books | The Casual Blog

March 11, 2018

My new crown, and notes on health and violence

New construction on Hillsborough Street

This week I bit the bullet and went to the dentist to get a crown on my bottom left molar (tooth number 18). The filling in that tooth was worn out and starting to crack, and a replacement was needed. The procedure involved a lot of drilling. The anesthetic worked, and the drilling wasn’t painful, but the noise, the burning smell, and the uncertainty were not pleasant. But it’s good to have operational teeth, and I am grateful for modern dentistry.

I took my first yoga class in many moons last Tuesday morning. I’ve been working out at the gym most mornings, but yoga fell out of my routine after a teacher I’d liked left. Returning to Blue Lotus, just across the street from our building, I was reminded vinyasa is harder than it looks, but also more calming than it looks. It’s good to contract and stretch, to move in sync with others, and to be reminded to breath deeply.

I suppose we could spend too much time on our bodily health, but for most of us, that risk is theoretical; we usually err in the other direction. At times our bodies seem so solid, and at times so fragile.

There was a fascinating, though also gut wrenching, piece in the NY Times this week about the effects of an assault rifle shooting into a human body. Guns like the AR-15 propel bullets at two or three times the speed of a handgun, and so unleash exponentially greater energy. Five trauma surgeons described the gruesome effects of such bullets. They make a small entry wound, then tumble, exploding bones and causing widespread tissue and organ damage, and then tear a large exit wound. One surgeon noted that seeing a victim of such a shooting is traumatizing for bystanders.

Kudos to the high school students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High and elsewhere who have been making themselves heard on the subject of assault weapons and other guns. A lot of us who think the lack of reasonable gun laws is very bad policy have gotten discouraged and wondered if we’ll ever get anything positive done. These students are righteously angry, and they are hard to ignore. They may be changing the terms of the debate.

Now if we could just get some of that energy focused on addressing the risks of thermonuclear weapons. While assault weapons on public streets are very dangerous, the destructive potential of the world’s nuclear stockpiles, including the US’s, is incomparably worse. Apropos, recently there was a short interview with Daniel Ellsberg, who worked as a nuclear strategist in the 1960s. In Ellsberg’s view, only amazing luck accounts for our not already having had a nuclear apocalypse.

I started reading Ellsberg’s recent book, The Doomsday Machine, in which he recounts learning that in the early 60s, US war planners expected in case of any nuclear war to kill several hundred million people. We know now that they underestimated, and that the blasts, fires, pulses, fallout, and famine from nuclear winter could well mean the extinction of all humans, not to mention many other life forms.

There are serious voices trying to get this issue on the table, though they get little play in US mainstream media. A few weeks ago, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists put the Doomsday Clock at two minutes to midnight signalling the closest we’ve been to disaster since 1953 and the height of the cold war. Last year 122 nations in the United Nations voted in favor a new treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons. This year’s winner of the Nobel Peace Prize was the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

This essay by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is well worth reading. It explains that we need to de-escalate international conflicts and enter into nuclear control diplomacy. As the Scientists note, humans created this problem, and they can solve it.

Rising like the phoenix from the ashes — new construction viewed from Casa Tiller

Leave a comment

November 12, 2017

Visiting the Lower East Side, Turandot, recent Chinese art, and The Patterning Instinct

Looking southwest from the Sixty on Allen Street

Friday before last I went to the Software Freedom Law Center conference, and afterwards Sally and I stayed on in New York to see friends and take in some art and music. We stayed at the Sixty LES (Lower East Side) near Jocelyn and Kyle’s new apartment. Back in the day, we viewed this neighborhood as a place to be avoided after dark, but now it’s what Soho and Chelsea used to be — a lively and relatively affordable area where young people live and new art can be made. It hasn’t yet been completely gentrified — there’s graffiti and trash, and little Bohemian businesses. I enjoyed walking around early in the morning and taking pictures, including the street scenes here.

We Are Moving

We went to the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday afternoon and saw Puccini’s last opera, Turandot. My only prior experience with Turandot was from recordings, and I had not particularly loved the music. The story, involving a Chinese princess who murdered all her suitors, seemed far from alluring.

