From Miley et al. – with self-love

The NYT ran an article last week covering the Christmas pop concert at Madison Square Garden. The average age of the chaperoned audience was maybe 9, at most 11. Many had come to see Miley, and she did not disappoint. The NYT piece starts with this remarkable paragraph: “The intensity for Miley is real,’ read an audience member’s live tweet above the stage during the Z100 Jingle Ball on Friday night. Stone truth. Up to the moment of Miley Cyrus’s appearance, whenever her name was mentioned … the massed screaming had something extra, a sound of acrid immediacy, released into the air of Madison Square Garden like the smell of burning wires.” Further on Ben Ratliff, the NYT pop critic, says “everything preceding her felt secondary”; and goes on to present a graphic depiction of the singer’s preposterous outfit and absurd “dancing” routine. In his view, despite the obligatory ironizing, there’s an obvious earnestness in Miley’s public provocations, “an almost boring will to transgress.” Mr Ratliff notes that her singing “became a pointed rejection of the rhythm of Jingle Ball, in which the upbeat mood must rule” – an attitude problem which was already apparent a few years back when the star was still 17, and couldn’t quite “access the deep joy" in another song.

Ambrose Bierce’s stroke of insight

I have always wondered how Ambrose Bierce could possibly come up with all his impossible, disconcerting witticisms and surreal plots. I assumed he might have suffered from what is now called PTSD, but I did not know if those four years in the Union army had left a more direct mark on him. And I never bothered to find out. Now it’s the centennial of Bierce’s mysterious disappearance into Panhco Villa’s Mexico, and stories about him are hard to avoid – courtesy of the imperative to maintain web traffic which even high-brow publications can hardly escape.

Those obscure objects of desire

A great piece on the NYT web site is, “The Agony of Instagram,” ostensibly addresses a new kind of “social media envy” cultivated by the Facebook subsidiary. It's blooming because these days “it’s not unusual to scroll through one’s Instagram feed and feel suffocated by fabulousness” – captured in perfect, slightly doctored images meant to relentlessly impress. But the article also points to a darker side of virtual self-actualization – which, for many, can raise the rat race to a whole new level.

Francis Bacon and the end of art, among other things

The record-breaking auctioning of Francis Bacon’s pathetic triptych had to stir yet another virtual tempest in a teacup, that’s for sure. And I thought that had already passed, as so many others have. But Jed Perl, who writes about art for the web site of The New Republic (and perhaps for the magazine, too – I haven’t touched it in maybe 15 years), still wants to fight the windmills. He has a new piece posted whose title cries out in large blue bold font: “The Super-Rich Are Ruining Art for the Rest of Us.”

The 24/7 brain

There are now numerous brain studies which indicate that sleep can do wonderful things for you. Apparently, sound sleep affects positively gene expression and helps the myelination (or maturation) of neural fibers connecting distant brain regions (which is essential for neural and mental integration); plays a key role in neural restoration and washing away the toxins built in the brain during a stressful day; facilitates the consolidation of long-term memories; etc. All these findings should perhaps prompt the obvious question:

Historical Moneyball

Cass Sunstein offers on The New Republic web site a critical review a new entry in the bulging “digital humanities” genre – a new book in which Steven Skiena and Charles Ward present a statistical model for ranking the most significant figures in the history of humankind. Sunstein’s title speaks for itself: “Statistically, Who Is the Greatest Person in History? Why Quants Can’t Measure Historic Significance.” He describes how the two authors developed their model based on what they saw as “objective” indicators – taken from the latest constellation of entries in the English-language Wikipedia, and weighted with a version of Google’s algorithm. Skiena and Ward kept refining their formulas as those kept producing absurd results – until they reached a list of names which to them seemed credible, but Sunstein still finds quite ludicruous.

The “selfish gene” lives on…

– despite the express desire of David Dobbs and a few biologists he interviewed to “lay it to rest.” Dobbs (of “orchid kids” fame) describes their scheming in another great article on epigenetics in Aeon, “Die, Selfish Gene, Die.” In it, he explains why some biologists have offered a revisionist view, seeking to dethrone the “selfish” gene as the lead actor in the evolutionary show. Instead, they have tried to represent it as a member of a larger cast – featuring prominently epigenetic mechanisms. Richard Dawkins and other evolutionary hardliners, however, have refused to budge. Perhaps Dawkins’s fundamentalist stance on this shouldn’t be surprising since his reputation and personal fortune are so heavily invested in the “selfish gene” meme he let out of the bottle. What does seem a bit surprising, though, is the fervor with which in the comments below the article supporters of Dawkins and his fellow travelers accuse Dobbs, readers who like his article, and – be extension, the dissident scientists he quotes – of misunderstanding the gene-centric theory. They argue that the theory merely states that the gene is the elementary unit which gets selected and transmitted in evolution, nothing more than that. So should we conclude that the revisionist biologists who have converted to the epigenetics paradigm are similarly dumb?

