by Yohan J. John

Once upon a time there was a village on the edge of a vast jungle. In it there lived a little girl who loved to explore the depths of the jungle. One day she heard a sound she had never heard before. She followed it until she came to a great old tree. High up in the branches she spotted a beautiful songbird. She sat by the tree for a time, enchanted by the bird's song. She returned home and told her friends about the bird. In a few days she became known as the Bird Girl, because she led the other children to the great old tree where the bird sang its tune. Soon enough, the adults went along too. Everyone agreed that the bird made a most wonderful music, unlike anything ever heard in those parts.

But the path to the great old tree was dangerous — there were slippery rocks and tangled roots. Wild animals prowled in the shadows. Still, the beauty of the bird's song had an irresistible pull. The village elders decided that the bird should be captured and brought to the village. Soon enough, the bird was caught, and placed in a cage. The Bird Girl told everyone that the song had somehow changed, and that something important had been lost. The elders did not pay her much attention. She went back to exploring the jungle, but rarely told the elders what, if anything, she found.

The villagers gathered every evening to behold the bird and its song. Word spread to neighboring villages, and soon curious pilgrims arrived. The villagers began selling food and trinkets to the visitors. The bird was a blessing!

One day the king was traveling through the region, on his way home from a victorious battle. He heard stories of the songbird, and decided to see it for himself. The bird proved even more impressive than he imagined. Nowhere in the kingdom was there a bird such as this!

The king decreed that such a bird could not be hidden away in an obscure village. He took it to the capital, where more people could be touched by the grace of its song. The villagers were sad to see the bird go, but they could hardly stand in the way of a king.

In the capital city, the king displayed the bird at his court. The courtiers told the king that such a bird could not possibly be placed in a crude wooden cage: it must have a royal cage, befitting its miraculous nature. And so a golden cage was built for the bird.

Over the years the king continued to embellish the cage: jewels and engravings were added to every bar. A temple was built especially for the bird. It was almost as marvelous as the king's palace. People arrived from every corner of the kingdom to behold the bird, hear its song, and marvel at its glorious cage. One day the Bird Girl came — though by this time she was called the Bird Woman. She muttered about how the bird's song had changed. As before, no one listened.

Read more »

by Paul Braterman

Translations change the course of civilisations. The translation project begun by Caliph al-Mansour in the 8^th century CE, and accelerated under his grandson Harun al-Rashid, made available in Arabic scholarly writings from Greek, Aramaic (Syriac), Persian, and Indian sources, and laid the foundation for the flowering of science and philosophy in the Islamic world during Europe's Dark Ages. A second translation project, from the 10^th century onwards, was in the other direction, from Arabic to Latin. Among its initiators was Gerbert d'Aurillac, the future Pope Sylvester II, and it reached its height in Toledo in Spain where for a while Christianity and Islam came into close contact and where Gerard of Cremona translated al Khwarismi and Avicenna (ibn Sina), as well as Arabic versions of works by Ptolemy and Aristotle. It refreshed Europe's contact with classical learning, while also conveying what was then current scholarship. It was the pathway through which Christian Europe rediscovered Aristotle, while Avicenna's clinical expertise is mentioned in the Canterbury Tales. His writings on geology, which I have discussed elsewhere, were among those translated at this time, but originally misattributed to Aristotle.

R: Avicenna expounding pharmacy to his pupils, from the 15th century "Great Cannon [sic] of Avicenna"; Wellcome Library via Wikimedia. Click to enlarge.

Happily, if belatedly, another translation project is now under way, from English to Arabic, focused largely on science-related topics of general interest, with special attention to evolution.

Why evolution? Not only because of its central role in modern life sciences, but because the response to evolution is a test of willingness to accept reality. Not just to accept that sacred texts require interpretation (we all know that anyway), but that human beings are part of nature. And because the teaching of evolution is under attack in the Arabic-speaking world (as it long has been next door, in Turkey, where last June it was dropped from the textbooks).

Acceptance of evolution is low throughout much of the Islamic world. In Saudi Arabia, school texts describe "Darwin's theory" as blasphemous and unscientific. In territory controlled by ISIS, the teaching of evolution was banned. In July, ISIS was finally driven from Mosul, its last major stronghold in Iraq. In August, Iraq itself dropped evolution from the school syllabus, on the grounds that the syllabus was overcrowded and that evolution was never really taught anyway. The Iraqi Education Minister, Omar Mahmoud Mohamed Iqbal Al-saydali, has religious party connections and while he has a degree in education (more that can be said for his opposite number in the US, or the UK or Scotland, for that matter) he has no special training in biology.

