Michael Kinsley hits the nail on the head, in the NYT Book Review:

The big strategic challenge for a career like this [Hitchens’] is to remain interesting, and the easiest tactic for doing that is surprise. If they expect you to say X, you say minus X.

Consistency is foolish, as the man said. (Didn’t he?) Under the unwritten and somewhat eccentric rules of American public discourse, a statement that contradicts everything you have ever said before is considered for that reason to be especially sincere, courageous and dependable. At The New Republic in the 1980s, when I was the editor, we used to joke about changing our name to “Even the Liberal New Republic,” because that was how we were referred to whenever we took a conservative position on something, which was often. Then came the day when we took a liberal position on something and we were referred to as “Even the Conservative New Republic.”

As this example illustrates, among writers about politics, the surprise technique usually means starting left and turning right. Trouble is, you do this once and what’s your next party trick?

Christopher Hitchens had seemed to be solving this problem by turning his conversion into an ideological “Dance of the Seven Veils.” Long ago he came out against abortion. Interesting! Then he discovered and made quite a kosher meal of the fact that his mother, deceased, was Jewish, which under Jewish law meant he himself was Jewish. Interesting!! (He was notorious at the time for his anti-Zionist sympathies.) In the 1990s, Hitchens was virulently, and somewhat inexplicably, hostile to President Bill Clinton. Interesting!!! You would have thought that Clinton’s decadence — the thing that bothered other liberals and leftists the most — would have positively appealed to Hitchens. Finally and recently, he became the most (possibly the only) intellectually serious non-neocon supporter of George W. Bush’s Iraq war. Interesting!!!!

Colbert’s interview with Benjamin Barber:

In recent years, have there been any developments in philosophy of mind and in computer models of consciousness that you find especially compelling?

That’s hard to say. I think there’s been a kind of shift in feeling over the years, but I wouldn’t be able to say anything specific. You have to understand that I’m not professionally involved in the philosophy of mind in the sense of being in the thick of things. I do like to think that my ideas about the philosophy of mind will interest and have some effect on philosophers of mind, but I don’t spend my time in their company. I don’t go to their meetings; I don’t read their books or articles very much, so I’m really out of it. I couldn’t say. I went to a conference a few months ago in Tucson, and I could see that it was popular to talk about self-reference, and that might not have been popular when GEB came out 30 years ago. And in fact I think that’s why this book—the two philosophers who invited me to contribute to their anthology—I think it’s sort of like an idea whose time has come. I’m not saying that it’s going to sweep the world; it might or might not. But it wasn’t a very fashionable idea 30 years ago, and it’s much more fashionable today. That means that I think the atmosphere for a reception for my ideas may be better, but I don’t know whether there are any big developments that have actually changed things.

more from The American Scientist here.

One of Germany’s most singular achievements is to have associated itself so intimately in the world’s imagination with the darkest evils of the two worst political systems of the most murderous century in human history. The words “Nazi,” “SS,” and “Auschwitz” are already global synonyms for the deepest inhumanity of fascism. Now the word “Stasi” is becoming a default global synonym for the secret police terrors of communism. The worldwide success of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s deservedly Oscar- winning film The Lives of Others will strengthen that second link, building as it does on the preprogramming of our imaginations by the first. Nazi, Stasi: Germany’s festering half-rhyme.

more from the NYRB here.

From The Boston Globe:

In “The Canon,” Angier agitates energetically for scientific literacy by highlighting key elements of scientific thinking, and by devoting chapters to, as she puts it, the “sciences generally awarded the preamble ‘hard.'” The chapter on astronomy, for example, centers on the ineffable instant in which our universe blossomed out of the Big Bang. The section on molecular biology features a reprise of the high-speed commotion that prevails within a human cell even before it’s time to split the DNA and divide.

And one finds that Angier’s polemical edge, when she cares to display it, is as keen as ever: She writes, for example, that proponents of creationism and/or intelligent design strike her as subscribing to sadly “data-deprived ideologies.”

IDEAS: What was your goal with “The Canon”?

ANGIER: In order to follow science, even in the newspapers, you have to have some confidence that you get the basic lay of the land, the geography of the scientific continent. I was trying to convey the basic ideas behind scientific thinking in a way people would understand.

More here.

