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Newsletter for 02-22-2005

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Articles

"Some paintings are so familiar it's easy to dismiss the artist's genius. One may forget that a career consisted of more than, say, an image of a Campbell's soup can or a Renaissance woman with an enigmatic smile. Jacques-Louis David is one such artist. While his name may not be familiar, his iconic images are. Think Napoleon on the back of a rearing white horse and you're in the right gallery."

"Legend has it that Rome was founded in 753 B.C. by Romulus and Remus, the twin sons of Mars, the god of war, who were suckled as infants by a she-wolf in the woods.

"Now, archaeologists believe they have found evidence that at least part of that tale may be true: Traces of a royal palace discovered in the Roman Forum have been dated to roughly the period of the eternal city's legendary foundation."

"A new theory of how planets form finds havens of stability amid violent turbulence in the swirling gas that surrounds a young star. These protected areas are where planets can begin to form without being destroyed."

"A cultural collision took place in Germany in 1945, between societies whose experience of the Second World War was light years apart. What the Soviet and German peoples did, as well as what was done to them, bore scant resemblance to the war the American and British knew. There was a chasm between the world of the Western allies, populated by men still striving to act temperately, and the Eastern universe in which, on both sides, elemental passions dominated. Although some individuals in Eisenhower's armies suffered severely, the experience of most falls within a recognizable compass of what happens to people in wars. The battle of Arnhem, for instance, is perceived as an epic. Yet the entire combat experience of many British participants was compressed into a few days. Barely three thousand men died on the Allied side. Among British veterans of northwest Europe, Captain Lord Carrington remembers with consider able affection his service with the Grenadier Guards tank regiment: 'We'd been together a long time. It may sound an odd thing to say, but it was a very happy period. We were young and adventurous. We were winning. One had all one's friends with one. We were a happy family.' I do not extrapolate from this that British or American soldiers enjoyed themselves. Few sane people like war. But many found 1944-45 not unbearable, if they were fortunate enough to escape mutilation or death. Hardly any Americans felt the hatred for the Germans which Pearl Harbor, together with the Japanese cultural ethic expressed in the Bataan Death March, engendered towards the soldiers of Nippon."

"There's a story they tell about a guy who went to see Hamlet and then demanded his money back.

"'Piece of junk,' he snarled. 'Full of cliches.'

"That's the thing about great works of art: We can't imagine a time before they existed, before certain phrases and ideas were part of the very air we breathed. And thus even if you've never seen Death of a Salesman or haven't read The Crucible since high school -- you're still influenced by Arthur Miller, who died Thursday at age 89."

"Humans have always thought of themselves as special, and with good reason. As far as we know, we are alone in the universe in churning out great works of art and literature, in formulating the laws of physics, and in creating the spectacle that is morris dancing.

"But our view of ourselves as the pinnacle of life has suffered huge blows at the hands of science. Every now and again comes an idea so revolutionary that it rocks the foundations on which our hubris is built."

"Arthur Miller was one of the creative giants of the 20th century. His seminal plays marked him out as a writer of rare gifts while his colourful life - including his marriage to Marilyn Monroe - embodied the politics and passion of his age."

"He is the original action hero, a fearless Norse warrior who slew a murderous troll and helped inspire Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. And he is coming to a multiplex near you."

"Just a few hundred meters behind the Manila Cathedral is a monument of black marble dedicated to all the innocent victims of war.

"Memorare - Manila 1945

"'Let this monument be the gravestone for each and everyone of the over 100,000 men, women, children and infants killed in Manila during its battle of liberation Feb. 3 - March 3, 1945.'

"'We have not forgotten them, nor shall we ever forget.'"

"Tiny single-celled creatures, many of them previously unknown to science, have been found at the deepest point in the world's oceans, almost 11km down."

"As is so often the case, Raymond Chandler said it best, and with a becoming generosity: Dashiell Hammett 'did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before.'"

"Behold the slam dunk, the pulse-quickening, throw-it-down, in-your-face signature move of the National Basketball Association. The dunk is a declaration of power and dominance, of machismo. In a team game, an ensemble of five players a side, it is an expression of self. In a sport devoted to selling sneakers, the dunk is a marketing tour de force, the money shot at the end of every worthy basketball sequence. (When you see the shoes in the 30-second spot, what is the wearer of those shoes always doing?) Next weekend in Denver, the cultural moment that is the N.B.A. All-Star Game will take place, an event set annually amid a weekend of concerts, lavish parties and showy displays of fashion. On such a big stage (and with defensive standards momentarily relaxed), the game itself is sure to be a veritable dunkathon, a string of self-satisfied throw-downs by the league's biggest stars. If I had my way, at the conclusion of the game the dunk would be taken out of commission. Banned as a first step toward rescuing a game that has strayed far from its roots, fundamentals and essential appeal."

