PingPong

As you probably have noticed from some of my previous posts ( this or this other ), I am a big fan of Prof. Steven Pinker . He is both an active scholar and a public intellectual that I hold in great regard. Author of many books, Pinker is mainly interested in psycholinguistics and cognitive science, fields in which he has done major breakthroughs. Apart from the meaning of the ideas he usually advocates for, Pinker is excellent at dissecting knowledge and data into pieces easy to understand by the general public. The latter partners well with his great communication skills to output curated science dissemination, but I believe that it is also the trace of a great mind operation. Recently, I came across a research line of his on "Quantitative Trends in Violence" I did not know about. It stroke me with surprise, first, because it is quite distant from his main area of expertise, and then, because I have a long-standing interest in regularities in History and quantitative an...

A documentary about the possibility of a democracy in the economic institutions.

In my opinion, short films are underestimated and discriminated against the champion of motion pictures that is the feature film. As far as I know, there is no particularly good reason for that, in the same fashion that there are absolutely no good reasons to rank short stories below novels in the literature domain. Just like the latter case, there is a challenge, and I would say as well a delight, in making (for authors) and assimilating (for readers/viewers) a small-packed message with no more stuff than needed.  I remember that Poe was a great advocate of short stories; in fact, I think he didn't write novels at all (ok, I checked: just one). Cortázar did write novels, but I would say he was biased towards short stories as well; probably, he better put this preference as a piece of advice to novice writers and using a boxing match metaphor: "A novel is always winning by points, while a short story ought to win by knock-out". I would say that (among other well-kn...

Omar Khayyam was a Persian mathematician, philosopher, poet and astronomer born in 1048 in Nishapur (modern day Iran). He obtained his early education from a scholar named Sheikh Mohammad Mansuri and later from one of the most renowned scholars of khorasan province. Mathematical Works Khayyam’s most famous works include his highly influential mathematical treatise called ‘Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra’ which he completed in 1070. This treatise highlighted the basic algebraic principles that were ultimately shifted to Europe. He laid the foundation of the Pascal’s triangle with his work on triangular array of binomial coefficients. In 1077 another major work was written by Khayyam namely ‘Sharh ma ashkala min musadarat kitab Uqlidis’ meaning ‘Explanations of the Difficulties in the Postulates of Euclid ’. It was published in English as “On the Difficulties of Euclid’s Definitions. In this book he contributed to non-euclidean geometry even though this was no...

This one is a bounce of Pedro’s post , and a way to say welcome! Some years ago I came across this great Argentinian theater company called Fuerza Bruta through a video of one their plays/performances/shows –I really wouldn’t know how to call them. I think they are quite novel in their approach to the audience (abandoning the fourth-wall theatrical scheme, for instance, but not only). Anyways, I should say I am not up-to-date with recent theater. In my opinion, however, the success of Fuerza Bruta lies in the sharp-minded observations about the modern life they want to convey, and their way to dress such observations so that the message is sound and clear (sometimes moving?) for the spectator. Here you have an example. Enjoy!

In line with another post , here I present yet another movie concerning the concept of reasonable doubt,  this time in the USA judiciary system. This particular movie is not concerned with the doubt as a driving force in the quest for truth, akin to the Cartesian method, but with the doubt as a halting mechanism, to call off any judgments once we've become aware of the intrinsic faults in our reasoning based on evidence. 12 Angry Men is a 1957 film to remember. Old fashion black and white, yes. But nothing in the aesthetical composition of the film will raise any eyebrow in a modern audience. At least, it shouldn't. It is all about full engagement in a logical (and psychological) debate and its smooth evolution towards a turning point. On the one hand, it leaves no time for distractions. One has to fully focus on dialogues. And on the other hand, it deals with universal and timeless topics, such as how to face preconceptions and the ethical need for expressing our own (and ex...

Arca

Viggo Mortensen, reads an English translation of a lecture by Albert Camus in 1946 at the Columbia University. The original lecture was delivered in French and had the title “La Crise de l’homme”, on the occasion of Camus only trip to the United States. What I found disturbing about this lecture is that it does not seem to be written 70 years ago, it could have been written today. What I like about it is that Camus explains to us why we should resist, why we should not simply accept the system that is presented to us as inevitable, or unique, or the only to make sense.