From The New Yorker:

For Tenet, the more painful criticism has come from someone who once appeared to view him with respect—Bob Woodward, perhaps Washington’s most influential reporter and the author of three best-sellers about the Administration’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Tenet acknowledges in his book that he has helped Woodward, and the two were known to be friendly. In fact, Tenet met with Woodward before writing his memoir, in order to seek Woodward’s advice. In the book-review section of the Post on May 6th, Woodward called Tenet’s account a “remarkable, important and often unintentionally damning” book. He accused Tenet of being “all over the lot” in his explanations of the slam-dunk comment, and, more significant, chastised Tenet for misunderstanding the relationship between C.I.A. directors and the Presidents they serve. Tenet, Woodward wrote, was “hampered by a bureaucrat’s view of the world, hobbled by the traditional chain of command, convinced that the CIA director’s ‘most important relationship with any administration official is generally with the national security adviser.’ ” Woodward then wrote, in a distinctly parental tone, “No. Your most important relationship is with the president.”

More here.

Today is the 195th birthday of Edward Lear, populariser of the limerick. This is from his 1846 work, A Book of Nonsense:

More here.  [Know a particularly good limerick? Leave it in the comments…]

Jen Phillips in Smithsonian Magazine:

Already this year researchers have announced the discovery of a bunch of new species: 6 types of bats, 15 soft corals, thousands of mollusks and 20 sharks and rays, to name a few. If a report issued in 2006 by the Census of Marine Life—conducted by more than 2,000 scientists in 80 countries—is any indicator, we will see a bumper crop of new animals in the years ahead, too. These discoveries, from the Hortle’s whipray to the Bali catshark, are partly the fruits of new technology like DNA bar coding, which allows scientists to use genetic differences to tell one species from another. But that isn’t the only reason: Evolution actually speeds up in the tropics, research has found, and global warming is making it happen that much faster.

More here.

Tony O’Brien in Metapsychology:

The theme of The Price of Truth is that the ideal of science as the objective, disinterested pursuit of knowledge is just that, an ideal, and that modern science is intimately tied up with the business world, and with financial incentives of one sort or another. While there are some who would see this state of affairs as a travesty, Resnik is more pragmatic. Drawing on examples of classical scientists, and from the current practice of science, Resnik argues for a middle road, one in which there can be room for financial incentives to encourage science, but where there are adequate restraints on the excesses of money to maintain the more communitarian goals of science. This position does not come without warnings, however. There are real risks from conflicts of interest, and ample evidence that in the absence of safeguards, these risks will come to fruition. Resnik canvasses the issues and calls for a balanced approach. Fittingly for a book on science, Resnik’s is a voice of reason, and if his call for balance doesn’t satisfy supporters of lasseiz-faire libertarians or principled conservatives, this is probably no bad thing. As Resnik is fond of saying, the truth lies somewhere in between.

More here.

It was Philip Larkin who said, in an obituary notice, that MacNeice could have written the words of ‘These Foolish Things’. To many people he’s still a poet of London and New York in the 1930s, worldly, suave and ironical. His poetry of the time was a cinematic one of city lights and cocktail bars, his philosophy an aesthetic of shining surfaces, ‘the sunlight on the garden’, ‘the dazzle on the sea’. The Irish light in his head was a metaphor for the variety of human experience and personality. His pleasure in things became, in his social poetry, a pleasure in people. His work enacted a struggle between darkness and light. The darkness derived from a psychiatric disorder in his mother which proved incurable; from a sheltered childhood in ‘darkest Ulster’, and an ambiguous fear of solitude: at school in England his fellows ‘could never breathe my darkness’. The light, by contrast, was prismatic. Variety being the spice of life, he set himself to champion variety and oppose homogeneity; his poetic joie de vivre had its source in a breaking wave.

more from Literary Review here.

Jay Parini in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Goethe became a jack-of-all-trades in Weimar, advising the duke on matters large and small, hunting on horseback with him, drinking with him in country inns. He served as a member of the inner council, sat on the war commission, and was chief inspector of roads, among other duties. He helped direct the duke’s financial affairs, and managed to pursue his own scientific research in areas including anatomy and physics. Oh, yes: He also wrote hundreds of poems — some the best ever written in any language — and numerous plays and novels, too. His verse play Faust was a lifelong project, which the critic Harold Bloom has called “a scandalous pleasure for the exuberant reader, but it is also a trap, a Mephistophelean abyss in which you will never touch bottom.” It’s a work that demands and repays countless rereading. One never quite gets to the end of Faust, nor does one wish to do so.

