Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Retro Videos
If you've ever tried to search for videos on that ham radio they call the World Wide Web, you'll appreciate the value of having hundreds of them gathered here for your convenience. Everything from Dean Martin to Everything But The Girl, and the list keeps getting longer by the day...more here
Creationism: God's gift to the ignorant
Science feeds on mystery. As my colleague Matt Ridley has put it: “Most scientists are bored by what they have already discovered. It is ignorance that drives them on.” Science mines ignorance. Mystery — that which we don’t yet know; that which we don’t yet understand — is the mother lode that scientists seek out. Mystics exult in mystery and want it to stay mysterious. Scientists exult in mystery for a very different reason: it gives them something to do.
Admissions of ignorance and mystification are vital to good science. It is therefore galling, to say the least, when enemies of science turn those constructive admissions around and abuse them for political advantage. Worse, it threatens the enterprise of science itself. This is exactly the effect that creationism or “intelligent design theory” (ID) is having, especially because its propagandists are slick, superficially plausible and, above all, well financed. ID, by the way, is not a new form of creationism. It simply is creationism disguised, for political reasons, under a new name...more here
Admissions of ignorance and mystification are vital to good science. It is therefore galling, to say the least, when enemies of science turn those constructive admissions around and abuse them for political advantage. Worse, it threatens the enterprise of science itself. This is exactly the effect that creationism or “intelligent design theory” (ID) is having, especially because its propagandists are slick, superficially plausible and, above all, well financed. ID, by the way, is not a new form of creationism. It simply is creationism disguised, for political reasons, under a new name...more here
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Madame Bovary's Ovaries
What if Charles Darwin wrote a novel? What if he wrote them all? Well, maybe he did, in a sense; the thesis of "Madame Bovary's Ovaries" is that Darwin, or rather the forces of evolution and natural selection that Darwin did write of, underlie the plot and behavior of all human characters in literature. It's the kind of all-encompassing theorizing, both radical and obvious at the same time, that is likely to enlighten some and seriously upset others.
David Barash is a well-known zoologist at the University of Washington, and his daughter Nanelle is a student at Swarthmore. They call their perspective that of "evolutionary psychology," but it's also been termed "sociobiology." Almost 30 years ago, a massive tome bearing that title by famed Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson posited that human behavior has a strong genetic component, and set off a firestorm of criticism, both scientific and, especially, political. A number of subsequent books, such as Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene," have explored this perspective with similarly controversial results. Many of us don't like having our most important feelings and actions reduced to biological imperatives -- we like to feel apart and above other species. Just look at the art and literature we produce as proof of our difference, we argue...more here
David Barash is a well-known zoologist at the University of Washington, and his daughter Nanelle is a student at Swarthmore. They call their perspective that of "evolutionary psychology," but it's also been termed "sociobiology." Almost 30 years ago, a massive tome bearing that title by famed Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson posited that human behavior has a strong genetic component, and set off a firestorm of criticism, both scientific and, especially, political. A number of subsequent books, such as Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene," have explored this perspective with similarly controversial results. Many of us don't like having our most important feelings and actions reduced to biological imperatives -- we like to feel apart and above other species. Just look at the art and literature we produce as proof of our difference, we argue...more here
WHOSE BIBLE IS IT?
Many authors who write about the Bible are so tendentious that their books are worthless; other writers are thoughtful and well-meaning but nonetheless argue as much from faith as from evidence. Which is why any syllabus of religion reading should begin with a book that teaches humility, reminding us how difficult it is even for the faithful to get at God's words. After all, God is perfect, but translators and scribes are not. One such book is Whose Bible Is It ?, a new history of how the Bible was written, redacted and translated into its present editions, written by the esteemed church historian Jaroslav Pelikan.
