For the new Arab public, the fundamental challenge today is not to shatter more taboos or ask more questions but to offer solutions. Al-Jazeera’s talk shows have given a forum to voices both moderate and extreme. The shows often err on the side of sensationalism and false oppositions, inviting conflict rather than reasonable compromise. In the short term, the station may well have strengthened anti-American sentiment in the region. But in a longer view, al-Jazeera is building the foundations of a pluralist political culture. By replacing stifling consensus with furious public arguments and secrecy with transparency, al-Jazeera and its Arab competitors are creating perhaps the most essential underpinning of liberal democracy: a free and open critical public space, independent of the state, where citizens can speak their piece and expect to be heard.

The world will continue to argue about whether the invasion of Iraq was necessary for the current democratic ferment in the Middle East. But al-Jazeera was most assuredly necessary. Shutting it down or muffling its voice might give Americans some short-term satisfaction, but to do either would also take away one of the most powerful weapons in the hands of Arab democratic reformers.

more from The Wilson Quarterly here.

You’re reading, reading a book, and when you’re not reading it, you mark your place. Maybe you simply use the book-jacket flap; if it’s a disposable book or you’re just a heathen, you fold the page corner down. But you usually mark the page with a foreign object, anything from a shred of newspaper to a strip of embossed leather someone bought you at Stonehenge. Often you don’t have much of a choice—because you also have a life outside of that reading, a life of rocket-launched inconvenience and impromptu upheaval, you often have to use whatever’s at hand to hold your space. Indeed, if you have children, then you know interruption like Priam knew Greeks hammering at his door for years and are usually rewarded for your endurance with an array of glitter-and-yarn craft-class bookmarks. But where are they now? You have to put that book down because the dog’s tongue is suddenly stuck to the freezer rack, or the urologist’s nurse has just called you in, or you’re suddenly at your stop and so will end up hustling off the train in a wad of shuffling commuters with only your finger inserted into the book’s crevice.

more from The Believer here.

A review of Iwan Rhys Morus’ When Physics Became King, in The American Scientist.

[T]he majority of the book is dedicated to the analysis of 19th-century British physics. For example, he discusses how a dozen upstart mathematics students at the University of Cambridge during the 1810s, including John Herschel, Charles Babbage and George Peacock, adopted the new mathematical analysis of the French and founded the Analytical Society. These lads wished to wrestle British science away from the grasps of aristocratic gentlemen—epitomized by the president of the Royal Society of London, Sir Joseph Banks—in order to reform both science and society. They maintained that meritocracy, rather than nepotism, was required for physics and the economy to flourish. Babbage and Herschel were committed to maximizing the efficiency of both mental labor and British manufacturing. Efficiency was applicable to both physics and business, or as Morus argues, “Efficiency was the name of the game in both cases, and efficiency was best achieved by due attention to, and proper application of, the laws of nature and the operations of the mind.”

Mathematics was believed to discipline the mind. The Analytical Society wanted to revolutionize the mathematical Tripos at Cambridge by having it cover French analytical calculus. Peacock eventually became one of the university’s examiners and accomplished this expansion of scope. By the middle of the 19th century, the Tripos had been overhauled, rendering it much more rigorous, with grueling written tests after the third year. Only those with a sharp mind, combined with physical stamina and the assistance of a good tutor (referred to as a “coach”), could survive. Posh accents (indicative of good breeding), which in the 18th century had been noted approvingly in oral exams, could no longer assist those who were ill prepared.

Ashis Nandy looks at Freud, modernity and post-colonial violence (though entitled “Frued [sic], modernity and postcolonial violence”) in The Little Magazine.

Today modernity, to qualify as such, requires an element of self-criticism or at least a sense of loss. The problem is compounded by the various schools of post-Freudian psychology, which are mostly progenies of the theoretical frames that crystallised as forms of dissent within the Enlighten ment. Even when they defy the modern, the defiance is primarily addressed to and remains confined within the citadels of modernity. The ones that try to break out of the grid often turn out to be transient fashions of brief shelf life. A culture not only produces its own ideas of conformity but also its distinctive concepts of valid or sane dissent. Worse, what looks like dissent in one culture at one time may not appear so in another culture at another time.

In Art Forum, a review of Russia! at the Guggenheim.

