Kakutani reviews Shalimar the Clown in the New York Times:

In his most powerful novels, Salman Rushdie has dexterously spun his characters’ surreal experiences into resonant historical allegories. “Midnight’s Children” (1981) transformed its hero’s tortured coming of age into a parable about India’s own journey into independence. “The Moor’s Last Sigh” (1995) used the dramatic reversals of fortune sustained by one eccentric family as a kind of metaphor for India’s recent ups and downs. And in recounting the interlinked stories of two powerful men, “Shame” (1983) became a sort of modern-day fairy tale about a country that was “not quite Pakistan.”

Mr. Rushdie’s latest book, “Shalimar the Clown,” aspires to turn the story of a toxic love triangle into a fable about the fate of Kashmir and the worldwide proliferation of terrorism. But this time, the author’s allegory-making machinery clanks and wheezes. Although the novel is considerably more substantial than his perfunctory 2001 book, “Fury,” it lacks the fecund narrative magic, ebullient language and intimate historical emotion found in “Midnight’s Children” and “The Moor’s Last Sigh.”

Worse, “Shalimar the Clown” is hobbled by Mr. Rushdie’s determination to graft huge political and cultural issues onto a flimsy soap opera plot – a narrative strategy that not only overwhelms his characters’ stories but also trivializes the larger issues the author is trying to address.

More here.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Chicago Symphony Orchestra music director Daniel Barenboim has defended his decision to deny an interview to an Israel Army Radio reporter, saying she was insensitive to have worn a military uniform at a literary function attended by Palestinians.

The incident took place Thursday at the Jerusalem launch of a book on music Barenboim wrote with the late Edward Said, a Palestinian intellectual.

Barenboim, a Jew raised in Israel, dismissed as ”nonsense” the suggestion that he dishonored Israeli pride, the Israeli army or the Israeli people by refusing the interview.

More here.

From Commentary:

When the late Richard Herrnstein and I published The Bell Curve eleven years ago, the furor over its discussion of ethnic differences in IQ was so intense that most people who have not read the book still think it was about race. Since then, I have deliberately not published anything about group differences in IQ, mostly to give the real topic of The Bell Curve—the role of intelligence in reshaping America’s class structure—a chance to surface.

The Lawrence Summers affair last January made me rethink my silence. The president of Harvard University offered a few mild, speculative, off-the-record remarks about innate differences between men and women in their aptitude for high-level science and mathematics, and was treated by Harvard’s faculty as if he were a crank. The typical news story portrayed the idea of innate sex differences as a renegade position that reputable scholars rejected…

The Orwellian disinformation about innate group differences is not wholly the media’s fault. Many academics who are familiar with the state of knowledge are afraid to go on the record. Talking publicly can dry up research funding for senior professors and can cost assistant professors their jobs. But while the public’s misconception is understandable, it is also getting in the way of clear thinking about American social policy.

More here.

From The Edge:

The seductive “let’s teach the controversy” language still conveys the false, and highly pernicious, idea that there really are two sides. This would distract students from the genuinely important and interesting controversies that enliven evolutionary discourse. Worse, it would hand creationism the only victory it realistically aspires to. Without needing to make a single good point in any argument, it would have won the right for a form of supernaturalism to be recognised as an authentic part of science. And that would be the end of science education in America.

(RICHARD DAWKINS & JERRY COYNE:) It sounds so reasonable, doesn’t it? Such a modest proposal. Why not teach “both sides” and let the children decide for themselves? As President Bush said, “You’re asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes.” At first hearing, everything about the phrase “both sides” warms the hearts of educators like ourselves.

One of us spent years as an Oxford tutor and it was his habit to choose controversial topics for the students’ weekly essays. They were required to go to the library, read about both sides of an argument, give a fair account of both, and then come to a balanced judgment in their essay. The call for balance, by the way, was always tempered by the maxim, “When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly half way between. It is possible for one side simply to be wrong.”

More here.

