From The Guardian:

On the morning of March 11 2004, as thousands of commuters made their way to work, 10 bombs packed with nails and dynamite exploded on four trains heading into central Madrid. The blasts killed 191 people and injured nearly 1,800. It was the worst Islamist terrorist attack in European history. Clara Escribano, who was travelling to work when her train was torn apart in one of the attacks, still lives with the memory. “I have a film of that day constantly playing in my head,” she said. “I still haven’t been able to get on a train. In fact, I cannot even walk on the same side of the road as the station where I got on the train.”

The events of 11-M, as the attacks are known in Spain, initially divided the country along political lines. The bombings were carried out just three days before a general election, which saw the incumbent conservative Popular party (PP) of José María Aznar defeated by the Socialist PSOE led by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. From the moment the attacks took place, the PP argued that they were the work of the Basque separatist group Eta; Mr Aznar went so far as to phone national newspaper editors, assuring them this was the case. Despite evidence soon emerging of a van containing detonators linked to the attacks and a recording of verses from the Qur’an, the PP stuck to its line.

More here.

Saul Smilansky, author of 10 Moral Paradoxes, over at Ethics Etc.:

While each of the questions of my four previous posts in this series could be answered fairly decisively, this question is naturally more open. So I will be able to give only some indication as to why moral paradoxes matter, and why investigating them further should be worthwhile. But there is another reason why it is difficult to speak here with confidence: moral paradoxes, in the strict sense (as we explicated their nature in the first post) have been almost completely neglected. To the best of my knowledge, my recent book 10 MORAL PARADOXES is only the third book ever on this topic, at least within analytic philosophy (the predecessors, in a broad sense, being Derek Parfit’s REASONS AND PERSONS which introduces various paradoxes, and the late Gregory Kavka’s MORAL PARADOXES OF NUCLEAR DETERRENCE; both of them from the 1980s).

The neglect of moral paradoxes is important, and seeing this will at once give us the first reply as to what moral paradoxes might be able to teach us. The importance of paradoxes in other areas of philosophy (epistemology, logic, metaphysics, philosophy of science and so on) is manifest, with hundreds of books and papers available and more coming out all the time. While there are many survey articles, special journal issues, and numerous collections of papers devoted to paradox in these areas, and indeed often to some individual paradoxes, there is nothing similar concerning moral paradoxes. So something very ODD is going on here: either moral paradoxes are just as important within morality as logical or epistemic paradoxes are to philosophical logic and epistemology – in which case, the neglect of moral paradoxes is outrageous.

Tony Judt in the NYRB:

We live in an economic age. For two centuries following the French Revolution, Western political life was dominated by a struggle pitting left against right: “progressives”—whether liberal or socialist—against their conservative opponents. Until recently these ideological frames of reference were still very much alive and determined the rhetoric if not the reality of public choice. But in the course of the past generation the terms of political exchange have altered beyond recognition. Whatever remained of the reassuring fatalism of the old left narrative —the inspiring conviction that “History” was on your side—was buried after 1989 along with “real existing socialism.” The traditional political right suffered a related fate. From the 1830s through the 1970s, to be on the right meant opposing the left’s account of inevitable change and progress: “conservatives” conserved, “reactionaries” reacted. They were “counterrevolutionary.” Hitherto energized by its rejection of now-defunct progressive convictions, the political right today has also lost its bearings.

The new master narrative—the way we think of our world—has abandoned the social for the economic. It presumes an “integrated system of global capitalism,” economic growth, and productivity rather than class struggles, revolutions, and progress. Like its nineteenth-century predecessors, this story combines a claim about im-provement (“growth is good”) with an assumption about inevitability: globalization—or, for Robert Reich, “supercapitalism”—is a natural process, not a product of arbitrary human decisions. Where yesterday’s theorists of revolution rested their worldview upon the inevitability of radical social upheaval, today’s apostles of growth invoke the analogously ineluctable dynamic of global economic competition. Common to both is the confident identification of necessity in the present course of events. We are immured, in Emma Rothschild’s words, in an uncontested “society of universal commerce.” Or as Margaret Thatcher once summarized it: There Is No Alternative.

