Veronique Greenwood in The New York Times:

Outside the kitchen door at the Kuala Belalong Field Studies Center in Brunei, on a number of trees near the balcony, there is a nest of very special ants. They explode.

This colony was studied in depth by scientists who, last week in the journal ZooKeys, published an in-depth description of the newly named species, called Colobopsis explodens, including a portion of their genome sequence. Workers of C. explodens have a distinctive, rather foul talent. When their nest is invaded, they rupture their own abdomens, releasing a sticky, bright yellow fluid laced with toxins on their attackers. Similar to honey bees that die after stinging, the exploded ants do not survive, but their sacrifice can help save the colony. Exploding ants have been known to science for more than 200 years, and the special ability for which they are named was first documented in 1916. But since 1935, no new species from the group had been officially named and described. To do this, ideally one needs to collect members of all the different castes in the colony, from worker to queen, write a detailed description of their appearance, and give the species a Latin name, among other things, said Alice Laciny, a graduate student at the Natural History Museum Vienna who is an author of the new paper.

“We knew they existed, and we did experiments on them,” she said, “but it wasn’t described as an official species yet.”

More here.

Jay Keyser at MIT Press:

When the history of modern theoretical linguistics is written, Morris Halle will be one of its chapter headings. Together with Noam Chomsky, his influence was seminal in turning linguistics from a descriptive discipline in which taxonomy counted for much and explanation for very little into the first explicit theory of the defining feature of homo sapiens, the ability to formulate and express an infinite number of thoughts. In this respect, the revolution wrought by Morris Halle and his colleague, Noam Chomsky, was akin to the Galilean revolution of the 17th century. Both led to profound changes in the way scientists thought about their domains.

I first experienced this revolution when I was a young graduate student at Yale University. Morris, a member of the foreign language section at MIT, was giving a talk at an American Mathematical Society meeting in New York City. The year was 1959. Morris was 36 years old. His talk was on Verner's Law. The effect of that talk on me was electric. I had come from two years of very traditional philological study at Oxford University where I concentrated in Old and Middle English. I had one year of graduate study at Yale under the tutelage of scholars like Bernard Bloch. And here in New York I was listening to an approach to the study of diachronic linguistics that was as radical in its way as the Galilean program was to the neo-scholastics who preceded him. If Morris was right, then everything I had been taught was not just wrong, it was meaningless.

More here.

Amia Srinivasan in the New York Review of Books:

All men are created equal—but in what sense equal? Obviously not in the sense of being endowed with the same attributes, abilities, wants, or needs: some people are smarter, kinder, and funnier than others; some want to climb mountains while others want to watch TV; and some require physical or emotional support to do things that others can do on their own. And presumably they are not “equal” in the sense of demanding identical treatment: a father can give aspirin to his sick child and not his healthy one without disrespecting the equality of his children. Rather, all humans are said to be equal in what philosophers call the “basic,” “abstract,” “deep,” or “moral” sense of equality. We are all, in some fundamental sense, and despite our various differences, of equal worth, demanding, in Ronald Dworkin’s famous phrase, “equal concern and respect.”

For many of the founding fathers, the principle of basic equality was consistent with some people being the property of others; in 1776 the abolitionist Thomas Day remarked that “if there be an object truly ridiculous in nature, it is an American patriot, signing resolutions of independency with the one hand, and with the other brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves.” A commitment to basic equality was also apparently consistent with “free” women being legally excluded from civic life. Today, the US’s commitment to basic equality is apparently consistent with not only enormous socioeconomic inequality, but also enormous inequality of opportunity, much of it still determined by race and gender.

The seeming compatibility of basic equality with gross material and social inequality has led more than one critic (Marx most obviously) to wonder if talk of being “created equal” is a hollow spiritual promise designed to placate those suffering from earthly misery. That basic equality is not such a hollow promise—that it means something substantial, and that it is crucial to our political morality—is the central thesis of Jeremy Waldron’s One Another’s Equals.

More here.

Carlo Invernizzi-Accetti and Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins in The Guardian:

Since Donald Trump’s election, the American left has asked itself tough questions about what it must do to respond to his rise. An equally important conversation needs to happen over the future of the American right. In a democratic system based on alternation in power, the left has an interest in the kind of opponent it is confronted with. When the other side is captured by far-right populism, the damage to democracy can be great.

From that point of view, Christian voters are a constituency that can play a key role in moving the right away from the likes of Trump. Their overwhelming support for him at the polls was essential to his success, but it seems to be at odds with fundamental Christian principles. This suggests there is scope for a different kind of conservative movement in this country.

Christian democracy, a political ideology embodied by figures like Germany’s Angela Merkel, contributed to establishing stable democracies in Europe in the aftermath of the second world war. The US was often deeply supportive of this process, yet never cultivated an analogous political movement at home. Now that it is facing a serious institutional threat of its own, it can perhaps learn from what it has long preached abroad.

More here.

From Quillette:

Quillette: What are some of the classic experiments in psychology that you think an educated person should know about?