Read more »

by Ashutosh Jogalekar

A few years ago, historian of science Steven Shapin had a review of Steven Gimbel's capsule biography of Einstein. The biography itself is quite readable, but Shapin also holds forth with some of his more general thoughts on the art of scientific biography and the treatment of famous scientific figures. He mulls over the tradition of writing about scientific lives that initially tended to treat its inhabitants as scientific heroes but which in recent times has sought more to illuminate their human flaws. Pointing out the triumphs as well as the follies of your subjects is of course an important thing to keep in mind for preventing a biography from turning into a hagiography, but as Shapin points out, one can bend over backward in doing this and err on the other side:

"The “human face” genre was an understandable response to hagiography, but more recently it has lapped over into a commitment to dirt-digging. Some modern scientific biographies mean to show great scientists as not just human but all-too-human, needing to be knocked off their pedestals. Galileo—we are now told—was a self-publicizing courtier, sucking up to his Medici patrons; Robert Hooke was a miser who molested his niece; Newton was a paranoid supervisor of torture who cheated in a priority dispute; Pasteur was a careerist power broker who cut ethical corners; even gentle Darwin was channeling laissez-faire capitalist ideology and using illness as an excuse to get colleagues to face down his scientific opponents on his behalf. Weary of stories about the virtues attached to transcendent genius, biographers have brought their scientific subjects down to Earth with a thunderous thump."

This view does not quite conform to the post-modernist ideal of treating every achievement as a subjective product of its times rather than as the unique work of an individual, but it does go a bit too far in discounting the nature of the few genuinely intellectually superior minds the human race has produced. The approach also tends to conflate people's scientific achievements with the social or personal aspects of their lives and somehow asks us to consider one only in the "context" of the other. But it seems odd to say the least to declare that Feynman is not a role model for science communication when millions of young people of all colors, nationalities, genders and political views have been deeply inspired by his teaching, books and science (more on this later). When it comes to being a successful model for science communication, shouldn't the product speak for itself rather than some preconceived ideology?

Read more »

by Carol A Westbrook

Did you give any Christmas presents this year? Or Hanukkah or birthday presents? Did the lucky recipients send you note by post, email, text, or at least a phone call? No? Well where, then, are their manners!

Yes, where, actually, are their manners?

It is true that our lifestyles have changed considerably since the days that the etiquette books were written. Many of the old rules are no longer relevant, while there are many new circumstances that Emily Post did not consider: cell phones, social media, gender equality, unconventional marriages, to name a few. This does not mean you have a license to ignore all of the etiquette rules that your parents taught you.

The rules of common courtesy make it possible for us to live together in harmony, without misunderstanding, insult, or hurt. These rules are there for a reason: to allow us be kind and polite to everyone without having to think about it–even if we can't stand them. As every etiquette book will tell you, if you are uncertain what is proper, then use common sense, treating everyone with kindness and respect.

Forgetting to say "thank you" is just one of example social rules that people break without thinking. There are many others that are especially important in getting along in today's society, and many which particularly vex me. I began to compile a list, which began to sound like Ko-Ko's song in the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, The Mikado,

"I've got a little list
Of society offenders
Who might well be underground
And who never would be missed"

Rather then sending this list to the Lord High Executioner, I will share it with you.

Read more »

by Christopher Bacas

There’s a sidewalk grate in Beverly Road station. Train sounds rise; squealed intervals evaporating as you pass. Underground, sun squeezes through the grid like skin pressed on a window screen. On the brightest day, its gutter brims gold, but never overflows. During heavy rains, the station’s walls sluice water that puddles next to the benches. When trains pass, delicate ripples ply their surface. On a grey April morning, feet bridging two platform lakes, I heard a heavy thud. The whoosh of air preceding it didn’t register. Three days of rain swelled my skull. Between the tracks, garbage sank in oily swamps. Over a dry stretch, a man lay face down; nylon backpack listing across his tan jacket. Instantly, a horizontal window opened and time upended.