Nevertheless, I absolutely loved it. Opera is a hydra-headed art with many elements, and here the music, sets, costumes, and acting made a compelling whole. For this story, Puccini’s music worked brilliantly. The Zeffirelli production looked fantastic, the orchestra sounded great, and the chorus was excellent. Sopranos Oksana Dyka and Maria Agresta sang beautifully, and the tenor, Aleksandrs Atonenk, absolutely killed in the famous Nessun Dorma aria.

Also on Saturday, we spent some time at the Met Breuer looking at the photographs of Raghubir Singh and at the Met looking at the old masters drawings exhibit, Leonardo to Matisse. On Sunday, while Sally went with Jocelyn to see the NYC marathon, I went up to the Guggenheim to see Art in China after 1989. In that year a decade of relative political freedom in China ended with the Tiananmen Square massacre. Young Chinese artists went in various directions, with many leaving China, and in various landing spots looking to express their political and personal concerns. There were 71 artists and groups represented, and multiple media and approaches. Not all of them spoke to me, but a few did, powerfully.

Ai Weiwei breaking a Han dynasty urn

One of the best known artists in the show is Ai Weiwei, whom I’ve found inspiring as a dissident thinker and conceptual artist. One of his works here was a room that brought to light thousands of unnecessary deaths of school children in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake due to a corrupt system and shoddy construction of schools. The work was as much journalism as art, but that was not by accident. In the exhibition notes he is quoted as saying, “Fight for freedom. Forget about art.” I don’t think he means to be taken literally on the forgetting part, but he’s serious about the fight.

Chen Zhen’s dragon

The big hanging sculpture by Chen Zhen of a dragon made of bicycle tires and parts was delightful and thought-provoking, invoking China’s shift from bicycles to cars and other technology. I also liked Chen Zhen’s upside down Buddha room which had little Buddha statues, parts of old computers and other detritus hanging underneath a suspended garden. Liu Dan had a large work that evoked traditional landscape painting but with a severe twist. Others used video with varying degrees of success. I liked the one that had a dozen or so monitors showing people scratching.

Chen Zhen’s upside down Buddhas

Most of these Chinese artists had been influenced both by their traditional culture and by Western culture, just as we in the West are absorbing Asian influences. I’ve been reading a new and intriguing book about how cultures are made and evolve: The Patterning Instinct, by Jeremy Lent. Lent traces the development of several Eastern and Western foundational ideas, including Taoism and neo-Confucianism, which he argues have been successful and remain vital. He also contends that certain core ideas of monotheism and science, including the mandate to dominate nature, are closely related to each other and are drivers in our global ecological crisis. There’s a lot in the Patterning Instinct to process, which is why I’m now working my way through it for a second time.

Leave a comment

September 3, 2017

Our new floor, Liszt, and some ants

At Raulston Arboretum, September 3, 2017

They finished installing our new wood floor, and so we said so long to the Hampton Inn and moved back home on Friday. There’s still a lot of unpacking, reconnecting, and rearranging yet to do, but the worst is behind us. The new flooring is American walnut in wider planks and a more textured surface, and we really like it.

We had a special sound absorbent underlayer put under the floor, in consideration of the neighbors situated under my Fazioli 228 grand piano. The instrument can put out a lot of sound, which I hope isn’t too annoying for them. I was very happy to be able to play it again.

The new floor under the Fazioli

Among other things, I’ve been working on one of Liszt’s songs for piano, Oh! Quand Je Dors, from the second Buch der Lieder fur Piano Allein. It’s so beautiful! At times it feels a bit lonely caring about Liszt, since my friends generally don’t seem to like him nearly as much as I do. I suppose loneliness often comes along with a passion, since caring intensely about something will separate you from others. Of course, it also connects you to others, but they may not be close by, and may even belong to generations long gone.

