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54.

Why wasn't Anna able to find her peace? This is, maybe, the central question of the greatest novel of all time. EXCERPT: "The fact of the matter is that nothing good came of the romance between Anna and Vronsky, and everyone would have been better off if it had never happened. Their affair was a cataclysm for Anna, obviously, but also for Vronsky, for Karenin, and for Seryozha, their son". SOURCE: Is "Anna Karenina" a Love Story?

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53.

The notion of a specific Asian modernity opposed to Western culture is a provoking point of view. But the claim of an original golden age destroyed by the contact with imperialism and colonialism is perhaps a bit overstated. EXCERPT: "Asia, for Mishra, extends from Japan to Egypt and from Turkey to Indonesia. The Muslim, Confucian, and Hindu impulses in Asia are stronger than any shared geographic sensibility. Asia is united mostly by the legacy of Western imperialism. In finely wrought biographical portraiture, Mishra lays bare an intellectual transformation whereby the chains of Western imperialism were broken and a self-consciously modern Asia envisioned. This transformation happened across inner-Asian borders". SOURCE: East is East and West is West: Al Afghani, Tagore, and Qichao

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52.

Are mind and values as fundamental as atoms and evolution in making sense of our existence as conscious human beings? A more favourable review of Thomas Nagel's last book. EXCERPT: "What Nagel does suggest is that philosophers, or scientists who wish to provide philosophical insight look at the relationship between mind and nature in a different way. In particular, philosophers should stop assuming that reality will one day be exhaustively explained by science, and start trying to incorporate other methods of explanation into our worldview. In response, philosophers like Weinberg and Leiter and Sober tend to dig their heels in, reiterate the pragmatic values of science, and conclude that these values are sufficient to justify philosophical naturalism. But this is not a satisfactory counterargument. Nagel and most critics of naturalism agree that our best methodology for predicting and manipulating natural phenomena is science. But why suppose that reality is exhaustively described by science in its current form? There are plenty of things that aren’t obviously describable in scientific terms which are part of reality: mathematics, logic, language, history, and, here we go again, consciousness. It is never going to be possible to put these under a microscope". SOURCE: Thomas Nagel is not crazy See also.

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51.

A skipped marriage at 16, an MBA from the London Business School and two wardrobes at home. Portraits of women from a changing Middle East. A slow return to visibility, with or without hijab. EXCERPT: "Asef Bayat, an authority on Islamism and professor of sociology and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, calls this quiet dissent the ‘art of presence’. His term aptly describes the multitudes of women who, through ‘the mundane [pursuit] of education, sports, arts, music or work’, haggle over more space and better terms with deeply conservative authoritarian regimes and patriarchal societies. If their methods stand in stark contrast to the public activism typically exercised in the West, it is with good reason: they are much more effective in extricating concessions from systems that are lethally unresponsive to organised action. The path of resistance is thus a ‘non-movement’ by defenseless constituencies, massaging the possible in pervasively hostile environments". SOURCE: The art of presence

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50.

Is the assimilation of jewishness into zionism a way of silencing dissent about the State of Israel? Would it be possible today a non-statist zionism like in Hanna Arendt's time? For Judith Butler jewish identity is diasporic in nature. EXCERPT: "In fact, Butler implies that the hypernationalistic tenor of present-day Zionism and its severance from its humanistic foundations may be partly the result of having effaced all other alternatives of Jewish identity, disqualifying critics of Zionism or Israel as self-hating and most gentile critics of Israel as antisemitic. And wiping out all legitimate resistance from the Jewish camp makes Zionism, and the nation-state that embodies it, very dangerous. In addition, this hegemony effaces the complex nature of Zionism itself, it non-territorial claims, its binational aspirations (binationalism, now considered anti-Zionism if not anti-Semitic, was the creation of devout Zionists), its humanistic core". SOURCE: How to Separate Jewishness from Zionism

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49.

