THIS BLOG HAS MOVED TO
http://node801.blogspot.com/
I am only using this space for file storage, etc., but I am leaving it up for the foreseeable future since it contains messages
to those in my courses.
DNA pioneer's own genes raise questions about the meaning of race
Commentary from By Arthur Caplan, Ph.D.
msnbc.com contributor http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22248094/
updated 8:36 a.m. ET, Fri., Dec. 14, 2007
"An Iceland-based genomics company, deCODE genetics, <BR>conducted an analysis of Watson's DNA, which Watson had<BR>
allowed to be placed on the Internet, and found <BR>that 16 percent of his genes are likely to have come <BR>from
a black ancestor.....<BR>
Indeed, the racial outing of Watson was quite a surprise —<BR> most likely to the 79-year-old Nobel-prize winner. <BR>This
past October he was forced to cancel a tour <BR>promoting his new book in England after opining in a <BR>British
newspaper that he felt “inherently gloomy about<BR> the prospects for Africa” because “all our social<BR> policies
are based on the fact that their intelligence is <BR>the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really.” <BR>
Jim’s fretting left him without a job at home — he retired from his job as <BR>chancellor at the Cold Spring Harbor
Laboratory in New<BR> York — and no longer especially welcome on the<BR> speaking circuit anywhere serious. Finding
out one has <BR>black genes seems especially inconvenient for somebody<BR> proclaiming blacks to be genetically
inferior."<BR>
Tom Feilden reports on the EU providing protection for primates in medical experimentation and for banning
experiments on the great apes all together. "Underpinning the draft directive is the principle of the 3R's -
reducing the number of animals to a minimum, refining experiments to alleviate suffering, and replacing animals
with alternatives wherever possible. It's an approach that has been pioneered here in the UK, and some are already referring
to the plan as a Europe-wide adoption of
"the British model"." http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/today/tomfeilden/2008/11/protection_for_great_apes.html
Listen to his report here: Tom
Feilden reports
The proposals seem fairly consistent with those proposed by Darwin.
It was a staple of the regimes of the Cold War to doctor photographs. Winston's job at the Ministry in 1984 was rewriting
history using such photographs. There is a good, though out of print, work by David King The Commissar Vanishes,
which details Stalinist photo techniques.
See the online exhibit at the Newseum http://www.newseum.org/berlinwall/commissar_vanishes/
Now the BBC has reported similar manipulations of recent photos of the
North Korean "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il in their story
'Fake photo' revives Kim rumours http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7715458.stm
Go to my course materials page to get the pdf of Eco's Casablanca.
Cultural Studies-- Short "interview" with Umberto Eco in New York TImes Magazine
In the New York Times Magazine today is a short "interview" with Eco. "Interview" because reporter writer
has been known to violate Times policy and condense or alter or take out of context what was said. The NYTimes own Public
Editor did a couple of pieces recently on the issue. Nevertheless, it is worth reading if only because of Eco's views on media,
politics, and his "invention" of Dan Brown.
You have to register with the Times (it is free) to view the article.
Questions for Umberto Eco
Media Studies
Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON
Published: November 25, 2007
Q: Although you’re known best as the author of the highbrow murder mystery “The Name of the Rose,” you’re also a prolific
political commentator whose essays have now been collected in a book, “Turning Back the Clock,” in which you warn against
the dangers of “media populism.” How would you define that term?
A: Media populism means appealing to people directly through media. A politician who can master the media can shape political
affairs outside of parliament and even eliminate the mediation of parliament.
Q: Much of your book is an assault on Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister of Italy who used his media empire to assist
his political ends.
A: From ’94 to ’95, and from 2001 to 2006, Berlusconi was the richest man in Italy, the prime minister, the owner of three
TV channels and controller of the three state channels. He is a phenomenon that could happen and is maybe happening in other
countries. And the mechanism will be the same.
But here we have the F.C.C. and other federal agencies to prevent the sort of monopolies that would allow a politician to
control the country’s newspapers and TV stations. In the States, there is still a great separation between the media and political
power, at least in principle.
Q: So why would any country besides Italy be at risk of having the media takeover you describe?
A: One of the reasons why foreigners are so interested in the Italian case is that Italy was in the last century a laboratory.
It started with the Futurists. Their manifesto was in 1909. Then fascism — it was tested in the Italian laboratory and then
it migrated to Spain, to the Balkans, to Germany.
Q: Are you saying that Germany got the idea of fascism from Italy?
A: Oh, certainly. According to what the historians say, it is so.
Maybe just the Italian historians. If you don’t like it, don’t tell it. I am indifferent.
