In today's world, no matter what you do, success seems to depend on how you project and market your ‘brand'. Surrounded constantly by advertisements, full of startling images and clever one-liners, it is only natural that most of us adopt the same vocabulary; painstakingly, we hone our physical and digital selves to come as close as possible to magazine perfection. When we practice our elevator pitches, we cast around for the catchiest phrases – those that will have the maximum staying power. As a theoretical physicist, I find myself quite at odds with this social phenomenon. When asked to describe the work that obsesses my thoughts, I have often caught myself searching for the mildest words I could possibly use in a given context. For instance, when I talk about the 10 dimensional space-time mandated by superstring theory, I will never refer to the invisible (or unfamiliar) six as ‘higher' dimensions, but instead by the physicists' preferred term of ‘extra' dimensions.
At first, it might seem like I am merely splitting hairs, but if you think about it, the word ‘higher' carries connotations of hierarchy – as if there are some dimensions that are more exalted than others. ‘Extra' sounds – to me, at least – far more down to earth. It is a matter-of-fact way of referring to something that is left over – in this case, from the visible world.
It was an unconscious reflex, this definite preference for one term over the other, but even as I first became aware of it, I knew instantly why it was so important to me. The ideas I deal with are so far removed from every day experience, that they can quite easily be made to sound fantastic. It takes very little skill to package them as exotic, almost mystical, phenomena bordering on the supernatural. But these ideas are worthy of more. They deserve to get attention not for their sensational packaging, but for the depth and beauty of what lies within.
And so, with that long preamble, let me now introduce you to these extra dimensions.
Superstring theory has been called the holy grail of physics, because it performs the theorist's ultimate objective of reducing the multiplicity of phenomena in this vast universe down to a single cause. The rich diversity of matter and forces we perceive, are merely the manifestations of the range of motion of quivering, fluttering, infinitesimal strings. The modes of oscillation of a string appear to us as distinct particles, and the gymnastics strings perform, as they split and recombine, are interpreted by us as particle interactions. Since string theory reduces all we know to a common origin, it also – as a corollary – unifies general relativity and quantum mechanics, two theories that were wildly successful on their own, but had been thought for decades to have ‘irreconcilable differences'. The price string theory demands in return for executing this coup, is that it must live in ten dimensions. The mathematics is simply inconsistent otherwise.
India's art heritage dates back several thousand years. Through the ages Indian art was for the most part figurative and highly stylized. Think of the Tanjore bronzes, the Buddhist cave paintings, the stylish Mughal and Rajput miniatures. Regional folk art, murals and fabric designs too bore distinctive distortions and motifs that identified geographic locations and specific traditions. It was not until the Victorian era that decorative realistic art (I think of it as calendar art) became popular among the art aficionados of India. In the early part of the 20th century, a group of artists in Santiniketan (the university founded by Tagore) and Calcutta began to break away from that developing trend of photographic realism. Trained in western methods, they looked eastward to draw inspiration from Buddhist, Mughal and Japanese paintings. The European style that influenced them most was that of the 19th century impressionists. The movement, loosely known as the “Bengal School,” ushered in the era of Indian contemporary art of the last century. The focus was on rural and urban scenes, mythology and politics. The result was a vibrant homegrown art movement which continues to thrive.
Shown here are ten modern Indian artists whose works span the decades from the 1930s to the present. Some of them are widely known, others not so much. This is a visual tour and not a conventional blog post. My commentary and analysis are sparse (not that I know very much more). Readers can follow the link to an artist's biography from his or her name. The choice of artists and art work is my own. Except for one, I have had the privilege of seeing the original work of all of the artists featured.
(Be sure to click on a photo to see its pop up image)
1. As a personal tribute,Abani Sen is my first pick in the line up of artists. He was my art teacher who taught me to draw and to look at light and shadow with a discerning eye. He belonged to the Bengal School and used ink, water color and oil with equal facility. A very fine artist and a dedicated popular teacher, he was well reputed within the informed art circle of Delhi and Calcutta but not so much in the art market.
best of all seeming impossibilities, of all the unlikelihoods at the heart of utopias,
is the slim hope of Ponce de León
(the golden nut of Eden’s tree to hoard and hold and keep alive, like the fire-tenders of prehistory, an ember no matter how small of coals hot and red of passion, a mind transparent as the whirr of hummingbird wings, firm as tenon in mortise, expansive as a new thought balloon, determined and fearless as a road-crossing tortoise at the pinnacle of noon)
—the will to keep lit a lasting blaze of moments that were hourless dayless monthless yearless and clear of haze .
