Stanley Fish over at his NYT blog, Think Again, asks “Will the Humanities Save Us?” and answers “No.”:

Do the humanities ennoble? And for that matter, is it the business of the humanities, or of any other area of academic study, to save us?

The answer in both cases, I think, is no. The premise of secular humanism (or of just old-fashioned humanism) is that the examples of action and thought portrayed in the enduring works of literature, philosophy and history can create in readers the desire to emulate them. Philip Sydney put it as well as anyone ever has when he asks (in “The Defense of Poesy,” 1595), “Who reads Aeneas carrying old Anchises on his back that wishes not it was his fortune to perform such an excellent act?” Thrill to this picture of filial piety in the Aeneid and you will yourself become devoted to your father. Admire the selfless act with which Sidney Carton ends his life in “A Tale of Two Cities” and you will be moved to prefer the happiness of others to your own. Watch with horror what happens to Faust and you will be less likely to sell your soul. Understand Kant’s categorical imperative and you will not impose restrictions on others that you would resist if they were imposed on you.

It’s a pretty idea, but there is no evidence to support it and a lot of evidence against it.

Joseph Kugelmass responds over at The Valve:

It my sincere belief that this argument is worthless. I hope, when I am finished, that it will be ashamed to show its face again. It is hardly original with Fish; rather, it is everywhere, since it makes scholars in the humanities feel humble and forthright, and it makes people hostile towards the humanities rejoice.

To begin with, there is no universal standard of behavior to which Fish can appeal in order to prove his point. Instead, one of the foundational principles of much study in the humanities is the idea of incomparability: we give up trying to decide whether one individual, or one culture, is essentially superior to another.

I’m divided between 2 of the 3 major Democratic candidates. But the Obama candidacy offers at least one unique possibility the others don’t–an end to the blight that has been the GOP’s Southern strategy. Simon Rosenberg in NDN blog:

My final observation this morning is a point we focus on in our recent magazine article, The 50 Year Strategy. This election is the first post-Southern Strategy election since 1964. The Southern Strategy was the strategy used by Conservatives and the GOP to use race and other means to cleave the South from the Democrats. This strategy – welfare queens, Willie Horton, Reagan Democrats, tough on crime, an aggressive redistricting approach in 1990 – of course worked. It flipped the South (a base Democratic region since Thomas Jefferson’s day) to the GOP, giving them majorities in Congress and the Presidency. 20th century math and demography and politics dictated that without the South one could not have a majority in the US. But the arrival of a “new politics” of the 21st century – driven to a great degree by the new demographic realities of America – has changed this calculation, and has thankfully rendered the Southern Strategy and all its tools a relic of the 20th century. As Tom Schaller has noted, today the Democrats control both Houses of Congress without having a majority of southern Congressional seats, something never before achieved by the party of Jefferson, Jackson and Lyndon Johnson.

From NoUtopia:

A Lemon
Pablo Neruda

From blossoms
released
by the moonlight,
from an
aroma of exasperated
love,
steeped in fragrance,
yellowness
drifted from the lemon tree,
and from its planetarium
lemons descended to the earth.

Tender yield!
The coasts,
the markets glowed
with light, with
unrefined gold;
we opened
two halves
of a miracle,
congealed acid
trickled
from the hemispheres
of a star,
the most intense liqueur
of nature,
unique, vivid,
concentrated,
born of the cool, fresh
lemon,
of its fragrant house,
its acid, secret symmetry.

Knives
sliced a small
cathedral
in the lemon,
the concealed apse, opened,
revealed acid stained glass,
drops
oozed topaz,
altars,
cool architecture.

So, when you hold
the hemisphere
of a cut lemon
above your plate,
you spill
a universe of gold,
a
yellow goblet
of miracles,
a fragrant nipple
of the earth’s breast,
a ray of light that was made fruit.

From The Washington Post:

GOD’S CRUCIBLE

Islam and the Making of Europe

By David Levering Lewis

“For a historian,” Lewis writes in his preface, “thinking about the present means thinking about the past in the present.” So it should be for the citizen as well.

