I found out about Civiblog through my friend (and erstwhile blogging partner at The Aula Point of View) Jyri Engestrom. Jennifer Leonard of Civiblog described it to me as, “A newly designed site out of The Citizen Lab at the Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto, with the view to build community and add ‘global civil society’ bloggers (politically-inclined individuals and all those working or volunteering for non-profit sector, i.e. NGOs) from around the world.” It seems like a great idea. From their site:

Civiblog is about community and the co-creation of content. We’re starting small but we’re aiming huge. From a few key blogs in Kandahar, Uganda and Guatemala to daily commentary and updates from all corners of the globe. From English-only to multilingual. Static posts to pod casting. No commentary at all to dynamic visual pattern analysis of all blog activity. We’re open to your feedback and we’ll get there with your help. As a global citizen, your input is invaluable as we develop Civiblog together.

Check them out. Get a free blog there. Help make the world better!

In the recent New Left Review, Perry Anderson offers a harsh assessment of John Rawls, Jurgen Habermas, and Noberto Bobbio’s takes on international relations and war.

“In these touchingly incoherent sentences, Rawls’s philosophy breaks down. Our society may be corrupt, but the world itself is not. What world? Not ours, which we can only wish might have been different, but another that is still invisible, generations and perhaps continents away. The wistful note is a far cry from Hegel. What the theme of reconciliation in Rawls expresses is something else: not the revelation that the real is rational, but the need for a bridge across the yawning gulf between the two, the ideal of a just society and the reality of a—not marginally, but radically—unjust one. That Rawls himself could not always bear the distance between them can be sensed from a single sentence. In accomplishing its task of reconciliation, ‘political philosophy may try to calm our frustration and rage against our society and its history’. Rage: who would have guessed Rawls capable of it—against his society or its history? But why should it be calmed?”

Chris Bertram over at Crooked Timber turns the tables on Anderson’s review.

“The article has all the classic Anderson hallmarks — the arrogant pronouncement of judgement from on high, the frequent lapses into Latin, a will to the most unsympathetic reading possible. Typically, Anderson is incapable of reading his targets in any other way that as providing pragmatic cover for the American hegemon. On the one hand he seems to adopt the stance of high principle against the unwitting tools of US power whose every argument is accounted for in terms of their personal history and psychology, but on the other it seems hard to know where the critical principles can be coming from since it is hard to see how, on Anderson’s world-view, principles can ever be anything other than the residue of power politics as false consciousness.”

Sean Carrol in the excellent Preposterous Universe:

Via MetaFilter, via Syaffolee, something that is pretty cool, but also annoying, because it could have been so much cooler: bubble chamber art. Beautiful images generated to resemble pictures taken from bubble chambers, the devices that physicists used to use to observe elementary particle interactions before we switched to fancy electronics.

Here’s the problem: the particle identities don’t make any sense. “Axions exist in a slightly higher dimension and as such are drawn with elevated embossed shadows. Axions are quick to stabilize and fall into single pixel orbits axions automatically re collide themselves after stabilizing.” Nonsense both grammatically, and as physics. (Axions, if they exist at all, do so in our ordinary dimensions, but they are stable neutral particles, and as such they wouldn’t make any tracks in a bubble chamber at all.) I don’t mind if people take license with scientific truths in order to make interesting art, but here it just seems so gratuitous — the pictures would look just as beautiful if the interactions had made sense, and the descriptions would have sounded even more intriguing. Another lost opportunity for bringing the two cultures together.

(Click on image to enlarge.)

Richard Dawkins’s second article in a series of three, from The Guardian:

Last week, “The giant tortoise’s tale” described ancestral tortoises floating inadvertently across from South America, colonising the Galápagos Islands by mistake, subsequently evolving local differences on each island and giant size on all of them. But why assume that the coloniser was a land tortoise? Wouldn’t it be simpler to guess that marine turtles, already at home in the sea, hauled up on the island beaches as if to lay their eggs, enjoyed what they saw, stayed on dry land and evolved into tortoises? No. Nothing like that happened on the Galápagos islands, which have only been in existence a few million years.

More here.