American Sniper has been both a wildly successful and wildly controversial film. While moviegoers have made the film the highest grossing war movie of all time, cultural critics have alternatively lauded and criticized the film for what they see as either a stirring depiction of a soldier's travails or a galling piece of jingoistic propaganda. Neither interpretation, however, hits upon the real takeaway of American Sniper, which is that unprovoked shark attacks off the Pacific coast are becoming a more prevalent threat for surfers, swimmers, and regular folks just trying to enjoy the water. It may seem counter-intuitive that a war film set in the desert could comment on shark attacks in the ocean, but then again, the actual Iraq war was sort of counter-intuitive too.
On its most literal level, American Sniper is a film about Chris Kyle, a real-life sniper and Navy SEAL. Kyle, portrayed by a beefed up Bradley Cooper, is enraged by the terrorist attacks he witnesses on television and subsequently decides to join the American Navy at thirty years old. Despite his advanced age, Kyle quickly becomes the “most lethal sniper in U.S. military history,” and the passionate debates about the film have centered around the depiction of how his transition from concerned, freedom-loving American to red-white-and-blue killing machine is depicted. For many right-leaning commentators, the film realistically describes the struggles of an honorable soldier putting himself in harm's way for his comrades and country. For many left-leaning commentators, the film is an overt piece of propaganda, a nuance-less film that refuses to acknowledge that there are regular people living in Iraq, people who don't necessarily spend their days fantasizing about blowing up Apache helicopters with RPGs.
In the past few weeks I have heard and read a number of impassioned responses to Clint Eastwood's “American Sniper”, a film based on the memoir of Chris Kyle, a Navy SEAL with the highest number of confirmed sniper kills in U.S. history. A common assertion that amateur and professional reviewers are arguing is if the film glorifies an unjust war. This focus of the debate is puzzling because I believe that few Americans are clinging to the notion that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past decade and a half have been morally justified, or even logical. Yet, the “War on Terror” continues to be divisive—one of the points of tension is the way most civilians view the armed forces who fought and continue to fight in the name of American interests overseas. What the U.S. still has the ability to constructively consider is how to reconcile this war and the men and women who are fighting it with an American society that is sharply divided in its opinions. This is largely because the armed forces make up such a small percentage of the population that the majority of Americans are far enough removed to think of them in absolute terms, rather than as actual people. As James Fallows writes in his piece in the most recent issue of The Atlantic, “Among older Baby Boomers, those born before 1955, at least three-quarters have had an immediate family member—sibling, parent, spouse, child—who served in uniform. Of Americans born since 1980, the Millennials, about one in three is closely related to anyone with military experience.” This is a barrier that it is necessary to address before Americans can intelligently debate the role the U.S. will have in Iraq and Syria in the coming months, specifically how American forces should be engaging with the Islamic State, or any other extremist groups, from the air or on the ground.
I was gonna write something about the Clint Eastwood film American Sniper. Seems like a topic of the Now. Something the internetting public can really grab onto and scream about.
U.S. sniper Chris Kyle: Troubled war veteran of humble origins whose experiences are a sharp prism for viewing America's exploitative class divides and tragic foreign policy, or a remorseless, racist killing machine who's murderous life and violent death reflect much of what's wrong with the nation?
That kinda thing. People love that sort of stuff. Gets ‘em all jacked up, clickety-click. Plus, I just saw the movie and have some ideas of my own. But you know what?
Fuck it.
I don't wanna talk about moral ambiguity. I don't wanna dissect global politics. I don't wanna filter through the finer shades of artistic vision, intention, and reception. I don't wanna delve into any of those abstractions. I don't wanna tap society's pulse and jump on the topic du jour. You know why?
Because life is meaningless.
As I sit down in front of this keyboard, I can't bring myself to care about what 3QD readers want or would enjoy reading. I can't be bothered to speculate on what type of essay might once again garner me a citation by Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish or land me back in the Huffington Post.
None of that matters. Because nothing matters. Nothing at all.
Meaning and truth are just illusions that humans chatter about incessantly because they can't stomach the sheer meaninglessness of it all.
The Earth is a snowball of cosmic debris. The possibility of life on it is a longshot accident that came in like a broken down nag in the 10th race at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens (a real dump if you've never been). To consider the evolution of single cell floaters into multi-cell life forms is a far more boring prospect than even the droning monotone of the dullest high school biology teacher could suggest. Just that jump took over two and half billion years.
The rest of it? Some dinosaurs, some meteorites, some mammals, and us.
Thoughts on the breath and depth of knowledge in the information age.