Matter is quite un-material. Atoms are flickering emptiness. In that chasm, cosmic forces act on infinitesimal scale. Particles unravel and reconstitute; their paths, limitless sorcery. Mass doesn’t tally the apple’s downward push, but the warp of gluons lacing quarks into its nuclei. Ancient eyes tuned to vibrations of air and earth, not dancing voids, we see only objects, immobile and too, too solid.

I looked left for an oncoming train. The tracks ran straight to “The Junction”, terminus of the 2 and 5 lines. From the intervening stop, an approaching train’s headlamps tilt down, then steadily rise. In front, on the rails, parallel mercury streams advance. Now, two oncoming lights shimmered, guttering ahead, backlighting people near the turnstiles.

“Stop the train! Stop it!”

I jumped to the tracks. A man further down joined me. We rolled the body face up, then grabbed handfuls of clothing and ankles. He was heavy and the platform shoulder high. We couldn’t heave past the bumper at its edge. From above, hands pulled the jacket and dragged him across concrete.

Leaning into the bumper, I discovered it was soft underneath; a rubber Mille Feiulle. In its layers, street grit and countless bug carcasses, the sour delta of 21st century Flatbush delivered by gushers of spring rain. I pushed down and couldn’t clamber onto the platform. Hands grabbed mine, and I stumbled up. Behind us, the stopped train, unblinking.

Read more »

by Max Sirak

(Rather listen? Go right on ahead…)

Ho, ho, ho!

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Praise, Pelor!

Last year for my December column, I borrowed a Steve Martin bit from SNL about wishes and riffed on it. (Here) This year, in the spirit of giving, I'm going to offer up a useful lens and associated vocabulary you can use to analyze behavior and decisions. But before we get to the goods, I'm going to take a moment and explain how I got familiar with this system.

Back In The Day

Ah, the year was 1993. Radiohead's first album, Pablo Honey, debuted. Bill Clinton became President. The Unabomber was running amuck. David Koresh was holed up in Waco, TX. And, because I was twelve years old, none these events garnered much of my attention.

Computer camp did.

That's right. The summer between sixth and seventh grade, me and two buddies, Josh and Andy, went to a weeklong, overnight programing camp. C++. BASIC. Visual BASIC.

I wasn't a strong coder. I never made it past your basic BASIC, but the week I spent at Cleveland's own, Ursuline College, influenced me greatly. It was there, amongst the caffeine- fueled, acne-riddled adolescents, who spent all their time staring at screens (long before it was cool…), I was introduced to a lifelong hobby.

Read more »

by Thomas R. Wells

“[B]y directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention….By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.” (Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, IV.2.9)

Doing right by others is difficult and time-consuming. Hence the attraction of what I call ‘invisible hand ethics’. This is modelled on Adam Smith’s famous account of how the overall outcome of lots of self-interested actions in the economic sphere can be good for society as a whole. Bakers just want to make a buck, but their self-interest produces the bread that feeds the people. Their competition for sales keeps prices down. The customers in turn just want the cheapest best bread, but wind up helping the best bakers make a good living. You get the idea. Smith claimed that in the economic domain this could be a far more reliable mechanism for achieving good outcomes than good intentions.

Invisible hand ethics has long since conquered economics. We no longer worry, as theologians did (they still do – but we don’t listen anymore), about whether it is ethical for businesspeople to make a profit beyond what they deserve for their work; whether prices should be proportionate to people’s ability to pay; whether a life of money making is a good one. The duty of the businessperson – as taught in every business degree, magazine, and TV gameshow – is to help her company win the game and take home the profit prize.

The idea of moral desert is still there. But now merit is decided by economic outcomes (price and demand), not by the moral inputs (the character or intentions of those concerned). Economic ethics has been outsourced to the markets. It is now a property of the system rather than of individuals.

Invisible hand ethics has spread. It can now be found far beyond the economic domain, especially in the professions organised around antagonistic competition, such as politics, science, sport, academia, law, and journalism. Lawyers strive to tell the story that best suits their client’s interest; scientists race to make discoveries first; politicians compete for votes so as to gain power; etc. The invisible hand is supposed to transmute this aggressive pursuit of self-interest by individual players into values like truth and justice and prosperity. For example, competition between politicians keeps them subservient to the people and encourages a vigorous public debate about where our society should go. Thus, democracy.