Katha Pollitt in The Nation:

[O]nce a devout Muslim, now an atheist and feminist firebrand, Hirsi Ali brooks no compromise with religion, religious-based customs or the notion of a community organized around religious identity. “Enlightenment fundamentalist” is a rather unfair term, actually: isn’t the whole point of the Enlightenment to rely on reason and empiricism, not, like fundamentalists, the revealed truth of a sacred text? As I said in my last column, I admire Hirsi Ali, despite her conservative associations (she’s a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute) and lone-wolf style. Not every feminist has to be a social worker or a grassroots organizer. I’ll bet plenty of women, Muslim and not, have been given courage by her books and example. Just to speak out is a feminist act. Still, it’s probably the case that once you’ve described yourself as a nonbeliever, believers aren’t going to take your view of their faith too seriously: you’ve written yourself out of the story. This would be true even if you had an encyclopedic grasp of your religion, which Hirsi Ali does not.

Because he wants to see Muslim immigrants well integrated in a Europe that currently marginalizes them, [Ian] Buruma is interested in world-famous philosopher Tariq Ramadan, who says he wants to create a modern Islam, an Islam for Muslims in the West, an Islam that would provide an alternative to the jihadist fire-breathers attractive to the disaffected young. For his profile of Ramadan in The New York Times Magazine, Buruma was attacked at tremendous length and with staggering ferocity in The New Republic by Paul Berman, who thinks Ramadan is a dangerous apologist if not a covert jihadist. Certainly (as Buruma would agree) Ramadan is no friend of women’s rights. One of the more troubling charges against him is that he has called for a moratorium on stoning of unchaste women–not a ban. Ramadan justified his wording by arguing that Muslims wouldn’t accept a total ban. But somehow one expects a bit more leadership from the man who wants to guide millions of European Muslims–who don’t, after all, practice stoning. Buruma himself famously described Ramadan as a cultural conservative, the Muslim equivalent of Jerry Falwell on social issues. Beside the important question of whether Falwellian values are a good thing, there’s also the question of whether they make for the peaceful civic relations Buruma wants.

Every schoolchild in America knows the story of the original Thanksgiving. In 1621 in Plymouth, émigré English Calvinists struggled to make their way in the harsh climate of this New World. Wampanoag Indians helped them, teaching them to grow corn. In gratitude the Pilgrims invited the Native Americans to join in their harvest feast. On this secular holiday, with our extended families around us at the Thanksgiving table, we may be moved to give thanks not only for the feast but also for our families, our country, and our many other gifts.

But this modern version of Thanksgiving would horrify the devout Pilgrims and Puritans who sailed to America in the 17th century. The holiday that gave rise to Thanksgiving – a “public day” that they observed regularly – was almost the precise opposite of today’s celebration. It was not secular, but deeply religious. At its center was not an extravagant meal, but a long fast. And its chief concern was not bounty but redemption: to examine the faults in oneself – and one’s community – with an eye toward spiritual improvement.

more from Boston Globe Ideas here.

From The Washington Post:

After decades of blissful ignorance, Americans have begun pondering how the food we consume each day arrives on our plates. Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006) forced readers to face the fact that our demand for a range of reasonably priced meats and produce comes with serious environmental consequences. Now two new books, Ann Vileisis’s Kitchen Literacy and Sarah Murray’s Moveable Feasts, give us even more reason to reevaluate the meals we take for granted. But they come to very different conclusions about whether to embrace or decry our increasingly complicated food web.

Kitchen Literacy chronicles how the growth of the increasingly complex food distribution system — railroads transporting animals and factories producing canned goods — eventually led consumers into a “covenant of ignorance” with supermarket chains, food manufacturers and advertising firms. All of them insisted that sleek packaging and catchy slogans mattered more than the traditional, hard-earned expertise homemakers had relied on for years.

More here.

Kamila Shamsie in The Guardian:

I recall very clearly sitting with a cup of coffee in upstate New York one morning last autumn, reading the now infamous section of the Martin Amis interview and thinking, “Where’s the punch line which turns it all on its head?” I scanned quickly through the rest of the article, then returned to the quote about Muslims, reading very slowly now, sure I’d missed the moment when Amis pronounced those awful views only in order to excoriate those who held them. When it became clear that, far from distancing himself from the views, he was attempting to implicate the wider world with the rhetorical use of “There’s a definite urge – don’t you have it?” my first thought was to contact a newspaper in the UK and offer to write a heated response. But then, as I read the Amis article out to my roommate, and she (American and Jewish) responded with as much horror and disbelief as I (Pakistani and Muslim) had felt, I thought, it shouldn’t have to be me.

By which I meant, I was convinced that disgust for Amis’s remarks would be widespread enough in the UK that other British, non-Muslims – those implicated in the “don’t you have it?” line – would step forward and say, “No, I don’t, and it’s reprehensible that you do.” It would be a far stronger attack on him, I thought, to have someone other than a Muslim foreigner hold him to account. After all, of course I would object to him suggesting that I should be strip-searched, prevented from travelling, made to suffer for my failure to prevent Muslim boys from becoming suicide bombers (ah, Mr Amis, if only I had that power…).

