by Mike O’Brien

Thirteen months of living under the spectre of plague has me looking for some means of escape. Mental escape, of course. Physically, I’m still stuck at home, abiding by various lockdown measures, awaiting with weary disdain my province’s next randomized adjustments to its infection-control scheme. Trapped below decks on a ship piloted by imbeciles, who believe that the sea respects economic imperatives and rewards prior restraint. It could be worse, of course. But that’s cold comfort as I anticipate the months of uncertainty between today and whenever I’m vaccinated.

My usual escape is to dive into curious corners of science and theory, learning odd bits of information about nature, or mechanics, or, if I’m feeling very adventurous, some dumbed-down version of maths. A recent dive led me into the world of astrobiology, a field rife with the kind of barely-tethered speculation that philosophers like myself thrive in. There are all kinds of empirical and technical questions, like what kinds of life used to exist on Earth when its chemistry was wildly different, and what kinds of chemical precursors are required to produce the elements necessary to terrestrial life. There are also more abstract questions about the probability of life’s emergence, and the probability that other advanced species exist given our inability to detect them. Even more removed from concrete facts are the ethical questions of what ought to be done and what does it all mean, and these are the easiest to write about without doing expensive experiments or troublesome equations, so I’m doing that. Read more »

There is a very unintuitive method of protecting fruit trees from a late spring frost (which can be deadly for fruit crops) on a day when temperatures fall far below freezing in the early morning: the trees with their blossoms and buds are sprayed (from a sprinkler system) with water which keeps freezing on them and protects the plants underneath from getting too cold by giving up the latent heat of phase change as it freezes.  One must keep the water spray on as long as the air temperature is below freezing. More information about this method is here.

You can see how dramatically beautiful the apple orchards look in this photo I took in the town of Vahrn, South Tyrol, last week. Imagine row upon row of these crystalline dwarf apple trees shining in the sun.

by Peter Wells

In 1887 Ludwik Zamenhof, a Polish ophthalmologist and amateur linguist, published in Warsaw a small volume entitled Unua Libro. Its aim was to introduce his newly invented language, in which ‘Unua Libro’ means ‘First Book.’ Zamenhof used the pseudonym ‘Doktor Esperanto’ and the language took its name from this word, which means ‘one who hopes.’ The picture shows Zamenhof (front row) at the First International Esperanto Congress in Boulogne in 1905.

From all available accounts, it is difficult to fault ‘Dr Hopeful’ in terms of intellectual attainment or character. Zamenhof was a native of the city of Białystok, now in Poland, then under Russian rule. Of Jewish ancestry, he is reliably reported to have had the following languages in varying degrees: Yiddish, Russian, Polish, Hebrew, German, French, Belarusian, German, Latin, Greek, Aramaic, English, Lithuanian, Italian and Volapuk (another invented language of the same period). Born in an area bedevilled by conflicts between people of different cultures and languages, and filled with an idealistic desire for peace and harmony, Zamenhof seems to have viewed his efforts as a practical contribution towards fulfilling that aim. Internationalism was in the air. Esperanto belongs to the group of forward-looking international movements that came into prominence at the end of the 19th century, such as the International Telegraphic Union, the Universal Postal Union, the Red Cross and the aforementioned Volapuk. Read more »

by Joan Harvey

The practice of violence, like all action, changes the world, but the most probable change is a more violent world. —Hannah Arendt, Reflections on Violence

When a young gunman murdered ten people at a supermarket in Boulder, a place I’d been in the week before the shooting, I was reading the letters of Mary McCarthy and Hannah Arendt. McCarthy and Arendt lived through terrible times, the worst being the Holocaust and then Vietnam; McCarthy lost both her parents to the Spanish Flu. In their letters I was struck by some parallels to our time: a friend and I had discussed, in letters, whether to stay or leave the country if Trump was reelected; McCarthy and Arendt did the same about Johnson and the escalating war in Vietnam; our fears of Trump echoed theirs of Nixon (though I’m not sure they could have imagined the disaster of the Trump presidency). But when the shooting took place, I realized that while both of them had lived through far worse atrocities than most Americans living today, neither Arendt nor McCarthy lived through these random mass shootings of children and civilians on American soil. There have always been random killings and serial killers, but not this massive meaningless mowing down of strangers.

