by Mike O’Brien

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” —Ecclesiastes 1:9

“Bullshit.” —Mike O’Brien 04-04-2022

It is a strange enough thing to collect knives. It is a step stranger still to collect sharpening stones; a further abstraction from reality, an auxiliary activity supporting a hobby which is itself a pantomime of preparedness and practicality. No matter. Once one is lodged firmly enough down a rabbit hole, the only options available are to hope for rescue, or to keep crawling deeper. I have clearly chosen the latter.

The two collection are, in principle, complimentary. Or they would be, if my knife collection served any use that would engender a need for resharpening. As it is, they remain pristinely polished and razor sharp, to no wordly end. The fact that their polished edges are also sharp is almost incidental; the added challenge of making them both polished and sharp is an undertaking of curiosity, contemplative time-wasting, and vain self-overcoming. Still, it’s cheaper than collecting cars, with far less surface area over which to preen.

Of course, function is a factor in this appreciation. The marvel of an alloy hard enough to cut glass is that it can cut glass, in addition to the marvel of our ability to produce such an alloy. Diamonds can cut glass, but you can’t make a reasonably priced pocket knife out of diamonds (actually… well, it’s complicated). But an alloy that can cut glass, while being transformable into a shape of our choosing, and while also being re-sharpenable after God-know-what manner of use managed to dull it, is something more special still. It is an example of human ingenuity’s power to manipulate natural substances to suit whatever specialized application we may devise. It is awe-inspiring, both in the sense of wonderment and dread. Read more »

by Michael Abraham

I am leaving, and I am taking nothing.

I am leaving, and I am taking nothing, and there is a void inside me—a round, black sphere, like a planet, or like the absence of a planet where a planet should be. I am coming apart in the stress of it. I am borrowing money and time, bleeding my pride out my feet as I run from this bar to that bar to be anywhere, to be out. It is not only that I am sad. It is that I am depleted, that I have given all I can give, and, now, there is no gift left. There is no gift, as in, there is no special sense of possibility glimmering, of the impossible becoming possible through me. There was once this gift, this special sense, and now there is only its having been there, its having flown off to someone somewhere else.

***

I walk circles around this place that I am leaving, and I note all the little, special things, the daily clutter of being alive. I do not think about the time that I have spent here. I think only of leaving, of fluttering off like a moth—not like a butterfly, for I am not going off in a gay manner. I am somber like a moth. To be somber is not to be destitute; it is not to despair. There is a certain resignedness to being somber, a certain goodnaturedness. One who is somber is like falling water, carried forward irrepressibly, tinkling and shimmering as the onward pull of gravity does what it will always do, which is to draw on and downward—that is to say, to be somber is to face inevitability. One who is somber has an air about him, is better-off than other sad folks. One who is somber is like a moth. This is the best that I can explain it, the allure of the feeling that I am feeling. It is not enough to say that everything in my life is ending and starting again. That is true. But it is better to say that I am a small and fragile thing, a small and fragile thing with a certain gravitas, a certain solemnity, moving into the broader world to see what the broader world has in store, moving into the broader world because there is no choice, because it is in my nature to move. Fluttering, fluttering.  

***

I don’t want to get into specifics because specifics muddy the water; they make complication where there might be the simplicity of feeling and all its affordances. Read more »

The literary critic Hugh Kenner (whom I got to know a bit when I was an undergrad at Johns Hopkins) once wrote about the French writer Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907) that he “…tired of flowers, and indulged in artificial flowers, and then tired of those and sought out real flowers so exotic they could pass for artificial.” This flower, in a restaurant I was in recently, reminded me of that. It was a real flower that could pass for artificial.

by Dick Edelstein

In Barcelona the daily scramble to deliver children to school results in terrible congestion in the upper part of the city, where the more economically privileged send their children. Watching this phenomenon brings back my own school days, when the most embarrassing thing any of us could imagine was being dropped off by parents. If such a thing were necessary for some unavoidable reason, the kids urged their parents to drop them a short distance away from the school so their peers wouldn’t see them getting out of the car. To be seen being coddled in this way was unimaginably embarrassing, almost as bad as having your mother show up to deliver a forgotten lunch box. Everything about parents tended to be embarrassing and much of the time we pretended not to have any. But there was a single exception to the drop-off rule. If the parents happened to own a 1956 Chevrolet, with its futuristic swept-wing design, then it was obligatory to be dropped off at school on some occasion, even if the ride was for only for a couple of blocks, so the other kids could look with sheer envy on this most prestigious possession. Read more »

by Pranab Bardhan

All of the articles in this series can be found here.

