Memorials to death by violence surround Khoury. Hariri’s shrine is a short walk from the main entrance of the an-Nahar offices, up through Martyrs’ Square, where a statue commemorates the Syrian and Lebanese anti-Ottoman radicals betrayed by the French and hanged by Jemal Pasha in 1916. On the front of the an-Nahar building itself is a banner-size portrait of Gebran Tueni, editor and grandson of the founder, who was killed by a car-bomb last December. Earlier in the year, after the huge ‘independence’ demonstrations aimed at Damascus, the same thing had happened to Samir Kassir, a colleague and great friend of Khoury’s. Kassir, part Palestinian, part Syrian, wholly Lebanese, was a founding member of the DLM. Like Tueni, though well to his left, Kassir was a vociferous critic of Syria. Khoury remembers trying to get through the police cordon around Kassir’s car in Ashrafiyyeh: he could see the slumped head and shoulders and thought his friend was still alive. ‘But the bomb had been placed directly under the driver’s seat,’ Khoury said, ‘and the head and shoulders were all that was left.’ Kassir’s glass-partitioned office, separated by a few yards of open plan from Khoury’s, is more or less as it was on 2 June 2005. ‘We just closed it and left it,’ he explained. ‘So Samir is still with us.’ On Kassir’s desk a few old copies of Le Monde are turning yellow. A mousepad gathers dust.

more from the LRB here.

In the post-war books that Firbank wrote and set abroad, things are rather different. In them the death of England, the imaginative liberation from English custom, indifference, cliché and hypocrisy, is engineered and celebrated in a very personal and defiant fashion. His own gay presence, as observer and admirer of young men, is unignorably strong. One of the concomitants of this change of setting and view is a change in manner, a more conventional handling of narrative, a clearing of texture. He becomes much less difficult. The books are still extraordinary: The Flower Beneath the Foot (1923), a hauntingly funny fantasy of court intrigue in which the jilting and heartbreak of a young woman culminates in a harrowing tragic ending; Sorrow in Sunlight, the following year, Firbank’s shortest, quickest and most brilliant novel, set on an imaginary Caribbean island, and his first to be published in the United States, just as it was the first he was actually paid for; and Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli, his most involved approach to a self-portrait, rejected by his enterprising new American publishers “on moral grounds”, and published, by Grant Richards again, six weeks after Firbank’s death. These books are all masterpieces, and in any full celebration of Firbank they would be the crown. But I have chosen to concentrate on that earlier mysterious period when Arthur Firbank emerged as Ronald Firbank, in his unprecedented novelty and complexity.

more from the TLS here.

Douglas K. Smith in Slate:

Private-sector companies have ready access to a gargantuan capital market of tens of trillions of dollars globally. Nonprofit organizations, by contrast, are crippled by capital-raising efforts that are minuscule, inefficient, and badly organized. As a result, nonprofits that have developed solutions for critical and growing challenges—in fields like education, health care, housing, economic development, and environmental sustainability—often struggle to grow.

This is a problem with a solution that is entirely within the power of our legislatures. Like the private sector, nonprofits need investors who take risks in pursuit of financial return.

More here.

From Washington Report on Middle East Affairs:

ISRAEL’S ASSAULT on Lebanon that began in July was not so much a war as a conflagration. Round-the-clock bombing and shelling by the Israeli air force continued day after day, causing hundreds of civilian deaths, and inflicting trauma and misery on hundreds of thousands more. Targets of the precision bombing included a U.N. observer post, Red Cross ambulances, roads, bridges, power systems and communication networks. Residents of neighborhoods under siege were bombed as they tried to flee. Others were buried under rubble when whole buildings collapsed and rescuers were unable to reach them. Trucks carrying medical and relief supplies were hit, and many of the sick and wounded died as hospitals ran out of generator fuel, antibiotics, even water and food.

