Editorial from Haaretz:

The public will decide which party should lead this camp, but it must be hoped that the Likud, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, will remain out of the picture. There is no longer room for a ruling party that is responsive to the interests and dreams of the settlers and leads the country to the brink of destruction solely because of a desire to retain settlements that have no right to exist and whose presence in the heart of Palestinian areas generates friction, hatred and exploitation for generations to come.

The coming days will reveal whether Kadima was just a passing political episode or a catalyst for a major and necessary political change. Granted, it was approved as an official party only two days ago, and it has no established political traditions to help it survive in the absence of its creator. But on the other hand, Kadima has a clear diplomatic message and a vital role to play in the stormy days to come.

More here.  [No agreement with the views expressed in Haaretz is implied. Thanks Stefany.]

From The Philosophy Gift Shop:

[Thanks to Stefany Ann Golberg.]

Lindsay at Majikthise sent us this 7×7 meme. And I’ve swallowed the bait:

1. Seven things to do before I die

(i) Hang glide (ii) Be a bartender at a semi-legal after-hours place in the city(iii) Beat Abbas at Scrabble by a margin of at least 300 points (iv) Learn Spanish (v) Learn statistical quantum mechanics (vi) Memorize the Divine Comedy (in English), and (vii) Drive down the 16,000-mile spine that is the pan-American highway, Alaska to Chile, and then drive off to Tierra del Fuego

2. Seven things I cannot do

(i) Whistle with my fingers (ii) Bake desserts, especially custards (iii) Yell (iv) Watch cricket (unless it’s done a la Bollywood musical) (v) Salsa (vi) Write poetry and (vii) Understand Hegel

3. Seven things that attract me to [New York City]

(i) Its deposits of time (ii) Its deposits of memory (iii) That it’s always used but never emptied or exhausted (iv) Its quiet places (v) Its non-parochialism (vi) That the instability of its parts makes a stable whole and home and (vii) The view of Manhattan while coming over the bridge on foot or on subway

4. Seven things I say most often

(i) Okey dokey (ii) I’m not sure (iii) You’re insane (iv) Will you let me finish (v) Too te too te too te too (vi) That’s trivially true and (vii) What’s your point

5. Seven books (or series) that I love

(i) Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Laclos (ii) Mimesis, Auerbach (iii) The Man Without Qualities, Musil (iv) The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bounaparte, Marx (v) The Great Transformation, Polyani (vi) The Making of the English Working Class, Thompson and (vii) Fact, Fiction, Forecast, Goodman

6. Seven movies I watch over and over again (or would if I had time)

(i) Sans Soliel, Chris Marker (ii) Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick (iii) My Beautiful Laundrette, Frears (iv) Apocalypse Now, Coppola (v) Touch of Evil, Welles (vi) The Matrix and (vii) LOTR

7. Seven people I want to join in, too

(i) Jason Kottke (ii) Matt Jones (iii) Sean Carroll (iv) The folks at Fistful of Euros (v) Cosma Shalizi (vi) Brad Delong and (vii) Darcy Argue

On the useful site, Evolutionary Theories in the Social Sciences, a working paper by Richard Nelson on evolutionary theories of cultural change.

[T]here are at least four intertwined “details” about the evolution of human culture that differentiate that process from biological evolution in important ways. They are, first, the often major role of human purpose, intelligence, and intellectual interaction, both in the generation of variety, and in the selection process. Second, selection criteria and mechanisms seldom involve directly issues of human survival or reproduction. The well being of certain kinds of organizations may be at stake, but often not. Third, the entity that is evolving − an aspect of human culture − is a phenomenon that cannot simply be characterized as the aggregation of the population of traits possessed by individuals, but has a collective property. These aspects of the evolution of human culture all are involved in a fourth important difference; the way human individuals and groups are involved with culture and its evolution is different in many ways from the manner in which genes and living entities are related in the evolution of species.

In Atopia, Sabine Müller looks at Alexander the Great’s India campaign as work of propoganda.

