Why not Shakespeare?

Brian Vickers in the Times Literary Supplement:

Shakespeare_3Those who seek to deny Shakespeare’s authorship of over thirty plays, two narrative poems and a collection of sonnets are driven to strange expedients. Consider the following stories:
(1) Francis Bacon, despite his busy life as a barrister, involved in both state and private legal cases, who kept up his connections with Gray’s Inn as a law lecturer, an MP and chairman of several committees, a rising government legal officer (SolicitorGeneral 1607, Attorney General 1613), and a scholar whose avowed ambition was to reform science so that it could benefit mankind despite all this, had enough time to write the works published under Shakespeare’s name, with the connivance of the actor from Stratford. Either they managed to deceive all the theatre people with whom Shakespeare worked on a daily basis his fellow actors; those who shared with him the management of both the theatre company (the Lord Chamberlain’s Men until 1603, thereafter the King’s Men) and their playhouse (the Theatre until 1599, thereafter the Globe); and the playwrights (Peele, Middleton, Wilkins, Fletcher) with whom he co-authored at least six plays, a process involving much viva voce discussion of plotting or else all these people were in on the secret. Bacon concealed his authorship during his and Shakespeare’s lifetime, but thoughtfully left some encoded messages in the First Folio, which were not deciphered until 1856. Bacon was also the President or Imperator of the Rosicrucians, an adept of the Kabbalah, and the leading English freemason.

(2) Although Christopher Marlowe was to all appearances killed in a tavern brawl in Deptford on May 30, 1593, his death being certified at an inquest held on June 1 and presided over by the Queen’s coroner, at which sixteen local jurors acquitted the assailant, Ingram Frazer, on the grounds of self-defence, this was all an elaborate scam arranged by Thomas Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster and Marlowe’s homosexual lover. The body buried in an unmarked grave in St Nicholas’s Churchyard on June 1 was in fact that of John Penry, the
Separatist leader, who had just been executed.

More here.

Anthony Hecht & landscape

David Yezzi on the uses of landscape in the poems of Anthony Hecht, in The New Criterion:

AnthonyhechtAny number of fine poems memorialize poets—W. H. Auden’s “In Memory of W. B. Yeats,” for example, or, in a less reverent vein, Tom Disch’s “At the Grave of Amy Clampitt,” written, oddly, while Clampitt was still alive. Such poems tend to announce either affinity or difference, friendship or rivalry, as one poet suggests—either critically or cordially—his relationship to the person or work of another. The poet J. D. McClatchy has an exemplary poem in the admiring vein titled “Auden’s O.E.D.”, which fondly recounts McClatchy’s first meeting with Auden. As a student at Yale, McClatchy buttonholed the elder poet after a reading and nervously asked him if Auden would sign his book. Auden took stock of this eager young chap and told him to bend over. Auden, you see, wanted to use McClatchy’s back as a writing desk. McClatchy then reverses the image to suggest, in a witty and touching homage to the master, that he has been writing on Auden’s back ever since.

More here.

The Matisse we never knew

Peter Schjeldahl reviews A Life of Henry Matisse by Hilary Spurling, in The New Yorker:

Images20matisse20womangifHenri Matisse, unlike the other greatest modern painter, Pablo Picasso, with whom he sits on a seesaw of esteem, hardly exists as a person in most people’s minds. One pictures a wary, bearded gent, owlish in glasses—perhaps with a touch of the pasha about him, from images of his last years in Vence, near Nice, in a house full of sumptuous fabrics, plants, freely flying birds, and comely young models. Many know that Matisse had something to do with the invention of Fauvism, and that he once declared, weirdly, that art should be like a good armchair. A few recall that, in 1908, he inspired the coinage of the term “cubism,” in disparagement of a movement that would eclipse his leading influence on the Parisian avant-garde, and that he relaxed by playing the violin. Beyond such bits and pieces, there is the art, whose glory was maintained and renewed in many phases until the artist’s death, in 1954: preternatural color, yielding line, boldness and subtlety, incessant surprise. Anyone who doesn’t love it must have a low opinion of joy. The short answer to the question of Matisse’s stubborn obscurity as a man is that he put everything interesting about himself into his work. The long answer, which is richly instructive, while ending in the same place, is given in Hilary Spurling’s zestful two-volume biography, “A Life of Henri Matisse.”