The book is far from perfect, but fortunately Pelikan is at his best where most readers will be at their worst: in antiquity. He begins with lucid, succinct explanations of the Hebrew Bible's translation into its first Greek edition, known as the Septuagint, then into Jerome's Latin version, the Vulgate. A fluent reader of Hebrew, Greek and Latin (and, for what it's worth, German, Italian, French, Russian, Slavonic and Czech), Pelikan is good at unsettling our notions of what the Bible really says. By the end of the 4th century, there were competing Hebrew, Latin and Greek versions of every major book of the Bible, and almost nobody could read them all and compare. Few Greeks would know, as Pelikan does, that what they read as "They have pierced my hands and feet," a line from the 22nd psalm that Jesus cries on the cross in the New Testament, was originally rendered by Hebrew scribes as "Like lions [they maul] my hands and feet" -- which, lacking the "piercing," seems much less like an Old Testament foreshadowing of the crucifixion...more here
The book is far from perfect, but fortunately Pelikan is at his best where most readers will be at their worst: in antiquity. He begins with lucid, succinct explanations of the Hebrew Bible's translation into its first Greek edition, known as the Septuagint, then into Jerome's Latin version, the Vulgate. A fluent reader of Hebrew, Greek and Latin (and, for what it's worth, German, Italian, French, Russian, Slavonic and Czech), Pelikan is good at unsettling our notions of what the Bible really says. By the end of the 4th century, there were competing Hebrew, Latin and Greek versions of every major book of the Bible, and almost nobody could read them all and compare. Few Greeks would know, as Pelikan does, that what they read as "They have pierced my hands and feet," a line from the 22nd psalm that Jesus cries on the cross in the New Testament, was originally rendered by Hebrew scribes as "Like lions [they maul] my hands and feet" -- which, lacking the "piercing," seems much less like an Old Testament foreshadowing of the crucifixion...more here
Anatomy of Severe Melancholy
''O woe, woe, / People are born and die, / We also shall be dead pretty soon / Therefore let us act as if we were dead already.''...more here
CARPE NOCTEM
A man has written a book about the night. Well, why not? In the past decade or so, we’ve seen books on pencils, bookshelves, tobacco, cod, salt, spice, blood, bread, caffeine, crying, the penis, the breast, boredom, smiling, the hand, and masturbation. (Do the last six items seem to nudge one another?) Eventually, such books, and others like them, will all come to dust, including the two so far on dust itself, but before they do we might ask ourselves if this expenditure of print on the obvious and quotidian constitutes anything like a trend, or even a cultural shift.
These longish narratives, after all, deal with subjects that an English man of letters in 1820 might have devoted, at best, a dozen pages to. While grand abstractions (beauty, genius, the sublime) often produced long word counts, the smaller, more familiar aspects of life (vulgarity, idleness, getting up on cold mornings) were the domain of miniaturists like Lamb, Hazlitt, Stevenson, and, closer to our own day, Logan Pearsall Smith, or Cyril Connolly in one of his lighter moods. The thought that such matters required ventilating at book length would never have occurred to writers, much less publishers.
If it seems that any noun in the dictionary can be tricked out as a book these days, it’s because the minutiae of daily life have acquired some intellectual capital. Good microhistories do brisk business because they see the big picture in the smallest details, offering the hope that everything under the sun has meaning. So, whatever was formerly neglected, or looked at but not really seen—utensils, foodstuffs, or the hemp that was used to make the ladders that enabled enemies to scale the walls that housed a king—now demands the academy’s respect and scrutiny.
It follows, then, as the night the day, that the night should have its own day. In fact, it’s surprising that it’s taken this long. One reason for the delay may be that A. Roger Ekirch, who teaches Early American history at Virginia Tech, took twenty years to research and write “At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past” (Norton; $25.95). Ekirch, if the Notes at the back of the book are any indication, has consulted what look to be a thousand and one sources, many of which puncture Thomas Middleton’s elegant rendering of the night as fit for “no occupation but sleepe, feed, and fart.” For Ekirch, the night—even before public lighting, mass transportation, and the introduction of official police forces changed it forever—has been a hubbub of activity, a sequence of comings and goings, a bustling fiefdom with its own distinct customs and rituals...more here
These longish narratives, after all, deal with subjects that an English man of letters in 1820 might have devoted, at best, a dozen pages to. While grand abstractions (beauty, genius, the sublime) often produced long word counts, the smaller, more familiar aspects of life (vulgarity, idleness, getting up on cold mornings) were the domain of miniaturists like Lamb, Hazlitt, Stevenson, and, closer to our own day, Logan Pearsall Smith, or Cyril Connolly in one of his lighter moods. The thought that such matters required ventilating at book length would never have occurred to writers, much less publishers.
