Tom Nairn reviews Multitude by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, in the London Review of Books:

The cover of Multitude invites bookshop browsers not just to read it, but to ‘Join the many. Join the Empowered.’ The missionary tone is underlined by Naomi Klein’s blurb – ‘inspiring’ – and a frisson added by the book’s appearance: a brown paper wrapping like those used to discourage porn thieves and customs inspectors. Trembling fingers that go further are reminded that this book succeeds Empire (2000), by the same authors, which provided a picture of the global imperium supposed to have followed the Cold War – not the American Empire, but a wider settlement of which US supremacy was just one part. This imperium has generated global resistance, which all purchasers are now invited to approve, in the name of democracy.

More here.

The ever-erudite Daniel Mendelsohn on The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, directed by David Leveaux, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York, March 22–July 17, 2005, in the New York Review of Books:

“When you look at a piece of delicately spun glass,” Tennessee Williams wrote in the stage directions for The Glass Menagerie, the 1944 play that made his name, “you think of two things: how beautiful it is and how easily it can be broken.” The observation has obvious relevance to that particular drama, which famously features, as one of its symbols, a collection of delicate spun-glass animals owned by one of its soon-to-be emotionally broken characters. (As it happens, the reference to spun glass isn’t a bit of pontificating about the themes of the play: Williams is trying to suggest, with typically ample, even novelistic, descriptiveness, the quality of the musical leitmotif he has in mind for his play.) But it’s hard not to read that stage direction without thinking of Williams’s entire theatrical output: in one way or another, nearly everything he wrote is about beauty and brokenness.

More here.

Gerry Gilmore  reviews Parallel Worlds: The Science of Alternative Universes and Our Future in the Cosmos by Michio Kaku, in The Guardian:

Cosmology books, explaining the probable origins and possible futures of our universe, have become the latest little black number: everyone seems to have one, many are appealing, but few match the classics. Michio Kaku is the latest to enter the lists, with his version of the history of the discovery of modern cosmology, of the mind-stretching array of mathematically-based calculations and speculations about possible far futures, including travel outside our universe into other multi-verses, and of his speculations on what it all means. Longlisted for the Samuel Johnson award for non-fiction, this is not a classic, but does raise many interesting ideas.

More here.

Lakshmi Sandhana in Wired:

Natural evolution has produced the eye, butterfly wings and other wonders that would put any inventor to shame. But who’s to say evolution couldn’t be improved with the help of a little technology?

So argues James Auger in his controversial and sometimes unsettling book, Augmented Animals. A designer and former research associate with MIT Media Lab Europe, Auger envisions animals, birds, reptiles and even fish becoming appreciative techno-geeks, using specially engineered gadgets to help them overcome their evolutionary shortcomings, promote their chances of survival or just simply lead easier and more comfortable lives.

On tap for the future: Rodents zooming around with night-vision survival goggles, squirrels hoarding nuts using GPS locators and fish armed with metal detectors to avoid the angler’s hook.

More here.

Bernd Heinrich reviews The Singing Life of Birds by Donald E. Kroodsma, in Scientific American:

Just as the colors and patterns of the feathers that birds wear show tremendous variation, so, too, do the songs that they broadcast–but much more so. Songs may be absent, or they may range from a few simple genetically encoded notes endlessly repeated, to virtuosos of variety resulting from copying and learning, and even to seemingly endless improvisation. In The Singing Life of Birds, Donald E. Kroodsma, an emeritus professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, celebrates the diversity through carefully chosen examples, one for each of the 30 years that he has studied birdsong.

The book is best described by its subtitle, The Art and Science of Listening to Birdsong. Kroodsma shares his secrets–solid, practical advice on how to record bird sounds and how to “see” the sounds in sonagrams, visual representations of the recordings of songs. A compact disc that accompanies the text aids readers in this task.

More here.