My teacher lent me a book by one of Liszt’s piano students, August Gollerich, which consists of diary notes of master classes Liszt conducted in 1884-86, the last two years of his life. The format of Liszt’s master classes was just like those today, with a series of students playing works, and then getting critical comments from the master. Liszt was very direct about what he liked and didn’t like, but he also had a sense of humor. He mixed practical instruction on tempo and volume with notes on the animating emotions, and frequently played to demonstrate his points. How daunting and amazing it must have been to play Liszt for Liszt! For his part, the master, nearing the end, seemed happy to be surrounded by adoring students, and still passionate about music.

Speaking of lonely passions, I heard a radio interview with Eleanor Spicer Rice, an entomologist who truly loves ants. She pointed up their under-appreciated contributions to the environment and some wonderfully quirky behaviors. She was so sweet and excited about these tiny creatures that I ordered and started reading her book, Dr. Eleanor’s Book of Common Ants. For each species, she writes three or four pages about their habits, customs, and talents, and her enthusiasm is infectious.

Leave a comment

April 30, 2017

A PB spin, Goode piano, Sapiens and science, and an operatic pearl

Blooming this week at Raulston Arboretum

I had an epic personal best spin class at Flywheel on Friday morning, with a score of 360. That’s big! The second place finisher’s score, 342, would also have been a PB. It was like expecting to run a 10k in 43 minutes and finishing in 33. I’d like to thank my teacher Matt, and the other fine spin teachers over the years (Vashni, Heather, Jen, Will) who helped me along the way.

I wish I knew for sure what produced all that energy, so I could bottle it. It might have been a good dinner the night before (Sally’s Blue Apron Thai cauliflower rice). It might have helped that I woke up early and did some pre-class foam rolling to loosen the muscles. Doing more interval work recently at the gym probably contributed. Also, there were several pretty girls in the class, which tends to increase peppiness. And it’s possible I drew a recently serviced and well-oiled bike. In any event, I will not be sharing the number of that bike, as I hope to get it next week.

That night we went over to Duke’s Baldwin Auditorium for a concert by master pianist Richard Goode. He performed Bach’s sixth partita and three late Beethoven sonatas (Ops. 101, 109, and 110). These works are well known to aficionados, but they’re also deep and mysterious. Even after two centuries, the interpreter can still find new things, and bring new life. Goode communicated the power and cohesiveness of the rich musical ideas, and also sang — literally! This was musicianship of the highest order, and I felt privileged to share the experience.

At the gym, I’ve been listening to Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari. Harari challenges a lot of widely shared assumptions about our origins, such as the notion that we were the sole human species on earth when we arose some 200,000 years ago. What happened to the Neanderthals, Denisovans, and other non-sapien human cousins? There are various theories, including the possibility that our ancestors exterminated them, as they killed off most of the existing species of large animals.

Harari points up that homo sapiens’ ruthless success as a species is attributable to our brilliance at social organization, and he accounts for this in part by our use of religious, economic, and other social myths. This is thought-provoking stuff, though Harari doesn’t always distinguish between matters of wide scientific consensus and ideas that are much more speculative.

I wouldn’t expect Harari to get everything right, since no one ever does. A recent edition of the You Are Not so Smart podcast (not yet posted at the web site) noted that medical students are now taught that half of what they learn in medical school will eventually turn out to be wrong. Science is always a work in progress. Fortunately, the scientific system is built for testing and error correction.

Not so long ago, I’d have thought the value of science was self evident and not in need of advocacy. Was I ever wrong! I expect that, barring nuclear catastrophe, science and reasonableness will prevail in the long run, but at the moment, we’re in trouble, with unreason ascendant on urgent questions of the environment, health, and social issues.

Raulston viewed from the Tiller quadcopter

On Sunday afternoon we went to the N.C. Opera’s production of Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers. It was a new opera for us, and we found the melodies very beautiful. The principal singers were excellent, as usual, and the chorus was particularly strong. The orchestra had a rich sonority and tonal variety. Conductor Timothy Myers is a brilliant musician, and also a wizard, to conjure all this in little ole Raleigh, NC. We’re really sorry he’s leaving us for bigger things next year. It was touching when, in the final curtain call, the company threw roses at him.