Steven Pinker: Where to begin? I’d cite studies of illusions and biases, to remind people of the fallibility of our perceptual and cognitive faculties. These would include experiments on visual attention by the late Anne Treisman and others showing that people are unaware of visual material they don’t attend to, together with any experiment on memory showing how un-photographic our recollections are (for example, Elizabeth Loftus’s studies on the unreliability of eyewitness testimony, or even the low-tech study in which people are asked to draw a penny, an object they have seen thousands of times). Let’s add Slovic, Tversky, and Kahneman’s demonstrations of illusions in reasoning about probability and risk. Overconfidence and the Lake Wobegon Effect (everyone is above average). Cognitive dissonance and our self-serving rationalizations. The Fundamental Attribution Error — we overestimate the importance of individual traits, and underestimate the power of the situation. And the basic findings of behavioral genetics: that all individual differences are partly heritable.

Q: Who is the most underrated psychologist of the 20-21st Century?

SP: Judith Rich Harris, who was kicked out of the graduate program in my department (Harvard psychology) in the 1960s because she “didn’t fit the stereotype of a psychology grad student”), and after writing several textbooks, came out in 1998 with The Nurture Assumption, the first book on parenting and personality that took the results of behavioral genetics seriously. She showed that people (including psychologists) were deluded by the heritability of personality into overestimating the effects of parenting on personality, and that peers, not parents, are the primary socializers of children.

More here.

Michael Saler in The Weekly Standard:

Caution: Netflix’s Black Mirror may be hazardous to your health. This anthology series about the perils of modern technologies is one of the most captivating shows on television; with its talented casts, immersive worlds, and tricksy narratives, it approaches platinum heights in this new golden age of television. But be prepared to binge and cringe simultaneously, because it is also the darkest series being broadcast today. While laden with satirical humor, the often-harrowing episodes can leave an unsettling residue of anxiety.

The series premiered in Britain in 2011 with an episode, “The National Anthem,” that set the tone. An opinion-conscious prime minister is thrown into crisis when a popular member of the royal family (think Princess Diana) is kidnapped. Her terrified pleas for help are broadcast across the nation, together with the kidnapper’s condition for her release: The prime minister must have sexual intercourse with a pig on live television. The public ultimately supports this demand through their comments and “likes” online, driven as much by an unstated desire to witness the humiliating spectacle as by any concern for the princess. And it gets its wish. As the prime minister’s pained and sweaty exertions are broadcast, we see the viewers’ facial expressions change from amused disbelief to shock, disgust, and ultimately chagrin at their complicity in the dehumanizing spectacle. Those new to the series may experience a similar spectrum of emotions. “The National Anthem” may be the first episode, but it isn’t necessarily the best place to begin watching Black Mirror. Since it doesn’t matter in what order the shows are seen, the 2014 holiday special “White Christmas” or the third season’s “San Junipero” would each make a kinder—and more representative—starting point.

Black Mirror, which now runs to four seasons and 19 episodes, is unrelenting in its depiction of connectivity as a conduit for cruelty. A condemned murderer is repeatedly tortured in a privatized prison that doubles as a public attraction. A doctor with a malfunctioning brain implant meant to heighten his empathy to patients’ discomfort becomes so addicted to pain that he ecstatically slices off portions of his own body.

More here.

Jonathan Beckman in 1843 Magazine:

Jonathan Beckman in 1843 Magazine:

What Are Women Made Of

There are many kinds of open.
…………………………..—Audre Lorde

We are all ventricle, spine, lung, larynx, and gut.
Clavicle and nape, what lies forked in an open palm;

we are follicle and temple. We are ankle, arch,
sole. Pore and rib, pelvis and root

and tongue. We are wishbone and gland and molar
and lobe. We are hippocampus and exposed nerve

and cornea. Areola, pigment, melanin, and nails.
Varicose. Cellulite. Divining rod. Sinew and tissue,

saliva and silt. We are blood and salt, clay and aquifer.
We are breath and flame and stratosphere. Palimpsest

and bibelot and cloisonné fine lines. Marigold, hydrangea,
and dimple. Nightlight, satellite, and stubble. We are

pinnacle, plummet, dark circles, and dark matter.
A constellation of freckles and specters and miracles

and lashes. Both bent and erect, we are all give
and give back. We are volta and girder. Make an incision

in our nectary and Painted Ladies sail forth, riding the back
of a warm wind, plumed with love and things like love.

Crack us down to the marrow, and you may find us full
of cicada husks and sand dollars and salted maple taffy

weary of welding together our daydreams. All sweet tea,
razor blades, carbon, and patchwork quilts of Good God!

and Lord have mercy! Our hands remember how to turn
the earth before we do. Our intestinal fortitude? Cumulonimbus

streaked with saffron light. Our foundation? Not in our limbs
or hips; this comes first as an amen, a hallelujah, a suckling,

swaddled psalm sung at the cosmos’s breast. You want to
know what women are made of? Open wide and find out.

