Weekly Reads, Poetry and Art for 30 January 2015
This week we’ll roll out a new set of features for the weekly reads. In addition to interesting news articles, I’ll be including a poem, interesting piece of art, and one spectacular sentence. If you’d like to suggest something for a future post, let me know.
Weekly Reads
With a Few Bits of Data, Researchers Identify ‘Anonymous’ People – “In fact, knowing just four random pieces of information was enough to reidentify 90 percent of the shoppers as unique individuals and to uncover their records, researchers calculated. And that uniqueness of behavior — or “unicity,” as the researchers termed it — combined with publicly available information, like Instagram or Twitter posts, could make it possible to reidentify people’s records by name.” New York Times
Liberals and the Illiberal Left – – “America’s most effective liberals—from Harry Truman to Rahm Emanuel—have known how and when to defy the illiberal left, whether that illiberal left was communist or Third Worldist or, as it is today, infatuated with the jargon of “intersectionality.” The liberals who couldn’t or wouldn’t or didn’t have been dragged toward the same marginality that has always befallen the hard left in America—and always will.” The Atlantic
Americans Believe in Science, Just Not Its Findings – – ““There is this really strong conventional wisdom that the U.S. is experiencing some kind of creeping anti-science sensibility in the public, and this explains why we have conflicts over things like climate change or evolution,” says Dan Kahan, a law and psychology professor at Yale Law School. “It’s a mistake to think that has to do with disagreement about the authority and value of science in our society.”” The Atlantic
Islamism and the Left | – “Some of us are trying to meet the test; many of us are actively failing it. One reason for this failure is the terrible fear of being called “Islamophobic.” Anti-Americanism and a radical version of cultural relativism also play an important part, but these are older pathologies. Here is something new: many leftists are so irrationally afraid of an irrational fear of Islam that they haven’t been able to consider the very good reasons for fearing Islamist zealots—and so they have difficulty explaining what’s going on in the world.” Dissent Magazine
Why are we so obsessed with talking animals? – “The fantasy of talking animals predates doge, and its internet ancestor LOLcats, by thousands of years. Long before the baby talk of a Shiba Inu was rendered in Comic Sans across the web, Plato imagined the legend of the Golden Age under Saturn as a nearly idyllic time when ‘man counts among his chief advantages… the communication he had with beasts. Inquiring of them and learning from them.’ Plato’s idea appeals to the ancient dream of Arcadia; the tempting lore that there was a perfectly peaceful time when man, in his natural state, could converse with beasts.” Aeon
The rise of the medical humanities – “But I’d like to end on a lighter note and propose that humour, in literature as well as in life, has a powerful therapeutic effect too. Laughing has been demonstrated to have healing powers. Byron knew this: “Always laugh when you can, it is cheap medicine.” Humour can also allow a review of self-perspective. The American comedian George Carlin asked, “Isn’t it a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do ‘practice’?”” Times Higher Education
Boko Haram Release Shocking Images of Child Soldier Training Camp – “According to Max Abrahms, professor of political science at Northwestern University and member at the Council of Foreign Relations, Boko Haram uses child soldiers in order to boost its membership numbers. “Terrorist organisations have power in numbers. The more members in the group, the greater its capability. There is a correlation between the membership size of a terrorist group and its ability to inflict bloodshed,” he said.” Newsweek
Poem of the Week
Poem For My 43rd Birthday by Charles Bukowski
To end up alone
in a tomb of a room
without cigarettes
or wine–
just a lightbulb
and a potbelly,
grayhaired,
and glad to have
the room.
…in the morning
they’re out there
making money:
judges, carpenters,
plumbers, doctors,
newsboys, policemen,
barbers, carwashers,
dentists, florists,
waitresses, cooks,
cabdrivers…
and you turn over
to your left side
to get the sun
on your back
and out
of your eyes.
Sentence of the Week
“It was in the books while it was still in the air.” –John Updike, describing the home run Ted Williams hit in his last at-bat.
Artwork of the Week
This piece, Romans in the Decadence of the Empire (1847) by French painter Thomas Couture , was one of the most striking large paintings I saw in the Musee d’Orsay, a depiction of the excesses of the Roman Empire. My favorite details include the philosophers or visitors on the right and the statues of notable Roman leaders looking down disapprovingly on the revelers.