Last May, police launched a massive operation against criminal gangs in Lyari, a district of Karachi. But in a favelas-like scenario things are not always what they seem. EXCERPT: "The police action on Lyari was carefully planned. The aim was to storm the headquarters from which the gangs operate, seize their weapons and take the leaders into custody—or eliminate them, if that was more feasible. On the first day of the raid the district was cordoned off: no fresh food supplies were allowed to reach the markets; water, electricity and gas were cut off, as well as internet and mobile phones. Loudspeakers instructed the inhabitants to remain indoors, or risk being dealt with as combatants. The people had to suffer the summer heat—temperatures of 40ºc or more—cooped up in their unventilated dwellings". SOURCE: The undercities of Karachi

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48.

Alfred Hitchcock was "scared stiff of anything that's to do with the law". No problem with that. The final destination of his obsessions were not police but films. EXCERPT: "Hitchcock didn’t just film a man’s obsession with a woman who is unresponsive to his desire; he also filmed a man who needed to keep misdeeds (admittedly hers, not his own) secret in order to have any chance of fulfilling his desires. Enduring an obsession that could be cured only by means of Hedren’s love or its simulacrum, compliance—and having done things with Hedren that he’d never want revealed—he made a film about the danger of the mirror being shattered, of the opaque barrier of the screen collapsing". SOURCE: Tippi Hedren's silence

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47.

Rejecting materialistic reductionism and evolutionary biology from a non-religious perspective. Have remarkable facts to be probable, unsurprising to be intelligible? Thomas Nagel's ambitious work presents some flaws. EXCERPT: "So Nagel thinks that an adequate scientific account of the existence of life, mind, and consciousness must show that those events had significant probabilities. He holds that current science does not do that and therefore needs to be supplemented. But with what? Nagel’s answer is that science should go teleological: concepts of goal and purpose need to be used in new scientific theories. This suggestion conflicts with the dominant scientific tradition of Galileo, Newton, and their successors. Teleology is the most radical idea in Nagel’s book". SOURCE: Remarkable Facts. Ending Science As We Know It

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46.

The existence of anti-doping bodies damages sport more than doping itself, Tim Black argues. Was Lance Armstrong convicted before receiving a fair trial? EXCERPT: "The question, then, that really needs to be asked is this: what is the big deal about performance-enhancing drugs? Athletes by their very nature are constantly trying to enhance their performance, whether it’s through state-of-the-art, high-altitude training facilities, the latest dietary regimes, or the most up-to-date equipment. Indeed cycling, from the strychnine-dominated days of the first Tour, has always featured people prepared to go to extraordinary lengths in the pursuit of glory. So why should some performance enhancements be legal and others not? The whole discussion about drugs in sport, the obsession with appearing clean, is in danger of ruining the sporting spectacle". SOURCE: Why Lance Armstrong was put in the stocks

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45.

The future in an algorithm. A well-timed combination of data, conversations, events could give us some clue about what will happen tomorrow. But, in the end, everything depends on our ability to ask the right questions.

EXCERPT: "This isn't a new idea. There have already been efforts to try to tap into what is simmering below the surface by tracking things like Google searches. Researchers at West Point's Combating Terrorism Center and Princeton University tracked Google searches in Egypt starting in January 2011 and found that there were more searches about events in Tunisia and its protests than for Egyptian pop stars. Recorded Future builds on that kind of public intelligence". SOURCE: Predicting The Future: Fantasy Or A Good Algorithm?

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44.

The complex relationship between photography and truth. First shots looked more like impressionist paintings.

EXCERPT: "Is photography a way of documenting the world that has an inherent “truth-claim” on the real? Or is it, as Steichen suggested, essentially graphic, a technique for creating a certain kind of image?". SOURCE: Trick or Truth?

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43.

Next stage, Holy Rus. Russian political culture seems inextricable from its ancient past. Ivan the Terrible still reigns in a post-modern society, a sum of all previous authoritarian incarnations. But don't forget that dystopian satire is hyperbolic by definition. EXCERPT: "Yet this is a far cry from the near absolute cultural and ideological management that was realized in the Soviet Union and that is depicted in Day of the Oprichnik. One suspects that such a total domination would be impossible in today’s world of electronic communications. In this, present-day Russian society sharply departs from its Soviet predecessor. Despite the dystopian visions of authors from Orwell to Sorokin of a fearsome trend in human history towards increasingly totalitarian societies, the example of Putin’s Russia demonstrates instead that in the twenty-first century a nominally democratic system can be successfully gamed with far less than a total domination of culture and ideology". SOURCE: Dress-up games with Russian history

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42.