If it seems that any noun in the dictionary can be tricked out as a book these days, it’s because the minutiae of daily life have acquired some intellectual capital. Good microhistories do brisk business because they see the big picture in the smallest details, offering the hope that everything under the sun has meaning. So, whatever was formerly neglected, or looked at but not really seen—utensils, foodstuffs, or the hemp that was used to make the ladders that enabled enemies to scale the walls that housed a king—now demands the academy’s respect and scrutiny.
It follows, then, as the night the day, that the night should have its own day. In fact, it’s surprising that it’s taken this long. One reason for the delay may be that A. Roger Ekirch, who teaches Early American history at Virginia Tech, took twenty years to research and write “At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past” (Norton; $25.95). Ekirch, if the Notes at the back of the book are any indication, has consulted what look to be a thousand and one sources, many of which puncture Thomas Middleton’s elegant rendering of the night as fit for “no occupation but sleepe, feed, and fart.” For Ekirch, the night—even before public lighting, mass transportation, and the introduction of official police forces changed it forever—has been a hubbub of activity, a sequence of comings and goings, a bustling fiefdom with its own distinct customs and rituals...more here
Saturday, May 21, 2005
The massacre no one wants to speak of.
Day and night, for three days in September 1982, a massacre took place in Sabra Street and Shatila refugee camp in a popular residential area of Lebanon's capital Beirut. Even today, few people are aware of the scale and extent of the killings that took place for 43 consecutive hours some 23 years ago. Palestinians were the target of this massacre, but they were not the only victims. Arabs of other nationalities, Turks, Bangladeshis and Iranians were also killed in their homes, in the streets, or marched to Sports City where they were shot in hastily-dug death pits.
A motley crew of Lebanese Christian militias attacked doctors, nurses and patients in the Gaza and Akka Hospitals. Axes and guns with silencers were used against everybody - including women, children, babies, the unborn, the elderly and the sick - so as not to draw attention to what was taking place. In the aftermath of the slaughter, rescue workers found that acid had been poured over people's faces and stomachs, eyes had been gauged out and bodies were booby-trapped. The French had to send in bomb-disposal experts to assist with the recovery. Not all the victims were found, and many remain missing, including an abducted British citizen who was simply known as "Uthman". Homes were bulldozed, and bodies were placed under roads that were then repaved, or dumped in pits that were then filled over with sand...more here
A motley crew of Lebanese Christian militias attacked doctors, nurses and patients in the Gaza and Akka Hospitals. Axes and guns with silencers were used against everybody - including women, children, babies, the unborn, the elderly and the sick - so as not to draw attention to what was taking place. In the aftermath of the slaughter, rescue workers found that acid had been poured over people's faces and stomachs, eyes had been gauged out and bodies were booby-trapped. The French had to send in bomb-disposal experts to assist with the recovery. Not all the victims were found, and many remain missing, including an abducted British citizen who was simply known as "Uthman". Homes were bulldozed, and bodies were placed under roads that were then repaved, or dumped in pits that were then filled over with sand...more here
Mozilla Firefox - Get It
# Protect yourself from Spyware and Adware# Browse and search the web more quickly with tabs
# Stay safe and secure online
The Bitter Search
More than 300 mass graves have been excavated in Iraq so far. The most recent discovery was made by American investigators in early May when they found a grave with 1,500 Kurdish people. Recovery and identification of Saddam's victims, however, is an arduous process...more here
Turn Me On, Dead Man
What do the Beatles, the Virgin Mary, Jesus, Patricia Arquette and Michael Keaton all have in common?...more here
The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life
Humans are economic animals. Although textbooks often deal with a fictitious Homo economicus guided entirely by rational self-interest, all of us—even economists—know that passions, habits and emotions vie with reason in the daily decision making that keeps up the flow of services and goods. Yet every generation of economists has come to grips in different ways with what Adam Smith referred to as our "propensity to truck, barter, and exchange."
