by Brooks Riley
Eating: The Not So Simple Pleasure
by Dwight Furrow
Well, it's not all that special—just a bowl of chili. But the simple act of consumption is undeniably rewarding. Food and drink provide us with an immediate hedonic reaction—no thinking, no analysis, no bothersome complexity. Our own likes and dislikes rule without judgment. You either like it or you don't and no one can tell you you're wrong (if you put away the calorie counter).
Such unreflective feasting is not exactly information-rich, but it is not utterly blind either. Dominant flavors and textures are familiar and thus instantly recognizable. But each forkful is more or less like the other and any evolution on the palate is buried by the next rapidly following mouthful. The satisfactions of this sort of eating can be had while thinking about more important matters like world peace or getting your nails done.
We all eat like this sometimes. Our nature dictates it. Evolution designed us, under conditions of scarcity, to crave such brute pleasure as a hedge against tomorrow when food might be unavailable. Life would be diminished if we could not enjoy this kind of eating.
But another kind of eating is possible and ultimately more important. With some focused attention, even a simple bowl of chili has interesting imensions: a slight smokiness from the bacon and charred chunks of beef, an unexpected fruity note from an abundance of aji panca chiles, and multiple savory layers from hours of slow cooking that we can appreciate only by attending to the shifting balance of flavors as they evolve on the palate. In a bowl of chili, there is food for thought as well as for consumption.
Queen Morayma: A Photo Essay
by Shadab Zeest Hashmi
I am in Granada again; after all these years of writing, publishing, and presenting my book, reading to audiences in numerous venues in no less than a dozen cities in America and around the world, I am about to discover why Morayma eludes history, why she haunts my book and casts a shadow on me instead of staying in the story with the other characters.
Morayma appears at the end, when, as I say elsewhere:
Nearly eight hundred years have passed in Al Andalus, Muslim Spain— years turning like great mills, a resplendence of work reflected in books and buildings, cities and institutions, technology and aesthetics, bridging antiquity with modernity, east with west, fissured periodically but sewn back again and again by Iberian Muslims, Jews and Christians.
Monday, February 22, 2016
The Bad, the Ugly And (Yes!) The Good
by Colin Eatock
Unfortunately, for all its bravado, contemporary classical music is in a bad way, and has been for some time now. Its composers and specialist-performers toil in obscurity, its core-audience is tiny, and its visibility within mainstream culture is just about nil. Like a hospital patient kept alive on a life-support system, contemporary classical music is largely maintained by university music departments. Most symphony orchestras and opera companies – knowing only too well where their bread is buttered – perform it only occasionally.
However, with my use of the word “unfortunately,” I don't mean to suggest there's anything especially unjust about contemporary classical music's marginal status. Cultures have always embraced what they like and rejected what they don't – and no amount of quasi-moralistic hectoring about what people ought to like is likely to change that. Also, on a personal note, I don't feel especially inclined to take the world to task on this issue. I believe I can speak for a great many classical music fans when I say that most of the classical music written in the last fifty years deserves an early death in an unmarked grave. Many concert-goers find most contemporary music a painful experience – and, as a music critic, I feel their pain.
Rather, my “unfortunately” was meant, partly, to express my concern about what the ongoing crisis of newness means for the future of classical music as a whole. The lack of a substantial body of well-known and culturally validated new works is, I believe, an existential threat to the entire art form: an artistic culture that immerses itself entirely in its own past will wither into irrelevance. Yet I've noticed that some people in the “mainstream” classical-music world see nothing to worry about here. They seem to think (if they think about the issue at all) that all they need to do is avoid the new stuff and play more Mozart and the problem will simply evaporate. This is head-in-sand thinking.
That said, my “unfortunately” was also meant as a lament for the few living composers whose works, I believe, are beautiful, compelling, culturally engaging and worthy of appreciation on a broad scale. But finding these precious needles in such a large haystack is an arduous business.
Concussion: Seeking the next Big Tobacco
by Saurabh Jha
Footballers are at risk of brain damage, specifically a neurodegenerative disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). CTE was described in a football player by forensic pathologist, Bennet Omalu, who performed an autopsy on Michael Webster, a former Pittsburgh Steeler. Webster died of a heart attack but had a rapid and mysterious cognitive decline. Webster’s brain appeared normal at first. When Omalu used a special technique, he found a protein, known as tau, in the brain.
