Peter Martin in Aeon:

In the United States, the name Noah Webster (1758-1843) is synonymous with the word ‘dictionary’. But it is also synonymous with the idea of America, since his first unabridged American Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1828 when Webster was 70, blatantly stirred the young nation’s thirst for cultural independence from Britain.

Webster saw himself as a saviour of the American language who would rescue it from the corrupting influence of British English and prevent it from fragmenting into a multitude of dialects. But as a linguist and lexicographer, he quickly ran into trouble with critics, educators, the literati, legislators and much of the common reading public over the bizarre nature of his proposed language reforms. These spelling reforms – for example, wimmen for ‘women’, greeve for ‘grieve’, meen for ‘mean’ and bred for ‘bread’ – were all intended to simplify spelling by making it read the way that words were pronounced, yet they brought him the pain of ridicule for decades to come.

His definitions were regarded as his strong suit, but even they frequently rambled into essays, and many readers found them overly aligned with New England usage, to the point of distortion. Surfeited with a Christian reading of words, his religious or moral agenda also shaped many of his definitions into mini-sermons or moral lessons rather than serving as clarifications of meaning.

More here.

Pamela B. Paresky in Psychology Today:

Jordanian-American Natasha Tynes is an award-winning author who faced government prosecution in Egypt for her work defending free speech and a free press. In May, Tynes saw a Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) worker eating on the train—something she understood to be prohibited for all riders. She asked the employee about it. The woman responded, “Worry about yourself.” Frustrated that she rides the Metro hungry in order to comply with the rules while someone she understood to have the power to ticket her for eating was not complying with the rules, herself, Tynes “tweet-shamed” the employee by writing a complaint to WMATA and posting it on Twitter along with a photo of the woman eating.

Horrible behavior? I’d say so. Disappointing to see someone behave that way? Sure. But in a world in which online shaming is the new norm, it’s not surprising. What is surprising is that less than 45 minutes after posting the tweet, Tynes deleted it, apologized for what she called a “short-lived expression of frustration,” and contacted WMATA to say it was an “error in judgment” for her to report the employee. She even asked that WMATA not discipline the employee.

But Twitter’s outrage machine turned on her. She became “Metro Molly.” The independent publishing company set to distribute her novel tweeted that Tynes had done “something truly horrible” and they had “no desire to be involved with anyone who thinks it’s acceptable to jeopardize a person’s safety and employment in this way.” Her publishing deal was canceled.

Does this seem like a high price to pay for a 45-minute lapse in judgment? Or even for acting like, well, a jerk?

More here.

Peter Beinart in The Atlantic:

The conventions of mainstream journalism make it difficult to challenge America’s self-conception as a peace-loving nation. But the unlovely truth is this: Throughout its history, America has attacked countries that did not threaten it. To carry out such wars, American leaders have contrived pretexts to justify American aggression. That’s what Donald Trump’s administration—and especially its national security adviser, John Bolton—is doing now with Iran.

The historical examples abound. William McKinley’s administration sought a pretext for war in 1898, when—driven by the desire to evict Spain from its colonies in the Caribbean—it ignored evidence that an internal explosion, not a Spanish attack, had blown up the USS Maine in Havana’s harbor. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson exaggerated a North Vietnamese attack on U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin to win congressional approval to escalate the Vietnam War. In 1986, Ronald Reagan’s administration sent warplanes toward Libya’s coast to provoke the missile fire that would justify an American bombing campaign.

More here.

R. Jeffrey Smith in the New York Times:

Griffin was referring to a revolutionary new type of weapon, one that would have the unprecedented ability to maneuver and then to strike almost any target in the world within a matter of minutes. Capable of traveling at more than 15 times the speed of sound, hypersonic missiles arrive at their targets in a blinding, destructive flash, before any sonic booms or other meaningful warning. So far, there are no surefire defenses. Fast, effective, precise and unstoppable — these are rare but highly desired characteristics on the modern battlefield. And the missiles are being developed not only by the United States but also by China, Russia and other countries.

Griffin is now the chief evangelist in Washington for hypersonics, and so far he has run into few political or financial roadblocks.

More here.

Howard W. French at The New York Review of Books:

There is a broad strain in Western thought that has long treated Africa as existing outside of history and progress; it ranges from some of our most famous thinkers to the entertainment that generations of children have grown up with. There are Disney cartoons that depict barely clothed African cannibals merrily stewing their victims in giant pots suspended above pit fires.¹ Among intellectuals there is a wealth of appalling examples. Voltaire said of Africans, “A time will come, without a doubt, when these animals will know how to cultivate the earth well, to embellish it with houses and gardens, and to know the routes of the stars. Time is a must, for everything.” Hegel’s views of Africa were even more sweeping: “What we properly understand by Africa, is the Unhistorical, Undeveloped Spirit, still involved in the conditions of mere nature, and which had to be presented here only as on the threshold of the World’s History.” One can hear echoes of such views even today from Western politicians. Donald Trump referred to a number of African nations as “shithole countries” in 2018, and French president Emmanuel Macron said in 2017, “The challenge Africa faces is completely different and much deeper” than those faced by Europe. “It is civilizational.”

more here.