As shocking as this event was, especially coming so close to the previous week’s mass killing in Atlanta, what has been less noticed are the many mass shootings (defined as four or more shot or killed, not including the shooter) in the United States every day. As of this date, April 10, 2021, there have been 135 mass shootings in the U.S. in 2021 and we’re just at the beginning of April. More mass shootings than days in the year so far. At least 31 more mass shootings since the one in Boulder. Read more »

by Thomas R. Wells

Effective altruism is based on a very simple idea: we should do the most good we can. Obeying the usual rules about not stealing, cheating, hurting, and killing is not enough, or at least not enough for those of us who have the good fortune to live in material comfort, who can feed, house, and clothe ourselves and our families and still have money or time to spare. Living a minimally acceptable ethical life involves using a substantial part of our spare resources to make the world a better place. Living a fully ethical life involves doing the most good we can. —Peter Singer

It is almost universally agreed that the persistence of extreme poverty in many parts of the world is a bad thing. It is less well-agreed, even among philosophers, what should be done about it and by who. An influential movement founded by the philosopher Peter Singer argues that we should each try to do the best we can by donating our surplus income to charities that help those in greatest need. This ‘effective altruism’ movement has two components: i) encouraging individuals in the rich world to donate more; and ii) encouraging us to donate more rationally, to the organisations most efficient at translating those donations into gains in human well-being.

Unfortunately both components of effective altruism focus on what makes giving good rather than on achieving valuable goals. Effective altruism therefore does not actually aim at the elimination of global poverty as is often supposed. Indeed, its distinctive commitment to the logic of individualist consumerism makes it constitutionally incapable of achieving such a large scale project. Effective altruism is designed to fail. Read more »

A Question of Necessity

Can you tell me a certain thing
that is a moral fact? … is a
specious question because
the fact of the thing
exists as something essential
to the survival of homo sapiens
in creating civilization, though civilization
does not always believe in the necessity
of its essential thing: the root
of what it means to be civilized—and the fact
of chaos, or natural inclination,
becomes the default mode
simply because morality,
being thought subjective,
and hard taskmaster, cannot be
sufficiently defined, and we all become
hawks or vultures feeding on carrion doves

It’s a question, whose answer itself is not an easy act
but is nevertheless, even if undefined, called love,
which is foremost not a thing we feel, but do:
a moral act made fact

Jim Culleny
9/13/20

by Raji Jayaraman

It’s official: Lilly Singh, the YouTube phenomenon, stands with Indian farmers. So do Greta Thunberg and Susan Sarandon. How could they not? Thousands of farmers—men and women, young and old—have been protesting non-violently but determinedly in the smoggy Delhi winter, for months.  If having seen their images in the news you feel no sympathy, then you may want to consider going on the same quest as the Tin Man. Rihanna thinks we should talk about #FarmerProtests. The Indian government disagrees, but let’s take Lilly Singh up on her challenge and “run with it.”

In September, 2020, the Government of India passed three farm bills, which arguably constitute the most dramatic agricultural reforms since independence. Everyone in the know will tell you that the agricultural sector, which employs roughly forty per cent of the Indian labour force, is in desperate need of reform. But why now, with little consultation and much haste, in the middle of a pandemic? The suspicions aroused are grounds enough for peaceful protest, but let’s press on. Read more »

by Robyn Repko Waller

Last spring we stumbled through the frighteningly new COVID landscape, facing unknowns. This spring we steer the course for a COVID exit, armed with vaccines. But how has our experience as agents changed?

This March we found ourselves in a starkly different pandemic reality from last. Gone are the early days of ubiquitous question marks — are masks effective? Will there be a vaccine? When will we see our extended family again?

