To be perfectly honest with you, only one race really gets the punting fires burning at Cheltenham on Sunday, and that is the Greatwood Hurdle at 15:00.

And in a further bout of truth, I really do think that the market has now landed on the right favourite in the shape of Monsieur Lecoq.

He is three-from-five since joining the stable from France, will love the ground and I think a 7lb rise for beating Le Prezien by a short-head in the Welsh Champion Hurdle, the pair 6 lengths clear, on his return is fair enough.

There must be more to come from this 5yo but the problem is that the ship has sailed as regards his price, so we have to look elsewhere.

Recent Flat form puts Torcello in the mix

Ascot winner Gumball has a leading chance on the clock and I like the way Quoi De Neuf shaped at Chepstow, but I have been chipping away at Torcello since earlier in the week and I have little hesitation in putting him up as the bet in the race at 16/1 each way, four places, with the Betfair Sportsbook.

I got lucky with Nietzsche at a big price in this race last season and one of his part-owners was Dan Gilbert, who is solely responsible for paying the bills for Torcello.

And this has the look of a long-term plot to me.

Gilbert bought the 5yo for 33,000 in May and he has recaptured his best on the Flat in winning his last three starts, and he is now rated 88 in that sphere (he actually hit 91 when trained by Andrew Balding in 2017).

So if he can translate that ability to hurdles, then he must be a player here off a mark of just 127.

Granted, that is no more than fair on what he has actually achieved over hurdles, harsh even. His Tramore maiden hurdle win in 2018 worked out well enough but he failed to progress as expected in that department, it has to be said.

And I was expecting connections to put headgear on him here as he often looked in need of them over hurdles (he wore a hood when winning at Tramore, and has also been tried in cheek pieces).

But you can't question his attitude on the Flat of late, as he battled hard to land his hat-trick at Windsor by a short-head last month, and all of those three wins came on soft or heavy ground.

Maybe he has simply turned a corner again, so he will do for me at the prices.

Santos the right fav but he might just need the run

The rest of the Cheltenham card does little for my enthusiasm, as the other ITV races include a Cross Country race - this column does not "do" Cross Country, thanks - and a measly 13 runners cover the remaining three terrestrial contests, as classy as they are.

Not for me.

ITV viewers do have the Southern National at Fontwell to peruse though and Shanroe Santos looks a fair price at around the 5/1 mark.

He is just 1lb higher than when winning this race by 5 lengths last season, handles testing ground very well and he has had a wind op since we last saw him.

Everything looks set for a big run but his recent record suggests he may need a run to put him straight - he had a prep run before winning this race last season - and I fear a marathon slog here first-time-up could find him out.

No, just Torcello for me on the Sabbath. And they can leave out as many hurdles as they wish.

Good luck.

***

Check out the latest episode of our Racing...Only Bettor podcast, available in video format for the first time. In this week's show, we have an exclusive interview with Tiger Roll owner Eddie O'Leary...

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Sunday ITV Racing Tips: Torcello can go well in Greatwood - Betting.betfair

If you peruse the corners of the internet occupied by the alt-right, sometimes called the manosphere, youre likely to encounter a lot of references to ancient Greece and Rome.

Theres a fascination with Spartan culture and stoic philosophers and famous thinkers like Aristotle and Plato. The men who consume this stuff and yes, its almost exclusively men tend to believe two things: that ancient Greek and Roman culture are the basis of Western civilization and that these cultures are the exclusive achievements of white men.

But the idea isnt merely to celebrate these ancient cultures. The goal is to turn a phrase like Western civilization into code for white culture and to cement a narrative about history that glorifies patriarchy and undercuts cultural progressivism.

This, of course, isnt all that new. As I wrote back in 2018, the alt-right appropriates the philosopher Nietzsche in similar ways and for similar reasons. But the obsession with Greece and Rome seems to be more widespread, and perhaps even mainstream.

Donna Zuckerberg, editor-in-chief of Eidolon, an online Classics magazine, examines this trend in her book, Not All Dead White Men: Classics and Misogyny in the Digital Age. I spoke to her recently about the appeal of ancient history to the alt-right, how its used to reinforce misogyny and racism, and why the field of Classics has a major problem on its hands.

A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

I think the best way to start is to have you explain why ancient Greece and Rome is so culturally significant to the alt-right.

Western civilization has, for the alt-right, become culturally acceptable code for white culture. So celebration of Western civilization is really a way to celebrate the cultural achievements of white men. They see ancient Greece and Rome as a starting point for this imagined idea of Western civilization, and later it evolves to include Christianity in the medieval period.

It gives them a unified cultural narrative to draw on.

So history is a device for glorifying masculinity and whiteness, both of which they take to be synonymous with Western civilization?

Exactly.

Part of whats so odd about the race dimension is that race as a category, or at least race as we think of it today, had almost no meaning in these ancient societies.

Right, ancient Greece and Rome were actually quite diverse and the concept of whiteness didnt have much meaning thousands of years ago. Race, as we know it, is a fairly recent category. But the far-right relies on this construct of Western civilization, which for them means white civilization and culture. So they craft a narrative that begins with Greece and Rome and then continues into the medieval period up through the emergence of modern Europe.

And what are the main themes you see beyond the usual white men are the most rational tropes? What specific conclusions are they drawing from history or what assumptions are they justifying?

They look to the ancient world for the confirmation of their pre-existing worldview, which is not necessarily easy to boil down to a few simple ideas the far-right, especially online, is intentionally malleable and difficult to pin down.

Most of its ideology depends on ideas taken from evolutionary psychology about normal, natural human behavior. So this includes ideas that men are naturally dominant and rational and women are emotional, along with a whole set of other ideas about gendered behavior (for example, the idea that women naturally want to marry up and thus are always looking for an alpha male).

But there are other ideas under this umbrella, too like tribalism, which they consider natural to human psychology and use to justify arguments for racism and against race mixing. They use whatever they can find to provide intellectual justification for these ideas, including history.

Theres also an obsession with cultural decline.

Why the obsession with decline?

The short answer is they want to predict what the future of America will look like, so they turn to these ancient cultures for patterns that reinforce their expectations. For instance, theres a strong belief that liberals are trying to create a chaotic multicultural society thats destined to fail; and the purity and patriarchy of ancient cultures, on their reading, is just a superior model, or at the very least, an argument in defense of their worldview.