God’s Crucible begins with the rise of Islam in the 6th and 7th centuries from the ruins of the conflict between imperial Rome and imperial Persia. This rise, Lewis writes expansively, is nothing short of “the greatest revolution in power, religion, culture, and wealth in history.” In the aftermath, the Fertile Crescent, the vast area of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, was forfeited to the Islamic upstarts in the Arabian peninsula.

Lewis’s treatment of Islam’s explosive beginnings and its expansion across North Africa into Europe is lucid, and his command of detail is encyclopedic. His narrative is enriched by Arabic sources that are often ignored by European scholars. For today’s Arabs and Muslims, these seminal events live intensely in the present: the life of Muhammad, the violent struggle for Mecca and Medina, the first four caliphs, the writing of the Koran and the split of the Shiites and Sunnis. If only for practical reasons, all Americans need to understand these things.

More here.

From Nature:

Old age does more than stealthily steal away our most cherished memories: it also seems to diminish our ability to imagine things. This finding, detailed in the January issue of the journal Psychological Science, supports the ‘prospective brain’ hypothesis, the idea that imagining the future and remembering the past rely on the same neural machinery. “One implication of this study is that imagining is quite closely related to, and dependent on, remembering, perhaps more so than we previously realized,” says Dan Schacter of Harvard University.

Over the past year, the prospective brain hypothesis has gained steady support among neuroscientists. An intriguing possibility raised by the hypothesis is that the primary role of human memory may not be to remember the past, but to imagine and prepare for the future.

More here.

Jennifer Kay in the Seattle Times:

First published in 1858, “Gray’s Anatomy” has never been out of print and has become one of the most famous textbooks in the English language. Its detailed anatomical diagrams and descriptions continue to influence artists and medical students today.

Bill Hayes used the tome to spell-check anatomical terms for his previous two books exploring sleep disorders and the nature of human blood. “The Anatomist” is Hayes’ attempt to reveal the man behind the diagrams, Henry Gray.

As Hayes quickly discovers, however, “Gray’s Anatomy” is about all that remains of the gifted London medical student who became one of the leading anatomists of his day before his death in 1861 at age 34. None of Gray’s manuscripts, letters or journals survive.

Hayes’ inquiries could have stopped there, were it not for one significant discovery: Though the book bears his name, Gray didn’t actually draw any of its 400 diagrams. Those were handiwork of Gray’s collaborator, H.V. Carter, whose name was left off some subsequent editions of the book. Luckily for Hayes, Carter did leave behind family letters and journals written in the pinched script of a stressed-out medical student in 19th-century London.

More here.

Robert Levine in Rolling Stone:

David Bendeth, a producer who works with rock bands like Hawthorne Heights and Paramore, knows that the albums he makes are often played through tiny computer speakers by fans who are busy surfing the Internet. So he’s not surprised when record labels ask the mastering engineers who work on his CDs to crank up the sound levels so high that even the soft parts sound loud.

Over the past decade and a half, a revolution in recording technology has changed the way albums are produced, mixed and mastered — almost always for the worse. “They make it loud to get [listeners’] attention,” Bendeth says. Engineers do that by applying dynamic range compression, which reduces the difference between the loudest and softest sounds in a song. Like many of his peers, Bendeth believes that relying too much on this effect can obscure sonic detail, rob music of its emotional power and leave listeners with what engineers call ear fatigue. “I think most everything is mastered a little too loud,” Bendeth says. “The industry decided that it’s a volume contest.”

Producers and engineers call this “the loudness war,” and it has changed the way almost every new pop and rock album sounds.

More here.

S. Abbas Raza in Foreign Policy in Focus:

What becomes ever more clear in the aftermath of the tragic killing of Benazir Bhutto is that there is little if any internal democratic structure left in the Pakistan People’s Party, the one political party in Pakistan which was built on a populist grassroots foundation by Bhutto’s father in the late 60s.

