by Ahmed Humayun

The conquest of Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is the latest indication of the Arab world's descent into chaos. Described by Western officials as even more extreme than Al Qaeda, this formidable Sunni extremist army controls chunks of Syria and is marching on Baghdad, intending to establish an Islamist state that will redraw the boundaries of the Middle East. The rise of ISIS is merely the latest development that underscores yet again the tragic folly of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Americans lost interest in Iraq long before the last American soldier departed the country in December 2011. It is remarkable that after having occupied Iraq for almost a decade, how easy it has been to let the entire experience simply recede into the background. (This amnesia applies even in the case of Afghanistan where American forces are still present in significant number. There is a palpable lack of interest with what is to become of that country and South Asia after the imminent U.S. withdrawal). It seems that when banners of victory cannot be credibly hoisted atop aircraft carriers ala ‘Mission Accomplished', then the story simply isn't worth following anymore.

We must reject this amnesia. We must remember what our leaders did in Iraq and follow this story all the way to its sordid denouement, if only because though the United States can leave, the inhabitants of these countries cannot. We should harbor no illusions that the nightmare that began on September 11, when Al Qaeda's henchmen attacked the United States, is over simply because we are in the process of disengaging from Muslim countries. We must understand our contribution to the festering of this problem so that we may instead contribute to its resolution.

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MOTHER WRITES
TO THE LION OF KASHMIR
SHEIKH MOHAMMED ABDULLAH

They tell me
you are buried
on the banks of Naseem
near the Hazratbal shrine,
your tomb heavily guarded
by India’s army.

I tell them
this represents
one of those ironies
history keeps throwing up:
the very people who jailed
you now guard your tomb

And the very people
whose ‘Lion’ you were
are disenchanted
with you for selling out
to your paymasters in Delhi
who now also bankroll

your son and his son,
sexually-transmitted dynasts,
who dare not even sigh
while soldiers shielded by
the Syrupy Secularism Act
silence the Vale of Saints.

By Rafiq Kathwari, Winner of the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award 2013. More poems here.

by Grace Boey

Philosophy: you either get it or you don't. The field has its passionate defenders, but according to its critics, philosophy is irrelevant, unproductive, and right at the height of the ivory towers. And now, the philosophy-bashing camp can count a proud defector from the other side: Peter Unger, Professor of Philosophy at New York University, has come out against the field in his latest book, Empty Ideas: A Critique of Analytic Philosophy.

Unger has written extensively over the course of his career on various philosophical topics, and his best-known writings include Ignorance: A Case for Scepticism (1975) and Living High and Letting Die: Our Illusion of Innocence (1995). As a no-holds-barred critique of mainstream analytic philosophy, Empty Ideas is a continuation of Unger's signature provocative style.

As a former student of his, I spoke to Unger in late May about Empty Ideas, his thoughts on the value of philosophy, Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, David Lewis, and the difference between philosophy, crystal healing and self-help (the answer: nothing that important).

Hi, Peter. To start things off, could you say a bit about your book Empty Ideas, and what it’s about?

Philosophers easily get the idea that somehow or other, just by considering things about the world that they already know, they can write up deep stories which are true, or pretty nearly true, about how it is with the world. By that I especially mean the world of things that includes themselves, and everything that’s spatio-temporally related to them, or anything that has a causal effect on anything else, and so on. They think they can tell a deep story about how it is that all of this stuff really hangs together, that’s much deeper, more enlightening and more comprehensive than anything that any scientist can do.

And so philosophers proceed to write up these stories, and they’re under the impression that they’re saying something new and interesting about how it is about the world, when in fact this is all an illusion. To say new and interesting things about the world — and that’s very hard, things of any generality I mean, or even anything interesting — you really have to engage with a lot of science. And very few philosophers do any of that, at least in any relevant way.

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by Yohan J. John

The osmosis of neuroscience into popular culture is neatly symbolized by a phenomenon I recently chanced upon: neurochemical-inspired jewellery. It appears there is a market for silvery pendants shaped like molecules of dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine, norepinephrine and other celebrity neurotransmitters. Under pictures of dopamine necklaces, the neuro-jewellers have placed words like “love”, “passion”, or “pleasure”. Under serotonin they write “happiness” and “satisfaction”, and under norepinephrine, “alertness” and “energy”. These associations presumably stem from the view that the brain is a chemical soup in which each ingredient generates a distinct emotion, mood, or feeling. Subjective experience, according to this view, is the sum total of the contributions of each “mood molecule”. If we strip away the modern scientific veneer, the chemical soup idea evokes the four humors of ancient Greek medicine: black bile to make you melancholic, yellow bile to make you choleric, phlegm to make you phlegmatic, and blood to make you sanguine.

A dopamine pendant worn round the neck as a symbol for bliss is emblematic of modern society's attitude towards current scientific research. A multifaceted — and only partially understood — set of experiments is hastily distilled into an easily marketed molecule of folk wisdom. Having filtered out the messy details, we are left with an ornamental nugget of thought that appears both novel and reassuringly commonsensical. But does neuroscience really support this reductionist view of human subjectivity? Can our psychological states be understood in terms of a handful of chemicals? Does neuroscience therefore pose a problem for a more holistic view, in which humans are integrated in social and environmental networks? In other words, are the “chemical self” and the “social self” mutually exclusive concepts?

