Fareed Zakaria weighs in on Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, in the New York Times:

Terrorism remains a threat, and we will all continue to be fascinated by upheavals in Lebanon, events in Iran and reforms in Egypt. But ultimately these trends are unlikely to shape the world’s future. The countries of the Middle East have been losers in the age of globalization, out of step in an age of free markets, free trade and democratic politics. The world’s future — the big picture — is more likely to be shaped by the winners of this era. And if the United States thought it was difficult to deal with the losers, the winners present an even thornier set of challenges. This is the implication of the New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman’s excellent new book, ”The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century.”

More here.  And see a slightly more negative review of Friedman’s book here.

Also, here‘s Fareed Zakaria’s Martini recipe. [Thanks Sean!]

From Nature:

For a cold Tuesday night in March, the turnout is surprisingly good. Twenty or so fresh-faced college students are gathered together in a room in the student union at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, the state’s largest public university. They are there for the first meeting of Salvador Cordova’s Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness (IDEA) club. “I have a great deal of respect for the scientific method,” Cordova tells his attentive audience as he outlines the case for intelligent design. Broadly speaking, he says, the concept is that a divine hand has shaped the course of evolution. The arguments are familiar ones to both advocates and opponents of the idea: some biological systems are too complex, periodic explosions in the fossil record too large, and differences between species too great to be explained by natural selection alone. Cordova — who holds three degrees from the university, the most recent one in mathematics — argues that the development of life on Earth would be described better if an intelligent creator is added to the mix.

Most scientists overwhelmingly reject the concept of intelligent design. “To me it doesn’t deserve any attention, because it doesn’t make any sense,” says Bruce Alberts, a microbiologist and president of the National Academy of Sciences. “Its proponents say that scientific knowledge is incomplete and that there’s no way to bridge the gap except for an intelligent designer, which is sort of saying that science should stop trying to find explanations for things.”

More here.

3 Quarks Daily editor Morgan Meis went to Vietnam with his new bride Stefany Anne Golberg for their honeymoon last year. As is usual with Morgan, he took an obsessive interest in the country, its history, literature, cuisine, and, of course, its vexed relations and encounters with the United States. He travelled widely while there, and read deeply when he returned. He even did some posts at 3QD about Vietnam here, and here.

Recently, Morgan and Tom Bissell were commissioned by the Virginia Quarterly Review to travel to Vietnam to cover the celebrations marking the 30th anniversary of the reunification of North and South Vietnam (the fall of Saigon), along with a photographer. They left a week ago, and Morgan posted this at The Old Town Review Chronicles four days ago:

I spoke with the young Vietnamese about the American War. “I’ve heard about this war,” a young woman said, “it seems like it was very terrible.” “Yes,” said another, “there was a documentary about it a few days ago. Those must have been difficult times.”

So much for presuppositions. Perhaps the final and sweetest revenge is that they’ve moved on more than we have.

The next thing I heard was a hair-raising email that Stefany forwarded, in which he says:

It’s a long story but we made it out of Vietnam. Because they were going to potentially detain us indefinitely and God knows what if we didn’t get out right away we were forced to fly to Singapore under constant guard from the secret police. I am very mentally exhausted and was very scared for awhile. Now I’m in Singapore with no way to get home. I’m trying to figure things out from here.

I have just spoken to Stefany, and Morgan seems to be out of danger, and just trying to make his way home. We wish him a safe passage back. Here is the Monday Musing column Morgan did for 3QD just before leaving.

Some have called Ed Witten the smartest man alive today. He is often compared to Einstein, and is by far the most famous string theorist around. Sean Carrol of Preposterous Universe reports (via Not Even Wrong):

Princeton professors stage “filibuster” against the anti-filibuster machinations of alumus Bill Frist. Two of the filibusterers are physicists Chiara Nappi and Ed Witten, the latter of whom regaled the crowd by reading selections from Griffith’s Introduction to Elementary Particles. Couldn’t he have just given an introductory lecture on twistors and string theory?

More here.

Thomas Powers reviews three recent books on the American intelligence effort, in the New York Review of Books:

“Chatter” seems too casual a word for what is arguably the most important single product of the mammoth American cyber-industrial establishment which gathers “communications intelligence.” Intelligence professionals use “chatter” to describe the miscellany they acquire of the personal and operational communications of “persons of interest,” another term of art meaning people who may know or be planning something the United States wants or needs to know about.

More here.

From Spiked:

2005 – announced as Einstein Year – marks the centenary of the publication of Albert Einstein’s equation E = mc². To mark this occasion, Sandy Starr at spiked and science communicator Alom Shaha have conducted a survey of over 250 renowned scientists, science communicators, and educators – including 11 Nobel laureates – asking what they would teach the world about science and why, if they could pick just one thing. Alom Shaha, who conceived the survey, has made four accompanying films in which interviewees talk through their responses…

Respondents include:

Colin Berry, Paul Davies, Richard Dawkins, K Eric Drexler, Susan Haack, Matt Ridley, Simon Singh, John Stachel, John Sulston, and Raymond Tallis

More here.

