Gilbert Achcar in The Guardian:

There is no dispute that Holocaust denial has been on the rise in Arab countries during the last two decades. This has been illustrated in a disgraceful way by the hero-like reception that Roger Garaudy, the French former communist turned Catholic, turned Muslim, turned Holocaust denier, received in several Arab countries in the late 1990s, after his sentencing by a French court for a Holocaust-denying book. Likewise, the rise of Holocaust denial among Palestinian citizens of Israel has been attested by recent opinion polls.

Yet western-style Holocaust denial – that is, the endeavour to produce pseudo-scientific proofs that the Jewish genocide did not happen at all or was only a massacre of far lesser scope than that commonly acknowledged – is actually very marginal in the Arab world. Rather, manifestations of Holocaust denial among Arabs fall for the most part under two categories.

On one hand, there are Arabs who are shocked by the pro-Israel double standard that is displayed in western attitudes towards the Middle East. Knowing that the Holocaust is the source of strong inhibition of western critiques of Israel, many Arabs tend to believe that its reality was amplified by Zionism for this very purpose. On the other hand, there are Arabs who express Holocaust-denying views out of exasperation with the increasing cruelty of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. Unable to retaliate in kind, they believe that they can harm Israel symbolically in this way.

In both cases, Holocaust denial is not primarily an expression of antisemitism, as western Holocaust denial certainly is, but an expression of what I call the “anti-Zionism of fools”. Yet it remains a minority phenomenon in the Arab world, fought by enlightened intellectuals and politically educated activists who explain that such attitudes are not only based on ignorance but do a disservice to the Palestinian cause. They point to the way any utterances of Holocaust denial are relayed by pro-Israeli websites, which use them in their propaganda.

Much less reported, however, are public acknowledgements by Palestinians of the Holocaust and of the universal lessons it bears for all persecuted peoples and groups.

Laura Miller in Salon:

Earlier this year, the American Book Review published a feature in which assorted authorities (mostly academics) cited their examples of “bad books.”

Some of the titles picked (on) are widely considered classics, from “The Great Gatsby” and “All the Pretty Horses” to Richard Yates' “Revolutionary Road.” A few readers were indignant about those choices, but the majority responded with glee; everybody feels he or she has been tricked or forced into reading an unjustly celebrated book and longs for the opportunity to rant about it.

Still other books are so universally derided that they endear themselves. The stupendously lousy poetry of Sir William Topaz MacGonagall (1825-1902) remains in print while the works of dozens of Pulitzer winners languish in obscurity. You can even subscribe to a service that will e-mail you a sample from his execrable “Poetic Gems” every day.

In the early 20th century, dinner party guests would entertain each other by reciting passages from the alliteration-heavy works of one Amanda McKittrick Ros (1860-1939), regarded by experts as the greatest bad novelist of all time. In Oxford, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and their friends competed to see who could read aloud from Ros' books the longest before cracking up.

More here.

Fidelius Schmid and Andreas Ulrich in Der Spiegel:

Everyone thought Hermann Simm deserved to be honored. It was Monday, Feb. 6, 2006, and he was dressed in his best suit to attend the day's event. He had been invited to Estonia's presidential palace to accept the “Order of the White Star” for his “service to the Estonian nation.” It was an ironic choice.

It wasn't the only medal Simm received for his services that year. The other honor was one that he could only see on his computer screen, supposedly so as to not jeopardize his cover. Sergey Jakovlev, his handler with the SVR, Russia's foreign intelligence service, appeared on the screen to show him his medal. Jakovlev was also the one who informed Simm that he had been promoted to the rank of major general for having supplied Moscow with the names of all suspected and known Russians working as spies for NATO. Then-President Vladimir Putin was very impressed, Jakovlev told his best spy.

Four years on, Simm has now reached the late phase of his career. Indeed, in his field — spying — it is not uncommon to spend one's old age in a small prison cell. Simms is incarcerated in a functional, post-Soviet building made of reinforced concrete in the Estonian city of Tartu, where he wears a plain prison uniform and seeks comfort in the Bible. Photos depict him as an older, gray-haired man with a sad look in his eyes.

This is the same man whom NATO, in a classified 141-page report, has recognized as the spy who was “most damaging in Alliance history.”

More here.

The Reform of the Calendar

The story we learned from the Weekly Reader as children
was tabloid bluster. There were no mobs, no riots,
no shouting about the theft of eleven days.
Nothing was really lost, they understood that.

The almanacs and newspapers of the time
show us how clear and orderly it was:
The reader will observe, that the day which follows
the second of this month is placed as the 14th,
and is to be so esteemed.

………………………………….All very simple.
Essays had run in the Gentlemen's Magazine.
Chesterfield had stood in the House of Lords
on March 18th, 1751,
and talked of science, commerce, the practical need
to deal with the rest of the world now, to move on.
Not even a nod to the past, the dangerous passions.