In the midst of all that, Goethe had magnificent friendships and rewarding love affairs. As Armstrong rightly notes, “The most fruitful — and the most intense — relationship Goethe ever had with a male friend was with the poet and dramatist Friedrich Schiller.” It was an exquisite friendship, marked by shared ideals between the two poet-playwrights, interesting conflicts, and deep respect on both sides. Goethe had a talent for friendship, and that gift helped to widen the bright circle around him.

More here.

Henri Matisse loved the light of California, and especially of San Francisco, which was the first place in America ever to see any of his paintings, just over a century ago. Next month, the city’s Museum of Modern Art hosts Matisse: Painter as Sculptor, the latest in a series of great revisionist shows that have drastically realigned the artist’s reputation over the past 15 years. This one puts paid to any lingering doubt that Matisse is one of the 20th century’s greatest sculptors. No previous exhibition has traced so clearly the imaginative thrust of his sculpture, laid out its interior logic so lucidly, or explored, in such detail, its impact on fellow artists.

more from The Guardian here.

From OneWorld:

Many of the world’s leading scientific institutions today announce the launch of the Encyclopedia of Life, an unprecedented global effort to document all 1.8 million named species of animals, plants, and other forms of life on Earth. For the first time in the history of the planet, scientists, students, and citizens would have multi-media access to all known living species, even those that have just been discovered.

The Field Museum, Harvard University, Marine Biological Laboratory (Woods Hole), Smithsonian Institution, and Biodiversity Heritage Library joined together to initiate the project, bringing together species and software experts from across the world. The Missouri Botanical Garden has become a full partner, and discussions are taking place this week with leaders of the new Atlas of Living Australia. The Encyclopedia today also announced the initial membership of its Institutional Council, which spans the globe, and whose members will play key roles in realizing this immense project. An international advisory board of distinguished individuals will also help guide the Encyclopedia.

The effort is spurred by a $10 million grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and $2.5 million from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and will ultimately serve as a global beacon for biodiversity and conservation.

More here. Visit EOL here.

From Ted.com:

As E.O. Wilson accepts his 2007 TED Prize, he makes a plea on behalf of his constituents, the insects and small creatures, to learn more about our biosphere. We know so little about nature, he says, that we’re still discovering tiny organisms indispensable to life; yet we’re still steadily destroying nature. Wilson identifies five grave threats to biodiversity (a term he coined), using the acronym HIPPO, and makes his TED wish: that we will work together on the Encyclopedia of Life, a web-based compendium of data from scientists and amateurs on every aspect of the biosphere.

Watch this inspiring video here.

From The New York Times:

JOHN DONNE The Reformed Soul. By John Stubbs.

It has always been convenient to see John Donne (1572-1631) as the St. Augustine of English letters, made priestly and pure in his own good time, and not too soon to have produced the brainy carnal thrustings of his early love poems. John Stubbs’s vivid new biography makes clear that the poet’s early verse is more emotionally disparate (“tender, brutal, cocky, manically unsure, knowingly sad”) than we often recall, and that Donne’s “desire for variation” was lifelong, part of an encompassing need to be “involved, employed, absorbed” in all that took place in this world as well as in everything that might lead to the next. “Change is the nursery,” the poet wrote in his third elegy, “Of musicke, joy, life, and eternity.”

When it came to the actual nursery and to subsequent childhood, Donne possessed a distinctly un-Wordsworthian desire to be finished with both as soon as possible, so that “the real pleasure of life,” as his biographer puts it, could begin. Stubbs shares the impatience of his subject, plunging Donne into sexual opportunity and sectarian danger within the first two dozen pages of his book. The talented young Elizabethan, son of an ironmonger, felt more compelled to be a gentleman than to remain a Roman Catholic, a lucky enough preference during the still new and brutal English Reformation.

More here.

From The Dubliner:

“Told you so, told you! Told you so, told you!”
Gerald Sleeman

“Better than Bush – articulate, intelligent, witty. Wish he were ours.”
Mary Bowman-Kruhm (US)

“Not Major. Not Hauge. Not Howard. Not Conservative. Not bad!”
Mike

“Complex. Easy to disagree with, easy to admire. That’s eight.”
Mike (Australia)

“The lives of 650,000 others cannot be followed by ‘but’.”
Consuelo Green

“Forty year Council housing waiting lists. Private housing price trebled.”
Brian Heath

“Education, educasion, edukashon – not my fault mate – Blair, Bliar, Liar!”
Ted Newcomen

More here.