Last year, I finally completed my Master's in Literature. I'd started way back in 2006 but, midway, I became the editor of a magazine, and I never found the time to take my second-year exams. Not that I had much time when the exams dawned in April, my last chance to retain my (great) first-year score. Perhaps I shouldn't be admitting this but, considering I read the syllabus four days before they started, I did an MA-by-Wiki and by watching the movies made on the books I should have read.
Finish I did, and fabulously. And, while part of me is proud of my genius and is jumping for joy at having worked the system, this has also been bothering the jigyasu* in me no end. While I recognise awareness is not held in degrees or determined by exams, I wonder what knowledge, general and specific, means today.
GK: Who's To Say?
It brings me to a nugget of an idea that has stayed with me for years from, of all things, Bridget Jones's Diary (probably book). Bridget justifies not knowing a piece of common information by presenting a counterpoint—when there is so much information available to us, what is ‘general knowledge' anymore? I am reminded of this often: at a random get-together just the other day, two friends of mine met for the first time. X, an activist, started raging against Monsanto. “What's Monsanto?” asked Y-the-fashion-writer. “You don't know Monsanto?!” he replied aghast. It was a bit tense and judgemental, but the evening moved on. Later that night, he decided to show us a video that he had recently chanced upon on YouTube. It was a homemade vid of a white girl rapping. “It's so cool,” X said awestruck, “the way she's talking-singing so fast…” “Erm, yeah, that's what rap is,” said Y, “and this is not even good!” And he said (I kid you not): “Rap?! What's that?”
In line with the criticisms of IQ tests, one must ask who determines general knowledge? What is relevant to whom? Today, when ‘do research' means ‘Google it', when we're bombarded with more information than we ever have been before, when our short-term memories are suffering from the lack of micro-moments, where does the Lowest Common Denominator of information lie?
This post, which will be brief as my posts go, consists of three parts. The second is a letter that my friend and colleague, Charlie Keil, has sent to the Vatican where he hopes it will come to the attention of Pope Francis. He urges us to send the letter as well. Charlie tells me that the second part of the letter, in which he speaks for the creativity of children, is the heart of the appeal. The first part, urging a peace process, is necessary for the second to flourish.
I’ve placed some contextual information before and after Keil’s letter and, as you can see, I’ve larded the post with photographs of children.
The Roman Catholic Church is a Remarkable Institution
It must be one of the oldest corporate bodies in existence and, of course, it precedes the existence of the nation state, a corporate form that now dominates world affairs. Other religions are older than Christianity, Judaism of course, but also Hinduism and Buddhism and others. But none of them are organized in the way that the Roman Catholic Church is.
The Roman Catholic Church is organized as a hierarchy that extends from the top, the Papal See in the Vatican, throughout the world to individual parishes, with various levels of organization in between. Other forms of Christianity have a similar organization, but not all of them. Most religions aren’t like that at all. They operate at the local and perhaps regional level, but without world-wide coordination on matters of doctrine.
There is an obvious sense in which the Catholic Church is the foundation of Western Civilization. Before Far West Asia, so to speak, had come to think of itself as Europe, it thought of itself as Christendom. The European nations didn’t exist. What existed was a bunch of Germanic tribes, cities, medieval fiefdoms, and regional empires.
And the Catholic Church. It preserved the books of the ancient world. And its liturgical music, descended from the chants of Jewish ritual, created states of mind conducive to contemplation and thought. It is in that context that Europe began to form itself and become the West.
Maybe the Catholic Church can now help the world to move out beyond its dependence on the nation-state as the organizational backbone of world affairs. It was there before the nations arose. Perhaps it will remain when nations have become obsolete. The job now is more modest, to bring the nations to embrace peace.
Jerwood Gallery Hastings, East Sussex, TN34 3DW, until 12th April 2015
by Sue Hubbard
Chantal Joffe made her reputation as a painter with work inspired by pornography and fashion, based on images torn from magazines. She is friends with the fashion designer Stella McCartney, has painted Kate Moss and Lara Stone, collaborated with the fashion photographer, Miles Aldridge, painting his wife the model, Kristen McMenamy, in her Islington studio, while Aldridge filmed the process. She enjoys what clothes do to the body, the excuse they give her to paint zig-zags, polka dots and Matisse-like patterns. Her work, mostly of women, questions how images are constructed and presented, subtly challenging the objectification of the female form, wrenching it back from the traditional ‘male gaze'. Recently she's moved more towards painting friends and family – her daughter Esme, her niece Moll and her partner, the painter, Dan Coombs. The results are works of disquieting intimacy. It's no surprise to learn that she has long been a fan of the emotionally jagged photographs of Diana Arbus, whose studies she describes as having: “everything about the portrait of a human that you can ever want.”