Granted, grimly, the COVID case and death counts continue to rise. And one still fears for the health of loved ones. Nonetheless we have hit our stride in the vaccine rollout (here in the US, that is). Just this weekend, 4 million Americans received the vaccine in one day. Institutions and industries — from universities to Broadway — are making plans to reopen like the golden days of pre-COVID. Those agonizing months of dread and isolation seem, comparatively, in the rear view mirror. 

Moreover, for many of us, the selves we were in March 2020 are no longer. We’ve lived through a transformative experience — honing new values and skillsets that we could not have imagined we’d acquire. Like my newfound role of hairdresser, kids’ crafts director, and work-from-home extraordinaire. 

In some ways, though, we haven’t changed. We still long for normalcy. We still value much of our pre-COVID ways. How will we square those old values and behavior patterns with this brave new world? Here, I contend, the work of eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume can offer illuminating insight. But, first, a story. Read more »

Marlène Huissoud. A3 Drawings 8, 2020. 

More here, here, and here.

by Martin Butler

Patriotism is a contested ideal in the culture war which bubbles away in the UK.  It’s worth examining not only as an idea in itself but also with regards to how it is understood and expressed in the present cultural context of the UK. It seems to me that the debate is dominated by two ends of a spectrum, both misguided. At one end there are those who find the word itself too problematic to be worth salvaging. It is, they would argue, despite claims to the contrary, unavoidably linked to its ugly cousin, nationalism, with its xenophobic and jingoist associations.[1]  On the other end of the spectrum there is a strong pushback against this squeamishness, although this side of the argument, which I call politicised patriotism, tends to associate the sentiment with a narrow set of political views and promotes the cartoonish idea of patriotism focused on flags.

But what is patriotism? Whereas nationalism is the aggressive pushing of your own nation as somehow better than others, patriotism, understood in its benign sense at least, is just love of country.[2] But what exactly does this mean? We need to acknowledge here that, as Benedict Anderson points out, nations are to a large extent ‘imagined communities’.[3] They are constructed entities based on a particular narrative handed down through history and culture. Anderson makes the amusing point that “The Barons who imposed Magna Carta on John Plantagenet did not speak English and had no conception of themselves as “Englishmen”, but they were firmly defined as early patriots in classrooms of the United Kingdom 700 years later.”[4] Anderson, I think, would want to contrast an imagined community with communities of individuals who in some way have direct social interaction. Anthropologist Robin Dunbar famously identified the magic number of 150 as the maximum number of meaningful relationships a human being can maintain.[5] Evidence suggests that hunter-gatherer groups that exceeded this number tended to split.  But we use the term ‘community’ in a far broader sense than this, so most communities are indeed ‘imagined’ in Anderson’s sense, and we have no trouble understanding this sense as real community; although we can acknowledge that the word ‘community’ is perhaps often used too loosely.[6] Read more »

by Jackson Arn

They hired me as a go-between. The interview was quick.
Jazz on the bar. Fake palms. Pantomimed
whirls everywhere. The handshake lingered
for a week. By then I’d been promoted and had no
time for protégés. Smoke hid me from
the noise. The billboard stared back.
Cars whispered through their hurry. It was a week.

A week later we buried the final shard. It was
a modest ceremony and we tried to hide our
mirth from dogs. They’d get the wrong idea. One
by one we reentered and I was last of course.
I had almost forgotten what it was to want a shadow.
If you join will you remind me sometimes? Will you
forget also? Will you tap my shoulderbone?

by Joseph Shieber

Imagine, in a solitary clearing, a ballet dancer practicing a piece of choreography. The dancer, who is listening to music on earbuds, is so engrossed in their performance that they don’t notice the world around them. Anyone who happened upon the dancer would hesitate to disturb them, afraid that any interruption would break the transcendently beautiful spell they cast with their graceful and intricate movements.

At that moment, there is a commotion in the lake beyond the clearing from the dancer. A young child has fallen into the water and can’t swim. Nobody else is within earshot, and the child screams for someone to help.

The dancer, caught up in their solitary performance, closed off from the sounds of the outside world by their earbuds, never hears the child. The child drowns.