A talk with Irene Papperberg on Edge:

What the data suggest to me is that if one starts with a brain of a certain complexity and gives it enough social and ecological support, that brain will develop at least the building blocks of a complex communication system. Of course, chimpanzees don’t proceed to develop full-blown language the way you and I have. Grey parrots, such as Alex and Griffin, are never going to sit here and give an interview the way you and I are conducting an interview and having a chat. But they are going to produce meaningful, complex communicative combinations. It is incredibly fascinating to have creatures so evolutionarily separate from humans performing simple forms of the same types of complex cognitive tasks as do young children.

Introduction by Marc D. Hauser:

In the late 1960s, a flurry of research on the great apes—chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans—began to challenge our uniqueness, especially our capacity for language and abstract conceptual abilities. Everyone soon weighed in on this debate including the linguist Noam Chomsky, the philosophers John Searle and Daniel Dennett, and the psychologist Burrhus Skinner. One corner of this debate focused on the assumption that you need a big primate brain to handle problems of reference, syntax, abstract representations, and so forth. It was to this corner of the debate that Irene Pepperberg first turned. She started with a challenge: do you really need a big primate brain to run these computations? After over 20 years of work with her African Gray parrot Alex, the clear answer is “No!”

More here.

From Prospect Magazine:

Read Julian Gough’s “The orphan and the mob,” winner of this year’s National Short Story prize.

From the gates of the orphanage to the site of the speeches was several strong miles. We passed through town and out the other side. The smaller orphans began to wail, afraid they would see black people, or be savaged by beasts. Agamemnon stuck closely to my rear. We walked until we ran out of road. Then we followed a track, till we ran out of track.

We hopped over a fence, crossed a field, waded a dyke, cut through a ditch, traversed scrub land, forded a river and entered Nobber Nolan’s bog. Spang plumb in the middle of Nobber Nolan’s Bog, and therefore spang plumb in the middle of Tipperary, and thus Ireland, was the nation’s most famous boghole, famed in song and story: the most desolate place in Ireland, and the last place God created.

More here.

From the University of Chicago Press website:

For years David Shulman, one of Israel’s most prominent scholars, has opposed his government’s policies and practices in the West Bank through the joint-Isreali-Arab peace group Ta’ayush. In Dark Hope: Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine he has created a passionate and anguished memoir of political activism and nonviolent resistance. An excerpt about the separation wall:

Confusion dominates discussion of the Separation Wall. Most Israelis want the barrier and believe it is the only effective means of stopping suicide bombers. There are those who argue against this—claiming that once the wall is built, the bombers, nurtured by despair, will come from within the vast Arab population trapped on the Israeli side of the wall. And there are some who oppose the very idea of “fencing off” or “fencing in” as a violent and self-defeating mechanism that effectively perpetuates the conflict. But, in general, the campaign led by Israeli peace groups against the wall is not aimed at the idea of a wall as such. It is a protest at the route that the government planners have mapped out, a route that penetrates deep into Palestinian territory and protects, before all else, every possible settlement and outpost. This trajectory virtually rules out a peaceful solution based on partition and the idea of two states for two peoples in Israel-Palestine. It also perpetuates a regime of terror inside the territories, leaving most Palestinian villages encircled, isolated, essentially ghettoized, and at the mercy of bands of marauding settlers. It also appropriates large tracts of Palestinian land, practically annexing them to Israel.

This basic distinction—between the wall as an anti-terrorist barrier, acceptable to nearly everyone, and the trajectory of the wall as planned by the Israeli right—has to be kept in mind in any discussion of the legal or moral situation.

More here.

Mark Caro in the Chicago-Tribune:

“The first shot and the first hit I got, I said, ‘Why am I doing this?'”

But Iraqi-born Wafaa Bilal has specific political, emotional and artistic reasons for the painfully interactive anti-war installation he has set up in a West Loop gallery at 217 N. Carpenter St. Confining himself from Friday through June 15 in a room at Flatfile Galleries, the 40-year-old Chicago resident has rigged a paintball gun to a Web camera, a computer and a motor, so anyone who clicks on the exhibit’s Web site can aim and fire at him just about 24 hours a day.

The installation is titled “Domestic Tension,” though Bilal says he originally wanted to call it “Shoot an Iraqi.”

“Susan [Aurinko, the gallery director,] said, ‘No way,'” Bilal recalls.

Nevertheless, that’s just what people are doing. As of lunchtime Wednesday, Bilal says, about 1,850 rounds have been fired in the room, mostly at him, though sometimes his table lamp, computer and desk chair get attention as well.

More, including video, here.  [Thanks to Bryon Giddens-White.]