“For a two full years after he took the picture, Adams, 71, who died at the weekend from Lou Gehrig’s disease, could not bring himself to look at it. That photograph showed the execution of a suspected Viet Cong fighter by a general from the South Vietnamese army on a street in Saigon on 1 February 1968. ‘They killed many Americans and many of my people,’ said the general, Nguyen Ngoc Loan, as he raised his pistol to the man’s head and pulled the trigger.”
From the obiturary of Eddie Adams, Pulitizer Prize winning photographer, in The Independent.

Here is a gallery of other Adams photographs from the Nikon center.

Here is an NPR interview where Adams talks about the famous Vietnam execution photo.

And here at The Guardian, James Fenton reviews Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others, in which Adams’ photo is thoughtfully considered.

This past Saturday in London, Val Stevenson of nth position.com had me over for dinner and introduced me to Mike Jay, a fascinating and very erudite man, who has written a fascinating and very erudite book, The Air Loom Gang: The Strange and True Story of James Tilly Matthews and His Visionary Madness.

In the best-selling tradition of A Beautiful Mind and The Professor and the Madman, here is a book of popular history that captures the atmosphere of a time and a place while telling a riveting true story of intrigue, obsession, and madness.

In the 1790s, London is the world’s most populated city, the center of European culture, and perhaps the most dangerous place on earth. As Parisian society races out of control across the channel, the tension between England and France escalates like never before. The scent of war is in the air.

Enter James Tilly Matthews. A respected Welsh tea merchant, Matthews has declared his intent to preserve the fragile peace, going so far as to meet with top leaders from both sides, and even serving time as a political prisoner in Paris. But when Matthews stands up in the House of Commons and declares Lord Liverpool to be a traitor, he is arrested and sent to a mental hospital. Trapped within the walls of Bedlam, Matthews becomes convinced that his mind is being controlled by a secret machine called an “Air Loom” that is hidden in a London basement and run by a devious gang of revolutionaries.

Imprisoned without a trial, dismissed as a lunatic, and denied political rights, Matthews’ story feels eerily contemporary. Was Matthews entirely crazy, or were British authorities simply trying to silence his accusations of treason? A page-turning piece of historical detective work, The Air Loom Gang sets out to separate fact from lunacy.

See more reviews and comments here, here, here, here, and here.

“Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers are peering into the atomic world with record clarity, developing an electron microscope image that can distinguish the individual, dumbbell-shaped atoms of a silicon crystal.

Researchers say being able to see how materials bond together at an atomic level could prove a significant benefit to the semiconductor industry, chemistry and in the development of new materials.”

More here from CNN.

“Quantum mechanics has done it again. In an experiment with supercooled helium, researchers at Penn State say they have found that as a solid ring spins around, part of it can remain perfectly still.

At ultracold temperatures, matter often behaves far differently than it does in everyday experience. For instance, many materials turn into superconductors, able to conduct electricity with no resistance, because electrons coalesce and move in synchrony without hitting the surrounding lattice of atoms.

In a similar way, other materials at low temperatures become superfluids, which flow without viscosity to slow them down.

The new experiment suggests a new state of matter: a supersolid.”

More here from the New York Times.

“Since 1977, deaf children in Nicaragua have been creating an increasingly sophisticated system of hand signals to communicate. Successive generations of children have, on their own, introduced new features that are found only in true languages, according to a report published today in Science. ‘They’re creating language out of gesture,’ says lead author Ann Senghas of Barnard College.”




More here from Scientific American.

Via politicaltheory.info and touching on some earlier posts (this and this) on what’s happening to history in the subcontinent, six prominent Indian historians try to answer the questions:

“Does politicisation of history adversely affect its study? Are historians hesitant to publish findings that might provoke certain political or religious factions?

Have intimidation tactics by the right wing worked? Have incidents like the violent backlash to James Laine’s book on Shivaji cast a ripple of fear amongst scholars?

If truth is the first casualty in the war to define our identity as Indians, are historians the next victims?”

The first issue of The Economists’ Voice is out. The Economists’ Voice

” . . . is a non-partisan forum for economists to present innovative policy ideas or engaging commentary on the issues of the day. Readers include professional economists, lawyers, policy analysts, policymakers, and students of economics. Articles are short, 600-2000 words, and intended to contain deeper analysis than is found on the Op-Ed page of the Wall Street Journal or New York Times, but to be of comparable general interest. Regular columnists with voices from across the political spectrum write several ‘Columns’ each year. Our ‘Features’ section welcomes submissions from any professional economist and is peer reviewed. . .

Why this journal?

Although much of what economists write is ‘inside baseball’ – written for a small audience of specialists — economists have much to contribute to the public debate on a wide range of policy issues. We believe that anyone concerned about the central issues of the day, whether they are students, policy makers, or other citizens, would benefit from hearing economists debate what should be done about problems from budget balancing to global development, from intellectual property to outsourcing, from health care reform to how to provide old age security. The Economists’ Voice creates a forum for readable ideas and analysis by leading economists on vital issues of our day.”

