Huw Price in Aeon:

A few years ago, a physicist friend of mine made a joke on Facebook about the laws of physics being broken in Italy. He had two pieces of news in mind. One was a claim by a team at the Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus (OPERA) in Gran Sasso, who said they’d discovered superluminal neutrinos. The other concerned Andrea Rossi, an engineer from Bologna, who claimed to have a cold fusion reactor producing commercially useful amounts of heat.

Why were these claims so improbable? The neutrinos challenged a fundamental principle of Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity, which says that nothing can travel faster than light. Meanwhile cold fusion (or LENR, for ‘low-energy nuclear reaction’) is the controversial idea that nuclear reactions similar to those in the Sun could, under certain conditions, also occur close to room temperature.

The latter was popularised in 1989 by Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, who claimed to have found evidence that such processes could take place in palladium loaded with deuterium (an isotope of hydrogen). A few other physicists, including the late Sergio Focardi at Bologna, claimed similar effects with nickel and ordinary hydrogen. But most were highly skeptical, and the field subsequently gained, as Wikipedia puts it, ‘a reputation as pathological science’.

It turned out that my physicist friend and I disagreed about which of these unlikely claims was most credible. He thought it was the neutrinos, because the work had been done by respectable scientists rather than a lone engineer with a somewhat chequered past. I favoured Rossi, on grounds of the physics. Superluminal neutrinos would overturn a fundamental tenet of relativity, but all Rossi needed was a previously unnoticed channel to a reservoir of energy whose existence is not in doubt.

More here.

Jane Shmidt in Open Letters Monthly:

Earlier this year, a potentially fictitious, albeit tremendously entertaining, story was reported by Yahoo news about an Algerian man who sued his bride after seeing her without makeup for the first time on the morning after the wedding. The man claimed that he was deceived, unable to recognize her as the same woman he married. Beyond its evident humor, this story is a thinly veiled criticism of the application of makeup, suggesting that women treat their body as an object in a sale with marriage as the ultimate goal, and that they use makeup as a tool to mislead and capture a mate, to beguile the male gaze.

Bitter animosity toward women’s use of cosmetics is nothing new. In her book on makeup practices and production, Face Paint: The Story of Makeup, Lisa Eldridge – a renowned professional makeup artist – charts out the history of the debate on the value of applying color to the body. She finds that makeup has been considered a form of artifice, or even indecency, for a large portion of history from ancient Greece through the present, while, on the other side of the spectrum, some contemporary feminists have denounced makeup as an instrument of oppression that forces women to conform to an ideal.

More here.

Gretchen McCulloch in Quartz:

You’ve probably come across the singular pronoun “they” recently. Perhaps it was in the Washington Post’s recent addition of it to the paper’s style guide. Perhaps it was in this BBC article about gender-neutral pronouns. Perhaps it was in this viral Tumblr post comparing singular “they” to singular “you.” Wherever the source, singular “they” has become more popular in 2015 than ever before–so popular, in fact, that it’s Quartz’s (unofficial) nomination for Word of the Year.

Let’s clear something up right away. Using “they” to refer to a single person isn’t new, but words of the year rarely are. Rather, this usage has been simmering for many years, finally bursting onto the scene this year with a newfound prominence. And just in time, too. Language can and should keep up with cultural shifts, including developments in society’s understanding of gender. While some holdout grammarians and copy editors might squirm, it’s become increasingly clear that our current pronoun palette simply isn’t sufficient. Luckily, we already have a perfectly good word at the ready.

More here.

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As Kerala was ushered into the modern era, closer to democracy and republicanism, the women of Travancore came to occupy a central role in its fortunes. In this excerpt from the book, Pillai delves into the history of Kerala’s unusual history of matriliny.

