[{"id":311217,"date":"2026-09-11T11:51:43","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T15:51:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=311217"},"modified":"2026-09-11T09:52:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T13:52:17","slug":"adrian-duncan-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/09\/adrian-duncan-reading.html","title":{"rendered":"Adrian Duncan Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Reading by Adrian Duncan\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Ypm4XKAT-VM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by <a href=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/support-3qd\">donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-311217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311217"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311218,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311217\/revisions\/311218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":311189,"date":"2026-09-11T11:45:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T15:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=311189"},"modified":"2026-09-11T07:39:36","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T11:39:36","slug":"justin-smith-ruiu-on-doomerism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/09\/justin-smith-ruiu-on-doomerism.html","title":{"rendered":"Justin Smith-Ruiu On Doomerism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Justin Smith-Ruiu at <em>The Hinternet<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-311190\" src=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws-1-3-360x232.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"232\" srcset=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws-1-3-360x232.png 360w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws-1-3-768x496.png 768w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws-1-3-300x194.png 300w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws-1-3.png 790w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px\" \/>I happen to think that if there is any threat for which doomerism is a rational response, it is neither climate change nor AI, both of which are almost certainly going to continue to cause us major problems, and worse ones than we\u2019ve known so far, in the coming years. It is, rather, war.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">States go to war with one another periodically, and it\u2019s been over eighty years since the last big one. That war arrived at its climax when the Americans introduced the world to a very new and different kind of weapon, in August, 1945. Soon after, a handful of other countries acquired the same destructive technology, and the post-war global order took on the character of a stand-off, fundamentally the same, if at a massively larger scale, as what you find in a hostage crisis. If you are 81 years of age or younger, you have lived your\u00a0<em>entire life<\/em>\u00a0under the reign of an unrelenting terror that we still find so exceptional and unacceptable when it takes the form of a single deranged man strapped with a vest of dynamite, but that somehow just becomes a background feature of everyday reality when that man\u2019s role is assumed by the state.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">Over the early post-war period there were several near-misses. Now the post-war period is over, and even the pretense of rational deliberation that that era\u2019s institutions upheld \u2014notwithstanding the absolute barbarian madness of the world those institutions pretended to be leading\u2014 has disappeared.<\/p>\n<p>More <a href=\"https:\/\/www.the-hinternet.com\/p\/on-doomerism?utm_source=post-email-title&amp;publication_id=86329&amp;post_id=215059034&amp;utm_campaign=email-post-title&amp;isFreemail=false&amp;r=3ikjv&amp;triedRedirect=true&amp;utm_medium=email\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by <a href=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/support-3qd\">donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Justin Smith-Ruiu at The Hinternet: I happen to think that if there is any threat for which doomerism is a rational response, it is neither climate change nor AI, both of which are almost certainly going to continue to cause us major problems, and worse ones than we\u2019ve known so far, in the coming years.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-311189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311189"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311192,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311189\/revisions\/311192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":311214,"date":"2026-09-11T10:47:29","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T14:47:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=311214"},"modified":"2026-09-11T09:49:48","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T13:49:48","slug":"a-brilliant-interrogation-of-philosophy-and-wonder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/09\/a-brilliant-interrogation-of-philosophy-and-wonder.html","title":{"rendered":"A Brilliant Interrogation Of Philosophy And Wonder"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Daisy Hildyard at <em>The Guardian<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\" style=\"padding-left: 40px\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-311215 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9781805221975-237x360.webp\" alt=\"\" width=\"237\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9781805221975-237x360.webp 237w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9781805221975-198x300.webp 198w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/9781805221975.webp 422w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 237px) 100vw, 237px\" \/>From his debut, Love Notes from a German Building Site, through <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/2025\/jan\/23\/the-gorgeous-inertia-of-the-earth-by-adrian-duncan-review-the-meaning-of-beauty\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth<\/a>, all Duncan\u2019s novels share a meticulous, patient narrative voice. While some have leaned on a blurry psychological disintegration for their denouement, here the conclusions are more definite: with economic gestures, he offers glimpses of the characters\u2019 new worlds. The novel often reads as a realist Irish rural story: hens underfoot, cold black tea on the table, drizzle. Catherine, so dignified, with a bone-deep sadness contracted via childhood tragedy, could almost be a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/william-trevor\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">William Trevor<\/a> character. But in Duncan\u2019s fiction that tradition converges with a cerebral European mode that is drawn to philosophy, architecture, madness and exile. I can\u2019t think of another writer who draws from the same seams in any comparable way.<\/p>\n<div class=\"ad-slot-container ad-slot-container-2 ad-slot-container--right-column ad-slot-container--offset-right\" data-ad-slot=\"true\">\n<div id=\"dfp-ad--inline2\" class=\"js-ad-slot ad-slot ad-slot--inline ad-slot--inline2 ad-slot--gc ad-slot--rendered\" data-link-name=\"ad slot inline2\" data-name=\"inline2\" aria-hidden=\"true\" data-google-query-id=\"CPuZ85XV5pYDFQ-6pgQd4DY3qQ\">\n<div id=\"google_ads_iframe_\/59666047\/theguardian.com\/books\/article\/ng_7__container__\" class=\"ad-slot__content\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\" style=\"padding-left: 40px\">The prose is exceptionally, perhaps deceptively, straightforward. When Alois makes dinner, he \u201csets a dark pot on his range to boil. He then lifts a skillet from the wall and begins to heat it up. He takes butter from his tiny pantry and carves a half-inch cube from it. Then he takes a delph pot from a cupboard and from it lifts two eggs, with which to prepare an omelette.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>more <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/2026\/sep\/11\/a-thought-without-collision-by-adrian-duncan-review-a-brilliant-interrogation-of-philosophy-and-wonder\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by <a href=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/support-3qd\">donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Daisy Hildyard at The Guardian: From his debut, Love Notes from a German Building Site, through The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth, all Duncan\u2019s novels share a meticulous, patient narrative voice. While some have leaned on a blurry psychological disintegration for their denouement, here the conclusions are more definite: with economic gestures, he offers glimpses&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-311214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311214"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311216,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311214\/revisions\/311216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":311223,"date":"2026-09-11T10:26:59","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T14:26:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=311223"},"modified":"2026-09-11T10:26:59","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T14:26:59","slug":"the-biophysical-world-inside-a-jam-packed-cell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/09\/the-biophysical-world-inside-a-jam-packed-cell.html","title":{"rendered":"The Biophysical World Inside a Jam-Packed Cell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Gabriel Popkin in\u00a0<em>Quanta Magazine:<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-311224 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/images-1.