by James McGirk

There is a junk store a few doors down from my house. Actually it isn’t even a store; it is just an alley with a tarp stretched over it and a chicken wire gate in front to protect the merchandise, which is mostly old furniture and baby things.

There used to be a guard dog chained to the gate. His name was Roscoe. I detest dogs, for the most part, but Roscoe wasn’t bad. He was beautiful. A pit bull with a pink muzzle and fur that was mostly white but had a faint orange hue. Roscoe was ferocious; terrifying, the streetlamp was out on his side of the street and at night he would hurl himself against the fence if you so much as looked in his direction, let alone walk past him.

During the day he was kept chained beneath a shady tree beside the gate. For three years he would snarl and bark at me every single time I walked by past him. If he was on his chain he would all but choke himself to snap at me. But I grew accustomed to the treatment and seeing him and there were times, admittedly not many of them, but when it was really hot and he was splayed out and panting or when his muzzle was protruding through the wire when I felt sorry for him.

And then one day he was gone. There was big piece chunk of plywood where he used to sit and the fence had an ominous gouge in it. I asked the owner what had happened to Roscoe. He was stolen. Someone had come by and snipped open the fence and pulled the howling, snarling, snapping thing out and stuffed him into the back of a van. They had it on tape. The police were called and they couldn’t do a thing. Roscoe was gone and considering what usually happens to stolen dogs in a rough neighborhood, he probably wasn’t alive for more than a couple of days.

To me dogs are disgusting, I think they are servile and slobbery and in a city like New York, something that should have been banned before something like bucket-sized orders of soda pop or shortening. But I felt awful passing by the junk store and knowing my noble, beautiful, if rather truculent neighbor Roscoe would never bark me at again. So, as a way of channeling my grief, I suppose, I resolved to catalogue the other creatures I interact with in my very urban environment.

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by Kevin S. Baldwin

With the recent global economic troubles, bail-outs of various kinds, and hand-wringing about passing financial debt onto future generations, it seems like as good a time as any to think about other debts that may be at least as important. Don't get me wrong: I too am concerned about the long term implications of deficit spending by national, state, and local governments, but believe these may be overshadowed by what we are doing to the natural world.

Nearly 20 years ago, Mathis Wackernagel and his collaborators began formulating a measure of human impact on the earth's ecosystems. Eventually they arrived at an index called the “ecological footprint,” which summarizes food and fiber production, animal feed, timber harvest, fishing, infrastructure, and fossil fuel consumption and expresses this in “global hectares.” Thus a typical American would require nearly 10 global hectares in order to be supplied with all goods and services (Note how this compares to the global average of nearly 2.0 gha ecological footprint).

Using the index of ecological footprint, Wackernagel et al. 2002 estimated that humans crossed the threshold of sustainability into unsustainability around 1980 (see figure).

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by Ajay Chaudhary

Have you finally learned to do what is necessary? – Ras al-Ghul, Batman Begins (2005)

Oh, you. You just couldn't let me go, could you? This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. You truly are incorruptible, aren't you? You won't kill me out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness. And I won't kill you because you're just too much fun. I think you and I are destined to do this forever. – The Joker, The Dark Knight (2008)

Don't talk like one of them, you're not! Even if you'd like to be. To them, you're just a freak, like me. They need you right now. But when they don't, they'll cast you out, like a leper. See, their morals, their code… it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. I'll show you, when the chips are down, these… these civilized people? They'll eat each other. See, I'm not a monster, I'm just ahead of the curve. – The Joker, The Dark Knight (2008)

Bane: Leave, you. Daggett: No, you stay here. I’m in charge. Bane [gently places his hand on Daggett’s shoulder]: Do you feel in charge? Daggett: I’ve paid you a small fortune. Bane: And you think this gives you power over me? – Bane and Daggett, The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

When Gotham is ashes…then you have my permission to die. – Bane, The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Tell me where the trigger is…then you have my permission to die. – The Batman, The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Sovereign is he who decides on the exception. – Carl Schmitt, “Definition of Sovereignty”, Political Theology (1922)

