Archive for October 2019
“If thou tastest a crust of bread, thou tastest all the stars and all the heavens”*…
Because of its central role in human nutrition, bread has appeared in countless cultural and religious keystones: the epic of Gilgamesh; the description of Egypt as the land of bread-eaters; Jewish oppression and the feast of Passover (bread of the afflicted); the Roman cry of “bread and circuses”; bread as a symbol in the poetry of Omar Khayyam; bread that signifies the body of Christ in the Eucharist. In short, made with simple, wholesome ingredients, bread is the staff of life. German bread continues to exemplify this tradition, one that Jews were supposedly destroying with processed white bread.
In contrast to the German disdain for white bread, in the United States it had become a symbol of successful industrialization, of a promising modern future. In the early twentieth century, Americans had developed a new anxiety about the potential contamination of their food supply. Eugene Christian and Mollie Griswold Christian exemplify the dramatic phobias surrounding both home-baked and bakery-bought bread in their 1904 book Uncooked Foods and How to Use Them: A Treatise on How to Get the Highest Form of Animal Energy from Food, with Recipes for Preparation, Healthful Combinations and Menus. They write, “Bread rises when infected with the yeast germ, because millions of these little worms have been born and have died, and from their dead and decaying bodies there rises a gas just as it does from the dead body of a hog.” Yum! Mass-produced bread seemed somehow safer, more sterile, in the public eye…
Food, politics, and culture– the dark and white flours of ideology: “Breaking Bread.”
* Robert Browning
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As we loaf, we might recall that it was on this date in 1826 that Noah Cushing, of Quebec, who two years earlier had received Canada’s first patent for his mechanical washing machine, patented a threshing and winnowing machine… which was briskly overtaken by Cyrus McCormick’s better-performing reaping machine, patented in 1834. Threshing and winnowing capacities were added to the reaper to create the now-standard “combine” that’s used to harvest grain.
Plaque commemorating Cushing’s (first) patent
“I think a strong claim can be made that the process of scientific discovery may be regarded as a form of art”*…
Click through for neuroscientist (and accomplished comic artist) Matteo Farinella’s unpacking of a serious issue in the practice of modern science: “Scientific knowledge is drowning in a flood of research.”
* (Nobel laureate and “father of nuclear physics”)
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As we honor abduction, we might spare a thought for a theorist supreme, Claude Lévi-Strauss; he died on this date in 2009. An anthropologist and ethnologist whose work was key in the development of the theory of Structuralism and Structural Anthropology, he is considered, with James George Frazer and Franz Boas, the “father of modern anthropology.” Beyond anthropology and sociology, his ideas– Structuralism has been defined as “the search for the underlying patterns of thought in all forms of human activity”– have influenced many fields in the humanities, including philosophy.
“I made bongs”*…
Alderson Federal Prison Camp, home to Martha Stewart for five months in 2004-5
From Town and Country Magazine, offered here without comment…
So you got caught. That porn star wasn’t about to pay herself to stay mum about her night with your boss, so you stepped up and took one for the team. Or perhaps your daughters were better at Instagram than calculus, so you spent half a million bucks pretending they were the best college athletic prospects since O.J. Simpson. Or maybe the SEC decided you were less of a “cryptoguru” and more of a charlatan.
From Felicity Huffman to Michael Cohen, nearly every day brings a notable figure face to face with a possible jail sentence—which, in turn, has given rise to a cottage industry: the prison consultancy. From companies like California’s White Collar Advice, which boasts a team of professionals with penal experience (as convicts or as employees of the Federal Bureau of Prisons) to individual entrepreneurs like Federal Prison Handbook author Christopher Zoukis, they have made it positively de rigueur for those more accustomed to sleeping between Pratesi than polyester to hire an insider who will lay out what to expect when expecting to be incarcerated…
Counsel for connected cons-to-be– the Emily Post of prison etiquette: “Inside the World of Prison Consultants Who Prepare White Collar Criminals to Do Time.”
* Tommy Chong, of his time at Taft Correctional Institute, where he built a kiln to fire his ceramic creations
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As we ponder privilege, we might recall that it was on this date in 1966 that one of Rolling Stone‘s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, “96 Tears,” by ? and the Mysterians (AKA Question Mark and the Mysterians), reached #1 on the pop chart.