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"310\" height=\"163\" srcset=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/images-1.jpeg 310w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/images-1-300x158.jpeg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 310px) 100vw, 310px\" \/>It\u2019s a familiar image, reprinted in countless biology textbooks: an illustration of a typical cell, halved like a grapefruit to reveal its innards. Strands of endoplasmic reticulum encircle a nucleus that floats in the center like a raft. RNA molecules wait patiently at ribosomes to deliver recipes for making proteins. A few vacuoles and Golgi bodies bob about. A mostly deserted cytosol offers a blank backdrop. These are scenes of a calm, rarefied order, as if a cell were a tidy factory with workers individually going about their focused tasks.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">Scrub that picture from your mind right now: Cells are anything but calm or rarefied. If you were trapped inside a cell, you would feel like a dancer in a thronged nightclub, constantly jostled by neighbors.<\/p>\n<p>More <a href=\"https:\/\/www.quantamagazine.org\/the-biophysical-world-inside-a-jam-packed-cell-20260218\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by <a href=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/support-3qd\">donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gabriel Popkin in\u00a0Quanta Magazine: It\u2019s a familiar image, reprinted in countless biology textbooks: an illustration of a typical cell, halved like a grapefruit to reveal its innards. Strands of endoplasmic reticulum encircle a nucleus that floats in the center like a raft. RNA molecules wait patiently at ribosomes to deliver recipes for making proteins. A&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-311223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311223"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311226,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311223\/revisions\/311226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":311219,"date":"2026-09-11T10:09:27","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T14:09:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=311219"},"modified":"2026-09-11T10:09:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T14:09:27","slug":"a-promising-heart-drug-failed-what-went-so-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/09\/a-promising-heart-drug-failed-what-went-so-wrong.html","title":{"rendered":"A Promising Heart Drug Failed. What Went So Wrong?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Gina Kolata in\u00a0<em>The New York Times:<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"css-s99gbd StoryBodyCompanionColumn\" data-testid=\"companionColumn-0\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-12m5bll evys1bk0\" style=\"padding-left: 40px\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-311220 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/10SCI-heart-lpa-superJumbo-360x270.webp\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"270\" srcset=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/10SCI-heart-lpa-superJumbo-360x270.webp 360w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/10SCI-heart-lpa-superJumbo-1024x768.webp 1024w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/10SCI-heart-lpa-superJumbo-768x576.webp 768w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/10SCI-heart-lpa-superJumbo-1536x1152.webp 1536w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/10SCI-heart-lpa-superJumbo-300x225.webp 300w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/10SCI-heart-lpa-superJumbo.webp 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px\" \/>Until last Friday, cardiologists thought they were on the verge of a new frontier in treating heart disease.\u00a0Three companies were conducting large clinical trials on experimental drugs that slash levels of a blood protein, Lp(a), thought to cause heart attacks and stroke. Doctors were eagerly awaiting the results, hoping the drug could be as important as a statin.\u00a0When Novartis, the first company to complete its trial, announced its results, late Friday afternoon, after the markets closed,\u00a0<a class=\"css-povzk\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/09\/04\/science\/heart-drug-fails-novartis-pelacarsen.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">cardiologists were shocked<\/a>. The drug could lower Lp(a) levels by 80 percent, but it did not prevent heart attacks and strokes. It had failed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-12m5bll evys1bk0\" style=\"padding-left: 40px\">\u201cThere\u2019s something we don\u2019t understand here,\u201d said Dr. John Alexander, a cardiologist at Duke.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-12m5bll evys1bk0\" style=\"padding-left: 40px\">Cardiologists regularly see patients who have had heart attacks even though their cholesterol and blood pressure levels are low. They do not have diabetes or obesity, and they do not smoke, either. All too often, though, they have high levels of Lp(a).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"><\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"Dropzone-1\">\n<div id=\"story-ad-1-wrapper\" class=\"css-1lvsdtt\">\n<div id=\"story-ad-1-slug\" class=\"css-47ks0y\">\n<p>More <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/09\/11\/science\/heart-drug-failed-novartis.html?unlocked_article_code=1.AVE.MNei.aUudSD-nW01K&amp;smid=url-share\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by <a href=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/support-3qd\">donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gina Kolata in\u00a0The New York Times: Until last Friday, cardiologists thought they were on the verge of a new frontier in treating heart disease.\u00a0Three companies were conducting large clinical trials on experimental drugs that slash levels of a blood protein, Lp(a), thought to cause heart attacks and stroke. Doctors were eagerly awaiting the results, hoping&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-311219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311219"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311222,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311219\/revisions\/311222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":311210,"date":"2026-09-11T09:46:34","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T13:46:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=311210"},"modified":"2026-09-11T09:46:34","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T13:46:34","slug":"a-civil-war-a-bestseller-and-the-trial-that-divided-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/09\/a-civil-war-a-bestseller-and-the-trial-that-divided-france.html","title":{"rendered":"A Civil War, A Bestseller, And The Trial That Divided France"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Kyle Berlin at <em>Harper&#8217;s Magazine<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\"><span class=\"drop-cap-first-letter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-311212 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/images-25-232x360.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"232\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/images-25-232x360.jpg 232w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/images-25-193x300.jpg 193w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/images-25.jpg 290w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 232px) 100vw, 232px\" \/>T<\/span>he legal dossier filed by Daoud\u2019s lawyers must be one of the strangest and most extraordinary documents I\u2019ve ever read. In their brief, Daoud\u2019s lawyers, Benjamin Moisan and Jacqueline Laffont-Ha\u00efk, laid out in meticulous detail a counterhistory of each piece of inspiration that Sa\u00e2da Arbane\u2019s lawyers had insisted was \u201cstolen\u201d from her life. According to Daoud\u2019s lawyers, the massacre in <em>Houris <\/em>was not inspired by the massacre of Arbane\u2019s family, but by the massacre in Had Chekala that Daoud had witnessed and reported on as a young journalist. Was it true that the families of both the fictional Aube and the real Sa\u00e2da owned small farms in a remote mountainous region? Perhaps, but so did Daoud\u2019s family, which was part of a Berber tribe called the Beni Ouragh, whose members were spread across many small villages, including Had Chekala. Was it true that both the fictional Aube and the real Sa\u00e2da underwent tracheotomies and had cannulas inserted? Yes, but during his research for the novel, Daoud watched documentaries in which Algerians who had been <em>\u00e9gorg\u00e9s <\/em>also had cannulas inserted. Was it true that both Aube and Sa\u00e2da lived in the neighborhood of Hai El Yasmine in Oran? Well, so had\u00a0Daoud.