by Emrys Westacott

Every book about English grammar that I know of is seriously incomplete. None of them seem to recognize the fact that elements of standard English are modified in subtle and often confusing ways when sentences are part of an exchange between married couples. In the hope of prompting the experts to rectify this situation, I offer here a few brief notes on the basic elements of spousal grammar.

In regular grammar, sentences have moods (e.g. indicative, subjunctive, etc.) expressed through verb forms, syntax, or intonation. In spousal grammar these moods also convey attitudes (love, hate, frustration, despair, etc.) of one spouse toward the other. Correct identification of the underlying attitude is key to understanding any intra-spousal utterance. The most important grammatical attitude-pointers are the following:

spousal imperative A fundamental unit of marital discourse. Traditional usage reflected power asymmetries ("Woman, fetch me my cudgel!") but increasing gender equality explains the current frequency of reactive imperative exchanges in a spousal context ("Get me a beer!" "Get it yourself!")

spousal nominative Occupies a grey area between the imperative and the suggestive. E.g. "OK, I'll fold the laundry, and you clean the toilet"–essentially short for, "I nominate you to clean the toilet."

spousal accusative Often the default mode of discourse between couples. Indeed, some studies suggest that up to 45% of utterances between spouses take the accusative form. Like grammatical objects, it can be either direct ("Well, you're the idiot who left the fucking window open!" or indirect ("Well, I'm not the one who left the fucking window open!")

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by Brooks Riley

by Christopher Bacas

Eviction begins with a sheaf of papers, hand-delivered, addressed to the tenant, known thereafter as “Respondent”. Attorneys employ a process server to ensure proper service. Any improprieties are grounds to dismiss and the Petionner files anew. Respondents often agree to waive this technicality. They are standing in front of a judge in a packed courtroom. They’ve taken off work, made arrangements for family and already waited four or five hours. Unless the tenant disputes non-payment itself, it’s better to proceed.

Our papers arrived in the mail; envelope a bulging fish, its paper crinkled into rows of scales and ball-point lettering murky. When I opened it, bracing saline flooded my belly. The terms were stark: without a timely response, Marshalls would forcibly remove us and all our possessions. My family home was remarkably stable. As a young professional, I’d spent 600 nights in motels, I wasn’t prepared to spend much time on the streets.

Eviction papers require a tenant to answer in person. In each borough, a special court convenes for housing cases. In Brooklyn, the court building is downtown, wedged in a sprawl of vertiginous modern gantries, gaslight storefronts and acres of cheap, street-level shopping. The entrance floor is a glassed box, furnished with two walk-through metal detectors, their conveyor belts, and steel tables stacked with tubs for personal items. The hard faces and surly voices of the entry guards clarify the tenants’ place: slightly above farm animal. Beyond the gauntlet, a bank of elevators, squalling up and down on greaseless cables. Indicator lights broken, mostly shuttling between upper floors, they arrive every 15 minutes or so. Even for the infirm, the stairs are quicker and actually, more dignified. Officers of the Court enter quickly on the side, through a secure door into a private elevator.

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by Michael Liss

History is fractal. Zoom out, and you see grand themes, mass movements, stirring oratory, and profound ideas. Zoom in, and it is countless individual acts and choices, smaller moments that often seem to be just footnotes, but are, on closer inspection, immensely revealing.

On May 22, 1856, South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks entered the Senate Chamber, strode purposefully over to the desk of Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, and beat him senseless with a gold-headed, gutta-percha walking stick. So forceful, and so numerous were his blows, that Brooks shattered his weapon. And so much the damage done to his victim, both physical and psychological, that Sumner was unable to resume his Senatorial duties for nearly three years.

Matter of honor for Brooks. Sumner had just delivered a two-day jeremiad, “The Crime Against Kansas,” which was laced with insults against Brooks’ home state and his kin, South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler. As for the need for 30 swings of the cane on a bloodied, helpless victim, anyone who understood the profound passion of offended dignity of the Southern Gentleman could explain it. Who, of Brooks’ stature, wouldn’t have acted the same way when faced with the same provocation?

