by Hari Balasubramanian

The Indian subcontinent is well known for its spices, and one of its stellar contributions is the ubiquitous black pepper. Native to South India and Southeast Asia (see unripe green fruits in picture), it’s been around for thousands of years, making its way very early to Europe and other parts of Asia by trade. Black pepper and the related long pepper may have been the most prevalent hot spices east of the Atlantic. That was until Columbus blundered onto the Americas in 1492, inadvertently connecting the Americas – which at the time had a unique ecological and cultivation history because of its isolation – to Europe, Africa and Asia.

In the newly globalized world since 1492, American ‘peppers’, better known as chilies, began to make their way to the rest of the world and took hold quickly. Indeed, all the chili peppers that the world uses today, without exception – from the mild bell peppers used primarily for their deep flavors to the hot ones that Indian, Thai, Chinese, Korean and other cuisines take for granted – all are descended from the varieties cultivated for millennia by pre-Hispanic farmers in southern North America (Mexico primarily) and northern South America (Peru and Bolivia have many varieties). The fiery habanero, which scores high on the Scoville Heat Scale, is originally from the Amazon from where it reached Mexico.

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by Mathangi Krishnamurthy

Many months ago, I wandered along with a bunch of enthusiastic companions, into a museum for sepulchral culture. Nestled in the charming, modernist city of Kassel, Germany, we were part of a conference group discussing reproductive loss, and I suppose our hosts considered it fitting that we make communion with death culture writ large. As we flitted curiously around, and up and down, seeking shelter from the sleet and wind outside, we noted little skeletal figurines, gravestones, tombs, tombstones, and ritualistic instruments meant to ease passage to other worlds. For a museum devoted to the seemingly morbid phenomenon of death, it left us surprisingly sanguine.

The dictionary tells me that a sepulchre is “a small room or monument, cut in rock or built of stone, in which a dead person is laid or buried”. I worry at the oxymoronic, “dead person”. Other romanticized words like “crypt”, “catacomb”, and “sarcophagus” serve as synonyms for those who do not quite like the cadence of “sepulchre”. Together, in medieval-esque glory, they capture for us the stories of death, memory, and memorialization, and cultures of dying. For this we share with all humankind, in that people die. The sorrow of their loss is mitigated by cultural processes that allow us to believe that their lives meant something.

There are no sepulchral museums in India. But memorialization is seen across the length of the country, from the sepulchral urns excavated at Adichanallur in South India, to the stone circles of Junapani in Nagpur, to the evidence of pit burials in Burzahoma, Kashmir. The Iron Age in these regions marks the beginning of the creation of separate areas for the dead.

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by Charlie Huenemann

David Hume, that most sly student of human experience, declared he couldn’t find himself anywhere. As he gazed inward, he came across sensations, feelings, passions, and moods, but he had never come across a self in the way one might come across a vivid shade of turquoise or a lampshade or a heartbeat. He could find no “simple and continued” thing underlying his perceptions, as a bed of stone lies beneath an ever-changing stream. And so he haplessly concluded that he was nothing more than a stream, a bundle of impressions, a shifting mass of predicates without a subject. And if someone else has come to a different conclusion – if he stumbles across himself in his own experience –

“I must confess I can no longer reason with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continu’d, which he calls himself; tho’ I am certain there is no such principle in me.”

It wasn’t long before alarm bells went off. In an appendix to his treatise, Hume admitted he was in deep trouble. The basis of his entire philosophy was the view that distinct events are, well, distinct: it is only our thinking that combines distinct events into ideas of enduring things, into stable causal regularities, into expectations of uniformity in nature, and so on. Our minds create the universe out of the diverse. But if we ourselves are diverse – if there is no unity even in us – then how we ever be able to pull off such a trick? Without a simple and continued thing to assemble all the broken fragments into a whole, how is the appearance of a whole ever to come about? “All my hopes vanish,” he wrote, as he entered into this deepest of all labyrinths. He provided no solution, not ever, and he never wrote on this subject again.

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by Grace Boey

“If all Men are born free, how is it that all Women are born slaves?”

“She who Marrys ought to lay it down for an indisputable Maxim, that her Husband must govern absolutely and intirely, and that she has nothing else to do but to Please and Obey.”

– Mary Astell, Some Reflections Upon Marriage (1700)

* * *

Mary Astell, writer and philosopher of the late-17th and early-18th century, provides an intriguing paradox for the contemporary feminist. Modern scholars of her work have referred to her as the 'first English feminist'; yet, she was unabashedly conservative in ways that severely limited her ability to push boundaries for women.

Astell's fierce advocacy for women's education is perhaps her biggest claim to contemporary fame. 1694 saw the first publication of her book A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, in which she argued that women had the same intellectual and moral capacities as men, were equally deserving of education, and ought to emancipate themselves from the the vain and foolish social customs that bound them. To this end, Astell proposed the formation of a female-only educational academy.