<\/p>\n<p>more <a href=\"https:\/\/harpers.org\/archive\/2026\/09\/borrowed-wounds-kyle-berlin-kamel-daoud-houris-algerian-civil-war\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by <a href=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/support-3qd\">donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kyle Berlin at Harper&#8217;s Magazine: The legal dossier filed by Daoud\u2019s lawyers must be one of the strangest and most extraordinary documents I\u2019ve ever read. In their brief, Daoud\u2019s lawyers, Benjamin Moisan and Jacqueline Laffont-Ha\u00efk, laid out in meticulous detail a counterhistory of each piece of inspiration that Sa\u00e2da Arbane\u2019s lawyers had insisted was \u201cstolen\u201d&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-311210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311210"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311213,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311210\/revisions\/311213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":311204,"date":"2026-09-11T08:09:42","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T12:09:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=311204"},"modified":"2026-09-11T08:09:42","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T12:09:42","slug":"friday-poem-507","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/09\/friday-poem-507.html","title":{"rendered":"Friday Poem"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>The Re-Generation<\/h2>\n<p>Comfort peaked in the year 19__, in the year 20__.<br \/>\nWe tell our grandchildren how it was and they scoff<br \/>\nat our selfish tendencies, at our tenderness. They ask,<br \/>\n<em>did you know what you were doing?<\/em> We do not admit<br \/>\nhow we stripped the rain- forest. Clear cut our way to<br \/>\nmodernity then choked on the dust bowl stirred by our<br \/>\ntechnologies. <em>I\u2019ll do it,<\/em> grandchild says\u2014<br \/>\nwith the same impatience we used to wait<\/p>\n<p>for the dialup reboot release\u2014<br \/>\nas we harvest fruit with an ignorance<br \/>\nthat snatches next year\u2019s bud.<br \/>\n<em>It wasn\u2019t my fault<\/em> our bruised eyes imply.<br \/>\n<em>Then whose was it?<\/em> The year was ____<\/p>\n<p>when the last spring dried up; we wanted<br \/>\nto weep. Held back. Knew our tears,<br \/>\nour salt wouldn\u2019t rescue anything. The nymphs<br \/>\nwithered, spirits fled. Imagine instead<\/p>\n<p>we\u2019d cast spells. Prayed<br \/>\nover lagoons and charmed the tidal<br \/>\npools. Imagine we salvaged<br \/>\nthe living.<\/p>\n<p><em>by Shanley Poole<\/em><br \/>\n<em>from<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ecotheo.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The EchoTheo Collective<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/support-3qd\">donating now<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Re-Generation Comfort peaked in the year 19__, in the year 20__. We tell our grandchildren how it was and they scoff at our selfish tendencies, at our tenderness. They ask, did you know what you were doing? We do not admit how we stripped the rain- forest. Clear cut our way to modernity then&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-311204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311204"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311204\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311207,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311204\/revisions\/311207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":310974,"date":"2026-09-11T05:00:32","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T09:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=310974"},"modified":"2026-09-13T03:13:58","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T07:13:58","slug":"a-reduction-of-the-seraglio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/09\/a-reduction-of-the-seraglio.html","title":{"rendered":"A Reduction of the Seraglio"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>by Rafa\u00ebl Newman<\/strong><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_310976\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-310976\" style=\"width: 256px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-310976\" src=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-06-at-21.36.33-285x360.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"256\" height=\"323\" srcset=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-06-at-21.36.33-285x360.png 285w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-06-at-21.36.33-237x300.png 237w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-06-at-21.36.33.png 694w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 256px) 100vw, 256px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-310976\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Backstage at Opernhaus Z\u00fcrich<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Not quite 25 years ago, on September 15, 2001, I took my six-year-old daughter to the opera. Her mother had arranged the outing, in part because it was clear how much Hella was beginning to enjoy musical theater\u2014a pleasure I had learned from my own parents\u2014and in part because, in the final weeks of her pregnancy with our second child, Caroline simply needed a few hours to herself.<\/p>\n<p>The tickets to that evening\u2019s performance of <em>Die Entf\u00fchrung aus dem Serail<\/em> at Opernhaus Z\u00fcrich had been purchased at some point during the summer of 2001, well before September 11. By the time Hella and I attended the production, four days after what would soon come to be known as 9\/11, everything had changed; and Mozart\u2019s 1782 opera, which mainly concerns two pairs of lovers escaping from danger but also stages a confrontation between the Christian and Muslim worlds, had taken on a new, more urgent aspect.<\/p>\n<p>When, therefore, the Swiss actor Peter Arens, in the speaking role of Bassa Selim, a convert to Islam and an Ottoman despot, made his celebrated final-act speech extolling clemency, in Zurich on September 15, 2001, he spoke directly to the audience rather than to the onstage character he was meant to be addressing. <em>[E]s w\u00e4re ein weit gr\u00f6sser Vergn\u00fcgen eine erlittene Ungerechtigkeit durch<\/em> <em>Wohlthaten zu vergelten, als Laster mit Lastern tilgen,<\/em> Arens said as Selim: \u201cIt is a far greater pleasure to repay injustices suffered by good deeds than to compensate evil by more evil\u201d, ostensibly renouncing vengeance on the son of his enemy and allowing him to return to Spain with the woman they both love, but in fact making an unmistakable plea for moderation in the American military campaign against Afghanistan that was gearing up that very moment. To amplify the point, in both 1782 and 2001, the four lovers respond with a quartet: \u201cNothing is as ugly as vengeance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the event, of course, Selim\u2019s\/Arens\u2019s implicit plea, and others more overt, in the international press and on the street, went unheard in Washington. What is more, when the US President\u2019s thirst for revenge was ultimately unslaked in Afghanistan, George Bush Jr. would go on, in 2003, to resume and extend his father\u2019s earlier war on Iraq with a trumped-up mission to find and destroy non-existent WMDs there. There ensued a Second Gulf War that lasted for eight years, until 2011, when US troops were withdrawn from Iraq.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The opera\u2019s effect on me, however\u2014in particular the effect of Peter Arens\u2019s portentous breaking of the fourth wall in Act 3\u2014was immediate, and lasting. It felt that evening as if we were living in History, my young daughter and I: as if the forces at work in the great world, which would normally bypass placid Switzerland, had been rerouted to run directly through the Zurich Opera House. As if the next move to be made by the US military might have consequences not only for the soldiers involved, or their targets abroad, but for all of us on earth\u2014as of course it did and still does: dire consequences. As if an actor speaking lines from a libretto written over 200 years earlier might in fact alter the course of contemporary human affairs.<\/p>\n<p>So when I was asked earlier this year to collaborate on a production of <em>The Abduction from the Seraglio<\/em>, as the opera is known in English, at the Bard Music Festival in upstate New York, I agreed at once. My job, as dramaturg and translator, would be to create a new English version of the work\u2019s extensive spoken dialogue and to advise the production\u2019s stage director, Marco Nistic\u00f2, on the cuts necessary to reduce the <em>Seraglio<\/em>\u2019s unwieldy volume of text, rife with stage business and musty ribaldry, and thus ensure an acceptable running time. The opera\u2019s arias, duets, trios, and quartets would, needless to say, be sung in the original German, and in their entirety.<\/p>\n<p>There was also a further, more political dimension to my brief. The <em>Seraglio<\/em>, once one of Mozart\u2019s most popular operas and the first to receive widespread acclaim during his lifetime, is no longer produced as often, particularly in the English-speaking world, since its plot depends on explicitly racist\u2014what would now be called Islamophobic\u2014stereotypes. My job, therefore, as I understood it from my initial meetings with Nistic\u00f2 and other members of Bard\u2019s faculty and festival administration, would include toning down some of the 1782 libretto\u2019s more flagrantly \u201cincorrect\u201d excesses without, for all that, sacrificing any crucial elements of the story.