The pivotal moment in Christopher Nolan’s recently-completed Batman trilogy arrives in the second movie. The Batman is riding a rather ominous motorcycle of monstrous proportions at the Joker, who is armed with a gun and a bad suit. But the Joker is not shooting at the Batman. Instead, he squeezes off a few rounds into the ground and repeatedly mumbles, “Come on, I want you to do it, I want you to do it. Come on, hit me.” It’s iconic, it’s deeply disturbing, and there is a wonderful ambiguity to the statement. Is the Joker trying to make the point that he extols throughout the movie? Are order and morality – any morality, including Batman’s one rule against killing people – a bad joke? Or is this an inward, psychological self-hatred exploding outwards as rage? Does the Joker merely want an aggrandized, but surely final, death? Suicide-by-Batman? The horror of Nolan’s version of the Joker as portrayed by the late Heath Ledger is that we simply can’t know. It’s a lingering and terrifying vision. However, Nolan clearly communicates to us via his prologue, Batman Begins, and his conclusion, The Dark Knight Rises, that he is primarily interested in the first question: is order a bad joke? If not, how and why? This is the question that these three films tackle and, ultimately, the one they seek to answer. So it is something of a puzzle as to why so much critical writing on the most recent film has focused on questions of explicit economic theories and American partisan politics. I will attempt to explore this puzzle here.

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by David Alvarez

Juan Valdez notwithstanding, coffee is an Islamic invention. According to the most popular story about its origins, sometime in the fifteenth century a goat-herding monk named Kaldi discovered coffee in the Kingdom of Ayaman (Yemen). His goats were staying up all night, “frisking and dancing in an unusual manner.” The Prior was informed, the goats diligently tracked, and the cause of their rambunctious insomnia identified: red berries from the “kahwa” tree.

The Prior, apparently a curious and practical type, tried the berries himself by boiling them in water and drinking the brew. It kept him awake all night. To help his monks with their nocturnal devotions, he shared his concoction with them. They declared it a gift of providence, and coffee soon spread “throughout the whole kingdom” and “other nations and provinces of the East.”

The Islamic world gave us not only coffee but also something else rather important: democracy. Popular histories of coffee are wrong in two big ways. If you thought the Kaldi story was too enchanting to be accurate, you are right. That story is mostly bunk. But an even bigger story we tell ourselves about coffee is just as fantastic. The most celebrated institution of the European Enlightenment is the English coffeehouse. As “seats of English liberty,” where all were welcome to discuss the news and criticize art and politics, the English coffeehouse gets lots of praise for promoting modern democracy. But this coffeehouse ideal as a space of debate and political dissent comes not from the European Enlightenment but from the world of Islam.

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by Majid Maqbool

On days when I’m alone at home some vivid images and memories of my childhood rush back. They arrange themselves in disturbing ways, unsettling previous memories. Sometimes these memories write themselves in solitude. Sometimes they are forgotten, only to return later from the oblivion: in the middle of some conversation, for example, while travelling, or at night, in the dreams. Sometimes it’s too painful to write down compelling memories. Sometimes remembering them is the only way of making peace with them. And all these memories are unforgettable, lingering in some corner of mind, waiting to be summoned.

I write because I remember. Because what I remember makes me who I am.

I remember, for example, those military crackdowns that loomed large over my childhood like black clouds: people ordered out of their homes early in the morning by the Indian troops, and assembled in open fields and playgrounds. And then that fearful wait for the next order of the troops. The troops lining up people, one frightened person after another, in front of that dreaded army gypsy. And whenever a masked mukbir (informer) seated inside the guarded army vehicle made a particularly shrill signal or a coded gesture, the person paraded in front of him was immediately frisked away by the troops. Often, he never returned home.

