Joseph Massad in The Electronic Intifada:

We had it coming, I suppose; it’s in the air but you don’t immediately recognize it: neurosophy. I would describe it as a slightly unhinged way of pontificating around neurological damage, assuredly the most upsetting type of damage we can encounter as humans. In order to soften the neurological blow, the neurosophist drags neurological concepts into a context that has nothing to do with neurology. You might say that in this activity neurons are taken to church, where they have no business. I shall come back to the churchy part later. Part of what Jill Bolte Taylor does in her book My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey might be called neurosophy. She describes what she went through when she was struck by a severe hemorrhage in the left hemisphere of her brain. (You can listen to her vivid description of the event on YouTube under her name.) Her book reads as both a thrilling and a frightening report of a visit to a region where, alas, quite a few people stray, only not many live to tell the tale with the vivacity Taylor brings to the subject. She is a neuroanatomist, and halfway through her ordeal she realizes: This is a unique chance-I’m a brain scientist and I am right in the middle of an actual stroke!

more from Threepenny Review here.

But in a larger sense, Al-Jazeera’s graphic response to CNN-style “bloodless war journalism” is a stinging rebuke to the way we now see and talk about war in the United States. It suggests that bloodless coverage of war is the privilege of a country far from conflict. Al-Jazeera’s brand of news – you could call it “blood journalism” – takes war for what it is: a brutal loss of human life. The images they show put you in visceral contact with the violence of war in a way statistics never could. For an American, to watch Al-Jazeera’s coverage of Gaza is to realize that you’ve become alienated not just from war, but even from the representation of war as a real thing. As Americans, we’re used to hearing the sound of heavy artillery, machine guns, and bombs in action films and video games. Yet here on the news, they seem strangely out of place. You could argue that Al-Jazeera uses images of civilian violence to foment public outrage against Israel. This might well be true. At the same time, these images acknowledge human suffering and civilian death and stand strongly against them – and in doing so, foment outrage against war itself.

more from Boston Globe Ideas here.

From Edge:

In retrospect, I realize now that having the Nobel Prize hovering out there but never quite arriving was a heavy psychological weight; it bore me down. It was a tremendous relief to get it. Fortunately, it turns out I didn't anticipate that getting it is fantastic fun—the whole bit: there are marvelous ceremonies in Sweden, it's a grand party, and it continues, and is still continuing. I've been going to big events several times a month.

The most profound aspect of it, though, is that I've really felt from my colleagues something I didn't anticipate: a outpouring of genuine affection. It's not too strong to call it love. Not for me personally—but because our field, theoretical fundamental physics, gets recognition and attention. People appreciate what's been accomplished, and it comes across as recognition for an entire community and an attitude towards life that produced success. So I've been in a happy mood.

But that was a while ago, and the ceremonial business gets old after a while, and takes time. Such an abrupt change of life encourages thinking about the next stage. I was pleased when I developed a kind of three-point plan that gives me direction. Now I ask myself, when I'm doing something in my work: Is it relating to point one? Is it relating to point two? Is it relating to point three? If it's not relating to any of those, then I'm wasting my time.

More here.

From The Guardian:

The African praise song traditionally celebrates the life of an individual, giving their name, genealogy, totem animal, job, personal attributes, etc in a rhythmical, incantatory, call-and-response style. To use this ancient form was an idea with exciting potential, but, as it turned out, the title of Elizabeth Alexander's inauguration poem was more inspired than the poem itself. Readers looking at the transcript might be asking if it's a poem at all. With its long prosy lines, this praise song is closer to a speech than a song.

“Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others' eyes or not, about to speak or speaking,” Alexander begins: not a riveting start. “All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din…” The “thorn” image is picked up later: “words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider”. In a poem concerned with language and human encounter, brambles may not be the sharpest metaphorical image for the curse of Babel.

Alexander's broad focus is offset by efforts to pick out small salient details. “Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum …” is effective, though it would have been more effective without the jarring echo of “pair” with “things in need of repair” in the previous sentence. Recalling her original inspiration, one of the strophes proclaims, “Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; the figuring it out at kitchen tables.” The reference to the hand-lettered signs (there were, of course, many in the crowd) is a nice touch.

More here.

///
Vanishing Act
Chris Forhan

Each bed with a child in it, or his wife,
his brain lined with sleeping bees,

my father is having to leave the house
with delicacy, easing the dead bolt open

in the dark. The house exhales him.
I'm thinking of a driving lay-up, of a girl

in homeroom, blue necklace, brown skin.
Transistor radio on my pillow, volume low.