Such views on women's education were remarkably radical for Astell's time, and her claims that women could be just as rational and virtuous as men went against popular sentiment. Her position on these matters will resonate strongly with the modern-day feminist. Consequently, the following excerpt from her later 1700 book, Some Reflections Upon Marriage, will come as a surprise—and perhaps disappointment—to some:

“She who Marrys ought to lay it down for an indisputable Maxim, that her Husband must govern absolutely and intirely, and that she has nothing else to do but to Please and Obey. She must not attempt to divide his Authority, or so much as dispute it, to struggle with her Yoke will only make it gall the more, but must believe him Wise and Good and in all respects the best, at least he must be so to her. She who can't do this is in no way fit to be a Wife.” (Reflections)

Despite what one might hope, the passage above isn't an isolated call by Astell for wives to submit to their husbands, no matter how lacking in wisdom or goodness he may be. Nor is it the case that Astell had changed her mind about the status of women by the time she started writing the Reflections; the Proposal itself is littered with calls for female subordination.

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by Leanne Ogasawara

Have you ever been moved to tears by a painting?

There is a wonderful letter, in James Elkins' Pictures and Tears, about museum goers looking at a landscape painting in Japan. The lady who wrote the letter to Elkins was in Tokyo as part of an Andy Warhol exhibition. Unable to speak the language and perhaps not all that knowledgeable about the culture, it had to be based on some kind of misunderstanding that she came to believe that the painting of a waterfall on rare display at the Nezu Museum, called Nachi Waterfall, was “a picture of God.”

This painting is a National Treasure of Japan and is not displayed so often (I never managed to see it in 22 years there). So, not surprisingly, the exhibition was jam-packed full of people there to see it.

In the letter, she described how beautifully dressed the people were, many in formal kimono and some looked to be college professors. She said it was like going to the Met, except that when she finally got near the picture, she found the people around her to all be silently standing there crying.

It is an extraordinary story in an extraordinary book.

Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever been overcome to tears by a painting? (It has to be a painting and it has to be tears).

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by Matt McKenna

Unless you’re a parent, there’s a good chance you haven’t seen Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip, although you likely have been assaulted by the animated film’s ubiquitous trailer. When confronted by the trailer, perhaps you, like me, muted your TV/laptop/cell phone and wondered, why is there another Alvin and the Chipmunks movie? Or perhaps you, unlike me, had the wherewithal in that moment to realize the Alvin movies don’t exist because anyone particularly likes them but instead because parents are forced to bring their children to them regardless of their quality. What the Alvin movies are for children, the lottery is for adults–just as the Alvin movies don’t have to be good to sell tickets, neither does the Powerball lottery have to payout to sell tickets. With the Powerball jackpot prize shooting north of $1 billion, giddy adults are lining up to purchase tickets they know aren’t going to win. Indeed, it must be a cushy job to work either at 20th Century Fox on an Alvin movie or at the MUSL which runs Powerball since in either case, people will buy tickets despite their product providing no value to their customers.

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by Bill Benzon

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by Eric Byrd

This half-memoir, half-history is one of those bleak books that illustrate Sartre's remark that a victory described in detail is indistinguishable from a defeat. On June 4, 1942, US Navy dive-bombers sank four Japanese aircraft carriers – all of which had been present at the attack on Pearl Harbor seven months prior – in one of the most spectacular naval revenges in history. But at other points of the battle, the American “Wildcat” fighters were found to be useless against the Japanese Zero, and the three squadrons of “Devastator” torpedo bombers were obliterated – 41 planes took off, 6 returned, and none scored a single hit on a Japanese ship. The crews of the Devastators flew obsolete aircraft, carried faulty torpedoes, and used terrible tactics: they flew straight at the Japanese carriers, low and slow, in tight formation; many were shot down by Japanese fighters before they could release, and those that did release “belly-flopped” their torpedoes into the waves, probably damaging the delicate propulsion and guidance innards. The destruction of the torpedo squadrons is always justified by the fact that their attacks kept the Japanese fighters off the American dive-bombers (the real hit men, lurking high above), and disrupted flight operations so much that the Japanese were unable to launch their own planned strike, and so hundreds of veteran Japanese pilots, waiting to take off, were incinerated in their cockpits.

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by Josh Yarden

“… Or, you could just free them yourself…” This cartoon raises quite a good question. Whether you find it funny or foolish, irrelevant or irreverent, it does go to the heart of the biblical message. If the Creator of the universe wants to free Hebrew slaves from bondage in Egypt (or get anyone to do anything, for that matter) why send a man to do the work of a Deity? Why go to all the theatrics of lighting a bush that is not consumed by the flame in order to capture the attention of a shepherd who doesn't understand why he has been chosen to complete a seemingly impossible task?