Read more »

by Hari Balasubramanian

Just as the distribution of wealth exhibits dramatic skews – a small percent owns a disproportionate share of the total wealth – so too does the distribution of healthcare expenditures. When individuals in the US population are ranked based on their healthcare expenditures in a particular year, then it turns out that:

1. The top 1% of individuals account for 22.8% of the total healthcare expenditures

2. The top 5% of individuals account for 50.4 % of the total healthcare expenditures

3. The bottom 50% account for only 2.8% of total healthcare expenditures

https://meps.ahrq.gov/data_files/publications/st497/stat497.pdf

(Healthcare expenditures refer to all payments made related to health events – either by insurer or out-of-pocket.)

The estimates are from 2014, but the trends remain quite consistent from year to year. It is true that older individuals are more likely to have higher expenditures. But even if we look only at those over 65, we will still find that a small percent has an outsize impact. There is a fractal-like consistency to the pattern: if we narrowed our search down to the top 1% in a population of 10,000, then among these 100, the top 1-5 individuals will still account for a large percent of the total.

A similar trend emerges when we look instead at the prevalence of health conditions. If we were to plot the percent of individuals in a population (y-axis) who had no health conditions (count=0 on the x axis), exactly 1 health condition (count=1), exactly 2 health conditions (count=2) and so on, we would get something like the graph to the right. About 45% of the population has no apparent health conditions; about 25% has exactly one health condition; 12% has exactly two health conditions. The percentages start to decline as the count of conditions increases, indicative of the few who have 6, 7, 8, 9 or more conditions. We are now at the tail of the distribution where healthcare costs are most likely to be concentrated.

Because most of us in any particular year are healthy, the challenges faced by this small segment of the population can remain somewhat distant. Yet at some point in our lives – hopefully later than earlier or even better not at all: who can say – there is always a chance that we might join their ranks.

In this column, I will present visualizations of healthcare use by individuals at the tails of the cost and health condition count distributions. I started creating these visualizations while researching a publicly available dataset called the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey – MEPS for short. This is the same dataset that was used to characterize the expenditure distribution above. Aggregate trends are valuable, but it is by looking closely at individual cases that one can begin to sense what is going on. Each year MEPS collects granular data on health events for members of thousands of households across the United States. Households are chosen in the survey to represent the national demographic; each household is compensated for the time spent filling out questionnaires. To protect the identities of those surveyed, the data is anonymized before it is released to the public.

Read more »

by Emrys Westacott

This Christmas millions of people will no doubt watch Frank Capra’s 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life. In many cases this will be their umpteenth viewing. The film is a popular Christmas entertainment for many reasons. The main action takes place on Christmas Eve. The final scene is of family and friends singing carols and making merry round a Christmas tree. The story is uplifting since love triumphs over despair and virtue is rewarded. Like Christmas itself, part of its appeal is nostalgic: fairy lights, tinsel and turkey are indelibly associated with an enjoyable time in childhood; and Bedford Falls, the small town where the action takes place, is presented as a friendly, spirited, cohesive (albeit almost entirely white) community where everyone knows their neighbors and whose center hasn’t yet been hollowed out by highways and suburban malls. Last but not least, there are angels. True, the angels are portrayed humorously, tongue in cheek. But the plot does hinge on their intervention. So the singing of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” at the end can be understood as expressing a kind of gratitude for and faith in benevolent supernatural powers that are watching over us and looking out for us.

Given all that, cynics and skeptics, especially those who have not seen the film for a long time, are often inclined to dismiss the film as so much sentimental slush. This is a mistake. For the film is not primarily about Christmas or angels. It’s about money. And it’s about the danger to society if avarice, greed, and egotism come to rule the roost. Just possibly, this is a morality tale that might still have relevance in Donald Trump’s America.

The central conflict in the drama is between George Bailey (James Stewart), who runs a small, struggling Building and Loan company, and Henry F. Potter (Lionel Barrymore), a rich banker and slumlord. Potter, we are told at the outset, is “the meanest and richest man in the county.” His guiding passions are for making money and wielding power. He is contemptuous of people like George who, since they care for things other than the bottom line–e.g.helping ordinary people to become homeowners–are not true businessmen, but “losers.” As for the hardworking, ordinary folk, Potter dismisses them as “rabble,” or “suckers,” and with a glancing ethnic slur against immigrants, "garlic eaters.” His limited, self-centered outlook is underscored by the closed carriage in which he travels, by the wheelchair to which he is confined, and by his only ever appearing inside the confines of paneled offices.

