Bilal Tanweer in Caravan [h/t: Chapati Mystery]:

THE CORE STEPS: HOW TO DISCOVER FAIZ

STEP 1: Get yourself born into a middle-class family in Karachi where books are considered the least useful of all forms of pulped wood—including pulped wood itself. Ensure that your father, who used to read Jasoosi Digest until a few years ago, now reads only Aurad-o Waza'if (Book of Daily Devotions and Prayers). Ideally, your mother should be an expert on all kinds of waza'if, big and small.

STEP 2: To really get going, however, you need even more discouragement. Pick an inauspicious moment, such as right after your parents' shouting match over your mother's shopping habits. Ask your father with great trepidation if he has a book of Faiz's verse. Hear him tell you flatly: “Beta yeh sha'iri to bhand, mirasiyo'n aur kanjaro'n ka kaam hai; tumhara iss se kya lena dena?” (“Son, poetry is for wags and pimps—what do you have to do with it?”) Please note that while saying this, he will have his gaze fixed on a handsome saas on TV conniving against her sexy bahu.

STEP 3: Now go to the nearest bookstore (which also sells cheap plastic toys and boardgames to keep the business on lubricated tracks) and ask the bookstore owner—a man most accurately described as a talking heap of flab piled on a chair, reeking of paan—if he has Faiz's book of verse.

Practically everyone who has written about Oppenheimer has noted his elusiveness, but until now no one has convincingly explained how he came to be this way. As Ray Monk shows in this superb new life, one reason is to be found in Oppenheimer’s schooling. Born in 1904, he began attending the Ethical Culture School on Central Park West in New York in 1911. His father – an immigrant from Germany who would make his fortune in the textile trade – married Ella Friedman, a painter who had taught art at Barnard College, in a service conducted by Felix Adler, the founder of the Ethical Culture Society, of which the school was an offshoot. In some ways the Society shaped the course of Oppenheimer’s life. Claiming to derive its precepts from Judaism but in fact promoting a secular version of Kant’s idea of moral law, Adler’s humanist creed was a formative influence on Oppenheimer. Insisting that the moral life had to be severed from religion, it shut him off from the spiritual traditions of Judaism. At the same it promoted the development of ‘spiritual personality’, a nebulous ideal that left Oppenheimer unsatisfied. Learning Sanskrit in the 1930s in order to read the Hindu scriptures in the original, he embarked on an enduring but ultimately unrewarding engagement with mysticism.

more from John Gray at Literary Review here.

The Soviet “empire of memory” was an integral part of the Cold War geopolitical order and it is no surprise that it collapsed along with that order. As Jan Werner Müller has written, after 1989 “memories of the Second World War were ‘unfrozen’ on both sides of the former Iron Curtain [….] liberated from constraints imposed by the need for state legitimation and friend-enemy thinking associated with the Cold War”.[14] The disintegration of the Soviet bloc (and later the USSR) might even to some extent have been a result of the subversive victimhood narratives entering the public space as well as domestic and international politics. Think about the narratives of the Katyn massacre and of the Great Famine, which undermined the legitimacy of the Soviet regime at the end of perestroika. Or consider the Baltic republics, where demands to reveal the truth about the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact and the new meta-narratives on Soviet deportations and repressions helped restore and legitimize national independence. One can find many explanations of the Soviet collapse in academic literature, but one is rarely discussed: the Soviet empire collapsed under the burden of historical guilt. If narratives of suffering proved to be so effective in dissolving the Soviet empire and enabling the former Soviet republics to achieve national independence, no wonder that political actors still find them still useful today – for example, in containing Russia’s geopolitical ambitions in eastern Europe.

more from Tatiana Zhurzhenko at Eurozine here.

Juan Cole in Informed Consent:

Clearly, Obama does not have progressive instincts, and prefers to rule from the center. This impulse is wrong-headed, since the center didn’t man his campaign offices or make phone calls for him. Ruling from the center means taking his base for granted while reaching out to relatively conservative constituencies. This tactic is why we don’t have a single-payer health insurance plan. It is why Wall Street reform has consisted of half-measures. It is why we are imposing a financial blockade on Iran that could easily spiral into a war. When it comes to the arch-conservatives, for the most part, Obama has never learned to just say ‘no.’

