Today marks the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, a real if not full step towards freedom and justice in the United States. Over at The Root:

January 1, 2013, marks the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, and in light of the historical milestone, two educators — Deborah Willis, New York University photographic historian, and Barbara Krauthamer, historian of slavery at University of Massachusetts-Amherst — created Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans and the End of Slavery, a book of photographs that shows what freedom looked like for blacks around the time of emancipation and reveals the role African Americans played in gaining their own freedom. The two scholars spoke to The Root about the history behind the photos and how there's more to these stills than meets the eye.

George Dvorsky in io9:

1. A Cyborg Competes Against Able-Bodied Athletes at the Olympics

For the first time ever in Olympic history, a double-amputee raced alongside able-bodied athletes. Nicknamed “Blade Runner,” South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius’s remarkable achievement raised as much enthusiasm as it did concern — some observers felt that his advanced prosthetic “Cheetahs” gave him an unfair advantage over the other athletes. But while Pistorius failed to medal, his remarkable achievement signified the dawn of the cyborg age.

2. NASA Starts to Work on a Faster-Than-Light Warp Drive

Speaking at the 100 Year Starship 2012 Public Symposiumearlier this year, physicist Harold White stunned the aeronautics world when he announced that he and his team at NASA had begun work on the development of a faster-than-light warp drive. His proposed design, an ingenious re-imagining of an Alcubierre Drive, may eventually result in an engine that can transport a spacecraft to the nearest star in a matter of weeks — and all without violating Einstein’s law of relativity. Though still in the proof-of-concept phase, White and his colleagues are trying to turn theory into practice — and potentially change the nature of space travel as we know it.

3. Scientists Enhance the Intelligence of Primates with a Chip

Back in September, scientists demonstrated that a brain implant could improve thinking ability in primates — and by a factor of 10 percent. By implanting an electrode array into the cerebral cortex of monkeys, researchers were able to restore — and even improve — their decision-making abilities. The implications for possible therapies are far-reaching, including potential treatments for cognitive disorders and brain injuries. And it also means the era of animal uplifting has begun.

Noam Chomsky and Michael Kasenbacher in Reader Supported News:

The question I would like to ask is what is really wanted work? Maybe we could start with your personal life and your double career in linguistics and political activism? Do you like that kind of work?

If I had the time I would spend far more time doing work on language, philosophy, cognitive science, topics that are intellectually very interesting. But a large part of my life is given to one or another form of political activity: reading, writing, organising, activism and so on. Which is worth doing, it's necessary but it's not really intellectually challenging. Regarding human affairs we either understand nothing, or it's pretty superficial. It's hard work to get the data and put it all together but it's not terribly challenging intellectually. But I do it because it's necessary. The kind of work that should be the main part of life is the kind of work you would want to do if you weren't being paid for it. It's work that comes out of your own internal needs, interests and concerns.

The philosopher Frithjof Bergmann says that most people don't know what kind of activities they really want to do. He calls that 'the poverty of desire.' I find this to be true when I talk to a lot of my friends. Did you always know what you wanted to do?

That's a problem I never had – for me there was always too much that I wanted to do. I'm not sure how widespread this is – take, say, a craftsman, I happen to be no good with tools, but take someone who can build things, fix things, they really want to do it. They love doing it: 'if there's a problem I can solve it'. Or just plain physical labour – that's also gratifying. If you work on command then of course it's just drudgery but if you do the very same thing out of your own will or interest it's exciting and interesting and appealing. I mean that's why people look for work – gardening for example. So you've had a hard week, you have the weekend off, the kids are running around, you could just lie down to sleep but it's much more fun to be gardening or building something or doing something else.

It's an old insight, not mine. Wilhelm von Humboldt, who did some of the most interesting work on this, once pointed out that if an artisan produces a beautiful object on command we may admire what he did but we despise what he is – he's a tool in the hands of others. If on the other hand he creates that same beautiful object out of his own will we admire it and him and he's fulfilling himself.