Potter’s callousness toward others is explained as the actions of “a frustrated old man who is lacking something.” That something seems to be friends. His lack of friends is mentioned several times and is linked to his extreme egotism. When asked to show concern for the children of people who have been dispossessed, he coldly replies, “they’re not my children.” To him, other people are simply a means to his own mercenary ends. In one angry exchange, George nails what seems to be Potter’s essence: “You think the whole world revolves round you and your money.” In short, Potter is a greedy, callous, self-centered egotist without any real friends. Remind you of anyone?

Read more »

by Samir Chopra

Like every human being on this planet, I speak with an accent. In my case, I speak the English language with a hybrid, mongrelized Indian variant that bears the impress of thirty years spent on the US East Coast—in New York City and New Jersey—with a two year stint in Australia in between. It is distinct and unmistakable and clear in its lilt and inflection; no American, listening to me, will think I have grown up in the US. My ‘looks’—perhaps vaguely Hispanic, Middle-Eastern, or Southern European—might confuse some Americans about my ethnic and national origins; they receive instant confirmation, once I begin speaking, that I’m some kind of ‘foreigner.’ The way I speak makes clear I’m from ‘elsewhere:’ I mix up my ‘W’s and ‘V’s, occasionally inducing double takes in bartenders when I specified vodka-based cocktails during my drinking days; I do not always pronounce vowels in the clipped and muddied style so distinctive of American English; I emphasize syllables in my own idiosyncratic way. Sometimes, when I travel in Europe, locals peg me as ‘American’ because they have picked up on an Americanism or an acquired American twang in my speech—they, for their part, seem to think I have an ‘American accent.’ Because the Indian accent has intonation patterns similar to that of Irish, Scottish, and Welsh accents, I’ve sometimes been asked—in the US—why as a brown man, I’m speaking in a brogue. (In the opening scenes of the 1990s British crime film, Twin Town, the Lewis brothers, from Swansea, Wales, are shown talking to their mother; their conversation is only partially audible but from the up-and-down sing-song intonations, I could have sworn I was listening to Indians.) Sometimes American listeners will insist I have a ‘British’ accent because I’m Indian, because India was an English colony and I attended so-called ‘English medium public schools,’ the Indian equivalent to the English or American private school. And so it goes.

The partial Americanization of my accent has been a subtle process; I have not been conscious of it being molded and shaped as I spoke English in the US. Instead, as I have participated in conversations, my spoken English has, in a kind of sympathetic dance, aligned itself with that of the speaker’s. My wife points out that when I converse with a good French friend, I start throwing around Gallic shrugs by the dozen; and when I lived in Australia, I picked up, quite quickly, many distinct Australianisms, and delighted in deploying them in my speech to my Australian friends (especially when it came to matters of shared interest like cricket). When I speak to Indians visiting the US from India, they make note of how impressed they are by the fact that I still comfortably trade in street-level colloquialisms in my conversations in Hindi/Urdu. I have, in a way, retained my Indian accent in my Indian languages; some Indians tell me I speak Hindi/Urdu with a Delhi accent; some Pakistanis assure me I speak Punjabi with a Pakistani accent. I do not belong anywhere; my accents give me away. My accent reflects my mixed-up nature, part Indian, part American, part migrant, part itinerant wanderer, part stable resident.

Because I speak English with an accent, it is a common enough suggestion—often made to my face, in all kinds of social settings, professional or personal, formal or informal—that English is not my ‘first language’, that rather, it is my ‘second language.’ But English is my first language in every relevant dimension; I speak, read, think, and write better in English than any other language.

Read more »

by Richard King

The Harvey Weinstein affair cannot be brushed aside as the culture of the casting couch. It is not one more story from the Hollywood fiction factory. It must not be allowed to be another tawdry milestone. It must be the watershed.