In 327 B.C. Alexander the Great started his Indian campaign after the conquest of Persia. He was not the first indeed. In the 6th century the Persian king Darius I had ordered to explore this unknown area and to establish a sea trade (Dihle 1998, 2-3). For Alexander the Indian war was a political necessity. First of all the legitimacy of the Macedonian king derived primarily from successes in campaigning. Alexander had to establish his position repeatedly with military triumphs and conquests. The opposition of the Macedonians against his new representation and policy as a king of Asia after the conquest of the Persian empire had increased and was a serious threat to his authority. Alexander had to continue his march, carry on the war and keep his men busy to avoid a widespread inner revolt. Moreover by adapting the Persian kingship he had taken over the duty to secure the Eastern borders of the empire and to establish his reign over the Indian satrapies following the example of the Achaemenid kings. He could not take the risk to ignore the imperial tradition and to leave India unconquered.

Waging war on India he moreover wanted to establish his declining authority. Nevertheless, his contemporaries regarded the campaign as an ambitious adventure to expand his new empire to the very limits of the world. The Athenian orator Aeschines commented: „Meanwhile Alexander had withdrawn to the uttermost regions of the North, almost beyond the borders of the inhabited world“ (Against Ctesiphon 165). So the tales about Alexander’s attempt to break on through to the end of the world were grounded on daily gossip of his very lifetime (Gunderson 1980, 5).

There can be no doubt that Alexander exploited the rumours for his propaganda. He had proved to be a master of creating his own myth in propagandist forms from the beginning of his reign on and he knew very well how to gain profit for his reputation as an invincible new Achilles from the ancient ideal of overcoming the present and conquer the whole world.

From the BBC:

A new documentary exploring the death of John F Kennedy claims his assassin was directed and paid by Cuba.

Rendezvous with Death, based on new evidence from Cuban, Russian and US sources, took three years to research.

One source, ex-Cuban agent Oscar Marino, said Havana had exploited Lee Harvey Oswald, who was arrested but shot dead before he could be tried. . .

Mr Marino told film director Wilfried Huismann that he knew for certain the assassination was an operation run by the Cuban secret service G2, but he declined to say whether it had been ordered by Mr Castro.

In Deutsche Welle, an interview with Huismann.

DW-WORLD: We know that Lee Harvey Oswald killed John F. Kennedy. But who ordered his assassination and why?

Wilfried Huismann: We settled the question of why in three years of research on this documentary in Mexico, USA and Cuba. Oswald had been an agent for the Cuban intelligence services since November 1962. He was a political fanatic and allowed himself to be used by the Cuban intelligence services to kill John F. Kennedy. It was a Cuban reaction to the repeated attempts of the Kennedy brothers, above all the younger Kennedy, Robert, to get rid of Fidel Castro through political assassination — a duel between the Kennedys and the Castros, which, like in a Greek tragedy, left one of the duelists dead.

From EGO Magazine:

“Study mathematics like a house on fire” – Charles Darwin

“We all stand on the shoulders of giants” – Isaac Newton

The two famous quotes by the founding fathers of biology and physics illustrates the crux of scientific inquiry. The first one was Darwin’s advice to young Francis Galton, a British polymath, geneticist and statistician, who later gave us some very useful statistical concepts such as correlation. The second quote is by Isaac Newton, who refers to the fact that science should not be a circular or lateral journey, but rather a cumulative progress: every scientist does not have to re-invent the scientific toolbox with each new question. Instead, science builds on the work and discoveries of those who went before us, while also constantly abstracting, refining and reordering of the components of the scientific framework.

But the lack of mathematics, or inability for biologists to stand on the shoulders of the mathematicians before them, and the resultant slow progress are precisely the characteristics that have become the bane of modern biology.

More here.

From Scientific American:

For the past few millennia, ants of the Attini tribe have tended gardens of fungus that they eat. Over the past few decades scientists have studied these agricultural insects, trying to understand how their gardens grew in the first place. Now a group of scientists have discovered that the ants carry a potent antibiotic bacteria in special pockets on their bodies that help control a parasite that can ruin their fungus harvest.

Entomologist Cameron Currie of the University of Wisconsin and his colleagues discovered the antibiotic bacteria in crescent-shaped pits on the exoskeletons of two species of Panamanian ants, Cyphomyrex longiscapus and C. muelleri, after scanning them with an electron microscope. The bacteria–of the Pseudonocarida genus–bloom on the individual face plates and other exterior parts of the ant, allowing it to rub the antiparasitic agent on its fungi crop. The ant also nurtures the microbe by secreting nutrients from special exocrine glands connected to the shallow pits.