Attempts to integrate economic life into natural history are not new: Early in the 18th century, Bernard Mandeville published several editions of his Fable of the Bees, and in 1759, Adam Smith published his Theory of Moral Sentiments, well before inquiring into the "Wealth of Nations" in 1776. In the 19th century, both Karl Marx and Herbert Spencer tried to incorporate natural selection into their doctrines of social warfare. The transfer of ideas has not been one-sided: Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace were greatly influenced by Adam Smith and T. R. Malthus. In the 1960s and 1970s, sociobiologists such as E. O. Wilson and William D. Hamilton analyzed costs and benefits of behavioral traits in terms of reproductive success, and John Maynard Smith hijacked game theory, a tool from mathematical economy, to investigate the trial and error of mutation and selection in terms of evolutionarily stable strategies. In return, Maynard Smith's "game theory without rationality" greatly boosted experimental economics and in its newest form led to neuroeconomics, a field in which researchers use functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify zones in the human brain specializing in emotional or rational decision making...more here
Attempts to integrate economic life into natural history are not new: Early in the 18th century, Bernard Mandeville published several editions of his Fable of the Bees, and in 1759, Adam Smith published his Theory of Moral Sentiments, well before inquiring into the "Wealth of Nations" in 1776. In the 19th century, both Karl Marx and Herbert Spencer tried to incorporate natural selection into their doctrines of social warfare. The transfer of ideas has not been one-sided: Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace were greatly influenced by Adam Smith and T. R. Malthus. In the 1960s and 1970s, sociobiologists such as E. O. Wilson and William D. Hamilton analyzed costs and benefits of behavioral traits in terms of reproductive success, and John Maynard Smith hijacked game theory, a tool from mathematical economy, to investigate the trial and error of mutation and selection in terms of evolutionarily stable strategies. In return, Maynard Smith's "game theory without rationality" greatly boosted experimental economics and in its newest form led to neuroeconomics, a field in which researchers use functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify zones in the human brain specializing in emotional or rational decision making...more here
On Sartre's God Problem
This year marks the centenary of the birth of Jean-Paul Sartre, the great philosopher of existentialism and a definitive model of the intellectual engagé. The Paris-based daily Libération asked a group of writers to comment on the philosopher's legacy. Norman Mailer was among the contributors. His remarks are reprinted below. --Adam Shatz
I would say that Sartre, despite his incontestable strengths of mind, talent and character, is still the man who derailed existentialism, sent it right off the track. In part, this may have been because he gave too wide a berth to Heidegger's thought. Heidegger spent his working life laboring mightily in the crack of philosophy's buttocks, right there in the cleft between Being and Becoming. I would go so far as to suggest Heidegger was searching for a viable connection between the human and the divine that would not inflame too irreparably the reigning post-Hitler German mandarins who were in no rush to forgive his past and would hardly encourage his tropism toward the nonrational...more here
I would say that Sartre, despite his incontestable strengths of mind, talent and character, is still the man who derailed existentialism, sent it right off the track. In part, this may have been because he gave too wide a berth to Heidegger's thought. Heidegger spent his working life laboring mightily in the crack of philosophy's buttocks, right there in the cleft between Being and Becoming. I would go so far as to suggest Heidegger was searching for a viable connection between the human and the divine that would not inflame too irreparably the reigning post-Hitler German mandarins who were in no rush to forgive his past and would hardly encourage his tropism toward the nonrational...more here
Saturday, May 14, 2005
Come As You Are
Brothers and Sisters, Lovers and Sinners, come, let us play...
May is National Masturbation Month, having been so declared by the erotically aware jill-off gals at Good Vibrations and the Godmother of Masturbation herself, Dr. Betty Dodson. Why bother to have a National Masturbation Month? Since just about everybody plays sexual solitaire at least sometimes, it's virtually the nation's-and the world's--preferred leisure past time.
