Are comic books Art? The question has been a thorny one since comics first appeared over a century ago and highbrow pundits predicted that the Sunday funny pages would destroy the fragile public’s chances of bettering themselves through exposure to the classics. Of course, they were right (thank God!), and comics — along with all the other exciting new popular art forms that emerged over the course of the 20th century (as well as certain strains of Modernist art making) — threw a monkey wrench into the stuffy, inhibited, inbred and arbitrary mechanisms by which such distinctions are decreed. Effectively, the authority of a few wealthy pillars of society to bestow immortality on those who toed the party line — and obscurity and poverty on those who didn’t — was wrested away and recast as a question of popular — and, to some degree, critical — consensus.

more from Doug Harvey at the LA Weekly here.

Here, for instance, is one writer in all-too-familiar high dudgeon: modern art, he says, is “decadent,” “narcissistic,” “meaningless,” “valueless.” These are not the words of some primitive from the outer reaches of rural Alabama. They come from a New York critic at the red-hot center of the contemporary art scene – Donald Kuspit, the editor of Art Criticism, a contributing editor of Artforum, a professor of art history and philosophy at the State University of New York, Stony Brook – and they appear in his most recent book, appropriately entitled “The End of Art.” Kuspit begins that book by quoting a news article certain to delight anyone who has grown skeptical about what is called art these days: In 2001, a high-priced gallery in London exhibited a work by Damien Hirst consisting of discarded coffee cups, empty beer bottles, candy wrappers and other detritus. It was valued at six figures. But a cleaning man, not being an art connoisseur, tossed the whole thing out with the trash. “The cleaning man,” Kuspit comments, “was clearly the right critic.”

from a major broadside in the New York Times by Barry Gewen.

From The New York Times:

THE GREAT WAR FOR CIVILISATION
The Conquest of the Middle East.
By Robert Fisk.
At least in part, “The Great War for Civilisation” is a stimulating and absorbing book, by a man who speaks Arabic, who has known the region better than most and has met the leading players, from bin Laden to Ahmad Chalabi (who offered to introduce him to Oliver North). It is a formidable production; and as Dr. Johnson said of “Paradise Lost,” no man ever wished it longer.

He doesn’t let us forget that he loathes Saddam Hussein, and is contemptuous of Yasir Arafat even as he sarcastically mentions his own anti-Israeli reputation. Then he goes on to write about “Israel’s policy of state murder” and “the American journalists who report in so craven a fashion from the Middle East.” This newspaper and its writers are regularly pummeled, notably “Tom Friedman, an old friend but an increasingly messianic columnist.” Friedman can look after himself, but if I were Fisk I would not lightly use the word “messianic” about anyone.

More here.

From Science:

One of the hottest new fields in American science appears to be figuring out what is wrong with American science and how to correct it. Numerous recent reports by high-level study groups have examined why the United States is losing ground to foreign competitors who are poised, say the studies’ authors, to wrest away the undisputed scientific pre-eminence it has enjoyed since the end of World War II. In today’s “flat world,” Thomas Friedman writes, computers and instantaneous communications eliminate many of America’s erstwhile advantages and allow technical workers in India, China, and Ireland to do jobs that Americans once held. Among the “most important” questions now facing the nation, he states, are why we are losing technical jobs, why our young people make a poor showing on international science and math tests, why “the world is racing us to the top, not the bottom, and why we are quietly falling behind.”

More here.

“Its union busting tactics against grad students are breaking laws and undermining academic freedom.”

Gordon Lafer in Newsday:

Traditionally, universities serve a very particular role in society. Conceived specifically as a refuge from the dog-eat-dog world of the market, they are home to a wider range of ideas than is tolerated in the business world. This is so because universities are the only place where you can’t get fired for saying what you think. They are a community of scholars where individuals are freed to pursue their notion of truth, knowing that, as long as their work is rigorous, their careers will not be sabotaged in retaliation for espousing the “wrong” view.

