By ARIEL DAVID, Associated Press Writer 1 hr 48 mins ago
ROME – Scientists have reproduced the Shroud of Turin — revered as the cloth that covered Jesus in the tomb — and say the experiment proves the relic was man-made, a group of Italian debunkers claimed Monday.
The shroud bears the figure of a crucified man, complete with blood seeping out of nailed hands and feet, and believers say Christ's image was recorded on the linen fibers at the time of his resurrection.
Scientists have reproduced the shroud using materials and methods that were available in the 14th century, the Italian Committee for Checking Claims on the Paranormal said.
The group said in a statement this is further evidence the shroud is a medieval forgery. In 1988, scientists used radiocarbon dating to determine it was made in the 13th or 14th century.
But the dispute continued because experts couldn't explain how the faint brown discoloration was produced, imprinting on the cloth a negative image centuries before the invention of photography.
Many still believe that the shroud "has unexplainable characteristics that cannot be reproduced by human means," lead scientist Luigi Garlaschelli said in the statement. "The result obtained clearly indicates that this could be done with the use of inexpensive materials and with a quite simple procedure."
The research was funded by the debunking group and by an Italian organization of atheists and agnostics, he said.
Garlaschelli, a professor of chemistry at the University of Pavia, said in an interview with La Repubblica daily that his team used a linen woven with the same technique as the shroud and artificially aged by heating it in an oven and washing it with water.
The cloth was then placed on a student, who wore a mask to reproduce the face, and rubbed with red ochre, a well known pigment at the time. The entire process took a week, Repubblica said.
The shroud is first recorded in history around 1360 in the hands of a French knight — a late appearance that is one of the reasons why some scientists are skeptical of its authenticity.
Measuring 13 feet (4 meters) long and three feet (one meter) wide, it has suffered severe damage during the centuries, including from fires.
Owned by the Vatican, it is kept locked in a special protective chamber in Turin's cathedral and is rarely shown. The last public display was in 2000, when more than 1 million people turned up to see it, and the next is scheduled for 2010.
The Catholic Church makes no claims about the relic's authenticity, but says it is a powerful symbol of Christ's suffering.
The shroud has been strongly debated within the scientific community. Some researchers claim that patches used in the Middle Ages to repair the cloth after a fire altered the carbon-dating results.
Another study, by the Hebrew University, concluded that pollen and plant images on the shroud showed it originated in the area around Jerusalem sometime before the eighth century.
Garlaschelli told Repubblica he didn't think his research would convince those who have faith in the shroud's authenticity.
"They won't give up," he said. "Those who believe in it will continue to believe."
__
On the Net:
The debunking group (in Italian): http://www.cicap.org/
Shroud Web site of the Turin diocese: http://www.sindone.org/
Monday, October 05, 2009
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
What Causes Gravity?
livescience
Greatest Mysteries:What Causes Gravity?
By Dave Mosher, LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 10 August 2007 09:20 am ET
Editor's Note: We asked several scientists from various fields what they thought were the greatest mysteries today, and then we added a few that were on our minds, too. This article is one of 15 in LiveScience's "Greatest Mysteries" series running each weekday.
In the deepest depths of space, gravity tugs on matter to form galaxies, stars, black holes and the like. In spite of its infinite reach, however, gravity is the wimpiest of all forces in the universe.
This weakness also makes it the most mysterious, as scientists can't measure it in the laboratory as easily as they can detect its effects on planets and stars. The repulsion between two positively charged protons, for example, is 10^36 times stronger than gravity's pull between them—that's 1 followed by 36 zeros less macho.
Physicists want to squeeze little old gravity into the standard model—the crown-jewel theory of modern physics that explains three other fundamental forces in physics—but none has succeeded. Like a runt at a pool party, gravity just doesn't fit in when using Einstein's theory of relativity, which explains gravity only on large scales
"Gravity is completely different from the other forces described by the standard model," said Mark Jackson, a theoretical physicist at Fermilab in Illinois. "When you do some calculations about small gravitational interactions, you get stupid answers. The math simply doesn't work."
Gremlins of gravity
The numbers may not jibe, but physicists have a hunch about gravity's unseen gremlins: Tiny, massless particles called gravitons that emanate gravitational fields.
Each hypothetical bit tugs on every piece of matter in the universe, as fast as the speed of light permits. Yet if they are so common in the universe, why haven't physicists found them?
"We can detect massless particles such as photons just fine, but gravitons elude us because they interact so weakly with matter," said Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago. "We simply don't know how to detect one."
Turner, however, isn't despondent about humanity's quest for gravitons. He thinks we'll eventually ensnare a few of the pesky particles hiding in the shadows of more easily detected particles.
"What it really comes down to is technology," Turner said.
Physicists aren't using mechanical wizardry to discover gravitons just yet, however. Efforts are currently focused on confirming the existence of the Higgs boson, which is the graviton's distant cousin particle responsible for giving matter mass.
Finding the 'toilet'
Sheldon Glashow, winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics, once called the Higgs the "toilet" of the standard model of particle physics.
Turner explained that Glashow coined the term because the Higgs performs an essential function: Keeping the standard model functioning, at least in an intellectual way.
"Really, the Higgs is more like a plumber with duct tape, holding the standard model together," Turner said. "A lot of the inelegance of it's all wrapped up in the Higgs."
And rightly so, he noted, because it's required to make the other forces involving mass—such as gravity—make sense.
"At the same time, the Higgs can be frustrating because it doesn't shed much light on gravity," Turner said, assuming that the particle is eventually discovered.
Accelerating answers
Discovering elusive particles such as the Higgs is something like traveling through time. By using enormous machines to whiz particles close to the speed of light, then smash them together, engineers can mimic the incredible energies present during the early universe.
So early in the universe's existence, particles were too energetic to stick together and form more familiar protons, neutrons and the like.
The Tevatron, Fermilab's 4-mile-circumference (6.3-kilometer) particle accelerator, may have already spotted the Higgs in accelerator data, according to physicists' Web logs. But Turner said the new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) circling 17 miles (27 kilometers) beneath France and Switzerland should clearly confirm it within a few years.
"I think it will be a sigh of relief when the Higgs is discovered," he said. Will particle accelerators, however, eventually pop out a graviton?
Xavier Siemens, a gravitational theorist at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, said showing gravity acts like a wave needs to happen first.
"Classically, we can measure waves, and waves are made up of particles," said Siemens, who is also a member of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) that looks for wave-like evidence of gravity. By detecting gravitational waves, there would be grounds to suggest gravitons really exist—and begin seeking it out.
"At this point it seems like science fiction. Theoretically, however, we should be able to detect single gravitons," Siemens said. "But how is the big question."
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/070810_gm_gravity.html
Greatest Mysteries:What Causes Gravity?
By Dave Mosher, LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 10 August 2007 09:20 am ET
Editor's Note: We asked several scientists from various fields what they thought were the greatest mysteries today, and then we added a few that were on our minds, too. This article is one of 15 in LiveScience's "Greatest Mysteries" series running each weekday.
In the deepest depths of space, gravity tugs on matter to form galaxies, stars, black holes and the like. In spite of its infinite reach, however, gravity is the wimpiest of all forces in the universe.
This weakness also makes it the most mysterious, as scientists can't measure it in the laboratory as easily as they can detect its effects on planets and stars. The repulsion between two positively charged protons, for example, is 10^36 times stronger than gravity's pull between them—that's 1 followed by 36 zeros less macho.
Physicists want to squeeze little old gravity into the standard model—the crown-jewel theory of modern physics that explains three other fundamental forces in physics—but none has succeeded. Like a runt at a pool party, gravity just doesn't fit in when using Einstein's theory of relativity, which explains gravity only on large scales
"Gravity is completely different from the other forces described by the standard model," said Mark Jackson, a theoretical physicist at Fermilab in Illinois. "When you do some calculations about small gravitational interactions, you get stupid answers. The math simply doesn't work."
Gremlins of gravity
The numbers may not jibe, but physicists have a hunch about gravity's unseen gremlins: Tiny, massless particles called gravitons that emanate gravitational fields.
Each hypothetical bit tugs on every piece of matter in the universe, as fast as the speed of light permits. Yet if they are so common in the universe, why haven't physicists found them?
"We can detect massless particles such as photons just fine, but gravitons elude us because they interact so weakly with matter," said Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago. "We simply don't know how to detect one."
Turner, however, isn't despondent about humanity's quest for gravitons. He thinks we'll eventually ensnare a few of the pesky particles hiding in the shadows of more easily detected particles.
"What it really comes down to is technology," Turner said.
Physicists aren't using mechanical wizardry to discover gravitons just yet, however. Efforts are currently focused on confirming the existence of the Higgs boson, which is the graviton's distant cousin particle responsible for giving matter mass.
Finding the 'toilet'
Sheldon Glashow, winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics, once called the Higgs the "toilet" of the standard model of particle physics.
Turner explained that Glashow coined the term because the Higgs performs an essential function: Keeping the standard model functioning, at least in an intellectual way.
"Really, the Higgs is more like a plumber with duct tape, holding the standard model together," Turner said. "A lot of the inelegance of it's all wrapped up in the Higgs."
And rightly so, he noted, because it's required to make the other forces involving mass—such as gravity—make sense.
"At the same time, the Higgs can be frustrating because it doesn't shed much light on gravity," Turner said, assuming that the particle is eventually discovered.
Accelerating answers
Discovering elusive particles such as the Higgs is something like traveling through time. By using enormous machines to whiz particles close to the speed of light, then smash them together, engineers can mimic the incredible energies present during the early universe.
So early in the universe's existence, particles were too energetic to stick together and form more familiar protons, neutrons and the like.
The Tevatron, Fermilab's 4-mile-circumference (6.3-kilometer) particle accelerator, may have already spotted the Higgs in accelerator data, according to physicists' Web logs. But Turner said the new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) circling 17 miles (27 kilometers) beneath France and Switzerland should clearly confirm it within a few years.
"I think it will be a sigh of relief when the Higgs is discovered," he said. Will particle accelerators, however, eventually pop out a graviton?
Xavier Siemens, a gravitational theorist at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, said showing gravity acts like a wave needs to happen first.
"Classically, we can measure waves, and waves are made up of particles," said Siemens, who is also a member of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) that looks for wave-like evidence of gravity. By detecting gravitational waves, there would be grounds to suggest gravitons really exist—and begin seeking it out.
"At this point it seems like science fiction. Theoretically, however, we should be able to detect single gravitons," Siemens said. "But how is the big question."
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/070810_gm_gravity.html
Friday, July 24, 2009
My Open Letter to The Cambridge Police Department's Public Information Officer
Since you are the public information officer, I am hoping this will eventually get to the correct individual. I am outraged at the absurd response from your department of the claim of being in the right in the arrest of Dr. Gates. Hiding behind the badge and rallying around wrong-does only alienates an already suspicious African American and dark-skinned public of the lengths law enforcement will go to protect a fellow officer. What must we as the public now demand...should we demand video camera and audio evidence of every deployment, call, or response for police assistance?
If this Sergeant was such a professional as being purported by your department, surely a professional and seasoned officer would be able to differentiate between an irate African American and distinguished scholar being disrespected in his own house and an individual not belonging in that house and resisting the directions from your officer? Or, was your sergeant's response because of who Dr. gates was? Furthermore, if the claim of belligerence is such an important issue surely your department should be able to provide statical evidence of numerous similar cases where the outcome was the same, I doubt that you can?
Additionally, shouldn't the ability to suppress potential volatile interactions between the public and law enforcement be imperative and basic training for all law enforcement officers? Would your department support this as the desired response in a similar occurrence? This outcome should not be expected or tolerated from a rookie officer much-less a seasoned officer and a supposed leader. Is it possible that such training is not a high priority in your department and law enforcement in general? What temperament of personnel are you recruiting or promoting to leadership positions?
Black America has suffered at the hands of law enforcement actions far too long and far too much, your department's actions has only added to the already thick callous. The Cambridge police department's cowardliness only reinforces the image and belief that law enforcement does not protect African Americans and other dark-skinned individuals. To some Americans, this situation is only a highlight in the 24 hour news cycle, however, to most African Americans it is a boulder on the already gargantuan pile of evidence against law enforcement in these United States of America.
Even greater evidence of the surreality of this situation is your departments demand of an apology from the first black president of our country...how dare you – does your departments shame have no limits! If your department wanted attention - now you have it in buckets-full!
If this Sergeant was such a professional as being purported by your department, surely a professional and seasoned officer would be able to differentiate between an irate African American and distinguished scholar being disrespected in his own house and an individual not belonging in that house and resisting the directions from your officer? Or, was your sergeant's response because of who Dr. gates was? Furthermore, if the claim of belligerence is such an important issue surely your department should be able to provide statical evidence of numerous similar cases where the outcome was the same, I doubt that you can?
Additionally, shouldn't the ability to suppress potential volatile interactions between the public and law enforcement be imperative and basic training for all law enforcement officers? Would your department support this as the desired response in a similar occurrence? This outcome should not be expected or tolerated from a rookie officer much-less a seasoned officer and a supposed leader. Is it possible that such training is not a high priority in your department and law enforcement in general? What temperament of personnel are you recruiting or promoting to leadership positions?
Black America has suffered at the hands of law enforcement actions far too long and far too much, your department's actions has only added to the already thick callous. The Cambridge police department's cowardliness only reinforces the image and belief that law enforcement does not protect African Americans and other dark-skinned individuals. To some Americans, this situation is only a highlight in the 24 hour news cycle, however, to most African Americans it is a boulder on the already gargantuan pile of evidence against law enforcement in these United States of America.
Even greater evidence of the surreality of this situation is your departments demand of an apology from the first black president of our country...how dare you – does your departments shame have no limits! If your department wanted attention - now you have it in buckets-full!
Sunday, June 28, 2009
The first Europeans were cannibals: archaeologists
by Virginie Grognou
Tue Jun 23, 11:21 pm ET
Skull named Miguelon, estimated to be 400,000 years old and the most complete skull of an Homo heidelbergensis ever found, is seen at the Atapuerca archaeological site, in the Atapuerca mountains in northern Spain. In 2007 a historic discovery of the fossilised remains of the 'first european' human was made at the site.
(AFP/File/Philippe Desmazes)
ATAPUERCA, Spain (AFP) – The remains of the "first Europeans" discovered at an archaeological site in northern Spain have revealed that these prehistoric men were cannibals who particularly liked the flesh of children.
"We know that they practiced cannibalism," said Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro, one of the co-directors of the Atapuerca project, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
A study of the remains revealed that they turned to cannibalism to feed themselves and not as part of a ritual, that they ate their rivals after killing them, mostly children and adolescents.