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was an intellectual who brought Western-style electioneering to Pakistan, campaigning up and down the country, holding political rallies in small villages and towns. But it was not all just fiery oratory and sloganeering (“Roti, kapra, aur Makan!”–Bread, clothing, and shelter!); there was a well-structured platform for poverty reduction, education, medical care, housing. And while campaigning, Bhutto also laid out his vision for an independent non-aligned foreign policy for Pakistan in his 1969 book The Myth of Independence. Though somewhat autocratic and manipulative, Bhutto showed himself as president and then prime minister from 1971-1977 to be the most effective civilian leader in Pakistan’s history.

Living up to his campaign promises, he changed labor policy to strengthen trade unions and increase workers’ rights. Despite severe opposition from powerful feudal landlords (of whom he himself was one), he managed to push through limits on land ownership. A proper constitution was adopted by the parliament under his leadership. He negotiated important treaties with India and China, particularly strengthening Sino-Pak relations and industrial cooperation. And he stepped up Pakistan’s nuclear program, foreseeing Pakistan’s need to counter a nuclear threat from India. But most importantly, by basing the foundation of his party on the poor and the illiterate, on farmers and peasants and laborers and the youth, he gave these groups not only a voice, but a dignity and hope they had never enjoyed.

More here.

Mansoora Hassan. Black Burqa Project: Vietnam Memorial Reflections.

More on this Pakistani-American artist here and here.

From the Independent UK (republished in AlterNet):

Until recently, we may have thought that the most interesting things about kangaroos were their mean left hooks and, in the case of Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, their ability to rescue lost children from the wilds of Australia.

But, thanks to research carried out in Queensland for the past four years, and released last month, the marsupial’s cleverest trick is its ability to produce environmentally friendly farts. Researchers have isolated the bacteria in the stomach lining of kangaroos that means their farts contain no methane, a greenhouse gas far more damaging than carbon dioxide.

The team, led by Dr. Athol Klieve, believes that unlocking this secret could lead to the creation of more climate-friendly cattle. Between them, the flatulent farm animals produce so much methane that they account for 14 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions in Australia, second only to power stations. But if the kangaroo bacteria were added to cattle feed, the researchers hope they could create herds with much lower carbon footprints.

Prospect (UK) asks 50 Prospect writers:

Tyler Cowen economist & blogger

Overrated
Hollywood movies. US ticket sales recovered this year, but to what end? This was a year for microculture, such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The bigger visual productions of the year won’t much stand the test of time. On the bright side, television drama continues to rise in quality.

Underrated
The iPhone. The world really did change on 29th June 2007. We now have handheld personal computers and personal entertainment centres, yet they are no larger than a thin pack of cards. And no, I’m not a techie, a gadget freak or an Apple lover. The device itself is beautiful as well.

Henry Farrell on Huckabee’s chances of winning:

A sort of follow-up to my last post, which began from the assumption that Huckabee had zero chance of winning the nomination. But what if he does? NB that I’m wearing my Irresponsible Speculator hat, not my Professional Political Scientist one in saying this; I’m not the kind of political scientist who knows this stuff at all well in the first place, and I haven’t gone to the trouble of going through the relevant data and articles so as to partially educate myself. But if I were to argue against those who say that Huckabee just can’t win the Republican nomination, my case for the defence would go something like this.

(1) Part 1 of the case against Huckabee winning is that he’s self evidently clueless about international politics, and has bizarre ideas about domestic politics. But does this really hurt him with a Republican base which has been primed for decades to believe that book-larning and expertise are the tools of Evil Coastal Elites. Attacks on his lack of savoir-faire seem to roll off his back, or perhaps even to make his supporters more enthusiastic. Case in point: his ‘negative advertising without negative advertising’ press conference, which was widely portrayed by media elites as having cooked his goose, but which doesn’t seem to have hurt him one bit.