James Parker at The Atlantic:

It was the event of his lifetime, and yet it had been a dull event. The language which now would sing of this extraordinary vault promised to be as flat as an unstrung harp.” In such terms did Norman Mailer, 50 years ago, frame the first landing of men on the moon. And in such terms did he also frame himself, the shaky, earthbound Homer who had to write about it. Mailer was in a funk. Low-grade depression had unstrung his harp. His marriage was going down the tubes; his just-concluded campaign for mayor of New York City (he came in fourth in a five-man race) had left him with “a huge boredom about himself”; he felt fat. Now Life magazine had given him a heavyweight assignment: Go to Houston and then Cape Kennedy to cover the Apollo 11 mission. Mailer on the moonshot: loads of words, loads of money. A big deal for Life magazine. And for Mailer? Grim opportunism. Out of tune, bardically bereft, plucking (as it were) flaccid strands of sheep’s gut, he was ripe for anticlimax. But he needed the cash.

more here.

Tom Holland at Literary Review:

Herculaneum, a town on the Bay of Naples that was buried beneath volcanic ash when Vesuvius erupted in AD 79, has only been partially excavated. Some buildings stand open to the sky; others, such as the theatre, can only be accessed through cramped and winding tunnels; many lie entirely entombed within rock. A visitor’s reaction to this can be an interesting gauge of character. The glass-half-full person will exult in the chance to walk the streets of an ancient city. The glass-half-empty person will wish there were more streets to walk. In Herculaneum, where furniture, bread and figs were all carbonised by the pyroclastic surge, the trace elements of life as it was lived in the heyday of the Roman Empire can serve to tantalise as well as satisfy the curious. To study the distant past is always to be greedy. It is to be like Orpheus, snatching after ghosts.

We can never know enough. This is not an exclusively modern feeling. Two thousand years ago, when Vesuvius erupted, a longing to make sense of what was happening lured antiquity’s most celebrated encyclopedist to his death.

more here.

Erin O’Donnell in Harvard Magazine:

HOW DID LIFE begin on Earth? On a young, rocky planet, how might chemicals have come together in just the right way to form the very first cells? How did those primitive cells start behaving like life: growing, dividing, and passing on advantageous traits to the next generation? The origins of life are especially murky because the geological record—the layers of rock and embedded fossils that hold clues about the history of Earth and life—disappears at roughly 3.9 billion years ago, erased by movements in the planet’s crust. As a result, scientists lack direct evidence for conditions on early Earth, including proof of the molecules that might have swirled in primordial ponds and formed the building blocks of life. This presents a host of questions, precisely the kind of big questions to which Jack Szostak is drawn. He and others believe they can reconstruct in the lab the long pathway that led from chemicals in space, to Earth’s formation, to pre-life chemistry on the planet, to early protocells, and finally to advanced cells with metabolism and protein synthesis. Sprawling explorations like these require expertise in many fields, including chemistry and biochemistry, geology and geophysics, and astronomy.

Szostak (pronounced SHAH-stak) may be the ideal person to pursue answers. A Nobel laureate, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, professor of chemistry and chemical biology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Rich Distinguished Investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, he is described by others as a brilliant, driven scientist. But he’s also known for mild-mannered humility, including a willingness to dive deeply into subjects that are new to him, and for his collegiality, for helping to foster idea-sharing that is moving science forward.

His own research focuses on one segment of the pathway to life: the protocell, “a really, really simple primordial cell that could assemble from chemicals that were around early on, on the surface of Earth,” Szostak explains. He hopes to understand how it would grow and divide and start to replicate, and eventually evolve. “We may not know what actually happened, but maybe we can work out different possible paths,” he says. “All we can do is try to assemble things in the lab that seem plausible.”

More here.

Matthew Warren in Nature:

Some time in the past 160,000 years or so, the remains of an ancient human ended up in a cave high on the Tibetan Plateau in China. Perhaps the individual died there, or parts were taken there by its kin or an animal scavenger. In just a few years, the flesh disappeared and the bones started to deteriorate. Then millennia dripped by. Glaciers retreated and then returned and retreated again, and all that was left behind was a bit of jawbone with some teeth. The bone gradually became coated in a mineral crust, and the DNA from this ancient ancestor was lost to time and weather. But some signal from the past persisted.