Manu Pillai in The Caravan:

Some anthropologists regard Kerala’s system of matrilineal kinship as the continuation of a practice that at one time existed all over the world, while others contend that it was conceived due to some mysterious, compelling circumstances that replaced patriarchy at a historical point. There are, however, two views on this that have been passed down within the region. One is mythological and based on a Malayalam treatise called Keralolpathi, as well as and a Sanskrit work called the Kerala Mahatmyam. These refer to the creation of Kerala by the legendary hero Parasurama, who is supposed to have hurled his battle-axe from Gokarna to Cape Comorin and claimed from the sea all the land in between. He is then said to have awarded this new region (conveniently) to Brahmins, after which he summoned (equally conveniently) deva (divine), gandharva (celestial minstrel), and rakshasa (demon) women for the pleasure of these men. The Nairs, the principal matrilineal caste, were the descendants of these nymphs and their Brahmin overlords, tracing their lineages in the maternal line. This version was dismissed quite appropriately by William Logan in his Malabar Manual as “a farrago of legendary nonsense.”

The other theory relates to the ancient martial tradition of the Nairs. Boys were sent off to train in military gymnasiums from the age of eight, and their sole occupation thereafter was to master the art of warfare. For them death by any other means than at the end of a sword on the battlefield was a mortifying ignominy and in their constant zeal for military excellence and glorious bloodshed, they had no time to husband women or economic resources. So a man would never “marry” a woman, as in other parts of India, and start a family with their children. Instead he would visit a lady in her natal home every now and then, solely for sexual purposes, and the offspring would be her responsibility entirely. Matriliny was, as per this theory, consequent upon the men purely being instruments of war rather than householders. So the onus of family and succession was taken care of by women, who formed large establishments and managed their affairs independently in the absence of men. While the military tradition of the Nairs, famous for its suicide bands called chavers, was well known, this theory is also more circumstantial than absolute.

More here.

Beverly S. Stohl in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

The first time I didn’t meet Noam Chomsky was in 1992, when a TV news channel asked him to interview me about my ability to talk backward fluently. He said no. I’d like to believe he was actually away, or sick, or that he didn’t get the message at all, but most likely he brushed off the request, sticking to more serious issues. Another linguist, Steven Pinker, took the assignment and determined that my skill, rather than being a sign of linguistic brilliance, was just a trick, like “juggling lit torches from a unicycle” (which I have to admit is on my bucket list).

The second time I didn’t meet Noam Chomsky was a year later, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, when I was interviewed in his office in Building 20, a decrepit army research building, by his longtime colleague and friend Morris Halle, for the position of Chomsky’s assistant. Morris met with several star-struck people whose priority was to become part of Chomsky’s inner world, but my skill set and lack of familiarity with his politics made me his choice for the position. When Morris learned that psychology was my field of study, he issued me a few caveats: “This will not be a warm and fuzzy position. You have not been hired to be Professor Chomsky’s friend.”

On my second day of work, a man in his mid-60s with longish graying hair and a chiseled face I recognized from photos arrived in my office looking preoccupied. He wore a gray crew neck sweater over a blue denim shirt and blue jeans rolled up to expose sensible white socks. He held two briefcases, one of heavy blue canvas and the other worn brown leather, with the letters “NC” stamped in faded gold at the top.

More here.

What follows is an essay adapted from a talk, delivered in 2010 to teenagers and parents in my hometown of Cupertino, California. The talk concerned the surfaces of things, like bodies and planets, and abstract surfaces, like the Möbius strip and the torus. The goal was to learn about the world by studying surfaces mathematically, to learn about mathematics by studying the way we study surfaces, and, ideally, to learn about ourselves by studying how we do mathematics.

Joshua Batson in Hypocrite Reader:

An atlas of squares assembles into a cube.

Imagine that you are an emperor regarding a great expanse from a tall peak. Though your territory extends beyond your sight, a map of the entire empire hangs on the wall in your study, seventy interlocking cantons. On your desk lies a thick, bound atlas. Each page is a detailed map of a county whose image on the great map is smaller than a coin.

You dream of an atlas of the world in which the map of your empire would fill but a single page. You send forth a fleet of cartographers. They scatter from the capitol and each, after traveling her assigned distance, will make a detailed map of her surroundings, note the names of her colleagues in each adjacent plot, and return.