Leave a comment

December 18, 2016

Charities, Allegiance, history, microbes, walks, and flying my new quadcopter

Demolition on Harrington Street

This week I wrote my annual checks to my favorite charities. Giving seemed more than usually important this year, since some of my favored causes are directly threatened by the recently elected executive — the environment, human rights, civil liberties, animal rights, family planning, and those less fortunate. I felt really lucky to be able to help, even if only a little, by giving to effective organizations.

I was especially mindful of the dire plight of refugees from the Middle East, Africa, Central America, and elsewhere, and so want to mention for your consideration the work of the International Rescue Committee and Doctors Without Borders. I’ll also note that in these tumultuous times we need more than ever the wisdom and beauty of the arts, and hope others will join me in supporting the wonderful North Carolina Ballet and North Carolina Opera.

On Tuesday, Sally and I saw Allegiance, a movie of a show recently on Broadway about the experience of Japanese-Americans in WWII. It was inspired by experiences of George Takei (Star Trek), whose family, along with many others, was held in a grim internment camp. At one level, it was a normal Broadway show, with pretty songs and kinetic dances, which were enjoyable if not especially original. But it was ambitious in taking on a big and tragic subject and expressing some of its complexity. While the so-called alt right has found new methods for inspiring fear and hatred of minorities, Allegiance does the opposite — it inspires caring.

The movie of Allegiance was a one-time-only, nationwide event that I learned about from the Stuff You Missed in History Class podcast, which I’ve been listening to at the gym. Stuff You Missed often take on subjects that our American history textbooks played down or left out, because they don’t fit comfortably into a triumphalist national narrative. For example, recent ones I’ve liked have treated the Dakota War of 1862, George Wallace, the Reynolds pamphlet of Alexander Hamilton, the first transatlantic cable, and the Palmer raids. They segments are lively and have a nice balance between serious academic history and the personal, emotional implications of some dire events. The hosts, Tracey V. Wilson and Holly Frey are starting to feel like friends — really smart, curious, and hardworking, with a sense of humor. You can check it out here.

THe spirit of curiosity and engagement with new things has been upon me, and so I finished reading, and started re-reading, I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life, by Ed Yong. It’s a lively and convincing view of the bacteria that live in us, on us, and all around us. This is a really exciting area of science, and developing fast. I like that Yong’s title used a line from Walt Whitmans’ Leaves of Grass, which also can change how we see ourselves.

When I was a child, I was taught that “germs” were bad, and the best thing to do was avoid them or eliminate them. As Yong makes clear, this was both silly and dangerous. Our bodies contain more bacterial cells than human cells, which calls into question who really owns those bodies. There are some 39 trillion bacterial cells in and on us, and thousands of species, though the particular kinds in each of us varies greatly, and the varieties are constantly changing. They are vital to our well-being. Without them, we could not grow or thrive. Each one of us is an ecosystems — microbiomes, as they now say. Without those multitudes, we could not grow, and could not continue to live. They are vital, for example, for digesting food, producing vitamins, breaking down toxins, and killing more dangerous microbes.

I also finished reading On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes, by Alexandra Horowitz. Horowitz, who teaches psychology and animal behavior at Barnard, writes well about who she sees, hears, smells, and touches in walking around New York. After an initial walk by herself considering how much there was to see in a city walk, she also realized how little she normally perceives. She does the other 9 walks with experts in some aspect of the urban environment, like a geologist, a paleontologist, an architect, a wild animal expert, a sound designer, and her dog (an expert in smells). She gives short by credible accounts of the relevant science, and makes us consider the urban environment as full of non-human life and history.

The demolition photographs here are from just down the block on Harrington Street, where they just knocked down a former furniture store that sat next to the old Board of Elections Building. They didn’t fence off the site, so I was able to take a good look around on Saturday. I look forward to more new construction in the neighborhood, including (can’t wait for this one) a grocery store.

Finally, this weekend I added a new line to the c.v.: quadcopter pilot! I took my first flight with my new DJI Phantom 4 quadcopter, a/k/a drone (a term I don’t really like, at least as applied to my aircraft) at Fletcher Park, where it was cold and gray. It was awesome! There is a learning curve, and I’m climbing it. I’m very excited about exploring aerial photography. These ones are my beginnings.