Russian Constructivism, the movement most favored in the West, is represented here by Aleksandr Rodchenko and Vladimir Stenberg, who have in effect been extracted from the vast pool of highly experimental artists working in multimedia production during the period immediately after the revolution. Indeed, they are positioned in a contextual vacuum not only in terms of their historical moment but also regarding their historical consequence. Both Rodchenko’s monochrome triptych Pure Red Color, Pure Yellow Color, Pure Blue Color, 1921, the culmination of his anti-painting agenda, and Stenberg’s spatial construction Spiral, 1920, one of a handful of surviving works from the laboratory phase of Soviet Constructivism, should have provided the perfect opportunity to discuss the influence these works had on their American postwar successors (even if only on a wall text).

Such poor representation of revolutionary abstraction (ironic in the con-text of an institution formerly called the “Museum of Non-Objective Painting”) came about, I believe, due to the pressure that Russian collectors have brought to bear. Since the 1990s, the first generation of nouveau riche—known for favoring figurative representation—has been hunting after nineteenth-century paintings with far more devotion than abstract ones. This enthusiasm is reflected by the greater presence of such work here, and perhaps hints at the real impulses behind this show.

In the last issue of Gastronomica, Carol Wilson looks at the history of the wedding cake.

Since antiquity, weddings customarily have been celebrated with a special cake. Ancient Roman wedding ceremonies were finalized by breaking a cake of wheat or barley (mustaceum) over the bride’s head as a symbol of good fortune. The newly married couple then ate a few crumbs in a custom known as confarreatio—eating together. Afterwards, the wedding guests gathered up the crumbs as tokens of good luck. The Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius, in De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), wrote that the breaking of the cake over the bride’s head mellowed into crumbling the sweet wheat cakes over her head. After all the cakes were used up, the guests were supplied with handfuls of confetto, a sweet mixture of nuts, dried fruit, and honeyed almonds. These sweetmeats were an important part of the wedding banquet and continued to be so for hundreds of years. Chronicles of the period record that in 1487 over two hundred and sixty pounds of “confetti” were consumed at the banquet following the wedding of Lucrezia Borgia and Alfonso d’Este, son of Ercole i, Duke of Ferrara.

From CNN:

…researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, say the measurements of seismic waves soon after a temblor can signal whether it will be a minor or monster temblor.

They say the information could possibly be used in an alert system to give seconds to tens of seconds of advance notice of an impending quake — enough time for schoolchildren to take cover, power generators to trip off and valves to shut on pipelines.

“We’re not taking about a massive amount of time,” said Richard Allen, an assistant professor of earth and planetary science, who led the study.

More here.

Nic Fleming in The Telegraph:

To some bright spark at Ladbrokes, it seemed like a novel and fun way to generate some publicity.

In collaboration with New Scientist magazine, the bookmaker last summer offered odds on five science projects coming off by 2010.

Punters were offered odds of 10,000-1 against the discovery of life on Titan and 100-1 against the building of a fusion power station.

But it was news of an offer of 500-1 that gravitational waves would not be detected by the end of the decade that spread like wildfire among a select band of physicists and astronomers.

After more than three decades of hunting for them, Prof Jim Hough of Glasgow University, did not hesitate to call the bookmakers.

More here.

From the CBC:

Afghan poet Nadia Anjuman has been beaten to death and her husband and mother have been arrested.

The United Nations condemned the killing Tuesday as a symptom of continuing violence against Afghan women four years after the fall of the Taliban.

It is common for women to be beaten by their fathers, brothers or husbands and “honour” killings in which women are murdered to save the family from disgrace are still accepted in Afghanistan.

Anjuman, 25, was widely praised for her first book of poems, titled Gule Dudi, or Dark Flower. She had a large following among students in Afghanistan and neighbouring Iran.

She died Friday in a hospital in the western city of Herat where she lived. She had been studying at university.

More here.

