Christian Caryl in the New York Review of Books:

Americans, by now, can be forgiven for believing that we know something about the situation in Iraq; we hear about it, after all, every day, in what seems like benumbing detail. And yet, in reality, what we know about the lives of individual Iraqis rarely goes beyond the fleeting opinion quote or the civilian casualty statistics. We have little impression of Iraqis as people trying to live lives that are larger and more complex than the war that engulfs them, and more often than not we end up viewing them merely as appendages of conflict. The language of foreign policy abstraction and a misplaced sense of decorum on the part of the press and television also conspire to sanitize the fantastically disgusting realities of everyday death.

More here.

At Columbia University’s World Leaders Forum, a video of the roundtable discussion of the Metropolitan Opera’s The First Emperor.

A roundtable discussion with Columbia faculty and the distinguished artists who are collaborating on the production of Tan Dun’s The First Emperor, which has its world premiere at the Metropolitan Opera House on December 21.

In what promises to be the most elaborate Met production since Prokofiev’s War and Peace, composer Tan Dun creates an epic new opera set in the ancient court of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China. The First Emperor is a story of love, power and betrayal. Legendary tenor Plácido Domingo sings the role of the emperor.

Participants

• Tan Dun, composer, conductor and co-librettist (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Tea; The Map: Concerto for Cello, Video and Orchestra; Water Passion after St. Matthew)
• Zhang Yimou, film director (House of Flying Daggers; Hero; Raise the Red Lantern)
• Ha Jin, National Book Award-winning novelist and co-librettist of The First Emperor (Waiting; War Trash)
• Lydia Liu, professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature and author (The Clash of Empires: The Invention of China in Modern World Making)
• James Schamus (program moderator), screenwriter, film producer and film executive (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; The Ice Storm; Brokeback Mountain)

Carl Zimmer in the New York Times:

A croak is how male green frogs tell other frogs how big they are. The bigger the male, the deeper the croak. The sound of a big male is enough to scare off other males from challenging him for his territory.

While most croaks are honest, some are not. Some small males lower their voices to make themselves sound bigger. Their big-bodied croaks intimidate frogs that would beat them in a fair fight.

Green frogs are only one deceptive species among many. Dishonesty has been documented in creatures ranging from birds to crustaceans to primates, including, of course, Homo sapiens. “When you think of human communication, it’s rife with deception,” said Stephen Nowicki, a biologist at Duke University and the co-author of the 2005 book “The Evolution of Animal Communication.” “You just need to read a Shakespeare play or two to see that.”

As Dr. Nowicki chronicled in his book, biologists have long puzzled over deception. Dishonesty should undermine trust between animals. Why, for example, do green frogs keep believing that a big croak means a big male? New research is offering some answers: Natural selection can favor a mix of truth and lies, particularly when an animal has a big audience. From one listener to the next, honesty may not be the best policy.

More here.

Athar Osama at SciDev.net:

Since India, Ireland, and Israel emerged as ‘software super-powers’ in the mid-to-late 1990s, many developing countries have joined the race for economic development led by information technology (IT).

Information and communications technology can level the playing field between advanced and under-developed countries in terms of access to information and knowledge. But it cannot be a panacea for the developing world’s quest for economic growth and prosperity.

Many countries have tried to replicate India’s success by developing IT-led economic development strategies, designed to “propel their economies into the twenty-first century”. Serious effort and precious resources have been spent on these endeavours.

But new evidence suggests that this might not be a viable way forward.

More here.

Robert Lloyd in the Los Angeles Times:

Here in the Western world, we live defined by media: We are what we watch, what we listen to. (A few of us are still the papers we read.) And because this identification is so strong and thoroughgoing, one can feel that anything that has ever been recorded or taped or filmed should be available to hear or see, and that there is even something heroic, in a Promethean way, about those who arrange to make this happen. In earlier days, this fire-stealing manifested itself as the bootleg-record industry, whose High Baroque period, marked by expensive and often beautifully designed boxed sets, was cut dead by the Internet, where such fast and efficient file-sharing technologies as bit torrent have created vast networks dedicated to getting the music and pictures of the music out for free.

