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Newsletter for 02-01-2005 For previous newsletters, please visit this page. Articles "Shakespeare is unquestionably one of the most distinguished writers of all time, possibly even the most distinguished. Since the time when he wrote his plays, however, they have been interpreted in many interesting and unique ways. This is a result of the varied ways in which Shakespeare's plays resonate with their [film] directors, and each of these directors, despite their differences of interpretation, can justify their interpretations of the text based on what each of them has discovered written between the lines." Go to story "The universe is creative and regenerative as well as brutal and finite – just like humans. In this lies a consolation that is open to believer and atheist alike...." Go to story "Temperatures around the world could rise by as much as 11C, according to one of the largest climate prediction projects ever run. "This figure is twice the level that previous studies have suggested." Go to story "The atom bomb, Einstein and me" Go to story "Meet Hindus who debunk Western misconceptions about caste, cows, karma and more." Go to story "A dozen Americans walked into a relief camp here, showering bereft parents and traumatized children with gifts, attention and affection. They also quietly offered camp residents something else: Jesus." Go to story "Who owns the words you're reading right now? if you're holding a copy of Bookforum in your hands, the law permits you to lend or sell it to whomever you like. If you're reading this article on the Internet, you are allowed to link to it, but are prohibited from duplicating it on your web site or chat room without permission. You are free to make copies of it for teaching purposes, but aren't allowed to sell those copies to your students without permission. A critic who misrepresents my ideas or uses some of my words to attack me in an article of his own is well within his rights to do so. But were I to fashion these pages into a work of collage art and sell it, my customer would be breaking the law if he altered it. Furthermore, were I to set these words to music, I'd receive royalties when it was played on the radio; the band performing it, however, would get nothing. In the end, the copyright to these words belongs to me, and I've given Bookforum the right to publish them. But even my ownership is limited. Unlike a house, which I may pass on to my heirs (and they to theirs), my copyright will expire seventy years after my death, and these words will enter the public domain, where anyone is free to use them. But those doodles you're drawing in the margins of this page? Have no fear: They belong entirely to you." Go to story "As the MER rovers blow out the candle on their one-year anniversary, they continue to make new discoveries on the Red Planet. How long they'll keep running is an open question, but NASA has several programs in the works for an encore." Go to story "Something wiped out most of the life on Earth 250 million years ago. Evidence has been building that it was an asteroid or comet strike that made Earth unlivable nearly instantly. But other scientists think that it wasn't instantaneous; instead, they found fossil evidence that the extinction occurred over the course of 10 million years. A group of volcanoes in Siberia spewed out gas continuously that set off a runaway greenhouse effect. Lowered oxygen levels in the atmosphere combined with intense heat would have hit life a deadly double blow." Go to story "For years, much of the world did aspire to the American way of life. But today countries are finding more appealing systems in their own backyards." Go to story "When Xbox released Halo 2 in November, it was possibly the most anticipated video game of all time. For those who had bought an Xbox on the strength of 2001's Halo, it was the end of an agonising wait. But for others in the global entertainment industry, the release was evidence of something more. "'In the States, Halo 2 generated $US125 million ($164 million) on day one,' says Chris Di Cesare, global director of Xbox marketing. 'It was the biggest single event in entertainment retail history - that includes box office. There's nothing close to that. Spider-Man 2 did $US115 million on its opening weekend.'" Go to story "Friends ask, with sympathy and concern, how I've been able to do my columns, teach, raise Alunsina and do the usual thousand other little tasks while nursing a fractured foot and a broken heart. I smile sadly, and then answer with courage: 'Mozart.'" Go to story "A lack of mates among human ancestors that lived million years ago has left modern humans more vulnerable to genetic disease, a new study suggests." Go to story "These days Thoreau is mainly remembered for the self-conscious life he lived, and for his vital role in the creation of environmentalism. In his own time he embodied ideas that others merely discussed in their parlors. The liquid clarity of Thoreau's sentences arose from the natural simplicity in which he was grounded." Go to story "The universe is destined to end. Before it does, could an advanced civilisation escape via a 'wormhole' into a parallel universe? The idea seems like science fiction, but it is consistent with the laws of physics and biology. Here's how to do it." Go to story "Can't tell your special from your general? David Adam explains the big ideas and shows how to pass yourself off as a saloon bar expert ... and survive Einstein Year." Go to story "'Tibet has become the symbol of all that present day humanity is longing for … the stability of a tradition, which has its roots not only in a historical or cultural past, but within the innermost being of man, in whose depth this past is enshrined as an ever-present source of inspiration.'" Go to story "Across the island, activists, archaeologists and historians are joining forces to preserve a cultural legacy that has endured for 3,000 years." Go to story (PDF) "NASA is returning to the Moon--not just robots, but people. In the decades ahead we can expect to see habitats, greenhouses and power stations up there. Astronauts will be out among the moondust and craters, exploring, prospecting, building. "Last week, though, there were no humans walking around on the Moon. "Good thing." Go to story "Jared Diamond’s new book, Collapse, offers fantasies about 'ecocide' instead of an understanding of history." Go to story "Tackling local and global problems require multidisciplinary thinking and the schools of the future will adjust by educating students in multiple disciplines, doing away with the confining specializations that are dominant today." Go to story "100 years after Einstein changed physics for ever, Alok Jha visits a leafy corner of Princeton to meet his intellectual heirs - still hunting for a theory of everything." Go to story "Ten-year-old Germans chatter and fidget like children in any classroom, seemingly