William Ayers in the New York Times:

In the recently concluded presidential race, I was unwillingly thrust upon the stage and asked to play a role in a profoundly dishonest drama. I refused, and here’s why.

Unable to challenge the content of Barack Obama’s campaign, his opponents invented a narrative about a young politician who emerged from nowhere, a man of charm, intelligence and skill, but with an exotic background and a strange name. The refrain was a question: “What do we really know about this man?”

Secondary characters in the narrative included an African-American preacher with a fiery style, a Palestinian scholar and an “unrepentant domestic terrorist.” Linking the candidate with these supposedly shadowy characters, and ferreting out every imagined secret tie and dark affiliation, became big news.

I was cast in the “unrepentant terrorist” role; I felt at times like the enemy projected onto a large screen in the “Two Minutes Hate” scene from George Orwell’s “1984,” when the faithful gathered in a frenzy of fear and loathing.

More here.

Taimur Khan in The National:

Even though Karachi smouldered for most of the decade, the perennial narratives of Pakistan as a chaos-ridden failed state permanently on the brink of becoming Talibanistan were flawed; local resilience and toughness proved them only half true. During my visits, I saw the shrines of Sufi saints, unique to South Asian Islam and especially to Sindhi culture, teeming with worshippers; the Urdu bazaar in the old city was packed with people buying books; and when the Indian cricket team finally came to play, the city revelled for days. After September 11, the economy grew at a pace that rivalled India’s, and, as in India, there was for the first time the formation of a broad middle class. Last year, an outburst of bourgeois consciousness helped force out Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s military ruler, and demanded elections that many hoped signalled a meaningful shift towards democracy and away from military-feudal rule. The West was outwardly enthralled because it seemed that Pakistan was finally on the teleological road to liberal democracy, the only modernity it cares about.

Two weeks ago I visited family in Karachi for the first time in three years. The fragile optimism I encountered in 2005 has evaporated. In the Nineties the upper middle class was comforted by the fact that no matter how bad things became in the short term, the status quo would always reassert itself: the military would always intervene to protect its interests, which overlapped with theirs. The army and intelligence agencies may have been fighting proxy wars in Afghanistan and on the border with India, but internally, the state maintained a surface equilibrium. But now the military is fighting a full-scale war on its home turf with the Pakistani Taliban. The idea that the army can maintain internal control has been revealed as fiction.

More here.

From Rocket Scientist:

There are a bunch of good reasons to kiss the English system of measurement goodbye, not the least of which is that we’re the last damn country to be using it, including England. Here are a few of them.

*If math makes your eyes roll up into your head, skip to the end.

Units are ambiguous. You know a difference between a pound-force or a pound-mass? Most people don’t. So how much in an ounce? Troy, fluid, standard and, of course, there’s an ounce-force, too. How about a mile? There’s a survey mile, statute mile, Scottish mile, ancient English and Roman miles, Irish mile, international mile and no less that three different nautical miles. Note that the US uses no less than three of these forms of mile. Know how many different kilometers there are? Yep, just the one and they use the same damn one all over the world. The same liters, Newtons, kilograms… One and only one and everyone uses it, even us.

Different units for the same damn parameter. How many units do we have for distance? There’s, of course, all the different flavors of mile, foot and inch. Also furlong, mil, angstrom, parsec, league, yard… In metric there are meters and factors of 1000 of meters. That’s all. In volume, there are cubic inches and cubic feet, also gallons, pints, quarts, barrels, etc. In metric, there are liters and factors of 1000 of liters. The other side of the coin is that, by knowing the unit, you know the parameter. Newtons are force. Kg are mass. Pounds, of course, can be either. Ounces can be a measure of weight or a measure of force or a measure of volume.

More here.

Years ago, as an architecture student traveling in Europe, I sought out Le Corbusier’s home in Paris. I had the address from his books, over which I had pored for hours in the university library. Some of his writings were more than 40 years old, but their rousing rhetoric still made architecture seem more like a noble crusade than a mundane profession. Perhaps that’s why I imitated his spidery ink sketches and his military-looking stenciled lettering. I admired Frank Lloyd Wright’s buildings, but the old man — he had recently died — with his capes and flowery pronouncements, was a figure from another era. I had been taught that Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a great architect, but his buildings left me unmoved — Mies is not for the young. “Corbu,” on the other hand, though he was 76, continued to produce designs that surprised and inspired — an unusual, spread-out one-story hospital for Venice, for example, with skylights instead of windows so you could see the sky while lying in bed. For a tyro, such invention was irresistible.

more from the NY Times here.