Over at Obsidian Wings, hilzoy posts this saved blog entry from a soldier who died in Afghanistan (via Sean Carroll):

Andrew Olmsted, who also posted here as G’Kar, was killed yesterday in Iraq. Andy gave me a post to publish in the event of his death; the last revisions to it were made in July…

I suppose I should speak to the circumstances of my death. It would be nice to believe that I died leading men in battle, preferably saving their lives at the cost of my own. More likely I was caught by a marksman or an IED. But if there is an afterlife, I’m telling anyone who asks that I went down surrounded by hundreds of insurgents defending a village composed solely of innocent women and children. It’ll be our little secret, ok?

I do ask (not that I’m in a position to enforce this) that no one try to use my death to further their political purposes. I went to Iraq and did what I did for my reasons, not yours. My life isn’t a chit to be used to bludgeon people to silence on either side. If you think the U.S. should stay in Iraq, don’t drag me into it by claiming that somehow my death demands us staying in Iraq. If you think the U.S. ought to get out tomorrow, don’t cite my name as an example of someone’s life who was wasted by our mission in Iraq. I have my own opinions about what we should do about Iraq, but since I’m not around to expound on them I’d prefer others not try and use me as some kind of moral capital to support a position I probably didn’t support. Further, this is tough enough on my family without their having to see my picture being used in some rally or my name being cited for some political purpose. You can fight political battles without hurting my family, and I’d prefer that you did so.

Gwendolyn Brooks in Poemhunter.com:

       arrive. The Ladies from the Ladies’ Betterment
    League
Arrive in the afternoon, the late light slanting
In diluted gold bars across the boulevard brag
Of proud, seamed faces with mercy and murder hinting
Here, there, interrupting, all deep and debonair,
The pink paint on the innocence of fear;
Walk in a gingerly manner up the hall.
Cutting with knives served by their softest care,
Served by their love, so barbarously fair.
Whose mothers taught: You’d better not be cruel!
You had better not throw stones upon the wrens!
Herein they kiss and coddle and assault
Anew and dearly in the innocence
With which they baffle nature. Who are full,
Sleek, tender-clad, fit, fiftyish, a-glow, all
Sweetly abortive, hinting at fat fruit,
Judge it high time that fiftyish fingers felt
Beneath the lovelier planes of enterprise.
To resurrect. To moisten with milky chill.
To be a random hitching post or plush.
To be, for wet eyes, random and handy hem.

     Their guild is giving money to the poor.
The worthy poor. The very very worthy
And beautiful poor. Perhaps just not too swarthy?
Perhaps just not too dirty nor too dim
Nor–passionate. In truth, what they could wish
Is–something less than derelict or dull.
Not staunch enough to stab, though, gaze for gaze!
God shield them sharply from the beggar-bold!
The noxious needy ones whose battle’s bald
Nonetheless for being voiceless, hits one down.

More here.

From Signandsight:

Jürgen Habermas writes an obiturary for American philosopher Richard Rorty:

I received the news in an email almost exactly a year ago. As so often in recent years, Rorty voiced his resignation at the “war president” Bush, whose policies deeply aggrieved him, the patriot who had always sought to “achieve” his country. After three or four paragraphs of sarcastic analysis came the unexpected sentence: ” Alas, I have come down with the same disease that killed Derrida.” As if to attenuate the reader’s shock, he added in jest that his daughter felt this kind of cancer must come from “reading too much Heidegger.”

One small autobiographical piece by Rorty bears the title ‘Wild Orchids and Trotsky.’ In it, Rorty describes how as a youth he ambled around the blooming hillside in north-west New Jersey, and breathed in the stunning odour of the orchids. Around the same time he discovered a fascinating book at the home of his leftist parents, defending Leon Trotsky against Stalin. This was the origin of the vision that the young Rorty took with him to college: philosophy is there to reconcile the celestial beauty of orchids with Trotsky’s dream of justice on earth. Nothing is sacred to Rorty the ironist. Asked at the end of his life about the “holy”, the strict atheist answered with words reminiscent of the young Hegel: “My sense of the holy is bound up with the hope that some day my remote descendants will live in a global civilization in which love is pretty much the only law.”