More here.

Can neuroscience provide a foundation for ethics?

Maura Pilotti reviews The Ethical Brain by Michael S. Gazzaniga, in Metapsychology:

In The Ethical Brain, Michael S. Gazzaniga teaches us something about making informed decisions in settings where our personal sense of right and wrong does not seem to provide an unequivocal answer. The guiding theme of his book is what Gazzaniga calls Neuroethics, the notion that knowledge of the brain’s functioning and organizational structure can ground our views of controversial issues as well as inform our decisions on the appropriate course of action.  In defining Neuroethics, Gazzaniga presents readers with timely and important issues, explores the multifaceted claims that render them controversial, and applies his training in neuroscience to craft a solution that is based on scientific evidence and reason rather than dogma.  If knowledge of neuroscience cannot assist him in formulating a reasonable answer, he draws attention to what he considers to be the limitations (either current or long-standing) of such knowledge.  Even when he has an answer, Gazzaniga is always respectful of all points of view.  In doing so, he highlights another interesting theme of this book, which is its recognition that ethical matters are generally multi-layered, they have divisive ramifications and, often, there are no universally satisfactory or pleasing answers for the dilemmas they pose.

More here.

Transition – To What?

I noticed that Newsweek calls its Obituary section “Transition.” Isn’t this a tad euphemistic? This sounds like business jargon to me, the softening of the edges of what can only be considered bad news, viz., death. Death is so awfully grim and dreary, let’s call it something else! It’s bad, but maybe in another sense it’s something good…a transition. To be fair, I think Newsweek also prints birth and marriage notices here, but the point still stands – should we mix and match when it comes to death? I mean, really, “transition” to what? Death? “Congratulations,” I imagine a voice intoning from the Great Beyond, “you have successfully transitioned from life to death!” Or: “I’m going through a period of transition. I’m between lives.” Is there a metaphysics implied here – the assertion of an afterlife, something, in other words, to which one may transition? I’m just asking.

(From an email I recently sent to Richard M. Smith, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Newsweek. I’ll update 3QD if any response is forthcoming.)

leiris on duchamp

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October publishes a translation of an essay on Marcel Duchamp by Michel Leiris. In the passage below he’s talking about The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even. The rest of the essay is available as a pdf.

A work such as this—a veritable Pandora’s box which one manipulates at one’s own peril—needs to be approached not from the classic point of view of form and substance, but rather, strictly speaking, from that of container and contained. Our critical task will therefore consist of making a rapid inventory of its contents and then of demonstrating, should the verdict prove positive, that there is a necessary relationship between container and contained. To begin with, one has to realize that Duchamp—initially one of the most talented of the so-called “Cubist” painters—has, like a number of other innovators of his period, set himself several problems having to do with the legitimacy of representation (the role of perspective, the discovery of methods that would be just as—or more—valid than perspective in order to move from the three dimensions of an object to its figuration on a surface, the role of colors, of light, etc.), but that instead of more or less academically resolving these problems, he has come up with his very own method, an “ironism of affirmation” that is quite different from the “negative

Digital fantasies

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A new generation of young creators has emerged that operates not from a deep contemplation of Duchamp, Beuys, Foucault, or Baudrillard, but from Dungeons and Dragons figurines, ‘80s “mythic” heavy-metal album covers, cyberpunk paperback art, and the kind of paintings of Vikings and missile-breasted Amazons found on the side of VW vans. Niche.LA and Lounge 441’s “Digital World: Oz” features the gently dissolving images of the flabbergasting Charli Siebert, described in the press materials as a self-taught “23-year-old digital artist from Huntington Beach, CA.” Siebert’s independence from art-school cant is gratifying in itself, but her frosted, distressed, tactile-but-ethereal images are the real thing—Goth and sci-fi kitsch ossified into beaux-arts stateliness. Her porny, morbid figures hover in a state of being pitched somewhere between photorealism and PhotoShop artifice, as if a family of Joel-Peter Witkin ghouls had invented their own video game to live in.

more about the show at Niche.La and Lounge 441 here.