Katie Engelhart interviews Zizek in Salon:

You have said before: “I am a philosopher, not a prophet.” And yet, your followers are remarkably pious; many worship you as a prophet. Why?

Well, I’m ambiguous on this. On the one hand, I return to a more classical Marxism. Like: ‘It cannot last! This is all crazy! The hour of reckoning will come, blah blah blah.’

Also, I really hate all of this politically correct, cultural studies bullshit. If you mention the phrase “postcolonialism,” I say, “Fuck it!” Postcolonialism is the invention of some rich guys from India who saw that they could make a good career in top Western universities by playing on the guilt of white liberals.

So you offer respite to the 20-something who wants to escape the fruits of postmodernism: political correctness, gender studies, etc.?

Yes, yes! That’s good!

But here I also have a bit of megalomania. I almost conceive of myself as a Christ figure.OK! Kill me! I’m ready to sacrifice myself. But the cause will remain! And so on…

But, paradoxically, I despise public appearances. This is why I almost stopped teaching entirely. The worst thing for me is contact with students. I like universities without students. And I especially hate American students. They think you owe them something. They come to you … Office hours!

Berndnaut Smilde. Nimbus II. Hotel MariaKapel, Hoorn. 2012.

Lambda print.

More here and here.

Rashid Latif Ansari:

The very next day that 2013 is ushered in, I would step in to the 83^rd year of my life, leaving me little time to do much. However, I resolve to devote my remaining time and energy to strive for the reversal of the centuries old myth of male superiority, which was only due to a single male attribute, the greater muscular power. With the advancements in science and technology, the muscular power has, and will have, to give in to the brain power, in which females are exhibiting greater prowess. Since 80’s women in the Western colleges are out numbering and outperforming men. Women bring and nurture new life, build homes and societies and rarely take part in criminal activities that take away life and destroy properties. They live longer and lead much healthier life than men. Leaving aside muscular power, what else men can boast about for their superiority? Allow me to take couple of minutes of your time to quote the findings of Greg Hampikian, a professor of biology and criminal justice at Boise State University, USA:

· Much against the myth of male lineage, ‘an uninterrupted, intimate and essential maternal connection defines our species.’

· ‘Women are both necessary and sufficient for reproduction, and men are neither. From the production of the first cell (egg) to the development of the fetus and the birth and breast-feeding of the child, fathers can be absent. They can be at work, at home, in prison or at war, living or dead.’

· ‘Your life as an egg actually starts in your mother’s developing ovary, before she was born; you were wrapped in your mother’s fetal body as it developed within your grandmother.’

· ‘After the two of you left Grandma’s womb, you enjoyed the protection of your mother’s prepubescent ovary. Then, sometime between 12 and 50 years after the two of you left your grandmother, you burst forth and were sucked by her fimbriae into the fallopian tube. You glided along the oviduct, surviving happily on the stored nutrients and genetic messages that Mom packed for you.’

· ‘Then, at some point, your father spent a few minutes close by, but then left. A little while later, you encountered some very odd tiny cells that he had shed. They did not merge with you, or give you any cell membranes or nutrients — just an infinitesimally small packet of DNA, less than one-millionth of your mass.’

· ‘Over the next nine months, you stole minerals from your mother’s bones and oxygen from her blood, and you received all your nutrition, energy and immune protection from her. By the time you were born your mother had contributed six to eight pounds of your weight. Then as a parting gift, she swathed you in billions of bacteria from her birth canal and groin that continue to protect your skin, digestive system and general health. In contrast, your father’s 3.3 picograms of DNA comes out to less than one pound of male contribution since the beginning of Homo sapiens 107 billion babies ago.’

· ‘If a woman wants to have a baby without a man, she just needs to secure sperm (fresh or frozen) from a donor (living or dead). The only technology the self-impregnating woman needs is a straw.’