Let’s suppose that the dancer could easily have reached the lake and rescued the child, if the dancer had been aware of the child’s existence at all. But the dancer thought themselves to be alone in the clearing, far away from anyone else. There can be no question that the dancer bears no responsibility for not having saved the child. The dancer never heard the child’s screams, never saw the child splashing about in the lake.

Of course, were the dancer ever to learn of the child’s death, they might blame themselves for not having done more. Such self-blame, however, is clearly not rational. They knew nothing of the child’s existence!

But now, let’s vary the case a bit. To keep the two cases apart, let’s call the first case “Earbuds”. The second case, like “Earbuds” has a similar setup. Again, a solitary clearing. Again, a ballet dancer at the pinnacle of their art. Again, a drowning child.

Unlike “Earbuds”, however, let’s now imagine that the dancer is accompanied by music played on a boombox. Let’s call this second case “Boombox”. Read more »

by Brooks Riley

In memory of Joe Blades, Broken Jaw Press embodied

by Eric Miller

Copse and cosmos

Do you find that, even while garden-seated—garden-stirring—, you yearn after gardens? Or that, once you have gotten in, you dapple the place with other spots and then, like a mirage, abide in the very measure in which you cease to be? This is more than solitude’s swing, or Fragonard’s for that matter. Then, across the clearing—the clustering scuff, blur and spin of amenities, where even boulders flock, ruffle and (foliaceous) flutter—, planes in view dovish a work over which I bent a shadow, juvenile. I did not know any of the story of the story, I only tried looking. It said “The Book of Thel,” and weighed less than a sandal might. My saltatory eyes spanned phrases and figures, a treehopper, painless impingement, clicks, thorn-shaped, as it springs. That kind (Family Membracidae) is all there once it gets there but most it leaves out, with integrity jumping to inconclusions. Nature does make leaps. I mean, in no time. The author? William Blake, whom plenty consider out of date because he was born some while since which is reckoned a fatal shortcoming in many respects and whom others still enjoy and these latter extenuate their suspect pleasure as resourcefully as they can.

I don’t care what the opinion is, opinion is blather, a sort of breeze fitfully brisk and smoggy, I don’t care except about how the book lives in me not otherwise than I live, sometimes living in gardens for a time. In this sense I am Blake’s ideal reader because I am not reading Blake, he doesn’t matter, here are certain verses and truths of ultimately unknown make and these are like dreams in part recalled. In Van Dusen Gardens, as in all gardens, there are intimate places, more intimate than I am to myself, experiences more than memories I never had that I can occupy and vacate like a nest box, and in those places today I see Thel passing, her high-waisted dress. Read more »

Reflection of mountain in a school building in Brixen, South Tyrol. Photo taken a couple of days ago.

by Alexander C. Kafka

“My first experience home-brewing was before it was legal,” says Jim Koch, cofounder and chairman of Boston Beer Company, maker of Sam Adams. “I did it with my dad. He brought home some yeast … then he brought home some hops, and we made a beer. And I thought it was so cool when the yeast brought the beer to life, and it started to bubble and you got that foam on the top of it, and it had that wonderful bready, ester-y smell, and I was in love.”

Koch kicks off producer and director Christo Brock’s crisp, fizzy new documentary, Brewmance, as one of the elders in the high church of American independent brewing. They provide historical context for the current, competitive scene of some 7,000 craft breweries. The grandfather of the group is Fritz Maytag, who, in the mid-1960s, turned a closing San Francisco brewery into today’s Anchor Brewing, an exotic  alternative to the bland corporate six-packs. Also chiming in are Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River, Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head, and Charlie Papazian, the pied piper of the group, who founded the Great American Beer Festival, an annual three-day 60,000-attendee extravaganza.   

The festival started four decades ago with 20 breweries and 40 beers, Papazian explains. Two of the 2,300 microbreweries represented at a recent festival are startups in Brock’s hometown of Long Beach, Calif., and the bulk of his film explores the inspiration behind the grueling births of those businesses. Read more »