Since my Chair was in International Trade, most of my teaching in Berkeley was in that field of Economics, both at the graduate and undergraduate levels. The undergraduate classes in Berkeley are large, and mine had sometimes more than 200 students, even though this course was meant mostly for later-year undergraduates. Large classes bring you in close touch (particularly in office hours) with a refreshing diversity of young people. But they also bring other kinds of experience.

In large crowded classrooms the borderlines were always a bit fuzzy–sometimes nearby pedestrians will saunter in just out of curiosity, to hear a funny-looking man speaking in a funny accent; some others were from the aimlessly-loitering often mentally-disabled street people. One day as I was teaching, one woman belonging probably to the latter group seated in a backbench suddenly stood up, looked at the ceiling for a minute and then gave out a piercing wail. As I was pondering how to handle this, fortunately for me she slowly walked out of the auditorium. Read more »

by Eric J. Weiner

Scholarship is a choice of how to live as well as a choice of career. –C. Wright Mills

In 2001, I felt lucky to get a tenure-track job in the College of Education and Human Services (CEHS) at Montclair State University (MSU) in New Jersey. Not only was the university a short jaunt from New York City, but the leadership in CEHS, in partnership with the University’s Office of the President, had instituted a faculty reward system for tenure and promotion that used Ernest Boyer’s four-pronged system of scholarship to guide its evaluation of faculty work. The Center of Pedagogy (CoP) oversaw all aspects of Boyer’s progressive model of faculty development across departments, schools and colleges as well as provided support for matters concerning pedagogy, curriculum, community-university partnerships, and learning. The move to adopt Boyer’s faculty reward system showed the University’s commitment to support the diversification of its faculty and student-body by broadening how it defined and evaluated scholarship. Given the University’s history as a normal school and the College’s deepening relationship to the work of John Goodlad, the move to embrace and build upon Boyer’s model had both intellectual as well as ideological coherence.

Writing for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Boyer’s work arises out of a frustration with the narrow way scholarship is traditionally conceptualized and rewarded within the modern university. In Scholarship Reconsidered (1990) he writes, “We believe the time has come to move beyond the tired old ‘teaching versus research’ debate and give the familiar and honorable term ‘scholarship’ a broader more capacious meaning, one that brings legitimacy to the full range of academic work.” He argues for a faculty reward system that considers the scholarship of the professoriate as having four overlapping functions: Scholarship of Discovery; Scholarship of Integration; Scholarship of Application; and Scholarship of Teaching. He rejects the idea that there should be a hierarchy of scholarship in the academy while acknowledging that Discovery and Integration–when produced for publication in peer review academic journals–have historically been recognized as the most legitimate forms of intellectual work. Read more »

—on scanning the news feed this morning:

Stasis—a collateral effect of nuclear power

We face the conundrum of dealing with Tony Soprano.
Tony, you know, will stop at nothing while you,
being disinclined to fire a nuclear warhead
(when Tony has some too)
are left with the fist of cutting off his credit.

This is the truth of modern war and diplomacy:
to take the chance that your enemy
actually cares about something other than himself.
We’re at the threshold of mob rule or Armageddon.
It’s a tough choice for a rational mind
because you understand it may be your last.

It’s a horrendous choice for a president. Hell,
it’s a horrendous choice for anyone who cares about anyone.
But it may not be for Tony. We just don’t know. So now,
maybe that old philosophical question has an answer:
How many choices can dance on the head of a pin,
just one?

Jim Culleny
3/21/22

by Jeroen Bouterse

He had a visceral aversion to war, was strongly in favor of social distancing in times of pandemic, and believed it would be a good thing if the Germans turned down their heaters a notch or two.[1] Of these still sympathetic opinions, the last was admittedly informed by his discomfort with wood stoves. Erasmus did comment on fuel markets once: echoing a friend’s joke, he claimed to be annoyed by heretics for being burned at such a scale that it drove up wood prices.[2]

It was one of the many occasions in which he spoke with dry irony about things that disturbed him deeply. Erasmus found his own way of talking about violence and war, and the other horrors that humans inflict upon each other. At the deepest level, his analysis was that war is bad. He was not, confirms his biographer Sandra Langereis, a very strong political thinker. An individualist rather than a sociologist, he tended to see war as a moral evil, and blame it on the foolishness and wrongheadedness of rulers. The people found cities; the mighty raze them to the ground.