From The National Geographic:

Java drinkers will surely get a jolt from the news that coffee is the top source of disease-fighting antioxidants in the U.S. diet, according to a new study. The popular beverage beat out black tea, bananas, dry beans, and corn—all common sources of antioxidants. But don’t get too juiced up about the health benefits of coffee just yet. Study authors and other experts warn that people get the most disease protection when they consume a wide variety of antioxidants, and coffee only carries a few specific types. They recommend eating more foods that contain a host of vital minerals and nutrients in addition to a high concentration of antioxidants—such as vegetables, fruits, nuts, and whole grains.

Picture: A handful of red (ripe) and green (unripe) coffee cherries. Coffee beans—the seeds inside these cherries—are removed, dried, roasted, and ground to create the popular beverage.

More here.

From Now or Never:

Roshi here.

I’m perplexed.  No matter how many times I encounter what seems like a flaw in nature –like black flies, for instance– I get this way.  Reading a report of the president’s parents touring hurricane relief facilities in Houston, I was struck by the black-flyism of George’s mama and understood as I never had before why they say the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree.

What the 1st Mamacita said:

“What I’m hearing which is sort of scary is that they all want to stay in Texas.  Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this –this (slight chuckle) is working well for them.”

I understand how she feels about hearing something scary.

I seem to recall a verse I once stumbled on in the Tao Te Ching , or maybe it wasThe Sayings of Dr. Phil.  It went something like this:

”Rivers may be shallow and there is no blame.
Shallow lakes and ponds exist and there is no shame.
Even seas, and the bays of seas may not be deep, and no one sheds a tear.
But shallow men and women mock the god who put them here.”

Sheherzad Preisler in Sheher’s Weblog:

I am eleven years old, and I live in Massachusetts with my mother. I am writing this essay about the Hurricane Katrina because I feel the need to stand up and say something about this catastrophe that may help us do better in future emergencies such as this one. I have been deeply affected by the amount of destruction the hurricane has done. I remember about two years ago, my mom and I went to New Orleans for a visit. It was such a beautiful city, and we wanted to visit much more often. I remember my mom and I walked into a beautiful boutique not too far from the Canal Street shops, and we made sort of friends with the shopkeeper from that boutique. She was very nice to us, and I remember buying a little glass frog from there. I was looking at my somewhat large collection of marble and glass figurines a couple of days ago, and I came across that small glass frog. The moment I saw it, I became overcome with emotion. I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that that nice woman might be dead right now.

More, including recommendations on what to do from young Sheher, and pictures, here.

According to Marjorie Kehe of The Christian Science Monitor, Michael Kimmelman’s new book The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa will have the following effects:

Your backyard will look like a museum and the subway platform will seem oddly inspirational. What you will find is that art is everywhere. And what could be bad about a discovery like that?

I couldn’t help but be reminded of the conceptual work of Robert McCarren, an artist who simply builds platforms all over the world for people to enjoy views – his work turns the world into a museum, basically, and his platforms are like benches in a gallery. I am writing an essay about McCarren for an upcoming show called “Almost Something” which opens on Sept 17th. Timothy Don, whose work has been influential on McCarren, wrote about a series of broken-down barns in Kentucky as if they were art for 3QD in “Down the Rabbit Hole.” Mr. Don’s term for such work is “Found Installation.” McCarren, on the other hand, calls his work “Invisible Art”; he also insists that he’s not an artist at all. I think the general idea is similar to Kafka’s “Nature Theater of Oklahoma” and Coleridge’s description of “the secret ministry of frost.” The implications of intentionality in nature are of course problematic.

Anya Kamenetz in The Village Voice:

Along with the rest of the nation, the rest of my hometown’s residents, and my friends and family, I’ve flown through a lot of emotions in the past week since Hurricane Katrina wrecked my city of New Orleans: fear, rage, anxiety, and grief. While the bodies are still being counted, I’ve currently settled on shame. I am ashamed to be an American. We are a people who constantly avow belief in various gods, in liberty and justice, and yet our fellow American citizens, ancient ladies and four-day-old infants, were left to die in the streets for lack of food and water as though they were born in the slums of Mumbai or the favelas of Brazil. We tell ourselves and the world we can do anything, be it grow crops in the desert or bring democracy to Iraq, yet we can’t land a helicopter on Interstate 10 or get buses to a convention center.

