Tribalism in sports is a funny thing. Like most Brooklyn residents, I was upset and dismayed by the rushed development deal for the Atlantic Yards project, the centerpiece for which was the Barclays Center, home of the Brooklyn Nets, transplanted from across the river, where they functioned as the New Jersey Nets. (Back in thoseContinue reading “Brooklyn is Back in the Playoffs, Or, The Lure of Tribalism”
Monthly Archives: April 2013
‘OK to be Gay if You’re a Woman’: Brittney Griner Comes Out
Brittney Griner came out on Wednesday and it didn’t make news: [Even as] there is increased speculation about whether a male athlete — any male athlete — will come out while still playing a major professional team sport, one of the best female athletes in the history of team sports comes out, and the reactionContinue reading “‘OK to be Gay if You’re a Woman’: Brittney Griner Comes Out”
The Closing of the NYPD’s Mind
Today, Brooklyn College hosted a panel titled ‘Are We Safer? Costs, Benefits, and Alternatives to 20 Years of Aggressive Street Policing” (organized by the Herbert Kurz Chair in Constitutional Law and Civil Liberties, Professor Anna Law.) The panel’s discussants were: John DeCarlo, Michael Powell (New York Times), Alex S. Vitale, and Franklin E. Zimring. The rangeContinue reading “The Closing of the NYPD’s Mind”
Courage in the Face of Terror, Elsewhere
After 9/11, we were told how brave New Yorkers were, how resilient this city was, how its people would come together in the face of adversity, how it had seen worse and endured and would do the same again. After 7/7 we were told that Londoners, who lived in a city that had survived theContinue reading “Courage in the Face of Terror, Elsewhere”
The Boston Bombings Are Bad News
By now, the bombings at the Boston Marathon are ‘old news’ for our 24-hour news and social media cycle. We’ve now run through the standard template of responses to such an attack: suspicion of the usual suspects, rallying cries of support for the afflicted, stern, righteous denunciations from political leaders, racist rants of revenge andContinue reading “The Boston Bombings Are Bad News”
Learning from Babies
What a baby does best is make the world new all over again. It does so by reminding us how the ordinary is just the extraordinary taken for granted, how the most elemental facts about ourselves give us the greatest occasion for wonder. They are the commonest creatures of all, with thousands born every minute;Continue reading “Learning from Babies”
God as Therapist, Existent or Non-Existent
In ‘When God is your Therapist‘, (New York Times, 13 April 2013) T.M Luhrmann suggests that the evangelical relationship with God often resembles that between client and therapist: I soon came to realize that one of the most important features of these churches is that they offer a powerful way to deal with anxiety andContinue reading “God as Therapist, Existent or Non-Existent”
What the Brain Can Tell Us About Art (and Literature)
In ‘What the Brain Can Tell Us About Art‘ (New York Times, April 12, 2013), Eric R. Kandel writes: Alois Riegl….understood that art is incomplete without the perceptual and emotional involvement of the viewer. Not only does the viewer collaborate with the artist in transforming a two-dimensional likeness on a canvas into a three-dimensional depictionContinue reading “What the Brain Can Tell Us About Art (and Literature)”
Get Your Computer’s Hands off my Students’ Essays
Last week, the New York Times alerted readers to the possibility of computers grading college-level student essays. As with any news featuring the use of ‘artificial intelligence’ to replace humans, reactions to this announcement feature the usual skewed mix of techno-boosterism, assertions of human uniqueness, and fears of deskilling and job loss. First, a sampleContinue reading “Get Your Computer’s Hands off my Students’ Essays”
Bohm and Schrödringer on the World, the Self, and Wholeness
Sans comment, two physicists of yesteryear on matters that might be considered philosophical. First, David Bohm on ‘the world’: [T]he world cannot be analyzed correctly into distinct parts; instead, it must be regarded as an indivisible unit in which separate parts appear as valid approximations only in the classical [i.e., Newtonian] limit….Thus, at the quantumContinue reading “Bohm and Schrödringer on the World, the Self, and Wholeness”
Samir Chopra 