by Aasem Bakhshi

This letter was written in 2013 as a self-reflection exercise in response to Karen Armstrong's letter which she wrote in 2011 to the people of Pakistan to discover compassion in their daily lives ¹.

In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

Earlier this week, I was visiting a small roadside bookstall when I discovered your letter. I picked it up, almost offhand, as if it was dropped in my mailbox. It proved to be a page-turner and unable to resist, I skimmed it standing right there in next half an hour. Needless to say that your earnest and sincere demand to rediscover compassion was not only compelling but also based on universal values of reason and harmony.

While driving back, I kept reflecting on some finer nuances of your discourse from various angles, as well as your 'charter of compassion' and found it necessary to engage with you at a more intimate level.

I should perhaps mention, right from the start, that I am cognizant of all your work. I do not claim to have read each word of it, but I have at least read each and every word you wrote about Muslim tradition and of course, about God. I mention this so you must not misconstrue me for a biased and misplaced prattler; rather, contrary to that, I am so overwhelmed by your desire to see a harmonious world that I thought it necessary to convey to you that you must know a little more about it.

Should I tell you about my favorite work of yours? No, it's not about histories of God or fundamentalism, or genesis of faith-based traditions; rather, it's the one about your own climb out of so-called darkness through that proverbial spiral staircase ². On a lighter note, I do understand that you love to tell the world about yourself, since it's your third autobiography. However, I found it amazing to find in you a person who has opted for religious truth, found it uncongenial, learnt ways to handle that uncongeniality and finally ended up being empathetic to it; that too, despite your ultimate disregard of its metaphysical truth value.

But I tend to digress, since this missive is not about you, but me and the world I live in. I am neither a critic nor a scholar, and not even a formal student of any religion or tradition. I do not claim to have any solutions, neither short-term nor long-term. My motivation is merely to open up and reveal more of my true self and underlying societal being, that in my humble opinion, you do not seem to know too well.

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by Maniza Naqvi

There is a part of Karachi called Golimar—‘Shooter'. This used to be the place where lame horses were brought by the military to be shot, back in the days of the British Empire. And the word Golibaz—means liar—or a fraud. Nowadays Golimar and Golibaz seem to pretty much sum up things. The horses have been replaced by people, especially those that are seen as a threat or as no longer worthwhile and the lies well they've never been replaced. I wonder what a historian would make of it.

Because that's a twitter-worthy bit of history right there: a place called Golimar and a condition called Golibaz. And what ties them together? Defense. The word Defense in Pakistan mean posh real estate developments. These are the places where the concept of equity and transparency and integrity go to die. These are the acres and acres of lands the Pakistan Military establishment awarded itself for its service to the country. The word military, in Pakistan, means absolute power, like the feudals of yesteryears–only more so, it is therefore the largest land owner in Pakistan. And the leasing off of these awarded lands from the military to civilians at fabulous prices for housing developments has been a profitable business. And that there is a bit of political economy—well the whole thing actually.

Professor Ayesha Jalal, the most excellent historian says ‘Pakistan's domestic dilemmas were inextricably linked to international conflicts (here). Besides the bullets and the blasts and the lies or because of them—business is booming for a few in Pakistan. Real estate–never better. Golf courses, fancy mosques, Yacht clubs, swimming pools, high rise apartments for the wealthy and shopping malls are expanding and flourishing. Residential developments for the rich are big business. Exports are off the charts for our textiles. Look at our IT sector. Could be even better if the fuel and electricity issues could be resolved. There are air-conditioned shopping malls and women work there as sales girls and even as security guards. Many of the sales girls and the security women working there wear hijabs. There's piped in music and azaan in the Malls along with the cheesy French fries and pizza. There are fast food courts. All classes of people mingle together in a clean air conditioned safe environment. Just like Dubai.

So what's the problem? Perween Rahman got shot and killed–murdered–for documenting land grabbing and trying to get legal rights documented for villagers who were in danger of being forcibly removed by land developers. The Supreme Court has ordered that her murderers be found by April 20, 2016. And there's Sabeen Mahmud shot and killed–murderd– for most probably talking about land grabbing too. In her murder case, a key witness and a key investigator in the case have both been killed since.