What Makes People Gay?

From The Boston Globe:

Gay_1 With crystal-blue eyes, wavy hair, and freshly scrubbed faces, the boys look as though they stepped out of a Pottery Barn Kids catalog. They are 7-year-old twins. I’ll call them Thomas and Patrick; their parents agreed to let me meet the boys as long as I didn’t use their real names.

Spend five seconds with them, and there can be no doubt that they are identical twins – so identical even they can’t tell each other apart in photographs. Spend five minutes with them, and their profound differences begin to emerge.

More here.

Can Extreme Poverty Be Eliminated?

From Scientific American:

Poverty Almost everyone who ever lived was wretchedly poor. Famine, death from childbirth, infectious disease and countless other hazards were the norm for most of history. Humanity’s sad plight started to change with the Industrial Revolution, beginning around 1750. New scientific insights and technological innovations enabled a growing proportion of the global population to break free of extreme poverty.

Two and a half centuries later more than five billion of the world’s 6.5 billion people can reliably meet their basic living needs and thus can be said to have escaped from the precarious conditions that once governed everyday life. One out of six inhabitants of this planet, however, still struggles daily to meet some or all of such critical requirements as adequate nutrition, uncontaminated drinking water, safe shelter and sanitation as well as access to basic health care. These people get by on $1 a day or less and are overlooked by public services for health, education and infrastructure. Every day more than 20,000 die of dire poverty, for want of food, safe drinking water, medicine or other essential needs.

More here.

Can you be a good scientist and believe in God?

Cornelia Dean in the New York Times:

At a recent scientific conference at City College of New York, a student in the audience rose to ask the panelists an unexpected question: “Can you be a good scientist and believe in God?”

Reaction from one of the panelists, all Nobel laureates, was quick and sharp. “No!” declared Herbert A. Hauptman, who shared the chemistry prize in 1985 for his work on the structure of crystals.

Belief in the supernatural, especially belief in God, is not only incompatible with good science, Dr. Hauptman declared, “this kind of belief is damaging to the well-being of the human race.”

But disdain for religion is far from universal among scientists. And today, as religious groups challenge scientists in arenas as various as evolution in the classroom, AIDS prevention and stem cell research, scientists who embrace religion are beginning to speak out about their faith.

More here.

Why Medical Studies Are Often Wrong

John Allen Paulos in a very interesting column at ABC News:

Paulos_3How many times have you heard people exclaim something like, “First they tell us this is good or bad for us, and then they tell us just the opposite”?

In case you need more confirmation for the “iffy-ness” of many health studies, Dr. John Ioannidis, a researcher at the University of Ioannina in Greece writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, recently analyzed 45 well publicized studies from major journals appearing between 1990 and 2003. His conclusion: the results of approximately one third of these studies were flatly contradicted or significantly weakened by later work.

There’s the well-known story of hormone replacement therapy, which was supposed to protect against heart disease and other maladies, but apparently does not. A good part of the apparent effect may have been the result of attributing the well-being of upper middle class health-conscious women to the hormones.

Another bit of health folklore that “everybody knows” that has turned out to be unfounded is vitamin E’s protective effect against cardiac problems. Not so says a recent large study.

And how about red wine, tea, fruits and vegetables? Surely the anti-oxidant effect of these wondrous nutrients can’t be doubted. Even here, however, the effect appears to be more modest than pinot noir lovers, among others, had thought.

And certainly many lung patients who inhale nitrous oxide and swear by its efficacy will be surprised to learn that a larger study does not show any beneficial effect…

More here.

Fetuses Likely Don’t Feel Pain Until Late in Pregnancy

Lindsey Tanner at ABC News:

Manipulate_fetus_lA review of medical evidence has found that fetuses likely don’t feel pain until the final months of pregnancy, a powerful challenge to abortion opponents who hope that discussions about fetal pain will make women think twice about ending pregnancies.