Reading these lines in The Guardian one week after the New York Times published the first explosive allegations about the former co-chairman of The Weinstein Company, I have to say I was sceptical, not to say dismissive. The Weinstein affair, a watershed? Really? The allegations came on the back of stories about Bill O'Reilly and Roger Ailes, both exposed in 2016 as sexual harassers and workplace bullies, and just four months after the Bill Cosby saga had reached the trial stage in Pennsylvania. Notwithstanding that the Weinstein allegations had expanded in the course of that week from claims of sexual harassment/shakedowns to claims of sexual assault and rape, it was difficult to see why this particular controversy should be regarded as a tipping point.

Well, that's a win for The Guardian, I guess. For whatever else the Weinstein scandal tells us about our culture, there is no denying that it is "a watershed" of sorts – that the reaction to it has catalysed a particular way of doing politics (and, I would argue, further marginalised others). I still can't envisage a future tome entitled, oh, The Women's March: A History of the Struggle for Female Equality from Mary Wollstonecraft to the Harvey Weinstein Scandal. But I am beginning to see this moment as a significant one on the liberal/progressive side of the aisle.

Why has l'affaire Weinstein so captured the progressive mood? The answer, surely, can be given in three words: "Donald", "J.", and "Trump". Trump, the Pussy-Grabber in Chief, was not supposed to win the election, not least because of his taped admission to a busload of media boofheads and hangers-on that his fame afforded him pussy-grabbing privileges. But not only did he win the election, he won it against a very "qualified" woman, whose success was supposed to blaze a trail for women and girls the world over. The Women's March was in many ways an expression of profound frustration that a man with such regressive attitudes could win an election in 2016, and much of the commentary of the past ten months – from the characterisation of Bernie Sanders and his followers as "brogressives" and "brocialists" to the remarkable reaction to an adaptation of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale – betrays a comparable exasperation. That is the essential difference between the Weinstein scandal and its analogues. It has come to light in the year of the Donald.

Read more »

by Michael Liss

I have a problem. Each December I write a political New Year’s ditty to send to friends and family. I’ve had a good time with them, even when the news (at least from my perspective) is less than cheery. I get to crib shamelessly from great authors of the past, ruin perfectly good metre with my tuneless ear, and throw in some real groaners. My “Mitchie at the Bat” is considered a classic of the genre, and even last year’s dirge-y “Wreck of the Hillary C” induced a small avalanche of comments from the similarly agonized.

But I’m blocked. Eleven months of government by cattle-prod has depleted my mirth supply, so, in a last-minute Hail Mary, I am going to recharge by pivoting to a dispassionate discourse about something we are all passionate about—money. Not Bitcoin, or something esoteric that’s way above my humble understanding, but plain old cash—the real stuff, actual specie, as in old coins.

I happen to have a few. Not many, and they don’t have much in the way of numismatic value, but they are a treasure trove of history, and history cheers me up. About a dozen assorted coins dating from the late 18th Century to 1892, all from a worn-out purse my grandmother found in her basement catacombs. Among them were some two-cent pieces from the 1860s, a half-dime, an 1803 large penny, a commemorative coin from the Columbian Exposition, and an absolutely exquisite 1826 Capped Bust half-dollar.

To a junkie like me (for history, not necessarily for coins) they are all wonderful. Collectively, they tell a story that starts with 16 states and ends with 44, of powdered wigs and multi-hour speechifying, several wars, horses and stagecoaches, cotton pickers and cotton merchants, the creation of whole new cities out of swamp, and the building of an empire (by whatever means necessary) that stretched across the continent.

Read more »

by Leanne Ogasawara

Einstein was adamant. He did not want a large public funeral.

He wanted to be immediately cremated with his ashes scattered before anyone had time to make a fuss.

Fair enough, right?

Einstein biographer Walter Isaacson reminds us of the 1727 funeral of Sir Isaac Newton. Like Einstein, Newton was a superstar of his day. And so not surprisingly, Newton was buried with the highest honors at Westminster Abbey in London. Pallbearers included not only the lord high chancellor, but two dukes and three earls. Most of the fellows of the Royal Society were there as well to honor one of the greatest scientists the world had ever known. Einstein, says Isaacson, could have easily commanded such a large-scale state funeral. For Einstein was held in similarly high esteem by the people of his time. President Eisenhower famously declared that no other man has contributed more to the expansion of knowledge in the 20th century than Einstein. Many felt he was the greatest man of the twentieth century and a state funeral would have been not only appropriate –but expected.