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by Chris Bacas

Z was a generous and kind man. Still, in a diner, he could embarrass me to death. Last off the bus, joining us at a crowded table, he rubbed bleary eyes, grabbed utensils in his fists and banged them loudly. We lowered our heads while sugar packets and jelly cups scattered. Sometimes, we scattered. “Hungry bear….hung-gree bear…. HUNGRY BEAR!”

On a Mississippi river boat cruise, the widow of our namesake showed up. It was her right to join us, gratis, anytime. She treated her “employee” like an incompetent peon. Z bit his tongue, hard. On the last night, drunk and thoroughly addled, the widow felt emboldened to make a speech. Taking the microphone, she rambled about the greatness of her late husband (an undisputed fact) and his kindness (pure fantasy). Teary-eyed, she ended with: “..and…wherever he is, I know ALL the Angels are playing trombones” A devilish grin on his face, Z looked straight down, toward the River Lethe, and stomped his foot twice, saying loudly “you hear that,_______, you hear that?” Despite his indentured servitude, our leader was a colleague more than a boss. For that alone, I grew to love him.

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by Philippe Huneman and Anouk Barberousse

Under the pseudonym 'Benedetta Tripodi', Anouk Barberousse, Professor of Philosophy at the Université Paris Sorbonne, and Philippe Huneman, Research Director at the Institut d’Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques (CNRS), submitted to the on-line journal Badiou Studies a paper entitled “Ontology, Neutrality and the Strive for (non)Being-Queer”[1]. It was in answer to a call for papers on the topic “Towards a Badiousian Queer Feminism.” The paper was accepted after a process of peer-review, and published in the December 2015 issue of the journal. Yet the paper was written with the specific the aim of absolute meaninglessness. Neither of the true authors could begin to explain what it meant. In a text published on April 1 on the Carnet Zilsel, the authors of the hoax told their story, and explained their project and the goal of the exercise. After this revelation, Badiou Studies withdrew the paper from its website. However, the website Retraction Watch recorded this episode, with comments by both the journal as well as the authors of the fake paper. Here, we provide the context and the meaning of this hoax according to their authors.

The Benedetta Tripodi hoax aims at unravelling the legitimating strategy that consists in presenting Alain Badiou’s philosophy as the central current in metaphysics and political theory in France. Our analysis does not intend to refute Badiou’s theory once and for all, though it does aim, by unravelling some of its weaknesses, to call into question the consistency of the overall construction. By casting a doubt on the philosophical seriousness of Badiou's writings and of the commentaries of his admirers all over the world, it defeats the argument that would establish the eminency of its metaphysical value simply from its current intellectual fame.

If indeed the journal devoted to Badiou allows for the publication of a wholly meaningless paper –for whatever reasons: obliviousness, lack of critical sense, etc.– this reveals a genuine problem within the club of Badiou’s readers. On these grounds, it is clear that Badiou’s international reputation cannot justify his objective supremacy as a philosopher. On the contrary one has to question the nature of this reputation as well as its sociological grounds.

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Segue
.

in shifts from bright to dim
there is no edge, no interim,
as also none exists from wide to slim
.
the sun comes up in orange blaze
night evaporates in such displays
lines are indiscernible in nights to days
.
when life from bud to apple goes
and succulence and color grows
earth is smoothly changing pose
.
breath segues in respiration
in which we find no separations
as intervals might mean cessation
.
birth moves on to what comes next
years tick off from more to less,
what follows then we have to guess
.

Jim Culleny
4/8/16

by Carl Pierer

“(…) [M]y own body is the primordial habit, the one that conditions all others and by which they can be understood. Its near presence and its invariable perspective are not a factual necessity, since factual necessity presupposes them. (…) I observe external objects with my body, I handle them, inspect them, and walk around them. But when it comes to my body, I never observe it itself. I would need a second body to be able to do so, which would itself be unobservable.” —Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Phenomenology of Perception, p. 93)

Having criticised the two dominant, opposing camps – one, broadly speaking, Humean, one Kantian – in the introduction, Merleau-Ponty tries to understand in the present section the role of our body in perception. He argues that the commitment to certain notions as fundamental shared by the two camps is mistaken; most relevant here are those of ‘subject' and ‘object'. In contrast to the inherited view that the subject-object distinction is fundamental, he argues there exists something more primordial: the body. For Merleau-Ponty, because of the body's priority, the accepted distinctions make sense only against the background of the body. To establish this, Merleau-Ponty first shows that our relation to our body is different from our relation to any other object. Then, he demonstrates that the former relation prefigures the latter.