"It is the first well-documented case of cannibalism in the history of humanity, which does not mean that it is the oldest," he said.
The remains discovered in the caves "appeared scattered, broken, fragmented, mixed with other animals such as horses, deer, rhinoceroses, all kinds of animals caught in hunting" and eaten by humans, he said.
"This gives us an idea of cannibalism as a type gastronomy, and not as a ritual."
The Atapuerca caves were first discovered in the late 19th century, when a tunnel was blasted through the mountain for a railway line.
"But at the time in Spain, there was not enough scientific knowledge to begin research," said the other co-director, Eudald Carbonell.
The first excavations did not take place until 1978, then "in 1984, we found 150 human remains.
In 1992, they found a complete intact skeleton, and two years later, they discovered remains dating back more than 800,000 years.
Those remains probably correspond to the first humans who reached Europe, known as Homo antecessor, after the Latin word for pioneer or explorer.
Homo antecessor, who lived before Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens, probably came to the caves of Atapuerca after a long migration from Africa and through the Middle East, northern Italy and France.
It is a particularly good site for human settlement, at the confluence of two rivers with a comfortable climate and rich in fauna and flora, de Castro said.
They found water and food in abundance, could hunt wild boar, horses, deer, "which means that they did not practice cannibalism through a lack of food. They killed their rivals and used the meat," he said.
"We have also discovered two levels that contain cannibalised remains, which means that it was not a one-off thing, but continued through time," he said.
"Another interesting aspect ... is that most of the 11 individuals that we have identified" as victims "were children or adolescents".
"We think that there are also two young adults including a female, which indicates that they killed the base of the demographic pyramid of the group."
Atapuerca, situated on the edge of Eurasia, allowed Homo antecessor to develop in an isolated and more distinct way, with characteristics that were both archaic and modern.
In addition to hunting, they also made tools.
The area at the time was heavily forested, with oaks, chestnut trees and junipers, and abundant with bears, lynxes, panthers, foxes and hyenas.
Copyright © 2009 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
Tue Jun 23, 11:21 pm ET
Skull named Miguelon, estimated to be 400,000 years old and the most complete skull of an Homo heidelbergensis ever found, is seen at the Atapuerca archaeological site, in the Atapuerca mountains in northern Spain. In 2007 a historic discovery of the fossilised remains of the 'first european' human was made at the site.
(AFP/File/Philippe Desmazes)
ATAPUERCA, Spain (AFP) – The remains of the "first Europeans" discovered at an archaeological site in northern Spain have revealed that these prehistoric men were cannibals who particularly liked the flesh of children.
"We know that they practiced cannibalism," said Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro, one of the co-directors of the Atapuerca project, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
A study of the remains revealed that they turned to cannibalism to feed themselves and not as part of a ritual, that they ate their rivals after killing them, mostly children and adolescents.
"It is the first well-documented case of cannibalism in the history of humanity, which does not mean that it is the oldest," he said.
The remains discovered in the caves "appeared scattered, broken, fragmented, mixed with other animals such as horses, deer, rhinoceroses, all kinds of animals caught in hunting" and eaten by humans, he said.
"This gives us an idea of cannibalism as a type gastronomy, and not as a ritual."
The Atapuerca caves were first discovered in the late 19th century, when a tunnel was blasted through the mountain for a railway line.
"But at the time in Spain, there was not enough scientific knowledge to begin research," said the other co-director, Eudald Carbonell.
The first excavations did not take place until 1978, then "in 1984, we found 150 human remains.
In 1992, they found a complete intact skeleton, and two years later, they discovered remains dating back more than 800,000 years.
Those remains probably correspond to the first humans who reached Europe, known as Homo antecessor, after the Latin word for pioneer or explorer.
Homo antecessor, who lived before Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens, probably came to the caves of Atapuerca after a long migration from Africa and through the Middle East, northern Italy and France.
It is a particularly good site for human settlement, at the confluence of two rivers with a comfortable climate and rich in fauna and flora, de Castro said.
They found water and food in abundance, could hunt wild boar, horses, deer, "which means that they did not practice cannibalism through a lack of food. They killed their rivals and used the meat," he said.
"We have also discovered two levels that contain cannibalised remains, which means that it was not a one-off thing, but continued through time," he said.
"Another interesting aspect ... is that most of the 11 individuals that we have identified" as victims "were children or adolescents".
"We think that there are also two young adults including a female, which indicates that they killed the base of the demographic pyramid of the group."
Atapuerca, situated on the edge of Eurasia, allowed Homo antecessor to develop in an isolated and more distinct way, with characteristics that were both archaic and modern.
In addition to hunting, they also made tools.
The area at the time was heavily forested, with oaks, chestnut trees and junipers, and abundant with bears, lynxes, panthers, foxes and hyenas.
Copyright © 2009 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Iran's political coup
June 13, 2009
http://garysick.tumblr.com/
If the reports coming out of Tehran about an electoral coup are sustained, then Iran has entered an entirely new phase of its post-revolution history. One characteristic that has always distinguished Iran from the crude dictators in much of the rest of the Middle East was its respect for the voice of the people, even when that voice was saying things that much of the leadership did not want to hear.
In 1997, Iran’s hard line leadership was stunned by the landslide election of Mohammed Khatami, a reformer who promised to bring rule of law and a more human face to the harsh visage of the Iranian revolution. It took the authorities almost a year to recover their composure and to reassert their control through naked force and cynical manipulation of the constitution and legal system. The authorities did not, however, falsify the election results and even permitted a resounding reelection four years later. Instead, they preferred to prevent the president from implementing his reform program.
In 2005, when it appeared that no hard line conservative might survive the first round of the presidential election, there were credible reports of ballot manipulation to insure that Mr Ahmadinejad could run (and win) against former president Rafsanjani in the second round. The lesson seemed to be that the authorities might shift the results in a close election but they would not reverse a landslide vote.
The current election appears to repudiate both of those rules. The authorities were faced with a credible challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, who had the potential to challenge the existing power structure on certain key issues. He ran a surprisingly effective campaign, and his “green wave” began to be seen as more than a wave. In fact, many began calling it a Green Revolution. For a regime that has been terrified about the possibility of a “velvet revolution,” this may have been too much.
On the basis of what we know so far, here is the sequence of events starting on the afternoon of election day, Friday, June 12.
* Near closing time of the polls, mobile text messaging was turned off nationwide
* Security forces poured out into the streets in large numbers
* The Ministry of Interior (election headquarters) was surrounded by concrete barriers and armed men
* National television began broadcasting pre-recorded messages calling for everyone to unite behind the winner
* The Mousavi campaign was informed officially that they had won the election, which perhaps served to temporarily lull them into complacency
* But then the Ministry of Interior announced a landslide victory for Ahmadinejad
* Unlike previous elections, there was no breakdown of the vote by province, which would have provided a way of judging its credibility
* The voting patterns announced by the government were identical in all parts of the country, an impossibility (also see the comments of Juan Cole at the title link)
* Less than 24 hours later, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamene`i publicly announced his congratulations to the winner, apparently confirming that the process was complete and irrevocable, contrary to constitutional requirements
* Shortly thereafter, all mobile phones, Facebook, and other social networks were blocked, as well as major foreign news sources.
All of this had the appearance of a well orchestrated strike intended to take its opponents by surprise – the classic definition of a coup. Curiously, this was not a coup of an outside group against the ruling elite; it was a coup of the ruling elite against its own people.
It is still too early for anything like a comprehensive analysis of implications, but here are some initial thoughts:
1. The willingness of the regime simply to ignore reality and fabricate election results without the slightest effort to conceal the fraud represents a historic shift in Iran’s Islamic revolution. All previous leaders at least paid lip service to the voice of the Iranian people. This suggests that Iran’s leaders are aware of the fact that they have lost credibility in the eyes of many (most?) of their countrymen, so they are dispensing with even the pretense of popular legitimacy in favor of raw power.
2. The Iranian opposition, which includes some very powerful individuals and institutions, has an agonizing decision to make. If they are intimidated and silenced by the show of force (as they have been in the past), they will lose all credibility in the future with even their most devoted followers. But if they choose to confront their ruthless colleagues forcefully, not only is it likely to be messy but it could risk running out of control and potentially bring down the entire existing power structure, of which they are participants and beneficiaries.
3. With regard to the United States and the West, nothing would prevent them in principle from dealing with an illegitimate authoritarian government. We do it every day, and have done so for years (the Soviet Union comes to mind). But this election is an extraordinary gift to those who have been most skeptical about President Obama’s plan to conduct negotiations with Iran. Former Bush official Elliott Abrams was quick off the mark, commenting that it is “likely that the engagement strategy has been dealt a very heavy blow.” Two senior Israeli officials quickly urged the world not to engage in negotiations with Iran. Neoconservatives who had already expressed their support for an Ahmadinejad victory now have every reason to be satisfied. Opposition forces, previously on the defensive, now have a perfect opportunity to mount a political attack that will make it even more difficult for President Obama to proceed with his plan.
In their own paranoia and hunger for power, the leaders of Iran have insulted their own fellow revolutionaries who have come to have second thoughts about absolute rule and the costs of repression, and they may have alienated an entire generation of future Iranian leaders. At the same time, they have provided an invaluable gift to their worst enemies abroad.
However this turns out, it is a historic turning point in the 30-year history of Iran’s Islamic revolution. Iranians have never forgotten the external political intervention that thwarted their democratic aspirations in 1953. How will they remember this day?
1 day ago
http://garysick.tumblr.com/
http://garysick.tumblr.com/
If the reports coming out of Tehran about an electoral coup are sustained, then Iran has entered an entirely new phase of its post-revolution history. One characteristic that has always distinguished Iran from the crude dictators in much of the rest of the Middle East was its respect for the voice of the people, even when that voice was saying things that much of the leadership did not want to hear.
In 1997, Iran’s hard line leadership was stunned by the landslide election of Mohammed Khatami, a reformer who promised to bring rule of law and a more human face to the harsh visage of the Iranian revolution. It took the authorities almost a year to recover their composure and to reassert their control through naked force and cynical manipulation of the constitution and legal system. The authorities did not, however, falsify the election results and even permitted a resounding reelection four years later. Instead, they preferred to prevent the president from implementing his reform program.
In 2005, when it appeared that no hard line conservative might survive the first round of the presidential election, there were credible reports of ballot manipulation to insure that Mr Ahmadinejad could run (and win) against former president Rafsanjani in the second round. The lesson seemed to be that the authorities might shift the results in a close election but they would not reverse a landslide vote.
The current election appears to repudiate both of those rules. The authorities were faced with a credible challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, who had the potential to challenge the existing power structure on certain key issues. He ran a surprisingly effective campaign, and his “green wave” began to be seen as more than a wave. In fact, many began calling it a Green Revolution. For a regime that has been terrified about the possibility of a “velvet revolution,” this may have been too much.
On the basis of what we know so far, here is the sequence of events starting on the afternoon of election day, Friday, June 12.
* Near closing time of the polls, mobile text messaging was turned off nationwide
* Security forces poured out into the streets in large numbers
* The Ministry of Interior (election headquarters) was surrounded by concrete barriers and armed men
* National television began broadcasting pre-recorded messages calling for everyone to unite behind the winner
* The Mousavi campaign was informed officially that they had won the election, which perhaps served to temporarily lull them into complacency
* But then the Ministry of Interior announced a landslide victory for Ahmadinejad
* Unlike previous elections, there was no breakdown of the vote by province, which would have provided a way of judging its credibility
* The voting patterns announced by the government were identical in all parts of the country, an impossibility (also see the comments of Juan Cole at the title link)
* Less than 24 hours later, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamene`i publicly announced his congratulations to the winner, apparently confirming that the process was complete and irrevocable, contrary to constitutional requirements
* Shortly thereafter, all mobile phones, Facebook, and other social networks were blocked, as well as major foreign news sources.
All of this had the appearance of a well orchestrated strike intended to take its opponents by surprise – the classic definition of a coup. Curiously, this was not a coup of an outside group against the ruling elite; it was a coup of the ruling elite against its own people.
It is still too early for anything like a comprehensive analysis of implications, but here are some initial thoughts:
1. The willingness of the regime simply to ignore reality and fabricate election results without the slightest effort to conceal the fraud represents a historic shift in Iran’s Islamic revolution. All previous leaders at least paid lip service to the voice of the Iranian people. This suggests that Iran’s leaders are aware of the fact that they have lost credibility in the eyes of many (most?) of their countrymen, so they are dispensing with even the pretense of popular legitimacy in favor of raw power.
2. The Iranian opposition, which includes some very powerful individuals and institutions, has an agonizing decision to make. If they are intimidated and silenced by the show of force (as they have been in the past), they will lose all credibility in the future with even their most devoted followers. But if they choose to confront their ruthless colleagues forcefully, not only is it likely to be messy but it could risk running out of control and potentially bring down the entire existing power structure, of which they are participants and beneficiaries.
3. With regard to the United States and the West, nothing would prevent them in principle from dealing with an illegitimate authoritarian government. We do it every day, and have done so for years (the Soviet Union comes to mind). But this election is an extraordinary gift to those who have been most skeptical about President Obama’s plan to conduct negotiations with Iran. Former Bush official Elliott Abrams was quick off the mark, commenting that it is “likely that the engagement strategy has been dealt a very heavy blow.” Two senior Israeli officials quickly urged the world not to engage in negotiations with Iran. Neoconservatives who had already expressed their support for an Ahmadinejad victory now have every reason to be satisfied. Opposition forces, previously on the defensive, now have a perfect opportunity to mount a political attack that will make it even more difficult for President Obama to proceed with his plan.
In their own paranoia and hunger for power, the leaders of Iran have insulted their own fellow revolutionaries who have come to have second thoughts about absolute rule and the costs of repression, and they may have alienated an entire generation of future Iranian leaders. At the same time, they have provided an invaluable gift to their worst enemies abroad.
However this turns out, it is a historic turning point in the 30-year history of Iran’s Islamic revolution. Iranians have never forgotten the external political intervention that thwarted their democratic aspirations in 1953. How will they remember this day?
1 day ago
http://garysick.tumblr.com/
Warp Drive Engine Could Suck Earth Into Black Hole
Eric Bland, Discovery News
June 11, 2009 -- "Star Trek" makes faster-than-light travel look easy, but according to new calculations by Italian physicists, a warp drive could easily create a black hole that would incinerate any passengers on a space craft and then suck Earth into a black hole.
"Warp drives are so far the best case scenario to attain faster-than-light travel," said Stefano Finazzi of Italy's International School for Advanced Studies. This paper "makes it much harder to realize, if not almost impossible, warp drives."
