From Edge:
Picture: A somewhat fanciful depiction of a multiverse consisting of a background empty spacetime giving birth to baby universes, as proposed in my 2004 paper with Jennifer Chen. Artwork by Jason Torchinsky. Sean Carroll: Theoretical Physicist, Caltech; Author, From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ulitmate Theory Of Time.
More here.
Elegy Asking That it be the Last
for Ingrid Erhardt, 1951-1971
by Norman Dubie
from The Mercy Sent: Collected and New Poems
Copper Canyon Press, 2001
A groundbreaking exhibition about Adolf Hitler opens in Berlin tomorrow, the first time since the war that a major museum has explored the relationship between the Führer and the German nation. Hitler and the Germans: Nation and Crime, at Berlin’s German Historical Museum, has been praised for smashing taboos and opening afresh the debate about how Hitler managed so successfully to seduce a nation. “Whether we like it or not he remains our strongest trademark,” said Karl Schnorr, a 68-year-old retired engineer at the preview. “Maybe it’s time we shook him off, but first we need to understand how we fell for him so utterly.” The opening coincides with a study published this week in which one in 10 Germans professed they would like a “Führer” figure to “govern Germany with a hard hand”, while 35% said they considered the country to be “dangerously overrun” with foreigners.
more from Kate Connolly at The Guardian here.
Can history come to an end? Arthur Danto has written of art entering a “post-historical” phase; he believes that the history of modern art as moving toward a state of abstraction has been fulfilled—indeed, internally exhausted. Since the 1960s, this particular “narrative,” as he calls it, has come to an end, even as the art world continues to exist, even to flourish. Although I don’t like the phrase “post-historical,” I think Danto is right. I had not, however, considered this idea in relation to history understood in its traditional sense as the actions of great men and nation building. But, a few weeks ago, the unnerving thought that this kind of history had come to an end confronted me. My husband and I were standing at the busiest traffic circle in Paris, the Place de L’Etoile, in front of the Arc de Triomphe, which, as I learned from the guidebook that I was reading aloud to him, was the largest triumphal arch in the world (165 feet tall), which meant that it was larger than any of the ancient triumphal arches still standing in Rome that were undoubtedly its inspiration. Reading that Napoleon dreamed of erecting a triumphal arch to the glory of the French army in 1806 following their victory at Austerlitz—a dream that would not be realized until 1836 when the arch was completed two decades after Napoleon’s final defeat and exile—did not surprise me. But I thought our guidebook was off the mark when it described the project as “grandiose” and attributed it to Napoleon’s “megalomania.” Instead, as I told my husband, raising a triumphal arch that would surpass in scale and magnificence the triumphal arches of antiquity was testimony to the hold of the ancients (especially the Romans) on the imagination and aspirations of modern people living before the twentieth century.
more from Rochelle Gurstein at TNR here.
My admiration for some of Benjamin’s writing, the elegance of his thinking and his language more than anything else, has accompanied me throughout my intellectual life. And this in spite of the irreparable damage I probably inflicted upon myself during my period of obsessive Benjamin reading. Because the confusion of his thinking exponentially propelled my own confusions to new heights, for many years. When you read Benjamin, you must learn to strictly separate admiration and criticism. The history of his influence is suitabably paradoxical. Benjamin’s writing, which was almost exclusively intended to be scientific in method, makes strict claims to the truth, even when it takes the form of aphorism, feuilleton, literary critique or memoir. But Benjamin today enjoys the level of worldwide adoration that is otherwise reserved for poets in Eastern Europe. He is quoted so extensively, his photograph reproduced so often, he is the subject of so many prominent congresses and meticulous exhibitions that you would be forgiven for thinking he was Germany’s leading poet. This misleading (oft kitschifying) treatment of a man who throughout his life regarded himself as a theorist, is most unusual for literary life in the west. At the very least it demands an explanation.
more from Stephan Wackwitz at Sign and Sight here.
Much of what medical researchers conclude in their studies is misleading, exaggerated, or flat-out wrong. So why are doctors—to a striking extent—still drawing upon misinformation in their everyday practice? Dr. John Ioannidis has spent his career challenging his peers by exposing their bad science.
David H. Freedman in The Atlantic:
More here.
William Saletan in Slate:
Why? For obvious reasons—anatomical, evolutionary, and aesthetic—anal sex should, on average, be less attractive and satisfying than vaginal or oral sex. In last week's column, based on new survey data, I inferred that female orgasms caused anal sex rather than the other way around. The other acts reported by women who engaged in anal sex—vaginal intercourse, cunnilingus, partnered masturbation—delivered the orgasms. In turn, these women indulged their male partners' requests for anal sex.