Brooks’ choice of a weapon said as much as his words. It was not an accident, not something grabbed in impulse. In the Southern Code, you dueled with an equal, but thrashed an inferior. Sumner, for all his refined manners, Harvard education, and the classical allusions in his speeches, was clearly a social inferior—a “Black Republican” of the worst type. Once Brooks settled on a course of action, he grappled with the choice of cane or bullwhip, but he never, ever, considered pistols.

Most of the South cheered. Fire-Eaters made similar threats against other Northern leaders, and Brooks mused, “It would not take much to have the throats of every Abolitionist cut.” He became a sort of a pop hero, the very exemplar of chivalrous Southern manliness. Among his adoring acolytes were students from the University of Virginia, who sent him a golden-headed cane, inscribed, and etched with the image of a cracked human skull.

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by Dave Maier

In 1985, by his own account, the filmmaker Wim Wenders had no interest in dance, and had to be dragged to a performance of choreographer Pina Bausch’s Café Müller by his companion, actress Solveig Dommartin (you remember her, she’s in Wings of Desire). However, he found himself so moved by the performance that he wept. So reports Siri Hustvedt in an essay accompanying the Criterion Collection issue of Wenders’s film tribute to Bausch, Pina: dance, dance, otherwise we are lost. With respect to Café Müller in particular, Hustvedt tells us that “one cannot encapsulate what one has seen in words.” That is, “one does not come away with a message or story that can be explicated […] Rather, [Bausch’s] work generates multiple, and often ambiguous, meanings,” which helps account for the work’s power:

The viewer’s emotion is born of a profound recognition of himself in the story that is being played out onstage before him. He engages in a participatory, embodied mirroring reaction with the dancers, which evades articulation in language. Susanne K. Langer is writing about music in the following passage from Philosophy in a New Key, but her commentary can be applied equally well to dance: “The real power of music lies in the fact that it can be ‘true’ to the life of feeling in a way that language cannot; for its significant forms have that ambivalence of content that words cannot have.” Musical meanings arrive, as Langer puts it, “below the threshold of consciousness, certainly outside the pale of discursive thinking. […] [Bausch:] “For I always know what I am looking for, but I know it with my intuition and not with my head.” Indeed, many artists work this way, even artists whose medium is words. There is always a preverbal, physiological, rhythmic, motoric, ground that precedes language and informs it.

Okay, that’s quite a mouthful. Let’s unpack it (as my anthropology teacher used to say).

If the experience of Café Müller reaches “beyond language,” a natural question is: what is it about dance, a non-verbal art, that allows it to do what words cannot? Is it that it is physical/gestural rather than verbal, or instead that it is characteristically artistic experience rather than everyday discourse? To answer this, we must also consider for comparison the two other possibilities: non-verbal non-art and verbal art (literature/poetry).

If everyday non-artistic gestures reach “beyond language” simply by being non-verbal, then it is hardly remarkable to say of dance that it does this as well, and thus it cannot be this mere ability that makes possible the latter’s power. It must be that what does the trick instead is that dance is an art of gesture, that it takes advantage of its non-verbal nature in a way that everyday gestures do not, in order to allow the exceptional experience that moved Wenders to tears. But what does that difference amount to here?

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by Akim Reinhardt

There are, of course, many ways in which I am nothing like Donald Trump. I do not publicly berate subordinates. I never drink Diet Coke. I am not a piece of human filth. I have not run for president, especially in a state of gross unpreparedness and unqualification.

But it should go without saying that any decent human being is, in many ways, not much like Donald Trump. Indeed, it is so obvious, that to even mention one's dissimilarities from The Donald is not only unenlightening but likely self-serving.

