by Jessica Collins

My fear of flying, and a review of Christine Negroni’s, The Crash Detectives: Investigating the World’s Most Mysterious Air Disasters, Penguin Books 2016.

“Outside those aluminum walls the air is too thin to sustain coherent thought for more than a few seconds. Life itself is extinguished in minutes.”

Few air travelers consider this fact, comments Christine Negroni. Call me an exception. During the artificially long night of a trans-Pacific flight, alone in a cramped cabin of sleeping bodies thirty-nine thousand feet above the dismal ocean, insofar as coherent thought is a possibility even within the thin walls of an aluminum tube hurtling through the lower stratosphere, such facts are the only ones I can consider.

I am terrified of flying. I am also well aware of the irrationality of that fear. Yet my firm belief in the safety of air travel does nothing to allay it.

As a young child in Sydney in the 1960s, my parents would often take me and my sisters to the Skyline Drive-In Cinema in Frenchs Forest. We had a Holden EH station wagon, the back seat folded forward to accommodate makeshift beds for us kids to fall asleep in. I never slept a wink. I would quietly peer over the back of the front seat and through the windscreen of the car angled up at the huge screen: a further window into the mysterious world of adulthood. I was five and six years old. We had no television. Yet at the Drive-In I met James Bond. I saw Slim Pickens straddle an A-bomb and ride it to doom. And most memorably, one evening in 1964, I watched the movie which would plant the seed of my future fear.

“Fate is the Hunter” was directed by Ralph Nelson and starred Rod Taylor, Glenn Ford, and Nancy Kwan. The critics were not impressed. The New York Times said: “[It] is a film you may be sure will never be shown as an in-flight diversion in commercial planes. And it might be better for airline travelers if they never see it anyplace. For not only is it about the crash of a commercial plane, in which 53 are killed, but it also makes airplane travel look more chancy than taking a rocket into space.”

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by Hirsch Perlman

Now that classes at U.S. colleges and universities are well under way and we're closing in on election day, this is a good time for college students, faculty, and campus communities as a whole to remind ourselves what's at stake in November.

November could bring a real opportunity to re-instill the values of the humanities and a liberal arts education, thanks to Bernie Sanders bringing free tuition at public universities and student debt refinancing to the Clinton campaign platform. The differences couldn't be starker— the promise of tuition-free public universities vs. humanities-free Trumpenstein universities. Humanities students across the country will need to make themselves heard in the 2016 election if they want to ensure we don't see the dystopia of humanities free universities.

The recently announced bankruptcy of I.T.T. Technical Institutes after losing access to federal student loans seems to reach back to a moment early in the presidential campaign when Senator Marco Rubio took a swipe at the humanities in an unctuous call for more welders, i.e. a useful trade, and fewer philosophers (4th republican debate, Nov. 10 2015).

The false dichotomy of “useful vs. useless” areas of study haunts the backbreaking debt students now typically carry. If unprecedented tuition hikes of the last eight years weren't burden enough, there are now thousands of victims of deceptive recruitment strategies and predatory lending. For-profit trade-schools like University of Phoenix and Devry University are under increased scrutiny (maybe not enough). And others like Corinthian Colleges, I.T.T., and, yes, Trump University, have thankfully shut down.

Let's also remember that Philosophers indeed make more money than welders (as Alan Rappeport was quick to correct, NYTimes, November 12, “Philosophers Say View Of Their Skills Is Dated”). But these battle lines aren't all quantifiable and not everyone would agree that increased earning power is the most important promise of a college degree. Senator Rubio's comment still hit its anti-intellectual mark. Students and voters who already think we undoubtedly need welders (i.e. jobs) but decidedly do not need philosophers (i.e. elites), will be further outraged that public universities are squandering resources by supporting Philosophy departments.

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The Day I was My Sister’s Chaperone

Tall tan stranger
in safari suit flew
from Kenya to Kashmir

to woo her
at the Shalimar
she raised her sari

to her ankles
at the fountain’s edge
he rolled his cuffs

to his knees. Their
toes touched. She waved
and a glint on her finger

caught my curious eye.
“Amorous Lover”
sailed silently amidst
lotus buds and leaves,

the shikarawallah
slashing Dal Lake
with heart-shaped oar.