This form of academic freedom is made possible by one of two things: the institution of tenure or a union contract. By cutting back on tenured positions while refusing to recognize teachers’ unions, NYU is undermining both pillars of academic freedom. In this way, academic managers are pushing a new vision of higher education – not a community of independent scholars freed to boldly pursue their notions of truth, but a place of permanent insecurity, where everyone is afraid to speak out against those in power…

Union busting is a sleazy practice in any industry. But in a university, it takes a further toll. It undermines the very integrity of intellectual life that draws people to academia in the first place. There is still time for NYU to reverse course and do the right thing. It is for all of us – particularly New York taxpayers who subsidize the tax-exempt university – to insist that it do so.

More here.  [Thanks to Asad Raza.]

From Science:

Astronomers have resolved a long-standing debate about how far our sun is from a nearby cluster of stars in the Milky Way. The new measurement may help scientists more accurately map out the shape of the galaxy, as well as determine the amount of gravitational “muscle” its star-filled arms contain.

The Milky Way is composed of several spiral arms–long, thin bands of bright, young stars that fan out from the center like the blades of a pinwheel. Our sun is located in the rather short Orion spiral arm, which is tucked inside the larger Perseus spiral arm. But astronomers aren’t sure how far away the Perseus arm is, and knowing that could help them determine the true size and makeup of the Milky Way. Two separate measurements of Perseus’ distance have given values that differ by a factor of 2–a large discrepancy even by astronomy standards, says Mark Reid of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

More here.

From The Guardian:

Lucy Newlyn was surprised and impressed by the variety and quality of the responses to her exercise on ‘inscape’ poetry. “I came to the exercise with a strong preconception about the ‘best’ kind of inscape poetry, and was expecting lyric poems focusing closely on visual and acoustic impressions, without any surrounding context or narrative. (I admire the steady, eye-on-the object-animal poetry of Lawrence and Hughes). I was therefore intrigued by the number of poems that tell or suggest a story.”

How to photograph the heart by Christine Klocek-Lim

You remember how the lens squeezed
unimportant details into stillness:
the essential trail of rain down glass,
the plummet of autumn-dead leaves,
your grandfather’s last blink when
the breath moved on.
Your startled hands compressed
the shutter when you realized: this is it,
this is the last movement he will take
away from the silent fall of morphine,
beyond the soft gasp of the nurse,
past the sick, slow thud of your heart
moving in the luminous silence.

More here.

Katrina vanden Heuvel in The Nation:

Last May, I wrote an Annals of Outrage II chronicling the waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government in the first half of 2004. Plenty of time has passed since my last piece and much has happened. Here, then, is my latest attempt to guide you through the Bush Administration’s most egregious corruption scandals. The information comes to us courtesy of the federal government’s internal investigations into administration fraud, waste and abuse. The cronyism and corruption have hit a new low.

More here.

Terry Teachout reviews Marion Elizabeth Rodger’s Mencken: The American Iconoclast, in The New Criterion:

You don’t pour years of your life into writing a biography unless you feel an initial bond of sympathy with the subject, and, though many a biographer has grown disillusioned along the way, it’s obvious from reading Mencken: The American Iconoclast that Rodgers still admires and, just as important, likes the man about whom she has written. But how closely does that man resemble the real H. L. Mencken? Have Rodgers’s sympathies led her to smooth his rough edges, or downplay less palatable aspects of Mencken’s work that might not sit well alongside her frank admiration? The answer, I suspect, will depend on how much you yourself like Mencken. Rodgers has been honest enough about his unattractive aspects. The coldness, the opportunism, even the anti-Semitism (though she never goes quite so far as to call it that) are all amply documented in her book. Nevertheless, she clearly feels the bad to be vastly outweighed by the good…

More here.

Andrew Sullivan in The New Republic:

Why is torture wrong? It may seem like an obvious question, or even one beneath discussion. But it is now inescapably before us, with the introduction of the McCain Amendment banning all “cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment” of detainees by American soldiers and CIA operatives anywhere in the world. The amendment lies in legislative limbo. It passed the Senate in October by a vote of 90 to nine, but President Bush has vowed to veto any such blanket ban on torture or abuse; Vice President Cheney has prevailed upon enough senators and congressmen to prevent the amendment–and the defense appropriations bill to which it is attached–from moving out of conference; and my friend Charles Krauthammer, one of the most respected conservative intellectuals in Washington (and a New Republic contributing editor) has written a widely praised cover essay for The Weekly Standard endorsing the legalization of full-fledged torture by the United States under strictly curtailed conditions. We stand on the brink of an enormously important choice–one that is critical, morally as well as strategically, to get right.