In my school days I remember the Indian army convoys driving past our school bus made us to wait till all the army trucks drove ahead, first, always. Often that meant waiting for hours, and getting late for school. To pass those uneasy hours, I remember counting the army trucks that made up that long and uninterrupted line of that dreaded army convoy. I remember the games we would play in the school bus: How many military trucks went past us today? 50? 100? 150, 200….? We would often challenge each other with the count. I remember the small bets we had kept for successfully predicting the number of army trucks that drove past our school bus. Quite often, I lost count of them…

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There is no defense for a man who, in the excess of his wealth,
has kicked the great altar of Justice out of sight. —Aeschylus


Drought

Having done their green work
the grasses say to the sky,
We thirst

The sky is blue and silent,
clouds tease. They slide
silently under a brilliant sun
hoarding their wealth

they are the Himalayas of heaven
cold and distant,
imperious,
proud of their majesty,
their volume,
joining and unjoining their vapors
among their kind alone
holding it to themselves

they are vacant
as an empty page
void
while the grasses
need psalms of moisture

they billow above dry prairies
counting their vaulted droplets
saving whole seas for their own
rainy day

by Jim Culleny
7/29/12

by Akim Reinhardt

I had come to suspect that Hillary Clinton was betraying us. That she was in fact a foreign agent, in service of a rival power.

And those poor fools who think Barack Obama was born in Kenya? It’s a red herring! Why couldn’t they see that? Clinton herself was probably behind it, a brilliant ploy to throw us off her tracks. It was all part of her master plan.

No doubt she sandbagged the 2008 primary, which was obviously hers for the taking. Come on now. Do you really think some skinny, inexperienced black kid could beat her if she didn’t let him?

But why did she do it? Wouldn’t a foreign agent like Hillary Clinton be in a position to destroy America after achieving the presidency? Maybe.

Maybe.

But she’s smarter than that.

By deftly placing her stooge Obama in the White House, the controversy of his foreign birth, which she herself had manufactured, would soak up the spotlight while she went about her nefarious business of taking down America by trotting the globe and hatching her evil scheme with various world leaders.

It was diabolical. It was brilliant. And the evidence seemed so convincing. After all, “Barack Obama” just isn’t an American sounding name. And, you know, there’s that whole thing about him not being white.

Well, his mother was white, and he largely was raised by white people, but they were just a sleeper cell. That’s all you need to know, really. The best conspiracies are the simplest ones, and the rest of that story just kind of writes itself.

And we all bought it, fools that we were. God-fearing, hard-working, America-loving fools. But damn us all to hell, I thought. Clinton was the rogue all along. And I had stumbled upon the evidence by chance, while doing something that rarely yields any new information: reading.

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by Sarah Firisen

With the Olympics coming to town
The British started to frown
The construction, the cost
The traffic lane lost
Our economy's already so down

You know it'll just get rained out
They've done what with the cycling route?
And the summer looks glum
Because tourists won't come
It's a fiasco without a doubt

Just as the grumbling built to its peak
And national spirits seemed bleak
The Olympics were given a lift
A real PR gift
An external, unwelcome critique

Yes, Mitt landed on Blighty's shore
With concerns and questions galore
“Is Britain prepared?”
The Romney declared
“How dare he!” the populace swore

And suddenly the people united
Everyone of them thrilled and excited
And they made clear to Mitt
We're all proud to be Brits
And the whole nation feels we've been slighted

As the sounds of Jerusalem swell
We're so proud of the land where we dwell
Just look at our Queen
And we love Mr Bean
Such a great show should all doubt dispel

Yes the Olympics have now come to town
And nothing will get the Brits down
It may rain, it may pour
But we know shore to shore
British pride never will drown

by Leanne Ogasawara

The other day on Facebook, I posted an article from the Atlantic, A Land Without Guns: How Japan Has Virtually Eliminated Shooting Deaths.

In the wake of Aurora, I thought there was a lot that was of interest in the article. But almost immediately the first comment I got was the old “same-old” about how “different” the Japanese are and that, “Holding up Japan as an example of how the US should handle guns is quixotic in the extreme, as nice as it may sound.” He explained, “Japanese are raised to be docile subjects of their government while America is based on the idea that the citizens can rise up against a tyrannical government and overthrow it. Distrust of the government is as American as apple pie. To do that, you need weapons.”

