Katrina vanden Heuvel in The Nation:

Last May, I wrote an Annals of Outrage II chronicling the waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government in the first half of 2004. Plenty of time has passed since my last piece and much has happened. Here, then, is my latest attempt to guide you through the Bush Administration’s most egregious corruption scandals. The information comes to us courtesy of the federal government’s internal investigations into administration fraud, waste and abuse. The cronyism and corruption have hit a new low.

More here.

Terry Teachout reviews Marion Elizabeth Rodger’s Mencken: The American Iconoclast, in The New Criterion:

You don’t pour years of your life into writing a biography unless you feel an initial bond of sympathy with the subject, and, though many a biographer has grown disillusioned along the way, it’s obvious from reading Mencken: The American Iconoclast that Rodgers still admires and, just as important, likes the man about whom she has written. But how closely does that man resemble the real H. L. Mencken? Have Rodgers’s sympathies led her to smooth his rough edges, or downplay less palatable aspects of Mencken’s work that might not sit well alongside her frank admiration? The answer, I suspect, will depend on how much you yourself like Mencken. Rodgers has been honest enough about his unattractive aspects. The coldness, the opportunism, even the anti-Semitism (though she never goes quite so far as to call it that) are all amply documented in her book. Nevertheless, she clearly feels the bad to be vastly outweighed by the good…

More here.

Andrew Sullivan in The New Republic:

Why is torture wrong? It may seem like an obvious question, or even one beneath discussion. But it is now inescapably before us, with the introduction of the McCain Amendment banning all “cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment” of detainees by American soldiers and CIA operatives anywhere in the world. The amendment lies in legislative limbo. It passed the Senate in October by a vote of 90 to nine, but President Bush has vowed to veto any such blanket ban on torture or abuse; Vice President Cheney has prevailed upon enough senators and congressmen to prevent the amendment–and the defense appropriations bill to which it is attached–from moving out of conference; and my friend Charles Krauthammer, one of the most respected conservative intellectuals in Washington (and a New Republic contributing editor) has written a widely praised cover essay for The Weekly Standard endorsing the legalization of full-fledged torture by the United States under strictly curtailed conditions. We stand on the brink of an enormously important choice–one that is critical, morally as well as strategically, to get right.

More here.

Emma Pollack-Pelzner in the Yale Review of Books:

Most people think that choice is good. After all, we associate choice with autonomy, control, independence and desirable outcomes. In reality, however, this is not the case. As Schwartz emphasizes, too many choices actually lead to less happiness, a lower sense of control, and even paralysis. And this is the paradox he addresses: we think we want more choices, but when we have more options we are, in general, less satisfied.

One of many studies demonstrating this paradox involves a simple decision: buying jam. Testers set up in a supermarket offered one group of shoppers six jams to sample. They offered another group 24 varieties to taste. Despite the fact that we would predict people with a larger jam selection would be more likely to find a jam they would like, the study found that those offered only six jams were much more likely to make a jam purchase, and were more likely to be happy with that purpose.

More here.

3QD’s own Ruth Kikin-Gil has a great design project worth looking at:

Goals and Background

Modern lives are increasingly becoming more flexible, connected and mobile. We were asked to create an installation for the Fjord’s office space that will communicate the themes of mobility and its influence on people’s lives. Fjord is a leading developer of digital products and services for people on the move.

PEOPLE+ installation exposes flows of communication, and stresses the fact that mobile communication expands the boundaries of a person and augments the distances one can reach.
A company = people + communication

Visual elements

Oriental calligraphy was the inspiration for the figurines we used in the installation

The installation uses the human figure symbol and the Plus {+} sign as a vehicle to tell a story. And the story is simple: connect one human being to another, and you have a network, and mobile communication is all about networks. It is some kind of emotional math if you will.

More here.

