The Selimiye Mosque, in Edirne, a city in northwest Turkey, is a magnificent stone edifice, with four minarets and an austere, octagonal-shaped body supporting a large dome. Built for Sultan Selim II in the sixteenth century, it has withstood numerous earthquakes and can accommodate more than five thousand kneeling worshippers. One evening at the end of January, I visited the mosque with Paul Wolfowitz, the president of the World Bank, and a half dozen of his aides and colleagues. Two years have passed since President Bush nominated Wolfowitz, the former Deputy Secretary of Defense and one of the architects of the war in Iraq, to head the sprawling multinational lending institution that has as its official goal “a world without poverty.”

more from The New Yorker here.

There he was, surrounded by urban noise and crowds, patiently inscribing grey stone. “To the unknown Roman girl”, said the brand new epitaph. I had come to 30 St Mary Axe in the City of London – the Gherkin – to see a poem that is written on benches around Norman Foster’s tower, by the Scottish conceptual artist Ian Hamilton Finlay. And here was another man, carving a memorial to a Roman skeleton to be reburied here this week. It was an encounter with the ancient world as unexpected as the one I’d just had in an exhibition of neon wall texts.

more from The Guardian here.

From MSNBC:

World-famous cosmologist Stephen Hawking was in the Seattle spotlight Monday night to explain the big questions: Why does time seem to move always forward but never backward? Why does he think running time backwards the only way to solve the universe’s biggest mystery? But the small questions can be just as intriguing: For example, how does Hawking “autograph” a book? When he composes a sentence on his gesture-controlled computer, does he blink or does he sneer?

Here are some insights into those questions, great and small, gleaned during a close encounter with Cambridge University’s frail genius: The title of Hawking’s advertised talk was “The History of the Universe Backwards,” but he actually delivered two lectures – one looking back at his own career in physics, and another focusing on his latest theories about a “top-down” approach to cosmology.

More here.

From Guardian:

Two hundred years after wandering through drifts of spring flowers in the Lake District, William Wordsworth has been given a pop video and rap version of his famous poem on daffodils. Read by a zany red squirrel in a series of dramatic mountain and lakeside locations, the hip take on the 24 lines of verse aims to lure more young people to the national park this summer.

Bouncing past tearooms and hotel discos, as well as the bay on Ullswater where the poem was inspired, the rapping rodent – a local busker in red fur – marks the bicentenary of the poem’s publication. “Wordsworth’s Daffodils poem has remained unchanged for 200 years,” said a spokeswoman for Cumbria tourist board. “To keep it alive for another two centuries we want to engage the YouTube generation who go for modern music and amusing video footage on the web.”

More here.

French postmodernism may be passing, but it had a point. Even if engagement with the world is the cure, the respite it gives may be short-lived. No sooner has the real moment gone than the work of memory begins, once more selecting, massaging, suppressing and spinning. That moment is like a glimpse of the naked king, or the politician’s one-day dash into the war zone: it may be a glimpse of truth, but even if we are honest enough to see anything we do not want to see, that in turn may just reinvigorate the work of disguise. That can’t have been the real Louis XIV, or the real Iraq. And heaven forfend that people see them like that—otherwise it might really destroy our legacy, or at any rate the bit that counts: its representation in self-image, story and picture.

more from Prospect Magazine here.

The paintings of Jacopo Tintoretto come as a revelation. According to standard opinion Michelangelo, Titian, and Raphael were the supreme artists of the sixteenth century; yet often during the last four hundred years, viewers have gazed in awe and surprise at works by Tintoretto, and wondered if he might be the greatest painter of all. Thus John Ruskin during his first visit to Venice wrote:

I never was so utterly crushed to the earth before any human intellect as I was today before Tintoret. Just be so good as to take my list of painters, and put him in the school of Art at the top, top, top of everything, with a great big black line to stop him off from everybody…. As for painting, I think I didn’t know what it meant till today.

more from the NYRB here.

Zimbabwean human rights activist Mary Ndlovu in Pambazuka:

The past weeks have indeed brought a qualitative change to Zimbabwe, with a significant shift in the balance of power between the forces which keep Mugabe in power and those which wish to remove him. Ultimately a government’s endurance rests on its success in maintaining a productive and healthy economy which delivers at least subsistence to the population. Mugabe has failed spectacularly in this sphere, with the economy in a state of contraction for the past seven years, and in free fall for the past year.

This collapse has effects which undermine his political support. Firstly, it makes it more difficult for him to dispense the largesse necessary to buy the continuing loyalty of the political and security elite, and to keep the lower ranks of the forces in line. Second, it makes the population, which has remained largely quiescent and submissive in the face of oppression, restive and prepared to risk more in confronting a hugely unpopular government which has destroyed their lives. And thirdly it has spill-over consequences in the region which are beginning to annoy and frustrate neighbouring governments.