Critics angrily disputed the findings and claimed the report is biased.

“They have literally stuck their hands into a hornet’s nest,” said Dr. Kanwaljeet Anand, a fetal pain researcher at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, who believes fetuses as young as 20 weeks old feel pain. “This is going to inflame a lot of scientists who are very, very concerned and are far more knowledgeable in this area than the authors appear to be. This is not the last word definitely not.”

The review by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco comes as advocates are pushing for fetal pain laws aimed at curtailing abortion. Proposed federal legislation would require doctors to provide fetal pain information to women seeking abortions when fetuses are at least 20 weeks old, and to offer women fetal anesthesia at that stage of the pregnancy. A handful of states have enacted similar measures.

But the report, appearing in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association, says that offering fetal pain relief during abortions in the fifth or sixth months of pregnancy is misguided and might result in unacceptable health risks to women.

More here.

In Finland’s Footsteps: If We’re So Rich and Smart, Why Aren’t We More Like Them?

Robert G. Kaiser in the Washington Post:

Cid_002d01c45d68207f1d8045846543br62z01Finland is a leading example of the northern European view that a successful, competitive society should provide basic social services to all its citizens at affordable prices or at no cost at all. This isn’t controversial in Finland; it is taken for granted. For a patriotic American like me, the Finns present a difficult challenge: If we Americans are so rich and so smart, why can’t we treat our citizens as well as the Finns do?

Finns have one of the world’s most generous systems of state-funded educational, medical and welfare services, from pregnancy to the end of life. They pay nothing for education at any level, including medical school or law school. Their medical care, which contributes to an infant mortality rate that is half of ours and a life expectancy greater than ours, costs relatively little. (Finns devote 7 percent of gross domestic product to health care; we spend 15 percent.) Finnish senior citizens are well cared for. Unemployment benefits are good and last, in one form or another, indefinitely.

On the other hand, Finns live in smaller homes than Americans and consume a lot less. They spend relatively little on national defense, though they still have universal male conscription, and it is popular. Their per capita national income is about 30 percent lower than ours. Private consumption of goods and services represents about 52 percent of Finland’s economy, and 71 percent of the United States’. Finns pay considerably higher taxes — nearly half their national income is taken in taxes, while Americans pay about 30 percent on average to federal, state and local governments.

Should we be learning from Finland?

More here.  And check out the photo galleries here.

stem cells from a growing fetus can colonise the brains of mothers

Andy Coghlan in New Scientist:

Everyone knows that kids get their brains, or lack of them, from their parents. But it now seems that the reverse is also true. Stray stem cells from a growing fetus can colonise the brains of mothers during pregnancy, at least in mice.

If the finding is repeated in humans, the medical implications could be profound. Initial results suggest that the fetal cells are summoned to repair damage to the mother’s brain. If this is confirmed, it could open up new, safer avenues of treatment for brain damage caused by strokes and Alzheimer’s disease, for example.

This is a long way off, but there are good reasons for thinking that fetal stem cells could one day act as a bespoke brain repair kit. It is already well known that during pregnancy a small number of fetal stem cells stray across the placenta and into the mother’s bloodstream, a phenomenon called microchimerism. They can survive for decades in tissues such as skin, liver and spleen, where they have been shown to repair damage.

More here.

7 NASA panelists report program is still troubled

Traci Watson in USA Today:

ShuttleThe culture inside the space shuttle program remains arrogant, sloppy and schedule-driven, says a scathing statement published Wednesday by a faction on the panel that oversaw NASA’s efforts to return the shuttle to space.

The statement, which was not endorsed by the majority of the oversight panel, comes three weeks after NASA put shuttle flights on hold until it can keep debris from falling off the fuel tank. Such foam debris triggered the disintegration of shuttle Columbia in 2003 and plagued the flight of shuttle Discovery, which landed Aug. 9.