· ‘Recently, the geneticist J. Craig Venter showed that the entire genetic material of an organism can be synthesized by a machine and then put into what he called an “artificial cell.” Mr. Venter started with a fully functional cell, then swapped out its DNA. In doing so, he unwittingly demonstrated that the female component of sexual reproduction, the egg cell, cannot be manufactured, but the male can.’

· ‘If all the men on earth died tonight, the species could continue on frozen sperm. If the women disappear, it’s extinction.’

Keeping Greg’s beautiful expose’ in mind and recollecting the shameful attacks of terrorists on unarmed civilians, recently targeting even a school going girl, Malala (Pakistan), the wanton killing of school children in Newton USA and the latest barbaric act of gang rape (Delhi, India) culminating in an un imaginable torturous death of an innocent victim, a young woman, I feel that it is high time that the women take the driving seat and transform this world from the mayhem created by men to a peaceful, considerate and compassionate planet.

In 2013, I will contribute my humble bit towards this cause. Will you too???

More here. (Note: Thanks to dear friend Javed Jabbar)

Gary Marcus in The New Yorker:

For me, much of the past year revolved around discussions prompted by a book of mine that was published in January, called “Guitar Zero,” about the science of learning and my own adventures in learning guitar at the age of forty. The basic premise was that the scientific evidence for a widespread view called the “critical-period effect” was far weaker than widely supposed. The critical-period effect is the idea that you can’t do certain things—like learn a language, or learn an instrument—unless you start early in life. It’s a discouraging thought for anyone past adolescence. But, recently, the evidence for this idea had started to unwind.

…Learning a new skill can also have unexpected benefits. Recently, the neuroscientist Nina Kraus published a pile of new studies that show that learning about music can facilitate getting better at other things, like language skills and hearing in noisy places—and can do so in ways that last for decades. (Her first studies were with children; other studies are now in progress to see if the same holds true for lessons taken by adults). Music training can help the brain better decompose the elements of sound—in ways that Kraus was able to directly measure in the lab—and seems to improve working memory, too. And, in another recent study, a team of Canadian researchers found evidence that a mere twenty days of music lessons can lead to better scores on a test of verbal intelligence. Moreover, whether or not picking up a new skill makes you smarter, it can certainly make you happier. We can’t all be rock stars. But, as the cliché goes, the journey can be every bit as rewarding as the destination. A New Year’s resolution shouldn’t just be about becoming great at something. It should be about becoming a better or happier or more fulfilled person. Whether your dream is to play piano, cook steak sous-vide, or finally learn to speak French, the lesson from all this new research is clear: there is no better time than now to take on something new. Happy New Year!

More here.

Emma Pearson in The New York Times:

I jogged into the Stanford Cancer Clinic with my boyfriend, the youngest people there by two decades. We stood there sweating and holding hands, a jarring sight in the sickly light. “You are 18, right?” the receptionist asked. Behind me, a woman so gaunt that her cheekbones protruded rolled by in a wheelchair. The oncologist called me alone to the exam room, and I told her the story I had revealed to more doctors than friends: I carry the BRCA1 mutation, which gives you a 98 percent chance of developing cancer. When my family found out that I might have inherited the mutation from my mother, we took it as a given that I would get tested. Scientists, atheists and lawyers, we are compulsively rational. Yet when I learned I carried the mutation, I felt the cruel weight of a paradox: you can never know whether you want to know until you already do.

At Stanford, I study artificial intelligence, in which math is used to resolve these sorts of dilemmas. My teachers claim that gaining information never hurts. It can be proved mathematically that a robot with more information never makes worse decisions But we are not robots. Our eyes don’t filigree the world with coordinates and probabilities, and they can be blinded by tears. Still, we, too, display a preference for information. We dislike uncertainty so strongly that we sometimes even prefer bad news. One study of people at risk for a terminal disease found that those who learned they were going to die from it were happier a year later than those who remained uncertain about their fates. Most people have a deep intuition that a life lived cleareyed has inherent value, independent of whether the truth makes you happy. But surely this has limits. I know there are some things I do not want to know: which other girls my boyfriend finds attractive or the day and manner of my death. The truth can hurt in two ways. It can worsen your options: you can’t live as happily with a significant other after learning of his infidelity. Or it can make you irrational: hearing about terrorists targeting airplanes may lead you to drive instead of fly, though planes remain much safer than cars.