In this quotation, Merleau-Ponty argues that the body cannot be thought as an object among others. If it could, then it would need to be given to us as an object of perception. But, unlike genuine objects of perception:

1. The body as an object of perception is not the same as the body that perceives.
2. Even as an ‘object' of perception, our relation to it is different from the one we have to any other object of perception. In particular, it features:
   1. ‘Near presence', and
   2. ‘Inevitable perspective'.

This essay will focus on (2.) to illustrate how thinking about its ‘near presence' and ‘inevitable perspective' reveals the inherited view to render our relation to the body ambiguous, one that fits neither that of a subject nor that of an object. This ambiguity will lead to the idea of the ‘primordial habit'. It would then be but a small step to show that the distinction is based on this primordial relation, yet to do so is beyond this essay.

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by Mathangi Krishnamurthy

Welcome to April. It is already the fourth month of the year, and I meditate as I write, on the simultaneous passage and non-passage of time. Everyday the newspaper tells me of a number of unbidden catastrophes, accidents of fate, so many lives snuffed out as if life were not, as I think it to be, certain and plan-worthy. The rude interruption of children, men, and women, to and fro in the business of life, and the visitation of deep and unthinking sorrow upon all those whose lives they touch.

Those lists I peruse a couple of times a week, “Ten Ways to be more Productive”, “Fifty Tips to Happiness”, and “The One Secret to finding your Purpose in Life”, all tell me to stop reading the newspaper. But this I cannot do. Long years ago, I was taught by well-meaning, upstanding, middle-class family members, that to be engaged in the business of the world, one must read the newspaper. And after all, if I am not nationalist enough to yell out praises at the nation morning, noon, and night, I can, at least, in good old Benedict Anderson fashion, read the damn newspaper.

Why, pray, you ask, are you so melancholic? This isn't on me, I plead. I am in the throes of PMS. Now the thing, of course, is that I may or may not be. Not that PMS is not real. But its symptoms, ranging across 200 or more possible sensations, and consequences, provide a wide ambit of possibilities. And within this ambit of possibilities, it feels as though my body gives me the permission to feel all those things that I keep tightly suppressed for worry of work, schedules, time, and money. So for a couple of days a month, I feel free. To not be cheerful, or happy, or certain, or plant my feet on the ground. I feel the freedom to be burdened, and uncomfortable. And this of course, is a gendered function; not a function of the female gender mind you, but a gendered function. For both, the inability and ability to show emotion, are deeply gendered propositions. The one that gives in to deeply felt traumas, and hysteria, and dislocations is weak, and not in control. But the one that is otherwise controlled, but feels compelled at key moments to give in to emotion is primal. And I'm in the throes of a primal PMS.

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Only in myth is death an illusion,
but there’s beauty in hope
and hope in myth
and myth in true profusion
…………….. —Angela DiSperanza
.
Grief to Myth

When they came to the tomb’s stone
it was set aside as if the occupant they’d loved
had gone to breakfast with friends
leaving a folded sheet for them
and some linen strips or not
and, as some say, a young man or an angel or two
who said, Your hope’s still in the world,
go find it. So their sadness left,
their grief became hope,
hope turned to myth
as word spread on myth’s wings
with love’s wind behind it
.

Jim Culleny
Easter, 2016

by Sarah Firisen

There’s never been a better, safer, healthier, fairer time to be a woman than right now. On the other hand, the bar was set pretty low for most of history. Yes, we are no longer chattel, the property of our fathers and husbands. We can vote, hell one of us is probably on track to be the leader of the free world come January. But in reality, there have been other major female leaders before: Margaret Thatcher, what about Queen Elizabeth I in the 16th century, how much did she do to advance the cause of women in England? How much did either of them do, either in terms of policy or as icons who caused a major shift in public attitude and behavior?