Masturbation isn't terribly controversial in these days of hotly debated sexual subjects. Why, it didn't even make Senator Rick the Stick Santorum's List of Naughty Sex Acts that the Government Should be Allowed to Break into Your Bedroom and Bust You For. Nor did Pope Rat mention it in his List of Reasons Good Catholic Americans Must Vote Republican. Still, what the Brits so adorably call "rubbing off" just doesn't get the respect that it deserves...more here
May is National Masturbation Month, having been so declared by the erotically aware jill-off gals at Good Vibrations and the Godmother of Masturbation herself, Dr. Betty Dodson. Why bother to have a National Masturbation Month? Since just about everybody plays sexual solitaire at least sometimes, it's virtually the nation's-and the world's--preferred leisure past time.
Masturbation isn't terribly controversial in these days of hotly debated sexual subjects. Why, it didn't even make Senator Rick the Stick Santorum's List of Naughty Sex Acts that the Government Should be Allowed to Break into Your Bedroom and Bust You For. Nor did Pope Rat mention it in his List of Reasons Good Catholic Americans Must Vote Republican. Still, what the Brits so adorably call "rubbing off" just doesn't get the respect that it deserves...more here
Friday, May 13, 2005
Xbox 360
Video game fans, it's now official: the next-generation console from Microsoft will be called Xbox 360 and it's looking to move console and online gaming far beyond anything else that's out right now.
A glorious shot of Project Gotham Racing 3
Xbox 360 will feature a detachable, upgradeable 20 GB hard drive (that means no built-in hard drive), free Xbox Live on weekends for anyone with a high-speed Internet connection, a sleek new body with a white plastic shell and a ton of digital media support...more here
A glorious shot of Project Gotham Racing 3
Xbox 360 will feature a detachable, upgradeable 20 GB hard drive (that means no built-in hard drive), free Xbox Live on weekends for anyone with a high-speed Internet connection, a sleek new body with a white plastic shell and a ton of digital media support...more here
Allegra
"I suppose that Time will do his usual work
— Death has done his."
On this day in 1822 Byron's five-year-old daughter, Allegra, died in Italy. She was the offspring of a brief relationship with Claire Claremont, stepsister to Mary Shelley. The above quotation comes from an April 23rd letter to Shelley, in which Byron expresses his hope that time will heal his grief.
In another letter, Byron expressed his desire that Allegra be buried at St. Mary's Church, Harrow — Byron had often wandered in the churchyard when a student at Harrow School— with a commemorative tablet inscribed, "I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me" (2d Samuel, xii. 23). Byron's reputation and Allegra's parentage caused church authorities to deny the tablet, though an unmarked grave was allowed. When Byron died (almost to the day, four years later — April 19, 1826), he requested burial at St. Mary's, but this was denied. In 1980, a memorial plaque for Allegra was finally put up in St. Mary's, inscribed with the sentence from Byron's letter to Shelley.
— Death has done his."
On this day in 1822 Byron's five-year-old daughter, Allegra, died in Italy. She was the offspring of a brief relationship with Claire Claremont, stepsister to Mary Shelley. The above quotation comes from an April 23rd letter to Shelley, in which Byron expresses his hope that time will heal his grief.
In another letter, Byron expressed his desire that Allegra be buried at St. Mary's Church, Harrow — Byron had often wandered in the churchyard when a student at Harrow School— with a commemorative tablet inscribed, "I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me" (2d Samuel, xii. 23). Byron's reputation and Allegra's parentage caused church authorities to deny the tablet, though an unmarked grave was allowed. When Byron died (almost to the day, four years later — April 19, 1826), he requested burial at St. Mary's, but this was denied. In 1980, a memorial plaque for Allegra was finally put up in St. Mary's, inscribed with the sentence from Byron's letter to Shelley.