So was I wrong to unwind my double helix?

More here.

From MIT Technology Review:

The quantum vacuum has fascinated physicists ever since Hendrik Casimir and Dirk Polder suggested in 1948 that it would exert a force on a pair of narrowly separated conducting plates. Their idea was eventually confirmed when the force was measured in 1997. Just how to exploit this force is still not clear, however.

In recent years, a new way of thinking about the quantum vacuum has emerged which has vastly more potential. And today, one physicist describes how it could be used to create propulsion.

Before we discuss that, let’s track back a little. According to quantum mechanics, any vacuum will be filled with electromagnetic waves leaping in and out of existence. It turns out that these waves can have various measurable effects, such as the Casimir-Polder force.

The new approach focuses on the momentum associated with these electromagnetic fields rather than the force they exert. The question is whether it is possible to modify this momentum because, if you can, you should receive an equal and opposite kick. That’s what rocket scientists call propulsion.

Today, Alex Feigel at the Soreq Nuclear Research Center, a government lab in Yavne Israel, suggests an entirely new way to modify the momentum of the quantum vacuum and how this can be exploited to generate propulsion.

More here.

Justin E. H. Smith at Academia.edu:

The fact that animals were for a long period of European history tried and punished ascriminals is, to the extent that this is known at all, generally bracketed or dismissed as amere curiosity, a cultural quirk. Yet as a few scholars have understood over the past twocenturies or so, this fact lies at the intersection of a number of fundamental questions of jurisprudence, moral philosophy, philosophical anthropology (particularly the study of ritual and sacrifice, and the relationship between humans and animals), the history of religion and of the emergence of a secular sphere. The idea that animals are suitable for trial and punishment strikes us today as so completely erroneous because our jurisprudence is based on the conviction that in order to be an appropriate target of blameand punishment, a being must be a rational, moral agent. This means in turn that in order for the trial and prosecution of animals to make sense within a given culture, that culturemust be operating either with a very different conception of where the boundaries of suchagency lie, or it must have a very different conception of what it is we are doing when we blame and punish. It is eminently worthwhile moreover to figure out where the differencelies, since in doing so we may hope to gain new insight into the philosophicalcommitments underlying our own conception of agency, or our own understanding of the purpose and justice of punishment, or both.

More here.

Berit Brogaard in Psychology Today:

It's the second night at the same restaurant. You order the Chilean cabernet. It's reasonably priced at $32. The waiter disappears and after what seems to be hours he comes back with a different Chilean wine—not one on the wine list. “We are out of the Chilean cabernet,” he says and decisively places the new bottle on the table. “But I can give you this exclusive Chilean blend for only $7 more. It’s an excellent bottle.” As if in a trance you quietly nod in agreement. The con artist opens and pours. Déjà vu! Except last time it was a French Syrah. This time you and your partner agreed you wouldn't spend more than around $30 on wine, yet once again you ended up with a bottle closer to $40. Sales trick or not, it’s plainly obvious that you bought right into it.

You walk into a computer store intending to purchase one of those teensy $300 notebooks for your teen daughter but walk out with a $2,300 MacBook Air. It didn't feel like a spur-of-the-moment buy. Somewhere along the way your intentions shifted, and at the time you actually thought it was a brilliant idea to reach into your pocket for an additional $2,000. You are not quite sure how it happened, and now it’s too late.

More here.

From Scientific American:

Can heterosexual men and women ever be “just friends”? Few other questions have provoked debates as intense, family dinners as awkward, literature as lurid, or movies as memorable. Still, the question remains unanswered. Daily experience suggests that non-romantic friendships between males and females are not only possible, but common—men and women live, work, and play side-by-side, and generally seem to be able to avoid spontaneously sleeping together. However, the possibility remains that this apparently platonic coexistence is merely a façade, an elaborate dance covering up countless sexual impulses bubbling just beneath the surface.