Much more interesting, I believe, is to consider the ways in which you really are quite similar to someone you find repugnant, to someone who is broken beyond repair, to someone you have absolutely no respect for whatsoever. Because when you acknowledge those features you hold in common with a disgusting, heinous wretch who fouls the earth with his very existence, then you can begin to penetrate your most obscure attributes, peel back your complex layers, and really learn something about yourself.

A well examined life cannot be lived amid self-congratulation or comfort. We can only discover our true selves by embarking upon difficult journeys to our inner souls and by confronting our deepest unpleasantries. Be happy and modest about any common ground you may stand upon with the hero. But know thyself when you turn to the mirror and chance upon fleeting glimpses of the villain. It is in that spirit of deep self-scrutiny that I must confess: I'm a lot like Donald Trump. Let me count the ways.

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by Brooks Riley

by Bill Benzon

Like many musicians, I was in a marching band in middle school and high school, the Marching Rams of Richland Township in Western Pennsylvania. We were a very good band. We marched in the Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C. in 1965.

That experience was a rich one. But it was also complicated and fraught with anxiety and ambivalence.

These lessons are about the lizard brain and its problematic relationship with civilization. Not merely Western Civ, mind you, but any civilization whatsoever.

Lesson the First: It’s the Groove, Baby

Those aren’t the words he used, but that’s what he meant. It’s the groove that tells the story; it’s the groove that moves the feet.

I’m talking about something told to me, though not to me personally, by Richard Cuppett, director of my high school marching band. Cuppett was something of a taskmaster and worked us hard. Because he did so, the band was an excellent one, so good, rumor had it, that some people came to football games—we’re talking Steeler country, folks, the coal mines and steel mills that fed the fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers—as much to see the band as to watch the football game.

Cuppett was talking to the band about excellence. How can you tell that a band is really good? If kids march alongside the band when it is on parade, the band is a good one. He passed that on to us as a lesson, though I forget whom he attributed it to. Perhaps some bandleader he’d worked with, or perhaps some legendary figure, like John Philips Sousa.

It sounded strange when I first heard it, gathered there in the band room along with the other bandsmen. It didn’t quite make sense to let little kids be the judges of band quality. But Cuppett was the director, so it must be true—I was just a kid then, and so inclined to believe things told to me by someone in authority.

His point, of course, is that when music is really grooving, it’s infectious. It will attract those little kids and get their fidgety feed to move in time with the music. For that to happen, two things are necessary: the musicians have to play together, and they have to play with passion. Not just one, or the other, but both at the same time.

Everyone, together, passion.

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by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse

The Owl of Minerva flies only at dusk. That's a metaphorical way of saying that wisdom is something that arises only at the end of inquiry, always in hindsight. You have to make the errors to learn from them, for sure. But there's more to the Owl of Minerva insight – our learning from the errors creates new capacities for error. And so, the process of learning from our mistakes is an endless task. That's what we call the Owl of Minerva Problem (we've written more about it HERE and HERE).

The fallacy fallacy is a good way to appreciate the Owl of Minerva Problem. The fallacy fallacy occurs when one starts seeing fallacies everywhere. In the same way that the college sophomore taking Abnormal Psychology becomes convinced that everyone in her dorm suffers from some disassociative disorder, students of informal logic frequently become convinced that fallacies are everywhere. That's fine, in a way. There are lots of fallacies and bad reasoning. That's because reasoning well is hard, and humans are regularly pretty bad at it. But once one starts seeing fallacies everywhere, one is tempted to think those who say so many things on the basis of fallacious reasons are thereby wrong about the things they say. But that inference, too, is a fallacy! Here's the basic scheme:

S is committed to p

S gives argument A for p

A is a fallacy

Therefore, p is false

The conclusion does not follow. Just because people have terrible reasons for some conclusion, it doesn't mean that the conclusion is false. Your uncle may believe something on the basis of wishful thinking, but that doesn't make it a false belief. So if he believes that the sun will rise tomorrow because he just can't go on in the dark, he's got a dumb reason, but his conclusion's still right. That's why we evaluate reasons as reasons independently of evaluating the conclusion. That's the whole point of critical thinking – keeping those questions separate.