Omalu’s discovery inspired the movie Concussion in which Will Smith plays the pathologist. The Fresh Prince plays convincingly a god-fearing, soft-spoken but brilliant physician, who is up against incredulous colleagues and the National Football League (NFL). The NFL clearly has a lot to lose from Omalu’s discovery. However, the director’s attempt to emulate The Insider, where big tobacco tailgates the scientist, fails at many levels.
This is not just because the NFL is not really Big Tobacco. The NFL is adept at playing to the gallery. Recently, it carried a pink logo to increase awareness of breast cancer. The NFL could have chosen prostate cancer. But solidarity with sisters is better PR than showing solidarity with brothers.
The reason why Concussion fails to ignite memories of Big Tobacco is that there is still a lot we don’t know about CTE, or the precise risks of banging one’s head. Some who play contact sports develop CTE, but many are unaffected. CTE has also been reported in people who haven’t had concussive injuries.
Omalu’s discovery has predictably touched our inner sanctum of social justice. Some want college football to be banned. Pitchforks have been raised full mast against the NFL. A narrative has developed in which the rich, greedy and unethical NFL conscripts young, hapless, unsuspecting men from poor families to inevitable brain damage. Righteous indignation is especially delicious when backed by science.
Monday Poem
The Milky Way, is destined someday to collide with the next-nearest spiral galaxy,
in the direction of the constellation Andromeda. When they collide, our sun will
likely be flung into a new region of galactic space. But when is that someday?
……………………………………………………………….. —EarthSky.org
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When Andromeda and the Milky Way Collide
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the night sky now is both
a starry spray of mother’s milk
and points of light as bright
as your last kiss
in its spray certain densities exist
think of them as knots in space
or mind
in them space (or mind) insists
that nebulae twist and pulses race
in them you may perceive
articulations of another’s face
or of one concealed behind
a veil of starry lace
attitude is key
and so is grace
but when Andromeda
and the Milky way collide things will change
any status quo will not abide
(you can never count on it to stay in place)
so on that day, in terms of hearts,
there could be tears
but you needn’t be concerned for us
since astrophysicists who’ve counted well
tell us this collision will not happen for
four billion years, and that, my love,
is quite a spell
.
Jim Culleny
12/8/14
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Atoms Old and New, 1: Atoms in Antiquity
by Paul Braterman
What is now proved was once only imagin’d – William Blake
Really important ideas in science are not the work of a single individual or even a single generation. The idea of an atom, for instance, was developed by ancient Greek philosophers, revived by eighteenth century chemists to make sense of their discoveries about the composition of matter, and used by nineteenth century physicists to explain the effect of temperature and pressure on gases. Our modern idea of molecules, formed with definite shapes by joining atoms together according to definite rules, was developed by chemists studying naturally occurring substances in the late nineteenth century. In the early twentieth century, the structure of the atom itself was explained in terms of more fundamental particles, while the last half century has seen advances that make it possible for us to directly sense, and even move around, individual atoms.
Roman fresco, illustrating front cover of R.E. Latham's excellent translation
Atomic theory dates back to the pre-Socratic philosophers, especially Leucippus and Democritus, who wrote and taught more than four hundred years BCE. The works of the pre-Socratics survive only in fragments, and in quotations by later authors. For example, Epicurus, some 130 years later, built this theory into his unified view of the world and morality. The views of Epicurus were beautifully expressed by the Roman poet Lucretius, who lived at the same time as Julius Caesar, in his great work De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of the Universe). According to this ancient atomic theory, atoms are eternal and indestructible. All forms of matter are built up from a relatively small number of kinds of atoms.
What led the early atomists to theories so remote from simple appearances? Greek philosophers were greatly puzzled by the phenomena of change and motion. If something is real, how can it be transformed into something that it is not? If something is in one place, how can it move, since that would imply that it was no longer in that place? Besides, how can anything move without displacing something (if only the air) that is already there, in which case which one moves first? There are serious problems here, that were not properly solved until the mathematics of fluid flow and the theory of limits were developed in the 18th and 19th Centuries.
One radical approach to the problems posed by change is to say that change itself is an illusion, and that the world of experience, in which we live and act, grow and die, is in some important sense unreal. Plato was influenced by this approach when he compared knowledge gained through the senses to a mere shadow-play on the walls of a cave. Such a view is deeply hostile to science, which relies on observation, and the influence of Plato and his followers was to greatly hinder the development of scientific thinking.