WATCH VIDEO: Explore the possibilities of time travel with Michio Kaku.
In normal physics, nothing can move faster than the speed of light. Einstein's theory of relativity forbids it. In normal space any object approaching the speed of light will increase in mass exponentially, and require an exponential increase in the amount of power needed to propel it forward.
There are two exceptions to this rule however. The first is what's commonly called a worm hole, a bridge connecting two different parts of space. A ship crossing this bridge would move at below light speed, but still arrive before a beam of light that would have had to go the long way around.
Warp drives are the second and more appealing option. A ship can't move through space faster than the speed of light. But with enough energy, space itself can move faster than the speed of light.
Known for the Mexican physicist Michael Alcubierre who originally developed the idea in the 1990's, an Alcubierre warp drive would create a bubble of energy behind the ship and a lack of energy in front of the ship, like a giant cosmic wave a space ship could surf. That particular section of space can travel faster than the speed of light in the surrounding space, and anything on or in that bubble will accelerate with it.
Finazzi and his colleagues propose creating this bubble of space-time by using a massive amount of "exotic matter," or dark energy. (Exactly how this bubble would be created is still a mystery.) According to their calculations and simplified, it would take a huge amount of energy to create the bubble, and then increasing amounts of energy to contain the highly repulsive dark energy.
Eventually the energy would run out. The bubble would rupture, with catastrophic effects. Inside the bubble the temperature would rise to about 10^32 degrees Kelvin, destroying almost anything on the bubble.
Anyone watching the ship nearby wouldn't be much better off.
"We know that the warp drive will be destabilized," said Finazzi. "But we do not know if it will in the end explode or collapse to a black hole."
Other physicists agree with the Italians' calculations, up to a point.
"It's a good paper; their results are sound," said Gerald Cleaver, a professor of physics at Baylor University who reviewed the work. The results make sense, at least, when creating warp drive using exotic matter in a universe where 1 plus 1 equals 2.
In a universe where 1 plus 1 equals 3, a possibility with string theory instead of the semi classical physics used by the Italians, a stable warp drive is viable.
Last year Cleaver and co-author Richard Obousy detailed a string theory-based warp drive that creates a bubble of space time by expanding one of the tiny, rolled-up dimensions (instead of a bubble of dark energy) predicted by string theory.
The biggest sticking point to a extra dimension-based warp drive? The entire mass of Jupiter would have to be converted into pure energy to power it.
The real question is not whether a warp drive, which by Cleaver's estimate is hundreds of years away, will be stable or not. It's about the fundamentals of the universe; do we live in a universe where 1 plus 1 equals 2 or 3? Until scientists can answer that question, there will be significant limitations on scientific models of the universe.
"These papers suggest limitations to what we can and can't do," said Cleaver. "We as scientists enjoy these papers because then we can look for ways to get around those limitations."
June 11, 2009 -- "Star Trek" makes faster-than-light travel look easy, but according to new calculations by Italian physicists, a warp drive could easily create a black hole that would incinerate any passengers on a space craft and then suck Earth into a black hole.
"Warp drives are so far the best case scenario to attain faster-than-light travel," said Stefano Finazzi of Italy's International School for Advanced Studies. This paper "makes it much harder to realize, if not almost impossible, warp drives."
WATCH VIDEO: Explore the possibilities of time travel with Michio Kaku.
In normal physics, nothing can move faster than the speed of light. Einstein's theory of relativity forbids it. In normal space any object approaching the speed of light will increase in mass exponentially, and require an exponential increase in the amount of power needed to propel it forward.
There are two exceptions to this rule however. The first is what's commonly called a worm hole, a bridge connecting two different parts of space. A ship crossing this bridge would move at below light speed, but still arrive before a beam of light that would have had to go the long way around.
Warp drives are the second and more appealing option. A ship can't move through space faster than the speed of light. But with enough energy, space itself can move faster than the speed of light.
Known for the Mexican physicist Michael Alcubierre who originally developed the idea in the 1990's, an Alcubierre warp drive would create a bubble of energy behind the ship and a lack of energy in front of the ship, like a giant cosmic wave a space ship could surf. That particular section of space can travel faster than the speed of light in the surrounding space, and anything on or in that bubble will accelerate with it.
Finazzi and his colleagues propose creating this bubble of space-time by using a massive amount of "exotic matter," or dark energy. (Exactly how this bubble would be created is still a mystery.) According to their calculations and simplified, it would take a huge amount of energy to create the bubble, and then increasing amounts of energy to contain the highly repulsive dark energy.
Eventually the energy would run out. The bubble would rupture, with catastrophic effects. Inside the bubble the temperature would rise to about 10^32 degrees Kelvin, destroying almost anything on the bubble.
Anyone watching the ship nearby wouldn't be much better off.
"We know that the warp drive will be destabilized," said Finazzi. "But we do not know if it will in the end explode or collapse to a black hole."
Other physicists agree with the Italians' calculations, up to a point.
"It's a good paper; their results are sound," said Gerald Cleaver, a professor of physics at Baylor University who reviewed the work. The results make sense, at least, when creating warp drive using exotic matter in a universe where 1 plus 1 equals 2.
In a universe where 1 plus 1 equals 3, a possibility with string theory instead of the semi classical physics used by the Italians, a stable warp drive is viable.
Last year Cleaver and co-author Richard Obousy detailed a string theory-based warp drive that creates a bubble of space time by expanding one of the tiny, rolled-up dimensions (instead of a bubble of dark energy) predicted by string theory.
The biggest sticking point to a extra dimension-based warp drive? The entire mass of Jupiter would have to be converted into pure energy to power it.
The real question is not whether a warp drive, which by Cleaver's estimate is hundreds of years away, will be stable or not. It's about the fundamentals of the universe; do we live in a universe where 1 plus 1 equals 2 or 3? Until scientists can answer that question, there will be significant limitations on scientific models of the universe.
"These papers suggest limitations to what we can and can't do," said Cleaver. "We as scientists enjoy these papers because then we can look for ways to get around those limitations."
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Clashes erupt in Iran over disputed election
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI and ANNA JOHNSON, Associated Press Writers 24 mins ago
TEHRAN, Iran – Supporters of the main election challenger to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad clashed with police and set up barricades of burning tires Saturday as authorities claimed the hard-line president was re-elected in a landslide. The rival candidate said the vote was tainted by widespread fraud and his followers responded with the most serious unrest in the capital in a decade.
By nightfall, cell phone service appeared to have been cut in the capital Tehran. And Ahmadinejad, in a nationally televised victory speech, accused the foreign media of coverage that harms the Iranian people. There was more rioting at night and fires continued to burn on the streets of Tehran.
Several hundred demonstrators — many wearing the trademark green colors of pro-reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi's campaign — chanted "the government lied to the people" and gathered near the Interior Ministry as the final count from Friday's presidential election was announced.
It gave 62.6 percent of the vote to Ahmadinejad and 33.75 to Mousavi — a former prime minister who has become the hero of a youth-driven movement seeking greater liberties and a gentler face for Iran abroad.
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, closed the door on any chance he could use his limitless powers to intervene in the disputes from Friday's election. In a message on state TV, he urged the nation to unite behind Ahmadinejad, calling the result a "divine assessment."
Mousavi rejected the result as rigged and urged his supporters to resist a government of "lies and dictatorship."
"I'm warning that I won't surrender to this manipulation," said a statement on Mousavi's Web site. "The outcome of what we've seen from the performance of officials ... is nothing but shaking the pillars of the Islamic Republic of Iran's sacred system and governance of lies and dictatorship," it added.
Mousavi warned "people won't respect those who take power through fraud." The headline on one of his Web sites read: "I won't give in to this dangerous manipulation."
Mousavi appealed directly to Khamenei to intervene and stop what he said were violations of the law. Khamenei, who is not elected, holds ultimate political authority in Iran and controls all major policy decisions.
Mousavi and key aides could not be reached by phone.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the U.S. hopes the outcome of the election reflects the "genuine will and desire" of the Iranian people. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the U.S. administration is paying close attention to reports of alleged election irregularities.
At a joint appearance with Clinton, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said his country was "deeply concerned" by reports of irregularities in the election.
The clashes in central Tehran were the more serious disturbances in the capital since student-led protests in 1999. They showed the potential for the showdown to spill over into further violence and challenges to the Islamic establishment.
The demonstrations began Saturday morning shortly before the government announced the final results.
Protesters set fire to tires outside the Interior Ministry and anti-riot police fought back with clubs and smashed cars. Helmeted police on foot and others on buzzing motorcycles chased bands of protesters roaming the streets pumping their fists in the air. Officers beat protesters with swift blows from their truncheons and kicks with their boots. Some of the demonstrators grouped together to charge back at police, hurling stones.
Plumes of dark smoke streaked over the city, as burning barricades of tires and garbage bins glowed orange in the streets. Protesters also torched an empty bus, engulfing it in flames on a Tehran street.
An Associated Press photographer saw a plainclothes security official beating a woman with his truncheon. Italian state TV RAI said one of its crews was caught in the clashes in front Mousavi's headquarters. Their Iranian interpreter was beaten with clubs by riot police and officers confiscated the cameraman's tapes, the station said.
In another main street of Tehran, some 300 young people blocked the avenue by forming a human chain and chanted "Ahmadi, shame on you. Leave the government alone." There was no word on any casualties from the unrest.
It was not clear how many Iranians were even aware of Mousavi's claims of fraud. Communications disruptions began in the later hours of voting Friday — suggesting an information clampdown. State television and radio only broadcast the Interior Ministry's vote count and not Mousavi's midnight news conference.
After night fell, Tehran's cell phone network appeared to be down. When users tried to call cell phones, a message appeared on their phones saying "error in connection." There was no immediate comment from Iran's Telecommunications Ministry and it did not appear that cell phones were down throughout the country. Residents in several provinces say their service is working.
Nationwide, the text messaging system remained down Saturday and pro-Mousavi Web sites were blocked or difficult to access. Text messaging is frequently used by many Iranians — especially young Mousavi supporters — to spread election news. It was also difficult to access social networking sites such as Facebook, which Mousavi's campaign used to galvanize supporters.
Ahmadinejad called on the public to respect the vote and attacked the foreign media's coverage.
"All political and propaganda machines abroad and sections inside the country have been mobilized against the nation. They have launched the heaviest propaganda and psychological war against the Iranian nation. Many global networks continuously worked, employing very complicated methods, that work against our nation and arranged a full-fledged battle against us."
Mousavi's campaign headquarters urged people to show restraint.
Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli, who supervised the elections and heads the nation's police forces, warned people not to join any "unauthorized gatherings."
The powerful Revolutionary Guard cautioned Wednesday it would crush any "revolution" against the Islamic regime by Mousavi's "green movement." The Revolutionary Guard is directly under the control of the ruling clerics and has vast influence in every corner of the country through a network of volunteer militias.
Even before the vote counting began, Mousavi declared himself "definitely the winner" based on "all indications from all over Iran." He accused the government of "manipulating the people's vote" to keep Ahmadinejad in power and suggested the reformist camp would stand up to challenge the results.
"It is our duty to defend people's votes. There is no turning back," he said, alleging widespread irregularities.
Mousavi's backers were stunned at the Interior Ministry's claim that Ahmadinejad won after widespread predictions of a close race — or even a slight edge for the reformist candidate.
Turnout was a record 85 percent of the 46.2 million eligible voters.
"Many Iranians went to the people because they wanted to bring change," said Mousavi supporter Nasser Amiri, a hospital clerk in Tehran. "Almost everybody I know voted for Mousavi but Ahmadinejad is being declared the winner. The government announcement is nothing but widespread fraud. It is very, very disappointing. I'll never ever again vote in Iran."
At Tehran University — the site of the last major anti-regime unrest in Tehran in 1999 — the academic year was winding down and there was no sign of pro-Mousavi crowds. But university exams, scheduled to begin Saturday, were postponed until next month around the country.
In the capital, several Ahmadinejad supporters cruised the streets waving Iranian flags out of car windows and shouting "Mousavi is dead!"
The election outcome will not sharply alter Iran's main policies or sway major decisions, such as possible talks with Washington or nuclear policies. Those crucial issues rest with the ruling clerics headed by Khamenei.
But the election focused on what the office can influence: boosting Iran's sinking economy, pressing for greater media and political freedoms, and being Iran's main envoy to the world.
Iran does not allow international election monitors. During the 2005 election, when Ahmadinejad won the presidency, there were some allegations of vote rigging from losers, but the claims were never investigated.
_____
Associated Press reporter Nasser Karimi contributed to this report from Tehran.
Copyright © 2009 Yahoo! Inc.
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
List of passengers aboard lost Air France flight
By The Associated Press The Associated Press Tue Jun 2, 3:02 pm ET
A list of the named passengers aboard Air France Flight 447, which disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris carrying 228 people:
-Luiz Roberto Anastacio, 50; Brazilian; president for South America, Michelin
-Stephane Artiguenave, 35; French; salesman at electrical distributor CGED
-Sandrine Artiguenave, 34; French
-Aisling Butler, 26; Irish, of Roscrea, Ireland; doctor
-Brad Clemes, 49; Canadian from Guelph, Ontario; Coca-Cola executive
-Arthur Coakley, 61; British; structural engineer for PDMS
-Jane Deasy, 27; Irish; doctor
-Pedro Luis de Orleans e Braganca, 26; Brazilian; descendent of Brazil's last emperor
-Jozsef Gallasz, 44; Hungarian; partner of Hungarian victim Rita Szarvas.
-Antonio Gueiros; Brazilian; information systems director, Michelin
-Michael Harris, 60; American, from Lafayette, Louisiana; geologist
-Anne Harris; American, from Lafayette, Louisiana
-Erich Heine, 41; South African-born; member of executive board of ThyssenKrupp Steel AG
-Claus-Peter Hellhammer, 28; employee of ThyssenKrupp Steel AG based in Germany
-Giovanni Battista Lenzi, Trentino area, Italy
-Zoran Markovic, 45; Croatian, from Kostelji, Croatia; sailor
-Christine Pieraerts; French; engineer at Michelin
-Rita Szarvas; Hungarian; therapist at a Budapest center for children with motor disabilities. Her 7-year-old son was also aboard, but his name was not released.
-Eithne Walls, 29; Irish; doctor
_Rino Zandonai; Trentino area, Italy.
-Luigi Zortea; Trentino area, Italy.