If the world is infinite, some surveyors will return with bad news: they were the member of their band to travel the furthest and uncharted territory lies on one side of their map. But if the world is finite, there will be many happy surprises: a friend last seen in the capitol is rediscovered thousands of miles from home, having taken another path to the same place. Their maps form an atlas of the world.

You have another dream, in which the whole world is contained in your capable hands, miniature and alive. Upon waking, you begin to tear the pages out of the atlas and piece them together, using the labels on the edge of each page to stitch it to its neighbors, constructing ever larger swaths of territory.

Soon you are left with six grand charts. You fit them together and they lift off the table to form a cube.

More here.

Jamelle Bouie in Slate:

There is no question that Trump has run the most unapologetically racist and nativist campaign since George Wallace made his first national play in 1964. And, like Wallace before him, it’s been successful, drawing tens of thousands of people to massive rallies across the country. Trump probes their fears, excites their passions, and gives them voice in a way they love and understand. “We have losers. We have people that are morally corrupt. We have people that are selling this country down the drain,” Trump declares. These voters may feel anxious about their economic status. But they also hold racial and cultural resentments. They’re worried about their futures and they dislike immigrants, Muslims, and blacks.

On Monday, the Washington Post looked at the white supremacists and white nationalists who cheer Trump as an asset to their movement. Trump has opened “a door to conversation” and “electrified” some members of the movement, says one leader in the Ku Klux Klan. “I think a lot of what he says resonates with me,” says David Duke, a “Grand Wizard” in the Klan and former Louisiana politician. In a similar piece for the New Yorker, writer Evan Osnos spoke to Jared Taylor, a prominent white nationalist who described the situation as such. “I’m sure he would repudiate any association with people like me,” said Taylor, “but his support comes from people who are more like me than he might like to admit.” These voices are self-serving, but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong. Trump has shot to the top, fueled by vicious rhetoric against Latino immigrants and Syriain refugees. He has shared racist memes about black Americans and called for a ban on Muslim travel to the United States. And each time, his support ticks higher.

Economic anxiety plays a part here. But maybe Trump has discovered something we all like to deny: That in the 21^st century, the racist vote is larger, louder, and more influential than we ever thought.

More here.

Carl Zimmer in The New York Times:

Over the past few million years, the ancestors of modern humans became dramatically different from other primates. Our forebears began walking upright, and they lost much of their body hair; they gained precision-grip fingers and developed gigantic brains. But early humans also may have evolved a less obvious but equally important advantage: a peculiar sleep pattern. “It’s really weird, compared to other primates,” said Dr. David R. Samson, a senior research scientist at Duke University. In the journal Evolutionary Anthropology, Dr. Samson and Dr. Charles L. Nunn, an evolutionary biologist at Duke, reported that human sleep is exceptionally short and deep, a pattern that may have helped give rise to our powerful minds. Until recently, scientists knew very little about how primates sleep. To document orangutan slumber, for example, Dr. Samson once rigged up infrared cameras at the Indianapolis Zoo and stayed up each night to watch the apes nod off. By observing their movements, he tracked when the orangutans fell in and out of REM sleep, in which humans experience dreams.

… Dr. Samson and Dr. Nunn found that the time each primate species spends asleep generally corresponded to its physical size, along with other factors, such as the average number of primates in a group. The one big exception: humans. We sleep a lot less than one would predict based on the patterns seen in other primates. From time to time while sleeping, we slip into REM sleep and dream. All told, we spend about 22 percent of sleep in REM, the highest ratio of REM to total sleep in any primate, the researchers reported. Dr. Samson and Dr. Nunn have an explanation for how humans ended up sleeping so little, and so often in REM. Over tens of millions of years, they assert, changes in our ancestors’ ecology drove the evolution of new sleeping patterns. Humans increasingly have been able to achieve a good night’s sleep. A number of studies suggest that REM sleep benefits the brain. Some scientists argue that it sweeps out molecular debris, and others say it consolidates new memories into lasting impressions. But it was not easy for our monkey-like ancestors to reach REM sleep. They slept on branches, and their nights were anything but easy. As monkeys try to sleep today, they get roused by winds, tree snakes and the jostling of their fellow primates. “It’s like economy class on a plane,” said Dr. Samson. Monkeys, he believes, have to rest longer to get the benefits of REM sleep.

