by Bill Murray

While everybody dreams of getting out of town, here’s the story of a mostly hapless road trip my wife and I took several years ago:

Ashray Raj Gautam waited in the dark before dawn. Men worked under the hood of his Toyota Corolla while we stuffed our things in its trunk. We pushed the car down the hill to get it started, and little Gautam took us to a town called Banepa, north of Kathmandu. Mirja bought junk food, I bought cheap Indian whiskey, and Gautam disappeared. When he came back he had a confession. He did a sheepish, dusty little shuffle.

“We came here with no fan belt.”

He was sure we could get one in Banepa but he couldn’t find one.

“Excuse me sir, we have to wait for new car from Kathmandu one hour.” He went to find a phone.

So we were off, sort of, driving from Kathmandu to Lhasa. Our Tibet travel permits would be waiting at the border. The fellow who booked us said don’t bring pictures of the Dalai Lama (I had five), and don’t be surprised if the police follow you – they’re not too used to private visitors. Read more »

by Rafaël Newman

A friend of mine, a retired Swiss high school teacher and an aficionado of American culture, has been compiling a list of “Pseudo Anglicisms”, words of evident English origin used in contemporary colloquial German (especially in Switzerland) which often have no actual correspondence in English as commonly employed by native speakers. His list includes Beamer (meaning a digital film projector and not the German automotive brand), Oldtimer (a vintage car and not a human veteran), Body (an undergarment), Handy (a cell phone), Mobbing (on-the-job harassment) and Talkmaster (an emcee), among many others. The database is currently being enhanced by his colleagues, who have recently proposed anomalies like Shootingstar (up-and-coming talent) and Tumbler (a clothes dryer).

Such borrowing from English is, unsurprisingly, particularly prevalent in the German-speaking business world, where Top Managers attend Trainings to be enriched by Learnings, receive Feedbacks and lament Pain Points at Briefings, and – last but not least, a peroration favored among Swiss rhetoricians – determine their company’s Purpose by Brainstorming to prepare themselves for an upcoming Challenge. This last term – Challenge – is ubiquitous in Helvetian business, advertising, and sports, driven in part by a spate of wacky fundraising dares on social media in the past years, and encouraged perhaps by the fact that the perfectly good native German equivalent – Herausforderung – is a less than sexy mouthful. Read more »

Pond at Rodenecker Alm in the South Tyrol, with floating red pollen from surrounding trees pushed to one edge by the wind, in May of 2020.

by Tim Sommers

Philosophy’s original contrarian hero was, of course, Socrates. He believed in Truth and the Good and refused to back down from the pursuit of the these – even when his life was on the line. He had no patience for ‘just whatever people tend to say about such and such’. The unexamined life, for him, was not worth living. And that examination requires being ready to question even your most cherished beliefs.

Socrates also hated democracy and was against writing.

If you haven’t heard that second bit before, it’s not a euphemism. Socrates opposed reading and writing – the things that we are doing right now, you and I. Writing was the new big thing at the time. Their internet. Or to put it in more scholarly terms, Athens was transitioning from being primarily an oral culture to a literate one. But writing fails to capture the truth, Socrates said. It leads writers and readers to be forgetful and to “be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality”. (Which does sound a lot like the internet, come to think of it.) Anyway, presumably, this  is why Socrates didn’t write anything down, and why we have had to learn most of what we know about him from Plato – who was also against writing, but then wrote a lot anyway. Really. A lot.

Although I haven’t done a scientific survey, academic philosophy still seems to have more than its fair share of contrarians. This is not an unmitigated good. Sure, when they are relentlessly pursuing what you think is the truth, contrarians seem great. But when they are arguing that we shouldn’t read and write, or that democracy is bad, well, maybe, not so great. Read more »

by Anitra Pavlico

Some police officers are not above bad behavior, even as they work to eradicate and punish it in civilians. It is painfully clear that some of this bad behavior amounts to murder. Civilian review boards are a tool that could punish and deter police misconduct, but they need to have the ability to carry out independent investigations, subpoena documents and witnesses, and issue binding recommendations for discipline. As of a few years ago, only five of the top 50 largest police departments in the U.S. had civilian review boards with disciplinary authority. Newark, New Jersey has recently established such a review board after decades of efforts. While many activists have lost faith in civilian review boards, ACLU director of justice Udi Ofer argues that many of these boards were “rigged to fail.” He says a weak civilian review board is arguably worse than none at all, because it “can lead to an increase in community resentment, as residents go to the board to seek redress yet end up with little.”