////
Ethnic Poetry
Julio Marzán

The ethnic poet said,”The earth is maybe
a huge maraca / and the sun a trombone /
and life / is to move your ass / to slow beats.”
The ethnic audience roasted a suckling pig.

The ethnic poet said,”Oh thank Goddy, Goddy /
I be me, my toenails curved downward /
deep, deep, deep into Mama earth.”
The ethnic audience shook strands of sea shells.

The ethnic poet said,”The sun was created black /
so we should imagine light / and also dream /
a walrus is emerging from the broken ice.”
The ethnic audience beat on sealskin drums.

The ethnic poet said,”Reproductive organs /
Eagles nesting California Redwoods /
Shut up and listen to my ancestors.”
The ethnic audience ate fried bread and honey.

The ethnic poet said,”Something there is that
doesn't love a wall / That sends
the frozen-ground-swell under it.”
The ethnic audience deeply understood humanity.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
………………………………………………………..
…………………………………………………….
……………………………
………………………………….
……………………………………….
………………………………………………
………………………………………….
………………………………………………
……………………………………………….
…………………………………………………
…………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………..

Rattawut Lapcharoensap in The Guardian:

On the night of December 1, a waxed crescent moon was reported to have formed a smiley-face in the Thai sky, with Jupiter and Venus as its eyes. In a country whose leaders regularly consult astrologers and numerologists, that celestial smiley-face seemed auspicious to many after the following morning's events, when the constitutional court disbanded the ruling People's Power Party (PPP) and two of its coalition allies on charges of electoral fraud, leading to the resignation of the prime minister, Somchai Wongsawat, and an end to the eight-day siege of Bangkok's airports by the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD). The crisis at the airports may be over but the political crisis in the country deepens; and it is a measure of its seeming intractability that some in Thailand looked heavenward for signs of relief.

The PAD and their allies have now forced from office three democratically-elected governments in two years. There is little to suggest that this will be the last. Should fugitive former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra's allies re-constitute to form another ruling coalition under different party names (and all indications suggest that they will), the PAD and their armed security force will take to the streets again. Their leaders have promised as much.

More here.

Kate Ravilious in National Geographic:

Fragments of six species of moss found in his gut suggest that the ancient man used bog moss—a mildly antiseptic and highly absorbent variety—to treat an injury on his palm, scientists believe. Several conflict wounds, including an arrow wound in the shoulder, eventually killed him.

He likely used another species of moss to wrap his food.

Researchers are confident that Ötzi wasn't deliberately eating the moss, but that some of the plant matter stuck to his fingers as he ate.

“Moss is neither palatable, nor nutritious,” said study lead author James Dickson, an archaeobotanist at the University of Glasgow, U.K.

“You'd need to be starving to death before you eat moss,” he said.

The plant discoveries also help piece together his last journey, showing that the fit 46-year-old traveled vast distances in a short amount of time.

More here.

From The Guardian:

Why does the waitress look sad? Who is the lady with a parasol? What are the women talking about? Writers reflect on the stories behind their favourite works in the Courtauld Gallery.

Philip Pullman on Édouard Manet's A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882)

Few paintings are so full of ambiguity. Ambiguity, or mystery, or uncertainty, though there is no uncertainty about the title, and the painting seems to show us precisely that: a bar at the theatre, or music hall (there isn't an exact English equivalent), known as the Folies-Bergère. And the Folies-Bergère is a place of pleasure, where everything necessary for a good time is to be had. Laid out for us to inspect on the marble counter are bottles of champagne, of beer, of various liqueurs; there is a dish of oranges with the light gleaming on their waxy skin; and there is a barmaid waiting patiently to serve us with whatever we desire – including, perhaps, herself.

But look only a few inches behind her, and the mysteries begin. The greater part of the picture surface depicts a mirror, whose gold frame we can see behind the barmaid's wrist. Most of what we see is a reflection of . . . well, what?

More here.

Abid Shah in The National:

In the early 1990s in Pakistan, qawalli was one of those entertainments that one watched on television just because there was only one channel. A repetitious musical form that involved a bunch of men sitting cross legged, clapping and singing Sufi songs, qawalli never gripped young Pakistanis or the Westward-looking upper middle class.