One vision of the Net maintains that it ought to be controlled and owned and exploited, farmed and ranched and arranged in such a way that nothing moves without the owner (which is not necessarily to say the creator) getting his cut. The other — the Wikipedia, OpenOffice, open-source way of no-business — holds that it is common ground, free and open, a place built and shaped by the people who use it, where sharing is the ultimate good.

Both approaches are manifest in YouTube, which is at once a commercial enterprise, now cutting revenue-sharing deals with major labels to legally show their videos, and a tool for moving around other people’s intellectual property.

More here.

Glenn C. Altschuler reviews the new biography by Robert D. Richardson in the Boston Globe:

Since his death, in 1910, James has not been forgotten. Along with brother Henry and sister Alice, James has been hailed as a member of America’s premier intellectual family. His great books — “The Principles of Psychology,” “Pragmatism,” “The Will to Believe,” and “Varieties of Religious Experience” — continue to be read. For his contributions to the structure of philosophy, Alfred North Whitehead ranked him with Plato, Aristotle , and Leibni z. James remains a patron saint of anti-imperialism. Howard Feinstein, R. Laurence Moore, and Louis Menand have written brilliant books about James’s decision to abandon art for a career in science, his interest in religion and parapsychology, and his membership in Cambridge’s Metaphysical Club. But no full-length narrative biography of him has appeared in a generation.

In “William James,” Robert Richardson, whose previous subjects were Thoreau and Emerson, seeks to understand James’s “life through his work, not the other way around.” Richardson presents no new interpretations of James’s theories of pragmatism and pluralism. Nor does he attempt to critique them. But he has a knack for explaining complex ideas clearly and elegantly and for bringing to life a fascinating character. Various William Jameses, Richardson suggests, lived inside the man: As he willed himself into optimism, he was often sad, irritable, and depressed. But the “central” or “essential” James was an apostle of activity, spontaneity, doubt, chance, and chaos, “astonishingly, even alarmingly open to new experiences,” including a headlong plunge into the maelstrom of American modernism.

In his personal as well as his professional life, Richardson points out, James was an irrepressible experimenter. He smoked opium , and recorded his responses to it in his diary. He climbed mountains, even after he was diagnosed with angina. He invited W.E.B. DuBois, a graduate student at Harvard, to his home, when few professors had social relations with African-Americans. And he was a “natural philanderer ” who refused to conceal his crushes from his wife.

More here.

From MSNBC:

A fossil of a leaf-imitating insect from 47 million years ago bears a striking resemblance to the mimickers of today.

The discovery represents the first fossil of a leaf insect (Eophyllium messelensis), and also shows that leaf imitation is an ancient and successful evolutionary strategy that has been conserved over a relatively long period of time. Scientists led by Sonja Wedmann of the Institute of Paleontology in Bonn, Germany, unearthed the remains at a well-known fossil site called Messel, in Hessen, Germany.

The 2.4-inch-long insect had physical characteristics similar to the oblong leaves of trees living there at the time, including Myrtle trees, legumes, such as alfalfa, and Laurel trees.

More here.

From Scientific American:

Stem cells from pulled teeth regenerate new roots, might some day replace dental implants. For Christmas, a few miniature pigs in a University of Southern California lab got new roots for their front teeth, courtesy of stem cells from human teeth. This regeneration of mammalian tooth root, reported in last week’s inaugural issue of PloS ONE, could have clinical applications that would have a big impact on oral surgery procedures such as root canals.

An international team headed by dentistry researcher Songtao Shi focused its efforts on stem cells found in the root apical papilla, tissue connected to the tip of the root that is responsible for the root’s development. Previous efforts by Shi and his colleagues involved the harvesting of stem cells from the dental pulp, the tissue at the center of a tooth, commonly referred to as the nerve.

More here.