<\/p>\n<p>The plot of <em><a href=\"https:\/\/opera-guide.ch\/operas\/die+entfuhrung+aus+dem+serail\/libretto\/de\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Die Entf\u00fchrung aus dem Serail<\/a>,<\/em> a reworking by Johann Gottlieb Stephanie (1741-1800) of an earlier libretto by Christoph Friedrich Bretzner (1748-1807), is as follows. Konstanze, a Spanish noblewoman, along with her lady\u2019s maid Blondchen and the latter\u2019s lover Pedrillo, a valet, has been kidnapped by pirates and is being held captive by Bassa Selim, an Ottoman pasha. Selim, himself a renegade convert to Islam, has fallen in love with Konstanze, and has been attempting, in a campaign of seduction combined with threats, to win her heart. Blondchen, meanwhile, is subject to the same attentions on the part of Osmin, Selim\u2019s harem keeper. As the opera begins, Belmonte, Konstanze\u2019s true love, has arrived under cover from Spain with the intention of rescuing his compatriots from the pasha\u2019s clutches. This he does eventually manage, with Pedrillo\u2019s connivance\u2014almost: for the escapees are apprehended before they can embark on Belmonte\u2019s rescue ship. The quartet fear the direst punishments at the hands of Selim, who has also learned that Belmonte is the son of his arch-nemesis; but in the opera\u2019s finale they are delighted when the Turkish grandee decides instead to pardon them and allow them to return home, championing clemency over vengeance:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Take your liberty, sail back to your fatherland and tell your sire that you were in my power and that I set you free, so that he may know how much greater is my pleasure at repaying the injustice I suffered at his hands with kindness, than to answer vice with vice.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This was the very speech that had so moved me a quarter of a century later, when spoken from the stage of Opernhaus Z\u00fcrich in German; I reproduce it here, in my own translation, with a special pleasure, and a particular frisson.<\/p>\n<p>And that speech, in my English rendering, did indeed make it more or less intact onto the stage at Fisher Center last month, when the 36th annual <a href=\"https:\/\/americansymphony.org\/concerts\/bmf-2026\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bard Music Festival<\/a> featured its new production of the <em>Seraglio<\/em> under the stage direction of Marco Nistic\u00f2, with the American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leon Botstein, music director and Bard\u2019s long-time President.<\/p>\n<p>Much of the rest of my translation of the opera\u2019s dialogue, however\u2014some 7,000 words in total\u2014did not make the cut. (The <em>Seraglio<\/em> is a so-called singspiel, a mixture of sung and spoken text, an early forerunner of the modern musical and a departure from the half-sung recitative of the Baroque era.) In a series of Zoom meetings and email exchanges, Marco and I gradually reduced my manuscript rendering of Acts 1, 2, and 3 by more than a third, with further cuts made by Marco and his cast when the opera went into rehearsal.<\/p>\n<p>On the whole, these excisions were reflective more of Marco\u2019s need to streamline the dialogue\u2019s bulk than of his obeisance to the dictates of the zeitgeist, as embattled as that last is in the contemporary United States. We cut a few mentions of \u201cbarbarians\u201d (although one of these is made by the Ottoman pasha himself, of Belmonte\u2019s Christian father) and of \u201cslaves,\u201d in deference to a particularly American sensibility; a great deal more Bowdlerizing was not necessary.<\/p>\n<p>Because in fact, Stephanie\u2019s libretto is not actually riddled with racist epithets. If anything, it is gender politics that the opera more centrally\u2014and, for a contemporary audience, more problematically\u2014deploys: Blondchen schools her would-be lover Osmin in the culture of (heterosexual) seduction while rewarding Pedrillo with erotic favors; Konstanze declares ecstatically that she would rather suffer death by torture than be unfaithful to Belmonte; and nevertheless, when the two couples are reunited, the women must endure a tiresome interrogation before their lovers are convinced of their chastity. All of this, of course, underpinned by a conventional (or imagined) understanding of sexual mores in the characters\u2019 respective cultures.<\/p>\n<p>But while it is undeniable that the <em>Seraglio<\/em> is animated by a Eurocentric perspective and Orientalist stereotypes, the caricature of Islamic absolutism drawn in the character of Osmin is weighed and found wanting against a Christian humanism represented by\u2014his master, the Ottoman pasha Selim, who foreswears the ostensible cruelty of his adopted faith to perform a consummately \u201cWestern\u201d act of charity and forgiveness. And the opera\u2019s Christian characters\u2014the quartet of European lovers, from Spain or, in the case of Blondchen, from England\u2014are effectively passive pawns between these two equally \u201cexoticized\u201d ethical poles; their \u201cnoble\u201d if ultimately foiled escape from the clutches of the ravening \u201cTurks\u201d is the occasion for buffoonery and slapstick rather than the triumph of civilization over barbarism.<\/p>\n<p>The only scene in which Islam is thematized with relevance to the dramatic action occurs in Act 2, when Pedrillo persuades Osmin to drink wine in defiance of religious proscription and slips him a sleeping draught to ensure the quartet\u2019s midnight escape. Here Marco wanted a strategic cut, the line in which Pedrillo uses mockery to goad Osmin into indulging: <em>Freylich k\u00f6nnt ihr armen Schlucker das nicht begreifen, dass es so ein herrlich Ding um ein Gl\u00e4schen guten alten Lustigmacher ist<\/em> (\u201cBut of course, you poor suckers can\u2019t appreciate just what a marvelous thing a good glass of wine is\u201d)\u2014along with a passing reference to \u201cMahomet,\u201d so as to avoid directly ridiculing the Muslim\u2019s faith and the Prophet himself. But of course, there was nothing to be done about Osmin\u2019s craven fear that \u201cAllah\u201d might see him drinking, since that reference comes in the duet the two characters sing, and was thus untouchable.<\/p>\n<p>More than calling for the excision of the odd offensive turn of phrase, Marco sought to temper the opera\u2019s 18th-century chauvinism, so flagrantly out of step with contemporary identity politics, by mixing up the ethnicity of his casting: the tenor <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tenorminghaoliu.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Minghao Liu<\/a>, born in China and trained in Ukraine, sang the Spanish nobleman Belmonte; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.haroldwilson.net\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Harold Wilson<\/a>, a decidedly Anglo-Saxon bass, sang the Ottoman harem keeper Osmin; and the part of Bassa Selim was assigned to the Italian-born <a href=\"https:\/\/www.operabase.com\/stefano-de-peppo-a16158\/en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Stefano de Peppo<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, however, the BMF production\u2019s most pointed act of de-racializing the <em>Seraglio<\/em> was simply its staging. Other noted productions, such as those at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=c-q7qiov8wU\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Glyndebourne in 1980<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=iYOTeHL14uQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Covent Garden in 1988<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=nrekmTmAvOU\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">La Scala in 2017<\/a>, or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=JRRzNbpaw1o\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Livermore Valley in 2018<\/a>, used lavish Balkan folk costumes and elaborately crafted scenery <em>\u00e0 la Turque<\/em>, the romantic trappings of an imaginary \u201cLevant.\u201d Marco avoided such patent Orientalism by having his singers perform a reduced drama directly in front of the onstage orchestra, which thus took the place of a stage set, supplemented only by the occasional colorful projection onto the back wall of the theater, to evoke the maritime surroundings of the pasha\u2019s villa. The costumes were a mixture of Edwardian elegance and boarding-school chic: Selim, for example, resembled a Lord Mayor dressed for a diplomatic dinner, while Belmonte looked as if he had just returned from the cricket pitch. A bygone British finery was thus deployed as an anodyne stand-in for the more heated 18th-century imperialism of the Habsburgs and the Ottomans.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_310977\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-310977\" style=\"width: 144px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-310977 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Bassa-Selim_2-144x360.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"144\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Bassa-Selim_2-144x360.png 144w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Bassa-Selim_2-120x300.png 120w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Bassa-Selim_2.png 198w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 144px) 100vw, 144px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-310977\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Stefano de Peppo as Bassa Selim, Bard Music Festival 2026<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The effect of all these adaptations\u2014in the appearance of the production as well as in the language of the dialogue\u2014was not to impoverish the Bard Music Festival\u2019s <em>Seraglio <\/em>by de-historicizing it, but instead to foreground the most timeless gifts of Mozart\u2019s singspiel. Towering over these, of course, is its music, with bravura arias for Konstanze and Osmin in particular and an innovatively narrative quartet at the close of Act 2; but of crucial importance as well is the central lesson of Stephanie\u2019s libretto, which, when relieved of its coarser ethnic opprobrium, clearly elevates kindness over coercion, trust over suspicion, and clemency over vengeance. Just as we heard it, in the audience at Opernhaus Z\u00fcrich, 25 years ago this week.