Dani Rodrik in Project Syndicate:

Two and a half years ago, senior staff members of the World Bank approached the Nobel laureate Michael Spence to ask him to lead a high-powered commission on economic growth. The question at hand could not have been more important. The “Washington consensus” – the infamous list of do’s and don’ts for policymakers in developing countries – had largely dissipated. But what would replace it?   

Spence was not sure he was the man for the job. After all, his research had focused on theoretical issues in advanced economies; he had been dean of a business school; and he did not have much experience in economic development. But he was intrigued by the task. And he was encouraged by the enthusiastic and positive response he received from the commission’s prospective members. Thus was born the Spence Commission on Growth and Development, a star-studded group of policymakers – including another Nobelist – whose final report was issued at the end of May.   

The Spence report represents a watershed for development policy – as much for what it says as for what it leaves out. Gone are confident assertions about the virtues of liberalization, deregulation, privatization, and free markets. Also gone are the cookie cutter policy recommendations unaffected by contextual differences. Instead, the Spence report adopts an approach that recognizes the limits of what we know, emphasizes pragmatism and gradualism, and encourages governments to be experimental.

Robert Goodin in Philosophy and Public Affairs:

Democracy might be characterized, semicircularly, as a matter of “groups of people making collective decisions in a democratic way.” I employ that circularity deliberately to bracket off the part of the formula that I do not want to focus upon for present purposes.

Of course, what it is to “make collective decisions in a democratic way” is precisely the part of the formula that traditionally preoccupies democratic theorists. Is that a matter of expressing opinions or of aggregating votes or of deliberating together? (And if “all three,” then combined how and in what proportions?) Insofar as it is a matter of aggregating votes, according to what rules? (Simple majority rule or something else?) Insofar as it is a matter of elections, what makes them free and fair? (How are campaigns to be conducted, electors apportioned to districts, and so on?) Are there any substantive constraints on what democracies may or must do? (Respect human rights, for example.) Such questions constitute the warp and the woof of democratic theory.

All that leaves to one side, however, the prior question of who exactly it is that is to be making those decisions in that democratic way. How do we specify the group making those decisions? That is what I shall call the problem of “constituting the demos.”¹

Writing in 1970, the preeminent democratic theorist of the previous generation complained, “Strange as it may seem . . . , how to decide who legitimately make up ‘the people’ and hence are entitled to govern themselves . . . is a problem almost totally neglected by all the great political philosophers who write about democracy.”

David Albert and Sean Carroll’s fascinating discussion of the issue:

//
Design
Billy Collins

I pour a coating of salt on the table
and make a circle in it with my finger.
This is the cycle of life
I say to no one.
This is the wheel of fortune,
the arctic circle.
This is the ring of Kerry
and the white rose of Tralee
I say to the ghosts of my family,
the dead fathers,
the aunt who drowned,
my unborn brothers and sisters,
my unborn children.
This is the sun with its glittering spokes
and the bitter moon.
This is the absolute circle of geometry
I say to the crack in the wall,
to the birds who cross the window.
This is the wheel I just invented
to roll through the rest of my life
I say
touching my finger to my tongue.

//

From Prospect Magazine:

Is it possible to be a true religious believer and at the same time enjoy good relations with people of other faiths or none? Moreover, can you remain open to new ideas and new ways of thinking?

Fethullah Gülen, a 67-year-old Turkish Sufi cleric, author and theoretician, has dedicated much of his life to resolving these questions. From his sick bed in exile just outside Philadelphia, he leads a global movement inspired by Sufi ideas. He promotes an open brand of Islamic thought and, like the Iran-born Islamic philosophers Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Abdolkarim Soroush, he is preoccupied with modern science (he publishes an English-language science magazine called the Fountain). But Gülen, unlike these western-trained Iranians, has spent most of his life within the religious and political institutions of Turkey, a Muslim country, albeit a secular one since the foundation of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s republic after the first world war.

Unusually for a pious intellectual, he and his movement are at home with technology, markets and multinational business, and especially with modern communications and public relations—which, like a modern televangelist, he uses to attract converts. Like a western celebrity, he carefully manages his public exposure—mostly by restricting interviews to those he can trust.

More here.

Brian Greene in Edge:

And when we look at the wealth of opportunities hovering on the horizon — stem cells, genomic sequencing, personalized medicine, longevity research, nanoscience, brain-machine interface, quantum computers, space technology — we realize how crucial it is to cultivate a general public that can engage with scientific issues; there’s simply no other way that as a society we will be prepared to make informed decisions on a range of issues that will shape the future.

