That just says it all. 37 carries. 189 yards. 1 TD

No Chicago Bears fan needs to be reminded of the debacle that the Cincinnati Bengals handed them last Sunday, but I will. Can I just say for the record that I did suggest in my last Bears post that they needed to 1) GET the run game going and 2) pressure Carson Palmer. Both did not happen….AT ALL.

The result. Well a 10 to 45 slaughtering at the hands of the Bengals. Forte crawled for a measly 24 yards on 6 carries. While Carson Palmer dropped 5 TD bombs for 233 yards in 20 completions out of 24. I said that fans don’t need to worry, but forget that…now the Bears fans can start panicking about their offensive line. IT JUST PLAIN SUCKS. Bottom line, no one can argue that fact especially if you have seen all 6 Bears games thus far. Do not justify it, accept it. Yes Chris Williams is new at right tackle, but for the rest of the line there is no excuse that a Chicago Bears team can not run. This O-line is mistake-prone for being a fairly veteran line. Frank Omiyale got owned for a second week in a row. It is just embarrassing play.

This just can not be a regular sight for a "franchise QB"

The worst part of it all? Pass protection has been compromised now too. Cutler has been pressured all season – and the stats are there to show for it – but Cutler has made enough plays to bail them out. Well the Bengals showed that if you put the Bears in a deep hole, Cutler can not do it all to bring the team back. The Chargers said it a few years ago when Cutler was with Denver – if you fluster Cutler he will kill you with mistakes. Cinny forced Cutler’s gunslinger mentality and the result was another 3 interceptions to the season. I don’t want to label Cutler “a more accurate and mobile Rex Grossman,” especially with the way the O-line has been playing, but Cutler botched two snaps and threw INTs that were very reminiscent of Rex. Bottom line, if the Bears want to see Cutler flourish management needs to reevaluate the offensive line. We need to protect our future investment.

Chad 8-5. A True Entertainer. A True Sportsman. Consoling an injured Alex Brown.

The defense? What can I say? There are no words for their epic collapse. FOX ran a stat that said the Bears haven’t been rung up on this badly since nearly 10 years ago. Couldn’t stop the run. Couldn’t stop the pass. As the first half wore on I started to LOVE Chad Ochocinco even more. If you watch him and his actions (not just this game), Ochocinco is a true professional when need be. He the talked the talk before the game, but was all business on the field. To back it up…that’s freakin’ awesome. Chad 8-5 just makes the NFL exciting.

IF there is any positive from this game it is that Devin Hester had 101 yards receiving – but he still fumbled on a pretty crucial drive. I was wrong about suggesting it might be a shootout. I was wrong that Benson would run only around 100 yards. I was wrong about the score and the outcome.

…and because the Bears blow I have officially jumped on the Vikings bandwagon. Yes, it was that bad yesterday. The reasons for why the Vikings? For one, I’ve been an Adrian Peterson fan since his Oklahoma days. I told my roommate that Peterson was a much better runner than Reggie Bush was when both were in college. No one believed me then. I was wrong on one part – Peterson is a much better player than Bush. Secondly, I respect the hell out of Brett Farve. Thirdly, I hate the Packers and would rather see the Vikings take the division any day. And lastly, because the Vikings play the game the way the Bears are supposed to – great running game and hard hitting defense.

Because of that, here is a clip of A.P. going All-Day on Steelers’ William Gay (rhymed that, ha!):

Om Niklas Grossman fortsätter säsongen som han startat den i Dallas borde OS biljetten med Tre Kronor vara klar. Bengt-Åke tog ju med honom redan till VM ifjol och när han nu toppar NHL’s plus/minus liga bevisar han sin klass. Laget ligger ändå “bara” sexa i Western Conference och har släppt in 26 mål. Vid ett OS på liten rink är det nog bra med backar som är stabila när det blåser. Grossman, Edler, Murray och varför inte Jonathan Eriksson får gärna komplettera de mer etablerade som Lidström och Kronwall. Som Bäckman spelar i Frölunda just nu borde han också vara aktuell.