It’s edited by Joseph Stiglitz, J. Bradford De Long, and Aaron Edlin. Columnists include three Nobel Prize winners– George Akerlof, Douglass North, and Joseph Stiglitz–and some very accomplished economists, legal experts, and management theorists (Paul Krugman, Richard Posner, and Glenn Hubbard, to name three).

Check out the first issue. (Posner has a piece that illuminates the issue of copyright which I touched on in my earlier posts about open source: certainly worth a read.) Or check out the synopses of the articles in the first issue by De Long on his blog.

From alternet.org:

“In some states, Republicans are threatening to conduct widespread vote challenges in heavily minority areas. In others, recent events suggest that poll workers may wrongly turn away voters. In still others, new laws passed or enforced by Republicans have erected hurdles to trip up the minority vote. And on Election Day itself, say advocates, Republicans may direct numerous tricks at Democratic districts in an effort to confuse or frighten voters.

Here’s a rundown of what’s happening in several swing states.”

For a different side to this debate, see Sughra Raza’s recent post on the ubiquitous nature of electoral fraud.

Relating to my recent post about films for cell phones, Marko Ahtisaari has just pointed this out:

“Connect to Art is a collection of modern art for your mobile Nokia phone. This new media of art is innovative and inspiring. It’s always with you, you can create a collection of your own!

Connect to Art represents art from known and established artists aswell as interesting new comers. New exhibitions open up frequently.

This website is an introduction to the mobile art collection. To experience the art, connect to our mobile site and download the work of art into your phone. The easiest way to download art is to send a WAP link into phone – from the left corner of each page. The link can also be typed manually.”

Go here for the art.

“Alan Tennant’s ‘On the Wing’ [is] a straightforward narrative that gradually evolves into a complex narrative that connects the origins of life with its uncertain future.

It begins in a battered single-engine Cessna Skyhawk 2,000 feet above a sandy plain the size of Connecticut — great tidal flats off Padre Island on the Gulf Coast in Texas, home to more than 300 species of resident, wintering and migratory birds, including Falco peregrinus tundrius, the fabled arctic peregrine falcons. These tiny acrobatic raptor-hunters are perfectly adapted creatures of the air. They fling themselves into surging updrafts to be lofted into the high, thin sky from which their astonishing eyesight lets them spot the smallest prey. Then, tucking in their wings, they fall, heaven-thrown darts, unfolding at the last moment to expose razor-sharp talons. Unwary doves, luckless cormorants or distracted gulls never quite know what’s hit them when the falcon rips past at suicide velocity, leaving behind a curved gash to the bone.”

Book review here by Homer Hickam in the New York Times.

“As filmmaking and digital technology grow ever more intertwined, scores of internet-related film festivals are creating forums to celebrate the marriage. But now one of the pioneers of such events is taking the film festival onto altogether new ground: the cell phone.

This month, Zoie Films, an Atlanta producer of independent films and festivals, began accepting entries for what it says is the world’s first cell-phone film festival. And while it might be difficult for some to imagine films that would work on 1- or 2-inch screens, Zoie’s founder, Victoria Weston, thinks the medium offers filmmakers — who are already used to creating films for computer screens — a rich palette with which to work.”

More here from Wired.

From Nature:

“In the build-up to the US presidential election, science is making a sizeable impact on the political agenda. But what will another four years of George W. Bush mean for science, compared with a term under Democratic challenger John Kerry? . . . To find out, Nature has asked the two candidates 15 questions about their science policies.”

Their answers are available in an interactive form as well as in a printable pdf version.

Here’s a new search engine, which, as near as I’ve been able to gather, is awesome. A9.com, in its own words:

We are inventing new ways to take search one step farther and make it more effective. We provide a unique set of powerful features to find information, organize it, and remember it—all in one place. A9.com is a powerful search engine, using web search and image search results enhanced by Google, Search Inside the Book™ results from Amazon.com, reference results from GuruNet, movies results from IMDb, and more.

A9.com remembers your information. You can keep your own notes about any web page and search them; it is a new way to store and organize your bookmarks; it even recommends new sites and favorite old sites specifically for you to visit. With the A9 Toolbar all your web browsing history will be stored, allowing you (and only you!) to retrieve it at any time and even search it; it will tell you if you have any new search results, or the last time you visited a page.

“There was his sensitivity to human character, his grasp of light and shade, his virtuoso hand with a brush. But Rembrandt’s self-portraits reveal another characteristic that may have contributed to his genius: a walleye.

Having studied 36 of those rather unforgiving self-portraits, a neuroscientist suggests that Rembrandt was stereoblind – that is, because his eyes did not align correctly, his brain automatically used one eye for many visual tasks. This may have allowed him to flatten images automatically as he observed the world, and then transfer that perspective onto the two-dimensional canvas, says Margaret S. Livingstone, a professor of neurobiology at Harvard Medical School.”

More here from the New York Times.

Via Dissent, an unemployed French-Muslim proofreader and unionist has written this manifesto of liberties. (In French, here.) It appears to be more a Mulsim manifesto aimed at fighting reactionary politics.