Perceiving a weakening in Mugabe’s power base, opposition leaders in political parties, civil society organisations, student movements and churches, have taken their cue and demonstrated greater determination and willingness to come together to push him out.

In n+1:

Last season’s series of museum exhibitions (the Queens Museum’s “Road to Recreation,” the Museum of the City of New York’s “Remaking the Metropolis,” and the Wallach Gallery’s “Slum Clearance and the Superblock Solution”), seeking, quite openly, to recover Robert Moses’s reputation and legacy, did not emphasize this particular antagonism, between many of Moses’s built structures and the current spatial ambitions of the city’s real estate interests. The Moses of the exhibits, which were unusual both for the artfulness of their display and for the openly opinionated quality of their explanatory plaques, was not the Moses whose expressways and housing projects are currently preventing New York City from gentrifying as thoroughly as, say, central London or Paris. Instead, it was the “middle-class” Moses—the builder of middle-income housing complexes like Morningside Gardens and Washington Square Village, of Lincoln Center and the United Nations, of soaring suspension bridges leading to suburban parkways, of Jones Beach, the Astoria Pool, and two world’s fairs.

Such a Moses, of course, did actually exist. Moreover, this particular Moses, this mighty champion of middle-class values, has more often been the source of commentators’ collective condemnation than he has of their esteem. Jane Jacobs was already criticizing this Moses, in her 1961 classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, for importing suburban spatial norms into her city of sidewalks, stoops, and corner shops. By this time, Lewis Mumford, an admirer of Moses during the 1930s and 40s, and usually an adversary of Jacobs’s, was attacking Moses on similar grounds. He found infuriating the “car culture” Moses built for so exclusively, and, along with many other city-planning advocates of the time, Mumford derided the great bureaucrat for neglecting mass transit.

There are parts of this piece by Tish Durkin I disagree with, but the following I have seen at times, and it does leave a bad taste. I hoped my predictions of disaster were wrong from the get go, and that my sporadic predictions that things would work out for Iraq would be right. Shadenfreude over this is, well, not just a broken joy but a deformed one. (via normblog)

[W]hat depresses me, and makes me despise so much war criticism even when I agree with it, is that so many of those positing it seem so happy about what’s gone wrong. They seem to relish the probability that Iraq will get worse and worse so that they can be righter and righter.

This isn’t new.

I remember an anti-war activist who was staying in our hotel in Baghdad, who had not come to Karbala for that first ashura. A good person trying to do good things, she had stayed behind to prepare a media alert on the horrors of the occupation — which, especially at a time when the coverage out of Iraq was largely very upbeat, was a very worthy thing to be doing. Still, one thing really bothered me about her. When, upon everyone’s return from Karbala, the activist heard that the day had actually been free of violence, and full of jubilation, she looked as if she had tasted a bad olive, and spit out her response: “Oh, fuck.”

How she must be gloating now. Reality has made sages of the most dire prophets. It’s perfect: Iraq really has gone to hell, and the demon neocons are the ones that sent it.

Like liberals – and thinking conservatives, and sentient beings — everywhere, I gravely doubt that the troop surge – so little so late — will do anything to save Iraq. But for the sake of the Iraqi people, I sure hope it does – even if that helps the Republicans.

But I’m not sure how widespread it is. While a few I’ve met do seem to feel glee at Iraq’s slide into the abyss (in an echo of the crisis mongering of old Commies, who thought a protracted depression would save the world!), most don’t. The opening of Paul Krugman’s April 11th 2003 NYT column seems me to be representative on this front:

Credit where credit is due: the hawks were right to say that a whiff of precision-guided grapeshot would lead to the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime. But even skeptics about this war expected a military victory. (”Of course we’ll win on the battlefield, probably with ease” was the opening line of my start-of-the-war column.) Instead, we worried — and continue to worry — about what would follow. As another skeptic, Michael Kinsley of Slate, wrote yesterday: ”I do hope to be proven wrong. But it hasn’t happened yet.”

Why worry? I won’t pretend to have any insights into what is going on in the minds of the Iraqi people. But there is a pattern to the Bush administration’s way of doing business that does not bode well for the future — a pattern of conquest followed by malign neglect.

