Pope, Not-Yet-Easter 2013

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More on Philip Roth

February 1st, 2013

Philip Roth

Philip Roth: Unmasked

American Masters explores the life and career of Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning novelist Philip Roth, often referred to as the greatest living American writer. Reclusive and diffident, Roth grants very few interviews, but for the first time, allowed a journalist to spend 10 days interviewing him on camera.

The result is Philip Roth: Unmasked, a 90-minute documentary that features Roth freely discussing very intimate aspects of his life and art as he has never done before. The film has its world theatrical premiere March 13-19 for one week only at Film Forum in New York City and premieres nationally Friday, March 29 on PBS (check local listings) in honor of Roth’s 80th birthday.

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Philip Roth on PBS

My local public TV station will air a program on Philip Roth at 9:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time today, Good Friday. I am looking forward to this program. (I live close to Roth's home town Newark, New Jersey.)
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Ronald Dworkin on Atheism and Religion

This is an interesting essay: Ronald Dworkin, Religion without God New York Review of Books (April 4 [sic], 2013).

The New York Review's blurb states: "Before he died on February 14, Ronald Dworkin sent to The New York Review a text of his new book, Religion Without God, to be published by Harvard University Press later this year. We publish here an excerpt from the first chapter."
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Early Morning in Liberty Park

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President Obama and Political Hackery

President Obama is sometimes a person of extraordinary gifts. For example, his recent talk to students in Jerusalem was eloquent, wise, and humane. But sometimes Obama is a creature of pure expedience. See his endorsement of Mayor Jerramiah Healy of Jersey City. This endorsement is truly appalling. Healy is a tawdry political hack.

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Meister des Hausbuches (1475)

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President Obama's (Semi-)Secret Global Warfare

This op-ed piece discusses Obama's secret and semi-secret use of drone warfare around the world: Mary L. Dudziak, Obama's Nixonian Precedent, NYTimes (March 21, 2013).

Ms. Dudziak concludes, "The Cambodia bombing, far from providing a valuable precedent for today’s counterterrorism campaign, illustrates the trouble with secrecy: It doesn’t work."
I would have thought that the bigger problem is the possible illegality of secret drone warfare around the world.
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John Sexton

Although I personally very much dislike the "superstar" system that President Sexton apparently has run at NYU - faculty superstars, so-called, get paid a lot more than "ordinary" faculty members - I find it hard to sympathize with the NYU arts & science faculty's vote of no confidence in him. Sexton has done an awful lot to make NYU one of the world's leading universities.

Your opinion?

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Rand Paul II

Rand Paul lecture on foreign policy
See also Douthat on Rand Paul..
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Hero Worship

Hero worship reminiscent of that for Josef Stalin.
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Rand Paul, Drones, U.S. Citizens, and Due Process

Rand Paul defends due process for U.S. "noncombatants" (citizens) on U.S. soil. 

See C-Span.

Rand Paul for President?
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USA SCIENCE & ENGINEERING FESTIVAL – ROLE MODELS IN SCIENCE & ENGINEERING ACHIEVEMENT

Lofti Asker Zadeh

Lotfi Asker Zadeh -- Computer Scientist and Mathematician

The Father of the scientific concept,"Fuzzy Logic", as well as "Fuzzy Sets" and "Fuzzy Systems"

You've likely heard of the term "Fuzzy Logic", or "Fuzzy Mathematics". But despite what their names may imply, there is nothing inexact about these scientific concepts were formulated, says Lotfi Asker Zadeh, the famous UC Berkeley University mathematician and computer scientist who coined the names of these theories and spent a career advancing their applications.

Known as "The Father of Fuzzy Logic",Lotfi was born in 1921 in Baku, Soviet Azerbaijan to an Iranian father (a journalist) and a Russian mother (a pediatrician). In 1931, when Zadeh was ten years old, he moved with his family to Tehran, Iran where he was enrolled in Alborz College (an American-run Presbyterian school), where he was educated for the next eight years. In 1942, he graduated from the University of Tehran with a degree in electrical engineering and emigrated to the U.S. the following year, enrolling at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Why He's Important: While a professor and scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, he published his seminal work on "Fuzzy Sets" in 1965 in which he detailed the mathematics of what he called the Fuzzy Set Theory. In 1973, he formally proposed his theory of "Fuzzy Logic", which, based on precise formulas, began allowing scientists, mathematicians and others to make accurate, realistic research data decisions when working in environments of incomplete information, uncertainty and imprecision. Fuzzy Logic does this by allowing for approximate values and inferences as well as for incomplete or ambiguous data (fuzzy data) -- instead of relying solely on crisp data (binary yes/no choices).