I know some things, not enough. My eyes
are closed, I'm listening hard, that song

again, Knock down the old gray wall,
my father standing beside his car—gone,

key in his hand, snowflakes in his hair.
At dawn, an Indian head test pattern will stare

from the TV, the freezer will churn out
its automatic ice. On the windowsill

an iris in a vase will have taken
the last water into its cut stem. I will

notice it, how it is there, and had
stood there the whole time, that flower.
///

Ed Pilkington in The Guardian:

When Barack Obama steps up to the podium to deliver his inaugural address, one man standing anonymously in the crowd will be paying especially close attention. With his cropped hair, five o'clock shadow and boyish face, he might look out of place among the dignitaries, though as co-author of the speech this man has more claim than most to be a witness to this moment of history.

Jon Favreau, 27, is, as Obama himself puts it, the president's mind reader. He is the youngest chief speechwriter on record in the White House, and, despite such youth, was at the centre of discussions of the content of today's speech, one which has so much riding on it.

For a politician whose rise to prominence was largely built upon his powers as an orator, Obama is well versed in the arts of speech-making. But today's effort will tower over all previous ones.

More here.

Yonit Farago in the Times of London:

Israel’s Government has thrown its weight behind efforts by supporters to counter what it believes to be negative bias and a tide of pro-Arab propaganda. The Foreign Ministry has ordered trainee diplomats to track websites and chatrooms so that networks of US and European groups with hundreds of thousands of Jewish activists can place supportive messages.

In the past week nearly 5,000 members of the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS) have downloaded special “megaphone” software that alerts them to anti-Israeli chatrooms or internet polls to enable them to post contrary viewpoints. A student team in Jerusalem combs the web in a host of different languages to flag the sites so that those who have signed up can influence an opinion survey or the course of a debate.

Jonny Cline, of the international student group, said that Jewish students and youth groups with their understanding of the web environment were ideally placed to present another side to the debate.

“We’re saying to these people that if Israel is being bashed, don’t ignore it, change it,” Mr Cline said. “A poll like CNN’s takes just a few seconds to vote in, but if thousands take part the outcome will be changed. What’s vital is that the international face of the conflict is balanced.”

More here.

[I wonder how many of the new names that have been popping up in the comments section at 3QD since the Gaza crisis began are members of this well-organized propaganda campaign. 🙂 ]

From the New York Times:

This afternoon we have answers from Taghreed El-Khodary, our correspondent in Gaza, to some of the many questions submitted by readers for our Q&A. Ms. El-Khodary, who was born in Gaza, has reported for The New York Times since 2001. During the recent conflict, Ms. El-Khodary was one of the few people reporting from inside Gaza, in part due to the fact that the Israeli military refused to give Western reporters access to the Palestinian territory during the fighting.

Ms. El-Khodary’s answers are below. (Given the constraints on her time, we are not taking any more questions.) We also have, at the end of the Q&A, a reply to one question asking about how her work is edited from Ian Fisher, a former foreign correspondent who is now the deputy foreign editor of The New York Times.

Q. Ms. El-Khodary, let me first thank you for your in-depth, balanced coverage of what must be a terribly painful event. My question is: What do ordinary Gazans want from their leadership now ? Do they want to continue the fighting, and if so, why? Do ordinary Gazans support Hamas’ decision to fire rockets into Israel ? Is this seen as a defensive action ? — Beth Katz

A. Taghreed El-Khodary responds:

From talking to many people, I can say that Palestinians in Gaza are against the continuation of fighting. They are relieved it is over. Hamas has sensed that; therefore, Hamas political leaders have decided to abide by the truce.

From talking to Hamas senior leaders, one can sense their interest in the truce not only because of the public pressure but also because they need to succeed in governance.

More here. [Thanks to Fred Lapides.]

Our own Justin E. H. Smith at his website:

Interested in joining? Go here.

How much longer will it remain possible to elide outrage against the Israeli siege of Gaza with support for Hamas? How far can the semantic band linking these two be stretched before it simply snaps?

And wouldn't it be useful if there were a concerted effort on the part of those of us who could not possibly be Hamas sympathizers, to the extent that we think all religion is childish, to vigilantly watch for and loudly denounce attempts to conflate our opposition to the Israeli assault with sympathy for Islamic jihad? Let us make that effort, by calling into existence a loose confederation of likeminded “Atheists for Gaza.”

Atheists for Gaza will announce themselves as having as little in common with Hamas as they do with Jerry Falwell, the pope, Vojislav Šešelj in Serbia, the BJP in India or the Shas Party in Israel.

Atheists consider them all cavemen. But we are clear-sighted enough to see the siege of Gaza for what it is: not a defense of democracy against the theocratic tyrants who would destroy it, but rather the collective punishment of a population, born into an open-air prison, for the desperate and ineffective gestures of its most frustrated members. Israel's attack is completely disproportionate to the threat posed by Hamas militants, as it is a full-scale military assault against a civilian population that does not even have its own military.