Then Peter Gabriel jammed with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. A beautiful voice in an unfashionable art, Nusrat was a heavyset, obscure qawalli singer until a round of introductions put him onstage with the British pop star and world music maven. Suddenly, Nusrat was big. Young Pakistani men in ties started attending his concerts. Then young Pakistani men in ties started dancing at his concerts.

And so, after the age of Nusrat, it became fashionable to listen to qawalli – a whole art form made hip by the touch of the West.

Ten years later, I can’t stop thinking about Nusrat and qawalli as Pakistan’s art community is gripped by talk of the “contemporary miniature art movement”. The movement, which has reinvented the ancient courtly art of Mughal manuscript illustration as a modern form, has become Pakistan’s calling card in the art world. Its artists have exhibited in Manchester, Tokyo, Dhaka, Dubai, San Francisco and New York, and at auctions the artists have started fetching $40,000 (Dh 147,000) or more for their work. The effect on the psyche and style of Pakistani art has been tremendous.

With a growing list of shows abroad, the names of a few major miniaturists have become famous. There is Shazia Sikander, who became, in 1997, one of the first citizens of an Asian country to exhibit at the Whitney Biennial in New York, with a show that launched the contemporary interest in miniatures.

More here.

Sadia Shepard in Forward:

When my Indian Jewish grandmother married my Indian Muslim grandfather in the 1930s, their marriage was unusual in some ways. But in others it was commonplace. Theirs was a romance of pre-Partition India, and their courtship and early marriage, like so many in Mumbai, unfolded in the grand and intimate spaces of the Taj Hotel — its restaurants, ballrooms and long, grand hallways.

Now, photographs of these same rooms show walls and floors streaked with blood and littered with glass. Nearly 200 people died in the attacks on Mumbai, most of them Indians — Hindus and Muslims alike. The terrorists also targeted foreign tourists, international business people and Jews, killing six at the city’s Chabad center — the first time that Jews have been singled out and massacred on Indian soil.

More here.

A short story by Daniyal Moeenuddin in The New Yorker:

Husna needed a job. She stole up the long drive to the Lahore house of the retired civil servant and landlord K. K. Harouni, bearing in her lacquered fingers a letter of introduction from, of all people, his estranged wife. The butler, knowing that Husna served the old Begum Harouni in an indefinite capacity, somewhere between maidservant and companion, did not seat her in the living room. Instead, he put her in the office of the secretary, Shah Sahib, who every afternoon took down in shorthand a few pages of Mr. Harouni’s memoirs, cautiously titled “Perhaps This Happened.”

Ushered into the living room by the secretary after a quarter of an hour, Husna gazed around her, as petitioners do, more tense than curious, taking in the worn gold brocade on the sofa, a large Chinese painting of horsemen over the rosewood mantel. Her attention was drawn to ranks of black-and-white photographs in silver frames—hunters in shooting caps, posing with strings of birds or piles of game; women in saris, their hair piled high in the style of the fifties, one in riding breeches, with an oversized dedication in looping script. To one side stood a photo of a youthful Harouni in a receiving line shaking the hand of Jawaharlal Nehru.

More here. (Thanks to Hasan Usmani).

The occassional debates about religion that pop up in the comment pages of 3QD always remind me of a section in Putnam's Reason, Truth and History on the character of his disagreement with Robert Nozick. For Putnam, fundamental disagreement does not preclude mutual respect, but it may be respect of a peculiar kind. It was something I wanted to note in the wake some of our recent discussions. (There's also been a new interesting comment by Patrick Lee Miller on the underlying post at Immanent Frame that started our own discussions, for those who may be interested.) Anal Philospher has posted an excerpt from Putnam:

Perhaps the analogy I have (occasionally) drawn between philosophical discussion and political discussion may be of help. One of my colleagues [the late Robert Nozick] is a well-known advocate of the view that all government spending on 'welfare' is morally impermissible. On his view, even the public school system is morally wrong. If the public school system were abolished, along with the compulsory education law (which, I believe, he also regards as an impermissible government interference with individual liberty), then the poorer families could not afford to send their children to school and would opt for letting the children grow up illiterate; but this, on his view, is a problem to be solved by private charity. If people would not be charitable enough to prevent mass illiteracy (or mass starvation of old people, etc.) that is very bad, but it does not legitimize government action.