William Rees-Moog in the London Times:

In the mid-1980s I was a member of a Vatican body with the impressive title International Committee of the Pontifical Council for Culture. Each year we had a meeting with Pope John-Paul II; on one occasion he gave us lunch and served a light white wine from, I think, a papal vineyard…

Our chairman was Cardinal Paul Poupard, an admirable example of the cultivated French intellectual in the Roman Curia; he is still the head of the Pontifical Council for Culture. Whether the council still has an international committee I do not know, since I left it nearly 20 years ago. Last week the cardinal was giving a press conference before a meeting in Rome of scientists, philosophers and theologians; this week they will be discussing the difficult subject of infinity. Cardinal Poupard had a beautifully trained French mind and inner loyalty to the Catholic faith. Nothing he says is said without careful thought. At the press conference he was discussing the issue of evolution, which is the critical dividing line between science and religion. Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species shook religious belief when it was first published in 1859 in a way that Isaac Newton’s equally important Principia had not shaken the faith of 1687…

It is a precautionary statement, distancing the Church from the American attack on Darwinism that Rome considers to be neither good science, nor good theology. It will also be taken as an indication of the priorities of the present Pope Benedict XVI.

More here.

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

Although abortion battles are in the news with the nominations of new Surpreme Court justices in recent months, the arguments we hear about the issue are all rather familiar and stale. In an effort to introduce a new, albeit somewhat fanciful, argument, let me begin with a classic story that is usually attributed to George Bernard Shaw.

Seated at a posh dinner party, Shaw asks the woman sitting next to him if she’d sleep with him for $1 million. She laughs and says she would, after which he asks her if she’d do so for $10. Outraged, she says, “What do you think I am?” He replies, “That has just been established. Now we’re just haggling about the price.”

Such hyperbolic extrapolations and exaggerations are useful when questioning the absoluteness of people’s beliefs and so might be helpful with an issue like abortion, in which people often adopt an inflexible and dogmatic pro-life position.

More here.

From despardes.com:

She may be shy and unread but Mukhtaran Mai has a sharp mind that equips her to match wits with any one. And she demonstrated that in full measure at a public meeting here on Saturday. Challenged by a critic as to how she could justify her recent visit to the White House in search of support for the rights of women around the world when its occupant had waged wars in which thousands of women have been killed. Mai raised her eyes, looked hard at her detractor and quipped, “I live in a small Pakistani village, but I ask you (those who live here) what have you done for the women who are being killed? Have you been able to stop the wars?” She thus turned the argument around with the skill of an accomplished diplomat. The repartee was delivered with a devastating effect; the woman who posed the question was left speechless and looking embarrassed as the packed Cooper Union hall exploded into a thunderous applause. (Photo)

More here.

From BBC News:

The US state of Kansas has approved science standards for public schools that cast doubt on evolution. The Board of Education’s vote, expected for months, approved the new language criticising evolution by 6-4. Proponents of the change argue they are trying to expose students to legitimate scientific questions about evolution. Critics say it is an attempt to inject creationism into schools, in violation of the constitutional separation between church and state. The decision is part of an ongoing national debate over the teaching of evolution and intelligent design. The theory of intelligent design holds that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power.

Tuesday’s vote was the third time in six years that the Kansas board has rewritten standards with evolution as the central issue.

More here.

From The New York Times:

Most television dramas play with the question “what if?” NBC’s “West Wing” revels in “if only….”

Sunday’s live presidential debate was the quintessence of wishful writing. Two intelligent, principled candidates tossed aside debate rules and went at each other full throttle on live television, debating everything from immigration and energy policy to foreign debt relief.

…

The world hates us, and even Americans deplore the sorry state of political discourse in their country. But only the uninformed or disingenuous complain about the quality of American television. It has a variety and breadth that no other nation can match. For every offensive reality series or inane daytime talk show, there are comedies and dramas that reach far higher in a single episode than most movies or Broadway shows.

More here.

“From London and Berlin to Sydney and San Francisco, civic authorities agree that the key to urban prosperity is appealing to the ‘hipster set’ of gays, twentysomethings and young creatives. But the only evidence for this idea comes from the dot-com boom of the late 1990s—and that time is over.”

Joel Kotkin in Prospect Magazine:

Yet rather than address serious issues like housing, schools, transport, jobs and security, mayors and policy gurus from Berlin and London to Sydney and San Francisco have adopted what can be best be described as the “cool city strategy.” If you can somehow make your city the rage of the hipster set, they insist, all will be well.

New Orleans, the most recent victim of catastrophic urban decline, is a case in point. Once a great commercial hub, the city’s economic and political elites have placed all their bets on New Orleans becoming a tourist and culture centre. Indeed, just a month before the disaster, city leaders held a conference that promoted a “cultural economy initiative” strategy for attracting high-end industry. The other big state initiative was not levee improvement but a $450m expansion for the now infamous convention centre.