There are likely almost as many atheists opposed to the assault on Gaza as there are atheists, for the same cognitive faculty that enables us not to be duped by unprovable claims as to the existence of a transcendent order is also the one that helps us to see through political bullshitting in general, and Israel's euphemistic appeal to 'self-defense' in particular. Yet astoundingly the public-relations war being conducted by Israel, simultaneously with its more conventional war on Gaza, has been remarkably successful in silencing the voice of the humanist objectors to the war by associating it with the indisputably anti-humanist voice of Hamas, against which Israel is supposedly defending freedom and democracy in the Middle East. But in fact Israel is only defending democracy for itself, and squalid Bantustans for everyone else.

More here. And I urge you to consider joining Justin's group now! I have.

Benjamin Zimmer in his very good blog, Language Log:

Chief Justice John Roberts' administration of the presidential oath to Barack Obama was far from smooth. Early reports differ in saying who stumbled: NBC and ABC say the flub was Roberts', while the AP says it was Obama's. I think both men were a bit nervous, and the error that emerged from their momentary disfluency came down to a problem of adverbial placement.

The Constitution gives the oath as:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

More here.

Amitava points me to this:

In the past few months, you’ve received a lot of advice, and doubtless you’ll receive a lot more in the months and years to come. Let me improve the ratio of useful to useless advice by recommending that you appoint Slavoj Žižek as the USA’s first ever Secretary of Culture.

Apart from dramatically improving America’s reputation with the rest of the world, this appointment has several other advantages, some of which are so obvious that they barely need commenting upon. Can’t sleep at night? Go down to the White House kitchen for milk and cookies and you’ll probably find Žižek at the table, writing and ready to talk about anything—and I do mean anything. Faced with someone asking you how your administration differs from previous administrations? Simply point out that Žižek is a member of your cabinet, and even the most hostile questioner will lapse into stunned, chastened silence.

In the remainder of this letter, however, I want to draw your attention to some other, less obvious benefits that come from Žižek’s presence in your administration, all of which have to do with his value as a symptom.

///
Quiet Night
Robert Wrigley

The bat's opened thorax blips

—that's its heart

beating, says the child—and its mouth bites at

the air, and the cat

that brought it down sits two steps below

and preens, while the pale cone

shed by the porch light makes and remakes itself

with the shadows of miller, moth, and midge.

Listen, the darkness just under the stars

is threaded with passings:

nighthawks and goatsuckers, the sleepy respirations of the forest,

and the owl that asks first for a name,

then leaves its spar

and spreads a silence

so vast and immobile

you can hear whole migrations inside it,

the swoons, the plummets, the bland ascensions

of souls.
//

Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — In college, as he was getting involved in protests against the apartheid government in South Africa, Barack Obama noticed, he has written, “that people had begun to listen to my opinions.” Words, the young Mr. Obama realized, had the power “to transform”: “with the right words everything could change -— South Africa, the lives of ghetto kids just a few miles away, my own tenuous place in the world.”

Much has been made of Mr. Obama’s eloquence — his ability to use words in his speeches to persuade and uplift and inspire. But his appreciation of the magic of language and his ardent love of reading have not only endowed him with a rare ability to communicate his ideas to millions of Americans while contextualizing complex ideas about race and religion, they have also shaped his sense of who he is and his apprehension of the world.

Mr. Obama’s first book, “Dreams From My Father” (which surely stands as the most evocative, lyrical and candid autobiography written by a future president), suggests that throughout his life he has turned to books as a way of acquiring insights and information from others — as a means of breaking out of the bubble of self-hood and, more recently, the bubble of power and fame. He recalls that he read James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright and W. E. B. Du Bois when he was an adolescent in an effort to come to terms with his racial identity and that later, during an ascetic phase in college, he immersed himself in the works of thinkers like Nietzsche and St. Augustine in a spiritual-intellectual search to figure out what he truly believed.

More here. (Note: Finally, after eight years, you do not have to apologize for being well read. Smart, in fact, is the new cool. Congratulations to all 3qd readers on this special day. Please read this entire article and learn for yourself what an incredible person will be at the helm.)

Carl Zimmer discusses an example of atrocious science writing in his excellent blog, The Loom:

I…I just don’t know where to begin with the opening to this article in the latest issue of Esquire. “Pretty lady”? “The new poor part of town”? A noxious martini of mixed metaphors topped with an olive of ridiculous hype. (Forget it–I can’t compete with this stuff.)

If we science writers want to defend our old-fashioned craft against its critics, how do we defend stuff like this?