Saree Makdisi writes in the London Review of Books:

The resumption of negotiations between the new Palestinian leadership and the Israeli government has generated a sense of optimism that one hesitates to dismiss out of hand. Yet previous rounds of negotiation, beginning with Oslo, served only to consolidate Israel’s grip on the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem, while making life even more difficult for the Palestinians. In the same way, the lull that followed the death of Arafat in November was seen by many as a time of hope, but it was then that the people of Jayyus, near Qalqilya, learned that more of their land would be expropriated in order to make possible the expansion of the Israeli colony of Zufim, in the ‘seam area’ between the Green Line and the barrier. Their olive groves were bulldozed in December. Blind optimism that overlooks these ‘facts on the ground’ is no better than despair.

More here.

Jason Cowley reviews WG Sebald’s last book, Campo Santo, in The Guardian:

Sebald is, above all else, an elegist. His lost men, emigrants and wandering solitaries tell of lives ended abruptly or displaced by the inexorable forces of history over which they have no control. Many of the people he writes about exist now only in photographs or as names on gravestones and memorials.

In Campo Santo, this latest collection of fragments, essays and unfinished pieces, we find Sebald in Corsica. There, as usual, he takes a small room in a hotel, visits several museums that prompt the inevitable reflections about Napoleon and his extended family, and accompany him as he begins his lonely walks around the island. Soon we find him in the graveyard of Piana, reading the names of the long dead and worrying about overpopulation and who, if anyone, will honour, let alone remember, the dead of our teeming modern cities: Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Cairo, Lagos, Shanghai, Bombay.

More here.

Sherwin B. Nuland reviews Gray’s Anatomy: The Anatomical Basis of Clinical Practice, 39th edition, edited by Susan Standring and others, in Scientific American:

The eminent mid-20th century British historian of medicine F.N.L. Poynter once said of Gray’s Anatomy that “what began as a book has become an institution.”

Like all progressive institutions, this one periodically looks itself over, evaluates its development and takes measures to be sure that it has kept up with the times. Keeping up has occasionally required increasing the complexity of its operations, necessarily expanding its bureaucracy, and seeking new and forward-looking leadership. As the institution among medical books, Gray’s Anatomy has throughout its history continued to do all these things, with the result that it has only improved with age; it is venerable but not hoary.

More here.

David Hambling in New Scientist:

The US military is funding development of a weapon that delivers a bout of excruciating pain from up to 2 kilometres away. Intended for use against rioters, it is meant to leave victims unharmed. But pain researchers are furious that work aimed at controlling pain has been used to develop a weapon. And they fear that the technology will be used for torture.

“I am deeply concerned about the ethical aspects of this research,” says Andrew Rice, a consultant in pain medicine at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London, UK. “Even if the use of temporary severe pain can be justified as a restraining measure, which I do not believe it can, the long-term physical and psychological effects are unknown.”

More here.

Sarah Boxer in the New York Times:

Let the browser beware. The New York Public Library’s collection of prints, maps, posters, photographs, illuminated manuscripts, sheet-music covers, dust jackets, menus and cigarette cards is now online (www.nypl.org/digital/digitalgallery.htm). If you dive in today without knowing why, you might not surface for a long, long time. The Public Library’s digital gallery is lovely, dark and deep. Quite eccentric, too.

So far, about 275,000 items are online, and you can browse by subject, by collection, by name or by keyword. The images first appear in thumbnail pictures, a dozen to a page. Some include verso views. You can collect ’em, enlarge ’em, download ’em, print ’em and hang ’em on your wall at home. All are free, unless, of course, you plan to make money on them yourself. (Permission is required.)

More here.

John Harlow in The Times:

THEY say “tomayto” and we say “tomarto”. And now a study has established that the Americans and British also have different smiles.

While we British smile by pulling our lips back and upwards and exposing our lower teeth, Americans are more likely simply to part their lips and stretch the corners of their mouths.

So distinct is the difference that the scientist behind the research was able last week to pick out Britons from Americans from close-cropped pictures of their smiles alone, with an accuracy of more than 90%.

The study by Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at the University of California in Berkeley, near San Francisco, analysed the 43 facial muscles used by humans to charm, smirk and appease.

More here.