Essay by Lee Siegel in the New York Times:

Freud’s essay [“Civilization and Its Discontents”] rests on three arguments that are impossible to prove: the development of civilization recapitulates the development of the individual; civilization’s central purpose of repressing the aggressive instinct exacts unbearable suffering; the individual is torn between the desire to live (Eros) and the wish to die (Thanatos). It is impossible to refute Freud’s theses, too. All three arguments have died in the minds of many people, under the pressure of intellectual opposition, only to remain alive and well in the minds of many others. To clarify the status of Freud’s influence today is to get a better sense of a central rift running through the culture we live in.

More here.

Will Knight in New Scientist:

A one-person vacuum elevator that slots into buildings with a minimum of fuss has gone on sale in the US.

The tube-shaped transporter carries a person upwards at a steady speed of 15 centimetres per second using turbines to suck air out of a pressurised chamber above the passenger capsule. The capsule is lowered when the pressure in the upper section is returned to normal.

The Residential Pneumatic Vacuum Elevator was developed by Vacuum Elevators, a company based in Argentina and Florida, US. Two- or three-floor versions are currently available, and the company is now developing a four-floor system and another that can accommodate a wheelchair.

More here.

I don’t mean to be so self-promoting but it really ought to be an enjoyable and amusing month. And who knows, maybe a good novel will come of it all. If not, we’ll all have a good laugh together. The opening is tommorrow night in L.I.C.

3quark readers get in free (of course, so does everyone else). Here’s the preview from Ed Park at the Village Voice.

Georges Simenon could write a novel in 11 days; according to a since debunked legend, he once finished an entire book in a day, enclosed David Blaine–like in a clear room while the public watched. Beginning May 7, Flux Factory’s “living installation” Novel puts three authors—Grant Bailie, Ranbir Sidhu, and former Voicean Laurie Stone—in three different enclosed environments for 30 days. Visitors can watch them scribble or stew from 3 to 5 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and from noon to 4 p.m. on weekends. On June 4, the writers come out of the chrysalis having completed a brand-new novel.

National Review:

Until Democrats promote someone who barks out something like, “We can and will win in Iraq,” or, “Let the word go out: An attack on the United States originating from a rogue state is synonymous with its own destruction,” or some such unguarded and perhaps slightly over-the-top statement, I don’t think that the American people will entrust their safety to the party. John Kerry, to be frank, is no Harry Truman, and time is running out for Hillary Clinton to morph into Scoop Jackson.

Philosophically, two grand themes explain the Democratic dilemma. One, the United States does not suffer from the sort of oppression, poverty, or Vietnam nightmares of the 1950s and 1960s that created the present Democratic ideology. Thus calcified solutions of big government entitlements, race-based largess, and knee-jerk suspicion of U.S. power abroad come off as either impractical or hysterical.

Second, there is the widening gulf between word and deed — and Americans hate hypocrites most of all. When you meet a guy from the Chamber of Commerce or insurance association, you pretty much know that what you see is what you get: comfort with American culture and values, an upscale lifestyle that reflects his ideology and work, and no apologies for success or excuses for lack of same.

More here.

Lee Dugatkin reviews Natural Conflict Resolution by Filippo Aureli and Frans de Waal, in New Scientist:

Look at the world’s worst trouble spots and you can’t fail to notice they have one thing in common: tit-for-tat attacks between warring parties. Escalation of violence is incredibly destructive, yet we humans find it very difficult to break the vicious cycle. It seems we are not good at conflict resolution. Perhaps we could learn a lesson or two from the spotted hyena.

Spotted hyenas are highly sociable. Like other animals that live in close-knit groups, they don’t always get along. But spotted hyenas don’t hold a grudge. Within about 5 minutes of a fight, the erstwhile combatants can often be seen playing, licking or rubbing one another, or engaging in other friendly acts to dissipate the tension. And they are not the only animals with a penchant for kissing and making up.

More here.

Steve Conner in The Independent:

The two winners of the Aventis Prizes for science books – one writing for children and another for adults – will each walk away with £10,000 and the glory of the most prestigious award in popular science writing.

This year sees Richard Dawkins and Robert Winston battling it out with four other shortlisted authors for the general prize, which will be announced at the Royal Society in London on 12 May.