Setting aside what I think is a really unfair characterization of Japan, I wondered why people are always so quick to think that there is nothing that could be learned from other countries. I am not speaking about my friend on Facebook but rather about a pattern that I have seen again and again after returning from two decades overseas. Granting that there are indeed different cultural approaches to issues of authority that would make passing gun laws more difficult here than say in Japan; but let’s face it; the right to bear arms doesn’t include the right to bear grenades, military drones or anti-aircraft, so why couldn’t assault weapons also be regulated? Of course, they can and to wit, they already have been regulated in the past by law. But perhaps more to the point, I think the Japanese case does have much to offer in terms of gun license procedures and accountability that we could learn from—different culture and history notwithstanding.

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by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse

The theistic argument from beauty is an instance of a broader class of arguments for God’s existence known as teleological arguments. The basic form of this kind of argument is as follows:

1. The universe (or parts of it) exhibit property X.

2. Property X is usually (if not always) brought about by the purposive actions of those who created objects for them to be X.

3. The cases mentioned in Premise 1 are not explained (or fully explained) by human action or non-intentional events internal to the universe.

4. Therefore: The universe is (likely) the product of a purposive agent who created it to be X, namely God.

The variety of teleological arguments is as broad the range of properties one can reasonably substitute for X. Traditional teleological arguments plug in for X the claim that some feature of the universe is fine-tuned for life, or that the universe has whatever is required in order to support creatures capable of consciousness, or moral responsibility. The argument from beauty, by contrast, begins from the premise that the universe exhibits beauty. This, the argument runs, entails that the universe must have been created by God, and thus that God exists. But teleological arguments have what we call evil twins. These are arguments that are teleological in structure, but proceed from premises concerning the imperfection or nastiness of the universe to the conclusion that there is no God. The universe, after all, is a mixed bag. Thus, for every theistic argument from, say, fine-tuning, there’s an atheistic challenge beginning from the observation that precious little of the universe is inhabitable and that living creatures are actually poorly designed. Similarly, for every theistic argument from consciousness, there’s an opposing atheistic argument that contends that consciousness deeply flawed and in any case not much of a boon. And for every theistic argument from the fact of moral responsibility, there’s an atheistic argument from immorality. This is what we call the evil twin problem: if theists contend that teleological arguments are valid in their logical form, then they must confront the atheist versions.

Here we will pose the evil twin problem for the argument from beauty: the argument from ugliness.

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by Misha Lepetic

Success comprises in itself the seeds of its own decline
and sport is not spared by this law.
~Pierre de Coubertin

As we helplessly hurtle towards the next inflammation of the Olympic Games, some notes on the effects of the Games on the built environment might be in order.

The Olympics may pretend to be the premier competition among nation-states, but their physical manifestation is always sited within the city. Given that cities are, by their very nature, already crowded places, something must give when, to paraphrase Joseph Conrad, the immovable object of the city meets the irresistible force that is the Olympic Games. Furthermore, once the Olympic hurricane blows through town, what are the long-term consequences?

This can be divided into three fairly discreet phenomena: the forced relocation of populations that suddenly find themselves “in the way” of breathlessly ambitious master plans; the design, construction and fetishization of dozens of state-of-the-art facilities for a few days’ worth of competitions; and the long, drawn-out consequences of deciding (or, more accurately, not deciding) what to do with these facilities once the athletes, media and sponsors have moved on to pastures greener.

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by Vivek Menezes

You won’t find the Truth
By crossing your legs and holding your breath.
Daydreams won’t take you through the gateway of release.
You can stir as much salt as you like in water,
It won’t become the sea.

(by Lal Ded, translated by Ranjit Hoskote)

My journey to Ziarat Dastgir Sahibun in Sringar began on a cool, cloudy afternoon in Goa last December at the annual Arts + Literary Festival, when Ranjit Hoskote finally released a master-work after two decades of labour, ‘I Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded”.

Like many here, no doubt, I’d encountered the writings of this revolutionary fourteenth-century mystic earlier. But the preternaturally brilliant Hoskote has completely re-cast her in a new light. I dare say most of those present when he talked about Kashmir (with Bilal Tanweer and Jerry Pinto) became as immediately hooked as I was. This is when I started to seek out more information about the unique, confluential Sufism that came to prevail in Kashmir, without much effacing the Shaivism, Buddhism, and indigenous nature-worship that preceded it.