The banality of overtheorizing

Richard Brody has taken another stab at Hannah Arendt's reputation as a thinker on the web site of The New Yorker  (“Hannah Arendt’s Failure of Imagination”) – this one occasioned by the release of a new book with interviews (including her last) and a new documentary. Unlike Arendt’s notorious diagnosis of Eichmann, Brody’s take-down seems spot on. He claims Arendt’s “mechanistic view of Eichmann’s personality, as well as her abstract and unsympathetic consideration of the situation of Jews under Nazi rule, reflect her inability to consider the experiences of others from within.” So Eichmann came out as a quasi-automaton and a mere cog in the machine, and Jewish leaders who were pressed to collaborate with the murderous Nazi regime appeared almost equally guilty of the tragedy which befell their community.

Pro-social psychopaths?

Neuroscientist James Fallon, who some time ago delivered on stage a striking self-revelation, has a new book out, The Psychopath Inside. I haven’t read the book, but I did revisit the online talk which preceded it. In his routine, Fallows describes how a few years back he got around to doing a neuroimaging study of the brains of psychopathic serial killers; how he recruited himself and family member as controls; and how he found out that the brain which showed the most obvious lack of activity in its empathetic regions turned out to be – his own.

Everything bad is good – or bad – for you

A few days ago, Science Daily published two summaries of new neuroimaging studies whose findings seemed to point in opposite directions: “Video Game Play May Provide Learning, Health, Social Benefits,” and “Teens Eat More, Cheat More After Playing Violent Video Games.” What are we to make of these divergent evidence-based conclusions?

Men and women, same but equal?

A brain study made front-page news the other day (at least in The Independent), and was splashed across countless information outlets across the world. A team of researchers scanned the brains of close to a thousand men and women, and uncovered “striking differences” (as one title put it) between the brain connectivity typical of the two genders. They “found greater neural connectivity from front to back and within one hemisphere in males, suggesting their brains are structured to facilitate connectivity between perception and coordinated action." Women, on the other hand,  appeared to have stronger wiring between the two hemispheres,  indicating they were generally better at integrating analytic thinking and intuition.

Want to think like a nerdy detective?

It’s been almost a year since Maria Konnikova’s book, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Homes, hit the bookstores – or, mostly, their virtual reincarnations. Since then, the author has produced countless articles and online video appearances aimed at hawking her thinking manual. They all leave, however, one vital question unaddressed: Why would anyone in her right mind want to think like Sherlock Holmes? So, here is how Arthur Conan Doyle once introduced Holmes:

Moscow Says Louis Vuitton Doesn’t Go With Red Square

This is the title of an article on the front screen of the NYT web site. The teaser below reads – next to the thumbnail of a curious photo from the provocative retail structure: “The luxury designer has built a temporary, two-story replica of a traveling trunk in Moscow, but to some officials, it is not temporary enough.” This makes you wonder: What century do these municipal bureaucrats live in, really? And what can be so “sacred” about this place anyway?

Collateral damage in Riga

After the collapse of that newly built supermarket which killed dozens of shoppers and three resquers, the president of Latvia described the tragic accident as “large-scale murder of many defenseless people.” Strong words reflecting much justified indignation – which also raise the obvious question: who was the murderer in this case?

Child's play

This morning, a title caught my attention on the front screen of the international edition of the NYT: “Sign of Hope: Children Playing Again.” That sounded quite extraordinary, so I looked at the teaser beneath. It started with: “The sight of children bouncing balls and using swings has given at least a glimpse of normalcy.” The rest of the sentence, though, indicated that the article was not about what I thought: it noted that those surprising signs of normalcy among children were on display “even if many are orphaned or burdened by awful memories of the storm.”

Of mice and humans

A couple of new neuroscientific studies were presented the other day at a press conference. On the basis of animal models, they were said to “reveal links between social status and specific brain structures and activity, particularly in the context of social stress.” One such study found that “adult rats living in disrupted environments produce fewer new brain cells than rats in stable societies, supporting theories that unstable conditions impair mental health and cognition.” On reading this, my first thought, of course, was: “Hmm, how would this finding about lab rats apply to a human society organized around a winner-takes-most rat race?”