Let me ask you this as a historian: Is there some validity to these arguments? In other words, are they projecting their own biases onto history or is their bias genuinely reflected back at them when they look at this history?

Both are true. On the one hand, their knowledge of ancient history and literature is often very shallow, and the scholar in me wants to interject by adding much more nuance and complexity to their awful interpretations.

But their analysis, in spite of being oversimplified and sometimes misleading, isnt necessarily fundamentally wrong. The fact is that many societies in classical antiquity were very patriarchal, and misogynistic ideas can be found in many canonical texts from ancient literature. So theyre not necessarily wrong to see, for example, misogyny in Ovids Ars Amatoria.

The question is how to interpret the text and how to decide what it means today.

Who are we talking about here? Is this mostly a marginalized internet phenomenon confined to incels and pick up artists or has this way of thinking, this way of interpreting history, become mainstream?

When I was writing Not All Dead White Men, I was looking primarily at online far-right communities. But Ive been surprised to see, in 2019, how much of the pushback against progressive Classical Studies has come not from the kind of people I studied, but from conservative and center-right intellectuals, who see progressive classicists as attacking the cultural heritage of Western civilization and trying to dismantle the canon.

It really has become a new skirmish in the culture wars.

But its also a problem for the actual discipline of Classics, right? There were reports of a racist incident at a Classics conference earlier this year, which speaks to how deep the rot goes.

Yes, absolutely. The incident you mention took place at the 2019 SCS in San Diego, the biggest Classics conference of the year. There was a lot of energy around progressive, antiracist Classics at that conference, which led to the formation of some new groups to promote the work of classicists of color.

But there were also several horrifying racist incidents, including the one you mentioned and one which involved the racial profiling of two students who were at the conference to receive an award for their incredible outreach work with the Sportula. In the aftermath of those incidents, there was a wave of harassment and backlash to progressive Classics led by sites like Quillette and The New Criterion.

My work in this book focuses on the reception of Classics in communities that are often vocally white supremacist. But the ties between racism and Classics exist in other places outside the internet. Theres a painful reckoning happening in Classics as a discipline as we try to confront our own complicity and do the hard work to make the study of Classics truly welcoming to all, not just a discipline where white men see their values reflected back at them.

Circling back to the way this stuff plays out online, the main goal of these alt-right types is to cement this idea that white men are the guardians of intellectual authority. But are they actually defending a tradition or are they just looking for a rhetorical club to beat women and people of color with?

I think its both. On the one hand, they do love that rhetorical club. But harassing people online actually takes a lot of effort, and having a real cause is extremely motivating. Defending their culture against those who want to destroy it provides that motivation. So this fixation on defending ancient history, defending this great civilizational legacy, is a very galvanizing force.

As I said in my interview with Angela Nagle, author of Kill All Normies, half the time I cant tell if these people are waging a genuine civilizational battle or just a heroic trolling campaign.

You seem to think its both.

I do think its both, and I think its very difficult to tell which it is at any moment. In the Daily Stormers Normies Guide to the Alt-Right, Andrew Anglin identifies one of the hallmarks of the alt-right as non-ironic Nazism masquerading as ironic Nazism. They want you to feel like youd be stupid to take them seriously, but also just as stupid maybe even more so to ignore them.

Its a very slippery but clever strategy, one thats perfectly adapted to modern internet culture.

People have always used history and philosophy to prop up their transgressive ideologies Whats your solution to the problem? Can we ever really stop people from weaponizing history?

No, we cant. We can provide alternatives, and continue to imagine new and different ways to think about what ancient Greece and Rome mean in the present day. And we can try to correct false information where we see it. Its a constant battle, but its an important one for any area of study to engage in.

We should always be thinking about what the study of our subject means and why its important.

I also wonder how much of this is a function of the way these internet platforms are designed and structured. How many people start off with a genuine interest in history and then find themselves pulled into a black hole of misogyny and racism and hate?

This idea haunts me. Again, I think all we can do is try to provide other content for people to find, which is part of what Im trying to do with my publication Eidolon.

You also point to a strange overlap between how the far-right and the far-left view the whole tradition of ancient philosophy Both sides see it as an affirmation of white male supremacy, only one wants to revive it and the other wants to replace it.

Im curious how you respond to the left on this front?

I dont think that anybody should feel obligated to study Classics. If your personal feeling is that it can never be more than white supremacist patriarchy re-inscribing its own values through the Western canon, then I completely understand why you wouldnt want to study it.

But if youre politically progressive and find Classics fascinating, then theres a lot of exciting work being done in the field to study that tension. I would point people in that direction and encourage them not to accept what theyve told about what history is or must be.

Read the original:
Why the alt-right loves ancient Greece and Rome - Vox.com

Ask students to read for more than a couple of sentences and many will protest that they cant do it. The most frequent complaint that teachers hear that its boring. It is not so much the content of the written material that is at issues here; it is the act of reading itself that is deemed to be boring. What we are facing here is not just time-honored teenage torpor, but the mismatch between a post-literate New Flesh that is too wired to concentrate and the confining concentrational logics of decaying disciplinary systems. To be bored means simply to be removed from the communicative sensation-stimulus matrix of texting, You Tube and fast food; to be denied, for a moment, the constant flow of sugary gratification on demand. Some students want Nietzsche in the same way they want a hamburger; the fail to graspand the logic of the consumer system encourages this misapprehensionthe indigestibility, the difficult is Nietzsche.

Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

I am a substitute teacher (grades K-12) in a public school system located in Virginia, a state on the eastern seaboard of the United States. For many years prior to becoming a substitute teacher, I also taught at a private school in Virginia. Tuition and fees at the private school are approximately $42,000 (USD), the public schools are, of course, tuition free.

To be sure, there are highly motivated students in both educational settings that call into question Mark Fishers observation above. But in the main, both organizations struggle with figuring out if they are working with their subjects as students or as consumers of services provided by teachers and administrators.

From what I have observed in the tiny microcosm in which Ive worked, adults have not figured out how to teach Generation Z. It is as if K-12 students are; well, lab rats, in a messy experiment that reflects adult confusion about how to facilitate learning in an era when all the book learning education seeks to impart is largely available on the World Wide Web (WWW). Reality hits video screens before adults can interpret it for their children; that is, assuming the adults are up to the task. Twitter, a modern day ticker-tape, dumbs down the American populace. Attention spans for students and adults are measured in 10 minute increments, if that.