We're living in the most peaceful period of human existence. State monopoly of violence has much to do with this trend. But a decisive factor is the link between reason and morality. EXCERPT: "Pinker argues that enhanced powers of reasoning give us the ability to detach ourselves from our immediate experience and from our personal or parochial perspective, and frame our ideas in more abstract, universal terms. This in turn leads to better moral commitments, including avoiding violence. It is just this kind of reasoning ability that has improved during the 20th century. He therefore suggests that the 20th century has seen a “moral Flynn effect, in which an accelerating escalator of reason carried us away from impulses that lead to violence” and that this lies behind the long peace, the new peace, and the rights revolution". SOURCE: Is Violence History?

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41.

A mistery family living upstairs and a tall and thin man walking in the garden. The decision: a "flip on the coin", 50-50. The case: weaker than W.M.D. in Iraq. Still, the end of the most wanted terrorist was a matter of days. EXCERPT: "One by one, the principals around the room were asked to choose among three options—a raid, a missile strike, or doing nothing—and then to defend their choice. The president said that he probably would not make a decision until the next morning, but he wanted to hear everyone’s view. It was widely reported in the weeks and months after the raid that most, or at least many, of the president’s top advisers opposed the raid, but this is not true. Nearly everyone present favored it. The only major dissenters were Biden and Gates, and before the raid was launched, Gates would change his mind". SOURCE: The Hunt For “Geronimo”

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40.

50 years ago, nuclear war was a real threat but life continued. People woke up, had breakfast and went to work. Nick Holonyak was very busy at General Electric. EXCERPT: "I had beaten the world to a visible laser with my alloy when I realized I’m also on the path to an LED. An editor from Reader’s Digest called me, and in February 1963 pointed at the fact that LEDs will eventually cover the whole spectrum and will be the source of white light. And that’s what’s happened. But I thought it would happen much quicker than 50 years". SOURCE: How Lasers Inspired the Inventor of the LED

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39.

Prof. Noam Chomsky deals with the Cuban missile crisis, 50 years later. Not surprisingly, he sides with the Soviet government and sees a "terrorist campaign" orchestrated by Kennedy administration. EXCERPT: "The two most crucial questions about the missile crisis are: How did it begin, and how did it end? It began with Kennedy’s terrorist attack against Cuba, with a threat of invasion in October 1962. It ended with the president’s rejection of Russian offers that would seem fair to a rational person, but were unthinkable because they would have undermined the fundamental principle that the U.S. has the unilateral right to deploy nuclear missiles anywhere, aimed at China or Russia or anyone else, and right on their borders; and the accompanying principle that Cuba had no right to have missiles for defense against what appeared to be an imminent U.S. invasion. To establish these principles firmly it was entirely proper to face a high risk of war of unimaginable destruction, and to reject simple and admittedly fair ways to end the threat". SOURCE: The Cuban Missile Crisis and Ownership of the World

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38.

Crowd has to be domesticated. At NYC's Grand Central Station they decided to place people on display. An uncontrollable mass became a disciplined protagonist of the space. EXCERPT: "Each of these changes was meant to remind the people that they were indeed individuals despite their place in the Crowd, and as individuals they still had social roles and responsibilities to fulfill. Moreover, these changes synchronized the Crowd by putting people through the same paces at the same points. But perhaps the most significant change would come from the architectural firm Warren and Wetmore. A deadly collision in 1902 preceded public demand for an even safer, more accessible terminal. Warren and Wetmore won the bid for reconstruction, and the plan they produced included galleries, which added yet another transition area but, more importantly, rendered the Crowd into a spectacle". SOURCE: The Story of Grand Central Station and the Taming of the Crowd