by Mike O’Brien

I have joked, mostly to myself, that if I ever wrote a memoir, it would be entitled “Never Gone Nowhere, Never Done Nothing: The Mike O’Brien story”. Such a lifestyle stands in near-total contraposition to that of Belén Fernández, at least in its status quo ante March 2020. Prior to that, she tells us, she had never spent more than a few months in the same place since leaving college. An American who goes to great lengths to avoid ever setting foot in America, she had arrived in Mexico on March 13 with the intention of setting off to yet another destination a few days later. Covid, of course, had other plans.

Her slim but dense (though never plodding) book, “Checkpoint Zipolite”, is a tale of forced stillness that stops her globe-trotting life in its tracks. The titular locale is, we are told, Mexico’s only clothing-optional beach, and carries the ominous and purportedly well-deserved nick-name of “Playa de la muerte“. Of course, mortality stalks around every corner in the age of Covid, so the “Beach of Death” might be as good a place as any to ride out a shelter-in-place-order. From my snowy Canadian suburb, it sounds downright idyllic.

The book is essentially a travel diary, woven through with frequent socio-political rants, personal reflections and historical factoids. There is a buzzing, over-active and effusive character to her life, her mind, and her writing, and when one outlet is blocked, it spills out through another. The repressed desire to travel is apparent in the daily minutiae (buying buckets, searching for yerba mate suppliers, negotiating space-sharing agreements with domestic insects) that serve as jumping-off points for recollections and rhetorical flights that span centuries and continents. Fernández’s life of incessant travel and political observation has provided ample material for weaving such connections, and though these digressions are conspicuous for their ubiquity, they don’t feel over-played. I could imagine many of the cited facts and events being replaced by equally poignant and entertaining substitutions from among Fernández’s own rich supply. Read more »

Pi —(Pi day, one day late…)

pi is perfection with a loose end
3 point 1 four and so on
without pattern or closure

the precision of a mandala
drawn by a drunk on three martinis
not describing wholeness merely
but thinking odd numbers
spouting them while rambling home
disheveled, irrational, unseemly
as the similar square root of 2
at the point of life and infinity
.

Jim Culleny
3/14/15

Sughra Raza. Crowing! Rwanda 2016.

Digital photograph.

by Brooks Riley

by Peter Wells

One of humanity’s greatest problems is that everyone thinks they are right. We are aware, of course, that we might be wrong, because we know that on certain issues we have changed our minds, and therefore must have been wrong at least once.  Nonetheless, at any given moment, we believe that we are right. The contrary would be ridiculous. We can say, if we wish, ‘I believe in the nuclear deterrent, but I might be wrong,’ but we can’t possibly say, ‘I believe in the nuclear deterrent, and I am wrong.’

Our beliefs on specific issues are part of a pattern of interconnected opinions, which we believe to be consistent, and they are related to the beliefs of members of our community, particularly our friends and colleagues. This tendency for our attitudes to be reinforced by our community has been exacerbated in recent years by social media. On the whole, we meet disappointingly few people who disagree with us, and this reduces the possibility that we might be persuaded to reconsider our views, to modify them or to compromise – which means we have fewer opportunities to grow in maturity and understanding.

In his essay ‘Trinity and Pluralism,’ Rowan Williams has an arresting observation about what people should do about the beliefs they hold – how they should regard them, and what they should do when they encounter people who hold different beliefs. He writes, of course as a Christian, but I wonder if the suggestions he makes can be applied to people of different persuasions. He proposes that

The Christian does not ask how he or she knows that the Christian religion is exclusively and universally true; he or she simply works on the basis of the ‘christic’ vision for the human good, engaging with adherents of other traditions without anxiety, defensiveness or proselytism, claiming neither an ‘exclusivist’ perspective invalidating others, nor an ‘inclusivist’ absorption of other perspectives into his or her own, nor yet a ‘pluralist’ meta-theory, locating all traditions on a single map and relativizing their concrete life.