Within days Israel turned Lebanon from a modern country that was still rebuilding from past Israeli invasions, into a place of desolation and death. And it did so with wholehearted help from the United States. When the Israelis began running out of munitions, the Bush administration rushed them a shipment of 5,000-pound laser-guided bombs designed to penetrate deep into the ground. The missiles would be dropped on their targets from American-made warplanes.

The European Union, the French government, and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan condemned Israel’s military operations as an “excessive use of force” that “cannot be justified.” Amnesty International accused Israel of “war crimes.” The United States alone gave a green light to Israel to continue its attacks. “I’m not sure at this juncture we’re going to step in and put up a stop sign,” White House spokesman Tony Snow said, as the number of dead rose and Lebanese corpses lay unburied in the ruins of their homes.

More here.

From The New York Times:

COLLECTED POEMS, 1947-1997 By Allen Ginsberg.

Gay, in the lotus position, with a beard, wreathed in a cloud of marijuana smoke and renowned as the author of a “dirty” poem whose first public reading in a West Coast gallery was said to have turned the 1950s into the ’60s in a single night, Allen Ginsberg embodied, as a figure, some great cold war climax of human disinhibition. Ginsberg, the hang-loose anti-Ike. Ginsberg, the Organization Man unzipped. The vulnerable obverse of the Bomb. He had the belly of a Buddha, the facial hair of a Walt Whitman and — except for the ever-present black glasses that hinted at a conformist path not taken — he was easier to imagine naked than any Homo sapiens since Adam.

But it’s difficult to memorialize such a personage. When Ginsberg died in 1997, he was a 70-year-old beatnik, which made him a cultural antiquity. Now, however, almost a decade later (and exactly 50 years after the publication of “Howl”), he still seems too familiar for immortality. Wasn’t he, just a few days before yesterday, hanging out backstage with rock stars? Wasn’t he just marching against the Persian Gulf War? Come out, Allen Ginsberg — you’re around here somewhere. If Dylan is, then you must be.

More here.

From Time:

So here’s how we chose the albums for the All-TIME 100. We researched and listened and agonized until we had a list of the greatest and most influential records ever – and then everyone complained because there was no Pink Floyd on it. And that’s exactly how it should be. We hope you’ll treat the All-TIME 100 as a great musical parlor game. Read and listen to the arguments for the selections, then tell us what we missed or got wrong. Or even possibly what we got right.

1960s

Album

Artist

Label/Year Released

More here.

From MSNBC News:

A first-ever museum display, “Against Nature?,”  which opened last month at the University of Oslo’s Natural History Museum in Norway, presents 51 species of animals exhibiting homosexuality. Homosexuality has been observed in more than 1,500 species, and the phenomenon has been well described for 500 of them,” said Petter Bockman, project coordinator of the exhibition. “I think to some extent people don’t think it’s important because we went through all this time period in sociobiology where everything had to be tied to reproduction and reproductive success,” said Linda Wolfe, who heads the Department of Anthropology at East Carolina University. “If it doesn’t have [something to do] with reproduction it’s not important.”

However, species continuation may not always be the ultimate goal, as many animals, including humans, engage in sexual activities more than is necessary for reproduction. “You can make up all kinds of stories: Oh it’s for dominance, it’s for this, it’s for that, but when it comes down to the bottom I think it’s just for sexual pleasure,” Wolfe told LiveScience. Conversely, some argue that homosexual sex could have a bigger natural cause than just pure pleasure: namely evolutionary benefits.

More here.

Michael Bywater in The New Statesman:

Andrew Robinson’s book is the intellectual biography of Thomas Young, “the anonymous polymath who proved Newton wrong, explained how we see, cured the sick, and deciphered the Rosetta Stone” – to quote the delightful, if hyperbolic, subtitle. But before we get on to its hyperbole, our hackles are already up, bristling at the word “polymath”.