A week or so ago I went to the movie theatre to which I almost exclusively go here in Modena, Sala Truffaut, to watch a movie by Laurie Anderson called Heart of a dog. I think it is a very beautiful movie, a mixture between a poem, a journal, a personal message and a testimony.  It is partially about losing people we love, not loving people we should love, loving a dog, teaching a dog to play the piano, about traumatic experiences from childhood, about the beauty of simple things like walking on the hills during spring. The format is very free and very personal, with the warm and soothing voice of Laurie Anderson (in the version I watched she was speaking in Italian, and yes, it was her) guiding us through the movie.  If ou have the chance, go out and watch it!

The Paris Review is a literary journal founded in Paris in 1953, that later moved to New York. They have an online archive with interviews with writers, organised by decade and called The Art of Fiction, or The art of Poetry, etc. The interviews are fairly extensive and usually start with the description of the place where they were done, the number of sessions they took, the way the writer review the final text, etc. There are many names I do not know and I small number that I know, either because they are so famous or because I have actually read some of their books. And there are some books I have read out of the curiosity these interviews rose. Just for Gabriel, here is the link to the interview with Jorge Luis Borges

No comments. It is simply awesome. Perhaps, it is worth just to point you to Stanford University youtube channel , and to the actual scientific article on the paperfuge , as they called it, including its mathematical description. 

This is a late translated and revisited version of a post from my first blog. Doubt is a 2008 film adapted to the screen by John Patrick Shanley (a Pulitzer prize recipient) from a stage play called Doubt: A Parable. You can feel the theatrical nature of the film: well-centered in characters and not atmospheres, having lots of long scenes and plenty dialogues. The acting is impeccable, not only in the protagonist roles, assumed by Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman, but also in the supporting ones. I remember I was at the edge of my seat watching the Oscar ceremony of 2008 when supporting actresses award was about to be announced. Viola Davis was a nominee... but she didn't win as she surely deserved due to a magnificent scene in the Doubt. But everything comes down to the script, which is brilliant in its economy of resources and its depurated narrative technique. Dialogues are paramount, of course. But the less trivial fact is that there is as much attention paid in wh...

Gabriel, in his last post , mentioned that fact that we often associate art with objects which are more than 2 centuries old but Talbot and Daguerre were presenting their discoveries around 1839, and only after that the art discipline of photography could emerge. Photography as an art form is a very interesting discipline since it is so recent and evolved so fast, fed by the knowledge of more traditional art forms, in particular painting, which sometimes tried to imitate, other times tried to differentiate from and stimulated by continuous technological innovations that both constrained and pushed forward photography. On the other hand, the photographic technique is used so ubiquitously not only within the art but in contexts so diverse as bureaucracy, security, family memories, travel memories, science, that a first approach to the art discipline is often confusing. Why should this picture be considered an art object? Of course, this is one of the questions always present in the h...

This is a late bounce of Claudia's post on art online . One of the best things about spending some time in Italy is having the chance of absorbing art at its best. Nevertheless, the worthwhile art we are unconsciously thinking about is often much more than two-centuries-old. Shame on us. I had the chance to prove me wrong about modern   Italian art when Federico, a friend of ours (that will sooner or later contribute to this blog), took me on a trip to Ferrara.  The excursion planned by Federico was originally intended to cover an exhibition on the occasion of 500 years anniversary from the first edition of the Orlando Furioso , an epic poem by Ludovico Ariosto, that -to my astonishing- was already playing with the Cavalry stories, also in ironical sense, almost 73 years before El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha  by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. But apart from this exhibition, we found another one in Ferrara, L'arte per l'arte  or art f...

Have I mentioned that I am very proud of my country, Cuba? Probably, you guessed it from a different post . The latter was more about our cultural heritage, but there are other levels of our idiosyncrasy that make me really glad to be a Cuban. Some of these levels may be impossible to disentangle from politics, and in fact, they were (are?) boosted by it. I won't launch an ode to the System in Cuba, partially because I think it is full of important faults, but also because there are other objective realities beyond Ideology that one should be bold enough to confront as such. Cuba is well known for their doctors, their health care system, their participation in medical assistance missions around the globe (e.g., Haiti after the earthquake of 2010), as well as for their (free of charges) international school of Medicine for fellows willing to help poor communities back in their home countries. To grasp the essence of Cuban public health care system, you may consult certain indi...