Let’s Take A Walk
by Carol A. Westbrook
When I was child, I knew every square inch of the streets in my Chicago neighborhood. I could tell you which trees grew where, which houses had the grumpy people to avoid on Halloween, which grass patches had four-leaf clovers, which stretch of sidewalk had the most black chewing-gum spots, and which 
Recently I re-visited my old neighborhood in Chicago and walked home from school again. Fifty years later, and I still remembered much of the detail. A few of my favorite trees were still standing, much increased in girth. The penny-candy stores were gone from the corners, but Al's tavern was still there (with a new name, but the same old signs). Sadly, most of the houses had barred windows, and all the yards had locked gates. I was the only person on foot. Times have changed.
CATSPEAK
by Brooks Riley
I Know That Feel, Bro: What Aziz Ansari and Celine Dion taught me about ‘relating’
by Yohan J. John
A few months ago I watched Indian-American comedian Aziz Ansari's new show, Master of None. During the Parents episode, I found myself confronted by a feeling that struck me as rare. I couldn't even tell if it was a good feeling or a bad feeling. It wound its way into me and tickled my soul. It felt vaguely embarrassing. Eventually I realized that it was the feeling of relating.
I imagine many young people felt this way at some point or the other during Master of None. The show manages to nail millennial anxiety and indecision on the head. And yet it's not nearly as dour and bitter as other shows that are praised for their apparent realism — think of Louie, or Mad Men, or The Wire. It's actually optimistic and good-natured; the word 'chipper' comes to mind.
Not every millennial can relate equally to all the situations portrayed in the show. I recall reading that at least one white fan of the show said she enjoyed every episode except the Parents one — that one she didn't quite 'get'. But it was the Parents episode that really grabbed me. It managed to capture the particular sort of generation gap that emerges between first generation immigrants and their kids. Even though my family is very different from the ones portrayed in the show, as an Indian whose parents moved to America I could appreciate the situation: the older generation has clearly gone through much harder times than their kids, and has struggled quite a bit to create opportunities for their kids to live comfortable and vaguely hedonistic lives. (To obsess over finding the best tacos in New York, for instance.) At one point Ansari's character Dev's father says ” You realize fun is a new thing right?” This is only a slight exaggeration of how many of our parents seem to feel. Fun is secondary, and not something they talked about much with their parents.
The kids — my fellow post-immigration, post-colonial millennials (whew!) — are vaguely aware that they ought to be more appreciative of their parents' sacrifices, but don't quite know how to go about it. This is partly because we have no idea how to go about anything, really: careers, relationships… everything about adulthood all seem impossibly hard to navigate. Master of None explores many of these sources of anxiety, but it was only during the Parents episode that I found myself getting choked up, and wishing I could be a better offspring. I suspect that the friends I was watching the show with — a Pakistani-American and a Chinese-American — were also tearing up a bit, but I was too engrossed (and embarrassed) to check.
Monday, February 15, 2016
Why should I respect your stupid opinion?
by Emrys Westacott
You have been called for jury service. The trial is complex and much hangs on the relative credibility of different witnesses, particularly those offering expert testimony regarding whether a certain medicine is likely to produce aggressive behavior as one of its side effects. A professional psychiatrist called by the defense testifies that in his opinion this effect is very likely. During cross examination, however, the wily prosecuting counsel manages to unearth a surprising, seemingly irrelevant, but nonetheless startling fact about this “expert”: he believes that aliens from space landed in the Nevada desert around 1965 and now effectively control all branches of government using advanced mind-control technology. The “expert” has in fact published several articles arguing for his views in the journal Alien Watch, and is a founding member of MASA (Mankind Against Space Aliens).
When the jury eventually retire to deliberate, it is not long before these beliefs become the focus of attention. One juror refers to the expert as “that nutcase who believes in UFOs.” Another calls him a “crank.” A third describes him as “cuckoo.” Inevitably, his beliefs about aliens damage the credibility of his other testimony in the eyes of some jurors, even though he undoubtedly has the requisite qualifications to be considered a legitimate expert on the side effects of certain medicines.One juror, however, playing the role of Henry Fonda in Twelve Angry Men, resists this wave of skepticism. “Did anyone notice,” she says, “that the expert called by the prosecution wore a crucifix around her neck? This ‘expert' may well believe that a man called Jesus walked on top of the sea, changed water into wine, came back to life after being executed, and ascended to heaven on a cloud. I hate to be awkward, but to my way of thinking these beliefs are even more incredible than the idea that space invaders landed in the desert. After all, the belief about aliens—unlike orthodox Christianity–doesn't assume anything supernatural or contrary to the scientific view of nature.”