Today is the 25th anniversary of John Lennon’s death. I grew up with Beatles music from a very early age because my two sisters (Azra and Sughra Raza) who were young teenagers at the time were diehard fans. (Apparently my first full sentence was some Beatles lyric.) There are all sorts of memorials being held tonight, not least the one at Strawberry Fields in Central Park, just across the street from the Dakota where JL lived and Yoko Ono still does, and where he was shot. It is not far from where I live, and I might stop by later. Here’s Steven Winn in the San Francisco Chronicle:

He was shot and killed, 25 years ago today, by a mad fan who thought he’d sold out and become a phony. On this Dec. 8, hundreds of biographies, broadsides, candlelight vigils, documentaries, reconsiderations and a Broadway musical later, John Lennon remains in the culture’s magnified crosshairs. And still we can’t quite get a fix on him.

Almost anyone of a certain age, now as then, has an opinion; a construct; a shadowy, imperfectly mapped place where Lennon lives and how his music — even if we only experienced it as a backdrop, as I did — helped place us in the world and simultaneously question that place. “Strawberry Fields Forever.” “Imagine.” “Beautiful Boy.” “I Am the Walrus.” “In My Life.” “Mother.” “Help!” The titles of the songs — everyone has his own private playlist — are enough. They summon things, take us back and remind us what we took forward and what we left behind. They stop time and expand it.

More here.

At the moment two local shows exemplify this chaos theory: Jon Kessler’s whirling-dervish CNN inferno at P.S.1, which is desperate in ways that respond to our quasi-desperate times, and Mike Kelley’s high school/hell house/Lawrence Welk extravaganza at Gagosian, which seems desperate for its own sake but still finds Kelley attempting to deepen his familiar themes. Both installations come on in waves of wall-to-wall pandemonium and will strike many as unbearable. Both echo architect Renzo Piano’s idea that harbors are “imaginary cities where everything keeps moving.” Kelley’s “city” is a high-production, multiplex trip into the id; Kessler’s is a homemade journey into the group mind. In each, visual syntax is dislocated, onslaught initially overwhelms order, cognitive functions are strained, and surfaces multiply. Kelley’s “Day Is Done” is like a variety show scripted by a regression therapist and is far more ritualistic, fictional, and Broadway musical than Kessler’s unabashed reality-based foray into politics and terrorism.

more from Salz at the Village Voice here.

There are artists who, despite their abundant gifts, seem destined to endure a melancholy fate, and one of them was Oscar Bluemner (1867-1938), the subject of a fine exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Bluemner was too “advanced” for the traditionalists at a time when modernism was still a contentious issue, and he was too tactless and outspoken in his relations with the modernists of the Alfred Stieglitz circle to benefit from their support. He remained an archetypal outsider in whatever milieu he frequented. He was born in Germany, where he was trained as an architect, and it was as an architect that he initially established himself in New York. In 1904, he designed the Bronx Borough Courthouse, but this remained his only major completed work in architecture, which he then abandoned in favor of painting.

more from hilton kramer at the NY Observer here.

From Science:

What’s behind the satisfaction we get from a tasty dessert? Researchers have long assumed it has something to do with the neurotransmitter dopamine. But a new study suggests that this so-called “pleasure molecule” isn’t necessary for us to enjoy that piece of cake after all.

Without the pleasurable kick dopamine is thought to provide, researchers assumed that people would be less inclined to get hooked on gambling or drugs. But recent evidence has called this theory into question. For example, mice lacking a type of receptor for dopamine still seek out morphine, suggesting that they find the drug rewarding even without dopamine signaling.

More here.

From Scientific American:

Mammals new to science have been emerging in Southeast Asia of late: three new species of deer found in the forests of Vietnam in the 1990s; a long-whiskered rat representing a previously unknown family of mammals discovered at a hunter’s market in Laos and revealed in May; and now a cat-size creature with orange fur and a long, strong tail has been photographed in Indonesia. A camera trap set in the mountains of Kayan Mentarang National Park in Borneo snapped two images of the mysterious creature as it trundled through the rain forest in 2003.

More here.

An interview with Don Wise, creator of “incompetent design”, from Seed Magazine:

No self-respecting engineering student would make the kinds of dumb mistakes that are built into us. All of our pelvises slope forward for convenient knuckle-dragging, like all the other great apes. And the only reason you stand erect is because of this incredible sharp bend at the base of your spine, which is either evolution’s way of modifying something or else it’s just a design that would flunk a first-year engineering student.