Ofer says review boards should have a fixed budget, not subject to politicians’ whims, and a majority of board members should be representatives of civic and community organizations. Of the top 50 police departments, 26 have no civilian review board in place at all. Of the remaining 24, all but nine are overseen by a board majority nominated and appointed either by the mayor, or by the mayor in conjunction with the head of police. This hampers the independence of the board when it comes to making disciplinary recommendations. Read more »

Haider Ali. Pakistanis for Black Lives. June, 2020.

“This is a message of peace and love to all,” Ali told The Associated Press on Friday, as he put the finishing touches on the mural. “It’s not from an individual, this message of love is from all of Pakistan.”

More here, here, here, and here.

Thanks to Abbas Raza and Samina Raza.

by Brooks Riley

by Sabyn Javeri Jillani

Now that we are witnessing a world that has withdrawn indoors, many people are reading plague literature, discussing Camus and Defoe, and reflecting on the nature of fear and contagion. But there is another kind of literature that lies neglected: stories that reflect the disconnect and dejection of seclusion -the literature of women’s isolation.

‘Alone today and for many days’, muses Virginia Woolf in her journal (1939) on the remoteness of wartime London. Today has a similar feel, as world over busy streets lie abandoned and silent, people cocooned in self-isolation. Those who are lucky enough, shelter in their sanctuaries, making seamless transitions to the digital world online. Those who are unable to adapt to this new reality, wait indoors for yesterday to return. Then, there are those for whom a house does not necessarily mean sanctuary, and yet others, who have no homes to shelter in. This pandemic has brought out many inequalities and injustices in our world but the one that seems overlooked is that self-isolation is not something new — for women.

There is, of course, the idea of a room of one’s own, which may empower a woman’s creative genius. But it is not Woolf’s idea of solitude that I discuss here but of isolation. An isolation that is linked to quarantine, and the idea of contagion. In many traditional societies, self-isolation is forced upon women as a custom during certain periods of their life such as menstruation (Chhaupadi), childbirth (Zuo yue zi), widowhood or, at times, even divorce (Iddat/Iddah). Through superstition or ritual, they are quarantined. Read more »

by Michael Klenk

When academics and journalists criticise technology today, they often assume the perspective of a bitter and desperate lover: intimately acquainted with the failings of technology, and vocal in pointing them out, but also too invested and unable to perceive the world without it.

That critical perspective on technology is important and increasingly mainstream, but it myopically focuses on the wrong question. It presupposes technology, and merely plug on ethics as a constraint. An adequate, non-myopic ethics of technology must start with the question of why we need tech in the first place. A very brief sketch of the history of the ethics of technology in two stages, and a case study of digital contact tracing help us see why.

First came technology: Our hominoid forebears used stone tools to butcher dead animals long before the first Homo Sapiens walked the earth. Since then, technology has empowered humanity and propelled us to be the dominant species on this planet. From this perspective, technology was often useful, frequently inevitable, and mostly seen as something beyond the purview of ethical considerations. From that perspective, technology is an eminently helpful and value-neutral tool. But then came ethics: A critical perspective on technology is almost as old as our use of technology. Read more »

Photo taken from a bridge over the river Eisack in the village of Mittewald, in the South Tyrol, in May of 2020.

by Shadab Zeest Hashmi

Gems carry a lure that is quintessentially primeval. Considered valuable throughout human history for obvious reasons such as rarity, durability and beauty, gems are inextricable not only from lore, art, architecture, culture, and craft, but also the aesthetics of language. Stories of different civilizations come to us carved in gemstones— Jade figurines of the Forbidden City in Beijing, lapis funerary masks of ancient Egypt, amber encrusted palaces in Moscow, the fabled and famously fought over “koh-i-noor” diamond, the emerald cups and diamond candlesticks of the Ottomans, the bejeweled “peacock throne,” the rubies of Ceylon— and stories manifold to these in words, from myths passed down via the oral tradition, to scripture, fairy tales, poetry and actual accounts of history, to science talk of archeology and gemology.