Deep in the hominin’s teeth, proteins lingered, degraded but still identifiable. When scientists analysed them earlier this year, they detected collagen, a structural support protein found in bone and other tissues. And in its chemical signature was a single amino-acid variant that isn’t present in the collagen of modern humans or Neanderthals — instead, it flagged the jawbone as belonging to a member of the mysterious hominin group called Denisovans¹. The discovery of a Denisovan in China was a major landmark. It was the first individual found outside Denisova Cave in Siberia, where all other remains of its kind had previously been identified. And the site’s location on the Tibetan Plateau — more than 3,000 metres above sea level — suggested that Denisovans had been able to live in very cold, low-oxygen environments.

But the finding also marked another milestone: it was the first time that an ancient hominin had been identified using only proteins. It is one of the most striking discoveries yet for the fledgling field of palaeoproteomics, in which scientists analyse ancient proteins to answer questions about the history and evolution of humans and other animals. Proteins, which stick around in fossils for much longer than DNA does, could allow scientists to explore whole new eras of prehistory and use molecular tools to examine bones from a much broader part of the world than is currently possible, according to the field’s proponents.

More here.

Sanjukta Paul in The American Prospect:

Antitrust law, established originally to limit corporate power, has become its friend. Think about the following anomalies:

• If a group of independent truck drivers forms an association to jointly bargain their prices, that combination is a cartel: automatically illegal, perhaps criminal. But if the same truck drivers go to work for a company that charges customers for their services on a single price schedule, there is no antitrust violation, even though this arrangement suppresses price competition precisely to the same extent. What is illegal outside a corporation is legal within it.

• If a group of small suppliers gets together to jointly bargain with Amazon for a better deal, that too is an illegal cartel. But if Amazon contracts with them and charges the same price for their goods, there is nothing illegal about it.

• If drivers for Uber join in an association to demand higher pay, the competition authorities currently assume that their joint action is illegal. But Uber itself has evaded antitrust scrutiny even though it fixes the prices that customers pay for the drivers’ services.

All these anomalies stem from the same double standard. Antitrust law has come to reinforce the power of large business firms, while preventing workers, small producers, and micro-enterprises from exercising collective power.

More here.

Sean Carroll in Preposterous Universe:

Games play an important, and arguably increasing, role in human life. We play games on our computers and our phones, watch other people compete in games, and occasionally break out the cards or the Monopoly set. What is the origin of this human impulse, and what makes for a great game? Frank Lantz is both a working game designer and an academic who thinks about the nature of games and gaming. We discuss what games are, contrast the challenges of Go and Poker and other games, and investigate both the “dark energy” that games can sometimes induce and the ways they can help us become better people.

More here.

Rashid Khalidi in the New York Review of Books:

“You cannot do without us,” Lord Curzon condescendingly told the Indians over whom he ruled as British imperial viceroy more than a century ago. As the Trump family rubbed shoulders with the Windsors during their recent visit to London, there was no mistaking the difference between the real aristocracy and the trumped-up one. However, Jared Kushner, presidential son-in-law and senior adviser responsible for crafting a Middle East peace plan, does have something in common with Lord Curzon and his colonial ilk.

In an interview with Axios shown on HBO on June 2, shortly before he arrived in the UK, Kushner cast doubt on the feasibility of independent Palestinian self-rule, declaring, “we’ll have to see,” adding, “the hope is that they over time can become capable of governing.” When asked if Palestinians should ever be able to enjoy freedom from “Israeli government or military interference,” he said only that this was “a high bar.” After suggesting that Kushner had consulted few if any Palestinians over the two years during which his peace plan was in the works, his interviewer asked if he understood why the Palestinians did not trust him. Kushner responded curtly, “I’m not here to be trusted.”

This was not the first time the Palestinians have been told they cannot govern themselves, that they are obliged to remain under foreign tutelage, and do not warrant being consulted about their national future.

More here.

Devorah Goldman in National Affairs:

Ronald Dworkin has written in these pages about the evolving identity of the American physician, from gentleman-doctor to benefactor to technician to scientist. In recent years, a combination of new laws and technologies have again redefined the doctor, this time as a sort of data-entry clerk. As Dr. Robert Wachter and health-policy consultant Jeff Goldsmith put it in the Harvard Business Review, “Only in health care, it seems, could we find a way to ‘automate’ that ended up adding staff and costs!” A taste of what today’s doctors must contend with can be found on the “Official Website of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology,” one of several government sites devoted to explaining Medicare to physicians:

Regardless of whether you’re reporting on the Advancing Care Information Objectives and Measures, or on the Advancing Care Information Transition Objectives and Measures, using certified [Medicare Electronic Health Records (EHR)] technology can aid you in the process. It may help you attain the 25 points allocated to Advancing Care Information reporting as part of the [Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS)] program….Using a certified EHR technology is required for reporting Advancing Care Information measures for most clinicians…and it may make your overall MIPS reporting easier.