New research suggests that there may be some truth to this possibility—that we may think we’re capable of being “just friends” with members of the opposite sex, but the opportunity (or perceived opportunity) for “romance” is often lurking just around the corner, waiting to pounce at the most inopportune moment. In order to investigate the viability of truly platonic opposite-sex friendships—a topic that has been explored more on the silver screen than in the science lab—researchers brought 88 pairs of undergraduate opposite-sex friends into…a science lab. Privacy was paramount—for example, imagine the fallout if two friends learned that one—and only one—had unspoken romantic feelings for the other throughout their relationship. In order to ensure honest responses, the researchers not only followed standard protocols regarding anonymity and confidentiality, but also required both friends to agree—verbally, and in front of each other—to refrain from discussing the study, even after they had left the testing facility. These friendship pairs were then separated, and each member of each pair was asked a series of questions related to his or her romantic feelings (or lack thereof) toward the friend with whom they were taking the study.

The results suggest large gender differences in how men and women experience opposite-sex friendships. Men were much more attracted to their female friends than vice versa.

More here.

From Time Magazine:

Ayesha Mir didn’t go to school on Tuesday, Nov. 27, the day after a security guard found a shrapnel-packed bomb under her family’s car. The 17-year-old Pakistani girl assumed, as did most people who learned about the bomb, that it was intended for her father, the television news presenter Hamid Mir, who often takes on the Taliban in his nightly news broadcasts. Traumatized by the near miss, Ayesha spent most of the day curled up in a corner of her couch, unsure whom to be angrier with: the would-be assassins or her father for putting himself in danger. She desperately wanted someone to help her make sense of things. At around 10:30 p.m., she got her wish. Ayesha’s father had just come home from work, and he handed her his BlackBerry. “She wants to speak to you,” he said. The voice on the phone was weak and cracked, but it still carried the confidence that Ayesha and millions of other Pakistanis had come to know through several high-profile speeches and TV appearances.

“This is Malala,” said the girl on the other end of the line. Malala Yousafzai, 15, was calling from the hospital in Birmingham, England, where under heavy guard she has been undergoing treatment since Oct. 16. “I understand that what happened was tragic, but you need to stay strong,” Malala told Ayesha. “You cannot give up.” It was one of the few times Malala had called anyone in Pakistan since she was flown to England for specialized medical treatment after a Taliban assassin climbed onto her school bus, called out for her by name and shot her in the head on Oct. 9. Her brain is protected by a titanium plate that replaced a section of her skull removed to allow for swelling. But she spoke rapidly to the older girl in Urdu, encouraging her to stand up for her father even if doing so brought risks. As an outspoken champion of girls’ right to an education, Malala knew all about risk — and fear and consequences — when it comes to taking on the Taliban. “The way she spoke was so inspirational,” Ayesha says. “She made me realize that my father was fighting our enemies and that it was something I should be proud of, not afraid.” The next day Ayesha returned to school. And with that call, Malala began to return to what she seems born to do — passing her courage on to others.

More here.

Habitation

Marriage is not
a house or even a tent

it is before that, and colder:

The edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn

where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far
.
we are learning to make fire

by Margaret Atwood
.
.

First, Hillary Crosley in The Root:

As all of the Django Unchained reviews hit the Internet, I'm sure plenty of African Americans will list why they hate Quentin Tarantino's new film about a slave's journey for revenge — but not me. A friend and I recently attended a screening for the film, which opens on Christmas Day, followed by an awkward question-and-answer session with the director. We were two of perhaps 10 black people in the theater — that's what makes what happened next so awkward.