More here.

This interview by Stefania Maurizi was first published in Italian in La Repubblica:

Q: Let’s start with the tragedy of Bhutto assassination. Today, international media remind us she was the first woman to become the PM of an Islamic country, she was a democratic leader, etc. Nonetheless, she was the scion of a feudal family, which was primarily responsible for making Pakistan an atomic power and she was known for the authoritarian control of her party. Looking back, how do you judge Benazir Bhutto?

A: Having first known Benazir Bhutto from high school in Karachi, and then later in Cambridge (Massachussetts), I am deeply saddened by her assassination. But, although the international media paint her as someone who could have led Pakistan into the modern age, the truth is very different. Her two tenures as prime minister were a nightmare of autocratic government and mis-governance. Billions disappeared from foreign aid. A Swiss court found her guilty of money laundering in 2003.  Ms. Bhutto owned mansions and palaces across the world. She even tried to steal land from my (public) university to feed the rapacious appetite of her party members.

Read more »

Michael C. Corballis in American Scientist:

In 1866, the Linguistic Society of Paris famously banned all discussion of the origins of language. The London Philological Society followed suit in 1872. Speculation about the evolution of language remained stifled for a century, and it was only in the 1970s that muted discussion began to emerge, often with an air of apology. Eventually, though, the floodgates opened, and the past two decades have seen a deluge of articles, books and conferences on the topic. The current state of the field is largely one of chaos, to the point that some observers might be tempted to think the ban should be reinstated. Most agree that language is in essence uniquely human, so that evidence as to its evolution remains indirect, and speculation can run wild. Nevertheless, recent advances in genetics, archeology, neurophysiology and computer modeling have provided powerful if sometimes conflicting leads.

Christine Kenneally reviews the current state of the field in her new book. An experienced science journalist with a Ph.D. in linguistics, she is well qualified for the task. The focal point for her discussion is a high-profile symposium on the evolution of language held in 2005 at Stony Brook, New York, where many of the leading players met and gave talks, but her reading and interviews range more widely. The First Word is almost certainly not the last word, but it does provide a lucid, readable, comprehensive account of the different ideas that are now current.

One figure who continues to exert a major if not always benign influence is Noam Chomsky, the dominant linguist of the past half-century, who made a rare appearance at the symposium.

More here.

Mohsin Hamid on writing his second novel, at his website:

In the summer of 2000, I began writing my second novel. I was living on Cornelia Street in New York’s West Village, working as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company with the unusual understanding that I would be allowed to disappear from the office for three months a year to write. I was close to paying off the hundred thousand dollars of loans I had taken out to finance law school; I had published my first novel, Moth Smoke, a few months earlier; and I was able to return regularly for extended periods to Lahore, the city in Pakistan where I had mostly grown up. The time had come for me to decide what to do with my life, and where to do it.

The choices I faced were confusing. New York or Lahore? Novelist as my entire profession or as only a part? And the choices were related. If I left my job to write full time, I would lose my employment-based work visa and be forced to depart permanently for Pakistan. As I had done once before, I turned to my writing to help me understand my split self and my split world.

More here.

Wayne Curtis in the New York Times:

Congratulations on selecting seat 21C! This manual is intended to familiarize you with the many options available to you.

Before BUCKLING in, please note that the man standing in the aisle next to you is about to make a request. He wonders if it would be okay for you to switch seats with his wife, who is in the middle seat three rows ahead. She is the one seated between the former linebacker and the canola oil salesman, and is peering over the seatbacks at you with wide and imploring eyes.

The man will ask this in a voice sufficiently loud that all passengers seated within several rows will look up from their sudoku puzzles and await your answer. If you say no, the passengers will all wonder: Why do you hate married people? You must be a bitter and
lonely person. Note also that there is no overhead luggage space three rows ahead, so you will have to wait for the entire plane to empty to come back and retrieve your bags. Have a good flight up at 18E!

More here.