Copyright © 2009 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
A list of the named passengers aboard Air France Flight 447, which disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris carrying 228 people:
-Luiz Roberto Anastacio, 50; Brazilian; president for South America, Michelin
-Stephane Artiguenave, 35; French; salesman at electrical distributor CGED
-Sandrine Artiguenave, 34; French
-Aisling Butler, 26; Irish, of Roscrea, Ireland; doctor
-Brad Clemes, 49; Canadian from Guelph, Ontario; Coca-Cola executive
-Arthur Coakley, 61; British; structural engineer for PDMS
-Jane Deasy, 27; Irish; doctor
-Pedro Luis de Orleans e Braganca, 26; Brazilian; descendent of Brazil's last emperor
-Jozsef Gallasz, 44; Hungarian; partner of Hungarian victim Rita Szarvas.
-Antonio Gueiros; Brazilian; information systems director, Michelin
-Michael Harris, 60; American, from Lafayette, Louisiana; geologist
-Anne Harris; American, from Lafayette, Louisiana
-Erich Heine, 41; South African-born; member of executive board of ThyssenKrupp Steel AG
-Claus-Peter Hellhammer, 28; employee of ThyssenKrupp Steel AG based in Germany
-Giovanni Battista Lenzi, Trentino area, Italy
-Zoran Markovic, 45; Croatian, from Kostelji, Croatia; sailor
-Christine Pieraerts; French; engineer at Michelin
-Rita Szarvas; Hungarian; therapist at a Budapest center for children with motor disabilities. Her 7-year-old son was also aboard, but his name was not released.
-Eithne Walls, 29; Irish; doctor
_Rino Zandonai; Trentino area, Italy.
-Luigi Zortea; Trentino area, Italy.
Copyright © 2009 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
America's Best Colleges - Learning How To Learn
America's Best Colleges
Learning How To Learn
Daniel Born 08.13.08, 6:00 PM ET
Caught between the platitudes of smiling deans and the stomach-churning prospects of one more Gen Ed requirement, another raft of 18-year-olds will begin its passage this fall into higher education's mysteries.
Some will come stoked by excellent scores on their SATs, precociously announcing their plans for med school. Still others will arrive with the ease of seasoned veterans, nursing fantasies of baseball careers, professionals in their mastery of the tobacco wad and stealth spittoon in the back row of freshman composition.
I have taught both kinds of students. And I've discovered that certain kinds of intelligence and ignorance are pretty well distributed throughout this diverse human sample.
One thing most students can't explain--regardless of their individual ability, tattoos, headgear or ethnic identity--is what this entity known as a liberal arts education amounts to. Sure, they can parrot the blather about being educationally "well-rounded."
During their undergraduate experience, they're likely to overhear talk about "core competencies" and "learning outcomes" if they listen at orientation or eavesdrop on their professors' intramural quarreling. But for most, getting on with the major is what matters, and in their view, the liberal arts stuff is synonymous with the dreaded general education core.
To talk to freshmen about the liberal arts as an education for freedom (the Latin liber, as in "free") will strike many as absurd. Liberal arts requirements are the stuff most students try to "get out of the way" as soon as possible, the grunt work one does prior to shopping for courses that hold real allure. Note: A certain segment of students will change majors once or twice, bushwhacked unexpectedly by courses they thought they would never enjoy.
Who can blame the students for not knowing any better? At many institutions of higher learning, the liberal arts have become a mere shadow, usually reduced to an ever more attenuated batch of distribution requirements between the major divisions of arts, humanities, math, and sciences.
Usually--though not always--the general education core dominates one-quarter of the student's courses over a four-year span. For many students, this is the stuff thrown at the flypaper.
Academics organize themselves along the lines of disciplines, departments, schools and professions--accredited by appropriate agencies, each wielding a particular brand of expertise. We are a long, long way from the medieval ideal of asking what the well-educated person ought to know and then providing a pat answer: the trivium of grammar, logic and rhetoric; the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music.
And unlike our medieval predecessors, few of us believe there is one ideal model of a well-educated person. We are predominantly pluralists. Educators who dare to suggest that students integrate their knowledge into a coherent whole, or unified vision of the world, are likely to be perceived as megalomaniacs or ideologues.
Still, there are hardy souls who continue to try to define rigorously what a liberal arts education is, and how it ought to be delivered. Among these have been Mortimer Adler and Robert Hutchins, who reformed the general education requirements at the University of Chicago along the lines of a strict "great books" model during the 1930s and 1940s.
Hutchins, who led the university for more than two decades, railed against the sort of vocational training that he saw infiltrating the best liberal arts institutions. He argued, and I think correctly, that the great books are those works that have stood the test of time because they engage the perennial questions of human existence. He famously declared: "The best education for the best is the best education for all."
His faculty, however, was not universally pleased with the list of books that his principal consiglieri Adler drew up for them to teach. After Hutchins retired as university chancellor in 1951, his two-year great books general education program unraveled, the victim of resurgent departmental fiefdoms.
A version of the Hutchins educational program goes on to this day--most notably at St. John's College (with campuses in Annapolis, Md., and Sante Fe, N.M.), and at Shimer College in Chicago. Columbia University, the original birthplace of the great books idea, still requires that all its undergraduates go through two year-long seminars in great books, a list periodically revised by the faculty who teach sections of these courses.
This educational immersion in core texts is described brilliantly in David Denby's Great Books: My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World (1996).
I readily identify with parts of the great books teaching agenda, which is enjoying a resurgence around the country. Not too long after reading Denby, I helped design a great books honors program (four courses over two years) at a small liberal arts college in Ohio.
At the present time, many colleges are revisiting the question of their core curriculum, trying to figure out how to make it more than a random amalgam of courses plucked from the academic divisions. Some find that a focus on books that demand a response from each new generation of readers is a productive one. It can invigorate students and faculty alike.
I teach great books because they require seriousness and rigor. And I think it's unreflective poppycock to say that the great books simply reify dead white male conservative values. To read the great books is to recognize that liberals, conservatives, straight and gay, male and female, imperial and subaltern voices are all part of the mix, all part of the great conversation to which we are invited.
Yet there are problems with building an entire liberal arts curriculum around the notion of great books or even core texts. The first is one of authority. Few grown-up academicians willingly take it on someone else's authority what texts they are supposed to teach. Just as students want freedom to choose, so do faculty. To wish for a "grandmaster generalist" who can answer the question of what every undergraduate should know is to wish for some kind of secular papacy. That strikes me as un-American.
There are few generalists who have the intellectual authority to tell the rest of us what we absolutely ought to read--or teach. And if such a person existed, would I want to bow at his or her knee? I don't think so.
E. D. Hirsch Jr., author of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (1987) provided a valuable corrective to American educational theory when he advanced the startling and much-needed claim more than 20 years ago that education actually needs some factual content in order to matter--not just a bunch of soft, and usually mealy-mouthed pedagogical "objectives" lacking substance.
But even Hirsch--who has spoken in several of my classes as a guest lecturer--recognizes with appropriate humility his own disciplinary blinders. He doesn't lay claim to the same expertise in microbiology that he claims as a fairly rambunctious literary theorist. If he did, nobody would listen to him.
There is a second problem with a purely great books approach to higher education, and it is this: Many of the students making that initial plunge into the sea of higher learning need us to help them learn a few simple strokes. And that is usually not accomplished by hitting them over the head with Plato's Republic when they're just beginning to tread water. Hutchins could do it at the University of Chicago because his student population was exceptional; those of us in the higher education trenches don't always enjoy that luxury.
For a number of years, I tinkered with my English composition course, eventually highlighting the learning objective of getting my students into the habit of reading for pleasure. It was one mid-December day when one of the hulking athletes in the back row came up to me after the last class of the semester. We had concluded the course with five sessions of reading and discussing Orson Scott Card's science fiction classic Ender's Game.
This is an action-oriented pulp adventure novel. It rewrites in key ways Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, and between the smoking-hot battle sequences it actually smuggles in some great books themes and ideas, cleverly alluding to Locke, Demosthenes, Machiavelli and others. Moreover, it is a book that raises profound questions about group loyalty, command and obedience, xenophobia and abuse of authority. It's not a great book, but it is a very good one.
The kid unfolded his tall frame from his desk and ambled toward me and stuck out his hand. I looked up as I was gathering my books and the pile of student essays to head back to my office.
He shook my hand. "Dr. Born," he said, with a big smile on his face, "thank you for this class. I wanted you to know this is the first book I've ever read from cover to cover."
He wasn't going to be an academic superstar, but he was on his way to making better, more articulate arguments and learning how to summon evidence, on his way to moving with less fear and more freedom through the world of the text. He had learned that he could speak up and make a contribution to the dialog. He was going to survive college. He was learning how to learn.
He would probably run into a few great books--not all of them, perhaps. But I knew that at least some of the stuff I had thrown at him was going to stick. And because of that, his thinking was clearer and his freedom a little more free.
Daniel Born was McCoy associate professor of English at Marietta College in Ohio before taking a position at the Great Books Foundation in Chicago. He edits the foundation's quarterly magazine, The Common Review, and is a lecturer in Northwestern University's School of Continuing Studies.
http://www.forbes.com/2008/08/13/liberal-arts-education-oped-college08-cx_db_0813born.html
Learning How To Learn
Daniel Born 08.13.08, 6:00 PM ET
Caught between the platitudes of smiling deans and the stomach-churning prospects of one more Gen Ed requirement, another raft of 18-year-olds will begin its passage this fall into higher education's mysteries.
Some will come stoked by excellent scores on their SATs, precociously announcing their plans for med school. Still others will arrive with the ease of seasoned veterans, nursing fantasies of baseball careers, professionals in their mastery of the tobacco wad and stealth spittoon in the back row of freshman composition.
I have taught both kinds of students. And I've discovered that certain kinds of intelligence and ignorance are pretty well distributed throughout this diverse human sample.
One thing most students can't explain--regardless of their individual ability, tattoos, headgear or ethnic identity--is what this entity known as a liberal arts education amounts to. Sure, they can parrot the blather about being educationally "well-rounded."
During their undergraduate experience, they're likely to overhear talk about "core competencies" and "learning outcomes" if they listen at orientation or eavesdrop on their professors' intramural quarreling. But for most, getting on with the major is what matters, and in their view, the liberal arts stuff is synonymous with the dreaded general education core.
To talk to freshmen about the liberal arts as an education for freedom (the Latin liber, as in "free") will strike many as absurd. Liberal arts requirements are the stuff most students try to "get out of the way" as soon as possible, the grunt work one does prior to shopping for courses that hold real allure. Note: A certain segment of students will change majors once or twice, bushwhacked unexpectedly by courses they thought they would never enjoy.
Who can blame the students for not knowing any better? At many institutions of higher learning, the liberal arts have become a mere shadow, usually reduced to an ever more attenuated batch of distribution requirements between the major divisions of arts, humanities, math, and sciences.
Usually--though not always--the general education core dominates one-quarter of the student's courses over a four-year span. For many students, this is the stuff thrown at the flypaper.
Academics organize themselves along the lines of disciplines, departments, schools and professions--accredited by appropriate agencies, each wielding a particular brand of expertise. We are a long, long way from the medieval ideal of asking what the well-educated person ought to know and then providing a pat answer: the trivium of grammar, logic and rhetoric; the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music.
And unlike our medieval predecessors, few of us believe there is one ideal model of a well-educated person. We are predominantly pluralists. Educators who dare to suggest that students integrate their knowledge into a coherent whole, or unified vision of the world, are likely to be perceived as megalomaniacs or ideologues.
Still, there are hardy souls who continue to try to define rigorously what a liberal arts education is, and how it ought to be delivered. Among these have been Mortimer Adler and Robert Hutchins, who reformed the general education requirements at the University of Chicago along the lines of a strict "great books" model during the 1930s and 1940s.
Hutchins, who led the university for more than two decades, railed against the sort of vocational training that he saw infiltrating the best liberal arts institutions. He argued, and I think correctly, that the great books are those works that have stood the test of time because they engage the perennial questions of human existence. He famously declared: "The best education for the best is the best education for all."
His faculty, however, was not universally pleased with the list of books that his principal consiglieri Adler drew up for them to teach. After Hutchins retired as university chancellor in 1951, his two-year great books general education program unraveled, the victim of resurgent departmental fiefdoms.
A version of the Hutchins educational program goes on to this day--most notably at St. John's College (with campuses in Annapolis, Md., and Sante Fe, N.M.), and at Shimer College in Chicago. Columbia University, the original birthplace of the great books idea, still requires that all its undergraduates go through two year-long seminars in great books, a list periodically revised by the faculty who teach sections of these courses.
This educational immersion in core texts is described brilliantly in David Denby's Great Books: My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World (1996).
I readily identify with parts of the great books teaching agenda, which is enjoying a resurgence around the country. Not too long after reading Denby, I helped design a great books honors program (four courses over two years) at a small liberal arts college in Ohio.
At the present time, many colleges are revisiting the question of their core curriculum, trying to figure out how to make it more than a random amalgam of courses plucked from the academic divisions. Some find that a focus on books that demand a response from each new generation of readers is a productive one. It can invigorate students and faculty alike.
I teach great books because they require seriousness and rigor. And I think it's unreflective poppycock to say that the great books simply reify dead white male conservative values. To read the great books is to recognize that liberals, conservatives, straight and gay, male and female, imperial and subaltern voices are all part of the mix, all part of the great conversation to which we are invited.
Yet there are problems with building an entire liberal arts curriculum around the notion of great books or even core texts. The first is one of authority. Few grown-up academicians willingly take it on someone else's authority what texts they are supposed to teach. Just as students want freedom to choose, so do faculty. To wish for a "grandmaster generalist" who can answer the question of what every undergraduate should know is to wish for some kind of secular papacy. That strikes me as un-American.
There are few generalists who have the intellectual authority to tell the rest of us what we absolutely ought to read--or teach. And if such a person existed, would I want to bow at his or her knee? I don't think so.
E. D. Hirsch Jr., author of Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (1987) provided a valuable corrective to American educational theory when he advanced the startling and much-needed claim more than 20 years ago that education actually needs some factual content in order to matter--not just a bunch of soft, and usually mealy-mouthed pedagogical "objectives" lacking substance.
But even Hirsch--who has spoken in several of my classes as a guest lecturer--recognizes with appropriate humility his own disciplinary blinders. He doesn't lay claim to the same expertise in microbiology that he claims as a fairly rambunctious literary theorist. If he did, nobody would listen to him.
There is a second problem with a purely great books approach to higher education, and it is this: Many of the students making that initial plunge into the sea of higher learning need us to help them learn a few simple strokes. And that is usually not accomplished by hitting them over the head with Plato's Republic when they're just beginning to tread water. Hutchins could do it at the University of Chicago because his student population was exceptional; those of us in the higher education trenches don't always enjoy that luxury.