But yes, I’m glad I’m alive now. Even so, let’s not kid ourselves that the fight has been won, even if we end up with President Hillary Clinton come January. No matter where you look, women continue to be undervalued and underrepresented, and that’s the good end of the scale. When I say that there’s never been a safer, healthier and fairer time to be a woman, I really mean in the west. Women are still treated as chattel across much of Africa, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and beyond. But even in the west, we have a long way to go. Even though women are now better educated than men, equally interested in the same careers and with almost as much experience in the workplace, a recent New York Times article cited the depressing fact that not only are women still earning about 87 cents on the dollar for the same job as men, but “when women enter fields in greater numbers, pay declines — for the very same jobs that more men were doing before.” And it seems this is job agnostic and actually also works in the opposite direction: jobs pay more once they start being done by men “Computer programming, for instance, used to be a relatively menial role done by women. But when male programmers began to outnumber female ones, the job began paying more and gained prestige.”

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by Leanne Ogasawara

“Italian Criminal Masterminds Heisted $875,000 Worth of Parmesan”

“Only in Italy,” I thought a few months ago when I read the headline above. Of course, Italian cheeses, like French wines, have been highly valued and given as gifts of diplomacy to kings and queens since at least the Medieval period. Samuel Pepys famously buried his Parmesan cheese in a hole dug in his garden when the London Fire broke out. Truly, Italian cheeses and wines are wondrous– just like the cities in which they were born!

And of all the delicious cities in Italy, maybe nowhere is quite as wondrously delectable as Modena.

A native son of the great city of cheese, Massimo Bottura is considered to be one of the greatest chefs on earth–and a few years ago, his 3 Michelin star restaurant, the Osteria Francescana, was ranked #2 in the world.

Located in one of Modena's back streets, Bottura says the city of his birth is defined by fast cars (Ferrari and Maserati) and slow food. Located between Parma and Bologna, the medieval town of Modena is situated smack in the middle of what is a world food capital. Yes, I am talking about gorgeous artisan cheeses carefully aged on cheese wheels (including the famed Parmigiano Reggiano), countless kinds of ham and sausage (Bologna gives its name to what it goes by in America), and a kind of Balsamic vinegar so it exquisite it reminds one of wine.

And did I mention vignola cherries?

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by Bill Benzon

Well, it wasn’t quite like that.

For one thing, they weren’t really trumpeters. They held the horns and blew through them, but not much came out. If those guys were trumpeters, then my name’s James Bond and I’m a secret agent who’s saved the world from countless psychotic megalomaniacal industrialists. Bond isn’t my name and I’m not a secret agent.

Chet the Jet

But I was part of a situation in which three trumpet players manqué did manage to escape from prison. Me and Chet the Jet—that’s what we sometimes called him, but only behind his back. Dr. Chester H. Wickwire was University Chaplain at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore back in the previous century. I’d been an undergraduate there and then took a job in the Chaplain’s Office. This was during the Vietnam era and I’d been a conscientious objector to military service and so had to perform alternative service, as it was called. The Selective Service System allowed me to work with the Chaplain’s Office.

We, Dr. Wickwire’s staff, sometimes referred to him as Chet the Jet. Just where and why that nickname, I don’t know. It had been in place for some time. But it was oddly apt. Dr. Wickwire couldn’t jet about anywhere. He’d had polio in his youth and needed two canes for support when walking, though he made do with one for short distances.

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by Evert Cilliers aka Adam Ash

Paul Krugman has become our most original and insightful commentator on the American scene. In his essential NY Times column, he was the first pundit to attack George W Bush, way before 9/11 or the Iraq War. He called Bush Jr a liar, and said Bush fudged his economic numbers.

But lately, Krugman has been a disappointment, because of his persistent sneering at Bernie Sanders.

What's up with that? Bernie Sanders may be our first honest politician, a straight-up progressive, who is doing America the favor of moving Hillary over to the left. He is an authentic dyed-in-the-wool liberal who complained about income inequality decades before Occupy Wall Street made it part of the national conversation. He voted against the Iraq War. His prescriptions would turn us into a socialist democratic state with a strong social safety net and a better single-payer health system. He stands for a $15 minimum wage. Free community college tuition, paid for by a Wall Street transaction tax. Big infrastructure spending for more jobs. Money out of politics. Break up the big banks.

What's not to like about Bernie?

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by Matt McKenna

Here’s the concept: two powerful white dudes fight each other until they’re forced to confront a common enemy, which more often than not is another powerful white dude. Are we talking about the plot of Batman v Superman or the sad reality of American presidential politics? Could be either, right? Well, both the movie and the current election cycle have left critics displeased and audiences entertained. Although Batman v. Superman has received only a 29% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, it has received a much better 71% from the audience. The primary election season has experienced a similar dichotomy between critics and the general audience: hardly a moment passes without a cultural critic decrying the base nature of this election cycle, yet audiences are tuning into election coverage on cable news channels in record numbers. Personally, I find the film much less offensive than the current (or any) election cycle if only because the film is fictional.