Perhaps this is a good time to read Erasmus. Read more »

Bridget Mullen. Threshold Blues, 2018.

Acrylic and Flashe on linen.

More here and here.

by Varun Gauri

When modern Buddhists and mindfulness practitioners say the ultimate cause of stress and suffering is the craving for permanence, especially the misguided craving for a permanent “self,” which “self” are they talking about?

In his interesting and provocative book Why I Am Not a Buddhist, Evan Thompson explores the possibilities: (1) The pre-reflective self, elemental to consciousness, is related to the fact that we cannot perceive an object without being aware that we are perceiving it. For example, I cannot notice a sunset without the knowledge that I am aware of the sunset. (2) I experience an imagined center of agency and locus of being. This is the sense, and the legal fiction, that someone is in charge in there, a CEO or author of our actions and thoughts. (3) Many of us believe in a non-material essence or soul. (4) I have an awareness of being embodied, the understanding that what happens to my arm also happens to me. (5) There is a social self that exists in relationships to others. I am continually monitoring where I stand in relation to parents, friends, families, colleagues, nations, and others. Am I loved, known, cared for? (6) Cognitive psychologist discuss the generalized ability to reflect on our own experience — the faculty for meta-awareness that is the source of introspection and planning. (7) Following from that capacity for meta-cognition, I am aware of  “an extended self,” which emerges from an historical past and is thrown into time (there was something before me and there will be something after). This self has a kind of gnawing awareness of an unknown future, or rather, a future uncertain but for my certain death. This is the self that has to go places, that has an autobiography and that spins a narrative identity. It is the self that existentialists discuss, the one that establishes a stance —  courageous, fearful, indifferent — toward our impending demise.  Read more »

by Rafaël Newman

For John Duffy (November 5, 1963—March 3, 2022)

…great confusion ensued, and everyone was compelled to drink large quantities of wine. Aristodemus said that Eryximachus, Phaedrus, and others went away—he himself fell asleep, and was awakened towards daybreak by a crowing of cocks, and when he awoke, the others were either asleep, or had gone away; there remained only Socrates, Aristophanes, and Agathon, who were drinking out of a large goblet which they passed round, and Socrates was discoursing to them, compelling the other two to acknowledge that the genius of comedy was the same with that of tragedy, and that the true artist in tragedy was an artist in comedy also. To this they were constrained to assent, being drowsy, and not quite following the argument. And first of all Aristophanes dropped off, then, when the day was already dawning, Agathon. Socrates, having laid them to sleep, rose to depart; Aristodemus, as his manner was, following him. At the Lyceum he took a bath, and passed the day as usual. Read more »

by Brooks Riley

by Bill Murray

Anticipating war in Europe, 2022.

Thursday, 13 January

If an attack is imminent, Kyiv’s air raid sirens will alert residents to tune in to emergency service announcements. Cars equipped with loudspeakers will also patrol the streets to announce important information.

The Kyiv City Council has posted an interactive online map, which shows the locations of the roughly 5,000 official locations where residents can shelter from a military attack. Of that number, 514 shelters are purpose-built facilities dating back to the Cold War where people can remain for days on end.

Each citizen should prepare an “emergency suitcase” ahead of time. This should be a backpack with a capacity of at least 25 liters, a little more than 6.5 gallons, containing “clothing, hygiene items, medicines, tools, personal protective equipment, and food.” The service also recommends carrying important documents and cash in the backpack.

Friday, 14 January

“Sweden, which is not part of NATO, has among other things noticed a number of landing craft from Russia’s northern navy which have been entering the Baltic Sea,” the AP reported. The next day … all three Russian Baltic Fleet Ropucha-class heavy landing ships departed Baltiysk (a port in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad). These can each land 25 armored personnel carriers. Read more »

by Sarah Firisen

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been spending more time in the office than I have since the start of COVID. I work for a technology start-up, and our New York office used to look and feel just as shows like Silicon Valley portrayed such offices: cool furniture, fancy coffee machines, lots of free snacks, gaming systems and board games piled up in a dedicated room, and lots of young people who gave the office a fun, high energy, even if noisy, vibe. But this visit, while the snacks and coffee machines are still there, the office has a rather ghost town-like feel. There’s been no mandate to return to the office, so for the most part, people haven’t. Every day I saw my colleague Andy who lives in a Manhattan apartment that’s too crowded with family and a dog. He escapes to the office for some peace of quiet. Then there was the receptionist and the facilities manager, who had no choice but to be there. But that was it for regulars. The odd person would float in for a bit, have a meeting, then leave. Is this the future of office life?