The main report says NASA fulfilled 10 of 13 safety goals the agency accepted after the accident, which were laid out by the accident investigators and included steps such as development of a technique to fix the ship in orbit. The main report does not comment on the shuttle program’s culture, which was not part of the panel’s official purview. The minority statement is included as an annex to the main report, as are statements from other panelists praising NASA.

More here.  [Thanks to Winfield J. Abbe.]

HOW INTELLIGENT DESIGN HURTS CONSERVATIVES

Ross Douthat in The New Republic:

The appeal of “intelligent design” to the American right is obvious. For religious conservatives, the theory promises to uncover God’s fingerprints on the building blocks of life. For conservative intellectuals in general, it offers hope that Darwinism will yet join Marxism and Freudianism in the dustbin of pseudoscience. And for politicians like George W. Bush, there’s little to be lost in expressing a skepticism about evolution that’s shared by millions.

In the long run, though, intelligent design will probably prove a political boon to liberals, and a poisoned chalice for conservatives. Like the evolution wars in the early part of the last century, the design debate offers liberals the opportunity to portray every scientific battle–today, stem-cell research, “therapeutic” cloning, and end-of-life issues; tomorrow, perhaps, large-scale genetic engineering–as a face-off between scientific rigor and religious fundamentalism. There’s already a public perception, nurtured by the media and by scientists themselves, that conservatives oppose the “scientific” position on most bioethical issues. Once intelligent design runs out of steam, leaving its conservative defenders marooned in a dinner-theater version of Inherit the Wind, this liberal advantage is likely to swell considerably.

And intelligent design will run out of steam…

More here.

issa touma

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The triumphs and travails of Syrian photographer Issa Touma make for pretty gripping stories in themselves. But above and beyond that, he has taken some truly amazing and beautiful photographs. Touma’s account of his struggles with the Baath party in Syria while trying to run his gallery and an international photography exhibit can be found at Joshua Landis’ site here.

More information about Nazar: Photographs from the Arab World, can be found here.

Some amazing pictures from Touma’s series, Sufi, can be found here.

Kimworld

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By the time Kim Jong Il, the Dear Leader, took over from his father as the absolute ruler of North Korea, the country was a slave society, where only the most trusted caste of people were allowed to live in sullen obedience in Pyongyang, while vast numbers of potential class enemies were worked to death in mines and hard-labor camps. After Kim Il Sung’s death, in 1994, the regime suspended executions for a month, and throughout the following year it committed relatively few killings. Since this was at the height of a famine, largely brought on by disastrous agricultural policies, hundreds of thousands were already dying from hunger. Then word spread that Kim Jong Il wished to “hear the sound of gunshots again.” Starving people were shot for stealing a couple of eggs.

More from the admirable Ian Buruma in The New Yorker here.

The Other Brain Also Deals With Many Woes

From The New York Times:

Gut Two brains are better than one. At least that is the rationale for the close – sometimes too close – relationship between the human body’s two brains, the one at the top of the spinal cord and the hidden but powerful brain in the gut known as the enteric nervous system.

For Dr. Michael D. Gershon, the author of “The Second Brain” and the chairman of the department of anatomy and cell biology at Columbia, the connection between the two can be unpleasantly clear. “Every time I call the National Institutes of Health to check on a grant proposal,” Dr. Gershon said, “I become painfully aware of the influence the brain has on the gut.” In fact, anyone who has ever felt butterflies in the stomach before giving a speech, a gut feeling that flies in the face of fact or a bout of intestinal urgency the night before an examination has experienced the actions of the dual nervous systems.

More here.

Monkey see, monkey go all-in: Primates prefer gamble over safe reward

From MSNBC:Monkey_1

When given a choice between steady rewards and the chance for more, monkeys will gamble, a new study found. And they’ll keep taking risks as the stakes rise and dry spells get longer. The research, in which scientists also pinpointed brain activity during the gambling, could provide insight into the human penchant for risk. In humans, it’s thought that low levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin might make one more risk-prone and impulsive. Perhaps, the scientists say, future work will shed light on the source of pathological gambling, obsessive-compulsive disorder and even depression.

More here.