unaware that they will soon be segregated by an education system with profound implications for their lives." Go to story "Let's free-associate. Monica: Bill; thong underwear; oral sex in the Oval Office; Ken Starr; impeachment; semen on a blue dress; Linda Tripp; and, if you're Robert M. Polhemus, the reason that 'the full Lot text moved from relative obscurity into new prominence in the 20th century.'" go to story "When Huygens descended through Titans clouds, snapping hundreds of pictures, it revealed a world with many similar physical features to our own planet: clouds, rivers, lakebeds, islands, rocks and dust. But Titan is cold, plunging below -170°C; a temperature where methane can exist as both a liquid and a gas. Huygens saw a series of drainage channels running from brighter highlands to flatter, darker regions. It landed in a material that has the consistency of loose sand. Instead of rocks, Huygens is surrounded by boulders of water ice, and instead of dirt, the probe found hydrocarbon particles that settled out of the atmosphere." Go to story "The nature of dark matter is one of the mysteries currently puzzling astronomers. A new study published in the journal Nature proposes that halos of dark matter the size of our Solar System (but with only the mass of the Earth) were the first objects to form after the big bang, and they served as the gravitational glue that attracted regular matter. It's possible that there are still more than a quadrillion (a million billion) of these halos just in our own galaxy, and they could pass through our Solar System occasionally. New observatories could be able to detect the gamma ray trails of these dark matter halos as they move through the Solar System, confirming one theory that they're composed of exotic particles called neutralinos." Go to story "When an informant tells you that six people he knows are planning on detonating a dirty bomb in Boston, should you believe him? That is no hypothetical question -- which is why psychologists who study lie detection, like Paul Ekman, a retired psychologist at the University of California at San Francisco, are getting more calls from the government than they used to." Go to story "One of the most intriguing, if least openly discussed, mysteries in art has been resolved. "Michelangelo's David is meant to be a representation in marble of the perfect male form. So why did his creator not make him - how would one say - a little better endowed?" Go to story "The sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz is an appropriate time to question the language used to describe the Nazis’ annihilation of European Jews and other 'subhumans'..." Go to story "The just war tradition came into being during the Middle Ages as a way of thinking about the right use of force in the context of responsible government of the political community. With deep roots in both ancient Israel and classical Greek and Roman political thought and practice, the origins of a specifically Christian just war concept first appeared in the thought of Augustine. A systematic just war theory came only some time later, beginning with Gratian’s Decretum in the middle of the twelfth century, maturing through the work of two generations of successors, the Decretists and the Decretalists, and taking theological form in the work of Thomas Aquinas and others in the latter part of the thirteenth century. Later in the Middle Ages, and particularly during the era of the Hundred Years War, this canonical and theological conception of just war was further elaborated by incorporation of ideas, customs, and practices from the chivalric code and the experience of war, from renewed attention to Roman law, especially the jus gentium, and from the developing experience of government." Go to story "MIT's 'Fab Labs' project aims to give ordinary people around the world the technology to design and make their own stuff. Is this the dawn of the age of 'personal fabrication'?" Go to story "Shakespeare is crucial to an understanding of Schiller, and one thing we have come to grasp in the past 20 years is the close kinship between German romanticism and our own dramatic tradition. George Steiner in The Death of Tragedy points out that Goethe and Schiller both adapted Shakespeare's plays for the Weimar stage. In November 1797 you even find Schiller writing to Goethe: "In the last days I have been reading the plays of Shakespeare which deal with the War of the Roses and now that I have finished Richard III , I am filled with true amazement. No Shakespearean play has so much reminded me of Greek tragedy." Insofar as Richard III deals with the fulfilment of a curse, Schiller was exactly right." Go to story "Just minutes before a 5 o'clock curtain on Jan. 9, two lines of fidgety ticketholders extended from the lobby of Alice Tully Hall through the front doors and out to the curb on Broadway. "'What is this, a rock concert?' a man muttered, craning his neck to see what the holdup was. "With the milling throng and the ubiquitous scalpers promising entry to the sold-out event, it might well have been. "But on this afternoon, the crowd - from well-heeled, silver-haired couples to students clad in jeans and toting instrument cases - was awaiting the opening of 'Ultimate Beethoven: A Journey Through Genius,' a six-concert series featuring Beethoven's 16 string quartets, played by the Takacs Quartet and presented by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. "Ah, Beethoven." Go to story "In 1755 a great earthquake struck the city of Lisbon, in Portugal. As a result, roughly 100,000 people died, in the process sparking a new debate about an old and deep theological dilemma: if (the Christian) God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good, how could this happen? The answer, such as it is, has always been that we simply can't understand how such calamities fit into God's plan, but they do, so we should simply have faith in the supreme being and not be as "arrogant" as constantly questioning His plans. "Of course, any human being who deliberately causes the death of thousands, regardless of the stated motive or 'higher' purpose, is branded as a horrible criminal, hunted down and prosecuted to the full extent of human law. Rational people feel rather frustrated by this sort of nonsensical double standard, and one defense against the irrationality of the world is, as Mel Brooks once said, a good sense of humor. If anything good came out of the Lisbon earthquake it was that it inspired the French philosopher Voltaire to write what became a classical masterpiece of world literature, Candide. In it, Voltaire makes fun of the simplistic attitude that we live “in the best of all possible worlds,” as affirmed by one of the main characters, Dr. Pangloss (loosely based on the philosophy of Leibniz), and clearly implied by theological 'explanations' of natural disasters." Go to story
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