Ed eccola, una vecchia ormai, che vive in una perpetua attesa del meglio, e crede, e teme il male, è piena di ansia per la vita degli uomini, e non distingue chi vive da chi è morto, sta qui e guarda le rovine della sua casa, ammira il cielo primaverile senza neanche accorgersi di ammirarlo, sta qui e si chiede perchè il futuro di coloro che ama è così intricato, perchè la loro vita è costellata di tanti errori, e non si accorge che in questa confusione, in questa nebbia, dolore e groviglio c’è già risposta, e chiarezza e speranza; e che lei sa, capisce con tutta l’anima il significato della vita che è stato dato di vivere a lei e ai suoi cari, e benche nè lei nè nessuno di loro possa dire cosa li aspetti, e benchè essi sappiano che in un tempo così terribile l’uomo non è più artefice della propria felicità, e che il destino del mondo ha ricevuto il diritto di graziare o punire, portare alla gloria o coprire di fango, e trasformare in polvere di lager, tuttavia non è concesso al destino del mondo e alla Storia, alla mano irosa dello Stato, alla gloria, o all’infamia della lotta di trasformare coloro che hanno nome di uomini. Qualunque cosa li attenda, la celebrità per la loro fatica o la solitudine, la disperazione e la miseria, il lager e la condanna, essi vivranno da uomini, e da uomini moriranno, come quelli che sono periti hanno saputo fare; proprio in questo consiste per l’eternità l’amara vittoria umana su tutte le forze maestose e disumane che ci sono state e ci saranno nel mondo.

(Vasilij S. Grossman, “Vita e Destino”, Jaka Book, III ed. giugno 2005, pag.849)

I’m on the record praising Lev Grossman’s essay “Good Books Don’t Have to be Hard.” Predictably, that piece generated a fair amount of blowback (and a concomitant amount of misinterpretation, like the fallacious argument that Grossman is arguing that good books can’t be hard); see a sample of it here, complete with a comment from yours truly.

Now, however, we can see how Lev Grossman Responds to Criticism of His Wall Street Journal Piece, as spoken by the man himself. Read it when you get a chance. It’s not terrible, but I think he could do better, and I hope he does “write more (if anybody cares) when I’m back in civilization.”

One thing I’d strongly disagree with comes when Grossman discusses Twilight’s sales: “All those millions of people might be idiots or have bad taste. But I think it’s kinda intellectually lazy to say that.” I don’t, and they do have bad taste. I’ve read a book and a half of the series, and they’re so cliche-ridden that they make Harry Potter look like Shakespeare, and the writing has originality and verve that make Dan Brown impressive by comparison.

To be fair, he goes on to say, “Meyer is doing something very very well, or at least giving people something they really really want, and I don’t think we have a good critical vocabulary yet for talking about what that something is.” She might be doing something well, yes, but writing isn’t it. That’s why a lot of people who are literary and/or like good writing don’t think much of her.

Everyone, I have a very important announcement to make. I’ve been in a relationship for four years now, and something really special has happened to me that I want to share with you. After a long courtship, I finally have decided to make the most important commitment one can make.

I’M ENGAGED!!!

…What? Oh, no, my boyfriend didn’t pop the question yet. I realized the other day that I am engaged to belly dancing. Sound ridiculous? Probably. The other night I found myself thinking, “All right, belly dance, you win. You make me want to work hard and be a better person. I am completely and utterly addicted to how I feel when I’m with you, and I can’t live without you. I know I want to spend the rest of my life with you and build a future with you.”

Then it hit me: “…wait. Did I just propose to belly dancing?”

Nothing makes you question your sanity more than realizing that you just mentally proposed to something intangible. Believe me, I understand if you think I’m crazy. Belly dance can’t snuggle with you, give you a foot rub after work, help you raise a family. But for me, belly dance makes me feel good and special every day, it keeps me sane, it helps me create goals, it gives my life passion and purpose… if that’s not a relationship I could make a serious commitment to, than I don’t know what is.

So I’m going with this, as crazy as it seems. Starting now, I am committing to this dance and I am committing to making my dreams a reality, 100%. I will dedicate as much time as I can to my training. I am relishing the thought of working my ass off to get what I want. I am so excited to continue developing my voice and style as an artist, and I am craving opportunities so I can really start working on getting my career started.

Now I just need a wedding planner.

There aren’t a whole lot of books dedicated to the subject of breaking into the world of belly dance. A lot of famous dancers I have talked to have readily admitted to me that a whole lotta luck and serendipity factored into their success. My friend Nichelle Lawrence once told me, “I never dreamed of being who I am. I just… kinda fumbled into myself and my identity.”

But I do think certain things can help you create opportunities, build connections, and help you do what you love to do. I am reminded again of some of the best advice I have ever received, courtesy of Petite Jamilla: “Be your own business.” And because of my new commitment to this dance, I am putting a lot of faith and work into the business side of my art. But I’m slowly learning there is more to it than just the business side of things — along with being a shrewd businesswoman, I need to work on the product — me. Think about this if you are married, engaged, or in a relationship with someone who you could see marrying — how much has that person changed you for the better? I feel that belly dance has changed me for the better, and now I need to work on being the best person and artist I can be as I take this huge next step.