This post is dedicated to my mother, a big fan of the trilogy of movies I am about to suggest. Before Sunrise, written by Richard Linklater and Kim Krizan, is a 1995 romantic movie featuring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy with an astonishing reception among the audience and critics (currently scoring 100% on Rotten Tomatoes!). It is an all-dialogue film centered around only two characters talking to each other in real time for one hour and 40 minutes -a conversation that you would never forget and would hardly disappoint you. After meeting on a train from Budapest, Jesse, a young American man, asks Celine, a young French woman returning to Paris, to get down with him in Vienna and keep him busy wondering around and talking till sunrise when he must take a flight back to the US. Although he uses a quite elaborate (and naive) excuse to convince her, the chemistry between the characters is stunning from the very beginning, and it is not surprising that she agree willingly. While walk...

I think there is no question that one of the most important topics today is the environment and its relation with politics. And, of course, the alternative facts are abundant. That's why I would like to share the texts of George Monbiot, that seem to me very clear and accurate. Still he says, on his website : I have tried to navigate and understand a world that is extraordinarily complex. The useful skill I possess is an ability to read and process a lot of information quickly: on average, I read around 600 pages of source material for every column I write. But this is nowhere near enough. The world’s complexity, and the impossibility of mastering any subject, let alone of achieving a comprehensive overview, means that we will always be wrong in some respects. George Monbiot is a journalist. He writes for The Guardian and he is the author of several books, the latest being How Did We Get into This Mess?   Politics, Equality, Nature . He is also involved in the...

Keeping the fictional bouncing,  I would like to suggest an HBO TV series created by Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta, The Leftovers. If Lindelof ring the bell is probably because you already watched Lost (a show of which Damon Lindelof is also a creator). In such a case, I would either strongly suggest you to watch The Leftovers as well, or advice you keep a safe distance from it, one or the other depending on your reaction to the last episode of Lost. The Leftovers is somehow in line with Lost (and perhaps also with Battlestar Galactica) in the sense that there is more to it than arriving at "the end", where everything might be expected to be explained and clear. The premise, developed in the novel by Perrotta that inspired the show, is the following: an extraordinary event removed 2% of the global population from the face of the Earth instantly. Of course, anyone can see that such a small number cannot affect drastically the functioning of our civilization. What it is le...

This is a late bounce on the radio podcast commented by Claudia. A radio program from BBC Radio 3. The show is called Free Thinking but I have little experience with it apart from this particular podcast I want to share with you. Here you have a very interesting debate on the role Philosophy as a discipline, its life in and outside academia, the possibility of vulgarizing and/or disseminating it, etc. The interviewees (highly accomplish philosophers: MM McCabe, Lucy O'Brian, Nigel Warburton and Constantine Sandis) question whether Philosophy is the History of Philosophy and the incorporation of established philosophical thinking, or the mental engine a philosopher put at work when formulating and discussing any philosophical issue, as well as many other subjects universal or contingent in current times. They even discuss at some point the role of Bryan Magee and his attempts to put Philosophy on prime time TV (BBC). Enjoy!

Since Erfan is dormant, I would like to share with you a British TV series that he suggest me, and that I think is one of the very best science fiction shows that has appeared in a while. Created by Charlie Brooker, Black Mirror (as it is called) is not based on a continuous plot of recurrent characters (such as Lost, Battlestar Galactica, etc.) neither it uses any episodic formula (The X files, Dollhouse, etc.). It is an anthology of stories completely disconnected from each other in its plot and characters as much as in their worldbuilding (the universe in which the plot is embedded in). The episodes are only linked through a late motiv, the impact that technology may have on our inner self and our social relationships, to the point of questioning the moral standards and other high values. Here I want to mention particularly the chapter called "The Entire History of You", which in my opinion is a great example of what series is all about. (Spoiler alert!) This time the...

My response to Gabriel/Federico post .

Van de Schoonheid en de Troost or Of Beauty and Consolation is Dutch TV program hosted by Wim Kayzer and broadcasted in 2000. There are several reasons for me to recomend this tv series. First of all I like the title very much. The title is in itself consoling, says that there is somewhere or somehow the possibility of consolation (that for some reason I feel the need). The second reason is the music of the beginning of each episode. Then, of course, the interviews themselves, since they are long enough and free enough to allow these brilliant people to show a little bit of their work, of their personality, of their idiosyncrasies. And probably the nicest thing of the series is the diversity of the people interviewed, scientists, writers, philosophers, painters, some incredibly shy, some the opposite, some believe in ghosts, most don't, all in all an interesting catalog of the human species. The tv series ends with a show in which they gather many of the guests to discuss the...

