The New Yorker has a great piece, “Brain Games,” on Vilayanur Ramchandran, a behavioral neurologist that they dub the “Marco Polo of Neuroscience.” The article explains how his research into the faulty “wiring” associated with disorders such as phantom-limb pain and Capgras delusion has led to low-tech treatments—often mirrors—that “trick the brain” back to normal. It’s an exciting look at science in action.
Archive for May, 2009
Teasing Open the Black Box
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009Scraping By
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009The Washington Post has a good primer on what it’s like to be poor. Even if the people profiled aren’t blameless, it’s galling to read about the hoops and hassles that are a constant presence in their lives.
“The poor pay more for a gallon of milk; they pay more on a capital basis for inferior housing,” says Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.). “The poor and 100 million who are struggling for the middle class actually end up paying more for transportation, for housing, for health care, for mortgages. They get steered to subprime lending. . . . The poor pay more for things middle-class America takes for granted.”
Most frustrating are the cash-checking businesses and payday loan suppliers. Maybe banks can use some of the bailout money they received to set up instant checking accounts for poor customers.
Review: The Winter’s Tale
Monday, May 18th, 2009Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale is a bizarre, ranging comedy. The play jumps so lightly between slapstick and cruelty that it’s unclear whether it’s a dark farce, a bloody satire exposing the dangers of absolute power, or a moldy amalgam of cuckoldry, class, and misogyny.
The premise has a king baselessly charge his queen with infidelity. He believes she’s slept with his brother, who wisely flees a plot to murder him. Suspected adultery is a common hook for Shakespearean comedy, with misunderstanding harmlessly giving way to reconciliation, but this story doesn’t skip to a happy ending. People die—one lord is famously eaten by a bear—and their quick, brutal ends remain unredeemed, the senseless spinoffs of a king’s jealousy.
While the king eventually claims guilt, he keeps his throne and privilege, with no consequences for his actions. It is clear that he lives by his whim, above laws, his station ensuring his status.
Similarly, his brother rages in his own kingdom, threatening murder and torture, in great detail, to peasants who have unwittingly displeased him. Lovers flee, false identities are discovered, and the play pushes itself to a magical ending. By the final scenes, the medium itself has been strained and exposed. The most momentous events take place offstage; the final scene unfolds as an inside joke, poking fun at the staged setting to work the miracle.
What did Shakespeare intend as he wrote The Winter’s Tale? Is the casual cruelty a nod to cynicism as he reached the end of his career? Was it meant to highlight life’s unevenness, the capriciousness of kings? Would the audience have laughed at the king’s jealousy or his brother’s rage? Would the kings have been viewed as “bad” kings, or would their failings have been standard for the lot? Did the play seek to evoke the sword that dangles above a nation of subjects? Or was it just a bundle of jokes, summing up man’s eternal folly?
It’s a strange, mixed bag, but there seems to be some subversiveness in it, along with a great deal of sadness and resignation. Terrible things happen for no good reason, it tells us. Sure, sometimes all ends well. But more often, in the end, you’re just food for the bears.
Bible Verses on White House War Briefings
Monday, May 18th, 2009In the days surrounding the U.S. invasion of Iraq, cover sheets…began adorning top-secret intelligence briefings produced by Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon. The sheets juxtaposed war images with inspirational Bible quotes and were delivered by Rumsfeld himself to the White House, where they were read by the man who, just after September 11, referred to America’s war on terror as a “Crusade.”
But Muslims would have to be crazy to think that there was any religious motivation behind any of this. It’s not like any U.S. generals referred to Allah as an idol or anything like that.
Dog Consciousness
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009The Spring 2009 issue of Notre Dame Magazine has a fascinating story on the mental capacity of dogs. In “The Natural Goodness of Dogs,” writer Jake Page relates, among other things, that:
In a recent series of experiments at the University of Vienna, Friederike Range rewarded dogs with a food treat if they held up a paw. Then when a lone dog was asked to hold up its paw, did so, and didn’t get a treat, it would keep on trying as many as 30 times. But when two dogs together were tested, with one of them not receiving a reward, the dog who was unrewarded made a big scene and soon refused to play. “Dogs,” said Range, “show a strong aversion to inequity.”
Secede Already!
Saturday, May 9th, 2009Inspired to talk of secession, the New Yorker writes their version of “Fuck the South“: “So Long, Pardner.”
For the old country, the benefits would be obvious. A more intimately sized Congress would briskly enact sensible gun control, universal health insurance, and ample support for the arts, the humanities, and the sciences. Although Texas itself has been a net contributor to the Treasury—it gets back ninety-four cents for each dollar it sends to Washington—nearly all the other potential F.S. states, especially the ones whose politicians complain most loudly about the federal jackboot, are on the dole. (South Carolina, for example, receives $1.35 on the dollar, as compared with Illinois’s seventy-five cents.) Republicans would have a hard time winning elections for a generation or two, but eventually a responsible opposition party would emerge, along the lines of Britain’s Conservatives, and a normal alternation in power could return.
The Federated States, meanwhile, could get on with the business of protecting the sanctity of marriage, mandating organized prayer sessions and the teaching of creationism in schools, and giving the theory that eliminating taxes increases government revenues a fair test. Although Texas and the other likely F.S. states already conduct some eighty-six per cent of executions, their death rows remain clogged with thousands of prisoners kept alive by meddling judges. These would be rapidly cleared out, providing more prison space for abortion providers. Although there might be some economic dislocation at first, the F.S. could remedy this by taking advantage of its eligibility for OPEC membership and arranging a new “oil shock.” Failing that, foreign aid could be solicited from Washington. But the greatest benefit would be psychological: freed from the condescension of metropolitan élites and Hollywood degenerates, the new country could tap its dormant creativity and develop a truly distinctive Way of Life.
Pretty strong stuff for a “respectable” magazine. Funny too.