More here.

Lessig’s TED talk:

First, the Saletan piece from Slate:

Last month, James Watson, the legendary biologist, was condemned and forced into retirement after claiming that African intelligence wasn’t “the same as ours.” “Racist, vicious and unsupported by science,” said the Federation of American Scientists. “Utterly unsupported by scientific evidence,” declared the U.S. government’s supervisor of genetic research. The New York Times told readers that when Watson implied “that black Africans are less intelligent than whites, he hadn’t a scientific leg to stand on.”

I wish these assurances were true. They aren’t. Tests do show an IQ deficit, not just for Africans relative to Europeans, but for Europeans relative to Asians. Economic and cultural theories have failed to explain most of the pattern, and there’s strong preliminary evidence that part of it is genetic. It’s time to prepare for the possibility that equality of intelligence, in the sense of racial averages on tests, will turn out not to be true.

More here.  And here’s Cosma:

William Saletan’s recent venture into demanding that we squarely face the harsh light of his pseudo-scientific prejudices is, in itself, intensely boring — we’ve played this scene over and over again — but becomes more interesting when we try to trace it back to causes, and then forward again to effects.

His writing the story may be explained in one of two ways.

1. He may be ignorant and stupid enough to be gulled by charltans like Rushton or Richard Lynn;
2. More charitably, he may not believe the bullshit himself, but may repeat it to his readers because he hopes that doing so advances some agenda of his own.

Now, William Saletan is a journalist. He is paid to write stories, in the belief that they will attract readers, who can then be advertised at. But his job, the reason why this would not be a purely exploitative manipulation of those readers, is that his stories ought to tell his readers things which will make them better informed about the world, better able to make their way through it. He has just demonstrated that he is either unable or unwilling to do his job. His readers might attempt to extract information from his words by undoing the distortions imposed by his folly and manipulations, but life is too short. His words are worth attending to only as specimens, rather than communications.

William Saletan is the national correspondent of Slate, and published this multi-part heap of rubbish there.

Update: See next post before complaining.

More here.  [Thanks to Ian McMeans.]

Jennifer Homans in The New Republic:

When Rudolf Nureyev defected from the Soviet Union in 1961, he became a legend overnight. He was a great dancer; but he was also a Russian, our Russian, and the instant he threw himself into the arms of the French authorities and declared, in English, “I would like to stay in your country,” the cultural cold war seemed for a brief moment to have been won. If Nureyev himself appeared stunned by the international media blitz that followed, gazing glassy-eyed into the flashing cameras, he adapted quickly to his new role. And this was not the last time he would touch a cultural nerve: he went on to become an avatar of 1960s style; and an exemplar of the celebrated vanity of the 1970s “Me Generation”; and an unabashed homosexual and, sadly, a victim of AIDS, which killed him in 1993 at the age of fifty-four. He did all of this while dancing–not sexy cutting-edge works, but nineteenth-century Russian classics such as Swan Lake and Giselle. Nureyev was the most unlikely of creatures: a serious classical ballet dancer who was also an international pop superstar.

More here.

From the New York Sun:

We speak for a growing number of faculty members at Columbia University who believe that President Bollinger has failed to make a vigorous defense of the core principles on which the university is founded, especially academic freedom. Academic freedom lies at the heart of what we do as faculty members: teach, generate new knowledge, and sustain the critical capacities of the society at large. It encompasses, among other values, the autonomy of the University in the face of outside threats and pressures, a determining role for faculty in the governance of the University and especially in the shaping of its research and teaching programs, the insulation of tenure and promotion decisions from outside interests, and the creation of an environment that enables the fullest and freest exchange of ideas. The events of the past few years have created a crisis of confidence in the central administration’s willingness to defend these principles.

We note, in particular, the following issues:

1) In the face of considerable efforts by outside groups over the past few years to vilify members of the faculty and determine how controversial issues are taught on campus, the administration has failed to make unequivocally clear that such interventions will not be tolerated. When outside groups attempted to sway tenure decisions, the President of Barnard issued a forthright statement rejecting such efforts; the President of Columbia has failed to do so.

More here.  [Thanks to Karen Ballentine.]