More here.

In Words Without Borders, Marina Harss reviews one of my favorite novels, Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North (1966).

A first reading of Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North can be a bewildering experience. The episodic manner in which the story is laid out means that important information about the characters and their past is left out, thus giving the reader a sense of being lost in a strange country where he has lost his bearings. In fact, the novel should probably be read in light of the ever-shifting political and cultural landscape of Sudan since 1899, the year in which the British took control. Salih’s book charts, through the experiences of its two central characters—the nameless narrator and Mustafa Sa’eed—two generations of the European-educated Sudanese elite through the period of domination by the British and into the early years of self-rule. At the time in which the book was written (it first appeared in Arabic in 1966), the country had just experienced yet another upheaval, the overthrow of the home-grown military government of General Ibrahim Abboud and the introduction of a parliamentary system. Salih writes in an introduction to the 2003 Penguin edition that “the general climate in Khartoum in those days was exhilarating. . . . For some reason my work became incorporated into this process of intellectual questioning.” This is, of course, not the end of the story, and since 1989, the Sudan has been ruled by the Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation, a repressive Islamic government which has, among other things, banned the publication of Season of Migration.

Harry Magdoff, Marxist commentator and one of the co-editors of Monthly Review, died on New Year’s Day. John Bellamy Foster has this obituary in MRZine.

Harry Magdoff — coeditor of Monthly Review since 1969, socialist, and one of the world’s leading economic analysts of capitalism and imperialism — died at his home in Burlington, Vermont on January 1, 2006.

Harry Magdoff was born on August 21, 1913 in the Bronx, the son of working-class Russian Jewish immigrants. His father worked as a housepainter. He grew up in a New York immigrant community at a time when war and revolution were common topics of conversation. On one occasion, he overheard a debate in a local park in which it was pointed out that Britain “owned” India. He was shocked and began to explore the history of colonialism. In 1929, at the age of 15, he encountered Karl Marx for the first time, when he found a copy of Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy in a used bookstore. Reading the famous preface, he was stunned. “It blew my mind,” he was to recall. Marx’s “view of history was a revelation. I didn’t understand the rest of the book, which cost me a quarter, but that got me started reading about economics. We were going into the Depression then and I wanted to figure out what it all meant.” The “determining element” in his emerging radicalism, however, was what he witnessed at the demonstration of the unemployed in Union Square in March 1930.

Richard Sparks thinks about the best way to rebuild New Orleans, in Issues in Science and Technology.

New Orleans will certainly be rebuilt. But looking at the recent flooding as a problem that can be fixed by simply strengthening levees will squander the enormous economic investment required and, worse, put people back in harm’s way. Rather, planners should look to science to guide the rebuilding, and scientists now advise that the most sensible strategy is to work with the forces of nature rather than trying to overpower them. This approach will mean letting the Mississippi River shift most of its flow to a route that the river really wants to take; protecting the highest parts of the city from flooding and hurricane-generated storm surges while retreating from the lowest parts; and building a new port city on higher ground that the Mississippi is already forming through natural processes. The long-term benefits—economically and in terms of human lives—may well be considerable.

To understand the risks that New Orleans faces, three sources need to be considered. They are the Atlantic Ocean, where hurricanes form that eventually batter coastal areas with high winds, heavy rains, and storm surge; the Gulf of Mexico, which provides the water vapor that periodically turns to devastatingly heavy rain over the Mississippi basin; and the Mississippi River, which carries a massive quantity of water from the center of the continent and can be a source of destruction when the water overflows its banks. It also is necessary to understand the geologic region in which the city is located: the Mississippi Delta.

“Russia!” is an exhibition well worth seeing. Visitors who know little about Russian art will see many important works and come away with a more complex view of the country and its culture. But the question remains: What “new perspective” has been provided on the “new Russia”? An unpleasant suspicion hovers over the exhibition that the art and its history were secondary considerations for the organizers and that the main point was that the “exhibition was realized under the patronage of Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation.” Was it all, in effect, a big advertising campaign, a mammoth photo-op designed to establish the bona fides of the new Russian patrons of the new Guggenheim global museum while providing America’s former rival with a glamorous opportunity to exorcise fifty years of stereotypes (unsmiling commissars, the Gulag, the KGB, bad teeth, long lines, admirable but irritating dissidents, mafioso “New Russians” in leisure suits dripping with gold jewelry, commandos in black masks, tanks on city streets…)? . . . The patrons and sponsors of “Russia!” were no doubt pleased with the publicity as well as the exhibition; those concerned about the accurate presentation of art and history, which should be the Guggenheim Museum’s mission, will feel differently.

more from The New York Review of Books here.