Bad and Worse
"Life - the way it really is - is a battle not between Bad and Good but between Bad and Worse." - Joseph Brodsky
The Canadian writer Roch Carrier was born on this day in 1937. One Carrier story, "The Hockey Sweater," has almost iconic status in the country as a light-hearted portrait of the clash between French-Canadian and English-Canadian culture. The text on the back of Canada's 5$ bill gives the story’s opening lines: "The winters of my childhood were long, long seasons. We lived in three places-- the school, the church, and the skating rink-- but our real life was on the skating rink." The crisis comes when the young French-Canadian boy finds that the hockey sweater delivered by mail-order is wrong, and from another planet:
Instead of the red, white and blue Montreal Canadiens sweater, Monsieur Eaton had sent us a blue and white sweater with a maple leaf on the front.-- the sweater of the Toronto Maple Leafs. I'd always wear the red, white, and blue Montreal Canadiens sweater; all my friends wore the red, white, and blue Montreal Canadiens sweater; never had anyone in my village ever worn the Toronto sweater, never had we even seen a Toronto Maple Leafs sweater.
Friday, May 06, 2005
Pop Culture
Pop culture, like fast food, gets a bad rap. It's perfectly understandable: Because we consume so much of the stuff -- we watch so much TV, pack away so many fries -- and because the consumption is so intimate, it's natural to look to our indulgence as the cause of all that ails us. Let's face it, we Americans are fat and lazy and simple-minded; we yell a lot and we've got short attention spans and we're violent and promiscuous and godless; and when we're not putting horndogs into office we're electing dumb guys who start too many wars and can't balance the budget and ... you know what I mean? You are what you eat. The output follows from the input. When you look around and all you see is Ronald McDonald and Ryan Seacrest, it seems natural to conclude that junk food and junk culture are responsible for a large chunk of the mess we're in...more here
Thursday, May 05, 2005
The Mind-body problem
It's always good to get a little historical perspective on a philosophical problem, especially one as thorny and multi-faceted as the mind-body problem. So let us begin with where the problem, or, at least, the modern version of it, started: René Descartes. For whatever reason, Hollywood has become dominated by Cartesian thinking in the last few years. The most notable of the Hollywood Cartesians are almost certainly Adam and Larry Wachowski, who wrote and directed the remarkable Matrix trilogy, beginning with The Matrix (1999), followed by The Matrix Reloaded (2003) and Matrix Revolutions (also 2003). The latter two films deviate into issues of freedom and determinism, the possibility of choice in a deterministic world, and so on. But the first film is a classic exploration of the sort of epistemological themes made famous by Descartes. The function of Descartes' dreaming and evil demon scenarios is taken over by “the machines”. To cut a long story short, approximately 200 hundred years in the future, almost all humans – there are a few free ones but not many – live in egg-like containers. The machines have designed things this way so that they can use the humans' bioelectric output as a power source. Of course, the humans know nothing of this: the machines are tricking them into believing otherwise. “The body can't live without the mind,” explains Lawrence Fishburne's Morpheus, in distinctly Cartesian mode, and so to keep the bodies alive, the machines create an extremely lifelike virtual reality – known as the matrix – modelled on the world at the end of the 20 th century. Suitable neural stimulation, then, makes the humans believe they inhabit this virtual reality...more here
The Bridge of Sighs
...The bleak wind of March
Made her tremble and shiver;
But not the dark arch,
Or the black flowing river:
Mad from life's history,
Glad to death's mystery,
Swift to be hurl'd—
Anywhere, anywhere
Out of the world!
In she plunged boldly—
No matter how coldly
The rough river ran—
Over the brink of it,
Picture it—think of it,
Dissolute Man!
Lave in it, drink of it,
Then, if you can!
Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care;
Fashion'd so slenderly,
Young, and so fair!...
Thomas Hood
Monday, May 02, 2005
Baking Bread
"There is an old saying that philosophy bakes no bread. It is perhaps equally true that no bread would ever have been baked without philosophy. For the art of baking implies a decision on the philosophical issue of whether life is worthwhile at all. Bakers may not have often asked themselves the question in so many words. But philosophy traditionally has been nothing less than the attempt to ask and answer, in a formal and disciplined way, the great questions of life that ordinary men put to themselves in reflective moments." Time, January 7, 1966.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)