We don’t like polymaths any more. Perhaps it’s because even being a monomath is too difficult now; even specialists specialise only in a small subset of their specialty, and learning is an either/or business. The wave/particle duality of light or the practice of medicine, but not both. Making a serious breakthrough in the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphs or serving with distinction on the Board of Longitude, but not both. That’s the modern way.

Thomas Young, who lived from 1773 to 1829, felt no such constraints. While he may not have been the last “man who knew everything”, he made significant progress in the fields of Egyptology, optics and the physics of light, and serious contributions to many other disciplines.

More here.

In Red Herring:

At first glance, the MySpace page of Randy Halprin, 29, of Livingston, Texas, is just a typical profile on the social networking site. It features a photograph of a smiling young man and dozens of blinking graphics of peace signs, goofy-looking aliens, pop-culture images and pro-vegetarian icons. The profile has 170 friends listed as of November 15, 2006. “Look at all the beauty still left around you and be happy, – Anne Frank” quotes his profile title.

It isn’t apparent until reading the blog entries on his profile that Mr. Halprin is a convicted murderer, awaiting his execution on death row.

Mr. Halprin is one of the “Texas 7,” a group of criminals that escaped from prison on Dec. 13, 2000. Of the escaped convicts, he was the youngest of the group at 23, and also serving the shortest sentence of 30 years for injury to a child. After escaping from prison, the seven were running low on funds, so they started on a spree of robberies, killing a police officer and injuring others. This landed all seven convicts on death row.

Since death row immates do not have Internet access, the profiles on MySpace are created and hosted for them by friends and family. Some profiles feature blog posts, which are transcribed from letters sent from jail.

(Kevin Poulsen comments in Wired.)

In Wired, a few science fiction and fantasy writers answer the challenge to come up with very short stories, six words or fewer!

We’ll be brief: Hemingway once wrote a story in just six words (“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”) and is said to have called it his best work. So we asked sci-fi, fantasy, and horror writers from the realms of books, TV, movies, and games to take a shot themselves.

Dozens of our favorite auteurs put their words to paper, and five master graphic designers took them to the drawing board. Sure, Arthur C. Clarke refused to trim his (“God said, ‘Cancel Program GENESIS.’ The universe ceased to exist.”), but the rest are concise masterpieces.

Failed SAT. Lost scholarship. Invented rocket.- William Shatner

Computer, did we bring batteries? Computer?- Eileen Gunn

Vacuum collision. Orbits diverge. Farewell, love.- David Brin

Gown removed carelessly. Head, less so.- Joss Whedon

Automobile warranty expires. So does engine.- Stan Lee

Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time- Alan Moore

Longed for him. Got him. Shit.- Margaret Atwood

In The New York Times:

Milton Friedman, the grandmaster of conservative economic theory in the postwar era and a prime force in the movement of nations toward lesser government and greater reliance on free markets and individual responsibility, died today. He was 94 years old.

A spokesman for the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation confirmed his death.

Conservative and liberal colleagues alike viewed Mr. Friedman as one of the 20th century’s leading economic scholars, on a par with giants like John Maynard Keynes, Joseph A. Schumpeter and Paul Samuelson.

Flying the flag of economic conservatism, Mr. Friedman led the postwar challenge to the hallowed theories of Lord Keynes, the British economist who maintained that governments had a duty to help capitalistic economies through periods of recession and to prevent boom times from exploding into high inflation.

David P. Barash in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Socrates was made to drink hemlock for having “corrupted the youth of Athens.” Is sociobiology or — as it is more commonly called these days — “evolutionary psychology” similarly corrupting? Although the study of evolution is, in my opinion, one of the most exciting and illuminating of all intellectual enterprises, there is at the same time, and not just in my opinion, something dark about the implications of natural selection for our own behavior.

More here.

