes it brilliantly suited to be a language of poetry. It’s why the pragmatic Anglo-American tradition (unlike effete French rationalism) doesn’t need poststructuralism: in English, usage depends upon context; the words jostle and provoke one another and mischievously shift their meanings over time.

English has evolved over the past century because of mass media and advertising, but the shadowy literary establishment in America, in and outside academe, has failed to adjust.

More here.

Jed Perl writes about two art exhibits in The New Republic:

If the Brooke Alexander show is pure modern magic, the UBS show [at MoMA] is no-magic, an exercise in corporate art-think that sends out very depressing messages about where the Museum of Modern Art is headed. Going through The UBS Art Collection, which features some 40 works that are a promised gift to the museum, I felt as if I were visiting the preview for a high-end auction of recent art. It’s nothing but a gathering of the usual suspects: Guston, de Kooning, Ruscha, Judd, Close, Kiefer, Stella, Rothenberg, Sherman, and Struth. I admired certain things. But there was no curatorial mind at work; there was no process of selection, no sensibility involved. So why is the Modern, only months after reopening, mounting this essentially uncurated, unselected, themeless, meaningless show?

More here.

Hitchens revists the Ohio vote and re-opens questions from the day after the election.

“Machines are fallible and so are humans, and shit happens, to be sure, and no doubt many Ohio voters were able to record their choices promptly and without grotesque anomalies. But what strikes my eye is this: in practically every case where lines were too long or machines too few the foul-up was in a Democratic county or precinct, and in practically every case where machines produced impossible or improbable outcomes it was the challenger who suffered and the actual or potential Democratic voters who were shortchanged, discouraged, or held up to ridicule as chronic undervoters or as sudden converts to fringe-party losers.

This might argue in itself against any conspiracy or organized rigging, since surely anyone clever enough to pre-fix a vote would make sure, just for the look of the thing, that the discrepancies and obstructions were more evenly distributed. I called all my smartest conservative friends to ask them about this. Back came their answer: Look at what happened in Warren County. On Election Night, citing unspecified concerns about terrorism and homeland security, officials ‘locked down’ the Warren County administration building and prevented any reporters from monitoring the vote count. It was announced, using who knows what ‘scale,’ that on a scale of 1 to 10 the terrorist threat was a 10. It was also claimed that the information came from an F.B.I. agent, even though the F.B.I. denies that.

Warren County is certainly a part of Republican territory in Ohio: it went only 28 percent for Gore last time and 28 percent for Kerry this time. On the face of it, therefore, not a county where the G.O.P would have felt the need to engage in any voter ‘suppression.’ A point for the anti- conspiracy side, then. Yet even those exact-same voting totals have their odd aspect. In 2000, Gore stopped running television commercials in Ohio some weeks before the election. He also faced a Nader challenge. Kerry put huge resources into Ohio, did not face any Nader competition, and yet got exactly the same proportion of the Warren County votes.

Whichever way you shake it, or hold it to the light, there is something about the Ohio election that refuses to add up.”

CNN reports:

“Muslim clerics in Spain issued what they called the world’s first fatwa, or Islamic edict, against Osama bin Laden on Thursday, the first anniversary of the Madrid train bombings, calling him an apostate and urging others of their faith to denounce the al Qaeda leader.

The ruling was issued by the Islamic Commission of Spain, the main body representing the country’s 1 million-member Muslim community. The commission represents 200 or so mostly Sunni mosques, or about 70 percent of all mosques in Spain.

. . .

Asked if the edict meant Muslims had to help police try to arrest the world’s most wanted man — who is believed to be hiding along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan — Escudero said: ‘We don’t get involved in police affairs but we do feel that all Muslims are obliged to … keep anyone from doing unjustified damage to other people.'”

Lee Siegel in Slate:

Salvador Dalí was a truly original artist. From the beginning, he painted real objects and people with a dreamlike precision; later, he would portray the strange shapes of his dreams with a vivid, mundane particularity. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, he painted like a visionary of the unconscious. But today he is dismissed by most critics and scholars as a venal schlock-monger because by 1936, when he appeared on the cover of Time, he had become an indefatigable and playfully self-conscious entrepreneur and self-promoter. Dalí created display windows for Bonwit-Teller; came up with an advertisement in Vogue for Bryans Hosiery; wrote a sensationalist autobiography; fashioned greeting cards for Hallmark; devised a computerized picture of Raquel Welch; made a hologram of Alice Cooper. This shrewd, practical man had once wanted, he irresistibly wrote in 1930, “to systematize confusion and contribute to the total discrediting of the world of reality.” Given this, Dalí’s whirlwind commercial activities seemed appallingly to consecrate the idea of inauthenticity and self-betrayal. Or did they?