"America's culture of self-revelation spells the end of privacy and the promotion of a smothering conformity."

"We are addicted to the concept of winners and losers. Last week alone, I was asked to nominate the Best Top 10 British Bands, write something about the Top 100 Scottish Novels of All Time, and I attended a lavish awards ceremony, sponsored by The Daily Telegraph, to name several Great Britons, in which the excellent writer Philip Pullman was vying with the differently excellent filmmaker Ken Loach for honours. The assumption, not a bad one in itself, seems to be that life is more exciting the more rivalry it involves, as if competition was the food of endeavour. I'm not entirely sure that competition is good for art. There is the danger that it can create a uniformity of thought and aim."

"Almost a thousand years ago, a teacher fell in love with his student. Almost a thousand years ago, they began a torrid affair. They made love in the kitchens of convents and in the boudoir of the girl's uncle. They wrote hundreds of love letters. When the girl bore a child, they were secretly married, but the teacher was castrated by henchmen of the enraged uncle. At her lover's bidding, the girl took religious orders. He took the habit of a monk. They retreated into separate monasteries and wrote to each other until parted by death."

"Economic cycles aren't what they used to be."

"The key to understanding Lincoln's philosophy of statesmanship is that he always sought the meeting point between what was right in theory and what could be achieved in practice."

"Sixty years ago Sunday, Allied bombers attacked Dresden and the thousands of residents and refugees who lived there. Traces of the militarily dubious decision to bomb the city remain visible today."

"In her 1929 classic, A Room of One's Own, author Virginia Woolf wrote: 'It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.' A lovely thought, but who has time to be idle anymore? These days, we're so busy living in multiple moments -- cell phone in one hand, BlackBerry in the other -- that we never find time to just focus on the moment, much less indulge in leisure."

"What do you mean when you call yourself a humanist?"

"The latest theory about love from psychological research is that basically the strongly positive associations people have about themselves 'spill over' to enhance their attraction to nearly anything associated with the self. This new psychological theory is called "implicit egotism" and promises to revise radically the way we think about love."

"How Booth Saved Lincoln's Life: A Lincoln family incident during the Civil War became a remarkable snippet of assassination lore."

"H.P. Lovecraft built his reputation as America's greatest bad writer on a loathsome edifice of unspeakable, hideous filth whose nauseating tendrils reach into the nightmarish depths of hyperbole."

"Thought might not be dependent on language, according to new research published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences."

"In Norse mythology, Ragnarok - the fate of the gods - begins when the earth is caught in the vice-like grip of a bone-chilling freeze. The heavens themselves freeze over, as the gods perish in great battles with evil serpents and murderous wolves. Eternal darkness settles over the bleak, frozen land as the sun and moon are both devoured. Odin, the father of all gods, finally falls to his death, and time itself comes to a halt.

"Does this ancient tale foretell our future?"

"One of the fundamental reasons for the ongoing conflict between the religious and scientific communities involves differences in terminology and word usage. Having heard many lay people scoff 'evolution is only a theory' or refer to 'the theory of Intelligent Design,' it seems prudent to discuss differences in usage and understanding, as Creationists are misusing the understanding of this and other scientific terms by the average individual to further their own aims."

"The eye has always had a special place in the study of evolution, and Darwin had a lot to do with that. He believed that natural selection could produce the complexity of nature, and to a nineteenth century naturalist, nothing seemed as complex as an eye, with its lens, cornea, retina, and other parts working together so exquisitely.The notion that natural selection could produce such an organ 'seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree,' Darwin wrote in the Origin of Species."

"A century of recording and broadcasting has expanded our taste and brought a vast new richness to classical music."

"The most convincing serial-killer movies aren't the ones drenched in blood and gore, says Gordon Burn. They're the films that show just how banal the lives of murderers can be."

"With its audience dwindling, classical music finds new cachet -- as thug repellent. It can't be what Bach & Co. had in mind."

"In 218 bc, Hannibal Barca left Iberia to take the Second Punic War to Rome -- leading a disparate 84,000-man army."

"It's the scripts that pay a high price when Hollywood goes into battle. Brian Courtis looks at one of the movie world’s murkier truths."