Teachers are little more than circuits in Americas educational network and, as such, transmit surface information to the students and little more. The kids know a lot, for sure, but they, like the adults that school them and lead them, have no intellectual depth, something required for critical thinking. It is fitting, I suppose, that in these times when the United States is a polarized nation of cynics who believe in nothing, its not surprising that its educators teach the young to be cynics. But as Oscar Wilde noted through one of his characters, a cynic is one who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.

And yet the very adults (academics, corporate leaders, politicians) that created this cynical, digitized short attention span world whine about students not being able to read and write, think critically or master math. There is a reason for that: They are not being taught effectively to do those things. All of which reaffirms something I wrote in 2013: The American Education System is creating Ignorant Adults.

The leaders of Boeing and Lockheed Martin worry out loud about the absence of US school aged students who can excel at science, technology, engineering and math disciplines (STEM). But they have no problem funding initiatives for Chinese students and aviation professionals in China.

Hocus Pocus

Back in the USA, school classrooms are a mishmash of technology, new wave/repackaged learning techniques and revisionist history. Apple I-Pads and Smart Boards are located in each classroom for student/teacher use. They are all connected to software that provides music, cartoons and learning platforms like Canvas for most grade levels. The latest teaching fads like Maker Learning with its Digital Promise backed by Google and Pixar, among others, competes with concepts like the Flipped Classroom, Blended Learning and other pedagogies that come in and out of vogue. And yet, along side all the technology are crayons, magic markers, pencils, paper and cardboard for writing and drawing.

Its no stretch to say that I-Phones, Android and other hand held devices may cause epigenetic changes. Students, teachers/coaches and administrators are constantly staring head down at their computing-communications devices. It is tough to get a face-to-face conversation going with most anyone in these groups as their eyes and heads are in the down position while sitting, walking or standing. Even if you are having a meatspace meeting, participants will incessantly dart their eyes to the handheld safely nearby the hand, in the hand, or on the lap (looking down again).

Americas past, woeful in many respects, is being revised again by adults to suit the agenda of those who seek to promote a narrative that seeks to change the political/cultural narrative of US society and its history, and it is aimed at young students in particular. The New York Times (NYT) 1619 Project is an example of this. According to the World Socialist Website, The 1619 Project, launched by the Times in August, presents American history in a purely racial lens and blames all white people for the enslavement of 4 million black people as chattel property.

The NYT has provided teaching materials that are being used by colleges, universities and high schools across the United States. Who is willing or capable of debating the claims of the New York Times; or should we say, who is willing to be labeled a racist for disagreeing with The revisionist authors of the 1619 Project? At the collegiate level, at least, there may be debate on the matter but at the high school level, what teacher is going to argue against using 1619 teaching materials. After all it is the New York Times.

What is very troubling about the NYT revisionism is that it makes the preposterous claim that racism is part of the DNA of all white people. The World Socialist Website claims that: This is dangerous politics, and very bad history[it] mixes anti-historical metaphors pertaining to biological determinism (that racism is printed in a national DNA) and to religious obscurantism (that slavery is the uniquely American original sin). But whether ordained by God or genetic code, racism by whites against blacks serves, for the 1619 Project, as historys deus ex machina. There is no need to consider questions long placed at the center of historical inquiry: cause and effect, contingency and conflict, human agency and change over time. History is simply a morality tale written backwards from 2019.

Sharpen My Pencils, Fool!

I have often winced at some of the practices I observed in classrooms. On a typical day as a substitute, I arrive at a school, pick up instructions left by the teacher who is absent (or has a meeting), and head to the classroom. Substitute teachers, or Subs, are a lower class of species, members of the gig economy, and treated as such by the real teachers and students. I remember one teacher I subbed for was headed off to a meeting and as she left said, Sharpen my pencils for me. I dutifully did. A majority of the teachers and administrators dont ask for your name, youre just known as The Sub.

Once students complete their work (if they even choose to do it), which for most does not take much class time, they are free to play video games, stick ear buds in and listen to music or hang out with friends via the handheld device. One of the popular video games with male 6th to 12th graders is Krunker, a first person shooter game. Is US society really that concerned about active shooters in schools?

The State and corporations can be found in some form in the public school system. One elementary school has Lockheed Martin as a sponsor of a science program. In another elementary school, a class is learning about Virginias geography: The students print and video work product will ultimately be used by a tourism association in the State.

In both institutions learning is calibrated to the SAT, ACT and various Advanced Placement tests. Student test scores serve as one metric for teacher performance reviews along with standards set by school boards, the State, or independent audits in the private school case.

Students are not required to stand or even pay attention to the United States Pledge of Allegiance that is carried via intercom into the classrooms each morning. Some schools dont even bother with it. Yet, during sporting events like American contact football, students/athletes and fans are required, or lets say by the pressure of custom are compelled, to stand for the playing of the United States National Anthem. American flags are stitched into football jerseys and prior to games one football player is selected to run the American flag onto the field amidst the adrenaline fueled shouts and growls of fellow teammates following close behind. A color guard from a high schools junior reserve officer training corps (JROTC) sometimes is present. They present in strict marching formation the American flag along with the flags of the US Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force.

To stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance in a classroom takes one minute. To be upright for the National Anthem takes, perhaps, five minutes. The school band normally plays the latter and on occasion high school Madrigals will sing the National Anthem.

Yes, the militarization of US society and the deification of military personnel, even if they are accountants in uniform working at the Pentagon, is something to be concerned about. But saying the Pledge, and standing for the National Anthem, should be a requirement for students. There has to be some measure or display of loyalty to ones country and the young must learn that. Still many want to wipe away any sense of citizenship, patriotism. Well, they are doing a fine job of that.

Mind the Inmates!

Students at both institutions are the beneficiaries of some serious force protection measures normally associated with protecting military personnel stationed at installations around the globe. The public schools in which I worked have armed police officers on site with a phalanx of civilian security/disciplinarians roaming the halls. Security cameras are everywhere indoors (hallways) and outside (entry and exit) recording movements. Public school buses are also outfitted with cameras and tracking systems.

The private school where I was once employed uses a less blunt force approach opting for a more subtle presence: security personnel are a bit less obvious and do not carry firearms. The school does employ a corporate style full-time director of security and safety with some serious emergency management credentials.