The shepherd in the cartoon gets it: You want to free the slaves? Why waste time appearing in flaming bushes, casting ten plagues and creating high drama. Just free the slaves. The Moses in the Bible, however, finds himself in an existential crisis: Why me? How? Who will listen to me? What should I say when I myself doubt I am capable of achieving my mission? The hero is perplexed… like everyone else who ever desired to change the world, yet also realizes that the challenge may be too great.

You don't have to be a prophet or the inspired leader of a nation to ask yourself, ‘Why me? Who will listen to what I have to say?' We all ask these questions in the face of the injustices we see. Regardless of what you believe about the origin and the meaning of the Bible, grappling with oppressors and oppression is a matter for humans to deal with. The biblical narrative reinforces this idea in multiple ways, from the Garden of Eden to the River Jordan. Humans have to make it on their own, enduring the hardships of everything from childbirth to cultivating the land in order to provide food for themselves to famine, slavery and battles to be free. That's life.

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by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse

So much Political commentary seems to proceed by means of debate rather than report. This is an understandable consequence of new technology which makes engagement easy. Our heightened exposure to debate is a good thing, too. Open debate is democracy's lifeblood. Yet popular political disagreement has taken on an odd hue. Rather than presenting facts and professing a view, commentators present views concerning the views of their opponents. And often, it's not only views about opponents' views, many go straight to views about opponents. Despite heated disagreements over Big Questions like healthcare, stem-cell research, abortion, same-sex marriage, race relations and global warming, we find a surprising consensus about the nature of political disagreement itself: All agree that, with respect to any Big Question, there is but one intelligent position, and all other positions are not merely wrong, but ignorant, stupid, naïve. And as a consequence, those who cling to these views must be themselves either ignorant or wicked. Or both.

A minute in the Public Affairs section of any bookstore confirms this: Conservatives should talk to liberals “only if they must” because liberalism is a “mental disorder.” Liberals dismiss their Conservative opponents, since they are “lying liars” who use their “noise machine” to promote irrationality.

Both views betray a commitment to the Simple Truth Thesis, the claim that Big Questions always admit of a simple, obvious, and easily-stated solution. The Simple Truth Thesis encourages us to hold that a given truth is so simple and so obvious that only the ignorant, wicked, or benighted could possibly deny it. As our popular political commentary accepts the Simple Truth Thesis, there is a great deal of inflammatory rhetoric and righteous indignation, but in fact very little public debate over the issues that matter most. Consequently, the Big Questions over which we are divided remain unexamined, and our reasons for adopting our different answers are never brought to bear in public discussion.

This brings us back to our original observation – there seems to be so much debate. Yet what passes for public debate is in fact no debate at all. No surprise, really. Debate or discussion concerning a Big Question can be worthwhile only when there is more than one reasonable position regarding the question; and this is precisely what the Simple Truth Thesis denies.

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by Jonathan Kujawa

Something we all learn very early on is that things needs to be round to roll. My nieces, Abi and Sydney, are barely a year old and they already know that pyramids and cubes are terrible for rolling along the floor. The ones with more faces do better, but even a twenty sided die bumps along as you roll it across a table. Everybody knows wheels need to be round. The transportation engineers had that one figured out ages ago.

Ug and Zog gather data.

The square wheel is the archetype of an idea so obviously wrong headed that it can be rejected out of hand. After all, thousands of years of engineering have only been a refinement of Ug and Zog's original design. Even if you are open minded about the possibilities, you only need watch the Mythbusters put the idea to the test. The result is so molar shattering that surely no more needs to be said.

Like philosophers, artists, and poets, mathematicians aren't bothered with things like “practicality” and “the real world”. They are handy to have around if you want someone to challenge your assumptions and think outside the box [1]. In the 1950s it occurred to Gerson Robison that there are actually two shapes in play here: the wheel and the road it rolls on. If you allow yourself to adjust the shape of the road's surface, then maybe, just maybe, you can put hills and dips into the surface which exactly complement the shape of your wheel.

In 1952 Robison posed the question in the puzzle section of the American Mathematical Monthly. Writing about it later he said [2]:

Some years ago, while picking up my son's toy blocks, I became intrigued with the possibility of finding a cylindrical surface upon which a plank would roll in neutral equilibrium…. The requirement of neutral equilibrium means, first, that the center of gravity of the roller must travel in a horizontal path and, second, it must remain directly above the point above the point of contact of the two curves in all positions. In addition, the roller must actually roll into each position.

That is, center of the wheel must travel only horizontally as it rolls along so that the passengers have a smooth ride, the center must remain straight above the point of contact with the surface, and the wheel must actually, you know, roll. Robison explains that for a curve which gives a portion of the wheel's shape, you can actually calculate corresponding complementary shape for the road. It is a nice problem which turns out to only need a bit of calculus.