By Rafiq Kathwari, the first non-Irish recipient of the Patrick Kavanagh Award.

Twitter: @brownpundit
Website: rafiqkathwari.com

by Aasem Bakhshi

Of all the critiques of Descartes (d.1650), Bachelard’s stands out, as he has selected those principles of Cartesian method which were passed on in silence by other critics, presumably for their seeming innocence. With most of the detractors of the father of modern philosophy, it has either been the principle of universal doubt, the alienated and privileged ego, some step in the logic of the Meditations, some substantive philosophical or scientific doctrine, or the very quest for foundations. For Gaston Bachelard (d. 1962), on the other hand, it was the reductive nature of Cartesian method and resulting epistemology which rendered his philosophy “too narrow to accommodate the phenomena of physics.” (New Scientific Spirit, p. 138) In more particular terms, Bachelard attacks the following rule which according to Descartes summarized his whole method:

The whole method consists entirely in ordering and arranging of the objects on which we must concentrate our eye if we are to discover some truth. We shall be following this method exactly if we first reduce complicated and obscure propositions step by step to simpler ones and then starting with the intuition of the simplest ones of all, try to ascend through the same steps to a knowledge of all the rest.” (Descartes, Rules for the Direction of Mind, Rule 5).

Bachelard objects to the reductive nature of Cartesian method and complains that it fails to regain the unified and synthetic reality once analyzed under the demands of method. It seems that Bachelard here has a point in view of the fact that it was this analytical tendency which lends Descartes the unbridgeable Dualism of Mind and Body. On the Cartesian advice to reduce the complicated to the simple, Bachelard accuses Descartes of having neglected the reality of complexity and neglecting that there are certain qualities which only emerge in the wholes and are not there in the parts.

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by Max Sirak

Knowing what something is not isn't the same as knowing what it is. Being aware that red is not blue, the sky is not the ground, or that dark is not light helps us in the beginning. It lets us narrow down the field and start to figure out what red, sky, and dark actually are. However, eventually we need to stop defining things in the negative (by what they aren't) and begin to work in the positive (saying what they are) if we hope to gain any clarity.

Imagine what it would be like if we had to say “the not-red-green-purple-yellow-not-below-us-which-we-don't-stand-on-is-not-ugly-or-unattractice-in-this-not-dark-with-no-stars,” instead of “the sky's a pretty shade of blue today.” Communicating anything to anyone, including ourselves, would be a nightmare.

Knowing what something isn't is good. Knowing what something is, is better. One operates in the negative, the other in the positive. One leads to a startling amount of confusion in a short amount of time. The other helps elucidate and lets us pretend at sense-making. Which, if we're being honest, is about as good as it gets.

Falling Short

I bring this up for a reason. Until very recently, I didn't have any standards or metrics to measure the success of my life. Because – I don't live a conventional life. I'm 35. I don't have a girlfriend. I've never been married. I've never been divorced. I don't have any kids. I don't have a proper career. I'm not on a corporate track. I don't own a home. I don't have a 401k. All the traditional markers of success for a mid-30s life (house, spouse, career, kids, etc.) are noticeably absent from mine.

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by Elise Hempel

It's hard not to think about smiling these days, with all of the dental ads talking about it, with almost every dentist out there promising to give you “a healthy smile” or “the perfect smile” or even “a smile makeover.” A brief internet search reveals that many dentists are even using the word “smile” in the names of their practices. In Chicago, there's “We Smile Dental”; in California, “Beautiful Smiles Dentistry.” Here in central Illinois, we have, of course, “Central Illinois Smiles,” and also “Smiles Dental Center” and (yikes) “Creative Smiles” (I'd like mine the standard straight and white, please). One dentist in my town has a “Smile Gallery” on his website, with before and after photos of previous patients, all widely and happily smiling in their after-shots.