It is the same security scene at public and private schools across the United States which raises an interesting question: Are students really captive minds in minimum security enclosures subjected daily to social, emotional learning techniques or socialization/habilitation for entry into society? Or are they free learners allowed to be creative and explore beyond the confines of the pedagogy that seeks to standardize them.

No Student Untracked

There is a functioning big data brother at work tracking students as they make their way through K-12 known as the Common Core of Data (CCD). CCD is described by Marc Gardner in a presentation for the US National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)as the annual collection of the universe of United States public elementary, secondary education agencies and schools. Data include enrollment by grade, race/ethnicity and sex, special education, english learners, school lunch programs, teachers, dropouts and completers. The CCD also gathers information from state justice, health and labor departments. The NCES also collects data from private schools.

It doesnt end there. Colleges and universities are tracking high school seniors as they begin their searches for schools theyd like to attend. The Washington Post recently reported that many colleges and universities have hired data capture firms to track prospective students as they explore websites. Records and interviews show that colleges are building vast repositories of data on prospective students scanning test scores, zip codes, high school transcripts, academic interests, web browsing histories, ethnic backgrounds and household incomes

The owner of Canvas, referenced above, is Instructure. Their mission, according to their investor website is to grow [the young] from the first day of school to the last day of work [retirement]. One of the capabilities that Instructure provides its clients is Canvas Folio Management. According to the investor webpage, it delivers an institutional homepage and deep, real-time analytics on student engagement, skills and competencies, network connections, and interactions across various cohorts. Allows institutions to generate custom reports tied directly to student success initiatives and export accreditation-ready reports on learning outcomes at the student, cohort, course, program, or institutional level.

Ah, yes, the thrill of being hunted for a life time by big data brother. Anyway, there is no escape.

Dont try this in a Classroom

Learning is an active process, not simply a matter of banking information in a recipient passive mind. Teaching therefore has to be a transactional process rather than just the transmission of information. The transactional aspect is essential to enabling students to challenge their situations in life, which they must learn to do if they are to play their parts as active citizens of a better worldteaching must be approached as an intellectually disruptive and subversive activity if it is to instill inquiry skills in learners and encourage them to think for themselves rather than mindlessly accept received ideas. We believe it is more important in the digital age than ever before. (Ingenious: The Unintended Consequences of Human Innovation by Peter Gluckman and Mark Hanson, Harvard, 2019)

Read the rest here:
America's Education System: Teaching the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing - CounterPunch

After underwhelming play through the soft beginning of their schedule, the Nets have to head out on their longest road trip of the year.

And they dont consider that a bad thing.

I love it, Taurean Prince said. I love playing away. Its a great time to grow camaraderie as a team, a great time to figure out who we really are. I think road games make teams stronger.

Hey, like Friedrich Nietzsche said, long western swings that dont kill us make us stronger.

The Nets already have stumbled through the supposedly easy part of the slate, with five of their first seven games at home and only two versus teams that had winning records last season. Now the going is about to get harder.

Five teams that are pretty good in our league, Kyrie Irving said. A great test to go on the road trip for that long.

After Thursdays practice, the Nets will fly out to begin a five-game swing through Portland, Phoenix, Utah, Denver and Chicago. Theyll be taking a step up in competition, too: That quintet is a combined 9-5 at home, while the Nets are 0-2 on the road.

Theres a lot of team dinners, a lot of the camaraderie is built on these trips. Obviously were excited to compete on the West Coast, but the stuff off the court is fun as well, Joe Harris said.

Its kind of fun, best friends, were together every day, Jarrett Allen added. Were going to be out having fun and were also going to have the serious side of basketball, so were just going to go out there, work our hardest and enjoy the trip.

Allen could end up working overtime on the trip. He has split the center spot with DeAndre Jordan, but the veteran suffered a sprained right ankle on Monday. The Nets offered no details on the grade or severity, nor any timeline for Jordans return.

What they did say was this trip offers an opportunity to develop chemistry.

Obviously theres nothing like being at home, but thats really where you come together as a group, Irving said. You want to come out with a winning record. Take those opportunities to play on other organizations floors or going against other good guys in our league.

Some great matchups up ahead. You just look forward to that challenge, just use the time to build team camaraderie, obviously spending some time in those cities. All we have is each other. We have our significant others sometimes on the trips, but for the most part its just us.

The Nets havent commented on whether Jordans injury will change plans for a 16th player to replace the suspended Wilson Chandler.

Center Alan Williams led the G-League in rebounding last season as a Nets two-way player, but a source close to the 26-year-old who is with Russias Lokomotiv Kuban said he isnt currently an option.

Former Nets chairman Dmitry Razumov ran Sundays New York City Marathon, and blistered through it in a solid 2:52.37.

Here is the original post:
Nets are really pumped for tough, long road trip - New York Post

The day that the theme of the Costume Institutes spring exhibition is announced marks the beginning of months of wild speculation. Yes, fashion fans will discuss what sorts of magic Andrew Bolton, the Wendy Yu Curator in Charge of the Costume Institute, will whip up in the museums galleries, but alsoand much more comically sothere is the issue of the Met Gala and its red carpet. Each year, guests of the ball are asked to dress according to a theme related to the exhibit. How will attendees grapple with this years show, About Time: Fashion and Duration, and the galas dress code: timeless?

The internet had plenty of ideas. Some instantly took up Boltons reference material, Virginia Woolfs Orlando and Sally Potters 1992 film adaptation, calling for Tilda Swintonworthy corsetry and frock coats. Others looked to the cochairsLin-Manuel Miranda, Meryl Streep, Emma Stone, and Nicolas Ghesquirecalling out each stars best, and most timeless, looks as inspiration. Still more have suggested commissioning flat circle costumes, which could either go full Nietzsche or, for a more pop cultural spin, channel Matthew McConaughey in True Detective.

We wont know if any of this will come to pass until May 4, 2020, but here are some of the internets best takes on the themes, as of now.