Joffe was born in 1969 in St. Albans, a small town in Vermont, in the US. When she was 13 years old her family moved to England and she went to school in London. But it was not until her foundation course at Camberwell School of Art that she began to find herself by ‘discovering Soutine, and all that paint.' Now she has been invited to show at the Jerwood Gallery in Hastings, the beautiful seafront gallery with a view over the beach full of working boats. Beside the Seaside features a number of new and unseen works made especially for this show and reflects her long-standing links with Hastings where she frequently visits family who live in the town. She often draws on the beach, though photographs commonly provide a starting point. She's not interested in literal truth but rather in what goes on under the surface, the awkward emotions that are held in check and frequently remain unconscious, only to leak through the publicly presented face. Just outside the main gallery is her 2008 painting of Anne Sexton with Joy. An American confessional poet, writing in the 1950s, Sexton was attractive, ambitious, manic depressive and suicidal. Like Arbus she penetrated shallow and socially conventional facades to reveal a brew of anger and suicidal thoughts. Here she is shown with her daughter and we can see just how imbalanced that relationship is. Joy looks away as her glamorous mother clings to her, voracious and needy.
How could Joseph's brothers have plotted to kill him? Why would they, and why stop amidst a frenzy of murderous intent? Was fratricide common in biblical times? Surely the story of Cain and Abel, whether it is factual or not, appeared with some historical context in which jealousy led to unbounded anger, and before the perpetrator could regain his senses, the regrettable act was complete. Intentional killings—be they foolishly impassioned manslaughter, premeditated murder or political assignation—continue to occupy our fascination today. A few thousand years later, and we're not all that different. What can we learn from this ancient story?
Perhaps a reading of Genesis was meant, at least in part, to provide an opportunity to reflect on the power of envy before it was too late. What thinking person who read the Bible would choose to become Cain in his own personal narrative? Later in the Book of Genesis, Jacob's older sons manage to stop short of killing their brother, and while throwing him in a dry cistern and selling him off to slavery was nothing to write home about—indeed they did not tell their father what they had done—at least they spared Joseph's life.
My problem with the story was that the brothers' jealousy motive never really made sense to me. Ok, their father Jacob's thoughtless favoritism for a younger son not born of their mother would certainly breed some resentment, but even with the ‘coat of many colors,' and Joseph's self-aggrandizing dreams, the plot remained simply too thin to support a murderous rage… that is, until I understood a couple of key words in the Hebrew I was not able to understand in English translation. Once I saw what I had previously missed, there was no going back. The meaning of the sequence of events in the whole story fell into place.
“Meaning of Heb. Uncertain”
The footnote “Meaning of Heb. uncertain” appears dozens of times. In spite of all the learning, teaching and preaching rooted in the stories of the biblical narrative over the past few thousand years, we know that some of the meaning has been lost in translation along the way. How does one know when to be uncertain? Let's face it; in the Bible as in life, there may be much more uncertainty than we are comfortable admitting to ourselves. Ambiguity reigns in a world that is subject to multiple interpretation. Ancient Hebrew is so foreign to modern readers that there are simply many passages where the translation relies on interpretations, rather than on a verifiably definitive meaning of the text itself. There are many phrases where wordplay carries the deeper meaning of a passage, and the unfortunate reader of a translated text cannot even see the double entendre that may well be the literary jewel of a certain passage.
It should come as no surprise that we cannot easily render ancient Hebrew into modern English. It can also be difficult to render ancient Hebrew into modern Hebrew. It's not that the meaning of an occasional word is uncertain. The very fact that these words came to us via hand written text on parchment scrolls is enough to suggest that we might easily misunderstand some of the words and much of the context. We really ought to have a bit less hubris about our own abilities to grasp the meaning of the ancient past.
Translators are interpreters who make choices for less informed readers. Some of those choices render the text in ways that alter or limit the meaning of the original. This is even true when we look at contemporary texts translated from one widely used and easily understood language to another. How much more so, must this be the case when we read translations of ancient texts? From spelling and usage to grammar and syntax to style and circumstances, we have to accept that we can neither see nor hear the text in quite the same way it was seen and heard a few millennia ago, and the differences are not always clear.
Genesis 37; 1-2
Here is the King James Version (KJV) rendering of Genesis 37:1-2 “And Jacob dwelt in the land wherein his father was a stranger, in the land of Canaan. These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brethren; and the lad was with the sons of Bilhah, and with the sons of Zilpah, his father's wives: and Joseph brought unto his father their evil report.”