From the Plimpton Project (via Yahoo! Picks):

George Plimpton didn’t just write, he threw himself into the ring with his subjects, bringing a dash of bravado to the occupation of journalist. Now, a group of Plimptophiles has crafted an online homage to the man who “attacked life” with such “gusto and grace.” The photos section cuts quickly to the way George went about things: Here he is listening to Muhammad Ali, slouching backstage at Caesar’s, or joking with Jonathan Winters. There he is, caught in full regalia, playing with the Bruins, the Boston Celtics, and the Detroit Lions. No fan ever had it so good. The “Arcana” section features a marvelous collection of his quotes. And we’re glad to know that an effort to erect a larger-than-life-size monument to the author-adventurer is under way. As for whether he should be depicted alongside a bicycle, dangling his boxing mitts, or astride a noble steed, we vote for all three. With gusto and grace.

More here.

From Edge:

Reinventing The Sacred by Stuart A. Kauffman: Stuart A. Kauffman studies the origin of life and the origins of molecular organization. Thirty-five years ago, he developed the Kauffman models, which are random networks exhibiting a kind of self-organization that he terms “order for free.” He asks a question that goes beyond those asked by other evolutionary theorists: if selection is operating all the time, how do we build a theory that combines self-organization (order for free) and selection? The answer lies in a “new” biology:

“While it may sound as if ‘order for free’ is a serious challenge to Darwinian evolution, it’s not so much that I want to challenge Darwinism and say that Darwin was wrong. I don’t think he was wrong at all. I have no doubt that natural selection is an overriding, brilliant idea and a major force in evolution, but there are parts of it that Darwin couldn’t have gotten right. One is that if there is order for free — if you have complex systems with powerfully ordered properties — you have to ask a question that evolutionary theories have never asked: Granting that selection is operating all the time, how do we build a theory that combines self-organization of complex systems — that is, this order for free — and natural selection? There’s no body of theory in science that does this. There’s nothing in physics that does this, because there’s no natural selection in physics — there’s self organization. Biology hasn’t done it, because although we have a theory of selection, we’ve never married it to ideas of self-organization. One thing we have to do is broaden evolutionary theory to describe what happens when selection acts on systems that already have robust self-organizing properties. This body of theory simply does not exist.”

More here.

From The Harvard Gazette:

World War II, with its influx of multiracial colonial volunteers and billeted American troops, was the caldron that created Great Britain as a state in which race became an instrument of policy and a tool of cultural division. That’s the thesis brought to the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study on Nov. 2 by Hazel V. Carby, a Yale University scholar of race, gender, and literature. The war, she said, prompted the emergence of Britain “as a modern racialized state.”

As early as 1942, the British Colonial office worried “what the future population of the nation would look like” in the face of a sexual invasion by black soldiers. By 1947, orphans of mixed race probably numbered in the hundreds, but the numbers were regularly inflated. “The lonely piccaninny” became a staple of the popular press, said Carby. It was an image that hid deeper fears of British cultural identity, and anxiety over a disappearing empire. Showing one tabloid image, Carby said, “A British subject is what this piccaninny is not.” In the end, she said, it was this war-induced “homegrown composite racial consciousness … that gave the English national culture its character, its meaning, its substance, and its resonance.”

Homi Bhabha, the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities and director of the Humanities Center, introduced Carby, whose work he called a robust confrontation with “intellectual pieties and scholarly orthodoxies.”

More here.

Anthony Lane in The New Yorker:

Who said this: “It is interesting for me to see this new Bond. Englishmen are so odd. They are like a nest of Chinese boxes. It takes a very long time to get to the center of them. When one gets there the result is unrewarding, but the process is instructive and entertaining.” The speaker is Mathis, a kindly French liaison officer in “Casino Royale,” Ian Fleming’s first James Bond novel, published in 1953. More than half a century later, we are back with “Casino Royale,” No. 21 in the roster of official Bond films, and we are back with Mathis. As played by Giancarlo Giannini, who was recently seen having his intestines removed in “Hannibal,” he is pouchy, affable, and dangerously wise, and his presence hints that this new adventure will not be an occasion for silliness: no calendar girls, no blundering boffins, no giants with dentures of steel. The same goes for hardware, with rockets and gadgets alike being trimmed to the minimum. It is true that Bond keeps a defibrillator in the glove compartment of his Aston Martin, but, given the cholesterol levels of the kind of people who drive Aston Martins, a heart-starter presumably comes standard, like a wheel jack. Whether Bond has a heart worth starting is another matter.