More here.

Scott McLemee in Inside Higher Ed:

Right after 9/11, the obituaries started to appear: Irony, the reports said, was dead. Either that or in really bad condition.

It had been a very 1990s thing, this irony. Never before in human history had so many people so often used that two-handed gesture to inscribe quotation marks in the air. Or pronounced the word really with an inflection conveying the faux enthusiasm that doubled as transparent contempt (as in; “I really like that new Britney Spears single”). The manner had been forged in earlier times — by pioneers at the Harvard Lampoon, for example. But it really caught on during the cold peace that followed the Cold War. Suddenly, irony became available to everyone, on the cheap. It was the wit of the witless, the familiar smirk beneath the perpetually raised eyebrow.

And then it died. Hard realities broke through the callow veneer of detachment. Everybody became very earnest. And then America entered its present golden age of high seriousness…

More here.  And see our own Morgan Meis’s riff on neo-sincerity here.

Kiernan Ryan in The Guardian:

Coleridge, arguably Shakespeare’s greatest critic, came closest to defining the distinctive quality of his vision, when he observed that Shakespeare is as unlike his contemporaries as he is unlike us. In other words, his plays at their most powerful are out of sync with both Shakespeare’s epoch and ours, and so can’t be explained fully in terms of the past they sprang from or the present in which we encounter them. What drives his drama is the dream of a dispensation whose advent we still await, the prospect of a future free from the division and domination that crippled Shakespeare’s world and continues to cripple ours.

More here.

From Nature: “The human genome underlies the fundamental unity of all members of the human family, as well as the recognition of their inherent dignity and diversity. In a symbolic sense, it is the heritage of humanity.”
Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights

It is with great pleasure that Nature presents this special section of the Genome Gateway to mark the publication of the initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome. We are delighted to uphold the principle at the heart of the Human Genome Project: free and unrestricted access to all our genome related material through these web pages. more…

The human genome is by far the largest genome to be sequenced, and its size and complexity present many challenges for sequence assembly. The International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium constructed a map of the whole genome to enable the selection of clones for sequencing and for the accurate assembly of the genome sequence. Here we report the construction of the whole-genome bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) map and its integration with previous landmark maps and information from mapping efforts focused on specific chromosomal regions. We also describe the integration of sequence data with the map.

More here.

Yad Vashem’s on-line database of survivors’ and victims’ names turns Holocaust museum into an ever-lasting monument By Ronny Shani for ynetnews.com

“Yad Vashem, considered by some the world’s largest Holocaust museum, has been operating an on-line survivors’ and victims’ database of names for a little over a year. Since November 2004, more than 4 million surfers from 178 countries have checked out the 3-million- name database; most visitors are English and Hebrew speakers, a museum source said. According to the source, the website proved to be successful in locating long-lost relatives and bringing families back together after dozens of years apart.”

John Allen Paulos in his monthly column at ABC News:

At first glance (and maybe the second one too), narrative and mathematics don’t seem to be natural companions, but recent years have made the juxtaposition much more common.

There have, for example, been many biographies about mathematicians ranging from Sylvia Nasar’s “A Beautiful Mind” about John Nash to Rebecca Goldstein’s just released “Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Godel”…

There’s even a new television murder mystery show, “Numb3rs,” featuring a crime-solving mathematician. (This latter reminds me of a joke that generally appeals only to mathematicians: How do you spell Henry? Answer. Hen3ry. The 3 is silent.) And these just scratch the surface. Countless — well, not really, you can count them — narrative renderings of things mathematical have poured forth in recent years…

With all this ferment it’s perhaps not surprising that the phenomenon has attracted academic interest. Scheduled for July 12-15 in Mykonos, Greece, an international conference on Mathematics and Narrative will explore the interplay between these two seemingly disparate ways of viewing the world.

More here.