It does not help that Obama will face virtually the same, obstructionist Tea Party House of Representatives that stymied him for the past two years. Instead of going to them and asking how he could make them happy, he has to threaten to make an all-out push to turn them out of office in 2014 if they continue to say ‘no’ to everything.

Progressives will have to push Obama to the left if we are to get what we want.

More here.

David L. Ulin in the Los Angeles Times:

What is the relationship of truth and invention in literary nonfiction? Over at TriQuarterly, an anonymous post called “The Facts of the Matter” frames the issue in a fascinating way. Presented as a personal essay, written by a middle-aged male author who, as an undergraduate at Yale, sexually assaulted “a girl I liked,” it is a meditation on revelation, narrative and construction, raising questions about the interplay of fact and narrative by admitting to a brutal truth.

Or is it? An editor’s note suggests that something else may be at work. “When we received this anonymous nonfiction submission,” it reads, “it caused quite a stir. One staff member insisted we call the New Haven, Ct., police immediately to report the twentieth-century crime it recounts. But first, we figured out by the mailing address that the author was someone whose work had been solicited for TriQuarterly. Other questions remained. What animal was this? A memoir? Essay? Craft essay? Fictional autobiography? Should we publish it with an introduction, a warning — and what should we say? The author later labeled it ‘meta-nonfiction.’ We thought it was worth publishing for the issues it raises.”

And what issues are those? First, I think, is anonymity, which puts a barrier between writer and reader that belies the intentions of the form. A key faith of the personal essay, after all, is its intimacy, the idea that we are in the presence of a writer, working under his or her own name and in his or her own voice, as something profound is explored.

More here.

Michael Bérubé in American Scientist:

Once upon a time there was a group of literary critics who got very excited about neuroscience. They especially liked what neuroscience seemed to be able to offer their field: a good, hard-science foundation for the importance of their work. For the neuroscientists were telling people that Homo sapiens sapiens is hardwired for storytelling. And these scientists weren’t telling just-so stories, either; they had clear evidence that human brains universally make up narratives, ranging from religions to sports to memoirs to dreams to delusions to conspiracy theories, and they could even point to the specific areas of the brain that light up when certain stories are told. Now, thought the literary critics, we can finally live happily ever after. And Steven Pinker will be our friend!

The only problem was that it wasn’t clear what neuroscience could offer the study of literature other than the claim that humans are hardwired for storytelling. It didn’t seem to have anything very interesting to say about specific stories, nor did it evince any great interest in getting into the textual details of those stories—or the various interpretive disputes about those stories—that make up so much of the work of literary criticism. In On the Origin of Stories (2009), which I covered in an earlier review for American Scientist, Brian Boyd tried to make neuroscience the basis for the study of literature, and although his account of neuroscience was compelling, he couldn’t come up with anything to say about literary works other than that their creators devised various storytelling techniques to hold our attention. And as Laurent Dubrueil wrote in an essay in Diacritics, Boyd “seemingly believe[s] language to be a diabolical invention of ‘Theory,’” which, Boyd complained, “cuts literature off from life by emphasizing human thought and ideas as the product of only language, convention, and ideology.” Unfortunately for this branch of literary criticism, it turns out to be very difficult to talk or write about extralinguistic matters.

More here.

Fifty years ago, Arkhipov, a senior officer on the Soviet B-59 submarine, refused permission to launch its nuclear torpedo.

Edward Wilson in The Guardian:

If you were born before 27 October 1962, Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov saved your life. It was the most dangerous day in history. An American spy plane had been shot down over Cuba while another U2 had got lost and strayed into Soviet airspace. As these dramas ratcheted tensions beyond breaking point, an American destroyer, the USS Beale, began to drop depth charges on the B-59, a Soviet submarine armed with a nuclear weapon.