More here.

Michael Crowley in Popular Science:

…but of more than a dozen nuclear-arms experts I interviewed, almost all agreed that assembling a crude nuclear bomb, though extremely difficult, is by no means impossible.

Just ask Graham Allison. In his recent book Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, he concludes that a terrorist nuke attack is “inevitable” unless the U.S. works much harder and faster to safeguard nuclear material. A former assistant secretary of defense who served under President Bill Clinton and now teaches government at Harvard University, Allison is actually taking small bets from colleagues that terrorists will detonate a crude nuclear bomb in a U.S. city within a decade. “If this happened tomorrow,” he says, “I could almost explain it more easily than I could explain why it hasn’t happened.”

Not everyone is as alarmist as Allison. Most experts with whom I spoke said that a nuclear terror attack is plausible but not inevitable, and that there’s no way to precisely gauge the odds. “I don’t think the public ought to lose a lot of sleep over the issue,” says nuclear physicist Tom Cochran of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

There is a consensus, though, about how such a nightmare would unfold. What follows is an examination of each step a terrorist organization would need to take to pull off a nuclear attack, and what is being done to raise the hurdles.

More here.

Roger Lowenstein in the New York Times Magazine:

Instead of trying to cut health-care costs or ration services, David Cutler, a Harvard economist, wants to reward doctors for doing a better job. In the long run, he argues, patients — and the economy — will be better off.

More here.

Jenny Hogan in New Scientist:

The rich are getting richer while the poor remain poor. If you doubt it, ponder these numbers from the US, a country widely considered meritocratic, where talent and hard work are thought to be enough to propel anyone through the ranks of the rich. In 1979, the top 1% of the US population earned, on average, 33.1 times as much as the lowest 20%. In 2000, this multiplier had grown to 88.5. If inequality is growing in the US, what does this mean for other countries?

Almost certainly more of the same, if you believe physicists who are using new models based on simple physical laws to understand the distribution of wealth. Their studies indicate that inequality in market economies may be very hard to get rid of.

Economists will join physicists to discuss these issues next week in Kolkata, India, at the first ever conference on the “econophysics” of wealth distribution. “We are interested in understanding whether there is some kind of social injustice behind this skewed distribution,” says Sudhakar Yarlagadda of the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINP) in Kolkata.

More here.

Jody Rosen in the New York Times:

The Algerian singer-songwriter Rachid Taha, 46, likes to tell the story about the night he met the Clash. In 1981, when he was the leader of Carte de Séjour (“Residence Permit”), a pioneering band from Lyon, France, that combined Algerian rai with funk and punk rock, the Clash played a concert at the Théâtre Mogador in Paris. Mr. Taha, a huge fan, bumped into the band on the street outside the theater and handed them a copy of his group’s demo. He never heard back, but a year later the Clash released “Rock the Casbah,” a raucous sendup of Middle Eastern politics with a suspiciously Carte de Séjour-like sound: slashing electric guitar, a dance beat and a lead vocal by Joe Strummer filled with undulating Orientalisms. To this day, Mr. Taha says he believes that his recordings inspired the song. “How else could they have come up with it?” he asks with a grin.

More here.

Kathryn Hughes in The Guardian:

Ever since its earliest days, limning (to give miniature painting its original name) has been the subject of a certain status anxiety. Practitioners and commentators have worried that it is not art at all, but itsy-bitsy hackwork. Or, conversely, that it is not an artisanal craft suitable for men, but merely a hobby for ladies. Or that it is an instrument of the court, full of pomp but not much else. Or, that it is small and domestic, a toy art.

Yet alongside this anxious babble is the work itself, an unarguable four centuries’ worth of small marvels…

More here.

Reported in Health News:

A University of Illinois researcher is learning about the anti-cancer power of one of the most famous vegetables: University of Illinois researcher Elizabeth Jeffery has learned how to maximize the cancer-fighting power of broccoli. It involves heating broccoli just enough to eliminate a sulfur-grabbing protein, but not enough to stop the plant from releasing an important cancer-fighting compound called sulforaphane.