And so a family trip to Kashmir this May, which readers of 3QD already know about.

As described in that purposefully touristic post made from Srinagar itself, there is a bizarre gulf between Kashmir’s very real status as a tourism destination with near-limitless appeal (and demand to match), and the quality and quantity of reliable information available to travelers.

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by Evan Selinger

Earlier this year, controversy surrounded ultrasound legislation in Texas, Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, and Idaho. Lost in the critical commentaries on abuses of patients’ and physicians’ rights was concern over a fundamental violation of liberty. This issue hasn’t gone away, even though sonogram coverage isn’t currently grabbing headlines.

Medical experts routinely use ultrasound technology in ways that favor the Right to the Life agenda, even in states that don't have mandatory ultrasound laws. This problem goes unnoticed because the potential harm caused by the medical community is not the result of political ideology. Rather, it arises from inadvertent exploitation of patients’ natural human weaknesses and cognitive tendencies. To understand why, we need to grasp how typical conversations about ultrasound images can impede rather than foster informed consent.

In cases where advocates pushed for mandatory ultrasound, proponents insisted that women considering abortion should be subject to robust informed consent policy. From this perspective, ultrasound technology looks like a perfect tool for ensuring women understand the profound ramifications of using surgery to terminate a pregnancy. Unfortunately, discussions of what ultrasound images reveal isn’t limited to objective medical facts.

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by Edward B. Rackley

To remark on how seamless our online and natural worlds have become is ho-hum these days, but last week as I slurped morning coffee and chatted online with a former Mai Mai rebel (whom I’ll call ‘Dikembe’) in turbulent eastern DR Congo, I found new reason to pause. Exchanging views on our perennial topic—solutions to Congo’s problems—felt as natural as the morning paper, but his statements resisted their usual meaning and tugged at me the rest of day. The part that recycled in my mind went a bit like this:

Dikembe: Things are bad in EDRC, Kabila [the president] can’t manage the situation.
Me: What does he manage? Nothing new there.
D: That’s why we reject him.

[pause]

D: So how many Congolese have to die before the international community pays attention?
Me: The int'l community is impotent, you’ve seen that countless times. You have a government, ask them. You elected Kabila, why did you choose him? Or are you saying the elections were a fraud?
D: Aha, now you understand me perfectly. We are hearing that even his own security forces are moving against him. Only the international community can save us now.

In a previous episode of Congo’s tumult Dikembe and I worked together disarming combatants and reintegrating them into civilian life. Many were minors, Dikembe’s former subordinates from different local militias. Our program offered vocational training and the tools to start new businesses but few ex-combatants took it seriously. Most went along with the programs to kill time, selling the clothes and tools they received for cash. A lesson for us was that the adrenaline of pillage and the instant authority of the gun had become integral to their identity, defining them long after the firing stopped. Many ex-combatants, especially children, remained fiercely loyal to former commanders, rejecting their families and all forms of authority. Psychologically they were listless and volatile, preferring the bustle and relative anonymity of towns to the monotony and awkward familiarity of village life. Dikembe was no hero, but sage enough not to follow the herd. I watched him adapt to civilian life in wartime, a humbling series of privations, as he resisted the lure of easy money and influence through armed crime and extortion.

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by Quinn O'Neill

Olympic excitement is in the air as the world’s best athletes get ready to take the stage. Many of them have been preparing for this for most of their young lives. It’s a shot at a gold medal and the glory that comes with it, and a chance to test their mettle against the very best in the world.

Perhaps we should qualify the term “best in the world”, though, since a lot of potential competition is eliminated rather unfairly before the games begin. A champion’s win is really only a fair victory over those who've had the same opportunity to develop their talents. There are about a billion people in the world who can’t afford to eat let alone participate in sports, and a lot more who can only afford to participate at lower levels.

It’s a privilege to be able to dedicate your life to achieving extreme excellence in a sport, especially since Olympic sporting activities tend to be of little practical value. Sure, sprinting skills might come in handy when you're trying to outrun a predator, and I guess you never know when you might need to row backwards across a lake really fast, but by and large, the utility of such skills doesn't justify the effort it takes to develop them. Watching events like javelin and race walking, it would seem that human beings will compete at just about anything, just for the sake of competing.