This rush to hipness has its precedents, perhaps even in Roman festivals or medieval fairs. But in the past, most cities did not see entertainment as their main purpose. Rome was an imperial seat; Manchester, Berlin, Chicago and Detroit foundries of the industrial age; London, New York, and later Tokyo, global financial centres.

Polly Curtis and Matthew Taylor in The Guardian:

The Association of University Teachers says the new offences of encouraging or training for terrorism could effectively outlaw an ethics debate about political violence, or a chemistry lesson.

“The major problem is you don’t need proof that you are intending to encourage terrorism,” says Jonathan Whitehead, the AUT’s head of parliamentary and public affairs. “And on the training law, the definition is anyone who ‘knows or suspects’ that the training could be used for terrorist purposes. Lecturers will have to start having suspicions about their students.”

Now Universities UK, which represents vice-chancellors, has taken up the issue, alongside the AUT and Sconul. Vivienne Stern, public affairs advisor to Universities UK, says: “The bill is unacceptably wide and will, in our view, expose academic staff and librarians – and by virtue of that the university management – to the risk of committing criminal offences during their standard work.”

More here.

Returning to the SculptureCenter, host of her breakthrough debut in 1987, the queen of mixed media brings nearly two decades of prolific creation full circle. Laboriously constructed from hair, wax, chicken wire, silk, hay, tar, ribbon, and myriad other materials, her trademark hanging, spreading, or climbing tangles, lumps, and clumps—simultaneously repulsive and gorgeous—stage encounters with delicacy and ponderousness, purity and dreck. With fourteen large-scale sculptures and eight dreamlike black-and-white photographs on view, this nineteen-year survey promises the quintessential Coyne experience.

from Artforum.

D. T. Max in the New York Times Magazine:

For the common reader, “Pride and Prejudice” is a romantic comedy. His or her pleasure comes from the vividness of Austen’s characters and how familiar they still seem: it’s as if we know Elizabeth and Darcy. On a more literary level, we enjoy Austen’s pointed dialogue and admire her expert way with humor. For similar reasons, critics have long called “Pride and Prejudic” a classic – their ultimate (if not well defined) expression of approval.

But for an emerging school of literary criticism known as Literary Darwinism, the novel is significant for different reasons. Just as Charles Darwin studied animals to discover the patterns behind their development, Literary Darwinists read books in search of innate patterns of human behavior: child bearing and rearing, efforts to acquire resources (money, property, influence) and competition and cooperation within families and communities. They say that it’s impossible to fully appreciate and understand a literary text unless you keep in mind that humans behave in certain universal ways and do so because those behaviors are hard-wired into us. For them, the most effective and truest works of literature are those that reference or exemplify these basic facts.

More here.

In the fall of 1991, an unusual song found its way onto the radio. It was called “Mind Playing Tricks on Me,” and was performed by a Houston hip-hop trio called Geto Boys. A slow, mournful plaint, “Mind” relied on long, harmonically complex guitar samples—a departure from the short horn bursts and rapid drums then dominating hip-hop. If the song had an antecedent, it was the blues, not music you might have heard in a disco. Geto Boys—Scarface, Bushwick Bill, and Willie D—had deep, unmistakably Southern voices, and their lyrics didn’t celebrate or protest anything. “Mind” is an unsettling song, its opening couplets freighted with anxiety: “At night I can’t sleep, I toss and turn. / Candlesticks in the dark, visions of bodies being burned. / Four walls just staring at a nigger. / I’m paranoid, sleeping with my finger on the trigger.” For several months, “Mind” was on the radio all the time. Then Geto Boys—and Southern hip-hop—seemed to disappear. In the fourteen years since “Mind” was released, the band has showed up again on the Billboard pop charts only twice, most recently in 1996.

more from Sasha Frere-Jones at The New Yorker here.

From BBC:

The latest study used sophisticated scans to monitor the brains of 10 men and 10 women as they watched 70 black-and-white cartoons. The researchers found similarities between the way that male and female brains respond to humour. But some brain regions were activated more in women, including both the left prefrontal cortex and the mesolimbic reward centre. The researchers say their findings suggest women place a greater emphasis on the language of humour, possibly employing a more analytical approach. They also believe that the women in the study were less likely to expect the cartoons to be funny – so when they were, their pleasure centre lit up with greater intensity than their male counterparts.

More here.