Leave a comment

November 6, 2016

Tree behavior, Hitler, conspiracy theories, and the truth about Hillary’s email

Big Woods Road, near Jordan Lake in Chatham County, November 5, 2016

Saturday morning was brisk, sunny, and clear. I drove Clara out to Jordan Lake, where I put her in sport mode and enjoyed the winding country roads. We drove up one of my favorites, Big Woods Road, and stopped at various spots to look for birds and colorful trees.

Clara, pausing on Big Woods Road

I’ve been reading The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate, by Peter Wohlleben. Wolleben has spent his life as a forester closely observing trees, and has also assimilated a great deal of research into their biology and behavior. As the title indicates, he contends that trees are social plants that cooperate with sophisticated systems for communication, including underground connections of roots and fungi and various airborne chemicals. They work together to ward off predators, withstand weather, and take care of the young. It’s amazing! There’s a nice overview of the book at Maria Popova’s wonderful blog, Brainpickings.

On a more somber note, I’ve been reading the new biography of Hitler by Ullrich Volker. It covers H’s birth to the start of WWII. It’s a good read, and offers insights into (though no definitive solution to) the great mystery: how could an intellectually mediocre charlatan maniac seize and hold dictatorial power, with such dire consequences? At the end of WWI, Hitler quickly rose in political life as a popular speaker on the theme that there was a vast, powerful Jewish conspiracy that accounted for Germany’s problems.

This bizarre conspiracy theory was widespread at the time, and of course has never disappeared. How do such crazy ideas take root and propagate? There seem to be a lot of them flying around these days. A case in point: militiamen who believe the Second Amendment is under siege. The NY Times had a fascinating piece yesterday on these folks by David Zucchino, with good pics by Kevin Lyles.

They are mostly white, rural, and working class, and they like to get together on weekends to shoot their weapons. Zucchino got them to talk. They are passionately convinced of many nutty ideas: Hillary is coming to get their guns, ISIS is invading the country, the Democrats are rigging voting machines. Also, they want to make America great again. All I can say is, Yikes!

Only slightly less bizarre is the meme, now rampant, that Hillary’s email handling shows that she is unusually dishonest and corrupt. Matthew Yglesias of Vox did a good piece unpacking this tale and showing it to be based on nothing. Hillary’s handling of email was not illegal, and there’s no basis for accusing her of dishonesty. And yet the networks have devoted more air time to this non-story than every other policy issue combined.

Yglesias concludes as follows:

One malign result of obsessive email coverage is that the public is left totally unaware of the policy stakes in the election. Another is that the constant vague recitations of the phrase ‘‘Clinton email scandal’’ have firmly implanted the notion that there is something scandalous about anything involving Hillary Clinton and email, including her campaign manager getting hacked or the revelation that one of her aides sometimes checked mail on her husband’s computer.

But none of this is true. Clinton broke no laws according to the FBI itself. Her setup gave her no power to evade federal transparency laws beyond what anyone who has a personal email account of any kind has. Her stated explanation for her conduct is entirely believable, fits the facts perfectly, and is entirely plausible to anyone who doesn’t simply start with the assumption that she’s guilty of something.

P.S. On Monday morning at the gym I listened to the podcast version of the latest This American Life, which included a segment on Hillary and the emails. Garrett Graff, a veteran reporter, came to pretty much the same conclusion as Yglesias: there’s no actual scandal. Graff noted that he, like other reporters, always hopes investigations will lead to titillating revelations of misconduct. We often see what we want to see, whether it’s there or not, which may account for some of the press’s egregiously biased “scandal” reporting of the email story. Those reports started a feedback loop that has grown very loud and shrill and overwhelmed our ability to consider the facts.

Leave a comment

October 26, 2016

Going to a new gym, the battle for truth in Trumpworld, and intelligent animals

Sunrise at Monument Valley, Navaho Nation

Last week I got a new gym membership at Lifetime Fitness at Six Forks. Why? I needed to get out of a workout rut and push forward. The cardio and weight equipment at Lifetime is more plentiful than at O2, and the space is larger. It also has a pool. It’s a little farther, but still easy to get to. I think I will like it.