Look at the teeth in your mouth. Basically, most of us have too many teeth for the size of our mouth. Well, is this evolution flattening a mammalian muzzle and jamming it into a face or is it a design that couldn’t count accurately above 20?

Look at the bones in your face. They’re the same as the other mammals’ but they’re just squashed and contorted by jamming the jaw into a face with your brain expanding over it, so the potential drainage system in there is so convoluted that no plumber would admit to having done it! So is this evolution or is this plain stupid design?

More here.

Norman Jenson at One Good Move:

Many of those who view themselves as religious are suspicious of those who aren’t. They believe you can’t be moral without religion. It is a stupid view and one that I believe is false on its face. Peter Singer and Marc Hauser, have written an interesting article (pdf) on the subject that points to some empirical evidence that supports the view that religion is not necessary to live the so called ‘moral life’.

Consider the following three scenarios. For each, fill in the blank with morally “obligatory,” “permissible,” or “forbidden.”

1. A runaway trolley is about to run over five people walking on the tracks. A railroad worker is standing next to a switch that can turn the trolley onto a side track, killing one person, but allowing the five to survive. Flipping the switch is ____________.

2. You pass by a small child drowning in a shallow pond, and you are the only one around. If you pick up the child she will survive and your pants will be ruined. Picking up the child is _________.

3. Five people have just been rushed into a hospital in critical care, each requiring an organ to survive. There is not enough time to request organs from outside the hospital. There is however, a healthy person in the hospital’s waiting room. If the surgeon takes this person’s organs, he will die but the five in critical care will survive. Taking the healthy person’s organs is _________.

When 1500 people answered the questions there was no statistically significant difference between those with religious backgrounds and those without.

More here.

From the CBC:

Ailing playwright Harold Pinter used his Nobel Prize lecture on Wednesday to deliver a fierce attack on U.S. foreign policy.

Pinter, 75, who has been battling cancer for years, was forbidden by doctors from going to Stockholm to receive his Nobel Prize. Instead he sent a video recording of himself in a wheelchair with his legs under a red blanket.

In a speech peppered with the potent silences that are often called “Pinteresque”, he accused the U.S. and its ally Britain of trading in death and employing “language to keep thought at bay.”

His lecture, entitled Art, Truth and Politics, emphasized the importance of truth in art before decrying its perceived absence in politics.

In a voice that was sometimes hoarse with illness, he said politicians feel it is “essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives.”

More here.

“Einstein’s philosophical habit of mind, cultivated by undergraduate training and lifelong dialogue, had a profound effect on the way he did physics.”

Don A. Howard in Physics Today:

Nowadays, explicit engagement with the philosophy of science plays almost no role in the training of physicists or in physics research. What little the student learns about philosophical issues is typically learned casually, by a kind of intellectual osmosis. One picks up ideas and opinions in the lecture hall, in the laboratory, and in collaboration with one’s supervisor. Careful reflection on philosophical ideas is rare. Even rarer is systematic instruction. Worse still, publicly indulging an interest in philosophy of science is often treated as a social blunder. To be fair, more than a few physicists do think philosophically. Still, explicitly philosophical approaches to physics are the exception. Things were not always so.

More here.

Theodore Dalrymple in City Journal:

Many books have over the years commented on Shakespeare’s knowledge of soldiering, sailing and navigation, the law, and so forth; and I have accumulated a small library of books, both British and American, written over the last century and a half, by doctors commenting on Shakespeare’s medical knowledge.

For the most part, these volumes are compilations of every conceivable medical reference in Shakespeare, arranged by play, by disease, or by relevant medical specialty. They include Ernest Jones’s famous—or perhaps “notorious” would be a better word—analysis of Hamlet’s Oedipus complex, and a much more recent volume on Shakespeare and neurobiology. The general tone is respectful astonishment at the accuracy of many of Shakespeare’s medical observations.