Batman v Superman is the narrative linchpin for Time Warner’s “DC Extended Universe,” which is an attempt to cash in on its ownership of the DC Comics characters the way that Disney has cashed in on its ownership of the Marvel Comics characters through developing a film franchise in which all the heroes fight on the same team in recurring, ever more expensive summer blockbusters. Therefore, although the film is called Batman v Superman, viewers shouldn’t be surprised to find out that Batman and Superman eventually stop fighting each other so they can go after the “real” bad guy, which (spoiler!) is exactly how the United States’ primary election process will play out. For all the jabs Republicans Ted Cruz and Donald trump take at each other, they will ultimately join forces to attempt to defeat the Democrat candidate in the general election. The same goes for Democrats Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, who will somehow forget all their prior complaints and support each other in defeating the Republican candidate.

If Batman and Superman becoming buddies sounds a lot like presidential primary opponents supporting each other in the general election, then the similarity between Superman’s struggles and Donald Trump’s campaign will be downright obvious with the one major discrepancy being that Superman is famously known for his good haircut.

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by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse

We have never embraced political conservatism. However, we also think that the conservative tradition in American politics is intellectually formidable. We find the best representatives of that tradition to be rigorous, insightful, and philosophically astute. They are political commentators for whom ideas matter. In their best work we find proposals and principles that we think are incorrect, but never merely stupid.

And this is as it should be. The entire system of American democracy is based on the premise that reasonable, intelligent, and well-informed citizens of integrity and good-will might nevertheless disagree deeply and sharply about fundamental moral, social, and political matters. Many of the most familiar political and constitutional mechanisms of our politics are aimed at managing such reasonable disagreement among citizens in a way that all disputants could be expected to recognize as even-handed, fair, civil, and rational. What's more, reasoned yet deep disagreement among intelligent and sincere citizens is not some unfortunate obstacle that democratic citizens should wish could be surmounted; working through such disagreements while sustaining conditions of civility and stable governance simply is what modern democracy is all about.

In this way, a modern democratic society needs there to be combating traditions of political commitment. Those who tend to find conservatism lacking need there to be stalwart defenders of conservative views that are articulate and smart. And the same goes for those who tend to reject various forms of liberalism and progressivism; they need there to be formidable exponents of the views they oppose. As we have written in previous 3QD posts, and have argued in our book Why We Argue (And How We Should), the only responsible way to oppose a view is to oppose the best version of it, and this requires one to know the best arguments in its favor. To put the point dramatically, modern democracy is an intellectual ecosystem that thrives only under conditions of civil disagreement among sincere and intelligent citizens. Were one of the many longstanding and noble traditions of democratic political thought to disappear from the public debate, the entire system would suffer.

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by Jonathan Kujawa

On March 15th it was announced that Andrew Wiles won the 2016 Abel Prize. Established in 2002, the Abel Prize has become arguably the most prestigious prize in mathematics. In contrast to the Fields medal, which is awarded to those under 40, the Abel prize set itself as the prize which recognizes long term contributions to mathematics.

In keeping with tradition (see here: 2015, 2014) we're taking the opportunity to check out the math of behind the Abel Prize. This is the rare instance when the prizewinner's work appeared in the New York Times and may well need no introduction. Wiles won for

…for his stunning proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem by way of the modularity conjecture for semistable elliptic curves, opening a new era in number theory.

— from the Abel Prize Announcement

Fermat's Last Theorem (FLT) is the claim that, for any n greater than or equal to three, there are no integer solutions to the equation

That is, you can't find numbers a, b, and c from among 0, 1, -1, 2, -2,… which can be plugged into

and have the same number on both sides of the equal sign. The same goes if the six is replaced with a 3, or 2016, or 187,201, or any other number greater than or equal to three.

If you haven't heard of FLT before, it's hard to see why anyone should give a rat's rear end about whether nor not there are integer solutions to this equation. On the other hand, Fermat conjectured FLT in 1637 and here we are in 2016 giving Wiles the Abel Prize for proving that yes, indeed, there are no such solutions. Something interesting must be going on.

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