Amanda Ripley in Time:

Most of the people who died on 9/11 had no choice. They were above the impact zone of the planes and could not find a way out. But investigators are only now beginning to understand the actions and psychology of the thousands who had a chance to escape. The people who made it out of the World Trade Center, for example, waited an average of 6 min. before heading downstairs, according to a new National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) study drawn from interviews with nearly 900 survivors. But the range was enormous. Why did certain people leave immediately while others lingered for as long as half an hour?

More here.

Billy Heller in the New York Post:

When Harper Lee published “To Kill a Mockingbird” in 1960, it caused a sensation.

Lee won a Pulitzer and the book became an Oscar-winning film starring Gregory Peck as bigotry-battling lawyer Atticus Finch.

Then Lee practically disappeared. She never wrote another book, and she gave her last interview in 1964.

But like her reclusive character Boo Radley, Lee recently emerged to perform an act of kindness.

The author signed a first edition of her book that will be sold to raise money for the seriously ill son of Cookeville, Tenn., police chief Bob Terry.

More here.

Julian Evans in Prospect Magazine:

In all the battles for the Enlightenment, one combatant’s name is rarely mentioned. Don Quixote de la Mancha, icon of everything in humanity that is calamitously idealistic, is renowned for qualities other than rationalist courage: for kindness and foolishness; for unintended comedy and a refusal to be disenchanted; for clairvoyant lunacy and obstinate romanticism in a rotten, factual world. He rides out with Sancho Panza from his village in la Mancha to discover that the world is not as he has read about it in books of chivalry and, impervious to ridicule or failure, for 124 chapters seeks to live up to the pastoral ideal of the knight errant, that fiction of the good man. Only in the 126th and final chapter does he acknowledge the “absurdities and deceptions” of the books that inspired him and then, in an ending of unbearable sadness, finally renounces his world of fantasy, returns to his senses, and dies.

More here.

Joshua Glenn in The Boston Globe:

TWO WEEKS AGO, in an item about the New York Press’s roster of the “50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers,” I asked readers to nominate Bostonians for a list of our own. The Top 10 “most loathsome” Bostonians, according to readers, are – in descending order – Mitt Romney (“Fake Bostonian”), Ben Affleck (“No-talent actor mooching off his Boston roots”), Cardinal Bernard Law (in absentia), Tom Finneran, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Tom Menino, WRKO’s Howie Carr, Big Dig overseer Matthew J. Amorello, and WTKK’s Mike Barnicle. These worthies are followed closely by WEEI’s Gerry Callahan; Johnny Damon (as author, not athlete); William Bulger (whose brother Whitey tied for 50th place with Jay Leno and “Fever Pitch” star Jimmy Fallon – “Take off the Sox gear you phony”); Curt Schilling (“It’s like the entire city of Boston can’t make a decision until they get Schilling’s input”); and, tied for 15th place, a lineup of grating furniture-store spokespersons: Bob of Bob’s Discount Furniture, Eliot and Barry of Jordan’s, and Bernie and Phyl of Bernie & Phyl’s (“GO AWAY”).

More here.

The anonymous 3QD reader who wrote “I love you and would like your hand(s) in marriage” as a response in our reader survey, has outed herself: it is Nell Grey of Pigeon Post Pictures. Nell Grey and Walker Errant are making what seems a fascinating documentary film called Turtles All The Way Down. From their website:

One year ago, we met Richard Ogust, a writer sharing his Manhattan penthouse with 1200 threatened and endangered turtles and tortoises. He was in the middle of a swarm of media attention. CNN, CBS, NBC, the Discovery Channel and others around the world were all shining their spotlights on “the crazy turtle guy of New York City.” But after the reporters left, the articles had been published and the programs had aired, Richard explained to us that the real story hadn’t been told.

Turtles All The Way Down tells a story not about eccentricity, but about devotion. It is a story inspired by an appalling but little known fact: that we are on the brink of losing a group of animals that have survived the ecological instability of the last 200 million years, including the great extinction that eliminated the dinosaurs.

More on the film here.  And Nell, if I weren’t happily married, I would certainly have accepted your proposal.

From MSNBC:

Bacteria have been programmed to behave like computers, assembling themselves into complex shapes based on instructions stuffed in to their genes. The work was led by Ron Weiss, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and molecular biology at Princeton University. The research could lead to smart biological devices that could detect hazardous substances or bioterrorism chemicals, scientists say. Eventually, the process might be used to direct the construction of useful devices or the growth of new tissue, perhaps restoring function to a severed spinal cord.

The study is detailed in April 28 issue of the journal Nature.

More here.