Other Achievements: Fuzzy Logic and his Fuzzy Set theory in general have been applied to numerous fields – from computer technology and control theory to artificial intelligence. Lotfi is also credited, along with John Ragazzini in 1952 with pioneering the development of the z-transform method in discrete time signal processing and analysis. These methods are now standard in digital signal processing, digital control, and other discrete-time systems used in industry and research. His latest work includes computing with words and perceptions.
Education: Lotfi received his Master's degree in electrical engineering from MIT in 1946, and his Ph.D in the same discipline from Columbia University where he taught for 10 years before joining UC Berkeley in 1959.

In His Own Words: Commenting how he came up with the name "Fuzzy Logic," he says: "I decided on the word 'fuzzy' because I felt it most accurately described what was going on in the theory. I could have chosen another term that would have been more 'respectable'. For instance, I had thought about using the word 'soft', but that really didn't describe accurately what I had in mind. Nor did 'unsharp', 'blurred', or 'elastic'. In the end, I couldn't think of anything more accurate so I settled on "'fuzzy'".

At age 92, Dr. Zadeh still remains active in his field. He serves as an editor of the International Journal of Computational Cognition, and his website at UC Berkeley lists him as Professor in the Graduate School of Computer Science. In addition, his Facebook page reports that he still goes to his office at UC Berkeley everyday whenever he is not out of town at national or international professional conferences.

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Infrared Andromeda

Ain't nature magnificent?

ESA/Herschel/PACS/SPIRE/J.Fritz, U.Gent/XMM-Newton/EPIC/W. Pietsch, MPE

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Robust Conversation

Some politicians (and some other people too) are wont to say, now and then, that the public should "have a conversation" about this or that issue. But most political talk is not much like a dinner conversation; most of it is much more like an argument. People who agree about fundamentals have conversations. The rest of us have arguments (unless we keep quiet).  &&& The dynamic evidence page

An Interesting Meditation on Pope Benedict XVI

Ross Douthat, The Ratzinger Legacy NYTimes (March 2, 2013):

It was the work of Ratzinger’s subsequent career, first as John Paul II’s doctrinal policeman and then as his successor, to re-establish where Catholicism actually stood. This was mostly a project of reassertion: yes, the church still believes in the Resurrection, the Trinity and the Virgin birth. Yes, the church still opposes abortion, divorce, sex outside of marriage. Yes, the church still considers itself the one true faith. And yes — this above all, for a man whose chief gifts were intellectual — the church believes that its doctrines are compatible with reason, scholarship and science.

[snip, snip]

[Ratzinger] did stabilize Catholicism, especially in America, to an extent that was far from inevitable 40 years ago. The church’s civil wars continued, but without producing major schisms. Mass attendance stopped its plunge and gradually leveled off, holding up even during some of the worst sex abuse revelations. Vocations likewise stabilized, and both ordinations and interest in religious life have actually risen modestly over the last decade. Today’s American Catholics, while deeply divided, are more favorably disposed to both the pope emeritus and the current direction of the church than press coverage sometimes suggests.

[snip, snip]

But for all of Catholicism’s problems, the Christian denominations that did not have a Ratzinger — those churches that persisted in the spirit of the 1970s and didn’t reassert a doctrinal core — have generally fared worse. There are millions of lapsed Catholics, but the church still has a higher retention rate by far than most mainline Protestant denominations. Indeed, it is difficult to pick out a major religious body where the progressive course urged by so many of Ratzinger’s critics has increased vitality and growth.

This doesn’t mean there isn’t some further version of reform, some unexpected synthesis of tradition and innovation, that would serve Catholicism well. And if such a path exists, Pope Benedict was probably not the leader to find it.

But he helped ensure that something recognizable as Catholic Christianity would survive into the third millennium. For one man, one lifetime, that was enough.

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Mubarak and Morsi

Mubarak is set to be retried. See Retrial of Egypt's Mubarak and sons set for April 13 Will Morsi eventually end up where Mubarak did?



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One of the glories of British journalism...

One of the perennial glories of British journalism is the capacity to take old news and give it new life by discovering it all over again. Such was the case on the front page of today's Daily Telegraph, which claims to have found that "Iranhas activated the Arak heavy-water production plant" that in fact started operations in 2004, and was formally opened by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2006.

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Goodbye to Academia

I enjoy watching, on C-Span, the authors who say they had to leave academia to do the thinking and writing they wanted to do. (Of course, the authors who appear on C-Span are those who managed to make a go of it: we are witnessing a kind of victor's history.) &&& The dynamic evidence page

Putting a Sheen on Old News

Julian Borger, Iran heavy water plant revealed - again The Guardian (Feb. 27, 2013) (blog):

One of the perennial glories of British journalism is the capacity to take old news and give it new life by discovering it all over again. Such was the case on the front page of today's Daily Telegraph, which claims to have found that "Iranhas activated the Arak heavy-water production plant" that in fact started operations in 2004, and was formally opened by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2006.

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A Day in May in Liberty Park

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extraordinary

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ordinary extraordinary

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Good guys with guns...

If true -- and this is a great big supposition -- , Oscar Pistorius's story illustrates that a good guy with a gun does not always kill a bad guy, a guy who is actually intent on doing harm, but that a good guy with a gun sometimes or often kills a good guy or gal:

David Smith, Oscar Pistorius: 'I thought Reeva Steenkamp was a burglar' The Guardian (Feb. 19, 2013).

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$2.7 Trillion on "Infrastructure"?

See Jack Schafer, Infrastructure rhetoric is a bridge to nowhere Reuters (Feb. 15, 2013).
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Pope Benedict XVI

Vatican Radio, 2013.02.11: Pope Benedict XVI announces his resignation at end of month

Pope Benedict XVI on Monday said he plans on resigning the papal office on February 28th. Below please find his announcement.

Full text of Pope's declaration

Dear Brothers,

I have convoked you to this Consistory, not only for the three canonizations, but also to communicate to you a decision of great importance for the life of the Church. After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry. I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering. However, in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the barque of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me. For this reason, and well aware of the seriousness of this act, with full freedom I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome, Successor of Saint Peter, entrusted to me by the Cardinals on 19 April 2005, in such a way, that as from 28 February 2013, at 20:00 hours, the See of Rome, the See of Saint Peter, will be vacant and a Conclave to elect the new Supreme Pontiff will have to be convoked by those whose competence it is.

Dear Brothers, I thank you most sincerely for all the love and work with which you have supported me in my ministry and I ask pardon for all my defects. And now, let us entrust the Holy Church to the care of Our Supreme Pastor, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and implore his holy Mother Mary, so that she may assist the Cardinal Fathers with her maternal solicitude, in electing a new Supreme Pontiff. With regard to myself, I wish to also devotedly serve the Holy Church of God in the future through a life dedicated to prayer.

From the Vatican, 10 February 2013

BENEDICTUS PP XVI

Listen to Pope Benedict XVI make his announcment:
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King Richard III -- and People Who Refuse to Forget Injustice

It is heartening to know there are people out there who want to undo an injustice they think was done circa 500 years ago to King Richard III. May Richard III stand in the shoes of millions of forgotten victims. And may God have a memory that is also very long. &&& The dynamic evidence page

The Book Is the Book

The book is the book.

It is what it is.
On challenges to "Abe" Rosenthal's account of the Kitty Genovese case:

"'It would never enter a publisher’s mind that they [sic] were [sic] obliged to add material,' said Jane Friedman, a co-founder and chief executive of Open Road Media, which specializes in digitizing and marketing backlist books. 'The information may have changed, but we are not journalists or academics. The book is the book.'”

Leslie Kaufman, Timeless Book May Require Some Timely Fact Checking, NYTimes (January 30, 2013).

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The Politics of Personal Destruction in Australia?

23 December 2012 Last updated at 20:22 ET

  Australia: A poisonous year in politics By Nick Bryant BBC News, Sydney

Political passions burned bright in Australia in 2012

This was the year in which character assassination became the modus operandi of Australian politics, and when all-out attack became the default setting of parliamentary life.

 

Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Opposition leader Tony Abbott. Former Speaker of the House Peter Slipper. Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. All have been the target of withering assaults on their reputations, and subject to the kind of sustained ferocity seldom witnessed in Australian politics.

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Australian Election Announced (well in advance)

Gillard sets Australia poll date of 14 September

 

Ms Gillard said the move allowed for a "reasoned" campaign

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