And all has been calm since then, all science and order.
We fall in line with the cosmos, leap-seconds added
or taken away. Our machines adjust in silence,

although we might, as we scrawl a date on a check
or stand at a sink and hear the radio speak it
(the month an ancient god, the mystical number)
still feel the murmurings of an old unrest.

by Maryann Corbett
from Astropoetica, Spring, 2010

Terry Newell in The Huffington Post:

As the world became more complex, and as problems became more global, we were willing to defer to expertise. We knew that we could not know enough. But what if we can't trust that expertise? That's the question that seems to loom over us now like an icicle perched over the front door.

We may rightfully lay some of our distrust at the feet of the experts themselves. Whether through ignorance or hubris, they have sometimes promised more than they could deliver and sometimes delivered things they never promised. Some of our loss of confidence in expertise may be due to our own overly optimistic expectations, and some may come from the general decline in trust that has hit nearly every American institution since the twin failures of Vietnam and Watergate.

There are no doubt other contributors. Our politics now seems to look to expertise more to buttress arguments than to answer questions. The result is that we use science to support value preferences, blurring the important distinction between science and morality. Our media, in giving attention to attacks on scientific work, may inadvertently (and in the partisan media, intentionally) elevate them in the public consciousness and foster the impression that all science is suspect. Our educational system, by failing in its job to teach us how to understand and properly evaluate the work of scientists, makes us inaccurate judges of the claims of expertise at best and cynics of those claims at worst. What we cannot understand, we become willing to question – or ignore.

Experts have fallen from the lofty perch on which we placed them.

More here. [Thanks to Mustafa Ibrahim.]

From The Telegraph:

A photograph taken in 1895 shows H G Wells whizzing along on an early bicycle, with his wife perched nervously on the handlebars. It was a characteristic choice of transport: 1895 was also the year he published The Time Machine, which carefully avoids describing the machine itself in any detail, but pauses lovingly over its “saddle”, as if Wells thought of it as little more than a customised bicycle speeding towards the future. It was one of the many bicycles that wobble their way through his fiction, like little models of the freedom and progress he championed throughout his life. Still, given the number of lovers he managed to collect over the years, as revealed in this sympathetic but clear-eyed biography, he would have been better off learning to drive a bus.

Wells’s sex life had an unpromising start. A short, weedy youth with a squeaky voice, his early experiences were limited to teenage fumbling (“hot, uncomfortable, shamefaced stuff”), and he seems to have been writing from experience when he described the disastrous wedding night of a fictional character for whom “maidenhead” means “the one on the road to Reading”.

More here.

From Nature:

In a packed concert hall, Kokichi Sugihara wields a pickaxe and mimes a blow to the stage. “I am a miner, and I have a secret,” Sugihara says, adjusting his hard hat and headlamp. “I have discovered a new super-magnet.”

A screen behind Sugihara begins playing a video. A cardboard structure appears, consisting of four ramps ascending to a raised platform. A hand places a wooden ball at the base of a ramp, and it rolls uphill, before stopping on the 'super-magnetized' platform. As the same trick is repeated for the other three ramps, the crowd lets out an “ooh”. Only there is no super-magnet, and Sugihara is no miner. He's a mathematician at Meiji Institute in Kawasaki, Japan, and his display is — officially — the world's best visual illusion. At least, according to the hundreds of vision scientists in the audience who have come to judge the sixth competition to find the Best Illusion of the Year, a satellite event of the Vision Sciences Society's annual meeting in Naples, Florida. Sugihara's gravity-defying marbles beat nine other finalists, chosen from 84 entries.

Vision scientists are not easily fooled — so how did Sugihara do it? All is revealed as the camera angle changes to show that what looked like four ordinary ramps leading up to a platform was really an intricate set-up of sheared support columns, skewed slide angles and ramps of different lengths, all of which were above the platform all along.

More here.

Dwight Garner reviews Paul Berman's Flight of the Intellectuals in the NYT:

Paul Berman’s new book, “The Flight of the Intellectuals,” plural, might as easily have been titled “The Flight of the Intellectual,” singular. It is essentially a booklong polemic against one magazine article: a profile of the Islamic philosopher Tariq Ramadan, written by Ian Buruma, the Dutch academic and journalist, and published in The New York Times Magazine in 2007.

Mr. Berman’s book has already made some noise. Writing in Slate, Ron Rosenbaum compared its stinging ambience, nostalgic to some, to one of “those old Partisan Review smackdowns,” in which Dwight Macdonald or Mary McCarthy cracked some unsuspecting frenemy over the head with a bookcase and a tinkling highball glass. And for sure, everything about “The Flight of the Intellectuals” feels old school, from Mr. Berman’s tone (controlled, almost tantric, high dudgeon) to the spectacle of one respected man of the left pummeling another while the blood flows freely, and no one calls the police.

