 | Tolu Ogunlesi works as a journalist in Lagos, Nigeria. He was awarded a 2009 CNN Multichoice African Journalism Prize, in the Arts & Culture category. Before now he has worked as a pharmacist, a management consultant and a corporate communications executive. In 2008 he was a Guest Writer at the Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, Sweden; and in 2009 a Cadbury Visiting Fellow at the University of Birmingham, England. His work has been translated into Dutch, Latvian, Italian, Norwegian and Swedish. He owns one digital camera, two lenses and plenty of hope for a successful career in photography. When he isn’t travelling he is busy looking forward to travelling. The rest of the time he is to be found contemplating starting a novel. Email: tolu.ogunlesi [at] gmail.com Website: www.toluogunlesi.wordpress.com List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order: |
Month: January 2011
James McGirk
 | James McGirk is an MFA student at Columbia University. His bylines include TIME Asia, More Intelligent Life, Foreign Policy and The L Magazine. For more information you are welcome to visit his website at jamesmcgirk.com. Email: james.mcgirk [at] caa.columbia.edu List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order:
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Dave Munger
 | Dave Munger is a writer living in Davidson, North Carolina. He is a columnist for SEEDMAGAZINE.COM and editor of ResearchBlogging.org. Dave co-founded ResearchBlogging.org, which collects blog posts about peer-reviewed research, in 2007. The site now has over 1,500 registered blogs and features over 16,000 posts in six languages. For five years, Dave and his wife Greta maintained the psychology blog Cognitive Daily, which was chosen three times to appear in the Open Laboratory, an annual anthology of the top science blog posts on the web. It has appeared on numerous top ten lists including ranking seventh on Nature’s 50 popular science blogs list. The site has had over 2.5 million visits. Dave is the author of several college textbooks. Email: dsmunger [at] gmail.com List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order:
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Justin E. H. Smith
 | Justin E. H. Smith is an American essayist, journalist, and satirist based in Montreal. He doesn’t want to write satire, but, as Juvenal said, the world leaves him no choice. He is a regular contributor to Counterpunch, and has written for numerous other online publications, including N+1. His work has been linked or cited in the online editions of the Guardian, the Atlantic Monthly, the Stranger, the Washington Post, and (probably a mistake) the National Review. His archive, www.jehsmith.com, brings together writing of his available on the Internet. Quite apart from all this, Smith is also a professor of philosophy and a specialist on the life and work of G. W. Leibniz. To see his academic profile, please visit www.jehsmith.com/philosophy. Email: [email protected] List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order: |
Akim Reinhardt
 | Akim Reinhardt is an associate professor of History at Towson University in Maryland. Born and raised in the Bronx, he has also lived in Michigan, Nebraska, and Arizona. He currently resides in a Baltimore row home that he shares with a very old but surprisingly resilient cat. He is the author of Ruling Pine Ridge (2007) and blogs regularly at ThePublicProfessor.com. Email: yankeeslim [at] gmail.com List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order:
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Namit Arora
 | Namit Arora grew up in the Indian cow-belt city of Gwalior, famous for its fort and the first epigraphic evidence of zero. After IIT Kharagpur he obtained a Masters in Computer Engineering from Louisiana, followed by a great escape in 1991 to Silicon Valley, where he played a cog in the wheel of Internet technology at three failed startups and at Nokia, Cisco, and McAfee. This didn’t make him wise but enabled him to attend lectures of dubious practical value at Stanford and to live, work, or travel in scores of countries, including yearlong stints in London and Amsterdam. He quit this profession in 2013 and moved from California to Delhi NCR. Namit’s essays have appeared in venues like the Humanist, Philosophy Now, the Times Literary Supplement, the Caravan, the Kyoto Journal, the Philosopher, Himal Southasian, and four college anthologies in the U.S. His review of Joothan won the 3 Quarks Daily 2011 Arts & Literature Prize. During a two-year break (2004-06), Namit traveled across India and created a photojournal. Over 15 museums, 30 academies, and 50 publishers have licensed his photos. His videography includes River of Faith, a documentary film about the Kumbh Mela. Contact him via email, blog or website. List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order:
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Sue Hubbard