The seventeenth century Flemish chronicler and diamond dealer Jacques de Coutre describes the Mughal emperor Jahangir as “looking like an idol on account of the quantities of jewels he wore, with many precious stones around his neck as well as spinels, emeralds and pearls on his arms, and diamonds hanging from his turban.” While some are attracted to gems as symbols of power and wealth, and others as the source of wellness energy, adornment or materials for craft, poets, artisans and artists have developed a complex vocabulary around gems through the millennia and across cultures. Vermeer brings out the unique luster of a pearl, in “The Girl with the pearl Earring,” the mosque-builders of Samarkand make an epic out of turquoise, Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato uses the most precious pigment available— derived from lapis lazuli— to paint the richest, most vibrant blue mantle in “The Virgin in Prayer,” the Mughals build the Taj Mahal, an architectural marvel of gem-inlay and marble. Read more »

by Adele Wilby

Roman Dial has written a great tribute to his son, indeed to his entire family, in his book The Adventurer’s Son. An adventurer and biologist, Dial writes movingly of his relationship with his only son, Cody Roman Dial in particular and of his accidental death while exploring the rainforests of Central America. Dial’s pride in his son and the pain and grief over his loss are palpable throughout the book. But as Dial himself acknowledges, ‘we never know the future’, and the death of his son at just 27 years old in 2014 is an event he could never have imagined when he began to introduce him to the joys and challenges of exploring the natural world.

The birth of Cody Roman was a celebratory moment for Dial, and he looked forward to establishing a deep father-son bond in a way that he and his father had not. For two decades and over five continents, the  bond between the two deepened as they  shared momentous times together exploring nature. Thus, Cody’s death at such an early age is a heart-breaking tragedy for Dial, his family and friends, but we learn from the book that Cody’s life was exceptional, rich and fulfilling, attributable to an adventurous and courageous father, and a mother who supported Dial’s aspiration to cultivate a respect and appreciation of the natural world in their son. Read more »

by Pranab Bardhan

In coping with the dire economic crisis in the wake of the pandemic many developing countries have resorted to cash assistance to the poor for immediate relief. Beyond the relief aspect, many macro-economists have also pointed to the need for such programs to boost mass consumer demand in a period of one of the deepest slumps of general economic activity in many decades. As I have been an advocate for universal basic income (UBI) in poor countries for more than a decade now—my first published paper on the subject came out in India in March 2011 in the Economic and Political Weekly— I have often been asked if the widespread adoption of such cash assistance programs indicates that it is now a propitious time for UBI. While I have supported the cash relief programs in the context of the crisis (most of these programs have not been universal, mainly targeted to the poor) and consider the experience gained in this as generally useful, I think those who like me have supported UBI have usually thought about it in a longer-time framework and in the context of a more ‘normal’ state of the economy with appropriate institutions, political support base, and administrative structures in place. Of course, I’ll not object if in a post-pandemic world attempts are made to help the temporary crisis programs ultimately extend or evolve into a more general UBI program in poor countries.

A Bit of History

By now it is well-known that the idea of UBI or that of a guaranteed minimum income enabled by a public assistance program has a long history in western thought, going back about 500 years to Thomas More and his friend, Johannes Vives, or that over the years the idea has been supported (and also attacked) by people in the whole range of the political spectrum, by libertarians and socialists alike. On a practical level it has been tried on a large enough scale briefly in the beginning of the last decade in two countries, Iran and Mongolia, and for the last 4 decades in one US state, Alaska. In all these 3 cases the funding source has been the bounty from some natural resource (oil for Iran and Alaska, copper for Mongolia). For rich countries in general, many economists, even in cases when they are otherwise supportive, think that it is much too expensive for the Government to fund a UBI at a decent level. In recent years, however, additional support has come from people (including some from the techno-utopian entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley) who are worried about the work-displacement effects of automation and artificial intelligence in the near future. Inducements for automation may be reinforced if we have to live with the virus for quite some time, as there will then be attempts to avoid production conditions where lots of workers have to congregate.