Listening to the debate, you feel yourself pulled in two directions. On the one hand, you can't help agreeing with those inclined to question the judgment of someone who believes the government is controlled by aliens from outer space. On the other hand, supposing for the sake of the argument that your general outlook on the world is thoroughly secular, you sympathize with the view that many orthodox religious beliefs are just as implausible. So you find yourself astride a paradox.
Noticing Aspects
by Carl Pierer
Fig. 1
Part II of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, also known as Philosophy of Psychology – A Fragment, contains a lengthy treatment of perception. He begins by drawing a distinction:
Two uses of the word “see”.
The one: “What do you see there?” – “I see this” (and then a description, a drawing, a copy). The other: “I see a likeness between these two faces” – let the man I tell this to be seeing the faces as clearly as I do myself.
The importance is the categorical difference between the two ‘objects' of sight. (PI, p. 193)
The first ‘object' of perception is a something, an entity that is being perceived. It can be reproduced by drawing a picture of it. The second ‘object' is more puzzling. Where is it to be located? What does it mean to see the likeness? It cannot be located within the object of perception (what is seen in the first sense), for it is a different way of seeing. Indeed, it is not something that can be externalised. I cannot show the likeness I see to the interlocutor. Wittgenstein continues:
I contemplate a face, and then suddenly notice its likeness to another. I see that it has not changed; and yet I see it differently. I call this experience “noticing an aspect”. (Ibid.)
This process, where one perception falls into an entirely different one, is not simply a distortion happening in rare scenarios but ubiquitous. For example, when the airplane takes off and I am looking out the window, I can see how the cars and houses get smaller and smaller. At first, they have their normal significance, they look just like cars, like houses. But suddenly, a change happens, and this picture falls into a different one, where cars and houses look unreal. They now look more like toys than the life-sized objects they are. My perspective has changed somehow and I can no longer see the house as one I could enter.
Wittgenstein's own example is that of the “duck-rabbit” (Fig. 1), the familiar picture from Gestalt psychology. We notice distinctly how we move from seeing a duck to seeing a rabbit. This is only part of its paradoxical air, for at the same time we are under no illusion that the picture itself has changed. What changes, when we see the shift from duck to rabbit, is nothing in the picture.The visual input we receive from the picture remains constant, yet the figure is altogether different. We might even exclaim ‘now it's a rabbit', which only furthers the paradox. For we employ such sentences to denote a true, observable perceptual change (for instance, when the picture of a duck is replaced by a picture of a rabbit in a film). Nonetheless, we are also inclined to utter it in this context, where the visual input remains constant. What, if anything, is it then that changes? And why does the change occur?
An Almost Love
by Mathangi Krishnamurthy
So, are you bumping into me tonight? What I mean is, did you get my email? About Joy James' talk on the racialization that constitutes practices of incarceration in the US? I think you'll find it interesting. It's anthropology and critical theory I know, but it's also a philosophical question, you know. We could sit together, and then we could talk about it. Like we talked on the bus last week, when I bumped into you. It's a wonder how much can be implied in a five minute conversation. You dug your elbow into my arm and said something funny. I think you were making fun of me, but I couldn't quite tell; I haven't quite gotten the hang of your accent yet. So I laughed that big laugh of mine meant to indicate that I am a fun girl, and that I get exactly what you mean, but really, I didn't hear a word. Anyway, like I said, we could talk about it.
CATSPEAK
by Brooks Riley
Chantal Joffe, Victoria Miro, Mayfair, London
by Sue Hubbard
Monday, February 8, 2016
Creationism, homoeopathy, and why we are all irrational; On reading Will Storr’s The Heretics
by Paul Braterman
Storr starts by telling us of his meeting with John Mackay, a Young Earth creationist, who was talking to an appreciative audience in a small town in Queensland. This seems to have been his first encounter with the full-blooded version of modern creationism, according to which evolution science and old Earth geology are fundamentally unsound, and the Bible is the infallible word of God. At the end of Genesis 1, God speaks of His work as being “very good”. “Very good” must mean no pain, and no death. It follows that tigers and tyrannosaurs coexisted happily with Adam and Eve in Eden, all of them adhering to strictly vegetarian diets, until the Fall went and spoiled everything. And “Tonight, the choice you have to face up to is this – do you put your faith in Darwin, who wasn't there? Or in God, who was?”