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by Jalees Rehman

We live in an era of exhaustion and fatigue, caused by an incessant compulsion to perform. This is one of the central tenets of the book “Müdigkeitsgesellschaft” (translatable as “The Fatigue Society” or “The Tiredness Society“) by the German philosopher Byung-Chul Han. Han is a professor at the Berlin Universität der Künste (University of the Arts) and one of the most widely read contemporary philosophers in Germany. He was born in Seoul where he studied metallurgy before he moved to Germany in the 1980s to pursue a career in philosophy. His doctoral thesis and some of his initial work in the 1990s focused on Heidegger but during the past decade, Han has written about broad range of topics regarding contemporary culture and society. “Müdigkeitsgesellschaft” was first published in 2010 and helped him attain a bit of a rock-star status in Germany despite his desire to avoid too much public attention – unlike some of his celebrity philosopher colleagues.

The book starts out with two biomedical metaphors to describe the 20^th century and the emerging 21^st century. For Han, the 20^th century was an “immunological” era. He uses this expression because infections with viruses and bacteria which provoked immune responses were among the leading causes of disease and death and because the emergence of vaccinations and antibiotics helped conquer these threats. He then extends the “immunological” metaphor to political and societal events. Just like the immune system recognizes bacteria and viruses as “foreign” that needs to be eliminated to protect the “self”, the World Wars and the Cold War were also characterized by a clear delineation of “Us” versus “Them”. The 21^stcentury, on the other hand, is a “neuronal” era characterized by neuropsychiatric diseases such as depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), burnout syndrome and borderline personality disorder. Unlike the diseases in the immunological era, where there was a clear distinction between the foreign enemy microbes that needed to be eliminated and the self, these “neuronal” diseases make it difficult to assign an enemy status. Who are the “enemies” in burnout syndrome or depression? Our environment? Our employers? Our own life decisions and choices? Are we at war with ourselves in these “neuronal” conditions? According to Han, this biomedical shift in diseases is mirrored by a political shift in a globalized world where it becomes increasingly difficult to define the “self” and the “foreign”. We may try to assign a “good guy” and “bad guy” status to navigate our 21^st century but we also realize that we are so interconnected that these 20^th century approaches are no longer applicable.

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by Madhu Kaza

My reading schedule has little to do with the publishing industry's calendar of launches, prizes and promotions. When I look back on a year's worth of reading I note that much of what I read was not hot off the presses. My year end list of favorite books mostly includes works that were published in previous years. One great thing about books, though, is that for the most part they stick around. Whether they are on my own shelves or at the library I depend on them to live out long lives and wait for me.

Here are a few books that I loved this year:

Marie NDiaye, Self-Portrait in Green (English Translation: 2014, Jordan Stump)

Marie NDiaye is a boss writer; she does what she wants. Apparently she had agreed to write a memoir. It's
thrilling to see how she shattered genre expectations to create a strange, surreal and devastating portrait of women in this book.

In the opening pages the narrator sees a mysterious ghost-like woman in green by a banana tree from her car. She is dropping off her children at school. The children are described as docile. The narrator writes of their bodies: “a golden dust floats above their heads. Their foreheads are curved and serene, their napes still pale . . . my children's arms & legs are bare, because the air is warm, intoxicating.” It's all kind of eerie as if this were the beginning of a horror narrative.

The women in green figures proliferate and the book proceeds through confusion, misrecognition, transmogrification. Early on the narrator writes, “That's when I run into Cristina, but as soon as I see her I'm not sure it's her rather than Marie-Gabrielle or Alison… If this woman really is Cristina, I remember that she's my friend.” Cristina may also turn out to be a woman in green, not a phantasm exactly but not an ordinary woman (or conventional realist character) either. Self-Portrait in Green is full of playful, intriguing passages like this one.

I didn't know precisely what to make of the book when I finished it. I didn't know what the various women in green added up to. But I did know that I had read a beautifully written, strange and visionary work that I would need to read again.

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by Shadab Zeest Hashmi

From the outside, Lorca’s summer house in Granada reminds me of childhood laughter, something he vowed never to lose: doors and windows painted promise-green, white walls, sunlight sliding like a child on snow, belly down. On my way here, I’ve seen tomatoes nearly as big as cantaloupes in a shop not far from the sign for this place: “Calle Arabial” and “Parque de F. Garcia Lorca.” I’m entering the world of Lorca’s poems as I take paths canopied by sequoias, pines, poplars, olive and pomegranate trees, expecting to be ambushed by the mischievous, life-affirming “house spirit” duende which inspires poetry by challenging one to a “duel on the rim of a well” according to Lorca.

Inside, the tour guide says no cameras please. I glance at the drawings, photographs, furniture, piano. Where is duende hiding?

Upstairs, the floor tiles are an imitation of the tiles of the Alhambra palace.

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