Let’s unpack what Williams is saying. Read more »

by Mike O’Brien

I heard a discussion about animal ethics recently, and the concept of “full moral standing” came up. The presumption was that we humans, certainly most of us and maybe even all of us, enjoyed this full moral standing, and the ethical quandary to be sorted was whether any other beings did as well. This is a common standpoint from which to philosophize about the rights and recognition due to our fellow earthlings: the view from the top. It is still quite common to assume that we are alone there. I suppose that this is a very sensible assumption, given the available data. Old modern myths, unfounded by anything except ignorance, arrogance and a deliberate withholding of curiosity about others’ experiences, denied animals any basis of consideration at all; no sensation, no consciousness, no “there” there at all. Increasing accumulation of knowledge, and decreasing self-delusion about the propriety of our collective abuse of nature, has lent more credibility to arguments for the moral enfranchisement of animals.

But facts only get you so far. When I was a wild and crazy youth, I pursued graduate philosophy studies and read a lot of works on sovereignty and the legitimacy of political power. One of the main take-aways of thousands of pages of obscure theory was the importance of make-believe. Not as a substitute for facts and logic, but rather as an accompanying dimension of thought. Even if humans are, in fact, completely determined in their behaviour by the laws of physics, the task of accurately predicting what billions of us will do decades hence is beyond our faculties. If we were simple enough to be predicted, we would be too simple to do the predicting. So, if we want to tell stories of what our collective future will look like, we have to make them up. The alternative is to be silent, and we are not the sort of apes to do that. Read more »

I shot this slow-motion video in January of 2017 in Vahrn, South Tyrol.

Dear Rafiq,

I just received your new book of poems, “My Mother’s Scribe,” and was delighted to learn your mother’s name is Maryam.

My maternal grandmother was named Maryam. My mother (Araxie, ten-years old) last saw her and her 3 younger brothers in Urfa on the Death March in 1915. They were in bad shape. Presumed dead. Her father, Giragos, my maternal grandfather, was killed in their village before the Death March began. My paternal grandfather, Barsam, was killed in a massacre in 1895, when my father was born. Araxie ended up in an orphanage in Aleppo where she was from 1915-1921, when she went to Beirut, where she met and married my father.

By ship to France and another ship to New York where they lived for the next many decades ­­at 521 E. 87th St, between York and East End. Father had a grocery store; we lived three flights up in a railroad flat. My father, Bedros, 80-years-old, was hit by a car at 87th and First Ave, just a block and a half from their apartment, in late January 1975. It was a Saturday. The car was driven by (I later learned) a Turkish doctor!

My father had escaped from the Turks in 1912 when he was 17. He reached New York in 1914. Some of his fellow Villagers—he was from Nibishi in Palu district, were already in New York. One of them was his brother-in-law, Kevork Garabedian. His wife, my father’s sister, Anna, was still in the “old country.” Bedros would not see her again until 1921 when they, including Araxie, all met in Beirut. Read more »

by Joseph Shieber

One of the most highly publicized philosophy papers of the 2000s was a paper that was actually written almost two decades earlier. Harry Frankfurt’s paper “On Bullshit” was first published in 1986, but some astute editor at Princeton University Press, noting its aptness for the George W. Bush era, reprinted the paper as a slim book.

The effect was electric. Frankfurt’s essay appeared in January of 2005 and was on the New York Times bestseller list for almost half of the year. Among Frankfurt’s many media appearances was a notable interview on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart about the book’s subject matter and its unexpected success (success so surprising that the Daily Show also interviewed a representative of Princeton University Press to discuss it).

According to Frankfurt’s discussion, “bullshit” refers to intentionally misleading communication in which “the bullshitter hides … that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him; what we are not to understand is that his intention is neither to report the truth nor to conceal it. … the motive guiding and controlling it is unconcerned with how the things about which he speaks truly are.” Read more »

9-Lived Cat

where?

where are you,
……….. on the willow-hung swing
……….. in a field of golden grass?
where,
……….. in the hemlock
……….. straddling the limb at top
……….. hands sticky with sap?
are you
……….. sitting on the well-house step
……….. with the lake at your back
……….. remembering a future of
……….. yes! or collapse?
are you
……….. on the topmost deck above the bridge
……….. gripping the cable-rail fast
……….. exhilarated at how the bow’s pitch feels
……….. spearing a new wave’s gut
……….. as green water breaks over steel
……….. and you feel on your face
……….. the meaning of. Splash! ?
where,
……….. among zucchini
……….. grubbing for those green and fat
……….. or off on a high in a twelve-string cage
……….. trying to strum the truth in that?

where, where?
……….. still tumbling up a shaft
……….. like a 9-lived cat
……….. ?