The captain of the B-59, Valentin Savitsky, had no way of knowing that the depth charges were non-lethal “practice” rounds intended as warning shots to force the B-59 to surface. The Beale was joined by other US destroyers who piled in to pummel the submerged B-59 with more explosives. The exhausted Savitsky assumed that his submarine was doomed and that world war three had broken out. He ordered the B-59's ten kiloton nuclear torpedo to be prepared for firing. Its target was the USS Randolf, the giant aircraft carrier leading the task force.

If the B-59's torpedo had vaporised the Randolf, the nuclear clouds would quickly have spread from sea to land. The first targets would have been Moscow, London, the airbases of East Anglia and troop concentrations in Germany. The next wave of bombs would have wiped out “economic targets”, a euphemism for civilian populations – more than half the UK population would have died. Meanwhile, the Pentagon's SIOP, Single Integrated Operational Plan – a doomsday scenario that echoed Dr Strangelove's orgiastic Götterdämmerung – would have hurled 5,500 nuclear weapons against a thousand targets, including ones in non-belligerent states such as Albania and China.

More here.

From MSNBC:

The United States may be an iconic democracy, but every year many Americans don't bother voting at all — regardless of lower turnout caused by events like Hurricane Sandy. The United States ranks 120th of the 169 countries for which data exists on voter turnout, falling between the Dominican Republic and Benin, according to a January 2012 study from the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. (Not all countries ranked were democracies, a factor that could skew the results.) About 60 percent of eligible voters will likely cast ballots Tuesday, a lower percentage than in most other Western democracies, said Michael McDonald, a political scientist at George Mason University. [ The Strangest Elections in US History ] Experts say the low turnout results from how often Americans conduct elections, the inconvenience of voting and the reality that each individual vote doesn't count for much.

Voting inconvenient
“Part of the issue is we have too much democracy,” McDonald said. “We're just voting a lot in the U.S.” With state, local and national races, as well as mid-term elections, most Americans have a chance to cast a ballot about once every year. Other Western democracies may only have an election every five years, McDonald told LiveScience. That frequency makes voting a hassle, he said.

More here.

From Smithsonian:

A vote in tomorrow’s presidential election could be viewed one of two ways. It’s either the culmination of months of weighing the arguments on countless issues and making a choice based on a commingling of knowledge and personal principle. Or you voted Republican or Democratic because, to paraphrase accidental pundit Lady Gaga, you were born that way. Okay, in the spirit of punditry, the latter is a bit of an oversimplification, but it does reflect the thinking of an emerging field called political neuroscience. Its focus has been on using brain scans to see if people of different political persuasions are different all the way done to their genes. Or put more bluntly, do their brains work differently?

Right brain, left brain

The latest research came out last week, a study at the University of South Carolina that concluded that the brains of self-identified Democrats and Republicans aren’t hard-wired the same. Specifically, the scientists found more neural activity in areas of the brain believed to be linked with broad social connectedness in Democrats (friends, the world at-large) and more activity in areas linked with tight social connectedness in the Republicans (family, country). This was in line with what previous studies have suggested, that people who say they’re Democrats tend to take a more global view on issues while those who call themselves Republicans tend to see things through more of an American filter. But the findings also ran counter to previous research suggesting Democrats are, by biological nature, more empathetic souls than Republicans. Not so, according to the South Carolina study; it’s just that Republicans are more likely to focus their empathy on family members or people they know.

More here.

You think our elections are tough? Tell it to the wolves.

Rob Dunn in Slate:

It is hard to escape the sensation that our electoral process is broken. Too much money. Too much bullshit. Perhaps we should turn to nature for insight, remedy, or just salve. The Book of Proverbs implored believers to go to the ant and consider her ways when it came to wisdom and industriousness. Can we also turn to the ant for lessons on democracy?

The idea that ants, honeybees, or other social animals might do a thing or two better than we do is ancient. The Bible, Torah, and Quran all invoke insect societies. In the Amazon, Kayapo children were once advised to follow the brave, social ways of the ant (and to eschew the more vulgar ways of the termite).