From The New York Times:

Sexual desire. The phrase alone holds such loaded, voluptuous power that the mere expression of it sounds like a come-on — a little pungent, a little smutty, a little comical and possibly indictable. Everybody with a pair of currently or formerly active gonads knows about sexual desire. It is a near-universal experience, the invisible clause on one’s birth certificate stipulating that one will, upon reaching maturity, feel the urge to engage in activities often associated with the issuance of more birth certificates. Yet universal does not mean uniform, and the definitions of sexual desire can be as quirky and personalized as the very chromosomal combinations that sexual reproduction will yield. Ask an assortment of men and women, “What is sexual desire, and how do you know you’re feeling it?” and after some initial embarrassed mutterings and demands for anonymity, they answer as follows:

“There’s a little bit of adrenaline, a puffing of the chest, a bit of anticipatory tongue motion,” said a divorced lawyer in his late 40s.

“I feel relaxed, warm and comfortable,” said a designer in her 30s.

“A yearning to kiss or grab someone who might respond,” said a male filmmaker, 50. “Or if I’m alone, to call up exes.”

“Listening to Noam Chomsky,” said a psychologist in her 50s, “always turns me on.”

At the same time, the researchers said, it is precisely the complexity of sexual desire, the depth, richness and tangled spangle of its weave, that call out to be understood.

More here.

From BBC News:

Researchers studied 3,000 dogs from 143 breeds and found small dogs all shared a mutation in a gene that influences size in other animals. This form of the gene was almost absent in large dog breeds, an international team reported in Science journal. The 14 small dogs in the sample, such as Portuguese water dogs, chihuahuas, fox terriers and pomeranians, share a specific sequence of DNA that includes the gene for making a hormone called insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1). The scientists also looked at DNA from nine large breeds including Irish wolfhounds, St Bernards and Great Danes.

The IGF-1 gene has been known to influence size in other organisms, including mice and humans. These results suggest that while there are invariably differences among breeds – even in genes for size – IGF-1 has played an important role in the evolution of many small breeds by being a gene that consistently affects body size. The new research suggests that a mutation in this gene led to the appearance of small dogs more than 10,000 years ago.

More here.

Joan Jonas. The Shape, The Scent, The Feel of Things. 2004.

Video.

More here, and here.

At just 24, Uzodinma Iweala is the youngest of Granta’s latest Best Young Novelists selection. Not one for wasting his time, he’s already working on a second book at the same time as training to be a doctor.

Michelle Pauli in The Guardian:

Iweala explains, “My dad said to me: “You’ve done a great job, but don’t get too high on being the youngest this or the youngest that because someone somewhere will do great things at a younger age than you. It’s not about the age. It’s about the work you produce.”

Wise words but probably unnecessary – Iweala junior appears to have an exceptionally wise head on his young shoulders. And there’s also no doubting his talent. At 24, he is the youngest of all the young writers on Granta’s list and the recognition comes on the back of his John Llewellyn Rhys prize win with his first novel, Beasts of No Nation, last year.

Iweala, still a student, remains admirably unfazed by the attention he is garnering. “For me, I am really interested in how I can stretch myself to produce things. If in the process others take note and recognise that, then wonderful. I remain very grateful for the recognition that the book and my writing has gotten,” he says. “But I think it would be very detrimental to my own performance as a young and growing writer if I started writing to gain awards and accolades.”

More here.

Jonathan Leake in the Times of London:

A £2 billion project to answer some of the biggest mysteries of the universe has been delayed by months after scientists building it made basic errors in their mathematical calculations.

The mistakes led to an explosion deep in the tunnel at the Cern particle accelerator complex near Geneva in Switzerland. It lifted a 20-ton magnet off its mountings, filling a tunnel with helium gas and forcing an evacuation.

It means that 24 magnets located all around the 17-mile circular accelerator must now be stripped down and repaired or upgraded. The failure is a huge embarrassment for Fermilab, the American national physics laboratory that built the magnets and the anchor system that secured them to the machine.

It appears Fermilab made elementary mistakes in the design of the magnets and their anchors that made them insecure once the system was operational.

More here.

Phil Berardelli in ScienceNOW Daily News:

For several decades, astronomers have been aiming sensitive radio receivers toward the heavens hoping to eavesdrop on signals generated by beings on planets elsewhere in the galaxy. Nothing yet, of course, but now an international team of researchers is proposing to look for flashes from alien laser beams as well using gamma-ray telescopes.

Gamma-ray telescopes are designed to detect the highest-energy particles of light: photons from exploding stars and the like. But if their ultra-fast, ultra-sensitive cameras are tuned to the proper wavelength, they also can detect faint flashes of optical light of the sort that might come from lasers positioned thousands of light-years away. “There are 20 to 30 naturally occurring light flashes recorded every second” by gamma-ray telescopes around the world, says astrophysicist Joachim Rose of the University of Leeds in the U.K. The telescope software usually ignores the flashes because it is configured to reject “anything that it doesn’t expect,” he says.

But those flashes could be evidence of intelligent life among the stars, Rose says.

