Free to live

Terry Castle, a professor of English at Stanford, makes in the Chronicle of Higher Education ("Don't Pick Up") “the case for breaking up with your parents." She ridicules her own students a bit for being constantly in digital touch with mom and dad. She tells them that when she was a college student back in the 1970s, they DESPISED their parents.

Free to die

According to the title of an article which came out in Der Speigel two months ago, a Dutch NGO “pioneers mobile euthanasia.” The plan is to initially bring death to the homes of people who are terminally ill and suffering. But the end objective is to increase public acceptance and eventually achieve the full legalization of assisted suicide – so that this service can become available to anyone who fancies to die, no questions asked. After all, if someone thinks it is in their best interest to die, why should they be persuaded otherwise?

The evil empire strikes back

Tetris is described in a NYT article on “stupid” video games (“Just One More Game”) as a “simple but addictive puzzle game.” It came pre-installed on Nintendo’s first-generation Game Boy. That, of course, was the device which launched the hand-held gaming revolution back in that iconic year – 1989. As it turns out, Tetris had been designed in a Soviet computer lab back in 1984 – another curious coincidence. 

The efficient life

In a NYT interview, a 28-year old digital consultant shares tips about the countless cool web sites, “niche social networks,” apps, etc. she uses on a daily basis. Why is she almost continuously plugged in? Very simple: “Its [sic.] not just my geeky love for the Internet that keeps me trying new products,” she said. “It’s a quest to find things that will ultimately make my life more efficient and run smoothly.” This must be a truly epic quest. Self-betterment as self-optimization, if you will.

Harvard and the superrat race

Harvard’s alumni magazine carries a feature article reporting on the lives of its undergraduate achievement freaks. Called “Nonstop,” the piece begins with a description of the crazy schedule of a female student who rises long before the sun has done so, has rowing practice at 6:00 a.m., attends multiple activities late into the night – and does this every single day.

What’s in a name?

A friend sent me that famous quote from “Romeo and Juliet”:

What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.

I knew it, but this is conclusive evidence that Shakespeare had never heard of branding, conspicuous and inconspicuous consumption, etc. Who says there is nothing new under the sun?

The end of American exceptionalism?

David Brooks has long argued that Americans are becoming more conservative and reembracing older values. According to a recent NYT article (“The Go-Nowhere Generation”), this may be partly true. It says that even before the crisis young Americans had become almost twice less likely to move across state borders or to even leave the family nest. The authors argue it would be terrible for Americans to become risk-averse, and twenty-somethings should not think twice before hopping on a Greyhound bus that will take them to a neighboring state with lower unemployment numbers. 

The marketplace of ideas

Nick Cohen passes for a leftist British intellectual. Yet he seems strangely oblivious to all those Gramscian allegations about an oppressive "ideological hegemony" suffocating the downtrodden in bourgeois societies. A couple of weeks ago he wrote a comment for Time Magazine criticizing political censorship in Europe ("The Right to Be Wrong"). His ire was provoked by the aborted French legislation meant to criminalize denial of the alleged Armenian genocide in the Ottoman empire. What is Cohen's main argument? He thinks "European judges and politicians have an aristocratic fear that if they grant the masses unrestricted debate, mobs will embrace revolution, racism or fascism. They do not believe that bad arguments can be defeated by better ones in a free society."

Poor Whitney

I am still thinking of Lehrer's point about the link between creativity and self-control (see previous post). If we take this seriously, then the tragic downward spiral of Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse, and countless other creative types would hardly come as a surprise; to say nothing of the careerwrecks experienced by Mel Gibson or Lars von Trier who would rather direct their impulsive outbursts at others...

Nerds can be destroyed but not defeated

“Moneyball” tells the story of a baseball franchise manager who places his faith in the statistical models developed by a recent economics graduate to recruit undervalued (i.e., cheap) players. They then, despite their coach’s doubts, go on to score the longest winning streak in baseball history against much more expensive opponents. My first thought on watching the movie was: “Isn't the timing here a bit awkward – why tell such an inspiring tale about the power of number crunching after blind faith in mathematical modeling helped almost destroy the global economy and Western civilization?"

Building Self-Control, the American Way

This is the title of a NYT article written by a molecular biologist and a science journalist. They offer a response to all the hype surrounding the publication of “Bringing Up Bébé,” in which an American expat shares her admiration for the effortless way in which French parents project authority and help their kids develop patience and self-discipline. So, what is the American way?

Divisive Devices

Under this title, Pamela Paul complains in the NYT that the iPad her husband takes into the family bed was creating an invisible wall between the two of them. My first thought was that her ire was provoked by the devious nature of the device itself (whose purchase she tried in vain to resist). She says she can’t resist glancing at the bright screen at a time of the day when she is desperate to tune out. I even thought of marketing expert Martin Lindstrom earlier column (“You Love Your iPhone. Literally.”) in which he explained how one’s iPhone could evoke an unconscious response in the brain (and probably the body) physiologically indistinguishable from love. So maybe Paul saw the iPad as a potential romantic rival?