by Bianca Lynne Spriggs
from Poetry, April 2018

What Are Women Made Of

……There are many kinds of open.
…………………………..—Audre Lorde

We are all ventricle, spine, lung, larynx, and gut.
Clavicle and nape, what lies forked in an open palm;

we are follicle and temple. We are ankle, arch,
sole. Pore and rib, pelvis and root

and tongue. We are wishbone and gland and molar
and lobe. We are hippocampus and exposed nerve

and cornea. Areola, pigment, melanin, and nails.
Varicose. Cellulite. Divining rod. Sinew and tissue,

saliva and silt. We are blood and salt, clay and aquifer.
We are breath and flame and stratosphere. Palimpsest

and bibelot and cloisonné fine lines. Marigold, hydrangea,
and dimple. Nightlight, satellite, and stubble. We are

pinnacle, plummet, dark circles, and dark matter.
A constellation of freckles and specters and miracles

and lashes. Both bent and erect, we are all give
and give back. We are volta and girder. Make an incision

in our nectary and Painted Ladies sail forth, riding the back
of a warm wind, plumed with love and things like love.

Crack us down to the marrow, and you may find us full
of cicada husks and sand dollars and salted maple taffy

weary of welding together our daydreams. All sweet tea,
razor blades, carbon, and patchwork quilts of Good God!

and Lord have mercy! Our hands remember how to turn
the earth before we do. Our intestinal fortitude? Cumulonimbus

streaked with saffron light. Our foundation? Not in our limbs
or hips; this comes first as an amen, a hallelujah, a suckling,

swaddled psalm sung at the cosmos’s breast. You want to
know what women are made of? Open wide and find out.

by Bianca Lynne Spriggs
from Poetry, April 2018

Sarah Churchwell in The Guardian:

Sadly, the American dream is dead,” Donald Trump proclaimed when he announced his candidacy for president of the United States. It seemed an astonishing thing for a candidate to say; people campaigning for president usually glorify the nation they hope to lead, flattering voters into choosing them. But this reversal was just a taste of what was to come, as he revealed an unnerving skill at twisting what would be negative for anyone else into a positive for himself. By the time he won the election, Trump had flipped much of what many people thought they knew about the US on its head. In his acceptance speech he again pronounced the American dream dead, but promised to revive it. We were told that this dream of prosperity was under threat, so much so that a platform of “economic nationalism” carried the presidency.

Reading last rites over the American dream was disquieting enough. But throughout the campaign, Trump also promised to put America first, a pledge renewed – twice – in his inaugural address. It was a disturbing phrase; think pieces on the slogan’s history began to sprout up, explaining that it stretches back to efforts to keep the US out of the second world war.

In fact, “America first” has a much longer and darker history than that, one deeply entangled with the country’s brutal legacy of slavery and white nationalism, its conflicted relationship to immigration, nativism and xenophobia. Gradually, the complex and often terrible tale this slogan represents was lost to mainstream history – but kept alive by underground fascist movements. “America first” is, to put it plainly, a dog whistle. The expression’s backstory seems at first to uncannily anticipate Trump and (at least some of) his supporters, but the truth is that eruptions of American conservative populism are nothing new – and “America first” has been associated with them for well over a century. This is merely the latest iteration of a powerful strain of populist demagoguery in American history, from president Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) to Louisiana senator Huey Long a century later – one that now extends to Trump.

More here.

Yanis Varoufakis in The Guardian:

For a manifesto to succeed, it must speak to our hearts like a poem while infecting the mind with images and ideas that are dazzlingly new. It needs to open our eyes to the true causes of the bewildering, disturbing, exciting changes occurring around us, exposing the possibilities with which our current reality is pregnant. It should make us feel hopelessly inadequate for not having recognised these truths ourselves, and it must lift the curtain on the unsettling realisation that we have been acting as petty accomplices, reproducing a dead-end past. Lastly, it needs to have the power of a Beethoven symphony, urging us to become agents of a future that ends unnecessary mass suffering and to inspire humanity to realise its potential for authentic freedom.

No manifesto has better succeeded in doing all this than the one published in February 1848 at 46 Liverpool Street, London. Commissioned by English revolutionaries, The Communist Manifesto (or the Manifesto of the Communist Party, as it was first published) was authored by two young Germans – Karl Marx, a 29-year-old philosopher with a taste for epicurean hedonism and Hegelian rationality, and Friedrich Engels, a 28-year-old heir to a Manchester mill.

As a work of political literature, the manifesto remains unsurpassed. Its most infamous lines, including the opening one (“A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism”), have a Shakespearean quality. Like Hamlet confronted by the ghost of his slain father, the reader is compelled to wonder: “Should I conform to the prevailing order, suffering the slings and arrows of the outrageous fortune bestowed upon me by history’s irresistible forces? Or should I join these forces, taking up arms against the status quo and, by opposing it, usher in a brave new world?”

For Marx and Engels’ immediate readership, this was not an academic dilemma, debated in the salons of Europe. Their manifesto was a call to action, and heeding this spectre’s invocation often meant persecution, or, in some cases, lengthy imprisonment. Today, a similar dilemma faces young people: conform to an established order that is crumbling and incapable of reproducing itself, or oppose it, at considerable personal cost, in search of new ways of working, playing and living together? Even though communist parties have disappeared almost entirely from the political scene, the spirit of communism driving the manifesto is proving hard to silence.

More here.