In the Village Voice, my favorite film critic, J. Hoberman, reviews the latest by one of my favorite film makers–Chris Marker’s The Case of the Grinning Cat.

Approaching 85, cine-essayist Chris Marker remains as lively, engag ed, and provocative as ever—and no less fond of indirection. (His La Jetée is not only a movie about the pathos of time travel, but a rumination on film-watching as well.) Marker’s hour-long video The Case of the Grinning Cat meditates on the state of post–9-11 French politics, taking as its apparent subject the enigmatic M. Chat, who in late 2001 began appearing, as if by magic, on Paris rooftops, walls, and métro stations.

This anonymously produced graffito—a wide-eyed, broadly smiling, boldly cartooned, bright-yellow feline—spread to other cities, and Marker does his part, matting M. Chat into artworks from cave paintings to van Goghs. During the 2002 French election that saw right-wing centrist Jacques Chirac defeat right-wing extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen, M. Chat took to the streets. Cat placards and masks dotted the anti–Le Pen demonstrations and appeared in crowds rallying against Bush’s war.

Via Political Theory Daily Review, on monogamy and polyamory, evolutionary psychology and human spirituality, in Tikkun.

For a variety of evolutionary and historical reasons, polyamory has had “bad press” in Western culture and spiritual circles—being automatically linked, for example, with promiscuity, irresponsibility, inability to commit, and even narcissistic hedonism. Given the current crisis of monogamy in our culture, however, it may be valuable to explore seriously the social potential of responsible forms of nonmonogamy. And given the spiritual potential of such exploration, it may also be important to expand the range of spiritually legitimate relationship choices that we as individuals can make at the various karmic crossroads of our lives.

It is my hope that this essay opens avenues for dialogue and inquiry in spiritual circles about the transformation of intimate relationships. It is also my hope that it contributes to the extension of spiritual virtues, such as sympathetic joy, to all areas of life and in particular to those which, due to historical, cultural, and perhaps evolutionary reasons, have been traditionally excluded or overlooked—areas such as sexuality and romantic love.

The culturally prevalent belief—supported by many contemporary spiritual teachers—that the only spiritually correct sexual options are either celibacy or monogamy is a myth that may be causing unnecessary suffering and that needs, therefore, to be laid to rest. It may be perfectly plausible to hold simultaneously more than one loving or sexual bond in a context of mindfulness, ethical integrity, and spiritual growth, for example, while working toward the transformation of jealousy into sympathetic joy and the integration of sensuous and spiritual love. I should add right away that, ultimately, I believe that the greatest expression of spiritual freedom in intimate relationships does not lie in strictly sticking to any particular relationship style—whether monogamous or polyamorous—but rather in a radical openness to the dynamic unfolding of life that eludes any fixed or predetermined structure of relationships. It should be obvious, for example, that one can follow a specific relationship style for the “right” (e.g. life-enhancing) or “wrong” (e.g., fear-based) reasons; that all relationship styles can become equally limiting spiritual ideologies; and that different internal and external conditions may rightfully call us to engage in different relationship styles at various junctures of our lives. It is in this open space catalyzed by the movement beyond monogamy and polyamory, I believe, that an existential stance deeply attuned to the standpoint of Spirit can truly emerge.

Truly a great loss. In Rolling Stone:

Fifty years after recording his first hit song, the Hardest Working Man in Show Business has played his final encore. James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, died of congestive heart failure early Christmas morning, after a brief bout with pneumonia in an Atlanta hospital. By his count, he was seventy-three years old.

One of the most influential performers of the 20th century, Brown had a hard-charging, hypnotically rhythmic signature sound that inspired peers and successors from doo-wop to hip-hop. Among his many chart successes – more than forty Top Forty hits and dozens more on the R&B charts — were the timeless classics “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” and “I Got You (I Feel Good)” and civil-rights anthems such as “Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud.” His best-known album, 1962’s Live at the Apollo, is often cited as the most exciting live album of all time. One of the original inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, Brown received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award in 1992.