More here.

Emma Pollack-Pelzner in the Yale Review of Books:

Most people think that choice is good. After all, we associate choice with autonomy, control, independence and desirable outcomes. In reality, however, this is not the case. As Schwartz emphasizes, too many choices actually lead to less happiness, a lower sense of control, and even paralysis. And this is the paradox he addresses: we think we want more choices, but when we have more options we are, in general, less satisfied.

One of many studies demonstrating this paradox involves a simple decision: buying jam. Testers set up in a supermarket offered one group of shoppers six jams to sample. They offered another group 24 varieties to taste. Despite the fact that we would predict people with a larger jam selection would be more likely to find a jam they would like, the study found that those offered only six jams were much more likely to make a jam purchase, and were more likely to be happy with that purpose.

More here.

3QD’s own Ruth Kikin-Gil has a great design project worth looking at:

Goals and Background

Modern lives are increasingly becoming more flexible, connected and mobile. We were asked to create an installation for the Fjord’s office space that will communicate the themes of mobility and its influence on people’s lives. Fjord is a leading developer of digital products and services for people on the move.

PEOPLE+ installation exposes flows of communication, and stresses the fact that mobile communication expands the boundaries of a person and augments the distances one can reach.
A company = people + communication

Visual elements

Oriental calligraphy was the inspiration for the figurines we used in the installation

The installation uses the human figure symbol and the Plus {+} sign as a vehicle to tell a story. And the story is simple: connect one human being to another, and you have a network, and mobile communication is all about networks. It is some kind of emotional math if you will.

More here.

Today is the 25th anniversary of John Lennon’s death. I grew up with Beatles music from a very early age because my two sisters (Azra and Sughra Raza) who were young teenagers at the time were diehard fans. (Apparently my first full sentence was some Beatles lyric.) There are all sorts of memorials being held tonight, not least the one at Strawberry Fields in Central Park, just across the street from the Dakota where JL lived and Yoko Ono still does, and where he was shot. It is not far from where I live, and I might stop by later. Here’s Steven Winn in the San Francisco Chronicle:

He was shot and killed, 25 years ago today, by a mad fan who thought he’d sold out and become a phony. On this Dec. 8, hundreds of biographies, broadsides, candlelight vigils, documentaries, reconsiderations and a Broadway musical later, John Lennon remains in the culture’s magnified crosshairs. And still we can’t quite get a fix on him.

Almost anyone of a certain age, now as then, has an opinion; a construct; a shadowy, imperfectly mapped place where Lennon lives and how his music — even if we only experienced it as a backdrop, as I did — helped place us in the world and simultaneously question that place. “Strawberry Fields Forever.” “Imagine.” “Beautiful Boy.” “I Am the Walrus.” “In My Life.” “Mother.” “Help!” The titles of the songs — everyone has his own private playlist — are enough. They summon things, take us back and remind us what we took forward and what we left behind. They stop time and expand it.

More here.

At the moment two local shows exemplify this chaos theory: Jon Kessler’s whirling-dervish CNN inferno at P.S.1, which is desperate in ways that respond to our quasi-desperate times, and Mike Kelley’s high school/hell house/Lawrence Welk extravaganza at Gagosian, which seems desperate for its own sake but still finds Kelley attempting to deepen his familiar themes. Both installations come on in waves of wall-to-wall pandemonium and will strike many as unbearable. Both echo architect Renzo Piano’s idea that harbors are “imaginary cities where everything keeps moving.” Kelley’s “city” is a high-production, multiplex trip into the id; Kessler’s is a homemade journey into the group mind. In each, visual syntax is dislocated, onslaught initially overwhelms order, cognitive functions are strained, and surfaces multiply. Kelley’s “Day Is Done” is like a variety show scripted by a regression therapist and is far more ritualistic, fictional, and Broadway musical than Kessler’s unabashed reality-based foray into politics and terrorism.

more from Salz at the Village Voice here.