Daniel Engber explains who the Druzes are, at Slate:

You can’t convert to being Druze, and you’re not supposed to convert to another religion if you’re born a Druze. Details about the religion are kept very secret—even from most Druzes. Only certain members of the community (maybe 10 or 20 percent) have access to the weekly religious meetings and are allowed to read sacred Druze writings—these people are called uqqal, the wise (as opposed to juhhal, the ignorant). Political and military leaders of the Druzes tend to be drawn from the juhhal; they can be distinguished from the uqqal by the latter’s distinctive dark clothes and white hats. Druzes who wish to become uqqal must undergo a lengthy application process; women are considered especially suitable for initiation. Something like one in 50 initiates attains elevated status and gains a special say in religious and cultural matters; these individuals are called ajaweed.

More here.

Rashid Khalidi is a man whose brilliance, fairmindedness, and decency I can personally attest to. He is the director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, and a highly respected scholar. Recently, in a disgraceful but unfortunately typical show of pro-Israel political muscle-flexing by the New York City government, he was banned from lecturing to city teachers.

Joyce Purnick writes about it in the New York Times:

Earlier this month, Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein barred Rashid Khalidi, director of Columbia’s Middle East Institute, from again lecturing to city teachers enrolled in a professional development course because of “a number of things he’s said in the past,” said Michael Best, the department’s general counsel. Asked if the department had verified those purported remarks, Mr. Best did not answer directly: “He’s denied saying certain things; he has not denied saying others.”

Set against the backdrop of a simmering campus dispute over Jewish students’ charges of intimidation by pro-Palestinian teachers, the Khalidi affair has inevitably been linked to the larger controversy. “In this feeding frenzy for finding culprits, he sort of got lumped in with others, and it’s been unfair to him,” said Ari L. Goldman, dean of students at Columbia’s journalism school…

There are no known complaints about Professor Khalidi from the schoolteachers, and he has won student praise at Columbia. In fact, Charles Jacobs, who heads the pro-Israeli group that first raised complaints of intimidation in Columbia classrooms, said Professor Khalidi “was not at all criticized. Students said he was the opposite of the people they were complaining about.”

More here.

And while we are on the subject, Frank Furedi writes in Spiked:

Gunjan Sinha in Scientific American:

No single diet works for everyone. Some people can slurp cabbage soup for a week and lose only a few ounces, while others on the same spartan regimen lose 10 pounds. But what if you could measure your metabolism and get a prescription for a customized diet?

Metabonomics may do just that. It is one of the latest offshoots of the “-omics” revolution–after genomics (genes) and proteomics (proteins). With the understanding that some diseases such as obesity are metabolic syndromes in which multiple biochemical pathways interact to cause complex symptoms, metabolic testing offers a way to gauge health over a lifetime. What is more, metabonomic technology might identify disorders before they produce symptoms. Such testing could help people choose diet and exercise regimens that are tailored to their individual metabolic states.

More here.

Excellent science writer Carl Zimmer in his blog, The Loom:

In my last post, I traced a debate over the evolution of language. On one side, we have Steven Pinker and his colleagues, who argue that human language is, like the eye, a complex adaptation produced over millions of years through natural selection, favoring communication between hominids. On the other side, we have Noam Chomsky, Tecumseh Fitch, and Marc Hauser, who think scientists should explore some alternative ideas about language, including one hypothesis in which practically all the building blocks of human language were already in place long before our ancestors could speak, having evolved for other functions. In the current issue of Cognition, Pinker and Ray Jackendoff of Brandeis responded to Chomsky, Fitch, and Hauser with a long, detailed counterattack. They worked their way through many features of language, from words to syntax to speech, that they argued show signs of adaptation in humans specifically for language. The idea that almost of all of the language faculty was already in place is, they argue, a weak one.

More here.

Adam Gopnik reviews Voltaire in Exile by Ian Davidson, in the New Yorker:

It is still bracing, at a time when the extreme deference we pay to faith has made any attack on religious beliefs unacceptable, to hear Voltaire on Jesuits and Muslims alike—to hear him howl with indignation at the madness and malignance of religion—and to be reminded that that free-thinking, which inspired Twain and Mencken, has almost vanished from our world. (There is, after all, as much of Voltaire in American life as in French life. Benjamin Franklin went to him for a blessing, and got it.)

More here.

Maggie McKee in New Scientist:

The most distant cluster of galaxies ever found has been revealed by astronomers – and it bears an uncanny resemblance to those nearby. The technique used to discover the cluster promises further discoveries at similar distances, which would help constrain cosmological models.