In my view, his fundamental premisses—the absoluteness of the right to property, for example—are counterintuitive and not supported by sufficient argument. On his view I am in the grip of a 'paternalistic' philosophy which he regards as insensitive to individual rights. This is an extreme disagreement, and it is a disagreement in 'political philosophy' rather than merely a 'political disagreement'. But much political disagreement involves disagreements in political philosophy, although they are rarely as stark as this.

What happens in such disagreements? When they are intelligently conducted on both sides, sometimes all that can happen is that one sensitively diagnoses and delineates the source of the disagreement. Often, when the disagreement is less fundamental than the one I described, both sides may modify their view to a larger or smaller extent. If actual agreement does not result, perhaps possible compromises may be classed as more or less acceptable to one or another of the parties.

Such intelligent political discussion between people of different outlooks is, unfortunately, rare nowadays; but it is all the more enjoyable when it does happen. And one's attitude toward one's co-disputant in such a discussion is interestingly mixed. On the one hand, one recognizes and appreciates certain intellectual virtues of the highest importance: open-mindedness, willingness to consider reasons and arguments, the capacity to accept good criticisms, etc. But what of the fundamentals on which one cannot agree? It would be quite dishonest to pretend that one thinks there are no better and worse reasons and views here. I don't think it is just a matter of taste whether one thinks that the obligation of the community to treat its members with compassion takes precedence over property rights; nor does my co-disputant. Each of us regards the other as lacking, at this level, a certain kind of sensitivity and perception. To be perfectly honest, there is in each of us something akin to contempt, not for the other's mind—for we each have the highest regard for each other's minds—nor for the other as a person—, for I have more respect for my colleague's honesty, integrity, kindness, etc., than I do for that of many people who agree with my 'liberal' political views—but for a certain complex of emotions and judgments in the other.

But am I not being less than honest here? I say I respect Bob Nozick's mind, and I certainly do. I say I respect his character, and I certainly do. But, if I feel contempt (or something in that ballpark) for a certain complex of emotions and judgments in him, is that not contempt (or something like it) for him?

More here.

Vijay Prashad in The Immanent Frame:

After the destruction of a sixteenth century mosque in Ayodhya in 1992, riots broke out across northern India. In Bombay, the forces of the Hindu Right led the riots; its armies killed a thousand Muslims. Two hundred thousand other Muslims fled the city. This was a form of ethnic cleansing that had a profound psychological impact on the city’s residents. A retaliatory attack led by a former Bombay gangster killed 257 people. Since then, attacks have come with remarkable frequency, almost one a year. Blame for these attacks often rests at the gates of either ex-Afghan Jihad veterans whose organizations are banned in Pakistan (such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba) or the foot-soldiers of the family of organizations that gather around the BJP. Violence is their tactic and their strategy; they have little else.

Mirror images of each other, the Hindu Right and the Islamic Right offer nothing for the future, but boil the resentments of selected parts of the population, to artificially hasten their hope for change with promises of martyrdom and paradise. These are the alchemists of resentment, who use bombs and swords, guns and axes to do their magic for them. There is no development of the protracted struggle to change the conditions of the present, only the irrational commitment to fleeting acts of terrible violence. Terror in saffron robes or draped in green flags has absolute contempt for the desperate needs of people who are increasingly abandoned by the policies that bring homelessness and hunger to hundreds of millions.

Only months ago, ordering that $1,950 bottle of 2003 Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon at Craft restaurant or the $26-per-ounce Wagyu beef at Nobu, or sliding into Masa for the $600 prix fixe dinner (not including tax, tip, or drinks), was a way of life for many Wall Street investment bankers. “The culture was that if you didn’t spend extravagantly you’d be ridiculed at work,” says a former Lehmanite. But that was when there were investment banks. Now many bankers, along with discovering $15 bottles of wine, are finding other ways to cut back—if not out of necessity, then from collective guilt and fear: the fitness trainer from three times a week to once a week; the haircut and highlights every eight weeks instead of every five. One prominent “hedgie” recently flew to China for business—but not on a private plane, as before. “Why should I pay $250,000 for a private plane,” he said to a friend, “when I can pay $20,000 to fly commercial first class?” The new thriftiness takes a bit of getting used to. “I was at the Food Emporium in Bedford [in Westchester County] yesterday, using my Food Emporium discount card,” recounts one Greenwich woman. “The well-dressed wife of a Wall Street guy was standing behind me. She asked me how to get one. Then she said, ‘Have you ever used coupons?’ I said, ‘Sure, maybe not lately, but sure.’ She said, ‘It’s all the rage now—where do you get them?’”

more from Vanity Fair here. via Felix Salmon.