 | Sue Hubbard is an award-winning poet, novelist, short-story writer and freelance critic living and working in London.Variously an antique dealer and a small holder she has written about the visual arts for twenty years for such publications as Time Out, The Independent on Sunday, The Independent and The New Statesman. She has published two collections of poetry, Everything Begins with the Skin (Enitharmon) and Ghost Station (Salt) and appeared in the Oxford Poets series (Carcarnet). She was the Poetry Society’s first ever Public Art Poet, responsible for London’s largest public art poem at Waterloo station, and has published a novel, Depth of Field (Dewi Lewis) and a collection of short stories Rothko’s Red (Salt). Her selected art writing is to be published next year by Damien Hirst’s Other Criteria. Website: http://www.suehubbard.com Email: info [at] suehubbard.com List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order: |
Gautam Pemmaraju
 | A Hyderabad native, Gautam has been a Bombay based writer/director since his return to India 14 years ago from NYC. With a couple of Masters degrees, in Communication from the University of Hyderabad and Television-Radio- Film from Syracuse University, he worked as a producer for three and half years at the music TV station Channel[V] during the height of its influence. As an independent since 2000, he works in Broadcast Design, Promotion & Brand Identity as well as in non-fiction TV shows & documentary. Contributing off and on to a few publications, post-colonial India and its strange cities is a primary interest of his, amongst several unrelated, excursionary ones. Email: gautam.pemmaraju [at] gmail.com List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order:
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Richard Eskow
 | Richard (RJ) Eskow is a consultant and writer who has worked as a Fortune 500 executive, a software designer, a professional rock musician. He’s been a consultant in health policy, technology, and medical issues for public and private clients, domestically and in over 20 foreign countries. Richard has conducted interviews with politicians such as John Kerry and Russ Feingold, musicians like Richard Thompson and Billy Joe Shaver, and figures in the worlds of religion and science. He is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and is an occasional co-host for “The Young Turks” radio show, despite being neither Turkish nor particularly young. Email: reskow [at] att.net List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order: |
Ryan Sayre
 | Ryan is currently out east finishing a PhD in socio-cultural anthropology. He works on security and seismicity in Tokyo and posts intermittently on architecture, earthquakes, and anthropology at www.architectonictokyo.com. Email: ryan.sayre [at] yale.edu List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order:
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Nick Werle
 | Raised in modern-day East Egg, Nick has watched two boom-bust business cycles up close. After concentrating in physics and modern critical philosophy at Brown, he has begun studying the history of modern physics and political economy. Currently an Affiliated Scholar at the Pembroke Center studying the history of physics and political economy, he teaches economics at The Wheeler School, in Providence, RI, and works as a writing tutor at the Brown University Writing Center. In addition to reading and writing, Nick enjoys long distance backpacking, cooking, and arguing. Email: nickwerle [at] gmail.com Website: www.runningthezoo.com List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order:
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Rishidev Chaudhuri
 | Rishi was born in Colombo, and grew up in Bangalore before going to college in Massachusetts, where he had a suitably unfocused liberal arts education. Afterwards, he drifted about India, and briefly worked as a journalist for a paper in Calcutta, interviewing local celebrities and struggling artists. He is now working towards a Phd in Applied Mathematics at Yale. In the meanwhile, he tries desperately to keep his literary and scientific interests away from each other, and to shield his worldview from the tentacles of modern science. Email: rishidev.chaudhuri [at] yale.edu List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order:
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Liam Heneghan
 | Liam Heneghan, a Dubliner, is an ecosystem ecologist working at DePaul University in Chicago where he is a Professor of Environmental Science and co-director of DePaul University’s Institute for Nature and Culture. His research has included studies on the impact of acid rain on soil foodwebs in Europe, and on inter-biome comparisons of decomposition and nutrient dynamics in forested ecosystems in North American and in the tropics. Over the past decade Heneghan and his students have been working on restoration issues in Midwestern ecosystems. Heneghan is co-chair of the Chicago Wilderness Science Team. He is also a graduate student in DePaul University’s philosophy program, a part-time model, and an occasional poet. Email: lhenegha [at] gmail [dot] com List of writings at 3QD, in reverse chronological order:
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Jim Culleny
 | Jim Culleny is the Poetry Editor of 3 Quarks Daily. After a stint in the navy, Jim received a BA in Art Education from William Paterson University and did graduate work in art at NYU. He taught art for several years in NJ public schools in Newark and Bergen County. Taught a little bit of everything else during two years at a remote residential community school in New York’s Adirondacks. Was a social worker in Lower Manhattan before Soho was Soho. Made a living most of his life as a carpenter, designer, and builder. Did regular radio commentary for about 10 years during Morning Edition on WFCR.FM in Amherst, Mass. and some for NPR on All Things Considered. Played and sang his way from rockabilly to jazz in numberless band permutations over a period too long to believe. Came to poetry through songwriting. Has had work published in The Third Muse Poetry Journal, the Christian Science Monitor, Penthouse Journal, and in 5-Minute Pieces, a chapbook published in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. He’s also been writing a regular op-ed column for the past 12 years for the Greenfield Recorder along the beautiful Connecticut River, and is presently making a living as project manager for an Architectural firm. Jim lives with his wife, Pat, of 31 years, and his 17 year old granddaughter. He has three daughters and four other grandchildren. Email: jimculleny [at] comcast.net Jim’s poems at 3QD, in reverse chronological order: |
Saifedean Ammous
 | Saifedean Ammous lives in New York and is a candidate for a PhD in Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He grew up in Ramallah in Colonized Palestine and has a Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering from the American University of Beirut and a Master’s in Development Management from the London School of Economics. He supports Liverpool FC rabidly, cooks the undisputed best shrimp pasta in the world, and blogs at TheSaifHouse.wordpress.com Email: Saifedean.ammous [at] gmail.com List of writings for 3QD, in reverse chronological order: |
The Nobleness of Life is to do Thus
On the anniversary of his death:
A tribute to Omar Azfar by Azra Raza, M.D.
There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’t is not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.
Shakespeare, HAMLET, Act v. Sc. 2.
Starting with the first note I received from Omar via cyberspace in the summer of 2007 which was copied to Ama, and ending with my last glimpse of him as he lay dying with his mother curled up next to him in bed, straightening his blanket, holding his hand, I was exquisitely aware of what a unique privilege it was to be witnessing this sublime relationship. Of course love is never quantifiable. In Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra, Act 1 Scene 1, Cleopatra demands to know how much Anthony loves her.
Cleo.If it be love indeed, tell me how much.
Ant.There’s beggary in the love that can be reckon’d.
Cleo.I’ll set a bourn how far to be belov’d.
Ant.Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth.
The friendship alone that existed between Omar and Naheed would require new heavens and new earths to accommodate it.
Arz o samaan kahaan teri wusatt ko paa sakay
Mera hee dil hai wu kay jahan tu samaan sakay
Continue reading here.
For Reasons of Their Own
There has been much concern in the American media about Jared Loughner’s sanity, lots of talk about the fact we cannot comprehend the mind behind that cold face, talk followed by overextended attempts to mine that mind’s deepest veins. “If you think what happened in Tuscon is incomprehensible…” a 60 Minutes piece from last week began, keep watching, we’ll help you comprehend. Is Loughner “disturbed enough to be found guilty but insane?” the New York Times mulled in the Magazine last weekend. The answer is yes, they hint.
But no one is calling Loughner a terrorist.
In May 1995, Time had a terrorist on the cover: Timothy McVeigh was shown with the caption, “The Face of Terror.” Time’s lede for another story on McVeigh is also pretty clear in its framing:
Terrorists succeed by remaining faceless. Their very anonymity allows them to move unnoticed among and around the people they plan, for reasons of their own, to maim or murder. But terrorists also occasionally get caught, although often, alas, after they have done their worst. And then the sight of their faces only deepens the mystery of their actions.
Like McVeigh, Loughner targeted a symbol of government power, and hurt innocent people. Like McVeigh, Loughner had a complicated relationship with the military and, like McVeigh, he apparently had a deep mistrust of the United States government. Jared Loughner, like Timothy McVeigh, “had reasons of his own,” which are and always will be inaccessible to the rest of us.
But we called McVeigh a terrorist. Why isn’t Loughner a terrorist? Has America redefined its criteria for who can be one?