<\/p>\n<p>This past June, after my work on the Bard <em>Seraglio<\/em> had wrapped up and before rehearsals had begun in upstate New York, <a href=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/07\/burning-books.html\">I attended<\/a> a very different production of <em>Die Entf\u00fchrung aus dem Serail<\/em>, at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.staatsoper-berlin.de\/de\/veranstaltungen\/die-entfuehrung-aus-dem-serail.21973\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Berliner Staatsoper<\/a>. I couldn\u2019t wait for the opera to be staged at Bard\u2019s Fisher Center on August 16, and I had been so immersed in the material, had listened to so many different recordings, that I was optimally primed to enjoy a live performance.<\/p>\n<p>The two versions, in Berlin and at Bard, bore some superficial similarities. The Staatsoper production, under the artistic direction of Andrea Moses and conducted by Thomas Guggeis, was as counter-ethnic in its casting as Bard\u2019s, with the South African tenor <a href=\"https:\/\/www.harrisonparrott.com\/artists\/siyabonga-maqungo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Siyabonga Maqungo<\/a> singing Belmonte, the Romanian soprano <a href=\"https:\/\/adelazaharia.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Adela Zaharia<\/a> as Konstanze, and the Bavarian bass <a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidsteffens.com\/en\/4220-2\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">David Steffens<\/a> playing the Turk Osmin. The Staatsoper sets, too, largely resisted Orientalism, opting instead for an anachronistic evocation of the beau monde on a cruise ship (with a mixed bag of temporal and cultural references in the costumes, including some parodically over-the-top Ottoman accessories).<\/p>\n<p>But where the Bard production under Marco Nistic\u00f2 was minimalist, laying the lightest of revisionist hands on the early modern material, Moser and her co-author Michael H\u00f6ppner opted for a maximalist, positively didactic approach to the libretto. The star of the Berlin production, and himself a collaborator on the revised dialogue, was <a href=\"https:\/\/buelent-ceylan.de\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">B\u00fclent Ceylan<\/a>, a German comedian of part Turkish ancestry who has centered his career on sending up contemporary German society and its problems with the integration of immigrants.<\/p>\n<p>Ceylan <a href=\"https:\/\/www.staatsoper-berlin.de\/de\/kuenstler\/buelent-ceylan.3713\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">prides himself on speaking no Turkish<\/a> and instead boasts of his fluency in \u201cthe unmistakable dialect of Mannheim\u201d\u2014a city with an above-average immigrant population and a center of Turko-German fusion\u2014, which he calls \u201cthe ultimate proof of integration.\u201d Ceylan is larger than life, with long flowing hair, a gym rat\u2019s build, a motor mouth, and a tendency to stud his routine with references to heavy metal underscored by rambunctious air guitar\u2014and so naturally Moser assigned him the role of the austere and moralizing Bassa Selim.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_310978\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-310978\" style=\"width: 227px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-310978 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/IMG_6599-227x360.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"227\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/IMG_6599-227x360.jpeg 227w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/IMG_6599-645x1024.jpeg 645w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/IMG_6599-768x1219.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/IMG_6599-968x1536.jpeg 968w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/IMG_6599-1290x2048.jpeg 1290w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/IMG_6599-189x300.jpeg 189w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/IMG_6599-scaled.jpeg 1613w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 227px) 100vw, 227px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-310978\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>B\u00fclent Ceylan as Bassa Selim, Staatsoper Berlin 2026<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Or rather, Ceylan assigned it to himself, since in the Staatsoper\u2019s production the comedian basically runs the show, stepping into and out of his role as the pasha to comment on the drama, perform stand-up comedy with explicit references to political affairs in 2026, and speak much of the characters\u2019 dialogue for them: ostensibly to hurry things along but in effect to provide a running meta-critique of the opera\u2019s outdated ideology. As with the Bard production, naturally, all of the music was kept intact, with particularly outstanding performances by Maqungo and Zaharia, the latter mastering Mozart\u2019s typically sadistic settings for soprano with apparent insouciance and very nearly, and quite credibly, seduced by Ceylan\u2019s sexy pasha, which added an intriguing nuance to the jealousy quartet in Act 2.<\/p>\n<p>But the sheer profusion of stage business and tech gadgets, including having characters use smart phones to create videos from their onstage perspective, which were then streamed live to the audience, threatened to engulf the opera, especially in combination with Ceylan\u2019s relentless, smartass, critical-theory-quoting patter. And the audience at the premiere on June 27 was not uniformly amused. In spite of pre-show remarks by dramaturg <a href=\"https:\/\/www.staatskapelle-berlin.de\/de\/kuenstler\/detlef-giese.1014\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Detlef Giese<\/a>, who was keen to prepare ticketholders for the radical version they were about to experience, and rather cringingly gave us explicit permission to laugh at the jokes we would soon hear, the applause at the curtain call was accompanied by some angry booing, in particular when Moser and her team came on stage.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, the Staatsoper\u2019s overblown, pedagogical production of the <em>Seraglio<\/em> actually reduced the work, by making it serve a political agenda far outside its own ideological world. Naturally I have no objection to using works of art from one era to make a political point in another, as Arens did when his placative recital of the pasha\u2019s speech on clemency in September of 2001 became an appeal to contemporary Washington. Indeed, Mozart\u2019s opera was itself an implicit comment on 18th-century current affairs, since it was conceived and performed as a tribute to the defeat of the Ottomans at the Battle of Kahlenberg in 1683, which had ended the siege of Vienna 99 years earlier and prepared the way for Habsburg ascendancy: the plot demonstrates the superiority, not of arms, but of ethics; indeed, the triumph of love over war. <em>Tu felix Austria nube<\/em>, and all that.<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, as Larry Wolff, author of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sup.org\/books\/history\/singing-turk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>The Singing Turk: Ottoman Power and Operatic Emotions on the European Stage from the Siege of Vienna to the Age of Napoleon<\/em><\/a>, pointed out in his onstage introductory remarks at the Bard Music Festival in August, Bassa Selim may be understood to represent the Habsburg Emperor Joseph II, Mozart\u2019s new patron, who was seated in the audience at the <em>Seraglio<\/em>\u2019s premiere: and thus in 1872 the opera was already functioning as a mirror held up to a prince, an allegorical masque celebrating the virtue of mildness in a ruthlessly modernizing world.<\/p>\n<p>But for these very reasons it is unnecessary to add further layers of anachronism to Stephanie\u2019s text, which functions at its hortatory best when the audience is allowed to simply draw its own historical conclusions. And while it is true that, in contemporary Germany, Turks and Turkishness have a valency that is unmatched in present-day America, and that it might therefore seem important, even irresistible, to champion the <em>Seraglio<\/em>\u2019s lessons on tolerance and integration more explicitly to a German audience (especially now that the anti-immigrant, fascistoid AfD is on the rise), Ceylan\u2019s humorous lectures on cultural appropriation to a self-selecting audience of bien pensant Europeans proved ultimately self-defeating. A singer friend who attended a subsequent performance, at which the claque was also loudly present, remarked: <em>Es r\u00e4cht sich, das Publikum f\u00fcr bl\u00f6d zu verkaufen<\/em> (\u201cThat\u2019s what you get for treating the public like dummies\u201d).<\/p>\n<p>So in the end, the streamlined version produced at the Bard Music Festival last month, with my newly translated dialogue reduced to the max and the stage stripped virtually bare, was not in fact this year\u2019s real reduction of Mozart\u2019s work: the Staatsoper\u2019s supercharged, over-hyped, gizmo-laden setting was.