There are artists who, despite their abundant gifts, seem destined to endure a melancholy fate, and one of them was Oscar Bluemner (1867-1938), the subject of a fine exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Bluemner was too “advanced” for the traditionalists at a time when modernism was still a contentious issue, and he was too tactless and outspoken in his relations with the modernists of the Alfred Stieglitz circle to benefit from their support. He remained an archetypal outsider in whatever milieu he frequented. He was born in Germany, where he was trained as an architect, and it was as an architect that he initially established himself in New York. In 1904, he designed the Bronx Borough Courthouse, but this remained his only major completed work in architecture, which he then abandoned in favor of painting.

more from hilton kramer at the NY Observer here.

From Science:

What’s behind the satisfaction we get from a tasty dessert? Researchers have long assumed it has something to do with the neurotransmitter dopamine. But a new study suggests that this so-called “pleasure molecule” isn’t necessary for us to enjoy that piece of cake after all.

Without the pleasurable kick dopamine is thought to provide, researchers assumed that people would be less inclined to get hooked on gambling or drugs. But recent evidence has called this theory into question. For example, mice lacking a type of receptor for dopamine still seek out morphine, suggesting that they find the drug rewarding even without dopamine signaling.

More here.

From Scientific American:

Mammals new to science have been emerging in Southeast Asia of late: three new species of deer found in the forests of Vietnam in the 1990s; a long-whiskered rat representing a previously unknown family of mammals discovered at a hunter’s market in Laos and revealed in May; and now a cat-size creature with orange fur and a long, strong tail has been photographed in Indonesia. A camera trap set in the mountains of Kayan Mentarang National Park in Borneo snapped two images of the mysterious creature as it trundled through the rain forest in 2003.

More here.

An interview with Don Wise, creator of “incompetent design”, from Seed Magazine:

No self-respecting engineering student would make the kinds of dumb mistakes that are built into us. All of our pelvises slope forward for convenient knuckle-dragging, like all the other great apes. And the only reason you stand erect is because of this incredible sharp bend at the base of your spine, which is either evolution’s way of modifying something or else it’s just a design that would flunk a first-year engineering student.

Look at the teeth in your mouth. Basically, most of us have too many teeth for the size of our mouth. Well, is this evolution flattening a mammalian muzzle and jamming it into a face or is it a design that couldn’t count accurately above 20?

Look at the bones in your face. They’re the same as the other mammals’ but they’re just squashed and contorted by jamming the jaw into a face with your brain expanding over it, so the potential drainage system in there is so convoluted that no plumber would admit to having done it! So is this evolution or is this plain stupid design?

More here.

Norman Jenson at One Good Move:

Many of those who view themselves as religious are suspicious of those who aren’t. They believe you can’t be moral without religion. It is a stupid view and one that I believe is false on its face. Peter Singer and Marc Hauser, have written an interesting article (pdf) on the subject that points to some empirical evidence that supports the view that religion is not necessary to live the so called ‘moral life’.

Consider the following three scenarios. For each, fill in the blank with morally “obligatory,” “permissible,” or “forbidden.”

1. A runaway trolley is about to run over five people walking on the tracks. A railroad worker is standing next to a switch that can turn the trolley onto a side track, killing one person, but allowing the five to survive. Flipping the switch is ____________.

2. You pass by a small child drowning in a shallow pond, and you are the only one around. If you pick up the child she will survive and your pants will be ruined. Picking up the child is _________.

3. Five people have just been rushed into a hospital in critical care, each requiring an organ to survive. There is not enough time to request organs from outside the hospital. There is however, a healthy person in the hospital’s waiting room. If the surgeon takes this person’s organs, he will die but the five in critical care will survive. Taking the healthy person’s organs is _________.

When 1500 people answered the questions there was no statistically significant difference between those with religious backgrounds and those without.

More here.

From the CBC:

Ailing playwright Harold Pinter used his Nobel Prize lecture on Wednesday to deliver a fierce attack on U.S. foreign policy.

Pinter, 75, who has been battling cancer for years, was forbidden by doctors from going to Stockholm to receive his Nobel Prize. Instead he sent a video recording of himself in a wheelchair with his legs under a red blanket.

In a speech peppered with the potent silences that are often called “Pinteresque”, he accused the U.S. and its ally Britain of trading in death and employing “language to keep thought at bay.”

His lecture, entitled Art, Truth and Politics, emphasized the importance of truth in art before decrying its perceived absence in politics.

In a voice that was sometimes hoarse with illness, he said politicians feel it is “essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives.”

More here.