I extend that shame to those trapped who turned to violence.

More here.

From The National Geographic:

An exhibition starring real, skinned human corpses arranged in poses—a soccer player in mid-kick, for example—is drawing record- breaking crowds and controversy to a Florida museum. Fetuses and a cigarette smoker’s tarred lungs are among the 20 corpses and 260 body parts on display. “Bodies: The Exhibition” opened August 18 at the Museum of Science and Industry in Tampa. The bodies in question are unclaimed or unidentified individuals from China. As such, neither the deceased nor their families consented to the use of the corpses in the exhibit.

More here.

From The Washington Post:

Of making many books there is no end. So it was written in the Bible, and more than 2,000 years later it still is true. Like bread and brick, the book goes on, issuing from presses, outliving all notions of technological change. Perhaps it’s as a Victorian do-gooder once said: “A good book is the best of friends, the same today as forever.” Well, dear reader, get ready for a horde of friends to overrun your house this fall: The sheer volume of book production is breathtaking.

On Beauty: by Zadie Smith (Penguin, Sept.). As if life weren’t chaotic enough for a British art professor and his African American activist wife, their son goes and falls in love with their nemesis.

Saving Fish From Drowning: by Amy Tan (Putnam, Oct.). Eleven American tourists in Burma wander into the jungle and meet a tribe that forever alters their perceptions of life.

Female of the Species: by Joyce Carol Oates (Harcourt, Jan.). More stories from the ever-fevered imagination of an American institution.

More here.

William Saletan writes in Slate:

When the history of our disgraceful preparation for and response to Hurricane Katrina is written, logistical failures—evacuation, flood planning, aid delivery, communication—will be only half the story. The other half will be our government’s incomprehension of the human part of the disaster. I’m not talking about the victims. I’m talking about the perpetrators, most of them ordinary people. The crime in New Orleans was not isolated. The lawlessness should not have been surprising. Disasters do not tend to bring out the best in people. And if you want to stop them from bringing out the worst, preaching is a lot less effective than weapons and aid.

What’s striking about most of the crime is how ordinary the perpetrators and their motives are. They steal food and clothing. They say it’s for their kids or neighbors. They argue—and some store managers agree—that that the flood would have ruined the goods anyway. Interviewed by reporters, they come off as decent citizens. Some are uniformed officers. You can imagine yourself, in dire circumstances, doing the same thing.

More here.

From The New York Times:

One of the many anecdotes about the fraught relationship between Edmund Wilson and his third wife, Mary McCarthy, dramatizes beautifully the problem of Wilson’s legacy. When Reuel, their son, was 9, he heard McCarthy, for once, praising her former husband. Reuel responded: ”Mommy, you mean my father is a great critic?” He smiled, clearly remembering her previous invectives against his father, and added: ”I always thought he was just a two-bit book reviewer.”

Edmund Wilson was part of a brilliant generation at Princeton. They were too brilliant in some cases to have as much as a first act in their careers; among the rest was F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose final books, ”The Last Tycoon” and ”The Crack-Up,” would be assembled and edited by Wilson. An early essay on Fitzgerald gives some sense of his tone, the quality of his prose and the exacting nature of his judgment. Fitzgerald, he wrote, ”has been given imagination without intellectual control of it; he has been given a desire for beauty without an aesthetic ideal; and he has been given a gift for expression without very many ideas to express.” ” ‘This Side of Paradise,’ ” Wilson wrote, ”does not commit the unpardonable sin: It does not fail to live. The whole preposterous farrago is animated with life.”

More here.

From BBC World News:

The Lancet says the time for more studies is over and doctors should be bold and honest with patients about homeopathy’s “lack of benefit”. A Swiss-UK review of 110 trials found no convincing evidence the treatment worked any better than a placebo. In 2002, American illusionist James Randi offered $1m to anyone able to prove, under observed conditions in a laboratory, that homeopathic remedies can really cure people. To date, no-one has passed the preliminary tests.