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">*<\/p>\n<p>About those gender politics, though: they remain an unsettling strand of the <em>Seraglio<\/em>, unsettled in the recent Berlin and Bard productions both. In Mozart\u2019s opera, women are held captive by men who threaten them with violence unless they submit; they defy their would-be rapists by declaring their willingness to die for the men they do love, who then come to rescue them, but only after they have had their morbid, victim-blaming suspicions about their beloveds\u2019 virginity allayed.<\/p>\n<p>The theme has continued to resonate beyond the <em>Seraglio<\/em> in 2026. As my work on the libretto was getting underway this past winter, it emerged that Leon Botstein, the conductor of the BMF <em>Seraglio<\/em> and President of Bard College since 1975, was mentioned in the Epstein files. At the time, in February of this year, Botstein promptly explained to Bard faculty and staff that he had indeed maintained contact with Jeffrey Epstein in the years prior to the latter\u2019s arrest and the revelations about his trafficking, but that their relationship had been largely driven by Botstein\u2019s fundraising duties. Botstein denied any knowledge of, let alone involvement in, any of Epstein\u2019s criminal activities. He expressed his regret, but was evidently intent on staying on as president.<\/p>\n<p>By May, however, when my work had concluded, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/05\/01\/us\/bard-president-leon-botstein-jeffrey-epstein.html?unlocked_article_code=1.gFA.F-YG.5yw7gSfMW1bU&amp;smid=em-share\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">further revelations<\/a> had come to light: the conductor had apparently indeed continued his relationship with Epstein after the latter\u2019s conviction on solicitation of a minor for prostitution, and Botstein was thus obliged to make a more radical decision: he would retire, after more than fifty years as college president.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_310980\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-310980\" style=\"width: 208px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-310980 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Bows_4-208x360.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"208\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Bows_4-208x360.png 208w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Bows_4-174x300.png 174w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Bows_4.png 315w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 208px) 100vw, 208px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-310980\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Botstein bows out<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The maestro who raised his baton on stage at Fisher Center on August 16, therefore, to conduct an opera about trafficked women who manage to escape from their tormentors, had been among the wealthy and connected patrons of a pasha-like financier whose business interests they knew to include just such trafficking, and from whose modern-day harem many of his captives did not escape.<\/p>\n<p>If any seraglio has ever needed reducing, it is surely that one.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Rafa\u00ebl Newman Not quite 25 years ago, on September 15, 2001, I took my six-year-old daughter to the opera. Her mother had arranged the outing, in part because it was clear how much Hella was beginning to enjoy musical theater\u2014a pleasure I had learned from my own parents\u2014and in part because, in the final&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":890,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3260],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-310974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mondaymagazine","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/890"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310974"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311258,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310974\/revisions\/311258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":311177,"date":"2026-09-11T04:30:25","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T08:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=311177"},"modified":"2026-09-10T15:32:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T19:32:15","slug":"memory-is-the-original-unreliable-narrator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/09\/memory-is-the-original-unreliable-narrator.html","title":{"rendered":"Memory is the Original Unreliable Narrator"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>by Priya Malhotra<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Mira remembers her third birthday party as a scene of almost extravagant happiness. There was a cream-puff cake, tier upon tier of it, which in memory has acquired the architectural grandeur of a wedding cake. Helium balloons floated close to the ceiling, their ribbons dangling into the room. She remembers presents, noise, people fussing over her\u2014the peculiar exhilaration of being three and understanding that, for one afternoon at least, the world had arranged itself around you.<\/p>\n<p>Her mother remembers the same party.<\/p>\n<p>Only she remembers a miserable child.<\/p>\n<p>Mira&#8217;s father had been unable to attend. According to her mother, Mira spent much of the afternoon crying for him. The celebrated cake barely interested her. Neither did the balloons. What her mother remembers is trying to coax an inconsolable three-year-old into enjoying a party in which the absence of her father seemed to eclipse everything else.<\/p>\n<p>Could one of these accounts simply be wrong? That strikes me as an overly simplistic question. Memory is not generally obedient to binaries such as right and wrong, particularly when what we are remembering is not merely an event but the way that event registered in a particular consciousness: what drew our attention, what mattered to us, what delighted or wounded us, and what barely registered at all.<\/p>\n<p>Facts, of course, are another matter. Mira&#8217;s father was either at the party or he wasn&#8217;t. The party took place on a particular day and at a particular place; the cake had some ascertainable number of tiers. Where and when something happened, and often what happened, are not matters of personal interpretation. This becomes especially important when memory moves beyond private life into history, crime, politics or other consequential matters, where competing recollections cannot be allowed to replace truth.<\/p>\n<p>But facts occupy surprisingly little of the territory we mean when we say, I remember.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>In fiction, an unreliable narrator is usually taken to be one who conceals something from the reader. That is one kind, and the shallowest. But often unreliability arises because the narrator can give us only the world as he or she is capable of seeing it. Their account may be limited by vanity, loyalty, prejudice, innocence, emotional investment, or by things about themselves that they cannot quite recognize. The events may be recalled conscientiously; what remains partial is the consciousness through which they are recalled.<\/p>\n<p>The Remains of the Day, for example, is narrated by Stevens, an English butler looking back upon a life devoted to service. His recollections are often precise, even fastidious, yet as the novel proceeds we begin to see limits in his understanding of his employer, of Miss Kenton, and of the choices that have shaped his life. The interest lies not in catching Stevens in a lie. It lies in noticing how a person can remember carefully and still understand selectively.<\/p>\n<p>Memory, I have come to think, is the original unreliable narrator.<\/p>\n<p>Not because it is forever fabricating the past, although it can certainly get facts wrong, but because there is no such thing as a memory untouched by the person who possesses it. We do not first experience life neutrally and then introduce subjectivity when we remember it. The subjectivity is there from the beginning. Two people can stand in the same room, hear the same conversation, witness the same quarrel, and already be living through different versions of the moment. Memory carries that difference forward.<\/p>\n<p>This is what interests me about Mira&#8217;s birthday. The divergence may not have begun years later, when mother and daughter remembered the party. It may have existed in the original moments of the party itself. Her mother was watching an unhappy child and registering the missing father, the tears, the apparent failure of the cake and balloons to console her. Mira was inhabiting the occasion from inside a three-year-old mind, where misery and delight could coexist quite comfortably. Perhaps she cried bitterly at two o&#8217;clock and was enchanted by the cake at two-thirty. What lodged in her mother&#8217;s memory was the sadness; what remained in Mira&#8217;s was the spectacle.<\/p>\n<p>Neither is necessarily a diminished version of the afternoon. Each memory preserves the form the experience took in the mind that lived it\u2014what assumed importance, what receded, and what survived long enough to become part of the story later told.<\/p>\n<p>I have often found that people who shared a moment with me remember it in ways that scarcely resemble my own version of it. One that comes immediately to mind involves a woman I will call Ruchi, whom I met at a party in Delhi shortly before I left India to study in America. She was a few years older than I was. I remember meeting her, faintly; for me, it survives as one of those minor social encounters that occurred and then largely disappeared into the clutter of the past.<\/p>\n<p>Ruchi remembers it vividly.