For a number of years, I tinkered with my English composition course, eventually highlighting the learning objective of getting my students into the habit of reading for pleasure. It was one mid-December day when one of the hulking athletes in the back row came up to me after the last class of the semester. We had concluded the course with five sessions of reading and discussing Orson Scott Card's science fiction classic Ender's Game.
This is an action-oriented pulp adventure novel. It rewrites in key ways Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, and between the smoking-hot battle sequences it actually smuggles in some great books themes and ideas, cleverly alluding to Locke, Demosthenes, Machiavelli and others. Moreover, it is a book that raises profound questions about group loyalty, command and obedience, xenophobia and abuse of authority. It's not a great book, but it is a very good one.
The kid unfolded his tall frame from his desk and ambled toward me and stuck out his hand. I looked up as I was gathering my books and the pile of student essays to head back to my office.
He shook my hand. "Dr. Born," he said, with a big smile on his face, "thank you for this class. I wanted you to know this is the first book I've ever read from cover to cover."
He wasn't going to be an academic superstar, but he was on his way to making better, more articulate arguments and learning how to summon evidence, on his way to moving with less fear and more freedom through the world of the text. He had learned that he could speak up and make a contribution to the dialog. He was going to survive college. He was learning how to learn.
He would probably run into a few great books--not all of them, perhaps. But I knew that at least some of the stuff I had thrown at him was going to stick. And because of that, his thinking was clearer and his freedom a little more free.
Daniel Born was McCoy associate professor of English at Marietta College in Ohio before taking a position at the Great Books Foundation in Chicago. He edits the foundation's quarterly magazine, The Common Review, and is a lecturer in Northwestern University's School of Continuing Studies.
http://www.forbes.com/2008/08/13/liberal-arts-education-oped-college08-cx_db_0813born.html
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Go Boldly, or Go Home: The Vanity Mirror Universe of STAR TREK (2009)
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Star Trek (2009 -- hereafter Star Trek '09) contains many punchings, shootings and implodings of things. It is sort of funny and sort of dumb, which makes it par for Summer Movie Fun Zone course. The story retraces the meteoric rise of James Kirk immediately before and after -- but only for three minutes during -- his Starfleet Academy training, and first hours on the job as captain of the USS Enterprise. The external conflict concerns Leonard Nimoy as the Spock of 2387 attempting to stop save Romulus from its own sun going supernova. He fails and is sucked into a black hole -- which somehow translates as "time warp wormhole" -- with a surviving Romulan mining vessel, and upon reemergence 153 years earlier the vengeance-crazed Nero (Eric Bana, playing straight as possible) declares war on all Spocks young and old. The emotional story is about Kirk realizing his potential rather than succumb to anger and adrenaline addiction, and Spock suffering the tortures of biracial identity issues. This may sound like rich material, and that is because it has been rich material for 40 years. Trek '09 does not actually engage these human concerns, not in the specific or abstract, but uses them to clumsily throw characters into roughly the correct location for the next action setpiece.
Director J.J. Abrams is a great TV concept man, though his most successful hour, Lost, is a straight-faced adult suspense remake of Gilligan's Island. He is a fine producer, though Lost rapidly lapsed into improperly planned idiocy, he did not touch script or camera for the excellent Cloverfield. He is, however, a terrible writer -- responsible for Regarding Henry, Armageddon, Gone Fishin', etc... -- and a worse director. Abrams' best directorial quality is a knack for hiring excellent actors then getting the hell out of their way. Unable to communicate in anything but big head close-ups of actors, and special effects shots which he technically did not "shoot" so much as "approve storyboards for", Abrams never needs to compose a striking, poetic, informative, or dramatic frame, because he is going to wiggle the hand-held around all over the mise-en-scène anyway. The script is not his doing, but it is entirely Abrams' fault that Trek '09 looks like a modern, boring garbagey TV show, rather than the beautiful, lurid, exciting and dreamy garbagey TV show it is based upon.
Star Trek '09 attempts an impossible, contradictory project regarding Trek Lore, desiring to reinvigorate these vigorous characters with a rousing space opera adventure and simultaneously mummify them in reverent awe, as pop culture icons whose every step toward their fated seats on the bridge of the Enterprise. Neither writers nor actors know whether to play this as if we are meeting characters afresh, or if everyone is in on some colossal and unhilarious joke about destiny and remakes. The result is a lot of quite literal smirking and mugging by the cast when they do something in character... If that makes sense, which it does not.
Chris Pine captures the bravado, temper and swagger of J.T. Kirk, but not the sheer lustiness and vigor, the sweatiness and passion. He also has bad skin, is not as handsome, and does not bulge in any of the sexy or unhealthy places as WIlliam Shatner. Pine's Kirk is less about joie de vivre than goofing around like everything is a blast all the time. This is, perhaps, not his fault, as the script gives him no opportunities for scenery chewing at a Shatnerian level, and not even much fuel for scenery licking. While the timeline disruption merely saddles Kirk with unnecessary daddy issues -- his frustration with the Kobyashi Maru test are motivated by the horror that his father died in exactly the same situation, rather than the perfectly sufficient reasons built into the character as Shatner played him -- this is nothing next to the reconfiguration forced on Spock.
Zachary Qunto, pasty and eyebrow-shaved, does what he can despite being miscast and having to interpret a version of Spock which removes virtually everything that makes the character Spock. If two generations of the awkward and scholastically gifted have deified Spock, it is because they admire not just the Vulcan half-breed's brains and efficient self-defense technique, but his resolute coolness, his detachment, that he comes from a math culture. Spock 2.0 is birthed by creators who do not respect or understand Vulcan itself, let alone the appeal at the heart of the character. In point of fact, the plot hinges on watching Vulcan collapse in on itself. Quinto, while certainly odd-looking, does not have the authoritative bass-baritone rumble, etched-granite skin, equine facial bones, hollow cheeks or penetrating glare of his predecessor; he is neither Other enough nor strangely beautiful as Leonard Nimoy. It may even be that Leonard Nimoy's very Jewishness informed Spock to a degree that cannot be replaced. Do-over Spock variously fumes beneath the bowl-cut over his Vulcan-ness, which is here not a metaphor for anything, or resents his human-ness; symbols of both cultures are sacrificed, forcing us to witness the appalling sight of Amanda Grayson falling in a big hole, and rendering Spock confused and with a vague identity crisis. Perhaps as ironic counterpoint, but more likely in grave misestimation, Winona Ryder gives an emotionally thin and otherworldly performance as Spock's human mom, while Ben Cross is more recognizably human as Sarek. The brilliance of Nimoy's original has always been that Spock, raised Vulcan and icy, has always had emotions, but no equipment for expressing them. In Trek '09, he has always been a mess (better not to delve into an out-of-nowheres smoochy relationship with Uhura, which must be singularly unsatisfying for the lady in red, and replaces the more interesting sight of Nurse Chapel pining for Spock). The very story of Spock is of a being put in touch with his humanity through prolonged contact and friendships on the Enterprise and with Kirk in specific. For a film purportedly about Kirk and Spock's dynamic, this imbalance is disastrous. Spock unequipped to deal with emotional turmoil + Kirk's lust for life = the formula the birthed the very notion of slash fiction. This has always been the pulse of this relationship, and Trek '09 makes hash of it.
Trek '09 is not about much of anything but itself and maybe the very idea of Trek Mythos. Some not-sense about people from the future impacting the way the Enterprise crew started hanging out and an old (well, future) enemy seeking straightforward revenge via convoluted plan is the kind of imagination-retarded story you might invent while playing with your Mego action figures. It is a huge mistake on the screenwriters' part to think the Wrath of Khan plot is hotswappable with a kiddie-Trek story. The recycling (thievery, if you prefer) renders the resonances of Khan moot, is one of the reasons the story doesn't work or feel like it makes "sense" (not to mention: they got paid for that?). It is symptomatic of the screenwriters only sort-of getting it. Because Khan's is partly a story about the end of Kirk's youthful derring-do, and career-long struggle with the Prime Directive. It is a story of the headstrong, boldly-going youth's bad decisions catching up with him in middle-age.
Trek '09 tries to graft the decade-spanning revenge and aging story onto an origin story. The result is a movie about young adult Spock forced to deal with a villain who wants to make Spock pay for perceived sins he will not commit for more than a century and a half... an error which is not even really Spock's fault.
In a very funny list posted to Mobius Home Video Forum, Lenny Moore outlined extremely basic hard-science problems at the root of the plot, not the least of which is how Spock and Nero's crew survive being sucked into a black hole, or exactly what Romulus is supposed to do with no sun and a matter-vacuum directly adjacent to its atmosphere. As above, problematic too is the crucial emotional-truth logic of how characters are behaving at any given time. Nothing in Trek '09 makes any goddamn sense. This is because it is, again, sort of dumb and weird as well. For some (waffling, sucking-up, ass-covering) reason, this re-whatevering of Trek does not simply jettison all previous continuity, as in, say the Ultimate Marvel comics line. It not only does not refuse to start over and let everyone in the audience deal with their own hang-ups about this, Star Trek '09 devotes its entire running time to explaining why it is not Star Trek starring Messers Shatner and Nimoy and the ship's bridge looks like an Apple store rather than a rec room, and the phasers look like cheap plastic squirt guns instead of bad-ass squirt guns. This is not ten minutes of applied phlebotinum, but the entire story. The baffling result is that the movie has no story of its own and spends two hours justifying its own existence.
The Trek notion of time-travel has always been inconsistent, but nowhere in Star Trek '09 is it obvious or logical that Star Trek '66 still exists. The new film doesn't "branch off" the timeline so far as I can tell, but supersede the Original Series... and therefore Next Generation, Voyager, and Deep Space 9. Don't worry about Enterprise, because I guess it wouldn't fall in the black hole, and already had continuity issues of its own. There is a vast amount of horrible Star Trek already, so under lab conditions I do not care a whit for dogged faithfulness to a continuity that does not serve the needs of storytelling. But Trek '09's A Story is preoccupied with little else but series continuity. This is the Star Trek equivalent of Crisis on Infinite Earths. As such, it begs for exactly the kind of scrutiny the screenwriters have presumably been tasked by Paramount to alleviate. And, as with all else, it is highly illogical at best.
Indeed, as the faithful yelped after seeing the trailer, James Kirk Prime cannot drive a 20th Century motor vehicle, as seen in "A Piece of the Action". But no matter: Black Hole Universe Kirk picked up the skill. You may or may not buy this, but after the temporal anomaly, any and every detail may be chalked up to The Hole. But!:
Events which occur in Trek continuity before the timeline alteration are violated before the Trek '09 plot patch-in even occurs: Jim Kirk's older brother Sam is a no-show, the Kelvin is able to identify a Romulan ship and nothing is made of how historic the encounter is, despite Kirk's clear question in the episode "Balance of Terror": "After a whole century, what would a Romulan ship look like...?"... or after 60 years, for that matter? Spock, McCoy and Scott's (pre-temporal anomaly) birthdays have been left nebulous, therefore presumably unchanged (and, [hand-wave] they look a good deal younger, though the actors are roughly the correct age, save Karl Urban as McCoy, who is ten years shy of DeForest Kelly at the inception of his five-year mission). Perhaps their personal histories since birth have been altered since the timeline anomaly, yet it causes all three men to enter Starfleet service at grossly late dates in life. This "altered" timeline seems awfully preoccupied with making sure all of the Enterprise crew is either the same age, or goes through Academy together, and all end up on the bridge faster than the first go-round (in Original Series continuity, Sulu started as a physicist and Chekov didn't make navigator until second season). The timeline also seems to have it in for Dr. Piper and Gary Mitchell, who must have been inspired to seek other paths in life, but exceptionally kind to Capt. Christopher Pike.
At the end, Spock Prime is trapped in this Hell dimension, where Vulcan has been Alderaan'ed, no one knows who he is, and all his friends are turned into smirking babies. Note: this potentially nightmarish s-f idea is not actually explored in the movie. Because no "ideas" are explored in the movie.
Putting myriad other shortcomings aside (if possible?), this is where Trek '09 fails to be Star Trek. Since the end of Original Series, Trek Universe turned into the dreariest of places, more fun to think about than to visit. Star Trek was colorful and shooty and goofy, sexy and boozy, and peoples' shirts got torn all the time because they were wrassling each other on piles of foam rocks. The first episode is about how McCoy has to metaphorically shoot his ex-girlfriend because she turned into a succubus. But it was also sincere and authentic speculative fiction. It waddled the line between hard and soft s-f. There are weaponized ship battles, and a space-Western spirit of adventure, but most every Original Series story is centered on some brainy classic s-f thought experiment, serious social, political or religious allegory, philosophical conundrum or, in purest form, asked seriously: what if?
Fine enough. Screenwriters Orci and Kurtzman never ask What If?, only ask How did they get on that spaceship? They got the action and adventure relatively right, but that is only part of the Star Trek spirit. Taking someone else's toys and playing with them in semi-clever, very loud and enjoyable way may be what these fellows do best, anyhow. In 2007 they wrote a better script for a movie about the Transformers than a sane person could reasonably expect (similarly sabotoged by a director's refusal to learn how to impart a sense of geography to any scene, be it epic robot battle or simple dialogue exchange). The plotting is lazy as well, hinging every joint on sheer coincidence -- often triple-hinging on coincidence -- but in a multiplex Space-Shot-ride film, this is not remarkable; excusable but not admirable. To their credit, the writers think of many thrilling and breathless things to do with the transporter room, Sulu's swordfighting skills, and invent brutal ways to smoke Redshirts. It also copiously steals from Star Wars pictures, including duplicating that part with the fish monsters from The Phantom Menace. While it may provide some nihilistic charge to proving that in this do-over Trek anything truly goes, making Spock part of a dying culture is neither as useful or fun as being able to visit Vulcan in future installments.
Oh, and the script hits several Trek tropes and in-jokes that made people in my theater chortle. I am nerdy enough that I think I "got" them, but not nerdy enough to pretend they were funny or that it was any kind of thrill to find out what happened to Jonathan Archer's dog.
Star Trek '09 plays like a Holodeck simulation of Star Trek '66. Fun while you're inside, harmless by design, but it dissolves before your eyes, insubstantial. Simulation over.