More here.

From The Guardian:

What this smart little book does is unpick some of the pathways by which various meats, fish, fruits and rice came together at particular moments in history to produce, say, a lamb pasanda or even our own particular favourite, chicken tikka masala (“curry”, it turns out, is a generic term that Indians themselves would never use). In 17th-century Goa, for instance, it was the visiting Portuguese who taught the local Indians how to make the exquisite egg and milk-based sweets that have since become part of the fabric of eating on the western seaboard. There again, 300 years later, it comes as a shock to learn that Indians of all castes were indifferent to the pleasures of tea-drinking until the beginning of the 20th century. It was only when their British rulers insisted that they try it for themselves, sweetening the experience with the promise of all the money that was to be made from this new cash crop, that the subcontinent gave itself over to the cup that cheers.

More here.

From The New York Times:

But perhaps most of all there was shame, a deep collective national disbelief that the world’s sole remaining superpower could not – or at least had not – responded faster and more forcefully to a disaster that had been among its own government’s worst-case possibilities for years. “It really makes us look very much like Bangladesh or Baghdad,” said David Herbert Donald, the retired Harvard historian of the Civil War and a native Mississippian, who said that Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s destructive march from Atlanta to the sea paled by comparison. “I’m 84 years old. I’ve been around a long time, but I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Around the nation, and indeed the world, the reaction to Hurricane Katrina’s devastation stretched beyond the usual political recriminations and swift second-guessing that so often follow calamities. In dozens of interviews and editorials, feelings deeper and more troubled bubbled to the surface in response to the flooding and looting that “humbled the most powerful nation on the planet,” and showed “how quickly the thin veneer of civilization can be stripped away,” as The Daily Mail of London put it. (Picture from The London Times).

More here.

The US space agency’s robotic rover Spirit has sent back a partial panoramic view from the summit of “Husband Hill” at Gusev Crater on Mars.

Spirit was still sending down data that makes up the colour 360-degree picture when Nasa held a news conference.

more from the BBC here.

From Stanley Kaufmann at TNR.

Broken Flowers. Bill Murray, as usual, presents a man who has looked upon the world and found it dubious. Going back now to visit five women he knew some twenty years earlier, one of whom may have had a son by him, he finds surprises and non-surprises. Jim Jarmusch wrote and directed intelligently. (Reviewed 9/5/05)

Junebug. A young Chicago woman, an art dealer, visits her husband’s rustic North Carolina family. She and they discover–or reveal–new areas in themselves. Flawlessly acted, Junebug was directed by Phil Morrison without sentimentality but with true feeling. (9/12/05)

more here.

Chávez’s rising profile and focus on his needy northern neighbors is no doubt getting under the skin of his nemesis President Bush, whom Chávez regularly refers to as “Mr. Danger.” The Bush administration has always been suspicious of Chávez, who is tight with Cuban leader Fidel Castro and in 2000 became the first democratically elected head of state to visit Saddam Hussein since the Gulf War. Washington’s barely concealed glee when a coup briefly deposed Chávez three years ago certainly didn’t help. After Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice fingered Chávez as a “negative force” in Latin America during her confirmation hearings, the Venezuelan retorted that “the most negative force in the world today is the government of the United States.”

more from Slate here.

From MSNBC:

Now that the storm has passed, Earth-imaging satellites are getting a better fix on the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina. The QuickBird satellite, operated by Colorado-based DigitalGlobe, got a clear shot of New Orleans on Wednesday and posted before-and-after views on its Web site. QuickBird’s “after” view, captured from a 280-mile-high (450-kilometer-high), sun-synchronous polar orbit, shows dark floodwaters over highways and even the downtown golf course, as well as the water surrounding the Louisiana Superdome. We’ve created an interactive viewer that labels the landmarks and lets you switch quickly between the before and after views.

More here.