Einstein, however, had other ideas. And immediately after his death on April 18, 1955, he was quietly cremated in Trenton, New Jersey. This took place on the afternoon he died before most people had even heard the news. The cremation was attended by all of twelve people; after which his ashes were scattered in the nearby Delaware River, as his great friend and Princeton colleague Otto Nathan read a few lines from Goethe's poetry.

This quiet funeral, for me, perfectly captures the man that was Einstein. He had wanted to be quickly cremated with no fanfare because, he said, he did not want his final resting place to become an object of morbid fascination.

But, alas, this was not to be. In what is an absolutely outrageous story, Einstein's brain was stolen. It then took on a life of its own as kind traveling relic around the country.

How is this possible?

Read more »

by Akim "Hot Cha Cha" Reinhardt

*Omg, so excited about Prince Harry announcing he's getting hitched to the absolutely fabulous Meghan Markle. Way to go, royal family!

*The Trump presidency continues shifting Foucualtian microtechnologies power, including the reinforcement select biopower apparatuses around immigration and race but, despite this, has thoroughly betrayed earlier promises to disrupt capitalism!

*Yes, it is a major bummer that the Magnificent Markle won't be going by the title "Princess Meghan," thereby ruining the theme of many a birthday party, but at least the Windsor Castle clan can finally begin weeding out the hemophilia and polydactylism.

*The funny man from frigid Minnesota is in some serious hot water. And we're not talking about Lou Grant! Serial molester/groper/tongue-down-your-mouther/sleep-therapist-from-Hell Al Franken resigned from the Senate last week after a cohort of his peers pressured him to step down. Sadly, frothing, myopic Dems who value scoring political points and cocktail party Suart Smalley impersonations more than challenging America's ingrained misogyny could not be consoled by the great equalizer: Minnesota's Democratic governor is filling Franken's seat, which won't even be contested for nearly a year, so there's plenty of time to install and establish a new incumbent. No matter . . . the party's Kardashian wing values appearances over everything else, and is working fervently to remind each and every last American that so long as Franken didn't rape and murder toddler cancer patients, he's way, way better than Roy Moore!

*Hot Hollywood Rumor: Quentin Tarrantino is pitching an R-rated Start Trek film to franchise impresario J.J. Abrams, who's excited about the idea, according to early reports. And fans think the long running series of futuristic, interstellar morality plays is the prefect setting for Tarrantino to update his white boy gender and racial revenge fantasies while having actors casually toss around the word "nigger." Early casting possibilities include Samuel L. Jackson as a potty mouthed, hyper emotional Mr. Spock and Uma Thurman as a sword-wielding, heroin snorting, track suit bedecked Klingon warlord. Hell yeah!

Read more »

by Bill Benzon

Franco Moretti and his colleagues at the Stanford Literary Lab have collected a number of their pamphlets into a book:

Canon/Archive: Studies in Quantitative Formalism by Franco Moretti (Author, Editor), Mark Algee-Hewitt, Sarah Allison, Marissa Gemma, Ryan Heuser, Matthew Jockers, Holst Katsma, Long Le-Khac, Dominique Pestre, Erik Steiner, Amir Tevel, Hannah Walser, Michael Witmore, Irena Yamboliev, published by n+1.

That book is the occasion of this essay, which thus resembles a review in some, but only some, respects.

If it’s only a review that interests you, then perhaps I can save you the trouble of a rather long read.

Canon/Archive is an important book of literary criticism, likely as important as any published this year. It is also rather technical in places. But you can skate over those spots if you’re determined to read the whole book. Look at the charts and diagrams, they’re the heart of the book.

That in itself is important to note; the book is full of charts and diagrams. That is unheard of in standard literary criticism. It’s a sign of the fact that Canon/Archive embodies a new mode of thought, perhaps the first since the advent of the so-called New Criticism before World War II (though mostly after the war).

A new mode of thought! Heavens to Betsy!

As Moretti notes in his preface, “Images come first … because – by visualizing empirical findings – they constitute the specific object of study of computational criticism” (xi). Think of it, visually, of course. You run the programs, visualize the results, and then write the text to support, explicate, and reflect on the implications of those visualizations.

Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.

For those who decide to brave the whole essay, here's a piece of advice: If you find something boring or a bit picky, do what I always do, skip over it. You can always come back.