Recently, I have been fortunate enough to talk to several amazing, incredible, hard-working artist who have been where I am now and have figured it out — they are doing what they love and they are successful at it. The more I talk to these women — Nichelle Lawrence, a freelance photographer; Kandice Grossman, a belly dance instructor, choreographer, director and producer; Suzanne Vansickle, a costume designer and manufacturer, the more I observe several key things that these women are doing to further their success.

Ladies and gents, I give you… a work in progress. It’s not a foolproof plan to “make it,” but it’s what I’ve gleaned in my short time trying to navigate this crazy, sparkly, world of belly dance.

1) Figure out what you want to say. Nichelle (who I am considering paying to be my life coach; the woman is just so wise) asked me this one day: “What makes a great belly dancer? What is it about their dancing that intrigues you the most and is what YOU want to watch?” I thought about it, and I tried to explain to her what I connect to the most while watching a dance. Nichelle looked at me and said calmly, “You want to know how to find your voice? Start there.” That element is where I’m starting from in my discovery to add something unique and special to this art form that is ME.

2) Start believing in what you can offer people. I had a lot of hesitation putting myself out there because I harbored insecurities that people would not like what I had to offer. Then I realized something: There is going to be someone (maybe many people) who absolutely do not like what I want to create. And that’s ok, as long as I’m happy with what I am offering. Have confidence in the product you are selling — you.

3) Put yourself out there, again and again and again and again. Asharah stressed to me the importance of an internet presence, and she’s right. Get a website. Get quality videos of yourself on Youtube. Get visible. Get people interested in learning more about YOU. Perform as much as you can at as many events as you can. Study as much as you can with as many dancers as you can (although I personally think having a primary instructor helps tremendously, someone whose skill far exceeds your own and who inspires you at least weekly). You’re marketing yourself — show people that you have something to offer.

4) Collaborate with others. Talk to other artists. I can’t even begin to stress how much I have learned simply by asking people about their artistic journey. Not all of these people were belly dancers. The most important thing is simply to listen. Open yourself to ideas. Never stop learning, processing, or analyzing.

5) Put out the vibes you want for yourself. Try to do one selfless thing a day, or once a week. If someone helps you out, do something for them. Don’t it because you feel obligated, or because there is some score to balance out. Do it because it’s making you a better person and because if we all can help out one another, we can go farther than we would fighting to break into this world on our own. Help out other artists that you admire. Barter. That energy, that good vibe, what you put out there is what people are going to want to give back to you. Work hard, stay humble, never forget those that helped you along the way. Without them, you would be less of the person and artist that you are today.

6) Write. I am someone who ordinarily is not inclined to keep a journal. But once I started dancing, I found out it was essential. If you’re reading this right now and you’re thinking about skipping this idea, I urge you to reconsider — just try it for a little while. Write down your ideas, journal when can’t get that little voice out of your head that’s telling you can’t do it, journal not only about dance but about you as a person — your hopes, dreams, insecurities, frustrations. I feel like if we want to be artists, we need to figure out what we want to say. But if you don’t even know who you are, how can possibly hope to find the means to express it? That’s the true beauty of art — an artist finds a depiction of herself or of her reality and expresses that in a way that resonates with people.

7) If you really want it, commit to it. I am working part-time right now. I have minimal health insurance that my parents are graciously helping out with. There have been more times than I care to admit where I’ve had less than $10 to my name. Awhile back, all I could think was, “I need to focus on making money right now. I need to figure out what to do. I don’t have time to devote to dance, that just has to go on the back burner right now.” My heart wasn’t buying it, though. I was miserable, even though I was trying to make these sacrifices in order to be happy. Now, I realize, I need to adapt to what I have. I need to find loopholes. I need to budget my money and live frugally. I can’t lose sight of what I want for myself just because times are tough, now is just a time where I need to work harder. I’m committing to dance, even though now it’s more difficult than ever. And you know what? Every since making that commitment a few days ago, I have felt better than I have in six months.

Fight for your happiness. A week or so ago was one of those $10-in-my -bank-account days. I was sitting at home, wondering why I felt so hopeless and depressed. I was feeling like no matter what I did, no matter how much good I was doing for others and despite my hard work, the universe was just not throwing me a bone. It’s so easy to give in to that despair and give up. But then I got mad. I thought to myself,  “Goddamn it, I am working hard. I am living a good life. I’m a good person. I deserve to be happy, and I am going to fight for my happiness. I refuse to let the circumstances and the sadness overwhelm me.” It’s proving to be a really important life motto for me. I think this is really important as an artist to maintain. As artists, we’re vulnerable. We’re exposing our innermost selves for the world to see and judge. The losses, let-downs and frustrations, as a result, can be incredibly crippling. But fight for it, because you deserve it.