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by Hannah Green

Today I had the exact same argument that blog readers and comedy central watchers have been having all over the country, according to Louis CK. The argument about whether or not Daniel Tosh should have apologized for allegedly suggesting that it would be hilarious if a female heckler got raped by five guys right there in the club.* My position was that he should have (and he did, so good for him.)

If you disagree with me, this is where I’m coming from. Women in this country are taught to be scared of rape all the time, and it’s really annoying. We think about it when we decide what to wear, where to go, when to go there, who to go with, who to trust. While men can also be the victims of sexual assault, I find that in general their lives tend to be less restricted by the attempt to avoid it. Whether or not this is rational doesn’t change the fact that it’s inescapable because we’re socially programmed this way. And a lot of us have experienced situations where we really do feel directly threatened, and these are terrible. They make you afraid to even go out, and then they make you angry at yourself because you feel weak. I understand that my position and that of other women in this country is far from the worst in the world. But still, in this aspect of life my male friend and I, at least, are pretty unequal

So the first reason I got mad, while slightly unfair, I think is also understandable. I got mad because my friend, being a dude who’s spent his whole life living in the same safe place, never even had to think about this stuff. Not his fault, I guess, but also not fair. I told him this. He apologized sarcastically, “I’m so sorry you were born into a male dominated society,” he said, “I was born into it too, by the way. I didn’t choose it.” So the second reason I god mad, which I think is fair, is that when he hears about this woman and how she felt threatened at the suggestion that five guys rape her, and when I say that I know I would feel the same way, his first reaction is to talk about how irrational that woman was. I’m telling him all this stuff about my life that I would never have even thought about telling him, and he doesn’t even shut up to try to understand why, or reflect on the fact that his perspective comes from a place of privilege. He tells me he doesn’t believe I would really feel threatened, because that’s such an irrational idea. She was in a comedy club, obviously no one was going to rape her.

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by Rishidev Chaudhuri

Like some eccentric prominent family, whose genius shades easily into the occult, the evil and the mad, Solanaceae, the family of the nightshade (so often prefixed by “deadly”), both contains several of our most ubiquitous food plants (typically of New World origin) and many of the multifarious toxins and deliriants beloved of witches, shamans and poisoners throughout history. The plants of Solanaceae are a dramatic-looking group, full of trumpet-like flowers that open at dusk and branches and stems that curl together like gnarled witches claws. They are also the source of eerie legends and origin myths, as exemplified by mandrake, said to grow from the ejaculate of a hanged man, and whose scream (when pulled out of the ground) will kill everyone in earshot.

To anyone who has ever shuddered at or been baffled by the thought that for most of history the Italians have had no tomatoes, the South Asians have had no chillies and no one in the Old World (including the Irish, the Germans and the Russians) has had potatoes, the gifts of Solanaceae are apparent. These are the bounty of the New World, plants that were brought over from the Americas by European explorers, introduced into their home countries and then spread to the rest of the world (many of the sins of the Portuguese colonists should be offset by their introduction of the chilli to India). Traces of this recency exist on the linguistic map, and several cultures label tomatoes and potatoes as some sort of eggplant or apple¹.

While the major Solanaceae food crops that we eat are from the New World, most of the family members used in the Old World were used as hallucinogens, medicines (in small doses) or as poisons (with the notable exception of eggplant). Both tomatoes and potatoes suffered from these associations, and it took a while before people became convinced that they were safe to eat. One is generally not responsible for one's relatives (except children), but there is some truth to this fear. The leaves and stems of tomato plants are mildly toxic, and potato sprouts can be quite dangerous (in recent years, much of this has been bred out of the plant varieties that we eat, though the same is probably not true for non-mass-market varieties). Once they broke through to acceptance, though, they spread widely and now both are cultivated widely all over the world. Potatoes in particular were an essential new source of cheap calories for the Industrial Revolution and were declared by Engels to be the equivalent of iron for their historically revolutionary role. They are thought to be responsible for a significant fraction of Old World population growth in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, with the downside that potato crop failures lead to severe famines.

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