My usual early morning workout starts with 10 minutes on the stairs machine, then 10 on the treadmill. Then I do core work (planks, leg lifts, etc.), balance, and flexion for 10-15. The next 25 is for resistance training, doing upper body and lower body on alternating days. Then 10 intense minutes of intervals on the elliptical or bike. At the end I stretch for 5-10 minutes. The numbers don’t quite add up, but it covers a lot of systems, and takes about an hour and a half.

Speaking of exercise, I want to give a little shout out to my new heart rate monitor, the Polar M400. Keeping track of my cardio effort level when exercising sometimes inspires me to work harder, and at least shows something is happening. The new device has a chest strap with a small snap-on Blue Tooth transmitter that signals a wrist monitor. In addition to showing current heart rate, it calculates average and maximum heart rate, steps, calories burned, and (with GPS) speed and distance traveled. It comes with some easy-to-use software for saving results on a smart phone or a laptop. There’s a little stick figure salutes you and congratulates you enthusiastically. My former device, a low-end Garmin, was less reliable, less entertaining, and more costly, so in hindsight I’m glad it finally broke down and needed replacing.

Waiging for sunrise at Mesa Arch, Canyonlands National Park, Utah

Before sunrise at Mesa Arch, Canyonlands National Park, Utah

While working out, I’ve been listening to various podcasts, including the latest This American Life. This show just keeps getting better – taking on some big subjects, with insight and dark humor. This week Ira Glass looked at Trumpworld, where lying is non-stop and shameless. We know this now, but we’re still struggling with something even more disturbing than pathological lying: that in Trumpworld, truth has no force.

It doesn’t matter that clearly indisputable facts show that crime is down, immigration is under control, our military is by far the strongest in the world, election fraud is incredibly rare, and the President is not a Muslim who founded ISIS – the true believers will not believe it. Until recently, I thought that these bad ideas were a problem of ignorance – just not having the right facts – but it turns out that that’s not it. For these folks, if evidence contradicts their beliefs, the evidence must be disregarded. We know that some of these people are intelligent, generous, and well-meaning, but they live in an alternative reality.

Sunset at Horseshoe Bend, Navaho Nation

Speaking of unconventional psychology, I finished reading Jonathan Balcombe’s recent book What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins. I liked it. Balcombe challenges the conventional wisdom regarding fish intelligence, which has it that their lives are largely automatic and instinctual, without consciousness or creativity. There’s a lot of evidence to the contrary. Some species have astonishing memories, the ability to plan, and to use tools. They experience fear and pain, and also pleasure. They have complex social relationships, and form groups both for hunting and protection. And they have an incredible range of skills in sensing and responding to their environment.

I also recommend Frans de Waal’s new book, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? De Waal, a primatologist at Emory University, debunks with overwhelming evidence the old chestnuts that only humans use tools, cooperate in social groups, and recognize individual identity. He presents an array of fascinating examples of non-human cognition, and invites us to use our imaginations to enter those other worlds. After reading De Waal, it is hard to view humans as entirely distinct from other animals and inherently privileged to exploit them. The gifts of other creatures are awe-inspiring.

Sunset at Balanced Rock, Arches National Park, Utah

Leave a comment

August 21, 2016

Bye bye Trump, races against racialism, grasping science, and connecting with the Middle East

Lately I’m feeling way more cheerful about the presidential election, with many indications that Trumpism is headed straight off the cliff. Every morning I hum a little with pleasant anticipation, looking forward to a new campaign mini-disaster, whether another preposterous pronouncement, another astonishing display of ignorance, or another scandal. Worries that it all might be just a clever act, and that he actually is only pretending to be impulse-control-impaired and dim, are going by the boards. It’s finally sinking in that his vulgar loathsomeness is historic.

It’s been fun this week watching the Olympics, despite so many ads and so much blather. And despite the embarrassing naive jingoism. Here in the US, we see mainly the events the US athletes are good at, and almost nothing of events they aren’t. But even allowing for all that, there have been plenty of exciting and inspiring moments.