This point about the fallacy fallacy is important because it provides a case where training in informal logic and fallacy detection actually creates a new kind of error. Nobody could commit the fallacy fallacy if there were no vocabulary of fallacies to begin with. The metalanguage of logic, which is supposed to help make us better reasoners, ends up making possible a particular kind of argumentative pathology. From the project of fallacy correction arises a new fallacy. Now, if that ain't ironic, we don't know what is.

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by Jonathan Kujawa

Apollonius of Perga (262-190 BC) was a well known and prolific geometer in ancient Greece. He is mainly known for his surviving work on the conic sections. Indeed, he gave us the definition of the ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola we use today. In some circles, Apollonius's most famous theorem is the fact that if you have three circles which are mutually tangent, then there always exactly two ways to add a fourth circle which is tangent to all three. That is, you can always fit exactly one new circle tangent to the original three within each interstice made by the existing circles. In the picture to the right if you start with the three black circles, then you can complete the picture to four tangent circles by adding either of the gray circles.

One thing I've learned in math is: anything worth doing once, is worth doing many times. Once you add the two new circles you've now created six new gaps. This, in turn, can be filled with circles, creating yet more gaps. And so on. You can keep adding circles forever:

Image from [1].

The fractally looking result is an Apollonian Gasket. There is a delightful Gasket maker available here. You get fun pictures like this one:

As we did above, it is common when drawing Gaskets to start with two circles inside of a third, but this is only for convenience and isn't needed for Apollonius's result. Indeed, if you start with three circles which are tangent to each other and none contains the others, then one of the two new circles you add will encircle the others, so you'll end up with the outside circle, anyway.

When looking at pictures like these, it is natural to ask how much of the big circle is filled by the smaller circles. At each stage there will always be little slivers of empty space. But perhaps eventually every gap is filled with a circle. If you know about fractals, you'll know the answer to this question is not so obvious.

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by Shadab Zeest Hashmi

And there was evening– you were born (raging like a lioness). A monsoon evening– the window wide and the world awash.

With this, the window in the story of my first hours on earth, my mother conjures a desire for perspective and possibility. I will grow up seeing the veins of history mapped onto this window, equations of math and myth, the teeth of logic, tufts of wisdom, pillars of language roofed by silence— every hue between identification and imagination. This “seeing” will begin from the most luxurious vantage point possible: my mother’s arms.

And it is evening, here in California, evening of a melon-sherbet sky and birds with pencil nibs for beaks. In the ultrasound image, my baby is an amphibious enigma— a riddle wafting in unfathomable love, thumb in mouth, curled like a golden promise, a dreamscape reminding me of a flock of starlings forming a dancing cloud— I shudder at his vulnerability, recall a verse from the Quran:

“Do they not see the birds above with wings outspread or folded in? None holds them (aloft) except Ar Rahman, the Most Merciful One. Indeed He is, of all things, Seeing.”

The word Ar Rahman comes from Raham or "womb," the superlative form of merciful love—the most exalted of the ninety-nine beautiful names of God.

Driving back from the clinic in the fading light, I feel vulnerable and empowered at the same time. Hand on my belly, I imagine the warmth of the womb waters. As my husband opens the door, Yaseen, my two-year old shrieks in delight, arms thrown wide; the sight quickens my heartbeat and baby Yousuf, weeks away from being born, feels my burst of joy and starts kicking in response: Love was never spoken with more eloquence. And I, the poet in the house, had nothing to do with it.

Marc Camille Chaimowicz. "Your Place or Mine" – current exhibition at Jewish Museum, NYC.

More here, here and here.

by Claire Chambers

As I step, bleary-eyed, out of my PIA aeroplane from Manchester, UK, I notice a door sign warning of the danger of falling personnel. Partly amused, partly disconcerted, I head for the luggage carousel at Karachi's Jinnah International Airport.