Here is the Jewish Publication Society (JPS) version: “Now Jacob was settled in the land where his father had sojourned, the land of Canaan. This, then, is the line of Jacob: At seventeen years of age, Joseph tended the flocks with his brothers, as a helper to the sons of his father's wives Bilhah and Zilpah. And Joseph brought bad reports of them to their father.” In these and in many other Christian and Jewish translations, there are both subtle and significant differences.
I want to focus here on three key words. As I see it, they clarify the reasons for the intensity of the brothers enduring anger. They are: “na'ar,” “et” and “dibah.”
In the case of the word “na'ar,” both of the translations above and others completely miss a possible instance of double entendre. Simply by putting the accent on one syllable or the other, the word could either be the noun for ‘young person' or the verb for vocalizing an aggressive animal sound.* Take them together, given the possibility that the double meaning is intended, and we have young Joseph braying like a jackass or growling like a dog, barking orders at his older brothers, taking advantage of his privileged position in his father's eye's.
The preposition “et” could indicate that he is with his brothers, or that he is doing something to his brothers. It would be nice if Joseph was just a helpful lad, herding with his brothers, but it would be out of step with the rest of the story. Nothing else in the text supports that reading. It makes much more sense that he is he is 'herding his brothers,' as a simple reading of the Hebrew text suggests. He is treating them as they treat the animals, taunting and maybe even threatening them. He is lording over them, as his dream portends.
The report Joseph brings to Jacob is labeled “dibah,” which could mean ‘bad' (according to JPS) or ‘evil' (according to KJV.) If it is bad, is that because of the quality of the report or the way it was delivered? If it is evil, who is responsible for that? Is it a report on the evil brothers, or is Joseph the evil one, intentionally delivering a slanderous report? If the brothers found out that Joseph provided Jacob with an intentionally false report to increase his own standing in their father's eyes, this clearly strengthens the case for their resentment boiling into a rage.
Here is an alternate translation of the second verse of Genesis 37:
Joseph at seventeen years
was herding his brothers
with the flock
And he brays
at the sons of Bilha and Zilpah, his father's wives
and Joseph comes with an slanderous report to their father
יוסף בן-שבע-עשרה שנה
היה רעה את-אחיו
בצאן
והוא נער
את-בני בלהה ואת-בני זלפה נשי אביו
ויבא יוסף את-דבתם רעה אל-אביהם
Fallen Hero Rising
Jacob does not see through Joseph's act until his favorite son dreams that his parents will bow down to him. At this notion Jacob becomes livid, finally castigating Joseph. It is no coincidence that in the next passage of the story Jacob sends Joseph into the hands of his brothers. It is a set up, and Jacob is the one who put it in motion. As the opening of chapter 37 indicates in a slightly ambiguous way, 'these are Jacob's issues,' implying perhaps both the progeny and the problems with which they must all contend.^
It is worth remembering that Jacob didn't ‘start the fire.' He inherited his contentious family relationships. His parents, Isaac and Rebecca, taught him to set up his brother. Later his uncle Laban set him up, tricking him into marrying Leah before Rachel, and making him work for fourteen years as an indentured servant. Jacob later returns the favor, tricking Laban into losing much of his flock. Tricking and trapping each other seems to be the robust and irresistible inclination of this family. It is what they do, over and over again.
All of the archetypal characters in the Book of Genesis follow this arc of rising to become the hero of the narrative for a time, until they fall to the depths of disgraceful behavior. But Joseph is a new type of hero, with the opposite trajectory. He is the first and only character in the Genesis narrative to get off to a despicable beginning and then rise above himself without falling from greatness. After Joseph is thrown to the depths of the pit where he is almost left to die, the story continues and of our fallen hero begins to rise. The rest is history, or perhaps not, but that is a subject for a different day.
* Think of an English word such as ‘kid.' Figuring our whether it means a young human or a young goat, or the verb to tease in a playful way, is all a matter of context. Another example would be ‘ram' or ‘buck' which could be an animal or an aggressive action. In the case of ‘buck' the word can also be a proper name or slang for a dollar. A young buck might ram a kid, and you might have to read that passage more than a few times to figure out who is who and what is going on.
^ “These are Jacob's issues,” The Hebrew word “toldot” is a plural that refers to things that have been born of other things, in either a literal or a figurative manner. 'Toldot' is alternately rendered in English as generations, lineage, history, events, etc.
Barbarian that I am, my knowledge of the classic Latin poetry, excepting Ovid’s exilic Epistulae, and what bits of the Metamorphoses an English major might meet in footnotes to the Fairie Queene and Paradise Lost, amounts to no more than names on a timeline. Poets in a Landscape is the remedial introduction I needed. Scottish classicist Gilbert Highet (1906 – 1978) was one of the great critic/teacher/explainers on the Columbia faculty, alongside Lionel Trilling, Jacques Barzun, and Mark Van Doren.