The jargon-laden instructions go on to provide links to several different webpages that discuss exceptions to these rules, explain the various technologies mentioned, and go into greater detail about MIPS itself. These do not include CMS’s many instructions for Medicare reporting and compensation, which can be found on the CMS website, or those provided on Medicare.gov, which is separate from CMS.gov. Given the complexity of reporting requirements, it isn’t surprising that physicians have begun to hire medical scribes, additional administrators, or consultants specially trained in “health IT” to navigate Medicare’s reimbursement system. The costs of these newly created positions are not covered by Medicare: Doctors must pay for the services out of pocket or spend their working hours taking endless notes and filling out forms instead of caring for patients. One large-scale survey in 2016 found that, of 17,236 physicians who responded, only 14% said “they had the time they needed to provide the highest standards of care.”

More here.

Donal McNeil Jr. in The New York Times:

In 1998, with 250,000 of its citizens dying of AIDS each year, South Africa’s Parliament legalized the suspension of drug patents so the government could import generic drugs. Almost immediately, 39 drug companies sued to overturn the law, naming the country’s beloved president, Nelson Mandela, in their suit. Following international condemnation, the suit was dropped in 2001.

…Another turning point came in 2001, when Cipla, an Indian company, offered H.I.V. drugs to Doctors Without Borders for $350 per patient per year. The offer revealed the huge markups the brand-name drug makers had been profiting from, and introduced the Indian pharmaceutical industry as a rival. “Cipla was a driver for change,” said David Reddy, chief executive of the Medicines for Malaria Venture, one of many public-private partnerships created to guide industry research. The George W. Bush administration founded or supported the agencies that became the biggest buyers of generics: the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief; the President’s Malaria Initiative; and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

More here.

Original Fire

—for Aza

I watch my daughter build a fire
not from a match or cigarette lighter
but from the original elements,
two sticks, a length of sinew, friction.
She has formed a cup of juniper shreds,
and when she spins out a black ember
and breathes it to life
she transfers the radiant pebble
into the nest and breathes again.
Sparks fly from her lips.
A dove of flame bursts from between her hands.
She speaks to the spark
until the words catch and burn
and I think, here is my daughter
who is innocent of all things
yet from whose lips
the terrible and merciful
flame flies out, the truth, the fire.

by Louise Erdrich
from Literary Hub

Isabella Hammad in the New York Review of Books:

Adam Dannoun, the protagonist of Elias Khoury’s powerful new novel, calls himself a child of the ghetto. He does not mean the Warsaw ghetto — although, growing up in the newly established state of Israel, he allows his university colleagues to make that assumption. He means the “ghetto” of the Palestinian town of Lydda, created by Jewish forces who uprooted tens of thousands of Palestinians on a death march in one of the bloodiest massacres of the 1948 Nakba. (That term, which Arabs use for the founding of the Jewish state, means “catastrophe.”) Adam, a baby at the time, was one of those who remained.

Through layers and levels of storytelling — we are in familiar Khoury territory here, moving in and out of various narrations — “Children of the Ghetto” ponders the silence of those who stayed in Lydda. To survive in the new state they lived “as invisible people.” Why were they silent — to avoid being killed? Because they had given up hope? Or because what they had gone through was unspeakable, an experience for which “silence is more eloquent than words”?

More here.

Michael Greshko in National Geographic:

But a new study shows that many species plan out intricate detours to reach their prey—smarts usually associated with far bigger creatures.

The arachnids, already well known for their colors and elaborate mating rituals, have sharp vision and an impressive awareness of three-dimensional space. (See “Surprise: Jumping Spiders Can See More Colors Than You Can.”)

“Their vision is more on par with vertebrates,” says Damian Elias of the University of California, Berkeley, who wasn’t involved in the new research. “And that allows them to do things that are physically impossible for other animals that size.”

Jumping spiders of the subfamily Spartaeinae (spar-TAY-in-ay) are particularly ambitious—they eat other spiders. Researchers suspect that preying on other predators requires extra intelligence and cunning.

More here.

Robert Wiblin and Keiran Harris in 80,000 Hours:

It can often feel hopeless to be an activist seeking social change on an obscure issue where most people seem opposed or at best indifferent to you. But according to a new book by Professor Cass Sunstein, they shouldn’t despair. Large social changes are often abrupt and unexpected, arising in an environment of seeming public opposition.

The Communist Revolution in Russia spread so swiftly it confounded even Lenin. Seventy years later the Soviet Union collapsed just as quickly and unpredictably.

In the modern era we have gay marriage, #metoo and the Arab Spring, as well as nativism, Euroskepticism and Hindu nationalism.

How can a society that so recently seemed to support the status quo bring about change in years, months, or even weeks?

Sunstein — co-author of Nudge, Obama White House official, and by far the most cited legal scholar of the late 2000s — aims to unravel the mystery and figure out the implications in his new book How Change Happens.

More here.