- Chris Stangl at 2:35 PM
Indexed in: Star Trek, televison
Star Trek (2009 -- hereafter Star Trek '09) contains many punchings, shootings and implodings of things. It is sort of funny and sort of dumb, which makes it par for Summer Movie Fun Zone course. The story retraces the meteoric rise of James Kirk immediately before and after -- but only for three minutes during -- his Starfleet Academy training, and first hours on the job as captain of the USS Enterprise. The external conflict concerns Leonard Nimoy as the Spock of 2387 attempting to stop save Romulus from its own sun going supernova. He fails and is sucked into a black hole -- which somehow translates as "time warp wormhole" -- with a surviving Romulan mining vessel, and upon reemergence 153 years earlier the vengeance-crazed Nero (Eric Bana, playing straight as possible) declares war on all Spocks young and old. The emotional story is about Kirk realizing his potential rather than succumb to anger and adrenaline addiction, and Spock suffering the tortures of biracial identity issues. This may sound like rich material, and that is because it has been rich material for 40 years. Trek '09 does not actually engage these human concerns, not in the specific or abstract, but uses them to clumsily throw characters into roughly the correct location for the next action setpiece.
Director J.J. Abrams is a great TV concept man, though his most successful hour, Lost, is a straight-faced adult suspense remake of Gilligan's Island. He is a fine producer, though Lost rapidly lapsed into improperly planned idiocy, he did not touch script or camera for the excellent Cloverfield. He is, however, a terrible writer -- responsible for Regarding Henry, Armageddon, Gone Fishin', etc... -- and a worse director. Abrams' best directorial quality is a knack for hiring excellent actors then getting the hell out of their way. Unable to communicate in anything but big head close-ups of actors, and special effects shots which he technically did not "shoot" so much as "approve storyboards for", Abrams never needs to compose a striking, poetic, informative, or dramatic frame, because he is going to wiggle the hand-held around all over the mise-en-scène anyway. The script is not his doing, but it is entirely Abrams' fault that Trek '09 looks like a modern, boring garbagey TV show, rather than the beautiful, lurid, exciting and dreamy garbagey TV show it is based upon.
Star Trek '09 attempts an impossible, contradictory project regarding Trek Lore, desiring to reinvigorate these vigorous characters with a rousing space opera adventure and simultaneously mummify them in reverent awe, as pop culture icons whose every step toward their fated seats on the bridge of the Enterprise. Neither writers nor actors know whether to play this as if we are meeting characters afresh, or if everyone is in on some colossal and unhilarious joke about destiny and remakes. The result is a lot of quite literal smirking and mugging by the cast when they do something in character... If that makes sense, which it does not.
Chris Pine captures the bravado, temper and swagger of J.T. Kirk, but not the sheer lustiness and vigor, the sweatiness and passion. He also has bad skin, is not as handsome, and does not bulge in any of the sexy or unhealthy places as WIlliam Shatner. Pine's Kirk is less about joie de vivre than goofing around like everything is a blast all the time. This is, perhaps, not his fault, as the script gives him no opportunities for scenery chewing at a Shatnerian level, and not even much fuel for scenery licking. While the timeline disruption merely saddles Kirk with unnecessary daddy issues -- his frustration with the Kobyashi Maru test are motivated by the horror that his father died in exactly the same situation, rather than the perfectly sufficient reasons built into the character as Shatner played him -- this is nothing next to the reconfiguration forced on Spock.
Zachary Qunto, pasty and eyebrow-shaved, does what he can despite being miscast and having to interpret a version of Spock which removes virtually everything that makes the character Spock. If two generations of the awkward and scholastically gifted have deified Spock, it is because they admire not just the Vulcan half-breed's brains and efficient self-defense technique, but his resolute coolness, his detachment, that he comes from a math culture. Spock 2.0 is birthed by creators who do not respect or understand Vulcan itself, let alone the appeal at the heart of the character. In point of fact, the plot hinges on watching Vulcan collapse in on itself. Quinto, while certainly odd-looking, does not have the authoritative bass-baritone rumble, etched-granite skin, equine facial bones, hollow cheeks or penetrating glare of his predecessor; he is neither Other enough nor strangely beautiful as Leonard Nimoy. It may even be that Leonard Nimoy's very Jewishness informed Spock to a degree that cannot be replaced. Do-over Spock variously fumes beneath the bowl-cut over his Vulcan-ness, which is here not a metaphor for anything, or resents his human-ness; symbols of both cultures are sacrificed, forcing us to witness the appalling sight of Amanda Grayson falling in a big hole, and rendering Spock confused and with a vague identity crisis. Perhaps as ironic counterpoint, but more likely in grave misestimation, Winona Ryder gives an emotionally thin and otherworldly performance as Spock's human mom, while Ben Cross is more recognizably human as Sarek. The brilliance of Nimoy's original has always been that Spock, raised Vulcan and icy, has always had emotions, but no equipment for expressing them. In Trek '09, he has always been a mess (better not to delve into an out-of-nowheres smoochy relationship with Uhura, which must be singularly unsatisfying for the lady in red, and replaces the more interesting sight of Nurse Chapel pining for Spock). The very story of Spock is of a being put in touch with his humanity through prolonged contact and friendships on the Enterprise and with Kirk in specific. For a film purportedly about Kirk and Spock's dynamic, this imbalance is disastrous. Spock unequipped to deal with emotional turmoil + Kirk's lust for life = the formula the birthed the very notion of slash fiction. This has always been the pulse of this relationship, and Trek '09 makes hash of it.
Trek '09 is not about much of anything but itself and maybe the very idea of Trek Mythos. Some not-sense about people from the future impacting the way the Enterprise crew started hanging out and an old (well, future) enemy seeking straightforward revenge via convoluted plan is the kind of imagination-retarded story you might invent while playing with your Mego action figures. It is a huge mistake on the screenwriters' part to think the Wrath of Khan plot is hotswappable with a kiddie-Trek story. The recycling (thievery, if you prefer) renders the resonances of Khan moot, is one of the reasons the story doesn't work or feel like it makes "sense" (not to mention: they got paid for that?). It is symptomatic of the screenwriters only sort-of getting it. Because Khan's is partly a story about the end of Kirk's youthful derring-do, and career-long struggle with the Prime Directive. It is a story of the headstrong, boldly-going youth's bad decisions catching up with him in middle-age.
Trek '09 tries to graft the decade-spanning revenge and aging story onto an origin story. The result is a movie about young adult Spock forced to deal with a villain who wants to make Spock pay for perceived sins he will not commit for more than a century and a half... an error which is not even really Spock's fault.
In a very funny list posted to Mobius Home Video Forum, Lenny Moore outlined extremely basic hard-science problems at the root of the plot, not the least of which is how Spock and Nero's crew survive being sucked into a black hole, or exactly what Romulus is supposed to do with no sun and a matter-vacuum directly adjacent to its atmosphere. As above, problematic too is the crucial emotional-truth logic of how characters are behaving at any given time. Nothing in Trek '09 makes any goddamn sense. This is because it is, again, sort of dumb and weird as well. For some (waffling, sucking-up, ass-covering) reason, this re-whatevering of Trek does not simply jettison all previous continuity, as in, say the Ultimate Marvel comics line. It not only does not refuse to start over and let everyone in the audience deal with their own hang-ups about this, Star Trek '09 devotes its entire running time to explaining why it is not Star Trek starring Messers Shatner and Nimoy and the ship's bridge looks like an Apple store rather than a rec room, and the phasers look like cheap plastic squirt guns instead of bad-ass squirt guns. This is not ten minutes of applied phlebotinum, but the entire story. The baffling result is that the movie has no story of its own and spends two hours justifying its own existence.
The Trek notion of time-travel has always been inconsistent, but nowhere in Star Trek '09 is it obvious or logical that Star Trek '66 still exists. The new film doesn't "branch off" the timeline so far as I can tell, but supersede the Original Series... and therefore Next Generation, Voyager, and Deep Space 9. Don't worry about Enterprise, because I guess it wouldn't fall in the black hole, and already had continuity issues of its own. There is a vast amount of horrible Star Trek already, so under lab conditions I do not care a whit for dogged faithfulness to a continuity that does not serve the needs of storytelling. But Trek '09's A Story is preoccupied with little else but series continuity. This is the Star Trek equivalent of Crisis on Infinite Earths. As such, it begs for exactly the kind of scrutiny the screenwriters have presumably been tasked by Paramount to alleviate. And, as with all else, it is highly illogical at best.
Indeed, as the faithful yelped after seeing the trailer, James Kirk Prime cannot drive a 20th Century motor vehicle, as seen in "A Piece of the Action". But no matter: Black Hole Universe Kirk picked up the skill. You may or may not buy this, but after the temporal anomaly, any and every detail may be chalked up to The Hole. But!:
Events which occur in Trek continuity before the timeline alteration are violated before the Trek '09 plot patch-in even occurs: Jim Kirk's older brother Sam is a no-show, the Kelvin is able to identify a Romulan ship and nothing is made of how historic the encounter is, despite Kirk's clear question in the episode "Balance of Terror": "After a whole century, what would a Romulan ship look like...?"... or after 60 years, for that matter? Spock, McCoy and Scott's (pre-temporal anomaly) birthdays have been left nebulous, therefore presumably unchanged (and, [hand-wave] they look a good deal younger, though the actors are roughly the correct age, save Karl Urban as McCoy, who is ten years shy of DeForest Kelly at the inception of his five-year mission). Perhaps their personal histories since birth have been altered since the timeline anomaly, yet it causes all three men to enter Starfleet service at grossly late dates in life. This "altered" timeline seems awfully preoccupied with making sure all of the Enterprise crew is either the same age, or goes through Academy together, and all end up on the bridge faster than the first go-round (in Original Series continuity, Sulu started as a physicist and Chekov didn't make navigator until second season). The timeline also seems to have it in for Dr. Piper and Gary Mitchell, who must have been inspired to seek other paths in life, but exceptionally kind to Capt. Christopher Pike.
At the end, Spock Prime is trapped in this Hell dimension, where Vulcan has been Alderaan'ed, no one knows who he is, and all his friends are turned into smirking babies. Note: this potentially nightmarish s-f idea is not actually explored in the movie. Because no "ideas" are explored in the movie.
Putting myriad other shortcomings aside (if possible?), this is where Trek '09 fails to be Star Trek. Since the end of Original Series, Trek Universe turned into the dreariest of places, more fun to think about than to visit. Star Trek was colorful and shooty and goofy, sexy and boozy, and peoples' shirts got torn all the time because they were wrassling each other on piles of foam rocks. The first episode is about how McCoy has to metaphorically shoot his ex-girlfriend because she turned into a succubus. But it was also sincere and authentic speculative fiction. It waddled the line between hard and soft s-f. There are weaponized ship battles, and a space-Western spirit of adventure, but most every Original Series story is centered on some brainy classic s-f thought experiment, serious social, political or religious allegory, philosophical conundrum or, in purest form, asked seriously: what if?
Fine enough. Screenwriters Orci and Kurtzman never ask What If?, only ask How did they get on that spaceship? They got the action and adventure relatively right, but that is only part of the Star Trek spirit. Taking someone else's toys and playing with them in semi-clever, very loud and enjoyable way may be what these fellows do best, anyhow. In 2007 they wrote a better script for a movie about the Transformers than a sane person could reasonably expect (similarly sabotoged by a director's refusal to learn how to impart a sense of geography to any scene, be it epic robot battle or simple dialogue exchange). The plotting is lazy as well, hinging every joint on sheer coincidence -- often triple-hinging on coincidence -- but in a multiplex Space-Shot-ride film, this is not remarkable; excusable but not admirable. To their credit, the writers think of many thrilling and breathless things to do with the transporter room, Sulu's swordfighting skills, and invent brutal ways to smoke Redshirts. It also copiously steals from Star Wars pictures, including duplicating that part with the fish monsters from The Phantom Menace. While it may provide some nihilistic charge to proving that in this do-over Trek anything truly goes, making Spock part of a dying culture is neither as useful or fun as being able to visit Vulcan in future installments.
Oh, and the script hits several Trek tropes and in-jokes that made people in my theater chortle. I am nerdy enough that I think I "got" them, but not nerdy enough to pretend they were funny or that it was any kind of thrill to find out what happened to Jonathan Archer's dog.
Star Trek '09 plays like a Holodeck simulation of Star Trek '66. Fun while you're inside, harmless by design, but it dissolves before your eyes, insubstantial. Simulation over.
- Chris Stangl at 2:35 PM
Indexed in: Star Trek, televison
Obsession with Naked Women Dates Back 35,000 Years
Clara Moskowitz
LiveScience.com clara Moskowitz Staff Writer Wed May 13, 1:21 pm ET
If human culture seems obsessed with sex lately, it's nothing new. Archaeologists have discovered the oldest known artistic representation of a woman - a carved ivory statue of a naked female, dating from 35,000 years ago.
The figurine, unearthed in September 2008 in Hohle Fels Cave in southwestern Germany, may be the oldest known example of figurative art, meaning art that is supposed to represent and resemble a real person, animal or object. The discovery could help scientists understand the origins of art and the advent of symbolic thinking, including complicated language.
"If there's one conclusion you want to draw from this, it's that an obsession with sex goes back at least 35,000 years," University of Cambridge anthropologist Paul Mellars told LiveScience. He was not involved in the new finding. "But if humans hadn't been largely obsessed with sex they wouldn't have survived for the first 2 million years. None of this is at all surprising."
The fixation wasn't just for naked women, though. Early carvings of phalluses appeared in Europe at about the same time.
Little 'Venus'
The tiny statue is carved out of the tusk of a woolly mammoth and is less than 2.5 inches (60 millimeters) long. Instead of a head, it has a ring that scientists think meant it was worn as a pendant looped through string. Paleoanthropologist Nicholas Conard of Germany's Tubingen University reported the discovery in the May 14 issue of the journal Nature.
The oldest human art dates back much further, to between 75,000 and 95,000 years ago in Africa. But that art was abstract, and consisted of geometrical designs engraved on pieces of red iron oxide. This is the first known art to represent a woman, and possibly the first art to represent anything real at all. Another find, a simple drawing that may represent a half-man, half-animal, could be a few thousand years older, but the date on that is uncertain.
The jump from abstract art to representative art seems significant, and might reflect a leap in the cognitive capacity of the human brain around this time. Some experts think that the development might have gone along with a leap in the complexity of human language.
"Language is a symbolic system - words are symbols for things. And so is art," Mellars said. "Art is a glaring illustration of a capacity for symbolic thinking. Since symbolic thinking lies at the core of language, people have often tried to link the two."
Mellars pointed out that there isn't enough evidence to really understand how complex human language was at this point, though.
Sex on the brain
The statue is notable not just for its symbolism, but for its style - particularly its sexuality.
"The figure is explicitly - and blatantly - that of a woman, with an exaggeration of sexual characteristics (large, projecting breasts, a greatly enlarged and explicit vulva, and bloated belly and thighs) that by twenty-first-century standards could be seen as bordering on the pornographic," Mellars wrote in a commentary essay in Nature.