Highet starts with biographical criticism of an admirable suavity. Cyril Connolly, another devotee of sensuously contemplative Latinity, said that with each poet Highet succeeded “in finding the man in the style.” Next, Highet invokes the consequent canon. He shows Goethe and Byron, Browning and Baudelaire, Eliot and Pound as they summon, echo or emulate the poets of the early empire. And as its title suggests, Poets in a Landscape is also a travelogue. In 1956 Highet and his wife, the spy thriller writer Helen MacInnes, made a tour of the conjectural birthplaces, spurious tombs and excavated villas of the Roman poets.
This piece is part of an on-going series of blogposts from the frontlines of Startup Tunnel, a new incubator based in New Delhi. You might also want to check out dispatches one, two, three and four.
Having commissioned a new suit of armor, the emperor Akbar was now in the process of inspecting it. Installed upon a stone mannequin in the armory workshop, black bell metal and brass accents gleamed back upon the badshah and his vazir Birbal. Fresh from recent campaigns, the emperor now said he wanted to be sure of the quality of protection it offered. And so he called for a lance, with which he reared back and then charged upon the mannequin. He was able, after a few tries, to pierce all the small slits of the helmet. He asked for a sword and tore apart the subtle slits between the body armor and the helmet. He asked for a mace and went at the now headless mannequin and cracked the chain metal links all around its torso. Even now that it had fallen upon the floor of the workshop, Akbar was still working out his PTSD on that prone suit of armor and the lifeless dummy within. When he was done, he looked up and declared it to be a lousy suit, practically the same as wearing nothing at all.
Perhaps you already know the end of this parable? Perhaps you have heard some other version of it? I'm not sure when I first encountered it, either at the back of an Amar Chitra Katha or else perhaps among a collection of stories from Iran. Either way, it has stuck in the mind, long awaiting the unraveling. There is something so shocking about seeing a new suit of armor being destroyed like that, something like a medieval crash test. One knows not what to make of what is going on, nor even how to respond to Akbar's judgement. Is a suit of armor really useless if it cannot survive many minutes of the untamed rage of a battle hardened king?
The badshah is about turn his fury onto his smith, when Birbal suggests that they give him a sharp warning and a week to build another prototype. The next week, when Akbar returns to the workshop to inspect the new piece he finds Birbal already there, wearing the emperor's battle armor and spoiling for sport. It is new and improved, he says, have at me and I'll show you. Akbar is eventually goaded into picking up a lance. He makes straight for Birbal, who steps lithely aside, pulls the lance forward, tripping Akbar forward and landing him on all four. Now that someone's wearing it, he grins, it's begun working pretty well.
On the face of it, this would seem to be a parable about how an artifact changes with use — an early instance of user-centered thinking about human artifacts. But there's something a bit tricky about how a suit of armor is best used and what its function really is. Birbal's response is cryptic, and it forces you to think about the whole the point of battle armor: it must not only resist onslaught, but allow its wearer to move about and conduct battle. This little fable sticks in the mind is because of the way it shifts between offence and defence, between object and agent. That little shift of the mind, between a closed and essentially reactive reference frame and a horizon of open possibilities is sudden and complete. It cannot arise gradually and it has no continuity with that earlier way of thinking.
You will remember, reader, that I've signed up to share a more prosaic kind of story, about the setting up of a new kind of business in a more prosaic time in a global city whose air is already thick with pollution and corruption and crony capitalism.
In his Contra Academicos, Augustine discusses a fragment of Cicero's Academica in which Cicero advances a unique argument for skepticism. Cicero's argument is unique in that it derives, ironically, from a positive epistemic assessment of human judgments. Skeptical arguments usually proceed from negative assessments of human cognition according to which humans cannot tell the true from the false, cannot articulate their reasons, are prone to unreflective dogmatizing, and so on. Those negative assessments are then taken to yield the skeptical outlook. Cicero's argument for skepticism, by contrast, derives from a positive assessment of a subset of human judgments. Let us call it the Red Ribbon Argument (or the Argument from Second Place):
The second prize is given to the Academic (skeptical) wise person by all the self-declared sages from the other schools, since they must obviously claim the first prize for themselves. A persuasive conclusion one can draw from this is that he is right to take the first place in his own judgment given that he has the second place in the judgment of all the others.
