An Extremely Fascinating Hominid

Salon has a good interview with the anthropologist Barbara J. King about the role played by religion in early homo sapiens and our primate cousins.

I especially like two things about King's reading of our primitive past. First, I think her treatment of religion not as a set of propositions about the universe but as a way of making social and symbolic relationships (i.e. meaning) is basically right. Also, this reinterpretation lets her make a very interesting argument: that religion in this sense isn't an accident of our evolutionary development, but actually let us outcompete the Neanderthals, who had a sophisticated sense of religious practice, but apparently not sophisticated enough.

And like King, I think the Neanderthals -- complicated humanoid primates who walked the earth with homo sapiens but who evolved completely independently -- are just super-cool.

Silverman is Magic

Man, I wish I still had cable. "The Sarah Silverman Program" debuts on Comedy Central tomorrow; the NYT has a write-up of the show in today's paper.

Among its many other attractions -- and I have a man-sized crush on Sarah Silverman that's impossible for me to lie about -- is its inclusion of "Mr Show with Bob and David" alumni Brian Posehn and Jay Johnston in the cast. Jay Johnston may have been the least funny person on that astonishingly funny show, but in the absence of a full list of the show's writers, the fact that both are on board is a good sign.

If only they could snap up the Brothers Odenkirk.

Mass Transit That Isn't

Portland, Oregon just built an Aerial Tram -- yes, a streetcar that is suspended by cables in the air -- connecting the Willamette waterfront to the Oregon Health and Science University. The cars and stations look stunning; the trip sounds like a fantastic tourist experience; and in some ways, the fact that the route is so limited and the cars so few -- just two 78-passenger cabins, probably less than the number of people I was jammed in with last week in one car on the Market-Frankford line in Philly -- just adds to its charm.

One woman, according to the New York Times, said that she'd "like it even more if it was 20 times slower and they served cocktails.” And apparently, so many people wanted to ride it when it opened to the public this weekend that the city decided to make the tram free of charge for every Saturday in February.

The regular fare is $4, roundtrip; an annual pass is $100.

The aerial tram seems to solve some of the problems of mass transit in already crowded cities, like how to create private-right-of-way without digging tunnels or closing streets. But in some ways, this little leg of Portland's already copious transit system isn't concerned -- or at least isn't primarily concerned -- with the typical problems of mass transit at all. The tram shaves ten minutes off the commute by car, but shortening a fifteen minute commute isn't a problem that demands that a city and school make this kind of public outlay. Instead, the goal seems to be principally aesthetic: "Some say it will give eminently livable Portland an aesthetic exclamation point it lacks, something like the Golden Gate Bridge or the Space Needle in Seattle."

Portland may well be the only city that I've never visited that I often think that I would very much like to live in someday.

One Man's "Good Government" Is Another Man's "Creeping Feeling of Dread"

This is one for the "Fascism" tag over at Points of Note. It's from a NYT article titled "Bush Directive Increases Sway on Regulation."

In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president’s priorities.
...
The White House said the executive order was not meant to rein in any one agency. But business executives and consumer advocates said the administration was particularly concerned about rules and guidance issued by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

This, on the other hand, is a handy definition from Wikipedia:

Commissar is the English transliteration of an official title (комисса́р) used in Russia after the Bolshevik revolution and in the Soviet Union, as well as some other Communist countries.

It is used to distinguish the title from similar titles in a variety of languages (such as commissaire in French or kommissar in German), which are usually translated into English as commissioner.

In Russia, the title was associated with a number of administrative and military functions in the Bolshevik forces during the Russian Civil War and the Soviet government afterwards. During the war, the White Army widely used the collective term bolsheviks and commissars for their opponents.

There were two well established titles: People's Commissar (government) and political commissar (military).

The term derives from a similar term in French to describe the equivalent of the rank of Major both in the army of the ancien regime and the French revolution. Such officials were not military officers but reported back to the political authorities: the king and the National Assembly, respectively. It is the use by the French revolutionary government which gave the idea to the Russian one.

Let's avoid the fine points about exactly which horrible phase in human history this reminds us of the most, or if it's some brand new variation of brazen political power-grabbing. I hope we all can agree that this largely-under-the-radar move is six different kinds of messed up.

Just Larking About

The UK and Ireland have their own version of Apple's Justin Long/John Hodgman Mac vs. PC ads. Good show. (Via CNET.)

Reflecting Reading

Just bouncing a couple of really good links along. The first, via Arts and Letters Daily, is a first-rate essay by Joseph Epstein about turning 70. It's smart, and often funny -- I read it out loud to my wife, and it performs very well. The most wistful part, at least for me, is when he lists the books he hopes to re-read before he dies. (He's already knocked out Tolstoy'sWar and Peace, and hopes to give Proust, Cervantes, Herodotus, and Montaigne one more go.)

The other, via Snarkmarket, is Michael Pollan's essay on "Nutritionism" from The New York Times Magazine. Calling it an essay on "nutritionism" is potentially misleading -- that strange word is one of at least a dozen terrific ideas, observations, and arguments Pollan makes about the history of our eating habits before it's all through. This is perfect long-form journalism -- too short for a book, way too long for a story, op-ed, or blog post. In addition to making you think, it just might make you change your life. It also makes me think that I should give Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma a whirl. After all, the vagaries of my diet aside, I'm still only 27 -- Herodotus can wait a little longer.

Salute the Uniform (and Only the Uniform)

My goodness, this is good: Garry Wills in the New York Times on the pretense of the phrase "Our Commander-in-Chief."

Email and Blogging, Copyright and Test Prep

Over at Snarkmarket on January 5, I wrote in a comment about something I found peculiar in my own internet habits. Here's the relevant chunk of my comment:

I'll often blog or comment on somebody else's article, but hardly ever email an author directly to tell him or her what I think. Part of the electronic public wants to continue the conversation with the author, but many of us are having our own conversation about somebody's thoughts, deeds, or words without ANY reference or input from them directly. This is understandable when it's an author, politician, artist, or other public figure -- there's a tradition there of having some kind of divide between the people who talk and those who are talked about. When it's other people who are in a similar situation to our own, it's more than a little weird.

A few days ago, I decided to break out of this habit and email another blogger directly rather than blogging on his post. The blogger happened to be Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing. Doctorow posted an anecdote sent to him by a friend about a copyright-protection clause the friend was made to sign when taking the GRE (Graduate Record Examination). Here's the text of Doctorow's post:

GREs: Cheating == copyright infringement

Friend of Boing Boing sez, "I took the GRE this afternoon, at a computer testing center in Brooklyn. I was forced to sign (and copy in longhand!) a statement about how I wouldn't tell anyone what was on the test. I was particularly upset by the following statement."

If I reproduce test questions in any manner I am subject to a copyright infringement lawsuit and any other action(s) ETS may take.

"I can understand ETS saying that telling someone what's on the GRE is dishonorable behavior, and that if you're found cheating they'll 'take measures' against you -- perhaps invalidating test scores. But 'copyright infringement lawsuit'? That's crazy talk!"

I'm more or less sympathetic with Doctorow and his copyright abuse hobbyhorse, but it seemed like there was an important part of this story that the friend (and Doctorow, by passing it along without comment) misunderstood. So I found Doctorow's email address by following the link from his Boing Boing site to his personal page, Craphound. Actually, its full title is "Cory Doctorow's Craphound.com."

Here's the text of my email:

Dear Cory,

I read your recent Boing Boing post on GREs and the copyright waiver
your friend was made to sign. Having worked for several test prep
companies and taught the GRE in particular, I can say that ETS is much
less concerned with student-to-student cheating than it is the
unauthorized reproduction of test questions by companies like Kaplan,
Princeton Review, and other test prep providers.

ETS publishes its own book of sample GRE exams
(http://store.digitalriver.com/store/ets/DisplayCategoryProductListPage/categoryID.3551800)
that are authentic, preadministered tests. Test prep companies have to
pay to develop their own sample tests and questions for their courses,
based on the publicly available ETS materials. Unlike ETS, they're not
allowed to say that their questions are "actual" test questions...
although it's been known to happen that some are slightly modified or
outright lifted versions of ETS-developed questions.

Best,

--Tim

To me, at least, this is a more interesting story than the one Doctorow tells. It's not that the GRE is equating cheating with copyright violation. It's that they're not really concerned with cheating at all, or at least, not as much as they are with protecting their own intellectual property, which just so happens to provide a lucrative publishing business on top of their primary business of writing and administering tests.

I had high hopes that Doctorow would add a chunk of my clarification to Boing Boing, not least because the bloggers there do that sort of thing all the time. But it's been three days, and no luck. I don't know if he hasn't seen the email, if he doesn't trust it, or just isn't interested in clarifying the story. (Instead, he posted on Craphound about how he'd made Forbes's list of the "Top 25 Web Celebrities.")

I don't want to be too hard on Doctorow. I very nearly called another blogger a coward for not posting a critical comment, when it turned out that the blog software just wasn't working the way it was supposed to. But it's left me a little down on the idea of carrying on direct conversations with other bloggers. Blogging may be the public sphere, but it doesn't leave much room for conversations on the side. Unless next time, I try Xeni Jardin.

More Brooklyn Photos

The Brooklyn Museum had two top-notch shows that I got to see with my sister and cousin. It was the last day of the big Annie Leibovitz retrospective, and there were no separate tickets to see the special exhibition, so the place was packed: amusement-park length lines and bodies smashed against each other all around.

Here's a good pic of one of AL's photos of Susan Sontag:



There was also a special exhibition of Ron Mueck's work that I'd read about. It was startling, but after all the hype I was surprised to find myself underwhelmed. Mueck does miniature and gigantic renderings of human bodies, using silicone and other materials to faithfully recreate individual strands of hair, etc. Here's a good image:



I took two photos myself, using the iSight camera on my laptop, which proved to be surprisingly good for this sort of thing. The museum's wifi capability was a real lifesaver too, as I was able to figure out when I could catch a train back to Philly. Here's one of Mueck's sculptures, surrounded by the thronging, curious crowd.



The display room where Mueck's work was shown was strangely empty, especially compared to the packed-to-the-gills, not-entirely-coherent displays in the permanent collection. Immediately across from the large statue I just photographed was a utility door with an electrical outlet on either side. I made a long Duchampian joke about the door being a true (if accidental) work of genius: the "really real" in a room of clever, conspicuous fakes. "The unopened door," I said, "both invites and resists us."



That said, I remain unconvinced that I'm not (accidentally) right. To quote Oscar Wilde: "it is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth."

Cover For the Next Swearing at Motorists Album

Brandon and I in Brooklyn, January 2007.