<\/p>\n<p>Years later, when we were back in contact, she told me that meeting me had been painful. At the time, she was married to a man who was neither particularly kind nor loving, and his work had taken them to an obscure village in India. At the party she saw me preparing to leave for America and found herself measuring, perhaps involuntarily, my circumstances against her own. In her memory, I was setting off toward the glamour and possibility of New York while she was returning to the middle of nowhere with a distant husband and a life that felt terribly constricted.<\/p>\n<p>An encounter that scarcely adhered to my consciousness lodged firmly in hers because it touched something already alive there. Significance is not distributed equally among the people who share an event. What glances off one person can penetrate another.<\/p>\n<p>The same holds for patterns across many memories. Suppose a man recalls being excluded repeatedly\u2014by siblings, friends, colleagues, lovers. Perhaps not every episode occurred as he remembers it. The pattern of recollection is telling nonetheless. It may point to an old wound, a dreaded expectation, a sensitivity in which certain slights lodge and contradictory experiences do not. Whether each incident happened as remembered belongs, perhaps, on a psychotherapist&#8217;s couch. The pattern is the thing that survives.<\/p>\n<p>Our omissions can be as revealing as what we retain.<\/p>\n<p>Nor does a memory stop changing once it has been formed. The consciousness that first experienced an event is only the beginning of the story; everything that happens afterward can alter the meaning of what came before. A conversation that seemed trivial at twenty can become important at forty. A parent remembered as unbearably controlling may look different after we become parents ourselves. A relationship remembered as happy may be recolored by something we learn years after it ends. The event itself has not changed. Its place in our understanding has.<\/p>\n<p>Photographs can become part of this process too. We may look at the same childhood photograph so many times that eventually the image begins to furnish the memory. Do I actually remember the red dress, the lawn and the birthday cake, or have I seen the photograph so often that its contents have been absorbed into what I now call remembering? The photograph began as evidence of a moment; repeated over decades, it can become one of the materials from which the memory itself is composed.<\/p>\n<p>This is why describing memory as merely fallible seems insufficient to me. Fallibility suggests a record that occasionally contains errors. Memory does something more complicated. It preserves experience selectively, and what it preserves can acquire different proportions and meanings as the remembering person accumulates more life. Later knowledge does not erase an earlier memory, but it can change the light in which that memory is seen.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, I can still discover that a detail I regarded as factual was simply incorrect. Perhaps I was certain a conversation occurred in one restaurant and incontrovertible evidence places it in another. What unsettles me in such moments is not the restaurant. It is discovering how confidently I had carried a false detail. Certainty, apparently, is no guarantee of accuracy.<\/p>\n<p>But that is fundamentally different from two people remembering the mood or significance of the same event differently. The first concerns a fact that can, at least sometimes, be corrected. The second begins with two consciousnesses having inhabited the same moment differently and then carrying different parts of it into the future.<\/p>\n<p>This, I think, is why memory is so fundamental to a sense of self. It does not keep the past alive in any neutral or comprehensive sense. It keeps alive our experience of having lived through it: the things that impressed themselves upon us, the things we misunderstood, the things whose significance we recognized only later. An old humiliation may help explain what we are alert to now; an experience of tenderness may shape what we recognize as safety; a childhood fear can leave an emotional reflex long after the room in which it began has vanished.<\/p>\n<p>Ana\u00efs Nin wrote, &#8220;We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.&#8221; I would remove writing as a requirement. Memory gives us that second tasting anyway, and often a third or fourth. But retrospect is never simply replay. Each return is made by a person who has lived longer and accumulated more experience than the person who last returned to it.<\/p>\n<p>A perfectly objective internal recording would undoubtedly be useful. I would sometimes welcome the ability to rewind an argument and establish exactly who said what. But I would not exchange memory for it. CCTV footage could settle a factual dispute; it could not contain the peculiar importance an otherwise ordinary afternoon acquired for the person who lived it.<\/p>\n<p>That is finally what links memory to the unreliable narrator. The narrator is inseparable from the telling. So too are we inseparable from what we remember. There is no pristine version of my remembered life from which I can remove my temperament, my loyalties, my injuries, my affections, my later knowledge\u2014in short, myself\u2014and uncover some purer, more authoritative version of the past beneath it.<\/p>\n<p>Nor would I want one.<\/p>\n<p>When someone remembers a shared experience differently from me, what interests me is not simply the contradiction. It is the glimpse into another interior life: the discovery that while I was living one afternoon, another person was living something adjacent to it but not identical, and that years later each of us carried away a different inheritance from the same few hours.<\/p>\n<p>An objective record could tell us what happened. Memory preserves the experience from the inside: what we noticed, what we felt, and what stayed with us. It is the reason there can be as many remembered pasts as there were people present\u2014and why, even when the facts are singular, human experience never is.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">***<\/p>\n<p><strong>Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by <a href=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/support-3qd\">donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Priya Malhotra Mira remembers her third birthday party as a scene of almost extravagant happiness. There was a cream-puff cake, tier upon tier of it, which in memory has acquired the architectural grandeur of a wedding cake. Helium balloons floated close to the ceiling, their ribbons dangling into the room. She remembers presents, noise,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1802,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3260],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-311177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mondaymagazine","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1802"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311177"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311180,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311177\/revisions\/311180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":310886,"date":"2026-09-11T04:00:40","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T08:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=310886"},"modified":"2026-09-11T04:58:50","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T08:58:50","slug":"lessons-from-singapore-the-long-road-to-water-independence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/09\/lessons-from-singapore-the-long-road-to-water-independence.html","title":{"rendered":"Lessons From Singapore: The Long Road To Water Independence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>by Eric Feigenbaum<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-310888 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Singapore-Desalination-Plant-water-supply-PUB-360x240.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"240\" srcset=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Singapore-Desalination-Plant-water-supply-PUB-360x240.jpg 360w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Singapore-Desalination-Plant-water-supply-PUB-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Singapore-Desalination-Plant-water-supply-PUB-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Singapore-Desalination-Plant-water-supply-PUB-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Singapore-Desalination-Plant-water-supply-PUB-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Singapore-Desalination-Plant-water-supply-PUB.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As a child of Southern California, I knew the importance of water conservation from a young age. During my high school years, the state was experiencing one of its regular extreme droughts and we were encouraged to take five-minute showers \u2013 turning off the water to lather and shampoo.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It all made perfect sense since in fourth grade we learned about the great aqueducts that moved runoff from the Sierra Nevada snowpack to Southern California \u2013 our literal lifelines. While it isn\u2019t true that it never rains in Southern California \u2013 and when it does it can be destructive \u2013 Los Angeles gets an average of 14.7 inches of rain per year. Hardly enough to sustain its population.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">California perennially struggles with water and it seems is always trying to catch up with its needs.