The true Copernican revolution

A slightly abridged version of this should probably have gone on Twitter, but I don't have an account there. Why? Because I don't want to generate "content" for yet another smug internet zillionaire; and because I would probably have 3 "followers" there. Anyway, I was in Torun a few days ago, in Poland. The old city there is quite impressive - in fact, the English adjective "impressive" doesn't quite begin to convey the feel of it. Ouitside of the old town there is, though, a big glitzy mall named after Copernicus - who was born here 540 Earth rotations around the sun.

The odds of scientific poiesis

Nautilus is a new journal which aspires to become the New Yorker of science writing - as if there can ever be such a thing. Most of the articles there are, indeed, finely written. But once in a while some overethusiastic prose does seems to slip in. Here is the teaser they emailed lately for an article festooned with the poetic title "The Odds of Innocence":

"Our group of astronomers took in the naked mountains by the sea. We had flown into the La Serena airport at noon, and found a parched landscape. What sparse vegetation there was survived by drinking coastal fog. Sleeping dogs melted in the sun and dotted the sidewalks beneath knotted telephone wires. In the busy town bazaar, an ancient man stood stooped by his cargo, dripping sweat, while two wolfish dogs sat on top of his empty car, a kind of primal security system."

Nadal über alles?

An article in the NYT asks if Federer or Nadal is the greatest among the current generation of male tennis players. What does Nadal have going for him? Apparently, his “ability to crunch the best numbers in what remains the essence of tennis, a sport often referred to as boxing without the blood.” So, he “holds a 21-10 record over Federer”; “holds a winning record over every other Grand Slam singles champion who has crossed his path as a professional” (with one minor exception); has the same, this time perfect, “winning record over every member of the current top 30”; and the list goes on and on: “Nadal also has the best career winning percentage in tour history at 84 percent to Federer’s 81. Nadal also has the edge in Grand Slam winning percentage over Federer at 88 to 86 and in Masters 1000 winning percentage (84 to 77) as well as a better strike rate against top 10 opponents (69 to 65).”

The joy of lobbying for a good cause

Der Spiegel carries a probing interview with the spokesperson of the Professional Association of Erotic and Sexual Services – a newly founded lobbying group for prostitutes in Germany (brothel owners can join, too, but only if “they themselves are working or have worked as a prostitute”). Her profile says she was trained as a precision engineer, tried sex work while acquiring that kind of education, and has not yet given it up at 45. The new association will fight a misguided draft law which “lumps prostitution together with human trafficking,” contains some misguided new restrictions on the sex industry, and could force many brothels to close down. For this purpose, the lobbying group will work to correct “the public perception that thousands of women in Germany are being forced into prostitution.” Instead, the German public will be educated that “there are many good, clean brothels, and most of the women do these jobs independently and voluntarily.”

Blinded by science

Philosopher-turned-psychologist Joshua Greene, who once though up the famous “trolley problem” and is now at Harvard, has a new book out – Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them. In it he addresses a curious question: if we are wired by evolution to have an aversion to harming others, why can’t we stop fighting along tribal lines? Or can’t we?

The age of unreality

I was looking at a couple of older articles lamenting an apparent loss of touch with reality on a mass scale. They have titles like “The Age of Bubbles,” “Welcome to the Age of Denial,” and the like. I thought for the sake of clarity and precision, they could have used a more technical heading: “Welcome to The Age of Subclinical Delusions.” Or perhaps of generalized “dissociation disorder.” Or just: “Welcome to the Matrix.”

Why put off till tomorrow the fun you can have today?

Grumpy social critics have long decried a perceived erosion of the famed “Protestant ethic” of old time and its replacement by a culture – or cult – of mindless wallowing in instant gratification. It turns out they needn’t have worried – or, more likely, they have deceptively fretted over an ideologically expedient myth evoked to justify outdated forms of social oppression or regulation. This is the somewhat counterintuitive diagnosis offered by humanities professors Patricia Vieira and Michael Marder in an opinion piece posted on the philosophical blog of the NYT. In its title, they ask the fraught existential and practical question: “What Do We Owe the Future.” Their response, apparently, is that we obsess way too much over such counterproductive concerns.

Weird neuropsychology

Alison Gopnik is a psychologist and the author of an acclaimed book, The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us about Truth, Love & the Meaning of Life (plus a few other books on how babies think). Two years ago she also gave a TED talk dramatizing some of her own findings and those of fellow child psychologists. In much of the talk, she explains (with some striking examples) how babies and small children are much cleverer that they are usually given credit for, to the point of engaging in some protoscientific thinking (with a penchant for hypothesis testing, etc.). At some point, though, she makes an even bolder claim. She says babies and children are, in fact, even more conscious than adults. And she offers a simple neuroscientific explanation for this counterintuitive juvenile advantage.