More here.

Jonathan Weiner in Scientific American:

It was not until a year and a half after his voyage on board the Beagle that Charles Darwin first came face to face with an ape. He was standing by the giraffe house at the London Zoo on a warm day in late March of 1838. The zoo had just acquired an orangutan named Jenny. One of the keepers was teasing her–showing her an apple, refusing to hand it over. Poor Jenny “threw herself on her back, kicked & cried, precisely like a naughty child,” Darwin wrote in a letter to his sister.

In the secret notebooks that he kept after the voyage, Darwin was speculating about evolution from every angle, including the emotional, and he was fascinated by Jenny’s tantrum. What is it like to be an ape? Does an orangutan’s frustration feel a lot like ours? Might she cherish some sense of right and wrong? Will an ape despair because her keeper is breaking the rules–because he is just not playing fair?

More here.

From the Micro Images Blog:

Chalk Dust (2500 X)

For the longest time, I wanted to see what chalk dust looked like up close. It turns out, you dont see all that much more, even at 2500x the dust is pretty fine. It is interesting to see that chalk dust is made up of two general sizes of particles, and that they tend to clump together a bit.

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Stoma (1500 X)

This is one of millions of holes found on the common leaf used for gas exchange in plants. What you see here is a waxy outer layer of leaf. Inside the hole you can also see the remains of two guard cells which help open and close this tiny pore to regulate air and water exchange. This leaf was found dried out already, which means this level of preservation is shocking. I did not expect to find anything so detailed left.

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Cobweb (450 X)

Ever wonder what that very fine cobweb looks like closer up? Well no longer. I wonder if some spiders make more curly webs than others? In the upper left corner, you have a thread of some fiber which shows just how thin the cobwebs are.

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More here.

Daniel S. Silver in American Scientist:

Historian George Sarton often said that science advances in darkness, invisible to the majority of people, who are more interested in battles and other noisier activities. In his 1957 book The Study of the History of Mathematics, Sarton went on to say that if the history of science is secret, then the history of mathematics is doubly so, “for the growth of mathematics is unknown not only to the general public, but even to scientific workers.”

Sarton’s words help us understand why few have ever heard of Arthur Cayley (1821-95) or James Joseph Sylvester (1814-97), two of the most profound and prolific mathematicians of the Victorian era. Cayley’s seminal investigations of matrix algebra, which constituted only a tiny portion of his 967 papers, were crucial for the development of linear algebra. The terms matrix, determinant and Jacobian, familiar to most science students, were invented by Sylvester, an enthusiastic poet who called himself the “mathematical Adam.”

It is not clear when Cayley and Sylvester first met, but by 1847 they were corresponding to share thoughts about mathematics.

More here.  [Photo shows Arthur Cayley.]

The echo of Eco still lures philosophers tempted by literary fame. True to their calling, aspirants find the notion occurs to them as a hypothetical.

Suppose, the wannabe star reflects, I combine the profundities of truth and meaning I handle with my left hand in seminars with the fast-paced narrative ratiocination I prize in mysteries (the books I actually consume instead of rereading philosophy texts assigned in those seminars). Then I soak it all in the sex, blood, and historical detail that attracts me as a run-of-the-mill cultural citizen.

Wouldn’t I rival the success of Umberto Eco himself, whose The Name of the Rose (1983), with its wonderfully deductive William of Baskerville and his terribly loyal sidekick Adso, conquered international best-seller lists in the 1980s and launched the Bologna professor of semiotics on a heady mass-market career?

more from The Chronicle Review here.