Pervez Hoodbhoy in the LA Times:

Why has Musharraf failed so dramatically to stop the insurgency? One reason is that most of the public is hostile to government action against the extremists (and the rest offer tepid support at best). Most Pakistanis see the militants as America’s enemy, not their own. The Taliban is perceived as the only group standing up against the unwelcome American presence in the region. Some forgive the Taliban’s excesses because it is cloaked in the garb of religion. Pakistan, they reason, was created for Islam, and the Taliban is merely asking for Pakistan to be more Islamic.

Even normally vocal, urban, educated Pakistanis — those whose values and lifestyles would make them eligible for decapitation if the Taliban were to succeed in taking the cities — are strangely silent. Why? Because they see Musharraf and the Pakistan army as unworthy of support, both for blocking the path to democracy and for secretly supporting the Taliban as a means of countering Indian influence in Afghanistan.

There is merit to this view. Army rule for 30 of Pakistan’s 60 years as a country has left a terrible legacy. The army is huge, well-equipped, armed now with nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles and has perhaps the world’s richest generals. Sitting or retired army officers govern provinces, run government agencies, administer universities, manage banks and make breakfast cereals.

Over at Infinite Thought, warning explicit images (via Crooked Timber):

What would humanist pornography look like? Chances are that even the most adamant defender of the charms of adult material would struggle to find much evidence of compassion or affection in today’s relentlessly lurid output. Contemporary pornography informs us of one thing above all else: sex is a type of work, just like any other. What matters most is quantity – the bigger the better. It is not for nothing that one of the most successful sex videos of all time, starring Annabel Chong, features 251 sex acts performed with approximately 70 men during a ten hour period. Contemporary pornography is realistic only in the sense that it sells back to us the very worst of our aspirations: domination, competition, greed and brutality.

The pornography industry itself is a veritable juggernaut, generating an estimated $57 billion in annual revenue worldwide. It makes more money than Hollywood and all major league sports put together. 300,000 internet sites are currently devoted to its propagation, and 200 new films are estimated to be made every week. Almost any genre and type of sexual taste is catered for, just so long as you aren’t looking for anything as recherché as sweetness or wit.

On one level, we might say, so what? Pornography serves a certain practical purpose, why expect anything more from it? If you want romance, go and read Mills and Boon! Alternatively, we might side with anti-pornography feminists and argue that the genre is so irredeemably associated with violence and misogyny that we should steer well clear of it, and perhaps even campaign for its abolition.

But what if there was another history of porn, one that was filled less with pneumatic shaven bodies pummelling each other into submission than with sweetness, silliness and bodies that didn’t always function and purr like a well-oiled machine?

Daniel Cressey in over at Nature’s blog The Great Beyond:

Japan said today that it plans to go ahead with its annual whale hunt of about 1,000 whales (AFP). For the first time this will include humpbacks, currently listed as a vulnerable species on the IUCN Red List.

A group of legal experts gathered by the International Fund for Animal Welfare think the humpback take could well be illegal. Japan insists that its whaling is for research purposes, although meat from the animals caught does end up being eaten. The IFAW group says this selling of meat could mean Japan is in breach of its obligations under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (press release, coverage in The Age).

“Japan’s repeated assertion that its whaling activities are legal is incorrect and misleading. ‘Scientific whaling’ as conducted by Japan violates international law and should not be allowed to continue,” said Alberto Szekely, professor of international law and coordinator of the panel (press release).

Ben Goldacre in The Guardian:

There are some aspects of quackery that are harmless – childish even – and there are some that are very serious indeed. On Tuesday, to my great delight, the author Jeanette Winterson launched a scientific defence of homeopathy in these pages. She used words such as “nano” meaninglessly, she suggested that there is a role for homeopathy in the treatment of HIV in Africa, and she said that an article in the Lancet today will call on doctors to tell their patients that homeopathic “medicines” offer no benefit.

The article does not say that, and I should know, because I wrote it. It is not an act of fusty authority, and I claim none: I look about 12, and I’m only a few years out of medical school. This is all good fun, but my adamant stance, that I absolutely lack any authority, is key: because this is not about one man’s opinion, and there is nothing even slightly technical or complicated about the evidence on homeopathy, or indeed anything, when it is clearly explained.

And there is the rub. Because Winterson tries to tell us – like every other homeopathy fan – that for some mystical reason, which is never made entirely clear, the healing powers of homeopathic pills are special, and so their benefits cannot be tested like every other pill.

From MSNBC:

The secret to why male organisms evolve faster than their female counterparts comes down to this: Males are simple creatures. In nearly all species, males seem to ramp up glitzier garbs, more graceful dance moves and more melodic warbles in a never-ending vie to woo the best mates. Called sexual selection, the result is typically a showy male and a plain-Jane female. Evolution speeds along in the males compared to females.