I’m committed. It’s going to be difficult at times, I know that. But I’m a romantic — I’m willing to sacrifice for something that I truly love with all my heart.

Speaking about current members of Congress during a break in the testimony, Krikorian told The BRAD BLOG that “for people in power situations in the United States, who know about this information, if they don’t take action against it, in my opinion, it’s negligence.”  Edmonds’ on-the-record disclosures also include bombshell details concerning outed covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson’s front company, Brewster Jennings. Edmonds alleges the front company had actually been shut down in August of 2001 — three years prior to Bob Novak’s public disclosure of the covert operative’s identity — following a tip-off to a wire-tap target about the true nature of the CIA front company. The cover was blown, Edmonds alleges, by Marc Grossman, who was, at the time, the third highest-ranking official in the U.S. State Department. Prior to that, Grossman served as ambassador to Turkey. He now works “for a Turkish company called Ihals Holding,” according to Edmonds’ testimony.

An unclassified FBI Inspector General’s report, released on her case in 2005, declared Edmonds’ classified allegations to be “credible,” “serious,” and “warrant[ing] a thorough and careful review by the FBI.” In 2002, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), then the senior members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, co-wrote letters on Edmonds’ behalf to Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and DoJ Inspector General Glenn A. Fine, calling on all of them to take action in respect to her allegations. And in a 2002 60 Minutes report on Edmonds’ case, Grassley noted: “Absolutely, she’s credible…And the reason I feel she’s very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story.”

The Magicians is a surprise and delight: its language is not overly showy and yet often contains an unexpected surprise, especially at the ends of sentences, as this early description shows: “Quentin was thin and tall, though he habitually hunched his shoulders in a vain attempt to brace himself against whatever blow was coming from the heavens, and which would logically hit the tall people first.” Until the last clause, one could be reading any novel, fantasy or otherwise, but saying that a blow from heaven would hit the tall first gives us Quentin’s personality in a single line, and yet its ideas are spun coherently across the entire novel.

Furthermore, the line shows an awareness of conventional description (how many characters have been described as tall and thin, as though being identified to the police?) and a willingness to subvert or upend that convention. Just as Grossman does so in terms of Quentin, he does so in terms of the fantasy genre more generally. When I write phrases like “the fantasy genre more generally,” they sound boring, but The Magicians is anything but: it’s the fresh air that blows through a land that has too often become dank and polluted through mere copying rather than innovation or real novelty.

Fantasy novels often live and (more often) die by the quality of the worlds they create and the rules that have to be set. If the novel has no rules whatsoever, it loses any point: the result is mindless chaos. If the rules are violated with impunity, they don’t seem real: it isn’t possible to fly in real life without an airplane, or glider, or whatever, and each device has constraints. Break too many rules and the world starts to seem superficial, knocking one from the experience of reading. If a character consistently breaks every rule that’s available, he or she eventually becomes God-like, which in turn seems pointless: if a character doesn’t have boundaries between themselves and what they desire, what’s the plot? They take what they want in a sentence. Dante’s Inferno is notoriously more fun and interesting than his Paradiso.

Fantasy novels fail when they gratuitously violate the rule they set for themselves. In middle school (which is age 11 – 14, for those not familiar with U.S. education customs), I read innumerable Dragonlance novels, each one worse than the one preceding it; one problem of the series as a whole was a wildly inconsistent magic system in which the heroes of one novel could be vastly more or less powerful than another. In another terribly series I read, The Sword of Truth, each novel depended on finding another villain even more powerful than the villain before, and a way to defeat that villain using ever more esoteric powers against them. Most of them also have comically juvenile view of sexuality, as I mentioned here—in The Sword of Truth, powerful women who have sex with men turn them into slavering servants who are willing to cut off their own genitalia. The bad guy is named Darken Rahl. Subtle, much?

One of Tolkien’s many brilliant decisions or realizations in The Lord of the Rings involves the fact that all the characters know the approximate borders of their powers; Gandalf often qualifies what he says, even in instances when it appears he knows the facts of a situation. While describing Frodo’s ordeal, Gandalf says, “This is what happened, as far as I can tell” (emphasis added). Gandalf was not there: he doesn’t know for sure based on eye-witness testimony. In short, he has a contingent view of the universe—a topic I’ll return.