Q: You’re saying that Italy was a trendsetter in both fashion — or art — and fascism?
A: Yes, O.K., why not?
Q: What do you make of Berlusconi’s successor, Romano Prodi, who was elected last year and has shifted the government leftward?
A: He is a friend. I like him, but I think he has been overwhelmed by the infighting after the election within his own majority.
Berlusconi has the advantage of being a big actor. Prodi is not an actor, which is not a crime, but it is a weakness.
Prodi is an intellectual as opposed to a businessman? Yes, he was a professor of economics. In the early ’90s, Prodi was also
a teacher in one of my programs. Suddenly he went into politics.
Q: You’re referring to the department of communications at the University of Bologna, where you’re a professor of semiotics.
A: I retired this month. I am 75.
Q: Have you ever wanted to go into politics?
A: No, because I think everybody must do his job.
Q: Do you see yourself mainly as a novelist?
A: I feel that I am a scholar who only with the left hand writes novels.
Q: I am wondering if you read Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code,” which some critics see as the pop version of your “Name of the
Rose.”
A: I was obliged to read it because everybody was asking me about it. My answer is that Dan Brown is one of the characters
in my novel, “Foucault’s Pendulum,” which is about people who start believing in occult stuff.
Q: But you yourself seem interested in the kabbalah, alchemy and other occult practices explored in the novel.
A: No, in “Foucault’s Pendulum” I wrote the grotesque representation of these kind of people. So Dan Brown is one of my creatures.
Q: Do you care if people read your novels 100 years from now?
A: If somebody writes a book and doesn’t care for the survival of that book, he’s an imbecile.
INTERVIEW CONDUCTED, CONDENSED AND EDITED BY DEBORAH SOLOMON
The Brian Lehrer Show US Torture Memo
How High Up?
Philippe Sands, international lawyer, professor of law at University College London and author of Torture Team: Rumsfeld's
Memo and the Betrayal of American Values, discusses his Vanity Fair article on the Bush Administration and torture and whether
any individuals might be in legal jeopardy.
Link to a 2003 memo from the Department of Justice saying torture of foreign nationals is lawful (pdf)
Audubon exhibit at the New York Historical Society
There is an exhibit of Audubon painting at the New York Historical
Society right now until March 26th. Audubon's friendship and
scientific partnership with John and Maria Bachman is discussed in the
readings. The link below is to the exhibit.
The New York Historical Society has the collection of
Audubon's work for Bird's
of America.
Science and the Origins of Race, SS. 490: Science News Sites
The question came up where to find accessible science news. Here are a few. Remember that
some of
these may be available via the Pratt's online
services. Make sure to check with them or to ask a reference
librarian
about their databases.
Perhaps the most
respected, though not so accessible both in terms of the
publication and because of its cost, is Nature http://www.nature.com/nature/index.html
Compare the analyzes of repetition, style, commodity, and fetish as found in the readings by Eco and Horkheimer and Adorno.
How does Hall make use of, or critique, these views in his encoding-decoding essay?
This essay should be five pages, rather than the 10 pages noted in the syllabus, and is due on March 12.
You may submit your essay via email.
Compare the analyzes of repetition, style, commodity, and fetish as found in the readings by Eco and Horkheimer and Adorno.
How does Hall make use of, or critique, these views in his encoding-decoding essay?
This essay should be five pages, rather than the 10 pages noted in the syllabus, and is due on March 12.
You may submit your essay via email.
A pdf of the slides from today are on available on my site, as well.
Online Exhibition of Ernst Haeckel's Art Forms in Nature
Online Exhibition of Ernst Haeckel's Art Forms in Nature
Check out this site, especially the bio and the plates available here:
http://www.mblwhoilibrary.org/haeckel/
Haeckel's illustration of the developing embryos are still standard in many text books, though the accuracy of some of the
features has been called into question. Next to Huxley, Haeckel was Darwin's most important popularizer, though Haeckel's
views would have been more aligned in general with Spencer than Darwin. Haeckel's Monists had connections with the German
Thule Society, which will be mentioned later in the readings.
His illustrations are discussed in the evolution debate that we will be reviewing as well.
I have made some changes for the last meeting, so read Stuart Hall in During and this short piece by Deleuze
http://www.n5m.org/n5m2/media/texts/deleuze.htm
The assignment for your midterm essay was to critique (as in analyze) some of what you find connecting Horkheimer and Adorno's
Culture Industry chapter, Eco's essay on Casablanca, and Borges' Pierre Menard.
Keeping in mind what you found in answering this question, discuss them in the context of Stuart Hall's article "Cultural
Studies and its Theoretical Legacies" from the During reader.
Hall lays out a genealogy of Cultural Studies that addresses some of the political commitments involved in this work. His
implicit argument is that the era when work in Cultural Studies maintained its coherence through these shared objects of study,
interventions, commitments, and ideologies has come to an end. Paradoxically, this end comes precisely when Cultural Studies
becomes institutionalized in the universities in the United States. This may be, as Marx would have had it, either tragic
or farcical. But the question to consider is less whether Cultural Studies is viable as an academic field, than it is to
consider whether or not the work that you have encountered is still of use, or if its theoretical legacies render it only
of historical interest. What do you think can be salvaged from the wreckage?
______
Your essay should be concise, and should not exceed 8-12 typed pages.
Cultural Studies-- Short "interview" with Umberto Eco in New York TImes Magazine
In the New York Times Magazine today is a short "interview" with Eco. "Interview" because reporter writer
has been known to violate Times policy and condense or alter or take out of context what was said. The NYTimes own Public
Editor did a couple of pieces recently on the issue. Nevertheless, it is worth reading if only because of Eco's views on
media, politics, and his "invention" of Dan Brown.
You have to register with the Times (it is free) to view the article.
Questions for Umberto Eco
Media Studies
Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON
Published: November 25, 2007
Q: Although you’re known best as the author of the highbrow murder mystery “The Name of the Rose,” you’re also a prolific
political commentator whose essays have now been collected in a book, “Turning Back the Clock,” in which you warn against
the dangers of “media populism.” How would you define that term?
A: Media populism means appealing to people directly through media. A politician who can master the media can shape political
affairs outside of parliament and even eliminate the mediation of parliament.
Q: Much of your book is an assault on Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister of Italy who used his media empire to assist
his political ends.
A: From ’94 to ’95, and from 2001 to 2006, Berlusconi was the richest man in Italy, the prime minister, the owner of three
TV channels and controller of the three state channels. He is a phenomenon that could happen and is maybe happening in other
countries. And the mechanism will be the same.
But here we have the F.C.C. and other federal agencies to prevent the sort of monopolies that would allow a politician to
control the country’s newspapers and TV stations. In the States, there is still a great separation between the media and political
power, at least in principle.
Q: So why would any country besides Italy be at risk of having the media takeover you describe?
A: One of the reasons why foreigners are so interested in the Italian case is that Italy was in the last century a laboratory.
It started with the Futurists. Their manifesto was in 1909. Then fascism — it was tested in the Italian laboratory and then
it migrated to Spain, to the Balkans, to Germany.
Q: Are you saying that Germany got the idea of fascism from Italy?
A: Oh, certainly. According to what the historians say, it is so.
Maybe just the Italian historians. If you don’t like it, don’t tell it. I am indifferent.
Q: You’re saying that Italy was a trendsetter in both fashion — or art — and fascism?
A: Yes, O.K., why not?
Q: What do you make of Berlusconi’s successor, Romano Prodi, who was elected last year and has shifted the government leftward?
A: He is a friend. I like him, but I think he has been overwhelmed by the infighting after the election within his own majority.
Berlusconi has the advantage of being a big actor. Prodi is not an actor, which is not a crime, but it is a weakness.
Prodi is an intellectual as opposed to a businessman? Yes, he was a professor of economics. In the early ’90s, Prodi was also
a teacher in one of my programs. Suddenly he went into politics.
Q: You’re referring to the department of communications at the University of Bologna, where you’re a professor of semiotics.
A: I retired this month. I am 75.
Q: Have you ever wanted to go into politics?
A: No, because I think everybody must do his job.
Q: Do you see yourself mainly as a novelist?
A: I feel that I am a scholar who only with the left hand writes novels.
Q: I am wondering if you read Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code,” which some critics see as the pop version of your “Name of the
Rose.”
A: I was obliged to read it because everybody was asking me about it. My answer is that Dan Brown is one of the characters
in my novel, “Foucault’s Pendulum,” which is about people who start believing in occult stuff.
Q: But you yourself seem interested in the kabbalah, alchemy and other occult practices explored in the novel.
A: No, in “Foucault’s Pendulum” I wrote the grotesque representation of these kind of people. So Dan Brown is one of my creatures.
Q: Do you care if people read your novels 100 years from now?
A: If somebody writes a book and doesn’t care for the survival of that book, he’s an imbecile.
INTERVIEW CONDUCTED, CONDENSED AND EDITED BY DEBORAH SOLOMON