Jim Culleny
6/18/18

by Robyn Repko Waller

We think of AI as the stuff of science, but AIs are born artists. Those artistic talents are the key to their scientific power and their limitations. 

We often seem to conceive of artificial intelligence (AI) as implementing an abstract, advanced version of the scientific method. Think, for instance, of recent successes in utilizing machine learning techniques to identify potential effective in-use drugs for combating severe COVID in the elderly. Here a machine learning technique, auto encoder, analyzed large data sets of genetic expression and how these genetic expression patterns were impacted by available drugs as well as by SARS-CoV-2. With AI, the pace of clinical trials, and so the timing of life-saving treatment, is quickened.

Or take the recent application of machine learning, specifically deep residual neural nets, in astrophysics to datasets of known gravitational lenses as a method of locating previously unknown galaxies exhibiting gravitational lensing. Gravitational lenses are observable warping of spacetime in images of distant galaxies. Observation of these gravitational lenses is critical for furthering understanding of the fundamental nature of the Universe, including black matter, but are not easily detected despite powerful observational telescopes and spectroscopic technology. Such discoveries, made possible via the coordination of machine learning and other tech-driven astrophysics, have doubled the number of known gravitational lenses, significantly advancing our ability to understand the fundamental properties of spacetime. 

These collaborations between machines and human scientists seem to be a good fit precisely because what the scientists aim to do — identify the underlying workings, patterns, and structures of observable phenomena of interest in our natural world. The power of human scientists, utilizing experimentation and sophisticated instrumentation, to fruitfully theorize about this underlying reality is great, but combined with the power of AI is exponentially greater. And faster. Read more »

Pati Hill. A Swan: An Opera in Nine Chapters, 1978 (detail from chapter 5).

More here, here, and here.

by Tamuira Reid

This is my son, Ollie.

This photo was taken five years ago. It’s one of my all-time favorites because of the look of absolute pride on his face. Hard-earned pride. I realize that pre-k graduation isn’t the most celebrated of milestones for a lot of families, but for us it was huge; Ollie was about to go mainstream.

Looking back at that little boy, and reflecting on the kid he is now, I feel lucky that we live in a city like New York. A city that has endless resources, creativity, spirit, hustle. The city that has taught us what it means to be humble, be grateful. A city that has afforded my disabled son access to an equal and appropriate education, and a public school with teachers who have loved and unconditionally supported him. A city that knows how to rally.

This is my son, Ollie.

Currently a proud in-coming fourth-grader, but with the same coke-bottle glasses and wide, generous smile. His backpack is usually absent-mindedly left open, and is stuffed with graphic novels, half-eaten bags of flaming hot Cheetos, a stress ball, and various contraband (slime, hotwheels cars, Skittles to share on the bus with potential friends, Pokemon cards to trade although he hasn’t figured out exactly how). As he passes you during drop-off, he will greet you with a “Good morning!”, maintaining direct eye contact, something that still feels, at times, unnatural to him.

Ollie Duffy doesn’t really walk from point A to point B, because the “electricity” running through his body, as he’d tell you, is hard to control. His movements are a little bit “more slippery” and unpredictable, like a sideways skip/grapevine type of thing, until he inevitably trips over his own feet. And even though he knows where he’s supposed to go, he often forgets mid-journey.

If Ollie sees your child crying, he will try to comfort them. Usually with a hug, sometimes with a Skittle. If that doesn’t work, he’ll sit nearby so they don’t feel alone. If Ollie is in class with a bully, he’ll feel sorry for them because being angry can mean you’re just frustrated, and he knows how that feels.

This is my son, Ollie.

Heart as big as the planet. Read more »