In a brief video from the dive recently obtained by National Geographic News, one of the rarely seen squid loiters above the seafloor in the Gulf of Mexico on November 11, 2007. The clip—from a Shell oil company ROV (remotely operated vehicle)—arrived after a long, circuitous trip through oil-industry in-boxes and other email accounts. “Perdido ROV Visitor, What Is It?” the email’s subject line read—Perdido being the name of a Shell-owned drilling site. Located about 200 miles (320 kilometers) off Houston, Texas (Gulf of Mexico map), Perdido is one of the world’s deepest oil and gas developments.

more from National Geographic here.

…..It's so easy to fall in love
…..(it seems so easy)
…..It seems so easy, so doggone easy
……………………………..–Buddy Holly

The Buddy Holly Poem
Maurice Kilwein Guevara

It's so easy
when you realize
that all the squirrels
on the shingled rooftops
of Milwaukee
are Buddha
that all trees shake green
in the wind
that the moon is you

Sing
that the whole of every note
is individual and one
that love is free
every day
on the blue earth

Listen to me
///

From Edge:

Happiness is a fundamental object of human existence. To the extent that it is synonymous with pleasure, it could even be said to be one of the “two sovereign masters” that, Jeremy Bentham argued, govern our lives. The other master, lest we forget, is pain. Our happiness is determined by a complex set of voluntary and involuntary factors, ranging from our genes to our health to our wealth. Alas, one determinant of our own happiness that has not received the attention it deserves is the happiness of others. Yet we know that emotions can spread over short periods of time from person to person, in a process known as “emotional contagion.” If someone smiles at you, it is instinctive to smile back. If your partner or roommate is depressed, it is common for you to become depressed.

But might emotions spread more widely than this in social networks—from person to person to person, and beyond? Might an individual's location within a social network influence their future happiness? And might social network processes—by a diverse set of mechanisms—influence happiness not just fleetingly, but also over longer periods of time?

More here.

From The Telegraph:

When I set out to write a study of the history of words, I thought I had a decent grasp of where even the most curious English ones originate. Those with the prefix al- – as in alchemy and alcohol – often have Arabic roots, and many seafaring terms – skipper, schooner, land-lubber – are Dutch. But there were plenty of surprises. Who knew that marmalade, for instance, while eternally associated in my mind with Paddington Bear, is in fact Portuguese? So here is an A-to-Z of some of my favourite English words that have been absorbed from and inspired by other languages.

A is for…

Avocado, which comes from Nahuatl, a language spoken by the Aztecs. Their name for it, ahuacatl, also meant ''testicle”.

B is for…

Bonsai. Although we think the tree-cultivating art is Japanese, it originated in China.

C is for…

Coleslaw. Supposedly eaten in ancient Rome, it comes from the Dutch kool-salade (''cabbage salad”).

More here.

Graeme Wood in The New Yorker:

In late 2007, in Pashmul, a tiny cluster of villages in southern Afghanistan, Muhammad Khan began his tenure as the police commander by torching all the hemp in a farmer’s field. Farmers in the area had grown plants up to seven feet tall, and, being teetotallers, like many Afghans, they smoked hashish constantly. Afghan soldiers and policemen in the area also smoked, to the exasperation of the NATO troops who were training them. But Khan wasn’t from Pashmul and he didn’t smoke. He ordered his men to set the harvest ablaze, moved upwind, then turned his back and left, with an expression of indifference.

Khan and his police officers are members of Afghanistan’s Hazara minority, identifiable among Afghans because of their Asiatic features; the population they patrol is Pashtun. Hazaras are mostly Shia, with a history of ties to Iran, whereas most Pashtuns are Sunni and have turned to Pakistan for support. Over the past century, the two peoples have fought periodically, and the Hazaras, who are thought to make up between nine and nineteen per cent of Afghanistan’s population—the Pashtuns make up nearly half—have usually lost. On the border between the Hazara heartland, in the country’s mountainous and impoverished center, and the Pashtun plains in the south and east, conflicts over grazing land are common. But, working alongside NATO soldiers, Hazara police units are now operating far to the south of these traditional battlegrounds and deep into Pashtun territory.

More here.

Though from 2003, this is a really fascinating TED talk: