Uneasy neighbors, part 1. Last month, I went to Washington, Illinois to conduct research and give a talk about a creative project I’m finally getting my hands around. The surprisingly lush, rolling prairie landscape of Tazewell County, the town of Washington’s old central square with its bandstand and gorgeous old buildings, and Dutch Lane just north of town will always maintain quasi-mythical status in my mind. My father, a lifelong Mennonite minister, referred often in his sermons to this place he was raised and lived until he left to complete alternative service as a conscientious objector during the Korean War in the 1950s. … (Si Omnia Ficta)
How to talk to science deniers. There is a pernicious belief spreading within the skeptic community that it’s a waste of time to talk to science deniers, so our efforts are better spent, well, doing what, exactly? I’ve been to plenty of skeptic conferences where we all talk to each other and pat ourselves on the back in recognition of just how cleverly we know how to debunk Gwyneth Paltrow’s latest Goop nonsense. Meanwhile, Paltrow keeps laughing all the way to the bank. A major reason advanced by some skeptics for why it is a waste of time to talk to what ought to be our primary target audience is an empirical finding known as the backfire effect. This is the alleged phenomenon by which if people who are firmly convinced of a certain notion are presented with contrary evidence, they will dig in more deeply. Thus, the lamentable result of activities such as fact checking is actually to reinforce the very beliefs we skeptics attempt to undermine. … (Skeptical Inquirer)
The great libraries of Rome. It’s around 200 CE, in Ephesus, an Aegean city of Greek roots, now a major hub of the Roman Empire. Meandering down marble-paved Curetes Street, a dweller is lost in the bustle of the town, procuring produce and wares in shops tucked beneath the colonnades, attending the public baths – even a conveniently placed brothel. It all plays out alongside merchants from across the Mediterranean, who disembark their ships to transport cargos and conduct business in the great depot between West and East. They make their way past the shrine to the emperor Hadrian and the nymphaeum of the emperor Trajan, bold reminders that the Ephesians, in their prosperity, are now part of the realm in faraway Rome. And there, culminating at the end of this lively thoroughfare at a slight angle, as though gradually revealing itself, lies a theatrical marble-clad façade of elegant Corinthian columns, exquisite reliefs and wordy inscriptions. Up a short flight of stairs, flanked by statues, three large doors offer a glimpse into a single large room, colonnaded and high-ceilinged. Thousands of scrolls are carefully stacked into rectangular recesses in the walls. The doors to the towering Library of Celsus are flung wide open: anyone can enter this shrine to the written word. … (Aeon)
Einstein and Oppenheimer’s real relationship was cordial and complicated. There’s a gutting scene midway through Oppenheimer that finds Cillian Murphy’s J. Robert Oppenheimer at one of his lowest moments. Despite the scientist’s service to his country, he’s being accused of harboring treasonous sympathies; an unofficial trial with a foregone conclusion is dragging him through the mud. Outside his home in Princeton, he encounters a colleague: Albert Einstein (Tom Conti), who doesn’t seem to get why his fellow physicist is lying down and taking it. If this is the reward the American government gives Oppenheimer after the years he spent developing the nuclear bomb that ended World War II, Einstein tells him in the film, Oppenheimer should simply “turn his back” on America. (It’s what Einstein was forced to do to his homeland of Germany, after all—and for understandable reasons, he would never trust governments or politicians.) What the essentially stateless Einstein doesn’t understand is that for New York City–born Oppenheimer, this simply isn’t an option. “Damnit,” he replies, “I happen to love this country.” … (Vanity Fair)
Aristotle and the art of friendship. How many friends do you have? Are they really your friends? Is it possible that your friends are using you for utility or pleasure? If you have never thought about these questions, then you really should. Aristotle certainly did. Aristotle addresses the question of friendship in Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII. Friendship, Aristotle tells us, is of supreme importance. Moreover, it is essential to our happiness. As the philosopher says, “No one would choose to live a friendless existence, even on the condition of having all other good things” (Nicomachean Ethics, Book VIII). It doesn’t matter whether you are rich or poor; friendship is essential to our lives. Aristotle tells us that if we are rich and prosperous, then we will need friends to partake in our beneficence and to help protect our prosperity. Conversely, if you are poor, friendship is viewed as one of the only refuges from misery. … (Classical Wisdom)
Thanks for the article about the Mennonites on the Illinois prairie. I grew up in that area in the 50s in a Baptist family with the KJV, the Hardy Boys books, and 5 cent RC Cola.
A sad quote from a NYT article: "The museum disputed that the larger-than-life statue, which investigators believe depicts the great Roman statesman Marcus Aurelius, was even from Turkey and suggested that it was really the torso of a philosopher, not an emperor." Ooops. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/19/arts/cleveland-museum-seizure-marcus-aurelius-bronze.html