There’s a great deal Gandalf doesn’t know, and that he knows he doesn’t know: that there’s a Balrog in Moria, or that one of the Palantiri is thrown by Wormtongue, or how, at first, to even enter Moria. So too with many of the situations in The Magicians: although Quentin and his friends don’t understand the world or each other in part due to adolescent fumbling and folly, his professors don’t understand it fully either: a mysterious entity appears in a classroom early on, and the magical protections that have been so laboriously woven around the school fail to keep this entity out; it would be like some force penetrating the security imposed by the Secret Service around the White House. The professors are stymied, and it’s a useful and terrifying moment precisely because no one knows what’s going on. In some ways, its randomness is scarier than the infinite varieties of dark lords who pop up like corn in Iowa, only to be mowed down by the scythe of heroes. There is so much we don’t know about the world, The Magicians implies, much as the modernist writers implied that there’s so much we don’t know about what goes in the human mind.

In The Magicians, magic is more like computer science or writing well or electrical engineering: it demands long study and practice to master, complete with incantation, confounding variables, deep thought, passionate virtuosity, and great precision. Grossman said in an interview with The New Yorker that “I was never really satisfied with what Rowling tells us about magic in Harry Potter. I never understood what was so hard about it—it just seems like swish and flick and expelliarmus and Bob’s your uncle.” It wasn’t hard. But then again, it isn’t as hard as one might expect in The Magicians, at least in the sense that its rules, limits, and details are never fully described, as one can, for example, find much of computer science is in the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs or The Art of Computer Programming. Or maybe they are there, and Quentin doesn’t see fit to share them with us. If so, however, the magical equivalents of those two books are well hidden; we’re more often treated to descriptions of how difficult magic is than examples of it. Take this passage:

Talent was a part [of being able to use magic]—that silent, invisible exertion he felt in his chest every time a spell came out right. But there was also work, hard work, mountains of it. Every spell has to be adjusted and modified in a hundred ways according to the prevailing circumstances… under which it was cast… textbooks and teachers treated [magic] like an orderly system for the purposes of teaching it, but in reality it was complex and chaotic and organic… It was Mayakovsky’s intention to make them memorize all these minutiae, and not only to memorize them but absorb and internalize them.

All this comes from a single page. The writing isn’t especially inspired here, especially the bits about “invisible exertion” felt in the chest. But the ideas are fascinating, even if we have to ask: but what does that mean, to have spells that have to be ceaselessly adjusted and modified? We don’t know. Quentin expresses the same interest regarding the imaginary (in the sense of “invented for The Magicians“) novels regarding Fillory, a land much like Narnia written by an author named Plover: “Now that [Quentin] had been to Brakebills and knew something about real magic he could read Plover with a more critical eye. He wanted to know the details behind the spells.” He doesn’t find out. When he’s performing “magic tricks” in the conventional sense using cards, he finds that learning the skill “wasn’t romantic at all. It was grim and repetitive and deceptive. And he worked his ass off to become very good at it.” Writers, however, aren’t very good at being able to show this work in fictional form because it would bog down the narrative, even if they themselves have mastered their own systems. Another powerful tool underlying Tolkien is the Elvish languages and the ancient legends; although they’re never explained, one can feel their depth and the sense of crumbling history that underlies Weathertop and the Rauros Falls. But fully explaining the details of a magic system is much more tedious—better to say the practice is grim and repetitive than show us how grim and repetitive it can be.

It is possible to have such descriptions in novels; Neal Stephenson analogizes early computers to organs, as in the music instruments, and cryptography to bike chains in Cryptonomicon, deftly explaining both ideas in ways that don’t require one to have actually taken the math behind behind the concepts to nonetheless understand them. We don’t get that in The Magicians. But we do get many descriptions of the tests and rituals that are reminiscent of what students are widely subjected to in school today; I can remember having to take Washington State tests in middle and high school, the Pre-SAT, the SAT, a bundle of Advanced Placement (AP) tests, innumerable college finals, the LSAT, the general GRE, and the subject GRE. There are probably more than I’m remembering at the moment. I’m surprised that a greater number of novels don’t focus on the rigamarole modern students go through. Then again, in retrospect I doubt any of them have been all that vital to my overall well-being and happiness: for that, reading interesting books, my sex life, and having “enough” money have all been far more important. The better question is, why didn’t I realize that earlier?