Most recently, Cornell University entomologist Tom Seeley has written a lovely and compelling book titled Honeybee Democracy which suggests we turn to the bees to see how they make decisions. Thanks to the work of Seeley and his collaborators, it is now clear that honeybee hives really are democratic. When it’s time to look for a new nest, options are weighted by the evaluations of many different bees about a site’s qualities—its size, its humidity, the density of surrounding flowers. Individual bees vote with dances, and when the number of dances in favor of some particular site is high enough, the masses are swayed. Together, citizen bees choose, if not perfection, the best possible option.

More here.

Mark Greif in n + 1:

Obama has been the best president in my lifetime. I know people speak of their disappointment with him. I, too, could say I feel disappointed in the purely literal sense. I had hopes for more. But I didn’t feel certain that a President could do all that much good, though I knew a bad one could do unbelievable harm. I’m not disappointed existentially, and that’s essential. Obama has been a better President than any other I’ve known outside of history books. He has been better than Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II. Not just that: he’s been maybe forty to a hundred times better than Clinton, and something like a thousand to ten thousand times better than Bush II. I don’t remember Carter well; my impression is that Obama is either slightly better than Carter or doing better in some comparably terrible situations. Plus, when I wake up in the morning, I like getting up in a country where Obama is President. I like it a lot. I like thinking about him. I like his family. I like his style. Those are bonuses; but I’d be lying if I didn’t acknowledge that they make it easier to bear some strictly political “disappointments.” So, facing the decision: am I going to vote for the reelection of the best President of my lifetime, whom I also happen to enjoy seeing, every time I see him on television, which is something you have to suffer a lot of with any leader, or am I—what? Not going to vote? Certainly not; not after the stolen election of 2000. Or am I going to vote for Obama and not feel good about it? No. I feel pretty great about it. I’ve been looking forward to this Tuesday all year.

More here by Greif as well as others. [Scroll down to continue reading the piece by Mark Greif.]

Robert Wright in The Atlantic:

“The final Dispatch poll shows Obama leading 50 percent to 48 percent in the Buckeye State. However, that 2-point edge is within the survey's margin of sampling error, plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.”

That wording suggests that Obama's two-point edge has no meaning. And that's a common way for journalists to interpret results that fall within the “margin of error.” For example, in September a conservative columnist in the New York Post asserted that Obama's lead in state polls didn't matter because the “polls separating the two candidates are within the margin of error — meaning that there is no statistical difference in support between Obama and Romney.”

Explaining why it's wrong to say there's “no statistical difference” in such cases will take a couple of paragraphs, so please bear with me (unless you recently took a stats course, in which case you can skip these paragraphs if not more).

Here's what pollsters never tell you, except maybe in the fine print: When they say there's a margin of error of X, they don't mean there's no chance whatsoever that the poll is off by more than X. Typically, their margin-of-error calculations are based on a confidence level of 95 percent, which means the chances of the poll being off by more than X are 5 percent.

In the Columbus Dispatch poll, X was 2.2. So if the poll had found Obama was ahead by 2.21 points, the finding would have been “outside the margin of error” and thus treated with great respect — but the fact is that there would still have been a 5 percent chance that, in the actual voting population, Romney was ahead. (I'm assuming the Dispatch followed convention and used the 95 percent confidence threshold in calculating its margin of error — see postscript below.) The flip side of this coin is that the Obama lead of 2 points in the poll, though less than the margin of error of 2.2 points, is by no means devoid of significance. If you did the math — which, many years after taking quantitative analysis in college, I lack the brain cells to do precisely — you'd find that there's a probability of somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 percent that Obama is ahead in the voting population as a whole.

More here.

If the United States wants to curb terrorism and nuclear proliferation, it needs to fundamentally rethink its relationship with Pakistan.

C. Christine Fair in Foreign Policy:

Long after the last U.S. or NATO soldier leaves Afghanistan — and no matter who wins on Tuesday — Pakistan will continue to present fundamental challenges to U.S. regional interests and international security.