And for those who've never smiled before, there is this slogan from another website: “Start Smiling with Dental Implant Consultation Today!” In the world of dentistry, it seems, the word “teeth” is a thing of the past. Smiling is important.

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by Maniza Naqvi

The inclusion of a hijabi, her photo somewhat snarling, in between the covers of this October's issue of the Playboy magazine is a delicious illustration of our times. Playboy, much defended by men for the heft of its ‘articles', is not known for its penchant for contraptions of modesty and demure unless they heighten the libido of individuals engaged with themselves in their solitary pursuit of release. So, I am impressed that Playboy has settled the issue, of what the hijab is in the west. What is it about? The titillation of having dominated and crushed and won. Sex. And packaging it just right, fresh, clean, just a bit dirty, oh yeah. The symbol of the crushed, inviting domination.

The French, of course had figured this out way before everyone else did, after all, the French are known for their superior sense of all things au contraire and colonized. The French should know a thing or two about the turn-on of a veiled Muslim. Ah the colonies of Algiers, Tangier, and so forth. Alexandria. The Levant. After all French artists led the pack (Henri Adrien Tanoux, Georges Jules Victor Clairin, Auguste Adolphe, Eugene Delacroix and so many more) in Europe who imagined the harem and and committed their imaginary inmates to paintings.

The nikab'd and the naked. Naked and unnaked can they serve the same purpose? To provoke? It is interesting that it is in France that Muslim women are being forced to take off their cover. The country which prides itself on its wardrobes, is forcing Muslim women to disrobe. Well not surprising this, since it has always imagined Muslim women as naked.

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by Christopher Bacas

In Novokuznetsk, our hosts, the “Symphony Society”, a group of music-lovers, artists and bon-vivants, met us at the station. Among them, an accordionist with impeccable skills. Isolated in this far eastern town, he was hungry to play and produced his instrument soon after we arrived at the venue. His knowledge of Jazz repertoire was limited, his ears and virtuosity were not. I quoted “Stranger in Paradise”. He took that quote, a small section of a much longer work by Alexander Borodin, and seamlessly connected it to all its' original modulations and permutations. He nodded to me to join him and continue what I started, but I begged off, thoroughly schooled.

After the gig, the Society brought us to their clubhouse. It was rustic; a cross between a hunting and fishing lodge and an instrument shop. The table settings included a troika of bottled beverages: red wine, white wine and vodka; roughly a bottle per guest. The starters came on huge circular platters: pickled local vegetables (domestic produce from a brief, intense growing season): cucumbers, tomatoes, onions and carrots; roasted peppers, eggplant, beans, cured meats, cheeses and home-smoked local fish. Dill sprigs punctuated the glistening rows.

Toasting commenced, with vodka tumblers refilled on the turn. After two toasts, roughly six or seven ounces of liquor, I was finished. Thereafter, I held the glass to lips and tilted my head back; miming what the others did. The booze brutally burned my lips. Whenever a club member came to refill my glass I turned away and nodded my head, then glanced up to see his disapproving look. When the main courses, roast fish and meat with starches and more garnishes arrived, I was plenty drunk. Servers hefted tray after tray to the table.

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There's no doubt about it: conflict commands attention.

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by Holly A. Case

Croatian State Archives, main reading room

This story—a true one—is about a graphomaniac. I found him in the Croatian State Archives, Zagreb, where even the washrooms have signature tiles. Art nouveau beads drip from the lamps over the desks and carefully restored owls stare down from the tiled ceiling. The building, once wasted on university students cramming for exams, is now reserved exclusively for carriers of the twin fevers, bibliophilia and graphomania (that is, for historians), and is saturated with the smell of old paper and the dust of disintegration.