“One must not think slightingly of the paradoxical”*…
The Building of the Argo, by Antoon Derkinderen, c. 1901. Rijksmuseum.
The thought problem known as the ship of Theseus first appears in Plutarch’s Lives, a series of biographies written in the first century. In one vignette, Theseus, founder-hero of Athens, returns victorious from Crete on a ship that the Athenians went on to preserve.
They took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same…
Of course, the conundrum of how things change and stay the same has been with us a lot longer than Plutarch. Plato, and even pre-Socratics like Heraclitus, dealt in similar questions. “You can’t step in the same river twice,” a sentiment found on inspirational Instagram accounts, is often attributed to Heraclitus. His actual words—“Upon those who step into the same rivers, different and again different waters flow”—might not be the best Instagram fodder but, figuratively at least, provided the waters that the ship of Theseus later sailed.
Two thousand years later the ship is still bobbing along, though some of its parts have been replaced. Now known colloquially as Theseus’ paradox, in the U.S. the idea sometimes appears as “Washington’s ax.” While not as ancient as the six-thousand-year-old stone ax discovered last year at George Washington’s estate, the age-old question remains: If Washington’s ax were to have its handle and blade replaced, would it still be the same ax? The same has been asked of a motley assortment of items around the world. In Hungary, for example, there is a similar fable involving the statesman Kossuth Lajos’ knife, while in France it’s called Jeannot’s knife.
This knife, that knife, Washington’s ax—there’s even a “Lincoln’s ax.” We don’t know where these stories originated. They likely arose spontaneously and had nothing to do with the ancient Greeks and their philosophical conundrums. The only thing uniting these bits of folklore is that the same question was asked: Does a thing remain the same after all its parts are replaced? In the millennia since the ship of Theseus set sail, some notions that bear its name have less in common with the original than do the fables of random axes and knives, while other frames for this same question threaten to replace the original entirely.
One such version of this idea is attributed to Enlightenment philosopher John Locke, proffering his sock as an example. An exhibit called Locke’s Socks at Pace University’s now-defunct Museum of Philosophy serves to demonstrate. On one wall, six socks were hung: the first a cotton sports sock, the last made only of patches. A museum guide, according to a New York Times write-up, asked a room full of schoolchildren, “Assume the six socks represent a person’s sock over time. Can we say that a sock which is finally all patches, with none of the original material, is the same sock?”
The question could be asked of Theseus’ paradox itself. Can it be said that a paradox about a ship remains the same if the ship is replaced with a knife or a sock? Have we lost anything from Theseus’ paradox if instead we start calling it “the Locke’s Sock paradox”?…
Is a paradox still the same after its parts have been replaced? A consideration: “Restoring the Ship of Theseus.”
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As we contemplate change, we might spare a reasoned thought for the Enlightenment giant (and sock darner) John Locke; the physician and philosopher died on this date in 1704. An intellectual descendant of Francis Bacon, Locke was among the first empiricists. He spent over 20 years developing the ideas he published in his most significant work, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), an analysis of the nature of human reason which promoted experimentation as the basis of knowledge. Locke established “primary qualities” (e.g., solidity, extension, number) as distinct from “secondary qualities” (sensuous attributes like color or sound). He recognized that science is made possible when the primary qualities, as apprehended, create ideas that faithfully represent reality.
Locke is, of course, also well-remembered as a key developer (with Hobbes, and later Rousseau) of the concept of the Social Contract. Locke’s theory of “natural rights” influenced Voltaire and Rosseau– and formed the intellectual basis of the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
“I think if human beings had genuine courage, they’d wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween”*…
With an eye to Thursday’s festivities, a collection of photos, circa 1897-1918, of children (from the Bronx) dressed as ghosts: “Costume.”
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As we give face to our fears, we might recall that it was on this date in 1966 that CBS premiered It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. it was the third Peanuts special (and second holiday-themed special, following A Charlie Brown Christmas) to be produced and animated by Bill Melendez. It was also the first Peanuts special to use the titular pattern of a short phrase, followed by “Charlie Brown”, a pattern which would remain the norm for almost all subsequent Peanuts specials. And it was one of 17 Peanuts specials (plus a feature film) to feature the music of Vince Guaraldi.
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