Brown, as some of his elaborate nicknames (“The Minister of the New New Super Heavy Funk”) imply, was best known for his indefatigable showmanship. His revue-style shows were designed to take his audience to ever-higher levels of delirium, and he was famous for “fainting” near the end of the evening, only to be revived by his band mates.

In news@nature, more on whether experiments in virtual worlds can bypass ethical concerns in physchological tests.

Half the volunteers could see the woman and half could not, communicating with her only through text. Both were told to give her ‘electric shocks’ of increasing voltage when she gave incorrect answers to test questions. The woman responded to these with protests and discomfort, asking for the test to stop as the voltage was ramped up.

The group from whom the virtual woman was hidden delivered shocks up to the maximum voltage, like many of those in Milgram’s experiment. Those who could see her were more likely to stop before reaching this limit².

Almost half of those who could see the woman said afterwards that they had considered withdrawing from the study, and several actually did. “Of course, consciously everybody knows nothing is happening,” says Slater. “But some parts of the person’s perceptual system just takes it as real. Some part of the brain doesn’t know about virtual reality.”

And instead of becoming accustomed to the virtual person and ceasing to empathise, many volunteers became more anxious as the study continued.

In the Economist, what do discoveries in neuroscience imply about free will?

IN THE late 1990s a previously blameless American began collecting child pornography and propositioning children. On the day before he was due to be sentenced to prison for his crimes, he had his brain scanned. He had a tumour. When it had been removed, his paedophilic tendencies went away. When it started growing back, they returned. When the regrowth was removed, they vanished again. Who then was the child abuser?

His case dramatically illustrates the challenge that modern neuroscience is beginning to pose to the idea of free will. The instinct of the reasonable observer is that organic changes of this sort somehow absolve the sufferer of the responsibility that would accrue to a child abuser whose paedophilia was congenital. But why? The chances are that the latter tendency is just as traceable to brain mechanics as the former; it is merely that no one has yet looked. Scientists have looked at anger and violence, though, and discovered genetic variations, expressed as concentrations of a particular messenger molecule in the brain, that are both congenital and predisposing to a violent temper. Where is free will in this case?

In 1946, Boris Vian—novelist, poet, playwright, songwriter, jazz trumpeter, screenwriter, actor, and general scourge of anyone failing to have enough fun in Paris in the postwar era—came to New York. He made the trip from France by submarine, caused a small international incident upon arrival, and had lunch. Then he ventured forth to discover America.

Vian was impressed by the state of American progress, which, he concluded, was far ahead of that of his native country, and not so impressed by American girls, whom he deemed silly things with large behinds. He ran into Hemingway but didn’t recognize him, and failed to say hello. He went to see the Empire State Building, only to discover that it had recently been demolished. He came across the Surrealist André Breton living in Harlem camouflaged as a black man and calling himself Andy. He spent a morning sitting in front of his hotel, hoping to see a lynching, but was disappointed.

more from the New Yorker here.

The premise of Cormac McCarthy’s new novel, The Road, is simple: In a ruined, postapocalyptic future, a nameless father and his young son—”each the other’s world entire”—trudge down a road toward the ocean, with the hope of finding a warmer, more hospitable locale. Along the way, they scrounge for cans of food in cities and countryside already thoroughly pillaged by other refugees. Death from starvation and exposure hovers, but a more immediate terror is the constant threat of dismemberment by roving bands of cannibals, for this is what most survivors have been reduced to. There is an urgency to each page, and a raw emotional pull in the way McCarthy, the poet laureate of violence, known for brutal and biblical novels like Child of God (1973) and Blood Meridian, or, The Evening Redness in the West (1985), renders the father’s attempts to keep alive the hopes of the young boy as well as his own, making it easily one of the most harrowing books you’ll ever encounter. Nearly unreadable in its heartbreaking detail, it is also, once opened, nearly impossible to put down; it is as if you must keep reading in order for the characters to stay alive.