These are the standard — and enormously important — reasons many would give in explaining why science matters.

But here’s the thing. The reason science really matters runs deeper still. Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that’s precise, predictive and reliable — a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional. To be able to think through and grasp explanations — for everything from why the sky is blue to how life formed on earth — not because they are declared dogma but rather because they reveal patterns confirmed by experiment and observation, is one of the most precious of human experiences.

As a practicing scientist, I know this from my own work and study. But I also know that you don’t have to be a scientist for science to be transformative. I’ve seen children’s eyes light up as I’ve told them about black holes and the Big Bang. I’ve spoken with high school dropouts who’ve stumbled on popular science books about the human genome project, and then returned to school with newfound purpose. 

More here. (First published as an OpEd piece by The New York Times, June 1, 2008)

Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s Nudge seems to be grabbing a lot of attention, including Barack Obama’s and David Cameron’s. Richard Woods in The Times:

“There can be a rather pious approach to it all, which I find off-putting,” she said. “What I like about the Wattson is that it just tells you what you are using. It’s not trying to make you feel guilt. I’m a great one for carrots, not sticks.”

That is a theme whose time has come, according to David Cameron. While Gordon Brown bludgeons us with top-down targets, on-the-spot fines and endless regulation, the Conservative leader wants to adopt a subtle new approach: the power of “social norms”, a phenomenon making waves thanks to a book called Nudge, which is published in Britain this week.

At the heart of social norms, Cameron says, is the idea “that one of the most important influences on people’s behaviour is what other people do”. The majority, it seems, don’t want to be very different from those around them.

Instead they want to belong, and they want to be on the side of the good guys. Give them proper information about the acceptable norm, plus a gentle push in the right direction, and they will change behaviour of their own accord.

The ideas have been mooted before, but some behavioural economists believe the potency of this phenomenon has been underestimated. Now leading politicians, such as Barack Obama, the Democrat candidate for the US presidency, are taking an interest.

Cameron appears to have taken the ideas to heart. “We’ve got to stop thinking that if government tells people what to do, they’ll do it,” he said in a speech earlier this month. “Instead we’ve got to harness the power of social norms to bring about social change.”

Were secular citizens to encounter their fellow citizens with the reservation that the latter, because of their religious mindset, are not to be taken seriously as modern contemporaries, they would revert to the level of a mere modus vivendi – and would thus relinquish the very basis of mutual recognition which is constitutive for shared citizenship. Secular citizens are expected not to exclude a fortiori that they may discover, even in religious utterances, semantic contents and covert personal intuitions that can be translated and introduced into a secular discourse.

So, if all is to go well both sides, each from its own viewpoint, must accept an interpretation of the relation between faith and knowledge that enables them to live together in a self-reflective manner.

more from Sign and Sight here.

The 1950s were arguably the greatest years of the Western — the period in which clichés were sustained and destabilized through psychology, revisionism, high style, and the kind of grandeur that follows when the most durable clichés are reframed against classical paradigms. Consider “The Furies,” in which a baggy reworking of the Oresteia is played out in an agora that stretches to the horizon, encompassing endless cattle pastures, mountainous outposts, a city strip with a saloon and bank, and communities of squatters. Yet ponderousness has no place on this Ponderosa. Anthony Mann was a director who knew his Aeschylus well enough to keep the story front and center, goading it with efficiency and brio, confining the poetry to visual effects that make the story memorable and, in two instances of sudden violence, awful — but in a good, Greek way.

more from the NY Sun here.

GOOGLE MAY BE widely admired for its technical wizardry and its quick, accurate search engine, but one of the company’s most impressive accomplishments has been its ability to grow as powerful as it is while still remaining, in the minds of most Americans, fundamentally likable.

The company today is a behemoth, with more than 15,000 employees and a market value as big as Coca-Cola and Boeing combined. Its search engine is the tool of first resort for expert researchers and schoolkids alike; for suspicious employers, first-daters, long-lost friends, blackmailers, reporters, and police investigators – in short, for seekers of any and all sorts of information. In April, the most recent month for which it compiled statistics, Nielsen Online found that 62 percent of all US Internet searches were done using Google. Yahoo, the next largest player, had only 17.5 percent of the market.