The discovery of this sulfur-grabbing protein in the Jeffery lab makes it possible to maximize the amount of the anticarcinogen sulforaphane in broccoli.

“As scientists, we learned that sulforaphane is maximized when broccoli has been heated 10 minutes at 140 degrees Fahrenheit,” said Jeffery. “For the consumer, who cannot readily hold the temperature as low as 140 degrees, that means the best way to prepare broccoli is to steam it lightly about 3 or 4 minutes–until the broccoli is tough-tender.”

Read more here.

From The Guardian:

Maggy Hendry has co-edited the third and fourth editions of the Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Women’s Biography alongside the original compiler and editor, Jenny Uglow. In honour of International Women’s Day, she has chosen her top 10 women from the latest edition of the Dictionary, which was published at the beginning of the year. “

1. Madonna
For liberating the brassiere. She is largely responsible for modern blatant bra-wearing. Back in the day, perhaps because we were supposed to have burnt them, we would have died of embarrassment if anyone caught a glimpse of so much as a strap. Bras as outerwear and also their straps have been out of the closet ever since Madonna got together with Jean Paul Gaultier et al.
Dictionary entry: Madona Louise Veronica Ciccone (1958-)

2. Frida Kahlo
For dedication to her art in spite of living a life of pain, and for her brutally honest self portraits which show her with a moustache, a beard and ferociously dark eyebrows that cross in the middle. An excellent role model for the hirsute.
Dictionary entry: Frida Kahlo (1910-54)

3. Jezebel
For a reputation which has been evolving for around three millennia. A woman with a penchant for make-up who lived life on her own terms, Jezebel achieves 597,000 results on the world wide web. She had a second world war missile named after her and appeared in celluloid as a ruthless southern belle played by Bette Davis in 1935. She is still to be seen roaming high streets up and down the land on Saturday nights (according to her mother).
Dictionary entry: Jezebel (c9th century BC)

And read more here:

7. Martha Gellhorn
For her fearless reporting of the Spanish Civil War and other conflicts including the second world war and wars in China, Vietnam and central America. Also for her stormy five-year marriage to Ernest Hemingway.
Dictionary entry: Martha Gellhorn (1908-98)

8. Mary Anning
For finding and unearthing a complete ichthyosaurus at the age of 12, and for discovering the first pterodactyl.
Dictionary entry: Mary Anning (1799-1847)

9. Mary Kingsley
For coming out of the west African swamps with a necklace of leeches, for writing about it with humour and for her insistence on wearing Victorian clothing – layers of petticoats, heavy skirts, boots and highnecked blouses – in all situations.
Dictionary entry: Mary Kingsley (1862-1900)

10. Rosa Parks
‘Mother of the civil rights movement’. For sitting at the front of the bus. Her action sparked off demonstrations, the eventual abolition of the segregation laws and the emergence of Martin Luther King as a national leader.
Dictionary entry: Rosa Lee Parks (1913-)

Enter your income into the GLOBAL RICH LIST and find out.  This ingenious little site is a public service from the folks at Poke, a creative design firm in London that produces websites for the likes of Alexander McQueen and Jamie Oliver.  To learn more about their groovy post-*Wallpaper achievements, check out their Obligatory Blog.

Chandler Burr in The New Yorker:

On a sunny afternoon last June, the French perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena arrived at the offices of Hermès, the luxury-goods maker, in Pantin, just north of Paris, to present his first essais—or olfactory sketches—for the company’s next perfume. Ellena, who is fifty-seven years old, had recently been named Hermès’s first in-house perfumer by Jean-Louis Dumas Hermès, the chairman of the company. Dumas Hermès wanted to fix a delicate problem: Hermès had an elegant perfume collection that included classic scents like Calèche and 24, Faubourg, yet they sold only modestly. Chanel, one of Hermès’s chief rivals, made ten times as much money on perfume. (Led by its eighty-three-year-old warhorse, Chanel No. 5, the company’s 2003 sales totalled $1.2 billion.) It might be possible for Hermès to make one of its older scents chic through advertising, but the family had chosen a more daring strategy: it would adopt Chanel’s approach, and set up its own perfume laboratory.

More here.