Cicero starts from a regular observation about dogmatism: those committed to a view become not only invested in their view, but also less capable of critically reflecting on it. We often form our own theoretical, political, and religious alliances well before we have thoroughly surveyed and critically compared all of the plausible options. That is, we make our allegiances first and critically examine later. As Cicero notes elsewhere in the Academica:
All other people . . . are held in close bondage placed upon them before they were able to judge what doctrine was best, . . . they form judgments about matters as to which they know nothing at the most incompetent time in life, either under the guidance of some friend or the from the first harangue from the first lecture they attend, and cling as to a rock to whatever theory are carried to by stress or weather.
Hence we might say that we are serially confirmationally biased. As we are committed to our beliefs, and loyal to our doctrines, we tend to seek evidence that supports them. And yet we formed these allegiances with almost no judgment at all! And so, Cicero observes, we will of course assign our own view first place when asked to rank all of the views. But this method of ranking obviously is not reliable. And the widespread conflict between votes for first place is testament to it.
So our votes for first place are unreliable. And when we compare the competing views to our own, we likely will succumb to similar distortions; the competing views will be rejected simply on the grounds that they are incompatible with our own view. So our ranking of the competing doctrines against our own are epistemically polluted as well. However, our assessments of the merits of the competing views relative to each other tend not to involve such distortions. Thus Cicero predicts that when enthusiasts of a particular view are asked what the second best view is, they will judge more clearly and less prejudicially. The interesting thought is that the skepticism has massive support as the second best view. According to almost all perspectives, skepticism is the best of the incorrect views.
through the new white sheet of this day’s blank uncertainty it shows as lines of shadow
the absoluteness of the leaf before is now unclear
and as I look ahead and let those pages slip beneath my thumb not only are those leaves all deaf and dumb they turn to mist and fade and fail and disappear
Everyone learns about Pascal's Triangle when they are young. But I, at least, didn't learn all the wonders contained in the Triangle. Indeed, we're still discovering new things!
To construct the Triangle is easy enough: you start with 1's down the outside edges and each interior number is gotten by adding together the two numbers just above it. So the third number on the sixth line is a 10 because that's the sum of 4 and 6.
Warning! Actually we will say that 10 is the second number in the fifth line. For reasons which will soon become clear, we will choose to start with zero when we count rows and columns of the Triangle. For example, the second number of the fourth line is a 6.
With the addition rule in hand it's off to the races: the Triangle goes on forever and you can calculate as many rows as your patience allows.
The first 10 rows of the Triangle [1].
Pascal introduced the Triangle in 1653 in Traité du triangle arithmétique as part of his investigation into probability and counting problems. Questions like “If I want to choose two people out of a group of four, how many possible pairs are there?” or “What's the probability of drawing a full house when dealt five cards from a well mixed deck of cards?”. Indeed, Pascal and Fermat essentially invented probability in a series of letters they exchanged around this time. You can see the Pascal's original triangle here.
What does the Triangle have to do with probability? Well, if you want to choose k objects out of a group of n possibilities, then the number of possible choices is precisely the kith number on the nth row of the triangle. Remember, for positions in the Triangle we always count starting from zero! Using this rule we see that there are exactly 6 ways to choose two people out of a group of four. And since 84 is the third number in the ninth row of the triangle, it must be that there are 84 ways to choose three people out of a group of nine. Once you can compute these numbers it's a short step to computing all sorts of probabilities.
Research institutions in the life sciences engage in two types of regular scientific meet-ups: scientific seminars and lab meetings. The structure of scientific seminars is fairly standard. Speakers give Powerpoint presentations (typically 45 to 55 minutes long) which provide the necessary scientific background, summarize their group's recent published scientific work and then (hopefully) present newer, unpublished data. Lab meetings are a rather different affair. The purpose of a lab meeting is to share the scientific work-in-progress with one's peers within a research group and also to update the laboratory heads. Lab meetings are usually less formal than seminars, and all members of a research group are encouraged to critique the presented scientific data and work-in-progress. There is no need to provide much background information because the audience of peers is already well-acquainted with the subject and it is not uncommon to show raw, unprocessed data and images in order to solicit constructive criticism and guidance from lab members and mentors on how to interpret the data. This enables peer review in real-time, so that, hopefully, major errors and flaws can be averted and newer ideas incorporated into the ongoing experiments.
During the past two decades that I have actively participated in biological, psychological and medical research, I have observed very different styles of lab meetings. Some involve brief 5-10 minute updates from each group member; others develop a rotation system in which one lab member has to present the progress of their ongoing work in a seminar-like, polished format with publication-quality images. Some labs have two hour meetings twice a week, other labs meet only every two weeks for an hour. Some groups bring snacks or coffee to lab meetings, others spend a lot of time discussing logistics such as obtaining and sharing biological reagents or establishing timelines for submitting manuscripts and grants. During the first decade of my work as a researcher, I was a trainee and followed the format of whatever group I belonged to. During the past decade, I have been heading my own research group and it has become my responsibility to structure our lab meetings. I do not know which format works best, so I approach lab meetings like our experiments. Developing a good lab meeting structure is a work-in-progress which requires continuous exploration and testing of new approaches. During the current academic year, I decided to try out a new twist: incorporating literature and philosophy into the weekly lab meetings.
Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass 1965 My first intimation that food and romance were related
The connection between food and romance has become a cliché, especially around Valentine's Day when even the most desultory couple manages to build a castle with a box of chocolate. But the connection is in fact more profound than a once-a-year phantasm. In fact the connection is deeply rooted in history and seems virtually universal.
Perhaps the most vivid demonstration of a direct link between food and romantic emotion is Laura Esquivel's novel (and subsequent film), Like Water for Chocolate. In this magical realist tale of a turn-of-the-20th-century Mexican family, Tita, the youngest daughter, communicates her emotions to her family through the food she makes for them. As she prepares the food, passion, longing, anger or frustration are transmitted via the food to the people who eat the dish, who then experience similar emotions. When Tita falls in love with Pedro, the Quail in Rose Petal Sauce she serves at a family celebration induces lustful feelings in her sister Gertrudis, who abruptly leaves the ranch while making love to a soldier on the back of a horse. When Tita's older sister, Rosaura, marries Pedro instead, Tita sorrowfully prepares a wedding cake, which throws her guests into paroxysms of longing and melancholy before they become violently ill.
Of course, this novel is pure fantasy, but the idea that food directly stirs our emotions has a long history. The Ancient Greeks, Egyptians, and Romans all entertained folk wisdom that various foods could induce sexual arousal, and the medical science and philosophy of the day was used to support such beliefs. We get the word “aphrodisiac” from Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of romantic love. According to the myth, Aphrodite was born from the sea and came to shore on a scallop shell accompanied by Eros, thus giving birth to the idea that shellfish can arouse sexual desire in lovers. Aphrodite also thought sparrows were particularly lustful and thus Europeans for many centuries considered sparrows to be aphrodisiacs—demonstrating that it doesn't take much to persuade people when the promise of sex is involved.
Sunlight slices through the window, hitting her where she sleeps. Neighborhood kids, already going hard, squeal and play happily somewhere in the distance.
I've been sitting on a cedar chest at the foot of her bed, waiting. I know better than to nudge MK to consciousness; she has a nasty right hook and isn't afraid to use it. It's the one thing her ex-husband, Frankie, a boxer turned philanthropist made sure to teach her before he left with a younger woman. Hit hard and fast. Keep the thumb outside so you don't break it. She remembered that when she slugged him on his way out the door, suitcase in hand.
The lump shifts under the heavy quilt, silver hair peeking out from the top. “Get me some water, will you love?” She doesn't look at me exactly, just gestures in my general direction.
And so our visit begins. Requests for water. For aspirin. For a foot rub. Anything to take the throttle and pain away. I can almost hear her brains sloshing against the side of her skull, eyeballs threatening to eject themselves out of socket. Fog filling the room.
Mary Kelly is no stranger to the Hangover of the Gods.
She lives most days in this fog, not, however, restricted to just her bedroom but to most areas of her life. A heavy, dense fog that moves in and around people until they eventually disappear altogether.
Rumor has it she came out of the womb thirsty.
Not for the sweet, dewy breast milk most babies cried for, that poured freely from the aching breasts of their mothers. Not for the powdery formula that dissolved quickly and easily into water. Milk – natural, manufactured, fresh from the body or out of a canister – did not interest her. MK (as her friends would come to call her) wanted something harder.
This unquenchable thirst sent her into the throes of what would be named, for convenience, or to spare her well-meaning but severely in-the-weeds mother from certain judgments, Gas. Her face all red and scrunched. Arms and legs flailing about like some demonic force had overtaken them. Gas, the doctors would confer proudly and leave the room.
Her mother wept and paced the kitchen and prayed to all the Saints she could remember by name. Help this child. She knew how to cook and sew and even talk about boys but this. She did not know what to do with this.
The local barmaids would insist that a little Guinness should do the trick. “Needs some iron pumping through the veins. Babe's damn near shriveled up.”
Beer into bottle. Bottle to mouth. MK drank. And drank. She drank with a fierceness that frightened her mother and dazzled the other, more seasoned drinkers in the room. “For the love of God, would you look at that!”
Two pints later and mother and child, huddled together on a barstool, breathed in the sudden peacefulness that had, until then, been eluding them both.