Hardcore fans would have forgiven the seventy-three-year-old legend (the galley cover announces “His New Novel,” as if God himself had written the book) had he produced another in his recent string of accessible novels. Some might see it as a return to form, but The Road diverges from his earlier work as McCarthy switches the focus from the hunters to the hunted. And some might see this free-floating futuristic nightmare as a radical departure, yet for true believers who’d followed the signs in his previous work, this is where they hoped he would arrive.

more from Bookforum here.

The husband wants to be taken back
into the family after behaving terribly,
but nothing can be taken back,
not the leaves by the trees, the rain
by the clouds. You want to take back
the ugly thing you said, but some shrapnel
remains in the wound, some mud.
Night after night Tybalt’s stabbed
so the lovers are ground in mechanical
aftermath. Think of the gunk that never
comes off the roasting pan, the goofs
of a diamond cutter. But wasn’t it
electricity’s blunder into inert clay
that started this whole mess, the I-
echo in the head, a marriage begun
with a fender bender, a sneeze,
a mutation, a raid, an irrevocable
fuckup.

more of Dean Young’s poem at Paris Review here.

From The Herald Tribune:

Maybe it was just a Freudian slip. Or a case of hiding in plain sight. Either way, Sigmund Freud, scribbling in the pages of a Swiss hotel register, appears to have left the answer to a question that has titillated scholars for much of the last century: Did he have an affair with his wife’s younger sister, Minna Bernays?

Rumors of a romantic liaison between Freud and his sister-in-law, who lived with the Freuds, have long persisted, despite staunch denials by Freud loyalists. The Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung, Freud’s disciple and later his archrival, claimed that Miss Bernays had confessed to an affair to him. (The claim was dismissed by Freudians as malice on Jung’s part.) And some researchers have even theorized that she may have become pregnant by Freud and have had an abortion.

What was lacking was any proof. But a German sociologist now says he has found evidence that on Aug. 13, 1898, during a two-week vacation in the Swiss Alps, Freud, then 42, and Miss Bernays, then 33, put up at the Schweizerhaus, an inn in Maloja, and registered as a married couple, a finding that may cause historians to re-evaluate their understanding of Freud’s own psychology.

A yellowing page of the leather-bound ledger shows that they occupied Room 11. Freud signed the book, in his distinctive Germanic scrawl, “Dr Sigm Freud u frau,” abbreviated German for “Dr. Sigmund Freud and wife.”

More here.

From Orion:

Some biblical scholars argue that Eve pulled down the suggestive pomegranate, not an apple, in the Garden of Eden. In the Koran, as in Persian iconography and poetry, images of pomegranates symbolized fertility, and in China, a bride and groom went to bed with seeds scattered on their covers to assure conception. In the early sixteenth century, the Spanish carried crateloads of them across the sea because the vitamin C-rich fruit guarded sailors against scurvy. The friars on board, meanwhile, brought roots to plant in the New World, where the fruit flourishes four hundred years later in California’s Mediterranean climate.

Folk healers have long used every part of the fruit to staunch wounds and treat illnesses like dyspepsia and leprosy. And these days, scientists in Israel have been actively researching the fruit’s pharmaceutical properties (the country harvests three thousand tons annually) to battle everything from viruses to breast cancer and aging skin.

The pomegranate contains a flavonoid that is a powerful cancer-fighting antioxidant. The fruit is also rich in estrogen, and one company is now marketing pomegranate-derived EstraGranate as an alternative to hormone-replacement therapy. In the works is a condom coated with pomegranate juice that will reportedly fend off HIV. In rural Sonoma County, California, where I live, stores now carry pomegranates from fall through winter, but we are offered only one variety, called Wonderful, grown by Paramount Farms, the corporate farm giant. Our nurseries carry only Wonderful seedlings, so when I wanted to plant a pomegranate, it had to be Wonderful. 

More here.

Leonardo da Vinci. The Last Supper. 1495-98. Milan.

More here and here.