Mackay claims to be able to feel the presence of God. What turned him against evolution, he says, was a biology textbook he was reading as an adolescent, which followed its exposition of evolution with a chapter advocating atheism. Unfortunately, he does not tell us which textbook he was referring to, giving me no way of checking his perspective, although such a chapter would of course be completely out of place in a biology textbook.
Mackay's audience were universally sympathetic, a fact that Storr observed with bemusement that turned to dismay when, the following Sunday, Mackay mounted the pulpit to deliver a scathing attack on the wickedness of homosexuals and the compromising Churches who countenance their activities.
Monday Poem
A bunch of frogs gather to watch a video about worms on a cell phone…
Posted by Daily Picks and Flicks on Wednesday, September 24, 2014
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Like Frogs
.
we congregate
like frogs before a video of food
piling on— poking, jabbing, jumping
at the mysterious fabric of reality
.
Jim Culleny
2/3/16
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Public Shaming and the Disposable Society (子曰、君子不器)
by Leanne Ogasawara
“When I was an undergraduate, on my way to first day of quantum mechanics class, I was riding up in the elevator with the professor and several (male) students. The professor kindly informed us that this would be the class that “separated the men from the boys.”
Astronomy is really making the news these days. Except it's not for the reasons one would hope or expect; for the headlines keep rolling in one after the other about “astronomy's snowballing cases of sexual harassment.”
Yikes!
As a woman, obviously, I think matters like this should never be covered up and that process must be put in place in universities to deal with transgressions. In fact, I go a step further and believe that as “exemplars,” anyone who is in a teaching profession should be held up to the very highest moral standards.
Like most women, this is also not something that I am unfamiliar with either.
As an undergraduate at Berkeley in philosophy, I was one of the few women in the program, and I think philosophy has similar kinds of issues as we are seeing in astronomy. Even as an undergraduate it often felt like a kind of “boys club.” In Japan, too, in my twenties, I worked at Hitachi, ostensibly as a translator and interpreter; but in fact, as the only “girl” in the department, I spent all my time answering the phones and serving tea and stapling papers and tidying up.
I didn't stay long…
In many ways, “not staying long” is what has characterized my life.
From Andrew Jackson to Donald Trump: Chasing the White Working Class
Progressives, moderates, and even many conservatives are aghast at Donald Trump's populist appeal. As this cantankerous oaf flashes ever brighter in the political pan, they fret that his demagoguery might land him the Republican presidential nomination, and perhaps even carry him all the to White House.
I'm not worried about the prospect of a Hail to the Trump scenario and never have been. As far back as August, I opined on this very website that he has virtually no chance of becoming president. I still believe that. He lost to Ted Cruz in Iowa, just like I said he would. And I'm sticking with my prediction that he'll be done by the Ides of March. Should Trump actually make it to the Oval Office, I'll buy you all plane tickets to Canada, as promised.
That being said, it's certainly worth investigating the Trump phenomenon. After all, how are we to explain the dramatic success of this heinous cretin? How could this man, who is not just a walking punch line, but also thoroughly repulsive in almost every way, be so popular, not just on a silly reality TV show with a dumb catch phrase, but also in the supposedly serious world of presidential politics?
Three Moments in America’s Conversation on Race
Let’s consider three imaginative works where race is an issue. First we have Shakespeare’s The Tempest. It is not American, of course, but English. The character of Caliban, who may not even be human, marks the imaginative space the English used for understanding Africans. The play was written and performed at about the same time as Jamestown, Virginia, as first settled.
Then we move forward two and a half centuries to late 19th Century. America has established itself as an independent nation and fought its bloodiest war, the Civil War, over the status of the American sons and daughters of Caliban. We find Huck Finn fleeing his abusive father by rafting down the Mississippi with a runaway slave. Jim sure isn’t Shakespeare’s Caliban nor is Huck a Prospero. I conclude with a counter narrative from the early 20th Century, an African-American “toast”, as they’re called, about the sinking of the Titanic. Think of such oral narratives as antecedents of rap and hip-hop.