The self-proclaimed “land of the pure” has used Islamist militants as tools of foreign policy since its earliest days of independence. In the fall of 1947, tribal marauders from Pakistan's Pashtun areas, benefiting from extensive government support, rushed into the princely state of Kashmir in hopes of seizing it for Pakistan. Leaders of the newborn Pakistani state feared that the king of the Muslim-dominant state of Kashmir would seek independence or agree to join India. The strategy triggered the very event Islamabad was trying to prevent: The king, watching with apprehension as his own security forces failed to stave off the attackers, sought India's help. India agreed to come to his aid, provided that the maharaja join India's dominion. Indian troops thus joined the fight to defend its newly acquired territory. The eventual ceasefire left the princely state divided between the dominions of India and Pakistan.

To wrest all of Kashmir from India, Pakistan has since then raised and nurtured numerous Islamist militant groups. In 1989, an indigenous insurgency erupted in Kashmir in response to gross Indian malfeasance. Pakistan swiftly took advantage of the surge of so-called mujahideen who had trained in Afghanistan fighting the Soviets. Pakistan's “foreign” militants overtook the Kashmiri insurgency. By the mid-1990s, the violence in the valley was mostly conducted by Pakistani terrorists — predominantly ethnic Punjabis — ostensibly on behalf of Kashmiris.

More here.

In the Gilded Age, many of the banks that have recently played important and devastating roles in our financial life—Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Lehman Brothers—were guided by men who had a passion for painting. J. P. Morgan’s collection was legendary. Paul Sachs, an early partner at the family firm, left banking to become a specialist in Italian Renaissance art, and to found the program in curatorial studies at Harvard. Robert Lehman and his father, Philip Lehman, each of whom ran Lehman Brothers, together assembled one of the great collections of Florentine and Sienese art outside Italy. Even the bank established to bail these other banks out, the Federal Reserve, had at its inception Paul Warburg. Warburg, often referred to as the “father” of the Federal Reserve, was the brother of Aby Warburg, one of the greatest scholars of the Italian Renaissance. In much the same way that aptitudes for math and music seem to descend together in families, so do there seem to be lineages for those gifted in the representation of value: the bankers and the painters. Not only did Gilded Age bankers study and collect art, their financial inventions were structurally quite like those of painters working at the same time. In particular, the financiers, as was true of Cézanne and his followers among the cubists, were interested in new representations of the future.

more from Rachel Cohen at The Believer here.

When the Red Army reached Poland, in the summer of 1944, it waited on the banks of the Vistula, just outside Warsaw, while the S.S., under the direction of Heinrich Himmler, killed fifteen thousand Polish partisans, who had staged an armed uprising, and more than two hundred thousand civilians. At the end of the fighting, half a million Poles were sent to camps, and the rest were deported as slave laborers to Germany. On Hitler’s orders, the city was razed. When the Red Army finally entered Warsaw, in January, 1945, the streets were filled with dead bodies. No one living remained. Except in Bulgaria, which has cultural ties to Russia, Soviet soldiers not only looted but raped, almost systematically, in the countries they passed through. In eastern Germany alone, up to two million women are believed to have been raped by Soviet soldiers. But, apart from complaining about Stalin’s refusal to come to the aid of the Warsaw Poles, Britain and the United States did nothing to stop the pillage of Eastern Europe.

more from Louis Menand at The New Yorker here.

Science and its practical consort Engineering mostly come out of this week with enhanced reputations. For some years now, various researchers have been predicting that such a trauma was not just possible but almost certain, as we raised the temperature and with it the level of the sea—just this past summer, for instance, scientists demonstrated that seas were rising faster near the northeast United States (for reasons having to do with alterations to the Gulf Stream) than almost anyplace on the planet. They had described, in the long run, the loaded gun, right down to a set of documents describing the precise risk to the New York subway system. As nature pulled the trigger in mid-October, when a tropical wave left Africa and moved into the Atlantic and began to spin, scientists were able to do the short-term work of hurricane forecasting with almost eerie precision. Days before Sandy came ashore we not only knew approximately where it would go, but that its barometric pressure would drop below previous records and hence that its gushing surge would set new marks. The computer models dealt with the weird hybrid nature of the storm—a tropical cyclone hitting a blocking front—with real aplomb; it was a bravura performance.

more from Bill McKibben at the NYRB here.