There, in a collection marked F. 227 MVP NDH Zagreb, 1941-1945, I came upon the chubby, bespectacled Vladimir Židovec (b. 1907), one-time lawyer and “first-class chess player.” His paper footprint filled folder upon folder, spilling over the edges of collections: foreign ministry, interior ministry, party archive, people's tribunal… I tracked him through the Second World War; shopped with him for his first tuxedo when the brand new German puppet known as the Independent State of Croatia sent him as its ambassador to Bulgaria; listened in as he and the Bulgarian prime minister talked politics over cabbage and pork cutlets; checked inventories of his state-furnished rooms in Sofia; bent over desks and tables as he wrote and wrote and wrote; and gawked at the Bulgarian social and political scene through his quirky “who's who” of Bulgaria.

Dimo Ačkov: “Knows Turkish well. Was a personal friend of Kemal Pasha [Atatürk].”

Dimitar Čorbev: “Very sly man. Some affairs have been mentioned in connection with his name. Good speaker.”

Georgi Genov: “Easily frightened. Hasn't left his house in the evening for a long time.”

Mihail Genovski: “Lately he has come under suspicion by the Germans. It is to be expected that steps will be taken against him.”

His documentary zeal vis-à-vis the lives of others left little room for details of his own person, so it was only in a folder of personnel files that I found certificates of recognition and praise from his superiors. My own assessment was similar, but for different reasons: One of his colleagues, the Croat ambassador to Slovakia, was barely literate by comparison, wrote few and uninformative reports, and got drunk and went to the beach, where he bawled out youngsters for going to the beach rather than joining the fight against the Soviets.

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by Richard King

When economist Branko Milanović first published his now-famous chart showing changes in global income distribution between 1988 and 2008 he furnished the world with a neat explanation for the various anti-establishment types now rocking the boat of Western politics: sandwiched between the Asian middle class and an increasingly bloated 1%—the winners from twenty years of “high” globalisation—the middle class of the rich world had been left behind and was voting in the rabblerousers. He also furnished it with a serviceable metaphor. From memory, it was Toby Nangle who first noticed that the chart resembled an elephant, and his inspired little graffito (below) twittered across the world in a flash. Journalists needed no further prompting. The chart was the elephant in the room … No: It was a sleeping elephant that threatened to wake up and destroy the joint … No: It was the eponymous pachyderm in the Indian parable of the blind men and the elephant—a beast the nature and significance of which depended on which bit of it you happened to be feeling … And so on and so on.

Now the metaphor-making has entered a new phase. Responding to a report by the Resolution Foundation that seems to cast doubt on Milanović's data, or some of the interpretations of it, some commentators have declared the “elephant chart” irrelevant. Once called “the most important chart for understanding politics today”—the one gif you need in order to make sense of the current intersection of domestic politics and macroeconomic trends—it is now a liability, a statistical howler. Scribblers in the conservative sheets were especially keen to ventilate the report's findings and the presses ran hot with their picturesque efforts. The elephant had been shot, no, tamed …No: It had wandered off from the herd and gone in search of the elephant graveyard … It had packed its trunk and said goodbye to the circus. (Okay I made that last one up; but surely it's only a matter of time …)

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by Thomas R. Wells

Collective action problems pit individual selfishness against the collective interest in areas as diverse as pollution, trade, peace, and public roads. The invisible hand of the market can't reach them. Instead we need politics. The European Union used to be good at this. But not any more.

An example. Public goods like roads and schools and police are worth far more than they cost. We would all be better off as individuals if we each donated some portion of our gains from them into a collective fund for providing them. Unfortunately, we would each be even better off if we were able to escape paying our fair share while everyone else paid theirs. Then we would have our cake and be able to eat it too, to drive on the roads that other people paid for. But then only suckers would contribute, and so the roads wouldn't get built and we would all travel very slowly and inconveniently.

Collective action problems are mitigated rather than solved. The main approach is the one recommended by Hobbes in his classic statement of the problem: we call our donations ‘taxes' and appoint someone with a big stick to come along and make sure everyone pays. Introducing an external power ('the government') with the power to punish anti-social behaviour changes the pay-offs attached to our choice of whether to contribute to the public good. Now individual rationality lines up with rational collective choice and the roads get built.