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by Carol A. Westbrook

The single most important skill you need to practice medicine is the ability to pass multiple-choice exams. Most people saw their last standardized test when college or grad school ended. No so for us doctors– exam taking continues until retirement. The process begins with the high SAT score required for entry into a good college, then a high MCAT to get into medical school. In medical school we complete Steps 1 and 2 of the USMLE (US Medical Licensing Exam) and in residency, Step 3. After residency come the Specialty Boards (e.g. Internal Medicine, Surgery, etc.), then the Subspecialty Boards (e.g. Cardiology, Oncology). It continues with re-certification exams in your specialty every 10 years. It does not end until retirement.

So here I am, in my 60's, having to sit for an exam in order to renew my credentials as a Medical Oncologist. If you haven't taken a standardized test within the last decade you will be surprised to find how things have changed. There is no paper, no filling out circles with No.2 pencils, and no exam booklets. The questions are read on a computer screen, and answered by point-and-click with a mouse. The exams are given at a testing center in a strip mall, where other test-takers may be fireman, manicurists, or hairdressers taking their state licensing exams. After passing triple security (two ID's and a palm print scan) you enter the exam room, where you will be directed to a workstation containing only a computer on an otherwise empty desk. No purses, wallets, watches, pens, cell phones, or calculators are allowed into the room. It is dead silent, and anonymous. Nonetheless, you quickly adapt to the computerized routine, and the exam itself is remarkably similar to any other multiple-choice exam. As always, there are a series of single questions and 4 answers, of which only one is right, including the notorious “all of the above” or “none of the above.”

Scoring well on a multiple-choice exam requires certain skills. You do need at least a passing familiarity with the material, of course, but just as important is a feel for the psychology of the exam–are they trying to trip me up on this question? Is there a hidden trick? Does the exam phrasing suggest a certain emphasis? Also required is precise reading of the question, and facility with English grammar (beware of the double negative!). The most important skill for the test-taker, though, is the ability to “cram”. By cramming, I mean the ability to review and retain a large amount of detailed information for a few days prior to the test.

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by Mara Jebsen

One of my favorite memories is also a mysterious one.It is 2006, and I am in Togo. The first goal struck for the continent of Africa has just been shot by Mohamed Kader. He’s representing the Togolese team, who are making their first and only World Cup appearance. A near-hysterical roar goes up in the neighborhood. I suspect I can hear roars from across the nearby Ghana border, too.

The sound is the invigorating effect of many groups of fans rising out of their seats in thatched roof bars and in courtyards under sticky mango trees. I run up to the balcony at the top of our house to see what’s happening in the street. A parade of shouting boys has collected on a road near the ocean. They are running and waving Togolese flags. An intense color combination results: the yam-dirt road, the brown boys, the dirty whitewashed city walls– and the whipping grass-green, and primary red and yellow of the cheap plastic flags. The boys march and deliver their holler into the big wide sound. Now one particularly small boy, wearing only green underwear, does not have a flag. As I watch, he shimmies his skivvies down over his dry knees, raises them in the air, and, belly thrust out, waves the green underpants round and round, whooping buck-naked for all he’s worth.

I'm not sure why I like this image so much. I’ve tried, in storytelling, to re-enact (without actually undressing) the fluid motion of the boy stripping and whooping without deliberation. He may have been about 7, and he swung the underpants around like a lasso, but with his head held high, proud.

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by Jeff Strabone

Kristina Williamson is a multimedia visual artist who can find the erotic in a Cheese Curl, the surreal in the every day, and signs of globalization in the empty village left behind. Her photographs span the globe from her small-town origins somewhere in America to the islands of Greece and Spain. Like Byron's Childe Harold in the ruins of the Acropolis, her new book of photographs in Greece contemplates in the contradictions of modernity what endures of the past and what is 'Gone—glimmering through the dream of things that were'. Her work alternates between domestic, global, eerie, surprising, revelatory, and beautiful—sometimes all in the same image. On the eve of her book's publication I caught up with the artist at her studio in Brooklyn to talk about the project and her new work, which she describes as 'the accidental surreal'.

Q: Your new book One Year on Kythera is a monograph of photos from a Greek island no one's ever heard of. Why Kythera and what is this strange vision you had there?

A: I've always been interested in rural communities having grown up in a small town. My first exposure to Greek culture was while living in the Greek precinct of Melbourne, Australia during a semester abroad. I was fascinated by the community's efforts to maintain a satellite of their homeland. So it was a combination of these two things that inspired my research into photographing in rural Greece.

Q: But why Kythera specifically? How did you end up there?

A; It actually started with a book called Portrait of a Greek Mountain Village by Juliet du Boulay. It's an important sociological study of rural Greece written in the late 1960's, early1970's illustrating village life on the island of Evvia and its response to modernization. Originally, I had the idea to revisit this same village thirty years later to see what has become of it. However, when I managed to track down du Boulay she refused to reveal the name and location of the village for concerns that it might bring it some 'uninvited publicity'.

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