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia &#8211; just one degree north of the equator \u2013 Singapore receives an average of 85 to 95 inches of rain per year with a surge to 117.52 in 2025. With 287.4 square miles to its name \u2013 slightly smaller than the City of Los Angeles\u2019 469 square miles and significantly smaller than the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area\u2019s 4853.1 square miles \u2013 it doesn\u2019t seem like water would be one of Singapore\u2019s issues.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But it has been \u2013 for more than 65 years. In fact, much like California, water is one of Singapore\u2019s greatest vulnerabilities and perennial issues.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Really \u2013 Singapore\u2019s water issues break down into two intertwined problems: independence and volume.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Volume was its original problem. Even before independence in 1965, Singapore did not have enough water to provide for its citizens and agriculture without supplementation. In 1961 and 1962 while still under British dominion, the Malayan mainland agreed to supply Singapore from two water sources under long-term agreements \u2013 one which elapsed in 2011 and the other which remains in effect until 2061 giving Singapore 250 million gallons per day (mgd).<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Only, at present, Singapore operates at a baseline of 440 mgd. And as we can see, the clock on that important 250 mgs is ticking.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This is why from independence, founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew said, \u201cEvery other policy has to bend at the knees for our water survival.\u201d<!--more--><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Singapore River and Kallang Basin had long been polluted and became an early focus for rehabilitation. While they could not yield enough water to solve the nascent island nation\u2019s problems, they had the distinct advantage of being 100 percent local. Their restoration took ten years to complete.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Still, Singapore needed a more comprehensive solution and in 1980, the government announced one: The Four National Taps.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Local catchment water<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 expanded to cover about two-thirds of the island\u2019s land area including a large storage capacity at the Marina Reservoir completed in 2008<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Imported water<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 from Malaysia under the 1962 Agreement and for many years accounted for 50 percent of supply.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>NEWater<\/strong>\u00a0&#8211; high-grade reclaimed water \u2014 launched 2002\u20132003.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Desalinated water<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 the first of five plants went online 2005, the most recent in 2022<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While catchment water figures are not regularly published, the island\u2019s newfound ability to draw water from such a large portion of its land mass and to store it within its now 17 reservoirs has been a game changer. Because the amount of rain changes both by season and even year, it can account for as much as 200 mgd of potable water, but more frequently may sit around 80-100 mgd.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Singapore\u2019s second prime minister, Goh Chok Tong, noted at the official launch of the NEWater system in 2003, described NEWater \u2013 wastewater reclaimed to become potable \u2013 \u00a0as \u201cmore than a clean and safe product. It is a strategic concept\u201d that multiplies every drop of water and moves Singapore toward self-sufficiency. He noted that by the time the 1961 Agreement expired in 2011 Singapore would not need to renew it, and by 2061 it could be totally self-sufficient if needed. He also publicly drank NEWater to build public confidence.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Amazingly, Singapore largely engineered and built its own five desalination plants \u2013 relying on certain products such as reverse osmosis membranes and other components manufactured in the United States and Japan. Together, they produce 190 mgd or roughly 43 percent of current water demand. The Singaporean companies responsible for the desalination plants have not only grown considerably, but have sold desalination technology to countries such as Algeria and China.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Thus, Singapore\u2019s third prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong frequently talked about how Singapore turned a strategic vulnerability into a strength \u2013 not only through the success of the Four National Taps but also for the way NEWater and desalination technology development bolstered Singaporean innovation and economic growth.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Included in its successes is making water safe out of the tap, which is not only the standard of developed nations, but gives Singapore the opportunity to reduce reliance on single-use plastic and other materials. For many of its neighbors, bottled water plays a large part of the drinking supply particularly in Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The alternative in many cases are parasites and diseases. While several factors play a part, one of the biggest \u2013 even for countries and cities (like Bangkok) that have adequate water treatment plants is contamination within the pipes themselves. Plastic PVC pipelines and broken or corroding metal pipes often make the water heading from treatment plant to homes and businesses as unsafe or more than pre-treatment. Sadly, bottled water is usually much more within people\u2019s means that installing quality water filtration systems in their homes and businesses.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Beyond that, due to significant uses of technology, strong monitoring and high standards, Singapore not only has the safest, cleanest water in its region \u2013 but compares favorably to much of the developed world including numerous European countries. This couples well with Singapore\u2019s public health efforts, moves to support longevity and reduction in communicable and tropical diseases since its inception.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWhy do you think we spend all these efforts to solve our water problem until we become specialists in water? \u2026 We should not gloss over our worries. They are real problems. And we are what we are because we can stand up for ourselves. If we can&#8217;t, we&#8217;ve had it,\u201d Lee Kuan Yew said.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Following the numbers, it\u2019s easy to think Singapore is doing just fine now. With 250 mgd from Malaysia, 190 mgd from desalination, another 175 mgd from NEWater and up to 200 mgd from catchment \u2013 Singapore easily exceeds the 440 mgd it currently requires. In fact, even cutting the 250 mgd from Malaysia, Singapore is still likely fine.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Can\u2019t Singaporean leaders pat themselves on the back for a job well done?<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yes \u2013 the accomplishment of moving from an inadequate water supply to one with excess capacity in 60 years is more than impressive. Plans that spanned decades and generations of leaders held and were often improved as new technology emerged.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, today\u2019s excess is tomorrow\u2019s drought. Singapore expects to nearly double its water needs over the next 30 years. It may be coming from a place of strength, but Singapore has not yet won the marathon.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As current Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said at 2023 World Water Day:<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWith the world facing a water crisis, Singapore must not take what it has for granted as clean, fresh water is a precious resource. For Singapore to have a sustainable water supply, the country has to keep planning ahead, build up its infrastructure, and invest in new technologies.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">***<\/p>\n<p><strong>Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by <a href=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/support-3qd\">donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Eric Feigenbaum As a child of Southern California, I knew the importance of water conservation from a young age. During my high school years, the state was experiencing one of its regular extreme droughts and we were encouraged to take five-minute showers \u2013 turning off the water to lather and shampoo. It all made&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1733,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3260],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-310886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mondaymagazine","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1733"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310886"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311031,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310886\/revisions\/311031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}]