In the car on our way to my hotel, we follow a man in a shalwar kameez the colour of lapis lazuli, one leg hitched over the tailgate of a Toyota Hilux, caressing the shaft of his gun. Our security guard occasionally uses his walkie-talkie to give a number and a crisp 'Roger' to a disembodied voice at the other end, which responds with another number and a 'Roger'. There must be some logic to it, but amidst my jet-lag pea-souper I can't see what.

A wall darkly proclaims: PREPARE ANY STRENGTH YOU CAN MUSTER AGAINST THEM. Countercultural stencils sunnily protest this authoritarianism with such slogans as 'I Am Karachi — United for Peace'. Banksy-style balloons brighten one Maersk Sealand container, and a lotus painted using truck-art techniques adorns a grim underpass. American sociologist Anita Weiss has regularly spent time in Pakistan since the 1970s. She is currently researching wall art, and calls the I Am Karachi group a 'guerrilla art movement', especially when it comes to the challenge they are sending out to sectarianism.

On the main road we see Land Cruisers rather than the Pajero jeeps I remember from 1990s Pakistan. Men hang off buses, and my eyes are assailed by a dizzying array of hoardings. KK Rehabilitation Centre. Handi Inn. Baithak Peshwari. On dusty slip roads, I notice a family eating their dinner under bedraggled trees on the pavement near the glittering Park Towers. Four men on the pavement are smiling, perspiring and conspiring. Yameen Chicken. Mutton and Beef Centre. WalkEaze. A school advertises its 'salient features' in businesslike bullet points. A beggar pleads at our car window on his bachche's behalf, exposing the lack of government capacity to deal with the country's grinding poverty.

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by Brooks Riley

by Dwight Furrow

It is natural to invoke beauty as the aesthetic ideal that winemakers strive to achieve and wine lovers seek to discover. Throughout much of the history of aesthetics beauty has named the highest form of aesthetic order. As Elaine Scarry writes, beauty is:

Sacred, lifesaving, having as precedent only those things which are themselves unprecedented, beauty has a fourth feature: it invites deliberation….Beauty almost without any effort of our own acquaints us with the mental event of conviction, and so pleasurable a mental state is this that ever afterwards one is willing to labour, struggle, wrestle with the world to locate enduring sources of conviction – to locate what is true. (Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just, 26-31)

For wine lovers scouring the globe for a glimpse of vinous perfection, Scarry's account of what beauty does surely rings true. However, although we toss the word beauty around quite freely, in the aesthetics of art it has fallen on hard times since early in the 20^th Century. With the display of Duchamp's upside down urinal in a New York art studio in 1917 and the mass atrocities of WW1 and the Holocaust haunting artistic production throughout the rest of the century, the idea of beauty no longer seemed to capture what the art world was selling. The problem was that by the 20^th Century beauty had been assimilated to what was "pretty", "charming", and easily accessible and had thus lost its power to enthrall or represent the more difficult aspects of human existence. Thus, the art world dumped beauty and embraced the sublime. Art became abstract, difficult, and for most of the public, inaccessible.

There are interesting parallels and cross-currents to this story about art that are beginning to unfold in the wine world today. In the past, prior to the 1980's, great wines were tough when first bottled taking years to develop in the cellar at which time they often developed aromas such as cigar box, old shoes and barnyard. Vintage variation was enormous especially in the storied vineyards of central France where unpredictable weather from the Atlantic Ocean inhibited the consistent ripening of grapes. In some years even great vineyards could produce only thin, weedy wines with harsh acidity and aggressive, under-ripe tannins prompting the addition of sugar to make the wine palatable. Furthermore, the presence of bacteria and the unpredictability of fermentations produced off flavors in the wine that contributed to a wine's character but also to a sense of adventure when opening a bottle. That was the good stuff. Vin ordinaire performed a plausible rendition of battery acid.

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