Scientists guess that it may have represented female fertility, or been related to shamanistic rituals and beliefs.
* Ancient Cave Art Full of Teenage Graffiti
* Image Gallery: Microscopic Images As Art
* 10 Surprising Sex Statistics
* Original Story: Obsession with Naked Women Dates Back 35,000 Years
LiveScience.com chronicles the daily advances and innovations made in science and technology. We take on the misconceptions that often pop up around scientific discoveries and deliver short, provocative explanations with a certain wit and style. Check out our science videos, Trivia & Quizzes and Top 10s. Join our community to debate hot-button issues like stem cells, climate change and evolution. You can also sign up for free newsletters, register for RSS feeds and get cool gadgets at the LiveScience Store.
Copyright © 2009 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
LiveScience.com clara Moskowitz Staff Writer Wed May 13, 1:21 pm ET
If human culture seems obsessed with sex lately, it's nothing new. Archaeologists have discovered the oldest known artistic representation of a woman - a carved ivory statue of a naked female, dating from 35,000 years ago.
The figurine, unearthed in September 2008 in Hohle Fels Cave in southwestern Germany, may be the oldest known example of figurative art, meaning art that is supposed to represent and resemble a real person, animal or object. The discovery could help scientists understand the origins of art and the advent of symbolic thinking, including complicated language.
"If there's one conclusion you want to draw from this, it's that an obsession with sex goes back at least 35,000 years," University of Cambridge anthropologist Paul Mellars told LiveScience. He was not involved in the new finding. "But if humans hadn't been largely obsessed with sex they wouldn't have survived for the first 2 million years. None of this is at all surprising."
The fixation wasn't just for naked women, though. Early carvings of phalluses appeared in Europe at about the same time.
Little 'Venus'
The tiny statue is carved out of the tusk of a woolly mammoth and is less than 2.5 inches (60 millimeters) long. Instead of a head, it has a ring that scientists think meant it was worn as a pendant looped through string. Paleoanthropologist Nicholas Conard of Germany's Tubingen University reported the discovery in the May 14 issue of the journal Nature.
The oldest human art dates back much further, to between 75,000 and 95,000 years ago in Africa. But that art was abstract, and consisted of geometrical designs engraved on pieces of red iron oxide. This is the first known art to represent a woman, and possibly the first art to represent anything real at all. Another find, a simple drawing that may represent a half-man, half-animal, could be a few thousand years older, but the date on that is uncertain.
The jump from abstract art to representative art seems significant, and might reflect a leap in the cognitive capacity of the human brain around this time. Some experts think that the development might have gone along with a leap in the complexity of human language.
"Language is a symbolic system - words are symbols for things. And so is art," Mellars said. "Art is a glaring illustration of a capacity for symbolic thinking. Since symbolic thinking lies at the core of language, people have often tried to link the two."
Mellars pointed out that there isn't enough evidence to really understand how complex human language was at this point, though.
Sex on the brain
The statue is notable not just for its symbolism, but for its style - particularly its sexuality.
"The figure is explicitly - and blatantly - that of a woman, with an exaggeration of sexual characteristics (large, projecting breasts, a greatly enlarged and explicit vulva, and bloated belly and thighs) that by twenty-first-century standards could be seen as bordering on the pornographic," Mellars wrote in a commentary essay in Nature.
Scientists guess that it may have represented female fertility, or been related to shamanistic rituals and beliefs.
* Ancient Cave Art Full of Teenage Graffiti
* Image Gallery: Microscopic Images As Art
* 10 Surprising Sex Statistics
* Original Story: Obsession with Naked Women Dates Back 35,000 Years
LiveScience.com chronicles the daily advances and innovations made in science and technology. We take on the misconceptions that often pop up around scientific discoveries and deliver short, provocative explanations with a certain wit and style. Check out our science videos, Trivia & Quizzes and Top 10s. Join our community to debate hot-button issues like stem cells, climate change and evolution. You can also sign up for free newsletters, register for RSS feeds and get cool gadgets at the LiveScience Store.
Copyright © 2009 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
Monday, May 04, 2009
Selflessness -- Core Of All Major World Religions -- Has Neuropsychological Connection
New findings suggests that all individuals, regardless of cultural background or religion, experience the same neuropsychological functions during spiritual experiences, such as transcendence. (Credit: iStockphoto/Dawn Poland)
ScienceDaily (Dec. 22, 2008) — All spiritual experiences are based in the brain. That statement is truer than ever before, according to a University of Missouri neuropsychologist. An MU study has data to support a neuropsychological model that proposes spiritual experiences associated with selflessness are related to decreased activity in the right parietal lobe of the brain.
The study is one of the first to use individuals with traumatic brain injury to determine this connection. Researchers say the implication of this connection means people in many disciplines, including peace studies, health care or religion can learn different ways to attain selflessness, to experience transcendence, and to help themselves and others.
This study, along with other recent neuroradiological studies of Buddhist meditators and Francescan nuns, suggests that all individuals, regardless of cultural background or religion, experience the same neuropsychological functions during spiritual experiences, such as transcendence. Transcendence, feelings of universal unity and decreased sense of self, is a core tenet of all major religions. Meditation and prayer are the primary vehicles by which such spiritual transcendence is achieved.
“The brain functions in a certain way during spiritual experiences,” said Brick Johnstone, professor of health psychology in the MU School of Health Professions. “We studied people with brain injury and found that people with injuries to the right parietal lobe of the brain reported higher levels of spiritual experiences, such as transcendence.”
This link is important, Johnstone said, because it means selflessness can be learned by decreasing activity in that part of the brain. He suggests this can be done through conscious effort, such as meditation or prayer. People with these selfless spiritual experiences also are more psychologically healthy, especially if they have positive beliefs that there is a God or higher power who loves them, Johnstone said.
“This research also addresses questions regarding the impact of neurologic versus cultural factors on spiritual experience,” Johnstone said. “The ability to connect with things beyond the self, such as transcendent experiences, seems to occur for people who minimize right parietal functioning. This can be attained through cultural practices, such as intense meditation or prayer or because of a brain injury that impairs the functioning of the right parietal lobe. Either way, our study suggests that ‘selflessness’ is a neuropsychological foundation of spiritual experiences.”
The research was funded by the MU Center on Religion and the Professions. The study – “Support for a neuropsychological model of spirituality in persons with traumatic brain injury” – was published in the peer-reviewed journal Zygon.
“Our research focused on the personal experience of spiritual transcendence and does not in any way minimize the importance of religion or personal beliefs, nor does it suggest that spiritual experience are related only to neuropsychological activity in the brain,” Johnstone said. “It is important to note that individuals experience their God or higher power in many different ways, but that all people from all religions and beliefs appear to experience these connections in a similar way.”
ScienceDaily (Dec. 22, 2008) — All spiritual experiences are based in the brain. That statement is truer than ever before, according to a University of Missouri neuropsychologist. An MU study has data to support a neuropsychological model that proposes spiritual experiences associated with selflessness are related to decreased activity in the right parietal lobe of the brain.
The study is one of the first to use individuals with traumatic brain injury to determine this connection. Researchers say the implication of this connection means people in many disciplines, including peace studies, health care or religion can learn different ways to attain selflessness, to experience transcendence, and to help themselves and others.
This study, along with other recent neuroradiological studies of Buddhist meditators and Francescan nuns, suggests that all individuals, regardless of cultural background or religion, experience the same neuropsychological functions during spiritual experiences, such as transcendence. Transcendence, feelings of universal unity and decreased sense of self, is a core tenet of all major religions. Meditation and prayer are the primary vehicles by which such spiritual transcendence is achieved.
“The brain functions in a certain way during spiritual experiences,” said Brick Johnstone, professor of health psychology in the MU School of Health Professions. “We studied people with brain injury and found that people with injuries to the right parietal lobe of the brain reported higher levels of spiritual experiences, such as transcendence.”
This link is important, Johnstone said, because it means selflessness can be learned by decreasing activity in that part of the brain. He suggests this can be done through conscious effort, such as meditation or prayer. People with these selfless spiritual experiences also are more psychologically healthy, especially if they have positive beliefs that there is a God or higher power who loves them, Johnstone said.
“This research also addresses questions regarding the impact of neurologic versus cultural factors on spiritual experience,” Johnstone said. “The ability to connect with things beyond the self, such as transcendent experiences, seems to occur for people who minimize right parietal functioning. This can be attained through cultural practices, such as intense meditation or prayer or because of a brain injury that impairs the functioning of the right parietal lobe. Either way, our study suggests that ‘selflessness’ is a neuropsychological foundation of spiritual experiences.”
The research was funded by the MU Center on Religion and the Professions. The study – “Support for a neuropsychological model of spirituality in persons with traumatic brain injury” – was published in the peer-reviewed journal Zygon.
“Our research focused on the personal experience of spiritual transcendence and does not in any way minimize the importance of religion or personal beliefs, nor does it suggest that spiritual experience are related only to neuropsychological activity in the brain,” Johnstone said. “It is important to note that individuals experience their God or higher power in many different ways, but that all people from all religions and beliefs appear to experience these connections in a similar way.”
Men Are From Mars - Neuroscientists Find That Men And Women Respond Differently To Stress
April 1, 2008 — Functional magnetic resonance imaging of men and women under stress showed neuroscientists how their brains differed in response to stressful situations. In men, increased blood flow to the left orbitofrontal cortex suggested activation of the "fight or flight" response. In women, stress activated the limbic system, which is associated with emotional responses.
See also:
Mind & Brain
* Stress
* Mental Health
* Anxiety
* Disorders and Syndromes
* Alcoholism
* Intelligence
Reference
* Functional neuroimaging
* Stress (medicine)
* Sympathetic nervous system
* Sleep deprivation
There are many books and movies that highlight the psychological differences between men and women -- Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus, for example; but now, neurologists say they have brain images that prove male and female brains do work differently -- at least under stress.
Same species, different genders … And now, a new high-tech scientific study reveals the differences between men and women may really start at the top. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania used a high-tech imaging method to scan the brains of 16 men and 16 women. The subjects were placed inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine, or fMRI.
"Using this state-of-the art-functional magnetic resonance imaging technique, we try to directly visualize what the human brain does during stress," Jiongjiong Wang, Ph.D., a research assistant professor of radiology and neurology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, told Ivanhoe.
Researchers then purposely induced moderate performance stress by asking the men and women to count backward by 13, starting at 1,600. Researchers monitored the subject's heart rate. They also measured the blood flow to the brain and checked for cortisol, a stress hormone.
When the scans were completed, neuroscientists consistently found differences between the men's stressed-out brains and the women's. Men responded with increased blood flow to the right prefrontal cortex, responsible for "fight or flight." Women had increased blood flow to the limbic system, which is also associated with a more nurturing and friendly response.
Doctors say this information may someday lead to a screening process for mood disorders. "In the future, when physicians treat patients -- especially depression, PTSD -- they need to take this into account that really, gender matters," Dr. Wang explains.
Other experts caution that hormones, genetics and environmental factors may influence these results, bringing to light yet another difference between men and women. Neuroscientists say the changes in the brain during stress response also lasted longer in women.
WHAT IS fMRI? Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) uses radio waves and a strong magnetic field rather than X-rays to take clear and detailed pictures of internal organs and tissues. fMRI uses this technology to identify regions of the brain where blood vessels are expanding, chemical changes are taking place, or extra oxygen is being delivered.
These are indications that a particular part of the brain is processing information and giving commands to the body. As a patient performs a particular task, the metabolism will increase in the brain area responsible for that task, changing the signal in the MRI image. So by performing specific tasks that correspond to different functions, scientists can locate the part of the brain that governs that function.
FIGHT OR FLIGHT: Certain events act as "stressors," triggering the nervous system to produce hormones to respond to the perceived danger. Specifically, the adrenal glands produce more adrenaline and cortisol, releasing them into the bloodstream. This speeds up heart and breathing rates, and increases blood pressure and metabolism. These and other physical changes help us to react quickly and effectively under pressure.
This is known as the "stress response," or more commonly, as the "fight or flight response." But if even low levels of stress go on too long, it can be detrimental to one's health. The nervous system remains slightly activated and continues to pump out extra stress hormones over an extended period, leaving the person feeling depleted or overwhelmed, and weakening the body's immune system.
STRESS-REDUCING TIPS: There are several easy, practical things people can do to reduce the amount of stress in their lives. (1) Be realistic and don't try to be perfect, or expect others to be so. (2) Don't over-schedule; cut out an activity or two when you start to feel overwhelmed. (3) Get a good night's sleep. (4) Get regular exercise to manage stress -- just not excessive or compulsive exercise -- and follow a healthy diet. (5) Learn to relax by building time into your schedule for reading or a nice long bath.
See also:
Mind & Brain
* Stress
* Mental Health
* Anxiety
* Disorders and Syndromes
* Alcoholism
* Intelligence
Reference
* Functional neuroimaging
* Stress (medicine)
* Sympathetic nervous system
* Sleep deprivation
There are many books and movies that highlight the psychological differences between men and women -- Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus, for example; but now, neurologists say they have brain images that prove male and female brains do work differently -- at least under stress.
Same species, different genders … And now, a new high-tech scientific study reveals the differences between men and women may really start at the top. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania used a high-tech imaging method to scan the brains of 16 men and 16 women. The subjects were placed inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine, or fMRI.
"Using this state-of-the art-functional magnetic resonance imaging technique, we try to directly visualize what the human brain does during stress," Jiongjiong Wang, Ph.D., a research assistant professor of radiology and neurology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, told Ivanhoe.
Researchers then purposely induced moderate performance stress by asking the men and women to count backward by 13, starting at 1,600. Researchers monitored the subject's heart rate. They also measured the blood flow to the brain and checked for cortisol, a stress hormone.
When the scans were completed, neuroscientists consistently found differences between the men's stressed-out brains and the women's. Men responded with increased blood flow to the right prefrontal cortex, responsible for "fight or flight." Women had increased blood flow to the limbic system, which is also associated with a more nurturing and friendly response.
Doctors say this information may someday lead to a screening process for mood disorders. "In the future, when physicians treat patients -- especially depression, PTSD -- they need to take this into account that really, gender matters," Dr. Wang explains.
Other experts caution that hormones, genetics and environmental factors may influence these results, bringing to light yet another difference between men and women. Neuroscientists say the changes in the brain during stress response also lasted longer in women.
WHAT IS fMRI? Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) uses radio waves and a strong magnetic field rather than X-rays to take clear and detailed pictures of internal organs and tissues. fMRI uses this technology to identify regions of the brain where blood vessels are expanding, chemical changes are taking place, or extra oxygen is being delivered.