Well, shame on me. Not for talking about sodomy—that taboo seems to be fading fast—but for doubting that women love it. These women are now coming forward to affirm that they're into it for their own pleasure, thank you very much.
More here.
Jerry Coyne challenges PZ Myers:
Both Greta Christina and I have written about what sort of evidence would convince us of the existence of a divine celestial being. But maybe P.Z. is a tougher nut to crack. So here’s a challenge to him:
Suppose that you, P.Z., were present at the following events, and they were also witnessed by lots of other skeptical eyewitnesses and, importantly, documented on film: A bright light appears in the heavens and, supported by wingéd angels, a being clad in white robe and sandals descends onto the UMM quad from the sky, accompanied by a pack of apostles with the same names given in the Bible. Loud heavenly music is heard everywhere, with the blaring of trumps. The being, who describes himself as Jesus, puts his hand atop your head, P.Z., and suddenly your arms are turned into tentacles. As you flail about with your new appendages, Jesus asks, “Now do you believe in me?” Another touch on the head and the tentacles disappear and your arms return. Jesus and his pack then repair to the Mayo clinic and, also on film, heal a bunch of amputees (who remain permanently arméd and leggéd after Jesus’s departure). After a while Jesus and his minions, supported by angels, ascend back into the sky with another chorus of music. The heavens swiftly darken, there is thunder, and a single lightning bolt strikes P.Z.’s front yard. Then, just as suddenly, the heavens clear.
Now you can say that this is just a big magic stunt, but there’s a lot of documentation—all those healed amputees, for instance. Even using Hume’s criterion, isn’t it more parsimonious to say that there’s a God (and a Christian one, given the presence of Jesus!) rather than to assert that it was all an elaborate, hard-to-fathom magic trick or the concatenation of many enigmatic natural forces?
More here. And PZ Myers responds with “Eight reasons you won't persuade me to believe in a god”:
I have been challenged by Jerry Coyne, who is unconvinced by my argument that there is no evidence that could convince me of the existence of god. Fair enough, I shall repeat it and expand upon it.
The question “Is there a god?” is a bad question. It's incoherent and undefined; “god” is a perpetually plastic concept that promoters twist to evade evaluation. If the whole question is nebulous noise, how can any answer be acceptable? The only way to win is by not playing the game.
There's a certain unfairness in the evidence postulated for god. I used the example of a 900 foot tall Jesus appearing on earth; there is no religion (other than the addled hallucinations of Oral Roberts) that ever proposes such a thing, so such a being would not prove the existence of any prior concept of god, and will even contradict many religions. It's rather like proposing a crocoduck as a test of evolution.
More here.
Carl Zimmer in The Atlantic:
The first thing I did was consult with Charles Nix, my friend and personal book design god. I cobbled together a Word file and sent it to him to show him what I had in mind. It took him a couple hours to transform it into a bare-bones eBook. If I wanted, I could have uploaded it to Kindle right then and there. But I knew that the manuscript was far from ready. I updated the older pieces with new science about the brain, cleaned up clumsy language, and sliced out repetitions.
As I learned about eBooks, I decided that they were not something I could handle completely on my own. I was not willing to abandon the most important things that go into publishing books, such as good design. Yes, we now live in an age where you can upload a Microsoft Word file directly to an eBook seller. But then you're the author of a Microsoft Word file. Who wants to be that?
More here.
When Autumn Came
This is the way that autumn came to the trees:
it stripped them down to the skin,
left their ebony bodies naked.
It shook out their hearts, the yellow leaves,
scattered them over the ground.
Anyone could trample them out of shape
undisturbed by a single moan of protest.
The birds that herald dreams
were exiled from their song,
each voice torn out of its throat.
They dropped into the dust
even before the hunter strung his bow.
Oh, God of May have mercy.
Bless these withered bodies
with the passion of your resurrection;
make their dead veins flow with blood again.
Give some tree the gift of green again.
Let one bird sing
by Faiz Ahmed Faiz
translation Naomi Lazard
from The True Subject;
Princeton University Press, 1987
Nathanial Gronewold in Scientific American:
The scene at this reservoir created by the Tarbela Dam and in areas to its north vividly shows what he's talking about. Long after the rains ended, the water level is still almost even with the rim of the dam, seemingly ready to spill over at any moment. Equally striking is the murky color of the water itself.
More here.