Still, tests in magic land are somewhat more consequential: whether you go to Columbia, Cornell, Williams College, or the University of Washington is of far less consequence than whether you go to magic school. Calculus and statistics don’t change based on what conventional university you attend, but if you don’t get into Brakebills, you’re apparently stuck in the regular world that many apparently want to flee, but if they flee further than fantasy novels, they might search why the regular world is structured as it is—which Quentin discovers, as all young people in Bildungsromans must, the hard way. Sure, meeting the Elves of Middle-earth would be great, but what do you do without insole support while trooping through hundreds of miles of wilderness? And what about toilet paper?

When he gets more into magic than he cares to, Quentin thinks, “Everything was much less entertaining and more difficult to organize than they’d counted on.” It’s a bit like going to Mars: great in science fiction but really tough in real life. The modern Western world is filled with incredible logistical marvels like smooth roads, plumbing, electrification, and so forth, all of which we take for granted, and all of which fantasy novels tend to ignore. Focusing too much on what one doesn’t have would be boring, but remembering that it exists is still useful, as is the difficulty in acquiring real skills. The move to magic land isn’t an easy one; Quentin wakes up and felt “vaguely confused and regretful, like he’d drunk too much at a party with people he didn’t know very well and fallen asleep in the host’s spare bedroom.” Images of altered consciousness are more common when dealing with magic, which can come to symbolize drugs, science, and more: perhaps that’s part of what appeals about the idea of magic: that it can morph, becoming everything and nothing.

The only other fantasy novel I know of in which magic seems both hard and limited comes from Usrula Le Guin’s Earthsea trilogy, but in the first three novels the characters behave more like idealized scholars or monks than people: they don’t have sex, they don’t get drunk, they don’t manipulate one another to achieve sex, drunkenness, power, or fame, and generally have adventures that are intellectually and spiritually encoded, unlike many prominent United States politicians who have used their power for more conventional purposes.

The Magicians is, in short, a self-conscious, or at least self-aware, fantasy novel, which very few books in the genre have been. In literary fiction, such ideas go back a long ways: the Modernists mapped the terrain extensively, John Barth wrote all over the maps with books like The Sot-Weed Factor and Giles Goat-Boy, and by now it seems like many literary novelists are moving away from the overtly modernist or post-modernist ideals and towards greater subtlety, which Grossman shows. After I wrote the first draft of this paragraph, I saw a Grossman essay titled “Good Books Don’t Have to Be Hard” in the Wall Street Journal, which also discusses the pervasive influence of modernism, which can too easily devolve into the pernicious influence of that school. Mark McGurl builds The Program Era around modernism’s legacy too. Perhaps authors are ready to move toward something else—which might also be a kind of return, but this time to Nineteenth Century novels, much as Post-Modernism was, in a fashion, a return to Eighteenth Century novels.

Self-consciousness imbued in plot that assumes a modernist view of character might be one way to that goal. Quentin thinks that, had he not gotten his wish, “He would have never have known the horror of really getting what he thought he wanted.” The bigger problem is that he thought he wanted the wrong thing and never corrected for it, and he treated adolescent love affairs like major issues of state, but without his parents around to take away his car keys and tell him that he’ll get over it. Instead, he finds the attractiveness of deadening emotions, or what he thinks “deadening emotions means,” when a particularly gruesome bit of what one can only call closer to the real world causes him to think, “The funny thing about it was how easy everything got, when nothing mattered.” Everything matters and nothing does: it sounds like unsourced Nietzsche, which is hardly a bad thing. Other very old ideas reappear too, like this:

In a way fighting like this was just like using magic. You said the words, and they altered the universe. By merely speaking you could create damage and pain, cause tears to fall, drive people away, make yourself feel better, make your life feel worse.

This could be an unusually clear example of speech act theory. But there are also allusions to Harry Potter, Tolkien, The Karate Kid (“Wax on, wax off”), C.S. Lewis, and probably other works I’ve missed. When Quentin and a classmate named Claire have to enter a door as part of a hazing ritual for their major, Physical magic, an older student eventually says that the door used to open when you said “friend” in Elvish—which Gandalf does to enter the Mines of Moria in The Fellowship of the Ring. She doesn’t note, however, that there are multiple strands of Elvish, Sindarin being the most widely known, the language Gandalf speaks: for magicians, many of these characters are cavalier with details. Nonetheless, if I were confronted with a magic door, saying mellon would certainly be one of my first efforts.