In the film, Django (Jamie Foxx) is purchased by Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), a German dentist-turned-bounty hunter, and the two pair up to collect the bodies and ransoms of outlaws across the South. Because Django is such a natural, Schultz asks him to work with him through the winter in exchange for his help finding the former slave's wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), who was sold to a different plantation. The search for Hildy leads the duo to the plantation of Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) — which he shares with his head house slave, Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson) — and bloody drama ensues.

Then, Ishmael Reed over at the WSJ's Speakeasy:

I had a pretty good idea of where “Django Unchained” was going from the first credit. It went to the Weinstein Company. The Weinstein Company once fought a legal battle (settled out of court) over the right to distribute “Precious,” which is, in my opinion, the worst film ever made about black life. The company’s name in the credits for “Django” also meant that the movie was aimed at a mainstream audience.

Though German, the bounty hunter character played by German-Austrian actor Christoph Waltz seemed to speak with a British accent, which is all the rage in the media, though I need subtitles to understand what Piers Morgan is saying half the time. The German dentist dazzles the screen with his eloquent talk and vocabulary and puts together constructions like “shan’t.” I would loved to have been present at the marketing meetings about this movie. The cynicism must have been as thick as cigar smoke.

Also at The Root, Henry Louis Gates has a 3 part interview with Quentin Tarantino.

Justin E. H. Smith in his own blog:

If you are half-learned in philosophy and prone to dissociative mental disorders, you might wish to reconsider your plan to retreat to a cabin in Montana. It's been tried before, probably more times than you know.

Ted Kaczynski tied for top, at 98.9 percent, in the logic course he took at Harvard with W. V. O. Quine, though he left no lasting impression on the professor. And anarcho-primitivism is in the end –is it not?– a sort of application of the law of the excluded middle: it's either the earth or us. It is somewhat more difficult to trace the Montana manifestos of the Canadian Métis resistance fighter Louis Riel back to his philosophical education at the Sulpician College of Montreal in the 1850s, but as with the Unabomber after him we can be certain that there were decades-old classroom lectures ringing in his head, in the silence of his cabin, as he set about putting his thoughts to paper.

Riel was in exile in the Montana Territory, having ducked across the border in the aftermath of the 1870 Red River rebellion in Manitoba. He was of Franco-Ojibwa ancestry, and a Métis: a label non-Canadians know better in its Spanish rendering, 'mestizo', yet one that has its own distinctive meaning in the Canadian context. During the rebellion he had ordered the execution of the Orangeman Thomas Scott, in order, it is speculated, to send Canada a little message about who was in charge out on the Prairie. Riel began to imagine himself the divinely chosen leader of all Métis, and took on the biblical name of ‘David’.

More here.

Nilanjana Roy over at her website:

That girl, the one without the name. The one just like us. The one whose battered body stood for all the anonymous women in this country whose rapes and deaths are a footnote in the left-hand column of the newspaper.

Sometimes, when we talk about the history of women in India, we speak in shorthand. The Mathura rape case. The Vishaka guidelines. The Bhanwari Devi case, the Suryanelli affair, the Soni Sori allegations, the business at Kunan Pushpora. Each of these, the names of women and places, mapping a geography of pain; unspeakable damage inflicted on women’s bodies, on the map of India, where you can, if you want, create a constantly updating map of violence against women.

For some, amnesia becomes a way of self-defence: there is only so much darkness you can swallow. They turn away from all the places that have become shorthand for violence beyond measure, preferring not to know about Kashmir or the outrages in Chattisgarh, choosing to forget the Bombay New Year assault, trying not to remember the deaths of a Pallavi Purkayastha, a Thangjam Manorama, Surekha and Priyanka Bhotmange, the mass rapes that marked the riots in Gujarat. Even for those who stay in touch, it isn’t possible for your empathy to keep abreast with the scale of male violence against women in India: who can follow all of the one-paragraph, three-line cases? The three-year-old raped before she can speak, the teenager assaulted by an uncle, the 65-year-old raped as closure to a property dispute, the slum householder raped and violently assaulted on her way to the bathroom. After a while, even memory hardens.