Despite its size and dominance, Google has avoided the public suspicion and vilification that have plagued powerful companies from Standard Oil to Microsoft. Instead, protected by its reputation for innovation, its famed “Don’t Be Evil” mantra, and the ever-improving precision of its search engine, Google has remained for the most part a trusted, even a beloved, brand.

more from Boston Globe Ideas here.

From The Guardian:

When novelist Mohammed Hanif told friends he was returning to Pakistan after 12 years in Britain, they were aghast. Why would he and his young family swap London for a city with daily power cuts and rampant gun crime? The answer proved surprisingly simple …

Two months from now, we are planning to return to Karachi with a container full of furniture, more pots and pans than we left behind and a 10-year-old son. Friends and family in Pakistan are aghast. From London to Karachi? Why are you coming to Karachi? Do you know what happened to Sana’s friend the other day? Do you have any idea how you’ll live without electricity for 10 hours every day? And, by the way, have you discussed this with Channan? How does he feel about it?

I will return to Sana’s friend’s plight and my own plans for living without electricity later, but let’s deal with the Channan question first. It’s a heart-wrenching one. He was born in Chelsea and Westminster hospital. He goes to a Church of England school in south London where he is the self-styled star of the school cricket club. His school people are divine, and not because of the church connection. His trumpet teacher has finally managed to get him into a school concert. His closest friends live in the neighbourhood. Obviously, he doesn’t want any of that to change.

More here.

From Scientific American:

Researchers say that references to planets and constellations in the Odyssey describe a solar eclipse that occurred in 1178 B.C., nearly three centuries before Homer is believed to have written the story. If correct, the finding would suggest that the ancient poet had a surprisingly detailed knowledge of astronomy.

The Odyssey, commonly dated to near 800 B.C., describes the 10-year voyage of the Greek general Odysseus to his home on the island of Ithaca after the fall of Troy in approximately 1200 B.C. Toward the end of the story, a seer named Theoclymenus prophecies the death of a group of suitors competing for the affection of Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, who is believed to be dead. Theoclymenus delivers his prophecy as the suitors are sitting down for their noontime meal. He foresees them entering Hades and ends his speech with the statement, “The Sun has been obliterated from the sky, and an unlucky darkness invades the world.” Odysseus dispatches the suitors not long thereafter.

Greek scholars Plutarch and Heraclitus advanced the idea that Theoclymenus’s speech was a poetic description of an eclipse. They cited references in the story that the day of the prophecy was a new moon, which would be true of an eclipse.

More here.

Over at the Templeton Foundation, several thinkers, Steven Pinker, Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, Mary Midgley, Christopher Hitchens, and Stuart Kauffman among them, discuss the issue and give very divergent answers.   Pervez Hoodbhoy:

Not necessarily.

But you must find a science-friendly, science-compatible God. First, try the pantheon of available Creators. Inspect thoroughly. If none fits the bill, invent one.

The God of your choice must be a stickler for divine principles. Science does not take kindly to a deity who, if piqued or euphoric, sets aside seismological or cosmological principles and causes the moon to shiver, the earth to split asunder, or the universe to suddenly reverse its expansion. This God must, among other things, be stoically indifferent to supplications for changing local meteorological conditions, the task having already been assigned to the discipline of fluid dynamics. Therefore, indigenous peoples, even if they dance with great energy around totem poles, shall not cause even a drop of rain to fall on parched soil. Your rule-abiding and science-respecting God equally well dispenses with tearful Christians singing the Book of Job, pious Hindus feverishly reciting the havan yajna, or earnest Muslims performing the salat-i-istisqa as they face the Holy Ka’aba. The equations of fluid flow, not the number of earnest supplicants or quality of their prayers, determine weather outcomes. This is slightly unfortunate because one could imagine joining the faithful of all religions in a huge simultaneous global prayer that wipes away the pernicious effects of anthropogenic global climate change.

Your chosen God cannot entertain private petitions for good health and longevity, prevent an air crash, or send woe upon demand to the enemy. Mindful of microbiology and physiology, She cannot cure leprosy by dipping the afflicted in rivers or have humans remain in unscathed condition after being devoured by a huge fish. Faster-than-light travel is also out of the question, even for prophets and special messengers. Instead, She must run the world lawfully and unto the letter, closely following the Book of Nature.

Twins Seven Seven. Tunde Singer.

More on this accopmplished Nigerian artist here, here, and here.

Paradise Lost

ADAM: Paradise has arbitrary dietary restrictions?

DEVIL: They’re really more like guidelines.

GOD: Incorrect.