I will bounce back the post of Claudia with the danzón. That particular piece  is from a Mexican composer. But although the danzón is a genre well settled in Mexican tradition, it is actually native from Cuba! Before starting, I should say that historiography of Cuban music is still being written or re-written, in the sense that there are lots of myths towards some figures as creators of rhythms and genres, towards the central role or not of Cuban music as an influence in the Caribbean, towards the catalog of 'generic complexes' (group of sibling genres), towards the intrinsic features of a genre that lives or had lived "parasitically" on top of other existing rhythms, and towards the predominant role of some particular rhythms in our Cuban culture. Let along the artificial nature of Salsa, since it is a matter of debate only outside Cuba. There is still room for a systematic and comprehensive view of all, but I personally think that the Cuban music historian that has...

Since Federico is not contributing yet, I will post one of his suggestions on Italian poetry. This is a declamation (more than a reading) by Roberto Herlitzka, and it is part of the Vittorio Gassman's personal anthology of recited poetry from Italian authors. Feel the bucolic environment and the euphemistically romantic tensions. And then, the crescendo...

An ever increasing number of museums is putting their art collection available online. Here are just a few: MoMA The Met The National Galery of Art Rijksmuseum The Hermitage Still, there is nothing like seeing the live, so by your train ticket and go to Milan, or any other place .   Manet e la Parigi moderna Dal 08 Marzo 2017 al 02 Luglio 2017 Milano , Palazzo Reale

Hans Rosling was a Swedish medical doctor, statistician, and educator of health care systems along the world. I was about to put IS when I noticed he died a month ago. He was an amazing public speaker and he was deeply concerned with how to pluralize knowledge on demographics to show real problems of the world in a non-dogmatic way. I think he was a believer on the fact that we can search for solutions to our local struggling in other parts of the world and/or other times. After all, there is enough data to examine all of those spatial and time dependencies, i.e, other political systems, cultures, ethnic composition, not only geography by itself, and History. TED has prepared a playlist only with his conferences. Let it be this a tribute to his teachings. But, actually, I wanted to show this incredible website envisioned by Rosling, Gapminder . There you can play yourself with demographic variables (e.g., annual income per person vs. life expectancy) having the time-evolution ...

The Darwin Debate is a ~50 min 1998 BBC show. It is not the typical documentary but a round table with four panelists and Melvyn Bragg acting as the host. Bragg is just moderating the debate of the panel composed of Steven Pinker, a renown cognitive scientist, psychologist, and linguist;  Jonathan Miller, medical doctor, theater and opera director, actor, etc.; Steve Jones, geneticist specialized in evolution; and Meredith Small, a biological anthropologist. The panelists engage in very deep questions emerging from the analysis of Darwin's theory of natural selection in contemporary times. They often disagree (!), and there are several attempts of speculating about features of culture and society as if they were stemming from evolution. Indeed, The Darwin Debate is not only intended to be an accurate discussion on data and evidence, but it is aiming at performing an intellectual exercise to trigger some awareness on the limits and daily-life implications of Darwin theories. I stron...

Bouncing back Gabriels RSA animate video , I present you yet another nicely done series of videos , this time about ph i losophers, sociologists, and other relevant intellectuals. The School of Life is a company devoted to developing emotional intelligence through the help of culture . They produce a lot of interesting material, maybe not specially elaborated , but that are anyway nice introductions for a series of topics. I think they try to spread knowledge common sense . I leave you one of their videos. Enjoy!

VSauce is a youtube channel created by Michael Stevens, graduated from psychology and English literature and turned educator and Internet personality. In my opinion, nothing in Stevens's academic career, other than his insatiable curiosity and his tremendous discipline, could have ever been used to forecast the success of his enterprise of weekly scripting, directing and hosting high level youtube videos concerning a variety of topics, ranging from human to exact sciences. The quality of the videos had been increasing since the beginning of VSauce back in 2010, not only in its visual appeal but also in the script, didactics, and the selection of subjects. Now VSauce is as mature as any TV show or documentary. Furthermore, the episodes (videos?) are incredibly profound and often self-contained. Here you have a recent example. It is very accurate in its mathematical definitions and the proofs for each statement, while conveying the message to any sufficiently interested audience i...