Hello, I’m God. Bet you didn’t expect to be talking to me on the interweb (unless, perhaps, your name is Neale Donald Walshe). I wonder if you’re one of those insufferable new atheist types? If so, I reckon you’re probably feeling a bit daft right now! I think I’d better get something clear before we start. I see myself as being a God in the Abrahamic tradition of God(s). What does this mean? Well, let’s put it this way, if you think that God is just another word for nature, or that I’m actually a pink bunny, or somesuch, then probably this activity isn’t for you. Anyhow, let’s get to it. It’s been drawn to my attention – by myself! – that a long time ago a fellow named Euthyphro got into a muddle, and ever since there has been some confusion about my nature. So I thought I’d ask you a few questions – you know, to see if we can get things straight.
more from Philosophy Experiments here.
J. Malcolm Garcia in Guernica:
They married and had children. They loved to go hiking on weekends. They enjoyed impulsively packing up their son and daughter and driving into the countryside with no specific destination in mind. When it snowed in the mountains they would go skiing on a whim, leaving behind the congestion of city life with all its problems and politics. Masood was openly critical of corruption and of his government’s ties with the War on Terror, but otherwise he was not a political person.
Nor was she—until he disappeared.
More here.
From PhysOrg:
“When people are in this passionate, all-consuming phase of love, there are significant alterations in their mood that are impacting their experience of pain,” said Sean Mackey, MD, PhD, chief of the Division of Pain Management, associate professor of anesthesia and senior author of the study, which will be published online Oct. 13 in PLoS ONE. “We're beginning to tease apart some of these reward systems in the brain and how they influence pain. These are very deep, old systems in our brain that involve dopamine — a primary neurotransmitter that influences mood, reward and motivation.” Scientists aren't quite yet ready to tell patients with chronic pain to throw out the painkillers and replace them with a passionate love affair; rather, the hope is that a better understanding of these neural-rewards pathways that get triggered by love could lead to new methods for producing pain relief.
More here.
Human Chain is a book that is serious about its own visionary burden. Like Caolite inside his fairy hill, the poet remembers being in a dugout “under the hill, out of the day / But faced towards the daylight, holding hands” where an imagined camera angle will “Discover us against weird brightness”. The light here, and in other poems, is that of “the dome of the sky” over Virgil’s Lethe, and some of the finest achievements in the volume look straight into that efflorescence, not least the central sequence, “Route 110”, in which the Aeneid ghosts memories of Heaney’s home and youth, ending with “the age of births”, where a grandchild is “one / Whose long wait on the shaded bank is ended”. Family, and the love in a family, provide Heaney with his own governing pietas. The human chain of the title is partly that formed by the generations, and if this gives a poignancy to the poet’s vivid evocations of memory – the kinds of long look at the past which he knows can feel like a last look – it also makes triumphant sense of the centrality of the Virgilian father to Heaney’s imaginative scheme. Heaney knows that if memory is a way of meeting the paternal shade again, it is at the same time the confirmation of ultimate parting – that the riverbank field may offer a glimpse of the future, in the generations to come, but must also confirm the finality of oblivion in the waters of Lethe.
more from Peter McDonald at the TLS here.
From his childhood in segregated Mobile, Alabama, to his run-ins with a nay-saying scientific establishment, the engineer Lonnie Johnson has never paid much heed to those who told him what he could and couldn’t accomplish. Best known for creating the state-of-the-art Super Soaker squirt gun, Johnson believes he now holds the key to affordable solar power.
Logan Ward in The Atlantic:
Projected onto the wall was a PowerPoint collage summing up some highlights of Johnson’s career: risk assessment he’d done for the space shuttle Atlantis; work on the nuclear power source for NASA’s Galileo spacecraft; engineering help on the tests that led to the first flight of the B-2 stealth bomber; the development of an energy-dense ceramic battery; and the invention of a remarkable, game-changing weapon that had made him millions of dollars—a weapon that at least one of the men in the room, the father of two small children, recognized immediately as the Super Soaker squirt gun.
Mild-mannered and bespectacled, Johnson opened his presentation by describing the idea behind the JTEC. The device, he explained, would split hydrogen atoms into protons and electrons, and in so doing would convert heat into electricity. Most radically, it would do so without the help of any moving parts.
More here.
Sari Nusseibeh and Amos Oz were jointly awarded the Siegfried Unseld Prize in Berlin on September 28, 2010. “A Tragic Struggle” and “The Magic Within Us” are drawn from their acceptance speeches.
From the New York Review of Books:
A Tragic Struggle by Amos Oz
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a tragic struggle between two victims of Europe—the Arabs were the victims of imperialism, colonialism, repression, and humiliation. The Jews were the victims of discrimination, persecution, and finally of a genocide without parallel in history. On the face of it, two victims, especially two victims of the same oppressor, should become brothers. But the truth, both when it comes to individuals and when it comes to countries, is that some of the worst fights break out between two victims of the same oppressor. The two sons of an abusive father will each see in his brother the face of his cruel father.
More here.