Moby-Dick

ISHMAEL: I’m existential.

AHAB: Really? Try vengeance.

ISHMAEL: I dig this dynamic. Can we drag it out for 600 pages?

The Great Gatsby

NICK: I love being rich and white.

GATSBY: Me, too, but I’d kill for the love of a woman.

DAISY: We can work with that.

more from McSweeney’s here.

Axel Leijonhufvud over at the Center for Economic Policy Research:

The Treatise on Money contains a piece of analysis that I have found illuminating. It deals with the financial side of a business downturn. Keynes assumes an initial equilibrium disturbed by a decline in expected future revenues from present capital accumulation. Firms cut back on investment and, as activity levels decline, direct some part of cash flow to the repayment of trade credit and of bank loans. As short rates decline, banks choose not to relend all these funds but instead to improve their own reserve positions. Thus the system as a whole shows an increased demand for high-powered money and simultaneously a decrease in the volume of bank money held by the non-bank sector. Keynes’s preference for speaking of ‘liquidity preference’ rather than ‘demand for money’ becomes understandable in this context since while an increase in liquidity preference does constitute an increase in the demand for outside money it also leads to a decrease in the volume of inside money.

What makes this analysis relevant in today’s context is that it describes a process of general deleveraging as part of a business downturn. Causally, it is the decline of investment expectations and the consequent contraction of output that prompts deleveraging. Today, we are faced with the converse question of whether or not the deleveraging that the financial sector is rather desperately trying to carry through will of necessity bring about a serious recession. For many months now, we have been treated to brave protestations from all sorts of sources that the real economy is strong and will not be much affected by the credit crisis. Yet, it is quite clear that, in a closed system, it is a fallacy of composition to suppose that general deleveraging can take place with out a decline in asset prices and excess supply of goods and services in general (Leijonhufvud  2007c).

Of course, the US private sector is not a closed system. Leverage can be reduced and liquidity improved by inducing sovereign wealth funds or other foreign entities to assume an equity interest in domestic enterprises as some American banks have done. Similarly, the  government can guarantee certain private sector debts and/or swap safe and liquid government debt for risky  and illiquid private debt. This too has been done. But there are limits to both these safety valves and it  remains a serious question whether they will suffice to stave off a serious and long-lasting recession.

An interview with Rossellini and videos related to the film Green Porno, in Scientific American:

Isabella Rossellini, well known as a supermodel and movie star, is now making short films for mobile devices that illustrate the sex lives of dragonflies, earthworms and other creatures. But they are not like standard nature shows. In these films, which she researched with the help of Wildlife Conservation Society experts, she not only details unusual aspects of the critters’ biology but also dresses up as them and mimics sex with paper cutouts. We asked Rossellini what she hopes to accomplish with the films on invertebrate love, dubbed Green Porno, which premiered May 5 on the Sundance Channel’s Web site.

How did you get started making these short films?
Sundance was interested in experimenting and expanding the definition of film. Sundance said, “Would you be interested in making films for the mobile?” We thought short films would be something that people would dedicate two minutes to watch, but longer would be difficult.

You call it Green Porno—what’s the story behind the name?
Sundance wanted, if possible, content that was environmental, because the channel and Robert Redford [the creative director of the network] are very dedicated to it. And then they said, “Because this is new media, can you make it flashy and funny?” Flashy to me translated into sex, so it’s great to do a very short little series about the life of bugs.

Online booking vacation package deals await. In the Herald Sun:

[A]s the detainees lie locked in cages, visitors can windsurf and fish.

The 1.5 million US service personnel and Guantanamo’s 3000 workers are eligible to visit the “resort”, which has a McDonald’s, KFC, Wal-Mart and a bowling alley.

The holiday comes cheap: only $42 a night for a fully equipped, airconditioned unit.

It is the souvenirs that have attracted most criticism. One gift shop T-shirt is decorated with a guard tower and barbed wire.

It reads: “The Taliban Towers at Guantanamo Bay, the Caribbean’s Newest 5-star Resort”.

A child-size T-shirt says: “Someone who loves me got me this T-shirt in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba”.

There are mugs inscribed with “kisses from Guantanamo” and “Honor Bound To Defend Freedom”.

The Guantanamo holiday trade was exposed by Zachary Katznelson, a lawyer who represents 28 detainees and makes regular visits to the prison.

“The military keeps a tight hold on Guantanamo Bay and someone senior has given their approval for this disgusting nonsense,” he said.