Read more »

by Evert Cilliers aka Adam Ash

When President Trump took the office of President in the year 2017, few Americans could have predicted the huge changes to come under the rulers that would follow him — changes inspired by his unprecedented example.

And few could have predicted that this man, who started with an approval rating lower than any president before him, down in the toilet, would end up with an approval rating so high up to heaven's ceiling, it even satisfied him, a man who loved to be adored. His ego feasted on his people's approval like bees feast on nectar, like kids feast on Big Macs with fries on the side, like flies feast on feces.

In fact, nothing much might have happened in the Trump years were it not for three events that came to pass late during his tenure, events that came to be known as the Unholy Trifecta.

The first event was the drowning of Miami in a hurricane much worse than any preceding one, which hit that city with spectacular results, undoubtedly occasioned by accelerated climate change.

President Trump called in the Army to install order when roaming bands of brigands began to rob and kill to survive in the chaos (or so the official line from the White House averred) which set the template for other take-overs by the Army of other cities in various states of trouble, mostly financial, brought about by Republican Governors who had slashed taxes to such a degree that there was no money left for schools, which led to massive protests, which led to the President sending in the Army to install order, and which normalized the military occupation of more and more cities.

Read more »

by Dave Maier

It’s that time of year again already – time to remind everyone that it’s that time of year again! I must admit I didn’t listen to a whole lot of new music this year, but I have definitely rounded up a good selection for you, even if there’s probably a whole lot out there that we won’t find out about until later. Such is life in the abundant times in which we live. The names here will be mostly familiar to regular listeners, but I’ve included a couple of oddities as well. Here’s to a happy and healthy 2018 for all!

[direct link if widget fails]

Yagya – The Great Attractor [Stars and Dust]

Yagya is Aðalsteinn Guðmundsson from Iceland. His latest release is very much in the vein of his earlier ones, e.g. 2009’s Rigning, which is probably my favorite. Ambient listeners might have to get used to the dance-floor pulse of Yagya’s music, as inherited from his major influence, Wolfgang Voigt (a.k.a. Gas), but that’s easily done, given his exquisite spacial and melodic sensibilities.

Read more »

by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse

Although the word "democracy" is commonly used to denote all that is good in politics, democracy is a dubious proposal. It is the thesis that you may be required to live according to rules that you reject, simply because those rules are favored by others. What's more, democracy is the proposal that you may be rightfully forced to live according to rules that are supported only by others who are ignorant, misinformed, deluded, corrupt, irrational, or worse. Further still, under democracy, you may be rightfully forced to live according to the rules favored by a majority of your fellow citizens even though you are able to demonstrate their ignorance and irrationality, and despite the fact that you can debunk the rationales they offer in support the rules that you oppose. Democracy apportions political power to citizens as such rather than according to their ability to wield it responsibly.

The aspiration of democracy is that with its freedoms, we allow reasons to be exchanged so that the best will come to be recognized. Note that this is true of democracy at its best. And we know that real-world democracy is far from the ideal. We are in fact forced to live according to rules that are favored by ignorant, misinformed, and irrational citizens; and many of the rules we are forced to live by are defensible only by way of the flawed rationales embraced by the ignorant. In real-world democracy, we are indeed at the mercy of our irrational and ignorant fellow citizens. Knowing this, politicians and officials cater to majority irrationality, and, once in power, they govern for the sake of gaining reelection.

It's difficult to see what could justify democracy. Maybe this is as it should be? Even under ideal conditions, political orders are always coercive, and so the task of justifying any mode of politics should be onerous. And the difficulty of justifying democracy should increase under non-ideal conditions such as those we currently face. Part of the task of democracy, even in its most ideal versions, is to critically assess the prevailing democratic order. And one way to assess a democracy is to envision alternative arrangements that might be superior.

In a recent book, provocatively titled Against Democracy, Jason Brennan takes up the chore of assessing existing democracy. His central contention is appropriately modest. He claims that if there is a workable nondemocratic political arrangement that can reasonably be expected to more reliably produce morally better policy decisions than existing democratic arrangements, we ought to try that alternative arrangement. Ultimately, he identifies a range of alternatives that he alleges will outperform democracy, all of which instantiate a political form he calls (borrowing a term coined by David Estlund) epistocracy, the rule of the knowers.

Read more »