Jenny Anderson in the New York Times:

Hedge fund managers, those masters of a secretive, sometimes volatile financial universe, are making money on a scale that once seemed unimaginable, even in Wall Street’s rarefied realms.

One manager, John Paulson, made $3.7 billion last year. He reaped that bounty, probably the richest in Wall Street history, by betting against certain mortgages and complex financial products that held them.

Mr. Paulson, the founder of Paulson & Company, was not the only big winner. The hedge fund managers James H. Simons and George Soros each earned almost $3 billion last year, according to an annual ranking of top hedge fund earners by Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine, which comes out Wednesday.

Hedge fund managers have redefined notions of wealth in recent years. And the richest among them are redefining those notions once again.

More here.

Patricia Sullivan in the Washington Post:

Edward N. Lorenz, 90, a meteorologist who laid the groundwork for chaos theory, memorably asking whether the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil can set off a tornado in Texas, died of cancer April 16 at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was an emeritus professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

At MIT, Dr. Lorenz accidentally discovered how small differences in the early stages of a dynamic system, such as the weather, can trigger such huge changes in later stages that the result is unpredictable and essentially random.

At the time, Dr. Lorenz was studying why it’s so hard to accurately forecast the weather, but the implications of his work go far beyond meteorology.

The new science of chaos fundamentally changed the way researchers address topics from the geometry of snowflakes to the predictability of which movies will become blockbusters. The butterfly effect became a popular way of describing unpredictability, most recently in “An Inconvenient Truth” (2006), the Academy Award-winning documentary with former Vice President Al Gore.

It also “brought about one of the most dramatic changes in mankind’s view of nature since Sir Isaac Newton,” said the committee that awarded Dr. Lorenz the 1991 Kyoto Prize for basic sciences.

More here.

“Mankind will not be free until the last capitalist has been hung with the entrails of the last bureaucrat.” This slogan, allegedly a 1968-er modification of Voltaire’s famous statement (with “monarchs” and “priests” being replaced with “capitalists” and “bureaucrats”), seems at once quaint, maniacal, noble and deranged. Next month will mark the 40th anniversary of the general strike in France sparked by the confrontation between police and students. This year also marks the 40th anniversary of the hot autumn in Italy, the uprising in Mexico City, the Prague Spring and the Soviet invasion, student protests in Germany and the Chicago Democratic convention. The movement, or era, or spirit, I suspect, only really ended with the foreign ministership of Joschka Fischer and the election of Daniel Cohn-Bendit to the European parliament. Euro|topics looks back at 1968 with a few articles on the protests in Western Europe. Over at Cafebabel, an interview with Daniel (“Dany Le Rouge”) Cohn-Bendit:

What do you think is the aim of today’s ‘revolt’? Has your generation already implemented the large reversal in personal freedom, which still continues for today’s youth?

There is the revolt against globalisation, the aim of which is clear. The G8 demonstration has shown that it is against injustice. There is a revolt against the ecological destruction of the planet. There is also simply the effort to safeguard against a very achievement-orientated society, which basically only offers a slump career-wise or unemployment.

The pressure of the working sphere for those who have a high standard of living is so high that some find it hard to endure. For this reason, many youngsters simply avoid achievement. More and more people are accused of this. The fact that they do not like to be political articulate has a socio-political effect.

But nothing like forty years ago?

We need to stop the comparisons with the situation forty years ago. It has gone, finished, is over the hill. It was nice for those who experienced it but it is over now. We have a different world, a different society. 1968 changed the world and now we have to deal with the current world and not look back.

From The London Times:

It would be hard to find someone better qualified than John Hemming to evoke both the natural splendour and biological complexity of Amazonia and the impact of the white man and his technology, from the knife blades that so entranced the Indians, to the chains that linked them as slaves under the horrified eyes of Roger Casement and others, to the D-9 bulldozers of today chewing up the rainforest for soya bean plantations. With a shelf full of distinguished books and papers on the Amazon, this former director of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) reassures his readers, without conceit, that he really knows what he is talking about. Describing the great English mid-19th century botanist Richard Spruce’s terror of getting lost, “even when not far from salvation”, Hemming comments, “Getting lost is one of the few fatal dangers in this environment. I have also experienced the panic of finding myself alone and disoriented in unexplored forests, far further from help than Spruce was at that time, knowing that if I continued in the wrong direction I would never survive.”

More here.

Rushdie agrees with Akbar: ‘Of course, the novel enormously heightens and increases that porosity — but actually the border between the world of dreams and the waking world is porous. We all dream things into being, you imagine yourself having a child and then you have a child. An inventor will think of something in his mind and then make it actual. So things are often passing from the imagined realm into the real world. It is much harder to do it the other way round!’

The staple Rushdie theme of multiple identities is here, too. The Emperor reflects that we are ‘bags of selves, bursting with plurality’. Yet the deeper preoccupation in the book is the emergence of humanism and of the self as distinct from the group, not only in Renaissance Florence, but in Akbar’s musings. ‘Were there such naked, solitary “I’s” buried beneath the overcrowded “we’s” of the earth?’ the Emperor asks himself.

more from The Spectator here.

Murakami has often argued that there is no indigenous tradition of distinguishing between high and low cultural products in Japan, where art is routinely exhibited in department stores and luxury merchandise can be seen in museums. In the 1990s, he coined the term Superflat to describe this condition of nonhierarchical flatness, linking it to the formal tendency toward two-dimensionality in Japanese art, from Edo screens to anime to his own depthless paintings, such as this DOB variation. For those of us who were reared on the idea that art is a special kind of luxury product—more contemplative, denser with meaning, somehow resistant to the status quo—Murakami’s radical leveling of art and commerce can be pretty unsettling.

more from Slate here.

Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic:

He began with the story of a black girl who’d risen to become valedictorian of his old high school, despite having been abandoned by her father. “She spoke to the graduating class and her speech started like this,” Cosby said. “‘I was 5 years old. It was Saturday and I stood looking out the window, waiting for him.’ She never said what helped turn her around. She never mentioned her mother, grandmother, or great-grandmother.”

“Understand me,” Cosby said, his face contorted and clenched like a fist. “Men? Men? Men! Where are you, men?”

Audience: “Right here!”

Cosby had come to Detroit aiming to grab the city’s black men by their collars and shake them out of the torpor that has left so many of them—like so many of their peers across the country—undereducated, over-incarcerated, and underrepresented in the ranks of active fathers. No women were in the audience. No reporters were allowed, for fear that their presence might frighten off fathers behind on their child-support payments. But I was there, trading on race, gender, and a promise not to interview any of the allegedly skittish participants.

“Men, if you want to win, we can win,” Cosby said. “We are not a pitiful race of people. We are a bright race, who can move with the best. But we are in a new time, where people are behaving in abnormal ways and calling it normal …

More here.

….

Operations
Tony Hoagland

In autumn, Operation Enduring Freedom commenced,
which some party-poopers wanted to nickname
Operation……….Infinite Self-Indulgence.
We tied flags to the antennae of our cars
that snapped like fire when we drove.

In winter there was Operation Gentle Sledge-Hammer,
which seemed linguistically a little underdigested,
but we lined up squads of second-graders
……..to stand at attention while we beat a drum.

Let me make it clear that I was
as doubtful as anyone about Operation Racial
Provocation
But I loved Operation Religious Suspicion,

which led to Operation Eye For An Eye,
which was succeeded by Operation Helping Hand;
—Let me tell you that was a scary-looking hand!
But that was also a very successful operation.

Someday you will required to perform a terrible
deed
in order to save yourself,
……………….but save yourself for what?

That would be a question for Operation
Self-Examination to answer,
which is a very painful operation
performed without anesthesia
in a naked room full of shadows and light.

Perhaps I might suggest, instead,
Operation Self-Medication, or Operation Endless
Mindless……..Distraction?
In the meantime Operation Collateral Amnesia
is running very smoothly.
When it is over we want to cal it Operation One Big
Happy………..family.€”
Is that okay with you?

..

Christopher Hitchens in Vanity Fair:

We tend to love anecdotes about apples and eurekas because they make scientific genius seem more human and more random, but that other great Cambridge denizen Sir Leslie Stephen was closer to the mark when he claimed genius was “the capacity for taking trouble.” Isaac Newton was one of the great workaholics of all time, as well as one of the great insomniacs. His industry and application made Bertrand Russell look like a slacker (and, like Russell, he was morbidly afraid of fire among his papers and books—fire which did, in fact, more than once break out). When he decided that a reflecting telescope would be a better instrument than the conventional refracting model, he also decided to construct it himself. When asked where he had obtained the tools for this difficult task, he responded with a laugh that he had made the tools himself, as well. He fashioned a parabolic mirror out of an alloy of tin and copper that he had himself evolved, smoothed, and polished to a glass-like finish, and built a tube and mounting to house it. This six-inch telescope had the same effectiveness as a six-foot refracting version, because it removed the distortions of light that were caused by the use of lenses.

In contrast with this clarity and purity, however, Newton spent much of his time dwelling in a self-generated fog of superstition and crankery. He believed in the lost art of alchemy, whereby base metals can be transmuted into gold, and the surviving locks of his hair show heavy traces of lead and mercury in his system, suggesting that he experimented upon himself in this fashion, too. (That would also help explain the fires in his room, since alchemists had to keep a furnace going at all times for their mad schemes.) Not content with the narrow views of the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life, he thought that there was a kind of universal semen in the cosmos, and that the glowing tails of the comets he tracked through the sky contained replenishing matter vital for life on Earth. He was a religious crackpot who, according to Ackroyd, considered Catholics to be “offspring of the Whore of Rome.”

More here.

Michael Shermer in Scientific American:

The next time you come face to face with a dog wagging its tail, you can make a quick determination on whether to reach out and pet it or step back in deference: check the tail-wag bias. If the wagging tail leans to the dog’s right, you’re safe; if the tail leans to the dog’s left, don’t move.

This tail-wagging bias was documented in a 2007 article in the journal Current Biology by Italian neuroscientist Giorgio Vallortigara and his veterinarian colleagues at the University of Bari. In an experiment, 30 mixed-breed dogs were each placed in a cage equipped with cameras that measured the asymmetrical bias (left or right) of tail wagging while the pooches were exposed to four stimuli: their owner, an unfamiliar human, a cat and an unfamiliar dominant dog. Owners elicited a strong right bias in tail wagging, and unfamiliar humans and the cat triggered a slight right bias. But the unfamiliar dominant dog (a large Belgian Shepherd Malinois) elicited a strong left bias in tail wagging. Why?

According to the researchers, because the left brain controls the right side of the body, and vice versa, the nerve signals cross the midline of the body and cause the dog’s tail to wag more to the right when its left brain is experiencing a positive emotion.

More here.

From CNN:

Some prominent New York divorce lawyers couldn’t think of another case where a spouse — in this instance, the wife of a major Broadway theater operator — had taken to YouTube to spill the secrets of a marriage in an apparent effort to gain leverage and humiliate the other side.

“This is absolutely a new step, and I think it’s scary,” said Bonnie Rabin, a divorce lawyer who has handled high-profile cases. “People used to worry about getting on Page Six [the gossip page of the New York Post]. But this? It brings the concept of humiliation to a whole new level.”

In a tearful and furious YouTube video with close to 150,000 hits to date, former actress and playwright (“Bonkers”) Tricia Walsh-Smith lashes out against her husband, Philip Smith, president of the Shubert Organization, the largest theater owner on Broadway.

More here.  And here’s the lovely video:

From Science:

In as little as 5 years, scientists may be able to grow eggs and sperm from ordinary body cells, an international consortium of scientists and ethicists announced in a consensus statement yesterday. The technological advance could be a boon for infertile couples as well as for research on reproduction, providing policymakers don’t ban the tools, the group says. Last year scientists announced that they had learned to turn back the clock on body cells. By inserting a select group of genes, they were able to convert skin cells into pluripotent stem cells (PSC)–cells capable of developing into any type of body tissue. This capability has opened up a whole new world of research–and it’s brought closer to reality the possibility of generating embryos from gametes (i.e., sperm and eggs) grown in the lab, bypassing the need to collect oocytes from women.

The consortium, known as the Hinxton Group, warns that “oversight structures” need to be in place before anyone attempts to deploy such gametes in human reproduction. Such a development raises a host of concerns that include safety issues and the specter of the “ultimate incest”–the same person supplying both egg and sperm. At the same time, the group urges policymakers to be “flexible” in regulating the new technologies, not only because of the insights they can offer into human development but also because they could present new options for infertile couples whose eggs or sperm is defective. In legislation currently being considered in the United Kingdom, it would be illegal to use gametes created in the lab to treat infertility.

More here.

Part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, and part 12.  Via richarddawkins.net.

Borderless nationalisms seem norm of the era.  The Campaign to Stop Funding Hate has released this report, on the Hindu Students Council. From the preface:

To continue CSFH’s positive engagement with local HSC chapters and its membership who have remained unaware of the National HSCs connections with the violent Hindutva movement. CSFH believes that this generation of Indian-American youth would not willingly or knowingly participate in politics that supports or affirms violence in the name of religion or nation. Unlike the National HSC, we feel that local HSC chapter can be engaged in lively, strong discussions, discussions that will enrich us all and make us more aware of the political and social implications of our actions – even actions that we think are not “political” but simply express our urge to nurture our identity or learn about our heritage.

To continue to question the National HSC on its deep, long-standing connections with the Sangh Parivar [Hindu organizations built around the extreme nationalist RSS], and its use of the large majority of its unsuspecting members to further the Sangh Parivar’s agenda of hate.

[H/t: Linta Varghese]

In parallel with the World Science Festival is this event, Thursday, May 29th:

The Moth at Symphony Space

In a special event that throws a uniquely personal spotlight on the working lives of scientists, Nobel Laureates and other renowned scientists take to the stage to tell stories about heroic failures, miscalculations and experiments gone wrong.

This captivating evening of live stories is presented in partnership with New York’s extraordinary storytelling collective The Moth. In keeping with Moth traditions, each story must be true, must be told live, and must be told in ten minutes. During its ten-year history, The Moth has sold out every show – bringing more than 2,000 live stories to over 60,000 audience members.

Participant(s):

But what I’m really suggesting is: the first time one hears Dylan will affect everything thereafter. Charlotte Brontë wrote wonderfully about first impressions and so did Jane Austin; we really need to value our first impressions and trust them, but not too much. I am the beneficiary – that also means the victim – of the fact that Dylan was first and foremost a love poet. At a party in Amherst, Massachusetts, the host and hostess announced that they were going to turn the lights out and that we were going to listen to a song. And we listened to “Desolation Row”. I’d never heard anything like it except that it was terrifically like The Waste Land, which is terrifically like Pope’s Dunciad. This is the extraordinary vision of hell on earth where civilization doesn’t know what to value or when it does know – doesn’t know how to value it.

Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk,
He looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet.

e=mc2 isn’t exactly reciting the alphabet, but it’s a wonderful way to put it. Or let’s take:

And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain’s tower
While calypso singers laugh at them.

Which is quite right: modernism was like the Titanic, it was terrifically expensive, it depended upon people below stairs or below deck. And it was a kind of disaster.

more from Eurozine here.

John McCain came all the way to a Victorian opera house at this old Southern railroad junction to ponder his ancestors.

Not far from an airfield named for his grandfather, on a stage bedecked with black-and-white family photos, McCain reflected on the notions of honor and courage and duty passed down through generations as he confessed to having “been an imperfect servant of my country for many years.”

With this look backwards in search of meaning, McCain was reveling in his greatest political asset. Perhaps more than any other national candidate in recent memory, McCain has relied on the promise of a transcendent character guaranteed by personal experience, the reason he has been able to convince voters – especially those who disagree with him on key issues – of his ability to rise above partisanship and privilege, artifice and ambition.

This is a political project, but also a literary one, initiated by Mark Salter, the Arizona senator’s closest aide and one frequently described as his alter ego, who for nearly two decades has made telling McCain’s stories his own life’s work.

more from The Boston Globe here.

….

In the beginning was the alphabet
–St. Roy

A Primer of the Daily Round
Howard Nemerov

A peels an apple, while B kneels to God,
C telephones to D, who has a hand
On E’s knee, F coughs, G turns up the sod
For H’s grave, I do not understand
But J is bringing one clay pigeon down
While K brings down a nightstick on L’s head,
And M takes mustard, N drives into town,
O goes to bed with P, and Q drops dead,
R lies to S, but happens to be heard
By T, who tells U not to fire V
For having to give W the word
That X is now deceiving Y with Z,
    Who happens just now to remember A
    Peeling an apple somewhere far away.

….

From Nature:

Books and films often dramatize financial-market traders as macho gamblers. Now there may be scientific evidence to back up that pop-culture image: two researchers have linked testosterone levels to the success of traders in one London market. John Coates, a trader-turned-neuroscientist at Cambridge University, UK, started the study after what he saw during his time working the markets: floor traders became frenzied during big winnings, then deeply depressed during downturns. “It was sort of classic manic behaviour,” he says. He says that he began to suspect that hormones, specifically testosterone, might be involved because the few female traders appeared to him to be “relatively unaffected”.

To find out, Coates and his Cambridge colleague Joe Herbert followed 17 male traders for 8 consecutive business days at a firm in London. The researchers took saliva samples from the group before and after the bulk of the day’s trading. They analysed the levels of two hormones: testosterone and cortisol, a hormone that is produced in response to uncertainty. The results, appearing today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were clear according to Coates: “Traders had an above-average gain on the days their testosterone was above average.” In 14 out of the 17 cases, the traders earned more money on days they had elevated morning levels of the hormone.

More here.