For all Grossman’s skill, there are few language flaws in it: Grossman likes the adjective “pretty” too much (page 83: “A woman was fussing over him, a pretty woman.” Page 64: His tutor was Professor Sunderland, the pretty young woman who had asked him to draw maps during his Examination.”) But the language is skillful, the larger plot is an impressive construction, the genre bending works, and the larger philosophical issues mesh. In short, from the micro- to macroscopic, The Magicians works. Too many novels succeed on the micro level of language or the macro level of plot without putting the two together. Not everyone agrees: take this quote from M.A. Orthofer’s review of The Magician, for example:

Quentin, in particular, shows very little maturity — he remains literally a schoolboy — and there is essentially no personal growth to his character, his passage to adulthood flatlining over the course of the story. (The fact that he’s an unsympathetic shit for long stretches (as are a surprisingly large number of the other characters) may be realistic — that moody college age (though in his case it feels more like that moody tween age) … — but doesn’t help matters.)

Given his home life and the demands of the school for magic, Quentin shows surprising maturity much of the time in all matters except sexual ones; in that respect, he’s closer to 14 than to 20, at least given my current understanding of university-style behavior.

The Magicians offers much more than Orthofer gives it, in part because Orthofer is focused on the direct characterization rather than how the plot affects how characters react to their circumstances. The complaints about pacing have some justification to them in the sense that monsters aren’t ceaselessly arising, and the book has a habit of showing rather than telling, as previously discussed, but these are to my mind necessary parts of understanding the world. The Magicians is the kind of book I’d hoped The Name of the Wind would be: fun, fast-moving, and written by someone who has vast ideas that are expressed with nuance. It brings the paradoxical realism of the kind James Wood celebrates in How Fiction Works to fantasy.

David Grossman, nella postfazione, sostiene che il 12 agosto 2006, quando suo figlio Uri, ventenne, cadde nella seconda guerra del Libano, questo libro, iniziato tre anni prima, era in gran parte già scritto: a cambiare sarebbe stata solo “la cassa di risonanza” di quell’evento. Nota opportuna, anche se il lettore informato del grave lutto che ha colpito l’autore, dopo aver letto la quarta, si immagina un racconto autobiografico dall’esito scontato, e resta comunque intimorito: sia per il taglio tragico, sia per la lunghezza del tomo, degna dei grandi romanzi russi dell’ottocento.

Invece il romanzo, impegnativo nella lettura (il lettore fast reading è avvertito), rivela molte sorprese tematiche e stilistiche, oltre ad avere una conclusione aperta, che ha evitato lo strazio di narrare, e di leggere, un dolore come quello per la perdita di un figlio.

La fuga da casa di Orah, madre di Ofer (in ebraico il nome suona come “cerbiatto”: da qui il titolo che riprende una bella similitudine del Cantico dei cantici), rappresenta uno spunto originale: Orah, infatti, crede che un lungo trekking a partire dalla Galilea, rendendola irreperibile, potrà evitare, magicamente, la morte del figlio al fronte, visto che ha azzerato le condizioni per la rituale comunicazione ufficiale del decesso di un soldato. Naturalmente sa razionalmente che questo non potrà salvarlo davvero, ed intuisce di proteggere piuttosto se stessa dal dolore, però non riesce a controllare questo impulso alla fuga.

In questo vagabondare con zaino e tenda, Orah non è sola: la accompagna Avram, un amico di infanzia, conosciuto in isolamento nel corso di una grave malattia, mentre il marito Ilan, a sua volta conosciuto nello stesso ospedale in analoghe circostanze, si trova in giro per il mondo. Così questo viaggio dal nord al sud di Israele, diventa un viaggio anche nel tempo che apre scorci inediti (anche sulla relazione tra i tre amici, che ricorda a tratti il film “Jules e Jim” di F. Truffaut). Gli sviluppi sono a volte sorprendenti per intensità o imprevedibilità, così che lo scrittore riesce a riallacciare i legami con il lettore, a volte scoraggiato in certi passaggi monotoni (e un po’ prolissi) e quasi indotto a “mollare”, cos’ come avviene nel corso di certe escursioni in montagna, dove l’apertura di un nuovo scenario rianima il camminatore stanco.

La ricomposizione del passato è al tempo stesso la storia di una famiglia, e di singoli individui come Avram che hanno evitato di costruirne una, perché trattasi di “alta matematica. Ci sono troppe incognite, troppe parentesi, troppe moltiplicazioni ed elevamenti a potenza. E poi …la necessità di mantenere costantemente un rapporto con ciascuno degli altri membri della famiglia …persino in sogno”. Non è una ricostruzione lineare. Essa risulta dal mosaico di intarsi retrospettivi sparsi, dal sovrapporsi di diversi punti di vista narranti: quello dei protagonisti, e quello di un narratore che non rinuncia all’onniscienza della vecchia tradizione, ma la ridimensiona, e la rinnova, mettendola in relazione con altre prospettive.