This is not to say Loughner’s actions weren’t swept up into other people’s political frameworks. To be sure, after the shooting, there was a flurry of conversation about politics. Or rather, “politics.” David Brooks argued that mainstream coverage overemphasized possible political motivations, with all the talk of Sarah Palin’s map and the “violent rhetoric of the Tea Party.” Brooks describes “a news media that is psychologically ill informed but politically inflamed, so it naturally leads toward political explanations.” Brooks is right in his diagnosis, but I see the opposite symptom: the media may be psychologically ill informed, but that hasn’t stopped them from attempting to psychologize Loughner to the nth degree.
Moreover, such an excavation of Loughner’s mind as those extended by the Times and 60 Minutes seems to be a privilege the media only affords, in 2011, to some violent men. Men who are called terrorists are ascribed political, ideological motivations. Loughner’s mental illness does not preclude such motivations – but our media’s language does, dismissing his admittedly confused political logic as the babble of a madman.
The Ultimate Obit – The periodic table
Of course, it’s even worse to know what the first line in your obit should be—and then not rate an obit at all, because people forgot you. Such was the fate of Albert Ghiorso (hard “g”), who helped discover more chemical elements, a dozen, than any human being who ever lived. Yet his death earned just three measly mentions in newspapers across the country (and those weeks after he died). I’d like to do the little I can to rectify that.
I wrote about Ghiorso in a recent book, and beyond the wizardry of his science, I remember most of all his mischief. He specialized in building radiation detectors that could pick out the presence of just a few atoms of new elements. The discovery of a new element was always a celebratory event—the periodic table is the most precious real estate in science—so during one experiment Ghiorso decided to wire his radiation detector to his building’s fire alarms at the University of California at Berkeley, so it would briiiiiing every time an atom appeared. For various reasons his team ran the experiment at night, and they cheered all through the a.m. as the atoms rang out. It was a complete success, except Ghiorso forgot to unwire the fire alarm the next morning. While he was at home sleeping, it went off during the day, forcing a panicked evacuation. The administration was not amused. In discovering a different element, berkelium, element 97, Ghiorso suggested using “Bm” as the chemical symbol for it, because it had been such a “stinker” to discover. To the eternal disappointment of every sophomore chemistry student in the world, the idea was vetoed.
What Else is Wrong with Classical Music
by Colin Eatock
I’ve been around the classical music block – as a composer, critic, scholar, educator, booking agent and administrator. As a result, I find that my own “issues” often differ from the concerns of people blissfully unaware of what lies hidden behind classical music’s façade. Yet even though some of the things I find problematic might not be readily identified as problems at all by many others, they have an adverse effect on classical music in the world today. I believe that if my various concerns were successfully addressed, the changes wrought would be beneficial in subtle yet far-reaching ways.
Fixation on the Canon
In the hyper-canonic world of classical music, there are only a few dozen composers who really count. All the rest – those composers you can’t buy a plaster bust of – receive little or no attention. I don’t have any great quarrel to the composers who have been accepted into the pantheon: Bach, Beethoven and Brahms wrote some wonderful music. However, I do question the idea that the formation of the canon was, as some people believe, a “natural” process caused by “the cream rising to the top.” (To accept this idea is to place far too much faith in the universe’s propensity for justice.) And I do have a quarrel with the idea that the composers who have somehow risen to the top are the only ones worthy of the world’s interest.
There are, to be sure, advantages to this star system. By focussing narrowly on a small number of composers and works, commonly shared tastes are cultivated, and a securely large audience for popular repertoire has been built up: a core audience for a core repertoire. Few musical organizations would dare to present a concert season that contained no widely acknowledged masterpieces by great composers, fearing box-office death. But they know they can rely on a handful of famous composers and works to sell their tickets.
On the other hand, fixation on “greatness” leads to repetitious programming. It’s also alarmingly unimaginative: for people to unquestioningly accept, holus-bolus, a repertoire based on decisions already well established in their grandparents’ day smacks of cultural sclerosis. One exceptional corner of the musical world – where a process of re-evaluation and enrichment took place throughout the twentieth century – is the early-music movement. But even the early-music specialists are losing their sense of adventure nowadays, and are settling into a core repertoire of their own.