More here.

Phoebe Boswell. Marama, The Maulidi Series, 2014.

Charcoal drawing.

More must-see works of this brilliant artist here, here, and here.

Natasha Lennard and Brad Evans in The NYT's The Stone:

Natasha Lennard: The premise of your book “Disposable Futures” is that “violence is ubiquitous” in the media today. There seems to be plenty of evidence to support this claim — just look at the home page of this news site for a start. But the media has always been interested in violence — “if it bleeds, it leads” isn’t exactly new. And the notion that there is just more violence in the world today — more violent material for the media to cover — doesn’t seem tenable. So what do you think is specific about the ubiquity of violence today, and the way it is mediated?

Brad Evans: It is certainly right to suggest the connections between violence and media communications have been a recurring feature of human relations. We only need to open the first pages of Aeschylus’ “Oresteia” to witness tales of victory in battle and its communicative strategies — on this occasion the medium of communication was the burning beacon. But there are a number of ways in which violence is different today, in terms of its logics intended, forced witnessing and ubiquitous nature.

We certainly seem to be entering into a new moment, where the encounter with violence (real or imagined) is becoming more ubiquitous and its presence ever felt. Certainly this has something to do with our awareness of global tragedies as technologies redefine our exposure to such catastrophic events. But it also has to do with the raw realities of violence and people’s genuine sense of insecurity, which, even if it is manufactured or illusionary, feels no less real.

One of the key arguments I make throughout my work is that violence has now become the defining organizational principle for contemporary societies. It mediates all social relations. It matters less if we are actual victims of violence. It is the possibility that we could face some form of violent encounter, which shapes the logics of power in liberal societies today. Our political imagination as such has become dominated by multiple potential catastrophes that appear on the horizon. The closing of the entire Los Angeles city school system after a reported terrorist threat yesterday is an unsettling reminder of this. From terror to weather and everything in between, insecurity has become the new normal. We see this played out at global and local levels, as the effective blurring between older notions of homeland/battlefields, friends/enemies and peace/war has led to the widespread militarization of many everyday behaviors — especially in communities of color.

More here.

Dinaw Mengestu in Guernica:

Growing up, we had strange bedtime rituals. In Peoria, Illinois, when my sister and I were very young, my father would sit between our beds and tell us stories of animals who fought, lied, and cheated their way through the jungle world he invented for us. There were dense forests, green hills, and rivers. There were lions, crocodiles, zebras, giraffes, and laughing hyenas, which my father, in his raspy scarred voice, would imitate. The heroes of the stories were always two mischievous monkeys who could cheat all the other animals who, while taller, stronger, and more ferocious than them, lacked their wit. In the end the monkeys always found refuge at the top of the tallest trees—a vantage point from which, in retrospect, they would have had a clear view of all the havoc they had caused.

As a child, I didn’t think of the stories as being particularly related to Ethiopia, or, on a broader scale, Africa. I didn’t think about where this landscape, with trees that, according to my father, were larger than anything I could imagine, came from, or what these animals, whom my father spoke of as if real intimates, were doing in the crowded and deeply divided bedroom my sister and I shared. They were ordinary fictions, bedtime tales invented wholesale each night, sprung effortlessly from my father’s mind like a long, deep breath. And so there he is, in both memory and imagination, straddling the narrow space between our beds with these stories that my sister and I were both desperate to hear, clueless as to how far they had traveled to wash up, as if by accident, in Middle America.

My father, of course, eventually stopped with the stories. He might have done so because we no longer asked him to tell us them, or because we were old enough to read on our own, or because it was the mid-1980s, and Caterpillar, where my father worked, was going through a round of layoffs that would bankrupt my parents’ plans of buying their first home. Or perhaps he stopped because suddenly, everywhere we turned, Ethiopia, or one tragic version of it, was staring back at us.

More here.