Elizabeth Kolbert in the second of a three-part series in The New Yorker (part 1 here):

The world’s first empire was established forty-three hundred years ago, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The details of its founding, by Sargon of Akkad, have come down to us in a form somewhere between history and myth. Sargon—Sharru-kin, in the language of Akkadian—means “true king”; almost certainly, though, he was a usurper. As a baby, Sargon was said to have been discovered, Moses-like, floating in a basket. Later, he became cupbearer to the ruler of Kish, one of ancient Babylonia’s most powerful cities. Sargon dreamed that his master, Ur-Zababa, was about to be drowned by the goddess Inanna in a river of blood. Hearing about the dream, Ur-Zababa decided to have Sargon eliminated. How this plan failed is unknown; no text relating the end of the story has ever been found.

More here.

Carl Zimmer in his excellent blog, The Loom (do first read the post, then try the tests before scrolling down to the answer):

Evolutionary psychologists argue that we can understand the workings of the human mind by investigating how it evolved. Much of their research focuses on the past two million years of hominid evolution, during which our ancestors lived in small bands, eating meat they either scavenged or hunted as well as tubers and other plants they gathered. Living for so long in this arrangement, certain ways of thinking may have been favored by natural selection. Evolutionary psychologists believe that a lot of puzzling features of the human mind make sense if we keep our heritage in mind.

The classic example of these puzzles is known as the Wason Selection Task. People tend to do well on this task if it is presented in one way, and terribly if it is presented another way. You can try it out for yourself.

Version 1:

You are given four cards. Each card has a number on one side and a letter on the other. Indicate only the card or cards you need to turn over to see whether any of these cards violate the following rule: if a card has a D on one side, it has a 3 on the other side.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Version 2:

Now you’re a bouncer at a bar. You must enforce the rule that if a person is drinking beer, then he must be over 21 years old. The four cards below each represent one customer in your bar. One side shows what the person is drinking, and the other side shows the drinker’s age. Pick only the cards you definitely need to turn over to see if any of these people are breaking the law and need to be thrown out.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Highlight the area between the Xs for the answers:

X The answer to version one is D and 5. The answer to version two is beer and 17. X

If you took these tests, chances are you bombed on version one and got version two right. Studies consistently show that in tests of the first sort, about 25% of people choose the right answer. But 65% of people get test number two right.

This is actually a very weird result. Both tests involve precisely the same logic: If P, then Q. Yet putting this statement in terms of social rules makes it far easier for people to solve than if it is purely descriptive.

More here.

Jennifer Viegas in New Scientist:

The most comprehensive study to date exploring the genetic divergence of humans and chimpanzees has revealed that the genes most favoured by natural selection are those associated with immunity, tumour suppression, and programmed cell death.

These genes show signs of positive natural selection in both branches of the evolutionary tree and are changing more swiftly than would be expected through random mutation alone. Lead scientist Rasmus Nielsen and colleagues at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, examined the 13,731 chimp genes that have equivalent genes with known functions in humans.

Research in 2003 revealed that genes involved with smell, hearing, digestion, long bone growth, and hairiness are undergoing positive natural selection in chimps and humans. The new study has found that the strongest evidence for selection is related to disease defence and apoptosis – or programmed cell death – which is linked to sperm production.

More here.

Paul M. Barrett in the Wall Street Journal:

In a compact stone and glass building here, the creators of the Arab American National Museum seek to set the record straight.

“If somebody else tells your story, it’s not your story,” Ismael Ahmed told me, “and in this case, we even think the story has been told with malice” by others. Mr. Ahmed heads the nonprofit social-services organization in Dearborn that built the museum, which opens today. By malice, he meant a desire to portray Arab-Americans as out of the mainstream, hostile toward the U.S. and possibly sympathetic toward terrorism.

The museum uses personal artifacts, skillfully distilled reminiscences and absorbing interactive displays to recount the tale of Arab immigration and accomplishment since the late 1800s. There is much to boast about, but just below the surface of the museum’s colorful exhibits–and sometimes emerging into full view–is a sense that corrections are needed; wrongs must be righted. It makes for a lively museum experience.

More here.