First thing that happens when you have a heart attack, an unlucky part of your heart turns white. The blood’s stopped pumping to that spot, so it becomes pink-speckled bloodlessness, coarse and cool like grapefruit gelatin.

This is the moment when, if they could think, these heart cells in this new poor part of town would go, “Well, shit.” Mortal things have a godly way of knowing when they’ll die.

Next comes the back-alley bruise of organ death. The cells turn from white to black, all shitted up like a body pit in a war, two weeks after. Suddenly, soldier, this part of your heart is dead, only it’s still in your body, attached to the good section — the 90210 ventricle — and the good part is smirking, it’s saying, “Come on, rebuild yourself, man!”

But the dead part can’t fix itself. And the healthy part can’t throw it a bloody rope. So the whole heart begins to die — 650,000 American deaths a year.

But now look here, a woman. She is a pretty lady of Pakistani heritage who highlights her soccer-mom layers, which you don’t expect from a lab-worn doctor-lady. And she’s got ideas. Wild ones. Hina Chaudhry believes she can do what the body can’t: fix the dead parts.

Our discussion yesterday about bad science writing took a sharp turn, jumped the rails, and landed over at Language Log, where my brother Ben takes over. Suddenly I feel a new kinship with the Psalms Book of Proverbs….

Natalie Angier in The New York Times:

With the inauguration of an administration avowedly committed to Science as the grand elixir for the nation’s economic, environmental and psycho-reputational woes, a number of scientists say that now is the time to tackle a chronic conundrum of their beloved enterprise: how to attract more women into the fold, and keep them once they are there.

Researchers who have long promoted the cause of women in science view the incoming administration with a mix of optimism and we’ll-see-ism. On the one hand, they said, the new president’s apparent enthusiasm for science, and the concomitant rise of “geek chic” and “smart is the new cool” memes, can only redound to the benefit of all scientists, particularly if the enthusiasm is followed by a bolus of new research funds. On the other hand, they said, how about appointing a woman to the president’s personal Poindexter club, the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology? The designated leaders so far include superstars like Harold Varmus, a Nobel laureate, and Eric Lander, genome meister.

The Rosalind Franklin Society, a group devoted to “recognizing the work of prominent women scientists,” has suggested possible co-chairwomen for the panel.

More here.

Ruchira Paul reviews Amitav Ghosh's new novel in Accidental Blogger:

A historical novel, Sea of Poppies is also a love story(ies) flowering both on land and water. It is the account of thriving global trade, addictions, greed, betrayal, war, occupation and the rigid hierarchy of class, caste, race and power. Thoroughly researched, Ghosh meticulously creates the culture of 19^th century India in the early grips of foreign occupation and that of seafaring adventurers, pirates and mercenaries. It is set in a time when the East India Company had discovered that among the varied natural resources across the vast expanse of India, the land and climate of the north central Gangetic plains offered one more lucrative opportunity of raising revenues for the British crown which had the additional enticing value of becoming the gateway to China. Under British supervision, the first large scale opium production in India's history began in a region across eastern Uttar Pradesh and western Bihar where farmers were commissioned (coerced) to devote their entire tracts of agricultural land to the growing of poppies for opium. Some quantities of the opium produced in India entered the local markets and it was also utilized for medical purposes in the form of morphine, an effective pain killer and anesthetic. But a large portion of the raw opium was exported to China, the other large Asiatic nation whose wealth and resources the Brits eyed hungrily and whose rulers, fearful of the European intent in Asia, had adamantly barred entry to foreigners. The plan was to make the Chinese so addicted and dependent on opium that out of desperation, the wily mandarins would open the doors of the secretive land to the procurers of the drug. Apart from the complicated shenanigans of opium trafficking, the novel also introduces readers to another British export – the first large scale relocation of Indian laborers to Africa, the Caribbeans and the far east as indentured servants, slaves with a new name.

More here.

Stanley Fish in the New York Times:

This view of higher education as an enterprise characterized by a determined inutility has often been challenged, and the debates between its proponents and those who argue for a more engaged university experience are lively and apparently perennial. The question such debates avoid is whether the Oakeshottian ideal (celebrated before him by Aristotle, Kant and Max Weber, among others) can really flourish in today’s educational landscape. It may be fun to argue its merits (as I have done), but that argument may be merely academic – in the pejorative sense of the word – if it has no support in the real world from which it rhetorically distances itself. In today’s climate, does it have a chance?

In a new book, “The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities,” Frank Donoghue (as it happens, a former student of mine) asks that question and answers “No.”

Donoghue begins by challenging the oft-repeated declaration that liberal arts education in general and the humanities in particular face a crisis, a word that suggests an interruption of a normal state of affairs and the possibility of restoring the natural order of things.

More here. [Thanks to Aditya Dev Sood.]