GP: In which he [Hitchens] took me to task for various things. And then he said something slighting about me to the New York Observer. Later he sent me an email basically expressing regret. And that was enough. And now if I see him—I invited him to the book party—if I see him it will be pleasant. That’s the kind of guy he is. If you are Christopher Hitchens you have to let go of some of your grudges, otherwise all of humanity will eventually be your lifelong enemy. [laughs]

RB: It’s interesting about how some people respond to him. When they agreed with him, they loved him, as usual, and when they disagreed, they found him to have all sorts of flaws. I don’t agree with him on the war, [but] I still admire him and think he must be paid attention to. He is an amusing stylist.

GP: He’s at his best writing about literature and history, I think, better than his political writing, which lately has suffered from certain excesses of partisanship.

RB: He’s under siege.

GP: And he will not back off. That’s it: He’s under siege and he is backed up and he is going to keep digging in.

RB: Which is why I was surprised by his blurb—but then again, I think he is intellectually honest.

GP: Yes, and some of the criticisms in my book of even people like him, or certainly of his new friends in the administration, although he wouldn’t make those criticisms, he is honest enough to accept them. The book has been far better-received on the right then on the left. I expected a little of that. It ranges from essentially a positive reception that’s closed around a critique that I am not sufficiently apologetic or have not seen the total folly of ever supporting such an enterprise. That’s in a couple of reviews in liberal left publications. They were respectful but critical. Then you move toward the blogosphere and even some well-known writers who, because my book was getting some attention, zeroed in on me as the Second Coming of Hitchens.

The rest of the excellent interview here.

From Harvard Magazine:

In a room where somber faces are the norm, Steve Cappiello is beaming. The tall, muscular 36-year-old points to his feet with a kid’s delight and declares, “Today was the first day I tied my shoes in a year. It sounds small, but it was big for me. I never thought a hunk of plastic would change my life as much as it has.” Cappiello is referring to the prosthetic left arm he has been awaiting for months, since losing his limb to cancer. For this once-hardworking day laborer from Brockton, Massachusetts, the “hunk of plastic” offers a chance to regain independence, support his family, and feel useful again. No longer will he need to ask for help buttoning his pants or tying his laces.

On one level, “Living with Life-Threatening Illness” is about the simplest of concepts: how to say hello, say goodbye, and listen. But by tackling issues so often avoided, the course also helps at least a handful of trainees become more comfortable with death and dying as they begin evolving from laypeople into doctors. This comes at a time when patients and families increasingly seek better end-of-life and palliative (comfort) care for themselves and their loved ones.

More here.

From MSNBC:

Researchers have deciphered the structure of a harpoonlike protein some viruses use to enter cells and begin infection. The protein is known as fusion (F) protein and is found on the outer surface of parainfluenza virus 5, a so-called “enveloped” virus that fuses its membrane with the membrane of its host cell before infection. Once the membranes are fused, the virus dumps its genetic content into the healthy human cell’s interior, hijacking the cell’s replication machinery to clone itself. The research, led by Hsien-Sheng Yin of Northwestern University, is detailed in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature.

More here.

“New research indicates that gas-guzzling cars are a much less important factor in climate change than the huge amounts of food devoured by carnivorous ‘burger man’. Jonathon Porritt on the geopolitics of food.”

From The Guardian:

Of all the seasonal homilies about “green” Christmases and “sustainable” new year pledges – an oxymoron if ever I’ve heard one – only one stuck in my mind: each of us could make a bigger contribution to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases by becoming a vegan than by converting to an eco-friendly car.

Researchers at the University of Chicago have calculated the relative carbon intensity of a standard vegan diet in comparison to a US-style carnivorous diet, all the way through from production to processing to distribution to cooking and consumption. An average burger man (that is, not the outsize variety) emits the equivalent of 1.5 tonnes more CO2 every year than the standard vegan. By comparison, were you to trade in your conventional gas-guzzler for a state of the art Prius hybrid, your CO2 savings would amount to little more than one tonne per year.