From Nature:

A coating of sugar could help nanoparticles deliver molecules to fight widespread tumours, according to research on mice. The team’s nanoparticles, which contain gene-silencing molecules that can inhibit cancerous growth, are designed to be injected into the bloodstream and taken up primarily by tumour cells. The nanoparticles also manage not to create troublesome reactions from the immune system. The nanoparticles, which are small enough to pass through blood vessels into the surrounding tissue, are taken up by cancerous cells because they carry a molecular tag that binds to receptors found on tumours. The agent consists of small interfering RNA (siRNA). When the agent is taken up by a tumor cell, it inhibits expression of the tumour-growth gene, and the cell stops multiplying. Other attempts to carry siRNA to tumours have used nanoparticles made of lipids. But in some mouse studies, these particles provoked an immune response, which would make the approach difficult to use in humans.

More here.

Zeina Nadine Assaf is a very talented young NYC artist. She wrote to tell me about H.O.A.S.T., which she is taking part in this weekend. Do try to make it there:

The Harlem Open Artist Studio Tour (H.O.A.S.T.) is a community-based arts organization that was established in 2004. Our mission is to foster artistic expression by uniting and promoting the visual artists of Harlem and to strengthen the community by stimulating awareness of the contemporary arts movement.

Our first project is the 1st Annual Harlem Open Artist Studio Tour – a two-day event that will accomplish our objectives by bringing the public into visual artists’ studios in historic Harlem on 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Saturday, April 30 and 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., Sunday, May 1, 2005. This event stands as a tribute to the art and culture that flourish in Harlem today.

There is more information here.  More info on Zeina here, and you can meet her personally on:

Saturday, April 30, from 11:30 – 4pm, and Sunday, May 1, from 1-5pm
At La Negrita, 999 Columbus Avenue, at the Northeast corner of 109th Street

Alessandro Petty writes for Domus Magazine (subscription needed) about Cairo’s growing cemetery population, only he is talking about living people:

“Contrary to modern urban-planning principles, the dictates of Islam, public hygiene rules and social conventions, people continue to live in Cairo’s cemeteries. This is a practice rooted in the funeral ceremonies of the Pharaohs and the religious beliefs of the Copts. The cemetery is a place of contemplation for the Sufis, a place of exile for impoverished nobles, a caravansary for pilgrims on route to Mecca and first homes for families newly arrived in the city from the countryside. “

Michael Balter in Smithsonian Magazine:

Archaeologists believe a 9,500-year-old Neolithic site in central Turkey may help solve the mystery of why humans first settled down in communities.

More here.

Alison Motluk in New Scientist:

Some mutant flies can get by on 30% less sleep than their normal counterparts, thanks to a single mutation in one gene.

The finding is important because it suggests the amount of sleep needed may be largely controlled by one gene, which may shed light on human sleep needs, says Chiara Cirelli at the University of Wisconsin, US. “This isn’t some obscure fly gene – there’s a homologue in mammals and humans.”

More here.

Terry Eagleton reviews The Literary Wittgenstein edited by John Gibson and Wolfgang Huemer, in the Times Literary Supplement:

Why are artists so fascinated by Ludwig Wittgenstein? Frege is a philosopher’s philosopher, and Bertrand Russell was every shopkeeper’s idea of a sage; but Wittgenstein is the philosopher of poets and composers, novelists and movie directors. Derek Jarman made his last major film about him; Bruce Duffy plucked a novel from his tormented life in The World As I Found It; M. A. Numminem has set Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus to music in his Tractatus Suite, and garbled fragments of the same text can be heard croaked in a hilarious stage-German accent by a Dutch pop group. The list is long.

One source of the fascination, no doubt, is the fabular, riches-to-rags nature of the philosopher’s career. The child of one of the wealthiest industrialists of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Wittgenstein gave away most of his fortune and spent much of his life in zealously Tolstoyan pursuit of sancta simplicitas.

More here.

The results of our reader survey (139 people responded) show roughly that:

• Most people want us to put up as many interesting items as we can find on a given day, but a significant minority wants only 1-5 posts at most.
• A great majority of people prefer the posts to be more than a sentence or two, but less than a screenful.
• Most people seem to like the pictures in the posts.
• Many people would like more original commentary from us, though about a quarter of respondents want the site to stay the same.
• Most people like the Monday column, but only a small number would like to see more such features.

In addition, a significant number of people left very helpful suggestions and comments, of which my personal favorite was:

• I love you and would like your hand(s) in marriage.

Many thanks to all of you for taking the time to tell us what you want, and for all the encouragement. We are always suckers for flattery.

For more detailed results, all the comments, and the exact numbers, click here.

Reported in The Guardian: Michael March talks to author Ahdaf Soueif about the war in Iraq and the west’s view of Islam:

MM: Name five points from Islam which could redirect history.

AS: If – rather than looking at what specific Muslims have done you look at what Islam says about itself – you find lots of ethical positions that one could build on. Diversity and equality are pretty good starting points: several texts celebrate diversity and affirm it as a positive good. And hand in hand with diversity comes equality. Putting a high premium on knowledge. Islam, until recent decadent times, has never set its face against science.

Encouraging you to simultaneously engage with the world and yet maintain a level of detachment: “Live for the next world as if you were to die tomorrow, and live for this world as though you were going to live forever.” There is a tradition of the prophet that says that if the end of the world were to come and you were carrying a seed in your hand go ahead and plant it.

More here.