Some companies have recalled workers to the office, at the least for a few days every week. But many haven’t, and perhaps never will. About seven months into the COVID pandemic, I questioned what the future of work would look like, “employee productivity is up. There have been enormous savings from lack of business travel and reduced real estate costs for many companies. We now know that, for the most part, we do have the technology infrastructure to support remote working at scale. This convergence of technology, employee productivity, and increased profitability for companies means that, for many people, some version of our current home office life will continue indefinitely.” A year and a half later, there’s no doubt that, while people miss some of the social aspects of on-site working, there are lots of things they don’t miss. Read more »

A fruiting hedge at the Soldatenfriedhof in Brixen, South Tyrol. Photo taken in October, 2021.

by William Benzon

Jerry Seinfeld is fond of comparing jokes to machines: Jokes are tiny intricately crafted machines, where all the parts fit neatly and precisely together, moving in precise, if sometimes surprising, fashion. Last summer I decided to pit Seinfeld against the precisest (is that even a word?), most super-modern, and biggest intricate machine I could think of, GPT-3. You may have heard of it, it’s an AI engine. As you may know, AI engines are not at all like automobile engines. They’re not mechanical devices. They’re, well, you know, they live up in the cloud, where all the super-modern high-tech gizmos and gadgets hang out, or whatever it is that they do while secretly plotting to take over the world.

Seinfeld tells a joke

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s start with something we know, Jerry Seinfeld. Here’s his very first television appearance. It is from 1977 on Celebrity Cabaret, a nationally syndicated show. He’s doing a bit that involves the Roosevelt Island tramway. You know what that is? If you’re familiar with the New York City area you do. Otherwise, it may be something of a mystery.

But first things first. Here’s the video (joke starts at about 0:29):

I’m not sure he’d get away with the word “ghetto” these days, but back in the 1970s it was A-OK. This particular sketchy part of town is the South Bronx which, as my colleague Michael Liss reminded me, was the setting for a 1981 crime drama, Fort Apache, The Bronx. It’s also the setting for the 2016 Netflix series, The Get Down, about the early days of hip-hop. Read more »

by Pranab Bardhan

All of the articles in this series can be found here.

We arrived in Berkeley and found it to be a pleasant place to live. I always have a partiality for small university towns that are culturally and politically alive. And yet Berkeley is not far from a thriving major city (San Francisco—“the unfettered city/resounds with hedonistic glee”, as Vikram Seth describes it in his verse-novel The Golden Gate) on the one hand, and from wide-open spaces on the other. Nature in Berkeley itself is quite beautiful, nestled as it is on a leafy hillside and facing an ocean and its bay, with gorgeous sunsets over the Golden Gate Bridge (on days when it is not shrouded by the mysterious fog—which appears almost as a character in San Francisco noir, like in the crime novels of Dashiell Hammett). Once driving in the dense fog in a winding street in the Berkeley hills I missed a turn and lost my way; I fondly remembered that famous scene in Fellini’s semi-autobiographical film Amarcord, where one winter-day in Rimini, his childhood town, the fog shrouds everything, the piazza disappears, and the grandpa loses his way home.

I found the people here also somewhat more laid back than in the intense cities of the east-coast. (Once a friend from New York visiting Berkeley told me that when a shop-assistant at the end of the transaction gave him a smile and said ‘have a nice day’, his first instinct with his New-Yorker neurosis was: ‘what? what did she mean?’) The cafes, restaurants, book shops, music stores and cinemas just outside the campus hummed with lively people. Strolling through the Sproul Plaza in the campus you sometimes get an experience associated with the soap-box speakers at Hyde Park in London or the performers in Latin Quarter in Paris: at one corner a religious preacher with Bible in hand is sternly telling us that the wages of sin is death, while a group of non-believers is busy mocking him; at another gathering some group is loudly bashing Israel for oppressing Palestinians while some Hillel International students are protesting; at another place five women are silently standing each exposing one breast, pointing toward donations for research on breast cancer; at another some Punjabi men and women are doing a vigorous bhangra dance;  at another a group of PETA women for animal rights is protesting the abuse of those rights in university labs; at another a stand-up comic is entertaining a large crowd; in a quiet corner you see a man covered with gold dust standing perfectly still like a golden statue, and so on. Read more »