The case for moral capitalism

Under this title, the Guardian offers a reminder that Keynes was keenly aware of the potential moral failings of capitalism. He once wrote: “To convert the business man into the profiteer is to strike a blow at capitalism … The business man is only tolerable so long as his gains can be held to bear some relation to what, roughly and in some sense, his activities have contributed to society.” But Keynes, who was not only an economist and speculator, but also an intellectual, feared the available alternatives to capitalism, so he wanted to save it.

Events that changed the world in 2011

This is the main caption on the Guardian web site today - or at least was at one point this morning. Can you guess what picture the editors picked to put beneath it? But, of course - a shot from the royal wedding! The Guardian crowd are not exactly flag-waving monarcho-patriots. So they probably though that was what the market wanted. And who could argue with the market?

Create your own reality, or the upside of delusion

Cahrles Blow cites some statistics in the NYT pointing to increased social acceptance of income inequality in the United States. Here are the basics:

- the percentage of Americans who said their country is divided into "haves" and "have-nots" had been climbing slowly since the early 1990s
- according to a recent survey, that proportion has now shown a marked decline
- currently, nearly 1 in 2 Americans are classified as poor or low income
- 6 in 10 count themselves among the "haves" in society
- a third see themselves as "have-nots"
- another poll found out that most Americans think "the fact that some people in the U.S. are rich and others are poor does not represent a problem but is an acceptable part of our economic system"

The revolution is being tweeted as we speak

No, I am not talking about the youth in another MiddleEastern or Eurasian country trying to snatch freedom from the jaws of fundamentalist or tasteless tyranny. I have in mind a curious analogy Virginia Heffernan, an enthusiastic digital watcher for the NYT, makes between the liberating potential of 1) the social media, and 2) the disco scene of the 1970s (“Internet Geeks and Freaks”). Addressing a question Heffernan had long asked (“why do women, gay people and nonwhite people revel in the very forms of Internet culture that make some of the prominent straight white men who write about the Internet most dejected, fearful and furious”), Nussbaum had written simply: “Social media is disco.”

In Euro Era, Opening Bell Is a 2:30 A.M. Alarm

This is the title of a recent NYT article. It opens with the following observation: "As the European debt crisis roils the markets, American traders who once awoke at dawn are now rising in the dead of night to gain an edge when business begins in London, Paris and Frankfurt." After hastily rubbing their eyes, traders start their "workday" in front of the computer monitors (up to six of those) many of them have installed right in their bedrooms. No doubt, this chronic sleep deprivation will do wonders for their ability to gauge risk and make sound investment judgments. These are some of the benefits of competition, thanks to the megaincentives only a global marketplace can porovide!

What Would Gandhi Do?

This is the title of an opinion piece in the NYT by historian Ian Desai. He thinks the efforts of the “occupy” movement to evoke Gandhi’s faith in nonviolent resistance are slightly misleading. With reference to the central slogan of the protesters, he says: “Gandhi would reject the division between the 99 percent and the 1 percent. Gandhi did not believe in enemies: he worked on the premise that solutions emerged only from cooperation.” Indeed, Gandhi was quite consistent in this regard. For example, he advised Britain to bite the bullet and surrender to Hitler, and he thought the Jewish people should resist the Nazis only in nonviolent ways.

The attack of the 50 foot nerd

Though a tad predictable, I though this is the title Adam Curtis should have given to his latest three-part documentary (aired in May on BBC). Instead, he opted for the faux poetic ”All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace.” On second thought, Curtis’s choice does seem to convey a larger, poetic truth. Those eight words ring with such piercing absurdity that it is difficult to imagine they were strung together by a living, breathing human being.

Long live the nerd patriarch

A former student recently sent me a link to a piece in the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly. Nothing warms my heart as much as receiving this kind of poke. The article describes the unceasing quest of biologist E. O. Wilson for a “theory of everything.” Seven decades ago, he started out as a boy hobbyist collecting with much excitement ants and other insects. Now in his early 80s, he doesn’t seem to have changed much. Only his intellectual ambition has grown. He now thinks the kind of science he pursues (dressed up in mathematical formulas and equations) is poised to finally resolve “the great questions of man’s nature” – the same questions that have bugged misty-headed philosophers for a couple of millennia.

A new day has come for the Lybian people

Below are a few quotes from an article in the Guardian, “Muammar Gaddafi's 'trophy' body on show in Misrata meat store”:

"Bloodied, wearing just a pair of khaki trousers, and dumped on a cheap mattress, Muammar Gaddafi's body has become a gruesome tourist attraction and a macabre symbol of the new Libya's problems.

You Love Your iPhone, Literally

This is the title of a recent article in the NYT. It is written by Martin Lindstrom, a neuroscientist who dabbles in marketing research. He carried out some fun experiments using sophisticated brain scanning equipment, with astounding results. When he exposed his subjects “to audio and to video of a ringing and vibrating iPhone,” he observed a “flurry of activation in the insular cortex of the brain, which is associated with feelings of love and compassion.

Geek sarcasm

"The plural of anecdote is not data." LOL!!!

Back to the future?

I recently posted a comment under this title on the new blog launched by our department (Politics and European Studies). It describes the coming end of all political accidents and uncertainty.