In The Guardian, Simon Jenkins reviews Terry Eagleton’s The Meaning of Life.

The search [for the meaning of life] soon moves into the author’s favourite territory of modernism. He points to the damage that science has done to religion’s answer to his question, so that for most people the answer is personal rather than collective. Until recently, “the idea that there could be meaning to your life which was peculiar to you, quite different from the meaning of other people’s lives, would not have mustered many votes”. Nowadays we feel the need to “own” the question. Life is our question and our answer. That is the gulf that divides Odysseus from Hamlet. Since the great soliloquy, to be or not to be has become my business, not yours.

At this point Eagleton’s argument lurches briefly towards silliness. Ask most people what life means to them, or perhaps what “gives it meaning”, and the answer will be a melange of family, love, home, sport, nationalism and, again, religion. Those who once saw their purpose on Earth as fixed by the sages and myths of tribe and community are today adrift on a sea of modernist diversity. “A great many educated people,” writes Eagleton, “believe that life is an accidental evolutionary phenomenon that has no more intrinsic meaning than a fluctuation in the breeze or a rumble in the gut … If our lives have meaning it is something with which we manage to invest them, not something with which they come ready equipped.”

Joyce Carol Oates reviews Collected Stories by Roald Dahl, in the New York Review of Books:

Though a number of Dahl’s most engaging stories, particularly in his early career, are cast in a realist mode, his reputation is that of a writer of macabre, blackly jocose tales that read, at their strongest, like artful variants of Grimm’s fairy tales; Dahl is of that select society of Saki (the pen name of H.H. Munro), Evelyn Waugh, Muriel Spark, and Iris Murdoch, satiric moralists who wield the English language like a surgical instrument to flay, dissect, and expose human folly. As a female character says in the ironically titled “My Lady Love, My Dove”: “I’m a nasty person. And so are you—in a secret sort of way. That’s why we get along together.” Given Dahl’s predilection for severely punishing his fictional characters, you might expect this nasty lady to be punished, but Roald Dahl is not a writer to satisfy expectations.

More here.

Andrew C. Revkin in the International Herald Tribune:

Over the last few decades, as scientists have intensified their studies of the human effects on climate and of the effects of climate change on humans, a common theme has emerged: in both respects, the world is a very unequal place.

In almost every instance, the people most at risk from climate change live in countries that have contributed least to the atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases linked to the recent warming of the planet.

Those most vulnerable countries also tend to be the poorest. And the countries that face the least harm – and are best equipped to deal with the harm they do face – tend to be the richest.

To advocates of unified action to curb greenhouse gases, this growing realization is not welcome news.

“The original idea was that we were all in this together, and that was an easier idea to sell,” said Robert Mendelsohn, an economist at Yale University.

“But the research is not supporting that. We’re not in it together.”

More here.

Born a Half-Century Ago, Helvetica’s Made a Lasting Impression.

Frank Jordans in the Washington Post:

Open a newspaper, look at a street sign, type an e-mail and chances are a Swiss design icon is staring you in the face, though you’d be hard-pressed to identify it.

But peer closely at the shape of the letters: If they’re easy to read and without unnecessary flourishes, then you might well be looking at an example of the Helvetica typeface, which turns 50 this year.

Helvetica lettering adorns images most people can conjure instantly, from New York subway signs to the logos of Harley-Davidson, American Airlines and BMW. But much of the time it remains invisible in a sea of print, unobtrusively conveying the message the designer intended it to.

Unusually for the little-celebrated craft of typography — the design and arrangement of typed letters — the anniversary is being marked in grand fashion, with an exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the release of a film by Gary Hustwit paying homage to what the cult documentary maker calls “one of the most popular ways for us to communicate our words.”

“Helvetica is one of those typefaces that everybody knows, everybody sees, but they don’t really see it at the same time because it’s so good at its job…”

More here.

Anthropologists are looking at how prehistoric tasks were divided, perhaps indicating the moment when we became truly human.

Faye Flam in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Could it be that Neanderthal females achieved an equality that is rare even by today’s standards?

Some anthropologists make a case that our extinct female cousins hunted alongside the males during an epoch when our own ancestral women were gathering plants and doing other (essential) work. They argue that the appearance of gender roles was critical to humans’ eventual domination of the globe – and that the importance of the women of the Pleistocene period has been vastly understated.

These assertions, controversial to be sure, play into growing scientific interest in prehistoric sex roles: How did our male and female ancestors divvy up the tasks of getting food, clothing and shelter, and how did those roles shape the evolving species? Did primitive peoples form relationships, the males playing father to sons and daughters, or did we act more like our chimpanzee and gorilla cousins – promiscuous, violent, with males fighting over the females?

More here.