No medical author, as far as I know, has suggested as a consequence that Shakespeare must have had a medical training, though many have suggested that he might have picked up medical knowledge from his son-in-law, a university-trained physician. His name was Dr. John Hall: he held a degree from Cambridge and probably had studied on the continent as well. However, Hall settled in Stratford only in 1600 and married Shakespeare’s daughter, Susanna, in 1608. By then, of course, Shakespeare had written most of his plays and made most of his medical observations and allusions: Hall, therefore, could not have been the chief source of his medical knowledge.

More here.

Alex Kumi in The Guardian:

At first sight it is little more than a poetic polemic about the virtues of an effective leader. But a poem has been removed from school textbooks in Pakistan after it became clear that the first letter of each line spelt out “President George W Bush”.

Penned by an anonymous writer, The Leader embarrassed education officials in the country after it found its way into an English textbook for 16-year-olds…

Here’s the whole poem:

Patient and steady with all he must bear,
Ready to accept every challenge with care,
Easy in manner, yet solid as steel,
Strong in his faith, refreshingly real,
Isn’t afraid to propose what is bold,
Doesn’t conform to the usual mold,
Eyes that have foresight, for hindsight wont do
Never back down when he sees what is true
Tells it all straight, and means it all too

Bracing for war, but praying for peace
Using his power so evil will cease:
So much a leader and worthy of trust,
Here stands a man who will do what he must

More here.

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

A bit of information is “common knowledge” among a group of people if all parties know it, know that the others know it, know that the others know they know it, and so on. It is much more than “mutual knowledge,” which requires only that the parties know the particular bit of information, not that they be aware of the others’ knowledge. As Aumann showed, one can prove a theorem that can be roughly paraphrased as follows: Two individuals cannot forever agree to disagree. As their beliefs, formed in rational response to different bits of private information, gradually become common knowledge, their beliefs change and eventually coincide.

Very abstract stuff, but there is an interesting example that demonstrates how the notion might enable us to explain sudden bubbles or sudden crashes in stock markets. These changes, which sometimes seem to be precipitated by nothing at all, might be the result of “subterranean information processing.”

More here.

David Biello in Scientific American:

In the 1930s French scientists determined that bees could not fly. They knew, of course, that the insects could and did. But according to their calculations, this feat was aerodynamically impossible. They based that conclusion on the fact that wings as small as a bee’s could not possibly produce enough lift to allow the bee to get airborne. The problem was, they presumed that the bee’s wings were stable, like an airplane’s, when in fact honeybees flap and rotate their wings 240 times a second. This flapping, along with the supple nature of the wings themselves, allows a bee–or any flying insect, for that matter–to create a vortex that lifts it into the air. But the specific aerodynamic mechanics of that process as it pertains to the honeybee, with its stubby wings, has remained a mystery until now.

More here.

Laurie Goodstein in the New York Times:

Behind the headlines, however, intelligent design as a field of inquiry is failing to gain the traction its supporters had hoped for. It has gained little support among the academics who should have been its natural allies. And if the intelligent design proponents lose the case in Dover, there could be serious consequences for the movement’s credibility.

On college campuses, the movement’s theorists are academic pariahs, publicly denounced by their own colleagues. Design proponents have published few papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

The Templeton Foundation, a major supporter of projects seeking to reconcile science and religion, says that after providing a few grants for conferences and courses to debate intelligent design, they asked proponents to submit proposals for actual research.

“They never came in,” said Charles L. Harper Jr., senior vice president at the Templeton Foundation, who said that while he was skeptical from the beginning, other foundation officials were initially intrigued and later grew disillusioned.

“From the point of view of rigor and intellectual seriousness, the intelligent design people don’t come out very well in our world of scientific review,” he said.

More here.

Mark Peplow in Nature:

Malicious computer viruses could be stopped in their tracks by immunity software that spreads faster than the virus itself, says a team of computer experts from Israel.

Their proposal relies on setting up a network of shortcuts through the Internet that only antiviral programs can use, allowing them to immunize computers before a virus arrives.

Eran Shir of Tel Aviv University began thinking about the problem when the infamous Blaster worm spread across the Internet in 2003. “It really got me annoyed,” he recalls. “Conventional antivirus software just couldn’t keep up with its spread.”

More here.