For example, this week we’ve seen some fantastic short and medium-distance running by the US women, who are most or all at least partially of African descent. Seeing all these beautiful, accomplished young women, I felt proud and also hopeful that we may still be making progress on our racial problem. The champions are, inarguably, our very best, and whatever our individual histories of race, it’s hard not to adore them.

Meanwhile, I’ve been listening to an engaging and challenging series of lectures from the Great Courses called Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They Know It, by Steven L. Goldman. This is basically a short history of the philosophy of science. But Professor Goldman does not shy away from difficult issues.

It turns out that there is good ground for maintaining that the scientific method, which I at least thought was thoroughly settled and definitively established as a methodology, is nothing of the sort. There is good reason for doubt as to whether scientific knowledge that is necessary, universal, and certain is achievable. While scientists make undeniable progress in penetrating mysteries of the universe and facilitating amazing technologies, there is a sense in which they don’t know what they’re doing. The relation between science and the natural world is still uncertain. For those of us who are fascinated by science, it’s bracing and thought-provoking.

Also bracing is Fractured Lands, a long piece on the Middle East by Scott Anderson, with photographs by Paolo Pellegrin, in last week’s NY Times Sunday Magazine. The subject is the catastrophe following the US-led invasion of Iraq 13 years ago which led to the rise of ISIS and the refugee crisis. Anderson presents episodes in the lives of six individuals from various walks of life from Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and Libya. It is an extraordinarily powerful piece. The leading characters come to life, and we care about them – even the poor, uneducated young man who joined ISIS. Caring alone won’t solve this complex crisis, but it’s a necessary first step.

Leave a comment

July 8, 2016

My unfortunate tendonitis, and an amazing Tarzan

I got a severe case of tendonitis in my left forearm, probably from trying too hard to improve my golf swing. I can handle ordinary pain without getting too alarmed, which may have led me to ignore warning signs when I should have stopped practicing. But I felt like I was on the threshold of grooving in the new, purer swing plane. From there, who knows!

Anyhow, last week my body spoke up unmistakably, and said, No mas! It was getting hard to pick up ordinary objects and pull things out of my pockets. So my golf improvement program is temporarily on pause, and I’m doing lots of resting, icing, and Advil.

We had our greatest ever dinner-and-a-movie experience last week at the Cinemark Movie Bistro theatre in Cary. It exceeded expectations in every way. The seats are enormous and plush, electronically adjustable, with unlimited leg room, and tables on the front and glass holders on the side. Our server was sweet and smart, and our food came without a glitch. The veggie burgers were delicious! Also, with our bottle of pretty good Chardonnay, they brought out a free-standing ice bucket!

Our movie was The Legend of Tarzan. It, too, exceeded all expectations, and earned a place on my list of best-ever action-and-adventure movies. Africa has never seemed more sensual and thrilling. There were all the usual excitements of an action pic – chases, shoot-outs, explosions – and of course excellent vine-swinging. But there was something a little deeper, in the loving and respectful depictions of the big animals, and of village life.

Unlike in so many action pics, Tarzan has believable high stakes. The background of this story is real history – the late 19th century genocidal colonialist exploitation of the Congo by King Leopold II of Belgium – and several of the characters were based on real people. Unfortunately – reverse spoiler alert — the real-life depredations of Leopold on the Congo were unspeakably worse. See King Leopold’s Ghost, by Adam Hochschold. Joseph Conrad personally witnessed this horror and turned it into immortal fiction in The Heart of Darkness, which I’m re-reading.

As Tarzan, Alexander Skarsgard manages to be both superhuman and appealingly understated. Margot Robbie is lovely and feisty as Jane. They’ve got chemistry. Christoph Waltz is a bone-chilling force of evil. The apes, wildebeests, ostriches, elephants, crocodiles, and other animals are fantastic!

Leave a comment

July 3, 2016

A flooring experience, kind Canadians, and one good thing about Donald Trump

This week while the flooring guys installed our new red oak floor, we stayed at the Hyatt Place, an increasingly uncharming unvacation, with nothing excitingly foreign and lacking the sweet comforts of home. With many years of marriage under our belt, Sally and I are good at comfortably sharing space, and we had no worrying collisions or conflicts, but also no room to spread out in the usual way.