Originally Appeared on Vogue

Read more from the original source:
24 Hours Later, the Internet Is Still Working Out This Years Met Gala Theme - Yahoo Lifestyle

Im going to die one day. Im relatively certain youre going to as well. Theres worse things I guess; just dont ask me what. Im not a philosopher, and you dont have to examine my writing closely to see that every other word I write doesnt end in -ology or -ogical, so Im probably underqualified to ramble on about life and death. On the other hand, death is almost certainly going to be a lived experience for me, so I might have some authority on the subject. I was given some advice about the inevitability of death recently, so I might as well have a little fun. Pass (it) on, so to speak.

I found myself just standing in a greenhouse, soaking in the beauty around me, wondering whether The Miscellany News office would look less like purgatory if it featured a fern or a nice large hanging plant. Out of the blue, the shopkeeper offered some wisdom that probably only comes from being around fading beauty the wilting flowers, dying plants, the indelible fragility of nurturing lifefor long periods of time: Dont take [yourself] too seriously. Youre going to die one day.

As much as I dont like being reminded of the mortality of someone I actually like, the shopkeeper is dead right. Im not going to pretend to know enough about nihilism to cite Nietzsche (I have enough trouble just spelling it) or have any great insights about life as a mortal, but there is great comfort in the idea of your own death, of finality. The late-night comedian Conan OBrienwhos actually remarkably well-educated and graduated from Harvard University magna cum lauderecalled a conversation with Albert Brooks where Brooks said, In 1940, people said Clark Gable is the face of the 20th Century. Who [expletive] thinks about Clark Gable? It doesnt matter. Youll be forgotten. Ill be forgotten. Well all be forgotten. (New York Times, Conan OBrien Wants to Scare Himself With the New, Shorter Conan, 01.14.2019). I think about that quote a lot. It makes you think about whats actually important. Is it personal or organizational success? Do you want to be the best? Are you driven by the envy of others? All motives are fine if thats what you want to do, but dont do anything just because you think youll be remembered for it.

What you should take away from that quote isnt that nothing we do matters. Instead, understand that if nothing you do will be remembered in the long run, you should try to do the right thing in each and every moment. If you promised to do something, you should do it. Not because it matters but because nothing else matters either. Maybe its because Im poor and not exceptionally successful, but all I have is my word, and if I dont have that, then I have nothing left at all. If you have no reason to do wrong, if you have nothing to gain because youre going to die and nothing matters, why not just do the right thing?

I honestly think Vassar would be a better place if more people thought this way. Forget about your legacy, what youll leave behind. Help some people, bite off more than you can chew, make mistakes and try again. Live life to the fullest because this life might be all you get. Stop worrying that youll look silly or if someone will think youre unserious. Listen: You can still be successful, competent and reliable without taking yourself too seriously. You can still be a good student even while realizing that its absurd that youre trading pieces of paper (tuition) that you dont have (student debt) for words (lectures) from people who write fan fiction about the gay brother of a Russian migr. This is a real thing that happens, and its hilarious on so many different levels. If you cant be a little un-serious, a little silly, youre wasting the humor that surrounds us all the time. Youre wasting your own life, and do you have a resource any more precious? I certainly dont.

This isnt the only reaction that you can have to the news that youll die. You could also go down the route of burning, looting and pillaging, being evil for evils sake. Thats a reaction, I will admit, but I hardly think thats a good way to go about things. For one, its not universally applicable. Screwing over everybody else to get ahead might work in the short run, but I cant advise you to do that because then its just detrimental to everybody. Closing the elevator door on somebody can really give you a strong feeling of satisfaction, but if we all start to do that, then everybody is now taking solo elevator rides and everybodys waiting longer too. The whole thing backfires.

So again, to bring it back to the beginning: Im going to die one day. So for now, Im going to enjoy time with people who are important to me. Im going to lie in the sun listening to Eight Days a Week because in the long run, nothing really matters. Theres no reason not to sit back and relax, or even not to try, and Im only going to get older.

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I'm going to die. We are all going to die (But it's fun) - Miscellany News

Emil du Bois-Reymond proclaimed the mystery of consciousness, championed the theory of natural selection, and revolutionized the study of the nervous system. Today, he is all but forgotten.

Unlike Charles Darwin and Claude Bernard, who endure as heroes in England and France, Emil du Bois-Reymond is generally forgotten in Germany no streets bear his name, no stamps portray his image, no celebrations are held in his honor, and no collections of his essays remain in print. Most Germans have never heard of him, and if they have, they generally assume that he was Swiss.

But it wasnt always this way. Du Bois-Reymond was once lauded as the foremost naturalist of Europe, the last of the encyclopedists, and one of the greatest scientists Germany ever produced. Contemporaries celebrated him for his research in neuroscience and his addresses on science and culture; in fact, the poet Jules Laforgue reported seeing his picture hanging for sale in German shop windows alongside those of the Prussian royal family.

Those familiar with du Bois-Reymond generally recall his advocacy of understanding biology in terms of chemistry and physics, but during his lifetime he earned recognition for a host of other achievements. He pioneered the use of instruments in neuroscience, discovered the electrical transmission of nerve signals, linked structure to function in neural tissue, and posited the improvement of neural connections with use. He served as a professor, as dean, and as rector at the University of Berlin, directed the first institute of physiology in Prussia, was secretary of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, established the first society of physics in Germany, helped found the Berlin Society of Anthropology, oversaw the Berlin Physiological Society, edited the leading German journal of physiology, supervised dozens of researchers, and trained an army of physicians.

He owed most of his fame, however, to his skill as an orator. In matters of science, he emphasized the unifying principles of energy conservation and natural selection, introduced Darwins theory to German students, rejected the inheritance of acquired characters, and fought the specter of vitalism, the doctrine that living things are governed by unique principles. In matters of philosophy, he denounced Romanticism, recovered the teachings of Lucretius, and provoked Nietzsche, Mach, James, Hilbert, and Wittgenstein. In matters of history, he furthered the growth of historicism, formulated the tenets of history of science, popularized the Enlightenment, promoted the study of nationalism, and predicted wars of genocide. And in matters of letters, he championed realism in literature, described the earliest history of cinema, and criticized the Americanization of culture.

Epistemology rarely inflames the public imagination anymore. In the second half of the 19th century, however, epistemology was one of the sciences of the soul, and the soul was the most politicized object around.

Today it is hard to comprehend the furor incited by du Bois-Reymonds speeches. One, delivered on the eve of the Prussian War, asked whether the French had forfeited their right to exist; another, reviewing the career of Darwin, triggered a debate in the Prussian parliament; another, surveying the course of civilization, argued for science as the essential history of humanity; and the most famous, responding to the dispute between science and religion, delimited the frontiers of knowledge.