The idea that males evolve more quickly than females has been around since 19th century biologist Charles Darwin observed the majesty of a peacock’s tail feather in comparison with those of the drab peahen.

More here.

From The New York Times:

In the modern vernacular, to say someone is “in denial” is to deliver a savage combination punch: one shot to the belly for the cheating or drinking or bad behavior, and another slap to the head for the cowardly self-deception of pretending it’s not a problem. Yet recent studies from fields as diverse as psychology and anthropology suggest that the ability to look the other way, while potentially destructive, is also critically important to forming and nourishing close relationships. The psychological tricks that people use to ignore a festering problem in their own households are the same ones that they need to live with everyday human dishonesty and betrayal, their own and others’. And it is these highly evolved abilities, research suggests, that provide the foundation for that most disarming of all human invitations, forgiveness.

In this emerging view, social scientists see denial on a broader spectrum — from benign inattention to passive acknowledgment to full-blown, willful blindness — on the part of couples, social groups and organizations, as well as individuals. Seeing denial in this way, some scientists argue, helps clarify when it is wise to manage a difficult person or personal situation, and when it threatens to become a kind of infectious silent trance that can make hypocrites of otherwise forthright people.

More here.

Akbar Ganji in the Boston Review:

Iran’s political-legal system is founded on apartheid, on unjust and untenable discrimination among members of society. Social opportunities and privileges are not distributed on the basis of merit, but according to such indefensible criteria as race, religion, and allegiance to the political regime. While some are deprived of certain basic human rights and the chance to benefit from their talents and efforts, others are afforded “special rights.” They benefit handsomely from coveted social opportunities and privileges. One of the most glaring fault lines of this apartheid system is gender. In Iran, women suffer every injustice and deprivation endured by Iranian men, and gender injustice as well.

Unfortunately, gender apartheid has not drawn as much outrage around the world as racial apartheid has. The international community was rightly united in its opposition to the regime in South Africa that denied blacks equal rights with whites, and it rose up to topple that system. But it has voiced little opposition to many societies in which the rights of women are systematically trampled upon. Under the guise of cultural pluralism, or respect for religious freedom, some clerical leaders have even rationalized gender apartheid.

More here.

John Allen Paulos in his Who’s Counting column at ABC News:

Iraq and 9/11, sex trafficking, flu vaccines, widespread autism. Cognitive biases color our view of these and other issues and can affect our policy choices.

Because they are well-, but not widely understood, I’d like to briefly mention three of the most common ones and some related new and troubling research about denials.

First the biases.

Three Common Psychological Biases

1. The “availability heuristic” is the pronounced tendency of people to view any story through the lens of a superficially similar story that comes easily to mind or is psychologically available. For this reason, much of politics revolves around strengthening this tendency by keeping a preferred narrative uppermost in people’s minds. It doesn’t take too keen a political instinct, for example, to realize that some politicians’ incessant invoking of 9/11 is an effort to keep it psychologically available, to help it color every aspect of the political agenda.

More here.

In pursuit of evidence that life arose on Earth more than once, scientists are searching for microbes that are radically different from all known organisms.

Paul Davies in Scientific American:

Thirty years ago the prevailing view among biologists was that life resulted from a chemical fluke so improbable it would be unlikely to have happened twice in the observable universe. That conservative position was exemplified by Nobel Prize–winning French biologist Jacques Monod, who wrote in 1970: “Man at last knows that he is alone in the unfeeling immensity of the universe, out of which he emerged only by chance.” In recent years, however, the mood has shifted dramatically. In 1995 renowned Belgian biochemist Christian de Duve called life “a cosmic imperative” and declared “it is almost bound to arise” on any Earth-like planet. De Duve’s statement reinforced the belief among astrobiologists that the universe is teeming with life. Dubbed biological determinism by Robert Shapiro of New York University, this theory is sometimes expressed by saying that “life is written into the laws of nature.”

How can scientists determine which view is correct? The most direct way is to seek evidence for life on another planet, such as Mars. If life originated from scratch on two planets in a single solar system, it would decisively confirm the hypothesis of biological determinism. Unfortunately, it may be a long time before missions to the Red Planet are sophisticated enough to hunt for Martian life-forms and, if they indeed exist, to study such extraterrestrial biota in detail.

An easier test of biological determinism may be possible, however. No planet is more Earth-like than Earth itself, so if life does emerge readily under terrestrial conditions, then perhaps it formed many times on our home planet.

More here.