In this essay I shall primarily talk about developing countries, where more than looming automation there may be some other special factors why UBI may be imperative, and also show that finding resources for a reasonable UBI supplement may be within the realm of fiscal feasibility. Read more »

by Eric J. Weiner

D: Well my name is Dick Doolittle and I’m a reporter from Grime magazine and we would like you to comment on the tragic riots—

B: Not a riot, it’s a rebellion

D: Well the tragic rebellion?

B: Man, tragic for who?

D: Well there’s havoc in the streets, the police have lost control over the People, criminals are running free from jail, and people are actually taking property from big businesses, it’s full of complete chaos

B: That’s not chaos, that’s progress

“The Coup,” from the album Kill My Landlord, The Coup

What does it mean to be white in America in 2020?[1]  As Boots Riley points out to Dick Doolittle in the opening exchange to the song The Coup, one of the things it means to be white in America is you have the power to define the terms of the debate. In this exchange, the rebellion is cast first as a riot and then a “tragic” rebellion until Boots checks the journalist. As people from across the racial spectrum rebel against police violence and systemic racism, the question, “What does it mean to be white?” is more than a question about unpacking the backpack of white privilege[2]; it requires a detour through the educational, cultural, and political apparatuses of our culture.

I am white and was educated from K-12 to never question the norms, values, and goals of white supremacy. I am being more than just provocative when I use the term “white supremacy” to describe my education. White supremacy should not be reduced to describing the most extreme forms of hatred and violence leveled against people of color. More inclusively, it is an ideological world view that makes whiteness a universal marker of innocence, excellence, power, beauty, intelligence, and progress. I think it’s important to reclaim the term from the referent of the Ku Klux Klan and other extreme right-wing terrorist groups because it gives us a way to think about the formative historical structures and systems that seed the soil for the emergence of white identity and consciousness in the United States. The construction of white identity is inseparable from its intimate association to the forces of colonization and the domination and exploitation of people of color. Read more »

Sughra Raza. A Murder …. Rwanda, January, 2016.

Digital photograph.

Editor’s Note: This is a letter sent by Dr. Audeh to my sister about her recent book, The First Cell: And the Human Costs of Pursuing Cancer to the Last, and I am publishing it here as a review with his permission.

by M. William Audeh

May 26, 2020

Dear Azra,

I am happy to inform you that upon the end our phone conversation, I opened your book, which had been on my Kindle since its publication, and read it over the long weekend.

My apologies for not having read it earlier, but I had my reasons, which I will explain below. However, let me begin by saying that I thoroughly enjoyed your book, not least because your passionate voice comes through the pages so clearly in your writing. I feel as if I have had the privilege of spending several evenings in your lucid company, discussing these fundamental scientific ideas and sharing the heartfelt sorrows. It is eloquent and wonderfully written; a deeply passionate yet sharply rationale argument and memoir. Congratulations!

I will confess, that although I was quite interested to read your book, having spoken with you about its inception, development and impending publication, I was ultimately hesitant. My reluctance stemmed from two regrettable impulses, about which I am not proud, but will readily admit to you, as a dear friend. One was simple jealousy, that you had written and published a book which expressed your long-held beliefs, and anger at myself, for not having found the time and energy to do so myself. Perhaps reading your book will now inspire me to write my own. The other source of my hesitancy was the belief, not entirely unfounded, that I would find myself disagreeing with you on many points of your discourse and did not want to experience that discomfort in relation to you as a friend and colleague. In truth, I am in agreement with you on so very many aspects of your book, that I feel foolish in having held that concern. However, now that I have read your work, and understand the manner in which you have chosen to lay out your argument, I would like to express my thoughts on what you have written. Read more »