Those Partisan Review fights got serious, and so does this book. Mr. Berman accuses Mr. Buruma, in his Times Magazine profile, of not scrutinizing Mr. Ramadan’s family, associations or writings closely enough, of presenting him in a respectful light. Presenting him, that is, as the kind of moderate and charismatic Islamic thinker in whom the West might find a useful intermediary.

Mr. Berman’s book, portions of which first appeared in The New Republic, is a patient overturning of the rocks that, he argues, Mr. Buruma failed to look under. He writes about historical figures Mr. Ramadan professes to admire and notes the tiny degrees of separation that link them to Hitler and the Nazis during World War II. He points out Mr. Ramadan’s ambiguous comments about things like 9/11, the stoning of women in Muslim countries and violence against Jews. Mr. Berman detects a kind of seventh-century barbarism lurking behind Mr. Ramadan’s genial smile.

Mr. Berman branches out in his book’s final third to condemn liberal intellectuals (nearly all of them but especially Mr. Buruma and the British historian Timothy Garton Ash) and their house organs, including The New York Review of Books, on another, related, account. He writes that while they have admired Mr. Ramadan, they have been inexplicably critical of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born Dutch intellectual who has become a major critic of Islam and, as a consequence, will probably have a large security detail for the rest of her life.

Sam Harris in the Huffington Post:

[T]he response to my TED talk proves that many smart people believe that something in the last few centuries of intellectual progress prevents us from making cross-cultural moral judgments — or moral judgments at all. Thousands of highly educated men and women have now written to inform me that morality is a myth, that statements about human values are without truth conditions and, therefore, nonsensical, and that concepts like “well-being” and “misery” are so poorly defined, or so susceptible to personal whim and cultural influence, that it is impossible to know anything about them. Many people also claim that a scientific foundation for morality would serve no purpose, because we can combat human evil while knowing that our notions of “good” and “evil” are unwarranted. It is always amusing when these same people then hesitate to condemn specific instances of patently abominable behavior. I don't think one has fully enjoyed the life of the mind until one has seen a celebrated scholar defend the “contextual” legitimacy of the burqa, or a practice like female genital excision, a mere thirty seconds after announcing that his moral relativism does nothing to diminish his commitment to making the world a better place. Given my experience as a critic of religion, I must say that it has been disconcerting to see the caricature of the over-educated, atheistic moral nihilist regularly appearing in my inbox and on the blogs. I sincerely hope that people like Rick Warren have not been paying attention.

First, a disclaimer and non-apology: Many of my critics fault me for not engaging more directly with the academic literature on moral philosophy. There are two reasons why I haven't done this: First, while I have read a fair amount of this literature, I did not arrive at my position on the relationship between human values and the rest of human knowledge by reading the work of moral philosophers; I came to it by considering the logical implications of our making continued progress in the sciences of mind. Second, I am convinced that every appearance of terms like “metaethics,” “deontology,” “noncognitivism,” “anti-realism,” “emotivism,” and the like, directly increases the amount of boredom in the universe. My goal, both in speaking at conferences like TED and in writing my book, is to start a conversation that a wider audience can engage with and find helpful. Few things would make this goal harder to achieve than for me to speak and write like an academic philosopher. Of course, some discussion of philosophy is unavoidable, but my approach is to generally make an end run around many of the views and conceptual distinctions that make academic discussions of human values so inaccessible. While this is guaranteed to annoy a few people, the prominent philosophers I've consulted seem to understand and support what I am doing.

Many people believe that the problem with talking about moral truth, or with asserting that there is a necessary connection between morality and well-being, is that concepts like “morality” and “well-being” must be defined with reference to specific goals and other criteria — and nothing prevents people from disagreeing about these definitions.

Our own Morgan Meis in The Smart Set:

I remember hearing Gang Starr for the first time. I was in my friend's garage, the one at his mom's house in South Central L.A. that he'd converted into a hangout spot, which was the fashion at the time. The neighborhood dogs were barking pointlessly in all the yards and the LAPD helicopters chop-chop-chopped the sky, ever present. It was a warm day, as I recall, and the sound coming out of the garage was damn smooth. I liked the raspy voice of the MC. He was rapping about the streets, which was also the fashion. He wasn't just bragging, rhyming about how hard he and his crew were. But he wasn't wagging a finger in condemnation, either. There was a balance to the song, something real from the standpoint of someone who knows. Like something Johnny Cash would have understood.

The song was “Just to Get a Rep” and the MC went by the name of Guru. Guru dropped into a coma two weeks ago after a heart attack related to his fight with cancer. On April 19, he died.