The cluster of galaxies spotted by astronomers lies 9 billion light-years away. That beats the 8.5 billion light-years’ distance of the previous record holder – a jump that represents a “significant fraction of a galaxy’s lifespan”, says Christopher Mullis, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, US, who led the team.

More here.

Afshin Molavi writes in Smithsonian Magazine:

Perhaps the most striking thing about anti-Americanism in Iran today is how little of it actually exists. Nearly three-fourths of the Iranians polled in a 2002 survey said they would like their government to restore dialogue with the United States. Though hard-line officials urge “Death to America” during Friday prayers, most Iranians seem to ignore the propaganda. “The paradox of Iran is that it just might be the most pro-American—or, perhaps, least anti-American—populace in the Muslim world,” says Karim Sadjadpour, an analyst in Tehran for the International Crisis Group, an advocacy organization for conflict resolution based in Brussels.

More here.

Richard Rorty reviews Philosophical Analysis in the 20th Century: Vol. I: The Dawn of Analysis, and Vol. II: The Age of Meaning, by Scott Soames, in the London Review of Books:

‘I had hoped my department would hire somebody in the history of philosophy,’ my friend lamented, ‘but my colleagues decided that we needed somebody who was contributing to the literature on vagueness.’

‘The literature on what?’ I asked.

‘Dick,’ he replied, exasperated, ‘you’re really out of it. You don’t realise: vagueness is huge.’

My friend’s judgment is confirmed by Scott Soames’s 900-page history of analytic philosophy. In an epilogue titled ‘The Era of Specialisation’, Soames cites ‘the investigation of vague predicates’ as an area of philosophical inquiry that has ‘exploded in the last thirty years’. The intensity with which such specialised inquiries are being pursued is, he says, indicative of the fact that ‘the discipline itself – philosophy as a whole – has become an aggregate of related but semi-independent investigations, very much like other academic disciplines.’

Soames welcomes this change.

More here.

And see a reply by Soames here.

The PBS documentary show Frontline has been so good lately that I look forward to it all week. Good films, but terribly saddening. Last week, in A Company of Soldiers, Frontline rode with Dog Company, the Army’s 1-B Cav Regiment, stationed in Baghdad. The film depicted a military situation that, for all the bravery and humanity of the soldiers, is dangerous, traumatic, and by all appearances largely futile. This week was The Soldier’s Heart, about the debilitating mental effects of combat trauma on returning soldiers. Taken together, the two films add up to a devastating portrait of Iraq’s affect on the soldiers. (This disturbing 60 Minutes report suggests that literally thousands of other casualties don’t even make Pentagon lists because they didn’t happen as a result of enemy fire, but that’s yet another story.) Frontline offers many of its original interviews in their unexpurgated form online, as well as the entire program available on the web after a few days have passed.

The bottom of Google’s homepage today, just below its copyright, contains:

©2005 Google – Searching 8,058,044,651 web pages

In memoriam, Jef Raskin 1943-2005

As for who he is, there’s this,

Jef Raskin, a mathematician,  orchestral soloist and composer, professor, bicycle racer, model airplane designer, and pioneer in the field of human-computer interactions, died peacefully at home in California on February 26th, 2005 surrounded by his family and loved ones. He had recently been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Jef created the Macintosh computer as employee number 31 at Apple in the early 1980s, revolutionizing computer interface design. Jef invented “click and drag” and many other methods now taken for granted by computer users. He named the Macintosh project after his favorite variety of apple, the McIntosh, modifying the spelling for copyright purposes. Jef’s article “Holes in the Histories” <http://jef.raskincenter.org/published/holes.html> addresses popular misconceptions about the Macintosh Project. Jef strongly believed that computers should make tasks easy for people, not the other way around. For twenty-five more years, his work focused on improving interfaces, culminating in his book, The Humane Interface (Addison-Wesley, 2000). Jef created the Raskin Center for Humane Interfaces (RCHI), <http://www.raskincenter.org> which will soon release a preview of Archy, a culmination and exemplar of his design principles. Archy redesigns the basic building blocks of computing to demonstrate  an entirely new paradigm for computer use. RCHI will continue under the technical leadership of Jef’s son, Aza Raskin.