There are however two alternative approaches to the Big Stick. We can institutionalise cooperation, for example by making it easier to make binding promises to each other. Or we can moralise it, by taking up a 'team' perspective and acting on the maxim, 'Act as I would wish others to do'.

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by Carl Pierer

As in any other academic field, outsiders as well as insiders often ask what do pure mathematicians actually do? What do they work on and how do they work? It probably does not help that whether the objects of study actually exist, or rather, what it would mean to say that they exist, is unclear. Who, then are the people who are drawn to this field?

It is notoriously difficult to make a film on intellectual work. Yet, there has recently been a surge in this kind of films: from Margarethe von Trotta's Hannah Arendt (2012) and Maria Schrader's Stefan Zweig: A Farewell to Europe (2016) to the more Hollywoodian Morten Tyldum's The Imitation Game (2014) and Matt Brown's The Man Who Knew Infinity (2015). The difficulty is really rather trivial: there is not very much to show about intellectual work. Somebody sitting at a desk, tearing her hair out? Typing a couple of words, only to delete three more sentences? Or the theatrical stare into the distance while chewing on her glasses? That hardly makes for a feature-length film. But the protagonists of these films are famous beyond their respective field. As some kind of ‘intellectual celebrity', their lives and characters have a special sort of attraction. There is a natural interest in their persona, maybe because of their work's status in general culture. To tell their story, then, is sure to attract interest, because their names have become a sort of institution. It is quite a different task to shoot a film on current, less glamorous and perhaps more ‘ordinary' research: the ongoing work of academics.

After the very well-received Colors of Math, Ekaterina Eremenko has recently come to Edinburgh to screen her most recent film The Discrete Charm of Geometry. Eremenko graduated with a masters degree in mathematics from Moscow State University in 1990, but later obtained a second masters degree in Film Directing from the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography. She has directed a few documentaries before turning to films about mathematics.

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by Michael Liss

“Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called ‘trigger warnings,' we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces' where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.”
—John Ellison, Dean of Students, University of Chicago

I was an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University in the 1970s, a place and a time where the phrase “safe space” referred to the stocked civil-defense structures under the campus, and “trigger warnings” were letters you didn't want to be receiving from people in positions of authority.

I raise this not to launch into a “when men were men” rant, but rather because Dean Ellison's letter reminded me of two lectures I attended at JHU—the first given by Alger Hiss, the second, in connection with the receipt of an honorary LLM awarded by the University, by Princess Ashraf Pahlavi of Iran. Hiss, as people of a certain vintage would know, was a government and State Department official accused, in 1948, of being a spy for the Soviets. in 1950, he was tried and convicted for perjuring himself before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and jailed for three and a half years. He then spent the rest of his life protesting his innocence. Princess Ashraf was the once-exiled twin sister of the Shah.

Hiss's talk was fascinating. Tall, thin, balding, and wispy looking, his cultured voice a little grainy with age, he inhabited the stage—if I recall, he had a stool, but moved about a bit—with the ease of an actor. His memory was like an old library filled with leather-bound books. He would select an event, pull it out, find some passages to share, put it back, and move to the next volume.

He was playing before an easy crowd—liberal college kids and faculty who loathed both Richard Nixon and the McCarthy-Era mindset he sprang from. Watergate was burning up everything in sight, and the yin-yang of Hiss and Nixon seemed to illustrate the obvious innocence of Hiss. A profound injustice had been done—Hiss had been made to pay an enormous price (his career and his freedom) to satisfy the colossal ego, ambition, and paranoia of Nixon and a passel of self-appointed patriots who looked for Commies under every bush.

That is at least what we thought, when going into Shriver Hall. And yet, after hearing him speak, my friends and I left with more questions than we had when we arrived. There was something about Hiss, maybe his affect, maybe just a studied compartmentalization, a reserve that came from living a life too often in shadows and alleyways, that gave us a slightly clammy feeling. We didn't buy Nixon's accusations of Hiss endangering the fiber of American life, but there was the odd sense of not hearing the entire story, of things omitted, choices unrevealed.

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