“Just to Get a Rep” might not be the best Gang Starr song, but it is the one I'll always listen to with a special fondness. One of the difficult things about doing hip-hop in the late ’80s/early ’90s was navigating the whole gangster rap thing. Did you try to out-gangsta the other guys? Did you go off in a completely different direction like the post-hippie sound of De La Soul? The gangsta rap persona was a bit overwhelming for any young MC trying to create a sound and an identity. Guru understood all that. “Just to Get a Rep” had a streety edge to it; Guru was down. Still, it was clear that he saw the tragedy and ugliness of the gangster life. Plus he wore that Black Muslim cap and he'd throw out fancy words, complicated diction. Guru once rhymed “mic” with “teletype.” I heard someone refer to him once as the “wise uncle.” I like to think of Guru that way. Just like your wise uncle, Guru was dangerously close to being full of shit, getting a little too self-righteous. But he always reined it back in the nick of time. “Jazz Thing,” the song made famous by Mo' Better Blues, is preachy and didactic but redeemed, nevertheless, by the delightful phrase, “Theolonious Monk, a melodious thunk.”

More here.

The Waters

Poet, oracle and wit
like unsuccessful anglers by
the ponds of apperception sit,
Baiting with the wrong request
The vectors of their interest;
At nightfall tell the anglers lie.

With time in tempest everywhere,
To rafts of frail assumption cling
the saintly and the insincere;
Enraged phenomena bear down
In overwhelming waves to drown
Both sufferer and suffering.

The waters long to hear our question put
Which would release their longed-for answer, but.

by W.H. Auden
from Selected Poems,
Vintage Books, 1972

From The Washington Post:

Fear not, for, behold, I bring you tidings of great joy: Philip Pullman's novel about Jesus is not quite as shrill as his public statements on religion would suggest. Choosing a vocal atheist and best-selling British fantasy writer to retell the story of the Gospels was clearly an answer to some publicist's prayer, but for all its satanic fanfare and heretical rejiggering, “The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ” is — God forbid — kind of inspiring. It even manages to convey a message that's always been central to Christian thought.

…

So what does Pullman do with the greatest story ever told? Essentially, he condenses the four Gospels, following the basic outline they provide of Jesus's life. Indeed, some of the text here — such as his simple, beautifully rendered Sermon on the Mount — will strike Christians as very familiar. Again and again, he displays a marvelous sense of the elemental power of Jesus's instructions and parables. Even when he transforms the canonical stories to match his atheist perspective, he emphasizes the basic Christian theme of universal love.

More here.

From The New York Times:

Why do some men and women cheat on their partners while others resist the temptation? To find the answer, a growing body of research is focusing on the science of commitment. Scientists are studying everything from the biological factors that seem to influence marital stability to a person’s psychological response after flirting with a stranger. Their findings suggest that while some people may be naturally more resistant to temptation, men and women can also train themselves to protect their relationships and raise their feelings of commitment. Recent studies have raised questions about whether genetic factors may influence commitment and marital stability. Hasse Walum, a biologist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, studied 552 sets of twins to learn more about a gene related to the body’s regulation of the brain chemical vasopressin, a bonding hormone.

Over all, men who carried a variation in the gene were less likely to be married, and those who had wed were more likely to have had serious marital problems and unhappy wives. Among men who carried two copies of the gene variant, about a third had experienced a serious relationship crisis in the past year, double the number seen in the men who did not carry the variant. Although the trait is often called the “fidelity gene,” Mr. Walum called that a misnomer: his research focused on marital stability, not faithfulness. “It’s difficult to use this information to predict any future behavior in men,” he told me. Now he and his colleagues are working to replicate the findings and conducting similar research in women.

More here.

Margaret Eby in Salon:

As it turns out, much of what you think about the state of the American marriage is wrong: Half of marriages don’t end in divorce; married people don’t have less sex than their single counterparts and — surprise! — fighting can actually be beneficial to your relationship. That is what Tara Parker-Pope, a health journalist and the woman behind the New York Times' Well blog, discovered while researching her new book, “For Better: The Science of a Good Marriage.” In the book, Parker-Pope argues that the marital bond isn't nearly as mysterious as you might believe, and unlike the vast majority of authors on the subject, she uses credible scientific research to back up her claims about everything from sex to housework.

As “For Better” points out, researchers found that couples in lasting marriages have at least five small positive interactions (touching, smiling, paying a compliment) for every negative one (sneering, eye rolling, withdrawal). When the ratio drops, the risk of divorce increases. Snoring and other sleep problems can contribute enormously to marital unhappiness. How you treat your partner during the first three minutes of a fight determines whether the argument will be good or bad for your marriage — launching a volley of personal criticisms is worse than opening up a discussion with a complaint. It’s these small but recognizable actions, claims Parker-Pope, that distinguish a marriage bound for splitsville from couples who stay together.

More here.