RSA Animate is a collection of 10 min cartoon-like animations on a whiteboard that partners with a synthesis of a conference given by renown academics in RSA Events . This series is put forward by the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), who aim at a 21st century enlightenment .  I first saw some of the short-film series while being in Cuba. I remember I was astonished by the amount of information they could compress in a 10 min talk. Then, I noticed that there was a great deal of post-processing after the 'natural' 30 min or so talk. Nonetheless, it is still amazing how they can manage to do it so smoothly. The animations deserve special attention. They are not only accompanying the talk but they actually supply complementary information, in terms of irony, cultural references, etc., while marking a step-by-step evolution of the speech in a better way than any slide show could do. Here is an RSA Animate example on "Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us", ...

Guys, I don't know if you already know about the ''Slow science movement'' or not, well this is a wiki definition for it: Slow science  is part of the broader  slow movement . It is based on the belief that  science  should be a slow, steady, methodical process, and that scientists should not be expected to provide "quick fixes" to society's problems. Slow science supports  curiosity -driven  scientific research  and opposes  performance targets . I'm personally interested in it if you remember Gabriel once we had a discussion on the waste of energy and resources to produce junk science and the fact that scientists are losing balance on looking into science.  Sometimes people do not know why they publish and for the sake of what?! it's become a tradition or kinda religion.  I'm most agreed with the directed scientific activities, slowly going ahead and touching the problem, whenever you can swallow the problem with...

TED-Ed is a satellite of TED devoted explicitly to education. Its slogan: Lessons worth spreading . Indeed their didactics is impeccable and directed to the general audience while addressing very complex subjects in science, philosophy, logic, etc. If you would like to master the skills behind scientific dissemination, I strongly suggest you to watch this kind of short films. Take for example this primer on Simpson's paradox, showing that analyzing statistical data is not straightforward at all. 

Following the example of Gabriel of showing you, not one, but a series of very interesting programs, I would like to present you RADIOLAB . Here's what they say about themselves: Radiolab is a show about curiosity. Where sound illuminates ideas, and the boundaries blur between science, philosophy, and human experience. I must say that just listening to them is a very exciting audio experience. At least for me, used to the classic radio programs, it was the discovery of a much richer way of making a radio show. They usually mix several stories in the same show, usually related with science or history, but they always have something of awkward or mysterious that keeps you listening one show after the other. Here is an example of one of their shows.  Enjoy!

Men of Ideas (1978) and The Great Philosophers (1987) are two BBC programs put forward and conducted by the philosopher and author, Bryan Magee. Both programs are based on the interview of an intellectual figure addressing a particular issue, either being current works of themselves that have had a great impact in the interviewee's field of competence (Men of Ideas) or History of Philosophy (The Great Philosophers). Needless to say, Bryan Magee within these programs is not just an interviewer, he is often driving the attention to very elusive or darkly explained subjects. Magee partners with the interviewee to engage in very deep philosophical debates while being an accomplice of the audience without any sign of condescendence. I want to share with you a great example of this kind of talks: an interview with Prof. Noam Chomsky on his works that has revolutionized the field of linguistics and that have had a strong impact in psychology. Chomsky is one the fathers of the cognitiv...

TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) organizes talks posted on their website and available free of charge. There is a wide variety of conferences but they are frequently based on counterintuitive ideas or at least going beyond the established knowledge. Simply put, their motto is Ideas worth spreading . I have found amazing lectures there. I hope you enjoy them all. This one, in particular, is given by Prof. James Flynn and is about the effect of the environment (and the tasks one has to perform to cope with real problems arising within it) in our intelligence quotient. By the way, it has been called the "Flynn effect" the fact that each generation increases their IQ levels. Enjoy!

Firing Line is a TV show from the US I discovered just a few days ago. It is always conducted by William F. Buckley, Jr. of whom it has been said to be  "arguably the most important public intellectual in the United States in the past half-century…".   The program is a talk show based upon the interview of top level intellectual figures from the US and abroad on different topics. It has the nice quality of being intellectually challenging while often dealing with highly polemic issues. See Hoover institution archives on Firing Line broadcasts for more features and details. In particular, the interview with Prof. Thomas Sowell in 1981 (entitled "The economic lot of minorities") contains a profound debate supported with lots of data on race and gender discrimination, and how unemployment and low income rates relate to education in ethnic minorities and women. I hope you reflect on these difficult points, which are still unresolved 36 years after this interview. ...