We ate lots of local ethnic food (Indian, Thai, Mexican, Chinese, Ethiopian, Italian), which was fun, though I regretted eating so much, which is so easy to do in restaurants. I stuck with my resolution of using the hotel gym early every morning, but missed the machines and equipment at my usual gym. I missed making healthy green smoothies for breakfast. I missed my piano and exploring the intoxicating music of Chopin, Liszt, and Debussy.

But enough kvetching. On Friday evening, we moved back in to our condo, and found that our Latino flooring guys had done good work. We quickly hooked up the lamps and unpacked some essentials, and walked over to Pho Pho Pho for some good Vietnamese food. The dust gradually settled over the next couple of days – really, a lot of dust.

It was a big week for ISIS mayhem in Istanbul, Dhaka, and Baghdad, which got lots of news coverage, and the epic humanitarian disaster of 65 million refugees and displaced persons continued, with little news coverage. There was one happy NY Times story about Syrian refugees being welcomed by Canadians. Ordinary folk have volunteered by the thousands to help unfortunates get resettled. Those Canadians are especially gifted in the way of kindness and generosity. Too bad they have such cold winters.

We could be moving there anyway if Donald Trump is elected. But happily that’s looking less and less likely, as more of his cons, schemes, and frauds come to light. Also, more and more, it looks as though he isn’t seriously working to win the election, but is primarily running to gratify his vanity and improve his personal bottom line.

Now that he looks less like a serious threat to the Republic, it’s easier to admit that Trump has done something important and good. He brought attention to an enormous problem, which for many educated, well-off people was almost invisible before. I’m speaking of the distress, fear, and anger of millions of white working class males. It’s now clear that we ignore their welfare at our peril.

The anger and fear aren’t hard to understand. It wasn’t so long ago that these folks could play by the rules and pay a mortgage, go out to eat, go on vacations, and otherwise support their families and have a materially comfortable life. But complex forces, including globalization, automation, and institutionalized corruption have led to job losses, employment insecurity, and wage stagnation. These forces have been well described by Robert Reich (for example, here) and Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson in their book Winner-Take-All Politics (summarized here).

As the working class lost ground over the last few years, I’ve puzzled over why they increasingly voted Republican, while Republican policies were increasingly skewed toward the wealthy and against them. They didn’t seem to notice that Republican tax breaks were mostly going to the super rich, and changes in labor law enforcement and other areas were to their disadvantage. It seemed that they were attracted and distracted by various social issues, such as abortion, affirmative action, guns, gays, and the “War on Christmas.”

Trump has shown that white working class males weren’t so concerned about the conservative social agenda, and weren’t really buying trickle down economics. He has ditched trickle down and generally steered clear of the social agenda issues (except for guns). This demographic may have noted that the Democrats quit doing much to help labor or otherwise serve their interests, and also noted that Democratic elites viewed them mostly with indifference, if not disdain. Most likely they identified with Republicans’ emphasis on rugged individualism, and therefore viewed Republicans as the lesser of the evils.

In Trump, this population has found an outlet for their boiling frustration and anger. They like his commitment to change. Unfortunately, they are also well pleased and energized by his fantasizing, conspiracy theorizing, and demonizing. But most important, Trump has acknowledged that they exist, and their problems are real. For the first time in a generation, a politician has put their concerns and values front and center.

Like it or not, angry, frightened, downwardly mobile voters aren’t going to go away. In fact, absent major changes, there are going to be millions more of them, as political, corporate, and technological forces continue to take away jobs and the social safety net continues to fray. Democrats need to reconfigure to acknowledge and address their grievances. Bernie made a good start, but we better keep moving forward. If Democrats don’t offer real solutions, someone else will offer imaginary ones. It is all too possible that a future Trump, smarter, better looking, and even more cynical than the Donald, could mobilize their anger into a true nightmare. Think Germany in the 1930s.

Leave a comment

Category: books