“Etre de culture musulmane et contre la misogynie, l’homophobie, l’antisémitisme et l’islam politique.” [trans–“We are of Muslim culture, we oppose misogyny, homophobia, anti-Semitism and the political use of Islam. We reassert a living secularism.”]

It’s attracting a number of signatories; see here and here.

Ajami has a tendency to get people riled up. Some see him as an aplogist for all that’s wrong about American Imperialism. Others simply have their doubts. And another group simply values the voice he brings to the table. Probably it is best to decide for oneself. Here is an influential article he wrote last year. Here is something brand new. Something on Al Jazeera. An interesting response to Samuel Huntington’s ‘clash of civilations’ thesis can be found here. Finally, his minor classic The Arab Predicament is worth reading whatever one thinks of the man.

Fareed Zakaria has this to say about the rest of the world these days:

“[I]n recent elections in Brazil, Germany, Pakistan, Kuwait, and Spain, the United States became a campaign issue. In all these places, resisting U.S. power won votes. Nationalism in many countries is being defined in part as anti-Americanism: Can you stand up to the superpower?”

I think that anti-Americanism is in fact plural. French anti-Americanism sounds more a judgment on culture and civilization, a lament of a telos lost, whereas those of others such as Latin Americans appear much more a criticism of policies, unadorned and unframed by grand evaluations of the prospects for world-history. Similarly, the role anti-Americanism plays in European nationalisms (and whatever embryonic European supra-nationalism exists) is very different from the one it plays in say Latin American nationalisms. In the former, I personally hear echoes of resentiment, even when I agree with Europe. Only Germany and the Netherlands have majorities which are opposed to increasing defense expenditure in order to become a military superpower. It’s this sort of stuff that makes European anti-Americanism irritating.

But there are greater worrisome trends. Eastern Europe has generally not embraced anti-American sentiment. Instead, it had been a bastion of support for the United States. And given their own experiences of occupation and subjugation, they were largely enthusiastic about the invasion of Iraq, seeing in it a wish that the US had done likewise and overthrown Eastern European dictatorships in earlier decades. But that appears to have changed as this survey taken by the German Marshall Fund and the Compagnia di San Paolo suggests. (Via politicaltheory.info.) Taking a close look at the details of the findings, one is surprised to find that Poland, once the most pro-American of European states, is now least supportive of having troops in Afghanistan. Poles are also the most likely to believe that European should spend more on their militaries in order to “protect” their interests separately from the United States. All of this is a mere 2 years.

A pregnant Sara Dickerman wonders about why she can’t eat what she isn’t allowed to eat.

I’m in my eighth month of pregnancy, and so far I have sheepishly eaten several slivers of air-dried Serrano ham, a few crumbles of blue cheese, and one shimmering piece of yellowtail nigiri. Then, there’s the red wine. It started with furtive thimblefuls (just to taste a new wine at the restaurant where I work!) but has spiraled out of control into a biweekly half-glass. All of these items are on the do-not-consume list for pregnant women, but no one seems to be able to tell me how much of a risk occasional lapses like mine pose to my baby.

That history, culture and religion are being tortured in schools across South Asia is disputed only by those who design and endorse the curriculum. Most of the focus is, of course, on the madrasses in Pakistan, especially following 9/11 and the renewed interest in the Taleban. (Here’s a fairly detailed look at madrasses in Pakistan.) Much less attention has been paid to the 20,000 Vidya Bharati schools run by the Sangh parivar. This review of D. N. Jha, The Myth of the Holy Cow by Susan Watkins published sometime ago in The New Left Review may help people become aware of the neglected side of indoctrination in the subcontinent.

“That Jesus roamed the Himalayas, absorbing Vedic wisdom from the gurus he encountered; that the human race originated in Tibet; that the gods reside in the body of the cow, mother of us all—all this has long been taught as established fact in the 20,000 Vidya Bharati schools run under the auspices of the Sangh parivar, the hardline Hindu-nationalist network that lies behind India’s ruling party, the BJP. The Vidya Bharati agenda has already been introduced into primary and secondary schools in BJP-run states, where education policy is often a pawn in coalition deals with regional parties. In 2001, the Sangh-dominated National Council of Educational Research and Training began deleting and rewriting sections of the history textbooks—removing, among other things, any reference to Indian traditions of eating beef. In January 2002, NCERT produced a new history syllabus, founded on its ‘value-based’ national curriculum framework for the country’s schools, which had proposed introducing courses on Vedic mathematics and a ‘spirituality quotient’ as a form of academic assessment.”

Via politicaltheory.info, here’s a review of The First Idea: How Symbols, Language, and Intelligence Evolved from our Primate Ancestors to Modern Humans by Stanley Greenspan and Stuart Shanker.

“Here is a book that gives new meaning to the old saying, ‘The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.’ Its authors, one a psychiatrist and the other a psychologist and philosopher, have teamed up to tackle the momentous question of how humans developed language. Fearing not to challenge some of the heavyweights of modern science, from Jean Piaget to Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker, they present their own theory: The development of language is connected primarily with affect rather than cognition, with the emotional learning that occurs in infants in the arms of those who love them. That is, language is rooted not in genes, not in the wiring of brains, but in behaviors we have learned over millenniums.”