"Quick quiz. Can you name the five freedoms of the First Amendment? If you're stumped, you're in good company - 99 percent of American adults can't either.

"That lack of familiarity with one of the cornerstones of American democracy has now found its mirror in a recent study of high school students. The largest survey to date of more than 112,000 students in ninth through 12th grades reveals basic misconceptions and a disheartening lack of interest in what it means, what it protects, and why it matters."

"After the Tsunami in Asia, researchers attempted to explain reports that aboriginal tribesmen had 'sensed' the danger in time to flee to higher ground.

"Although some researchers dispute the existence of a 'sixth sense' for danger, research from Washington University in St. Louis has found a region of the brain that serves as an 'early warning system' -- monitoring environmental cues and helping to change our behavior to avoid danger."

"I am in the middle of Don Quixote—where many writers are and, according to Cervantes scholars, where every writer should be. I’m reading it because this year marks the 400th anniversary of its publication. I would like to say that I’ve finished it, but I cannot. The Quixote, as it is affectionately referred to by die-hard fans, is not something you finish. It’s something you rattle around in."

"Growing incomes in western societies no longer make us happier, and more individualistic, competitive societies make some of us positively unhappy. Public policy should take its cue once more from Bentham's utilitarianism, unfashionable for many decades but now vindicated by modern neuroscience."

"On December 27, 2004, more than a dozen spacecraft recorded the brightest event from outside the solar system ever observed in the history of astronomy. The spacecraft, which included Earth-orbiting satellites as well as interplanetary probes such as Cassini, Mars Odyssey, and Ulysses, picked up a powerful burst of gamma rays and X-rays from one of the most exotic beasts in the galactic zoo: a magnetar. These bizarre objects are neutron stars possessing magnetic fields a million billion times more powerful than Earth's field, or some 1,000 times greater that those of normal neutron stars."

"Francis Fukuyama is the man famous for the 'End of History' thesis. In 1989 he presented it in a public lecture at the University of Chicago: History had ended with liberal democratic modernity. Sixteen years to the day, he gave a follow up talk in the same lecture hall entitled 'The End of History Fifteen Years Later' [sic]."

"Teenagers are a powerful consumer force with a taste for luxury but have an exceptionally poor grasp of the actual cost of living, according to research published today.

"Two thirds know how much an Apple iPod mini costs (£179) but three quarters have no idea about the price of a pint of milk (30p) and one in eight thinks that being "in the red" means being embarrassed."

"'The worst cruelties of life are its killing injustices.' John Berger on poverty, desire, storytelling, and the future’s gift to the present."

"Every middle-class American family with a college-age child knows how it goes: the meetings at which the high school counselor draws up a list of 'reaches' and 'safeties,' the bills for SAT prep courses ('But, Dad, everyone takes one; if you don't let me, I'm screwed'), the drafts of the personal essay in which your child tries to strike just the right note between humility and self-promotion—and finally, on the day of decision, the search through the mail in dread of the thin envelope that would mean it's all over and that, as a family, you have collectively failed."

"George Balanchine, the greatest dance innovator of the twentieth century, and possibly the most important in all 350 years of classical dance history since the language was codified in the court of Louis XIV, has just been subjected to a global celebration lasting an entire year in honor of the centennial of his birth, in tsarist Russia, in 1904. Now it is perhaps a good time, as he enters his second century of influence, to assess the many acts of heroism performed in his honor—and the attendant damage."

"Relativity. Incompleteness. Uncertainty.

"Is there a more powerful modern Trinity? These reigning deities proclaim humanity's inability to thoroughly explain the world. They have been the touchstones of modernity, their presence an unwelcome burden at first, and later, in the name of postmodernism, welcome company."

"Recently a school district in rural Pennsylvania officially recognized a supposed alternative to Darwinism. In a one-minute statement read by an administrator, ninth-grade biology students were told that evolution was not a fact and were encouraged to explore a different explanation of life called intelligent design. What is intelligent design? Its proponents maintain that living creatures are just too intricate to have arisen by evolution. Throughout the natural world, they say, there is evidence of deliberate design. Is it not reasonable, then, to infer the existence of an intelligent designer? To evade the charge that intelligent design is a religious theory -- creationism dressed up as science -- its advocates make no explicit claims about who or what this designer might be. But students will presumably get the desired point. As one Pennsylvania teacher observed: ''The first question they will ask is: 'Well, who's the designer? Do you mean God?'''

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