These are indications that a particular part of the brain is processing information and giving commands to the body. As a patient performs a particular task, the metabolism will increase in the brain area responsible for that task, changing the signal in the MRI image. So by performing specific tasks that correspond to different functions, scientists can locate the part of the brain that governs that function.
FIGHT OR FLIGHT: Certain events act as "stressors," triggering the nervous system to produce hormones to respond to the perceived danger. Specifically, the adrenal glands produce more adrenaline and cortisol, releasing them into the bloodstream. This speeds up heart and breathing rates, and increases blood pressure and metabolism. These and other physical changes help us to react quickly and effectively under pressure.
This is known as the "stress response," or more commonly, as the "fight or flight response." But if even low levels of stress go on too long, it can be detrimental to one's health. The nervous system remains slightly activated and continues to pump out extra stress hormones over an extended period, leaving the person feeling depleted or overwhelmed, and weakening the body's immune system.
STRESS-REDUCING TIPS: There are several easy, practical things people can do to reduce the amount of stress in their lives. (1) Be realistic and don't try to be perfect, or expect others to be so. (2) Don't over-schedule; cut out an activity or two when you start to feel overwhelmed. (3) Get a good night's sleep. (4) Get regular exercise to manage stress -- just not excessive or compulsive exercise -- and follow a healthy diet. (5) Learn to relax by building time into your schedule for reading or a nice long bath.
Race And Gender Determine How Politicians Speak
ScienceDaily (Jan. 13, 2009) — New study looks at speech patterns of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and others. Race and gender influence the way politicians speak, which is not always to their advantage. Camelia Suleiman from Florida International University and Daniel O’Connell from Georgetown University in the US have come to this conclusion as a result of their findings, published online in Psycholinguistic Research.
See also:
Mind & Brain
* Gender Difference
* Racial Issues
* Language Acquisition
Science & Society
* Political Science
* Racial Disparity
* Bioethics
Reference
* Illusion of control
* Conflict resolution research
* Self image
* Misogyny
Suleiman and O’Connell compared the language of male and female, and black and white politicians to determine whether ethnicity and gender play a role in the way they speak. They studied transcripts of interviews between Larry King on CNN TV and Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice. Specifically, they looked at how the politicians’ speech was constructed: the number of syllables spoken, the use of interjections, interruptions, self-referent ‘I’, non-standard English such as ‘gonna’, y ’ know, and laughter.
Their analysis shows that language reflects a social hierarchy that is not explicitly acknowledged. The “subordinate” roles of black race and female gender are revealed in speech patterns with “dominant” white males. And they are expressed differently in conversations with a white female, a black male and a black female. In effect, a degree of racism and sexism is reproduced by the very people who oppose these societal attitudes.
The researchers, in focusing on Barack Obama’s language, in particular, found that his presentation of himself is nothing like the traditional black political orator Martin Luther King or Jesse Jackson. Barack Obama does not deliver the poetic sermon of a past generation of African American leaders. Rather, like Condoleezza Rice, he displays self-confidence and serenity and remains calm and composed under stress. He stays focused and does not communicate obvious emotion.
According to the authors, both Obama and Rice are accomplished models of a new generation of African American leaders. It seems that they need to be even more careful about what they say than their white political colleagues, because they are judged on the use of their language differently than their white counterparts.
Journal reference:
1. Suleiman et al. Race and Gender in Current American Politics: A Discourse-Analytic Perspective. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 2008; 37 (6): 373 DOI: 10.1007/s10936-008-9087-x
Adapted from materials provided by Springer Science+Business Media, via AlphaGalileo.
See also:
Mind & Brain
* Gender Difference
* Racial Issues
* Language Acquisition
Science & Society
* Political Science
* Racial Disparity
* Bioethics
Reference
* Illusion of control
* Conflict resolution research
* Self image
* Misogyny
Suleiman and O’Connell compared the language of male and female, and black and white politicians to determine whether ethnicity and gender play a role in the way they speak. They studied transcripts of interviews between Larry King on CNN TV and Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice. Specifically, they looked at how the politicians’ speech was constructed: the number of syllables spoken, the use of interjections, interruptions, self-referent ‘I’, non-standard English such as ‘gonna’, y ’ know, and laughter.
Their analysis shows that language reflects a social hierarchy that is not explicitly acknowledged. The “subordinate” roles of black race and female gender are revealed in speech patterns with “dominant” white males. And they are expressed differently in conversations with a white female, a black male and a black female. In effect, a degree of racism and sexism is reproduced by the very people who oppose these societal attitudes.
The researchers, in focusing on Barack Obama’s language, in particular, found that his presentation of himself is nothing like the traditional black political orator Martin Luther King or Jesse Jackson. Barack Obama does not deliver the poetic sermon of a past generation of African American leaders. Rather, like Condoleezza Rice, he displays self-confidence and serenity and remains calm and composed under stress. He stays focused and does not communicate obvious emotion.
According to the authors, both Obama and Rice are accomplished models of a new generation of African American leaders. It seems that they need to be even more careful about what they say than their white political colleagues, because they are judged on the use of their language differently than their white counterparts.
Journal reference:
1. Suleiman et al. Race and Gender in Current American Politics: A Discourse-Analytic Perspective. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 2008; 37 (6): 373 DOI: 10.1007/s10936-008-9087-x
Adapted from materials provided by Springer Science+Business Media, via AlphaGalileo.
Perceived Warmth, 'Babyfaceness' Positive Characteristics For Black CEOs
ScienceDaily (Apr. 30, 2009) — As President Barack Obama commemorates his 100th day as the country's first black commander-in-chief, a new study by Kellogg School of Management researchers examines the intersection of race and power in corporate America. While many traits of successful leaders transcend racial or ethnic bounds, this study sought to focus on one particular facet of blacks' ascensions to power: the physical characteristics of so-called "babyfaces," and their influence on perception and achievement.
"The Teddy Bear Effect: Does babyfaceness benefit Black CEOs?" will appear in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science and is co-authored by Robert Livingston and Nicholas Pearce of the Kellogg School.
Searching for traits common to black CEOs who have successfully navigated treacherous cultural and corporate terrain, the researchers demonstrate that babyfaces – and perceived warmer physical appearances and personality traits – can benefit black CEOs and act as disarming mechanisms within the social hierarchy. Black CEOs categorized as having a babyface tend to be at the helm of more prestigious corporations than black CEOs who have a more mature appearance.
"Prior research has shown babyface-type traits are a liability for those striving for a leadership role because they undermine perceptions of competence, but these studies focused on white males," said Livingston, lead author and assistant professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School of Management. "Because a babyface is disarming, we hypothesized that it would provide an advantage to black leaders who have a history of being stigmatized as too threatening to occupy positions of high power."
Methodology
Non-black women and men were shown 40 headshot photos of black men and white women and men. Though the faces were not recognized by participants, all were current or former CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.
Participants were asked to rate how babyfaced, how attractive, and also how old, each person appeared. They also rated each in terms of perceived personality traits. For example, how warm did a person appear? How competent would they be as a leader? Participants were then asked to use those same personality criteria to rate, in general, how they perceive blacks and whites. Finally, participants guessed how much money each person earned.
Babyface Definition
The researchers have identified several traits associated with "babyfaceness" including a rounder face, larger forehead, smaller nose, larger ears and fuller, pouty lips. Despite these individual features, babyface is a "gestalt" or whole that is easily recognizable by people. Babyfaceness is an attribute that generalizes across regions, ethnicities, gender and even species, as identified by social psychologists. There is a universal, evolutionary response to babies across all cultures because infants require special care, attention, and nurturing in order to survive.
This adaptive response to infants is over-generalized to adults who have features that resemble babies. The result is that babyfaced adults are treated differently compared with maturefaced adults: babyfaced adults are considered more warm, innocent and trustworthy.
The hypothesis of the current study was that babyfaceness could serve as a "disarming mechanism" that would attenuate the fear, hostility and aggression typically associated with black males. Thus babyfaceness would facilitate the ascension of black males but not white males.
Results
Babyface features had a clear influence on professional achievement, both perceived and real. Black CEOs were rated as being more babyfaced, and having warmer personalities, than whites.
The more babyfaced the black CEO, the more he was also thought to earn. In terms of real, not just perceived, earnings and achievement, the more babyfaced the black CEO, the more prestigious was the company he actually led, reflected by both Fortune 500 ranking and annual corporate revenue. These perceived and real professional benefits were correlated with physical appearance, not to perceptions of age, which was not found to be linked to babyfaceness.
Livingston pointed out that while the 10 black CEO faces were considered warmer than the white faces, blacks as a group were considered less warm than whites overall. Thus, the visual influence of babyfaceness clearly shifted perception, and the playing field. He said, "To function effectively as an African American male in the U.S. it helps to have a disarming mechanism." A disarming mechanism is a physical or behavioral trait, noted Livingston, that eases perceptions of threat—it signals to whites that they do not have a reason to fear this particular black individual. Babyfaceness is but one example: political conservatism, style of speech or dress, smiling behavior, or even a Harvard education might also serve a similar disarming function.
The research notes disarming mechanisms, like warmth, are only necessary for groups that are perceived to be hostile or threatening by default. Prior research has shown warmth to be counterproductive for white male leaders and women leaders. "Female leaders are already 'disarmed' because of traditional caregiver roles and stereotypes," said Livingston. "Women leaders must prove to be strong and assertive, frequently at the expensive of being perceived as lacking warmth." The implication is that black leaders may have to adopt a gentler leadership style compared with white males who can get angry or pound their fists in order to accomplish leadership objectives.
Beyond the Babyface
While facial features may present natural advantages or obstacles to some, other behavioral traits can be developed and used by most anyone. "There are other mechanisms thought to help minorities function and achieve without stoking envy, resentment, fear," said Livingston. "For example, some point to Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice as someone who internalizes shared ideology with the dominant group, and is therefore seen as non-threatening." Livingston adds that although Barack Obama does not possess all of the typical features associated with babyfaceness per se, he does have a disarming appearance. "Big ears or a simple smile can disarm one's appearance from suggested perceptions of threat that might otherwise be associated with black males. This could serve to increase the appeal of the president or even one of Hollywood's most successful actors—Will Smith," he said.
"The Teddy Bear Effect: Does babyfaceness benefit Black CEOs?" will appear in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science and is co-authored by Robert Livingston and Nicholas Pearce of the Kellogg School.
Searching for traits common to black CEOs who have successfully navigated treacherous cultural and corporate terrain, the researchers demonstrate that babyfaces – and perceived warmer physical appearances and personality traits – can benefit black CEOs and act as disarming mechanisms within the social hierarchy. Black CEOs categorized as having a babyface tend to be at the helm of more prestigious corporations than black CEOs who have a more mature appearance.
"Prior research has shown babyface-type traits are a liability for those striving for a leadership role because they undermine perceptions of competence, but these studies focused on white males," said Livingston, lead author and assistant professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School of Management. "Because a babyface is disarming, we hypothesized that it would provide an advantage to black leaders who have a history of being stigmatized as too threatening to occupy positions of high power."
Methodology
Non-black women and men were shown 40 headshot photos of black men and white women and men. Though the faces were not recognized by participants, all were current or former CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.
Participants were asked to rate how babyfaced, how attractive, and also how old, each person appeared. They also rated each in terms of perceived personality traits. For example, how warm did a person appear? How competent would they be as a leader? Participants were then asked to use those same personality criteria to rate, in general, how they perceive blacks and whites. Finally, participants guessed how much money each person earned.
Babyface Definition
The researchers have identified several traits associated with "babyfaceness" including a rounder face, larger forehead, smaller nose, larger ears and fuller, pouty lips. Despite these individual features, babyface is a "gestalt" or whole that is easily recognizable by people. Babyfaceness is an attribute that generalizes across regions, ethnicities, gender and even species, as identified by social psychologists. There is a universal, evolutionary response to babies across all cultures because infants require special care, attention, and nurturing in order to survive.
This adaptive response to infants is over-generalized to adults who have features that resemble babies. The result is that babyfaced adults are treated differently compared with maturefaced adults: babyfaced adults are considered more warm, innocent and trustworthy.
The hypothesis of the current study was that babyfaceness could serve as a "disarming mechanism" that would attenuate the fear, hostility and aggression typically associated with black males. Thus babyfaceness would facilitate the ascension of black males but not white males.
Results
Babyface features had a clear influence on professional achievement, both perceived and real. Black CEOs were rated as being more babyfaced, and having warmer personalities, than whites.
The more babyfaced the black CEO, the more he was also thought to earn. In terms of real, not just perceived, earnings and achievement, the more babyfaced the black CEO, the more prestigious was the company he actually led, reflected by both Fortune 500 ranking and annual corporate revenue. These perceived and real professional benefits were correlated with physical appearance, not to perceptions of age, which was not found to be linked to babyfaceness.
Livingston pointed out that while the 10 black CEO faces were considered warmer than the white faces, blacks as a group were considered less warm than whites overall. Thus, the visual influence of babyfaceness clearly shifted perception, and the playing field. He said, "To function effectively as an African American male in the U.S. it helps to have a disarming mechanism." A disarming mechanism is a physical or behavioral trait, noted Livingston, that eases perceptions of threat—it signals to whites that they do not have a reason to fear this particular black individual. Babyfaceness is but one example: political conservatism, style of speech or dress, smiling behavior, or even a Harvard education might also serve a similar disarming function.
The research notes disarming mechanisms, like warmth, are only necessary for groups that are perceived to be hostile or threatening by default. Prior research has shown warmth to be counterproductive for white male leaders and women leaders. "Female leaders are already 'disarmed' because of traditional caregiver roles and stereotypes," said Livingston. "Women leaders must prove to be strong and assertive, frequently at the expensive of being perceived as lacking warmth." The implication is that black leaders may have to adopt a gentler leadership style compared with white males who can get angry or pound their fists in order to accomplish leadership objectives.
Beyond the Babyface
While facial features may present natural advantages or obstacles to some, other behavioral traits can be developed and used by most anyone. "There are other mechanisms thought to help minorities function and achieve without stoking envy, resentment, fear," said Livingston. "For example, some point to Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice as someone who internalizes shared ideology with the dominant group, and is therefore seen as non-threatening." Livingston adds that although Barack Obama does not possess all of the typical features associated with babyfaceness per se, he does have a disarming appearance. "Big ears or a simple smile can disarm one's appearance from suggested perceptions of threat that might otherwise be associated with black males. This could serve to increase the appeal of the president or even one of Hollywood's most successful actors—Will Smith," he said.
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