Epistemology rarely inflames the public imagination anymore. In the second half of the 19th century, however, epistemology was one of the sciences of the soul, and the soul was the most politicized object around. When du Bois-Reymond proclaimed the mystery of consciousness, he crushed the last ambition of reason. Everyone who longed for a secular revelation was devastated by the loss. The historian Owen Chadwick put it this way: The forties was the time of doubts, in the plural and with a small d. . . . In the sixties Britain and France and Germany entered the age of Doubt, in the singular and with a capital D.

Jealous rivals identified du Bois-Reymond as a member of the Berlinocracy of the new German Empire. This was not quite fair. As a descendant of immigrants, du Bois-Reymond always felt a bit at odds with his surroundings. He had grown up speaking French, his wife was from England, and he counted Jews and foreigners among his closest friends. Even his connections to the Prussian crown prince and princess disaffected him from the regime. Du Bois-Reymond supported women, defended minorities, and attacked superstition; he warned against the dangers of power, wealth, and faith; and he stood up to Bismarck in matters of principle. His example reminds us that patriots in Imperial Germany could be cosmopolitan critics as well as chauvinist reactionaries.

He once joked to his wife that Prussian officers assumed that anyone of his eminence was an intimate of the government who regularly conversed with the Kaiser. He might have told them that he had introduced the engineer Werner Siemens to the mechanic Johann Georg Halske, or that he had launched the career of the physicist John Tyndall, or that he had sponsored the photography of Julia Margaret Cameron, or that he could recite poetry by Goethe and Hugo that he had seen in manuscript, but he was too polite to do more than excuse himself. His enthusiasts would have been pleased to learn that he did indeed present himself to his king, a considerable honor for someone who once signed a guestbook as Emil du Bois-Reymond, frog-faddist, Berlin.

Du Bois-Reymonds distinction was a long time coming. Most of his life he worked in obscurity, although every so often a keen observer would perceive the significance of his methods. Ivan Turgenev, for one, based the character of Bazarov in Fathers and Sons on his example. Another famous student at the University of Berlin, Sren Kierkegaard, wrote:

Of all sciences physical science is decidedly the most insipid, and I find it amusing to reflect how, with the passing of time, that becomes trite which once called forth amazement, for such is the invariable lot of the discoveries inherent in the bad Infinity. Just remember what a stir it made when the stethoscope was introduced. Soon we shall have reached the point where every barber will use it and, when shaving you, will ask: Would you like to be stethoscoped, Sir? Then someone else will invent an instrument for listening to the beats of the brain. That will make a tremendous stir, until, in fifty years, every barber can do it. Then in a barbershop, when one has had a haircut and a shave and has been stethoscoped (for by then it will be very common) the barber will ask: Perhaps you would also like me to listen to your brain-beats?

Detecting brain-beats is not yet common practice in barbering, but it is in medicine. In this respect Kierkegaard was right: The march of technology has been steady to the point of routine. Every refinement of du Bois-Reymonds electrophysiological apparatus, from the vacuum-tube amplifier to the microelectrode to the patch clamp, can be thought of as a footnote to his original technique. Such achievement in instrumentation is anything but small: Two years after Kierkegaards taunt, du Bois-Reymond contended that physiology would become a science when it could translate life processes into mathematical pictures. The imaging devices associated with medical progress the EKG, the EEG, the EMG, and the CT, MRI, and PET scanners seem to vindicate his prediction. But success is not a category of analysis any more than failure. To make sense of why du Bois-Reymond devoted the whole of his scientific career to one problem, it helps to understand his deepest motivations.

The physiologist Paul Cranefield once asked a simple question: What kind of scientist, in 1848, would promise to produce a general theory, relating the electrical activity of the nerves and muscles to the remaining phenomena of their living activity? Cranefields answer was someone who believed that electricity was the secret of life. Perhaps du Bois-Reymond really did think of himself as a visionary after all, he was born in the year in which Frankenstein was published. On the other hand, a scientist obsessed with electrophysiology could just as easily be deemed a practical philosopher, a misguided fool, or a complex figure.

The study of animal electricity has a long history. When du Bois-Reymond came to the topic, it was still musty with doctrines of vitalism and mechanism, forces and fluids, irritability and sensibility, and other arcana of biology. Underlying all this confusion were the elementary workings of nerves and muscles, the problem that sustained him throughout his career. The reason is plain: Nerves and muscles are the basis of thought and action. Du Bois-Reymond never gave up trying to understand animal electricity because he never gave up trying to understand himself.

If you want to judge the influence that a man has on his contemporaries, the physiologist Claude Bernard once said, dont look at the end of his career, when everyone thinks like him, but at the beginning, when he thinks differently from others.

This quest for identity informed the course of his science and his society, a Romantic theme of parallel development common to the first half of 19th century. Du Bois-Reymonds struggle to establish himself might stand for Germanys struggle to establish itself, the success of both endeavors catching witnesses off guard. Less apparent is the more classical theme of the second half of his life: the understanding that authority implies restraint. This is the deeper significance of his biography how his discipline failed to capture experience, how his praise of the past hid his disapproval of the present, and how his letters and lectures only hinted at the passion of his ideals. The result of a years work depends more on what is struck out than on what is left in, Henry Adams wrote in 1907. Du Bois-Reymond shared Adamss Attic sensibility. The sad fact is that most of his countrymen did not. Du Bois-Reymond was not the first intellectual to counsel renunciation over transcendence, but he was one of the last in a nation bent on asserting itself. His caution deserves notice.

How, then, could someone so famous and so important end up so forgotten? Let me suggest three kinds of answer. The first has to do with the histories that disciplines write about their origins. These usually take the form of the classical Greek myth of the Titanomachy, with a Promethean figure (the disciplinary founder) aligning with the Olympian gods of truth against an older and more barbaric generation (here symbolized by Kronos, or tradition). Psychology provides a perfect case in point. In Russia the disciplines heroes are the two Ivans, Pavlov and Sechenov, with little discussion of how much they owed to Carl Ludwigs studies of digestion or Emil du Bois-Reymonds studies of nerve function. In Austria the hero is Sigmund Freud, and only recently has Andreas Mayer laid out just how much he learned from Jean-Martin Charcots use of hypnosis. And in the United States the hero is William James, the center of a veritable industry of scholars, none of whom quite put their finger on why he moved to Berlin in 1867. James never mentioned his debt to du Bois-Reymond, perhaps because he quit his class, or perhaps because so many of his early lectures drew from du Bois-Reymonds writings. In each case the titanic hero breaks the line of continuity, throws over the all-devouring father, and benefits humanity with his torch of reason.

The second answer has to do with academic specialization. Du Bois-Reymond is hard to pigeonhole. This is the trouble with studying polymaths: It takes a long time to master the history of the fields in which they work, and when one does, it isnt easy to sum up their contributions in a catchphrase. As a result historians have tended to reduce the complexity of Imperial German culture to caricatures of creepiness on the one hand (Nietzsche, Wagner, and the politics of despair) and kitsch on the other (nature, exercise, domesticity, and Christmas). Such distortions fail to capture the main feature of the age, which was excellence in science, technology, and medicine. After all, its not just du Bois-Reymond who has been forgotten pretty much every German scientist of the 19th century has been forgotten as well.

Du Bois-Reymond is hard to pigeonhole. This is the trouble with studying polymaths: It takes a long time to master the history of the fields in which they work, and when one does, it isnt easy to sum up their contributions in a catchphrase.

To my mind du Bois-Reymond provided the best explanation for his oblivion. Reflecting on how few of his generation remembered Voltaire, he suggested that the real reason might be that we are all more or less Voltairians: Voltairians without even knowing it. The same holds true for du Bois-Reymond: He is hidden in plain sight.

Du Bois-Reymond reminds us that individuals mark their times as much as their times mark them. If you want to judge the influence that a man has on his contemporaries, the physiologist Claude Bernard once said, dont look at the end of his career, when everyone thinks like him, but at the beginning, when he thinks differently from others. Bernards comment regards innovation as a virtue. By this measure du Bois-Reymonds contributions are as noble as any. But du Bois-Reymond taught a lesson of even greater importance, one that matters now as much as ever: how to contend with uncertainty.

Gabriel Finkelstein is Associate Professor of History at the University of Colorado Denver and the author of Emil du Bois-Reymond: Neuroscience, Self, and Society in Nineteenth-Century Germany.

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The Greatest Unknown Intellectual of the 19th Century - The MIT Press Reader

In recent years, Skidmore College, where I am a professor, has been roiled by political incidents large and small. As at other colleges and universities, these eruptions have ranged from sometimes violent protests designed to prevent controversial speakers from speaking to call-outs and disruptions to prevent the teaching of ostensibly offensive books or to punish people for using ostensibly offensive language.

In an effort to encourage dialogue, the president of Skidmore recently invited a scholar named Fred Lawrence to give a lunchtime lecture to faculty and staff. As author of a book called Punishing Hate and the secretary of Phi Beta Kappa, the nations oldest honor society, Lawrence seemed suited to offer advice about the troubles wed been going through on campus. How could we better differentiate between offenses serious enough to warrant concern, and the more minor slips or unintentional derogations sometimes called microaggressions?

To be unable to tell the difference between kicking a dog and accidentally tripping over one is to have little hope of successfully navigating life on a college campus, Lawrence said, in a talk that was mild and notably free of polemic.

The first faculty member to raise a hand after the lecture asked Lawrence whether he was aware of the privilege he had exercised in addressing us. She spoke with conviction, and suggested that Lawrence had taken advantage of his august position by daring to offer his advice. Lawrence replied with courtesy, conceding that, like everyone else assembled, he was of course the beneficiary of several kinds of privilege, and would try to be alert to them.

Though nothing further came of this exchange, it seemed clear that privilege had been invoked as a noise word to distract from the substance of Lawrences remarks and from his suggestion that some of us had failed to make the elementary distinction he had called to our attention. More, the privilege charge had been leveled with the expectation that he was guilty not because of anything particular he had said, but because he was a white male.

There was a time, not so long ago, when to speak of privilege was to identify forms of injustice that decent people wished to do something about

It was hard not to think that my young colleague was in fact suffering from what Nietzsche and others called ressentiment a feeling of inferiority redirected on to an external agent felt somehow to be the source or cause of that painful feeling. Rightly or wrongly, she regarded him as the embodiment of a power, or authority, that is nowadays conventionally associated with privilege; that is, with some endowment or attribute wealth, position, conviction, erudition, benevolence enjoyed by some people but not others.

Of course there really is such a thing as privilege, and of course it is distributed unequally in any society. Youd have to be a fool to deny that whiteness has long been an advantage, however little some white people believe that their own whiteness has given them what others lack. Can anyone doubt that privilege is a real and legitimate issue when certain groups in a society enjoy ready access to good healthcare and schooling when others do not? There was a time, not so long ago, when to speak of privilege was to identify forms of injustice that decent people wished to do something about.

But youd also have to be a fool to deny that the idea of privilege has been weaponized in contemporary discourse, often by people attempting to seize rhetorical advantage. The privilege call-outs increasingly common in the culture entail a readiness to rebuke people simply because their gender, ethnicity or rank makes them an apt target for shaming and condemnation. The charge of privilege is usually directed at its targets not with the prospect of enlisting them in some plausible action to combat injustice but instead to signal the accusers membership in the party of the virtuous. Accusations of privilege have become a form of oneupsmanship, and a charge against which there is no real defense.

The writer and linguist John McWhorter has written of the self-indulgent joy of being indignant; for many in the academy, he notes, the existential state of Living While White constitutes a form of racism in itself. In fact, he argues, the standard White Privilege paradigm is designed to shunt energy from genuine activism into Im sorry a kind of performance art.

Those words a kind of performance art sharply identify what has lately happened and explain why many of us believe it is time to retire the term privilege, or at least agree to use it only when it cannot be understood to describe a self-evident crime. Not every advantage is unearned. Not every advantage is misused. Not every white person enjoys privilege in the way that some white persons do. Not all black people are without advantages.

In fact, to speak of privilege in the way that is now customary is to suppose that whiteness, or blackness, or maleness, or other such attributes, must signify to all of us the same things. It is to consider a white person primarily as a white person, a black person primarily as a black person, and to consign to irrelevance the many other qualities that make humans different from each other.