This may come as a bit of a shock to climate change campaigners. “Stop eating meat” is unlikely to be the favourite slogan of the new Stop Climate Chaos coalition.

More here.  [Thanks to Don Lawson.]

From a very interesting article by Jim Rossignol at his weblog (also in PC GAMER UK):

“So this guy has a lot of fans?” I say, knowing the answer but nevertheless incredulous.

“Hundreds of thousands in his fan club,” says Yang. “Impossible to track the number of people who watch him play.”

Impossible, because the man on the stage is on Korean television almost every day. He is about to sit down and play what is close to becoming Korea’s national sport: Starcraft. His name is Lee Yunyeol, or in game [RED]NaDa Terran. He is The Champion. Last year his reported earnings were around $200,000. He plays a seven year-old RTS for fame and fortune and to many Koreans he is an idol. Every night over half a million Koreans log on to Battlenet and make war in space, many of them with dreams of becoming like Yunyeol. But his skill is almost supernatural. Few people who play all day long will be able to claim a fraction of his split-second timing and pitiless concentration. Practicing eight hours a day, Yunyeol’s methods and tactics are peerless. Well, almost peerless. In fact there are two or three other players who command similar salaries. They might not hold the crown now, and one of them will probably take it from him soon, but for now at least, Yunyeol is king.

The existence of people like Lee Yunyeol ensures that South Korea is unlike any other gaming culture on Earth.

More here.

Following up on Paul Theroux’s, er, insights(?) on African development, here’s a piece by Binyavanga Wainaina on how to write about Africa in Granta.

Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. If you must include an African, make sure you get one in Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress.

In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don’t get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn’t care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular. . .

Throughout the book, adopt a sotto voice, in conspiracy with the reader, and a sad I-expected-so-much tone. Establish early on that your liberalism is impeccable, and mention near the beginning how much you love Africa, how you fell in love with the place and can’t live without her. Africa is the only continent you can love—take advantage of this. If you are a man, thrust yourself into her warm virgin forests. If you are a woman, treat Africa as a man who wears a bush jacket and disappears off into the sunset. Africa is to be pitied, worshipped or dominated. Whichever angle you take, be sure to leave the strong impression that without your intervention and your important book, Africa is doomed.

Your African characters may include naked warriors, loyal servants, diviners and seers, ancient wise men living in hermitic splendour. Or corrupt politicians, inept polygamous travel-guides, and prostitutes you have slept with.

District and Circle

Tunes from a tin whistle underground
Curled up a corridor I’d be walking down
To where I knew I was always going to find
My watcher on the tiles, cap by his side,
His fingers perked, his two eyes eyeing me
In an unaccusing look I’d not avoid,
Or not just yet, since both were out to see
For ourselves.
As the music larked and capered
I’d trigger and untrigger a hot coin
Held at the ready, but now my gaze was lowered
For was our traffic not in recognition?
Accorded passage, I would re-pocket and nod,
And he, still eyeing me, would also nod.

*

Posted, eyes front, along the dreamy ramparts
Of escalators ascending and descending
To a monotonous slight rocking in the works,
We were moved along, upstanding.
Elsewhere, underneath, an engine powered,
Rumbled, quickened, evened, quieted.
The white tiles gleamed. In passages that flowed
With draughts from cooler tunnels, I missed the light
Of all-overing, long since mysterious day,
Parks at lunchtime where the sunners lay
On body-heated mown grass regardless,
A resurrection scene minutes before
The resurrection, habitués
Of their garden of delights, of staggered summer. . . .

The rest of the poem from the TLS here. Good stuff.

There is a peculiar pleasure that comes to a critic who has badly underestimated the capacities of a particular novelist. Peculiar, because one hates to look like a fool; but pleasure, because it is always good to find the number of excellent novels in the world enlarged. With his new book, Arthur & George, Julian Barnes has increased that tally by one, and I am left feeling suitably chastened by my failure to foresee this turn of events. (But before I proceed with my mea culpa, a quick caveat emptor: To champion Barnes, I can’t help giving away the plot. So, click away now if you’re planning to read Arthur & George, and come back when you’re done.)

more from Slate here.