Jane Stevenson reviews Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler, in The Guardian:

This learned and entertaining book starts around 3,300BC and works forwards. Given that it’s a short history of the last 5,000 years, it is remarkably comprehensive as well as thought-provoking. For most people, learning a first language is so ‘easy’ you don’t remember doing it and picking up others later on is a tedious chore.

It therefore seems reasonable that any time one group of people conquers another, the victors should impose their language, but historically, things haven’t always worked like that. Nicholas Ostler’s aim is to look at why some languages survive and spread, while others, for example the Aboriginal languages of Australia, fail.

He identifies three major paths to success: breed your way to majority status (like Chinese), spread by conquest (like Arabic) or give rise to a popular religion (like Sanskrit). But there is also another aspect contributing to the long-term survival of a language, which is to become classical.

More here.

James Bennet in the New York Times Magazine:

…national coherence and democratic aspiration combine to explain why, on Arafat’s death, the Palestinian public pivoted from Arafat to Mahmoud Abbas and why it did it so smoothly. More than four years into their latest violent conflict with Israel, Palestinians drew together behind Arafat’s longtime No. 2, Abbas, who turns 70 this month, as one of the few national figures remaining — one with the credentials to span the divided populations of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and the diaspora. In an election Jan. 9, he won more than 60 percent of the vote. That he did so well was evidence to Palestinians of their national unity; that he did not do better was evidence to them of the strength of their democratic institutions. Hassan Khreisheh, an opposition member of the Palestinian Parliament, tied these themes together when he proudly declared at the swearing-in of Abbas, ”Our people have put an end to the 99.999 percent that Arab leaders have become accustomed to.” Palestinians were now exceptional, he was saying, because they had democracy.

More here.

Of the most frequent two contributors to this blog, one is Indian (Robin), one is Pakistani (me), so we like news like this from the New York Times:

As India and Pakistan faced off here in Mohali, in the heart of a divided Punjab Province, for the first test match of a six-week long cricket series, Indians and Pakistanis greeted each other with a mixture of intense curiosity, apprehension, guilt, affection, longing, hope.

Spectators wandered around the stadium here with an Indian flag painted on one cheek and a Pakistani flag on the other. On the streets nearby, sari shops announced discounts for “our friends from Pakistan.” Local families took perfect strangers into their homes and refused to take any money. Inside Indian living rooms, Pakistanis traded stories about weddings and children, the quality of the roads, the price of chickens and motorbikes.

Amid the enthusiasm, ordinary Indians and Pakistanis uttered the unthinkable. “There is no difference between us,” said Naveed Ahmed, of Bahalwalnagar, in the Pakistani Punjab. It was his first time in India.

Adding an explicitly political flavor to the game, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan is expected to attend a match during the series, most likely on April 2 in the Indian city of Kochi…

The Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, was himself born in what is now Pakistan. The Pakistani president, General Musharraf, was born in New Delhi.

More here. Oh, and the match itself has now ended in a draw. Details here.

Cosma Shalizi reviews Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution by Ray Jackendoff:

Still, since we’re all good materialists and mechanists these days, we have to suppose that language is implemented in the brain somehow, and it would be nice to know how. Put a little differently: my version of English has a certain structure to it; therefore there must be something in my mind, in my brain and its interaction with its environment, which corresponds to that structure, just as is true of my ability to throw a frisbee, cook qorma-e-behi, or find my way around downtown Ann Arbor. If there are various ways of describing the mathematical structure of my version of English, which there are, it would be nice to know which one most closely corresponded to the mental mechanisms involved. These could, of course, be totally idiosyncratic, but that would be very odd, and it seems more reasonable to assume that the way I implement English is very similar to the way other speakers of my dialect do. It’s a bigger leap, but it’s not unreasonable to assume that the way I implement my native language has got basically the same organization as the way my cousins in Tamil Nadu implement theirs, even though English and Tamil are not related languages.

Thus the enterprise of generative grammar: characterize the structure of human languages in ways which illuminate the mental mechanisms involved in its use. Jackendoff has devoted his professional life to this ambitious undertaking — in his book The Linguistics Wars, Randy Allen Harris describes him as “Chomsky’s conscience”, the guy who did the hard work of filling in the messy details needed to make Uncle Noam’s proposals actually work, nor has his commitment to generative grammar (as opposed to Chomsky) weakened. But Foundations of Language is not intended just as an incremental advance in generative grammar, or even as a summary of what has been achieved, but rather as a fairly significant reformulation and reorientation.

More here.