Our emphasis on privilege has served to obscure a great many things that ought to be obvious. We cannot have a serious discussion about privilege without first making elementary distinctions between one experience of race or advantage and another. Until and unless we are prepared to renounce the performance art phase of our relationship to privilege we ought to let it go.

Robert Boyers, a professor of English at Skidmore College, is the founder and editor of the journal Salmagundi and the founder and director of the New York State Summer Writers Institute

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The term privilege has been weaponized. It's time to retire it - The Guardian

But I have foundthat in the simple act of living with hope, and in the daily effort to have a positiveimpact in the world, the days I do have are made all the more meaningful andprecious. And for that I am grateful.

~ Elizabeth Edwards ~

Have youever had one of those days where it seems that the world is one big pigeon,just waiting to crap on your front steps? Sure, we all have. Then someone comesalong and tells you to keep positive. You feel like strangling them on thespot. While our mind is telling us we should be positive, our feelingsare screaming at us to tell the world where to stick it. Regardless ofhow we feel however, we realize that it will not do us any good to continue tohave our own pity party and we need to move on.

There arethings we can do, that will help us turn our attitude around, brighten our dayand shorten our stay in a negative state the next time it seems the world isout to get us.

Here are 5 things we can do.

Step away and get a reality check

When we arein a negative state, we have a tendency to see problems as greater than theyare, overreact and see trappings in a situation that really dont exist. Thiscauses the position and problem to snowball and get worse. Ask yourselfthis question, Is there anything I can do at this time to keep the problemfrom getting worse? Or, How could thisproblem have been worse than it is? This may help us to see there is somelight at the end of the tunnel. If we feel stuck in negativity we can asksomeone we trust to give us their perspective. As they are not caught upemotionally in the problem as we are, they will be able to see in a clearer andunbiased manner.

Look for a positive and focus on it

When youhave just found out some bad news it will not be easy to focus on somethingpositive. Try to shift your thinking, however, away from the negative toa situation that has gone well, good ones or something that has brought you joyand happiness in the past. If it makes it easier just try to think of somethingneutral. Do whatever it takes to shift your focus. At the time ofreceiving bad news it may feel you are the only one who is having a difficulttime. The life stories of most highly successful people will usuallyinclude at least one chapter on overcoming tragedies and failures. Remindyourself of this next time things have gone off the rails for you.Nietzsche said that What doesnt kill us will make us stronger. Peoplewho have survived adversity and gone on to better their lives believe this andlook back on their difficult times with a sense of pride for having overcomethem.

Look past the situation

Think ofdifficult situations that you have been through in your past.Become aware that this too will pass. Try to imagine what it will be like ayear, five years or ten years from now looking back on this time. It willhelp us focus on doing the difficult work that we need to do to get through acrisis, while at the same time giving us perspective that this is only onething in our ongoing lives. This helps keep us from getting overwhelmed by ourpresent negative situation or events.

Ask for and accept help

Successfulpeople have a strong support network that they can count on to support them intimes of need. If you have such a network, this is the time to reach outand ask for help. Knowing when we need help and asking for it is a signof strength, not of weakness. We feel good when we are able to helpothers, so let others experience that same feeling by being able to help us in timesof need. Support networks dont happen by accident, they are built upover time with effort and consistency. The way to develop a strongsupport network is to be part of such a network by offering and helping othersfreely in times of need. What we put out to others comes back to usmultiplied. If you dont have an immediate support network, or haverecently moved to an area where you dont know anyone, there are organizationsin the community whose purpose it is to offer support in your situation.Reach out to them in difficult times.

Develop an Attitude of Gratitude

Everymorning, before I start my day I have a gratitude book in which I write in atleast ten things which I am grateful for. When Im having a bad day, togo back to that list helps me and I become aware of all the good there are inmy life. Developing an awareness of all the positives and rememberingthem is a powerful tool that helps us overcome adversity and the difficulttimes that are an inevitable part of life. While remembering all thethings we have to be grateful for is a good practice in our everyday lives, itis especially important during difficult times.

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5 Ways to Stay Positive When Facing Adversity - Thrive Global

UNSHELTERED, by Barbara Kingsolver. (Harper Perennial, $17.99.) Two narratives, one set in the 21st century and one in the 19th, entwine in this novel about two familes that occupy the same house centuries apart. Each seeks elusive shelter as it reels from its own set of disruptions. Kingsolver has given us another densely packed and intricately imagined book, Meg Wolitzer wrote in these pages.

PALACES FOR THE PEOPLE: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life, by Eric Klinenberg. (Broadway Books, $18.) Klinenberg, an N.Y.U. sociologist, argues that designing public building projects like streets and schools to maximize human connections solves a host of social ills. Anyone interested in cities will find this book an engaging survey, our reviewer, Pete Buttigieg, wrote.

COME WITH ME, by Helen Schulman. (Harper Perennial, $16.99.) Set in Silicon Valley and Fukushima, Japan, Schulmans sixth novel centers on a long-married couple, the parents of three children, who plunge into real-world and cyber experiences that shake the foundations of their staid, affluent life. Our reviewer, Stephen McCauley, called the book strikingly original, compelling and beautifully written.

NINE PINTS: A Journey Through the Money, Medicine, and Mysteries of Blood, by Rose George. (Picador, $18.) This exploration of that crucial bodily fluid encompasses the ancient practice of bloodletting, the lucrative market in plasma transfusions and the authors harrowing personal experiences. The Timess Dwight Garner applauded Georges no-nonsense briskness and potent moral sensibility.

I AM DYNAMITE! A Life of Nietzsche, by Sue Prideaux. (Tim Duggan Books, $18.). This intimate biography of the sickly 19th-century philosopher who became an unwitting intellectual pillar of the Third Reich moves between his life, his published work and his personal writings. The Timess Parul Sehgal praised Prideauxs attentive, scrupulous portrait.

MEMOIRS OF AN EX-PROM QUEEN, by Alix Kates Shulman. (Picador, $17.) Published in 1972 and immediately embraced as a feminist classic, this reissued novel follows its heroine from teenage triumphs and humiliations in an Ohio suburb through snuffed-out ambitions and a disastrous marriage to a hard-fought kind of freedom, sexual and otherwise. Sasha Davis might well be a female cousin of Alexander Portnoy, Marylin Bender wrote in these pages.

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New in Paperback: Unsheltered and Come With Me - The New York Times