Mentre si ricompone il puzzle, non si può non essere colpiti ancora una volta dalla profondità con cui gli scrittori israeliani perlustrano, raccontano, ma, soprattutto, vivono i sentimenti. L’amore in particolare – inteso nelle diverse accezioni di amore tra uomo e donna, amore coniugale, genitoriale, fraterno, amicale – è il vero protagonista di questo libro. Sorge il sospetto che la tragica vicenda che Israele ha intessuto con le proprie mani, coinvolgendo anche, loro malgrado, i cittadini dissidenti, tenendo tutti sotto scacco, abbia creato un tale clima di insicurezza e di vertigine del vuoto da rendere le persone molto più consapevoli dell’importanza dei loro affetti privati, che in altre realtà sono invece presi con maggior superficialità o distrazione. Così come della labilità del confine tra vita e morte, come suggerisce la frase conclusiva del libro.

Although our discussion of Burn This Book was largely tabled this week, we are going to jump-start the engine and get rolling this weekend with some discursive interplay on chapters three, five, and six.

From Chapter 3, “Writing in the Dark,” by David Grossman:
1. Why does Grossman title his piece, “Writing in the Dark”? What relevance does his discussion of war and human suffering have to his purpose for writing this essay?

From Chapter 5, “The Man, the Men at the Station,” by Pico Iyer:
2. How is Iyer’s friendship with Maung-Maung significant to his purpose as a writer? Defend your argument with supporting examples/quotes from the text.

From Chapter 6, “Notes on Literature and Engagement,” by Russell Banks:
3. How does Banks define the role of the novelist? Compare and contrast Banks’s definition with your own purposes for writing. What about your students’? How do these purposes shift and at times collide?

Click here to see this dubious picasso on ebay.

They keep coming. Here’s yet another “Picasso” ebay listing by John Re. Shouldn’t this guy be a billionaire by now given the number of Picassos he has? All of his Picassos come from Bob Grossman. Same old story. Check the appraisal (it seems unauthentic) and seek an independent opinion before you waste your money on this. Notice how there are grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes in the purported Parke-Burnet catalogue that comes with the painting. Bad grammar and inconsistent spellings are a hallmark of John Re’s paintings. Read more about John Re’s art and criminal background on this blog. 

Una máquina eléctrica puede efectuar cálculos matemáticos, memorizar acontecimientos históricos, jugar al ajedrez, traducir libros de una lengua a otra. Supera al hombre en su capacidad de solucionar con mayor rapidez problemas matemáticos; su memoria es impecable.

¿Existe un límite al progreso que crea máquinas a imagen y semejanza del hombre? Evidentemente la respuesta es no.

Se puede imaginar la máquina de los siglos y milenios futuros. Escuchará música, sabrá apreciar la pintura, ella misma pintará cuadros, compondrá melodías, escribirá versos.

¿Hay límite a su perfeccionamiento? ¿Podrá ser comparada a un hombre? ¿Lo sobrepasará?

La reproducción del hombre por parte de la máquina necesitará cada vez más electrónica, volumen y superficie.

El recuerdo de la infancia, las lágrimas de felicidad, la comprensión hacia un perrito enfermo, la aprensión, la ternura maternal, la reflexión sobre la muerte, la tristeza, la amistad, la esperanza repentina, la suposición feliz, la melancolía, la alegría inmotivada, la turbación inesperada…

ás crueles designios contra la vida humana y la libertad. Los líderes del fascismo mienten cuando afirman que la tensión de la lucha les obliga a ser tan crueles. Al contrario, el peligro los reconduce a la cordura; la falta de confianza en sus fuerzas les obliga a moderarse.

El día en que el fascismo esté convencido de su triunfo definitivo, el mundo se atragantará en sangre. Cuando el fascismo no encuentre más resistencia armada, nada contendrá ya a los verdugos de los niños, las mujeres y los viejos. Porque el ser humano es el gran enemigo del fascismo.

El otoño de 1942 el gobierno del Reich adoptó una serie de leyes particularmente crueles e inhumanas.

En particular, el 12 de septiembre de 1942, cuando el nacionalsocialismo estaba en el apogeo de sus éxitos militares, los judíos de Europa fueron sustraídos a la jurisdicción de los tribunales ordinarios y transferidos a la Gestapo.

Adolf Hitler y los dirigentes del partido tomaron la decisión de aniquilar a la nación judía.

Disponemos a continuación una entrada con un artículo escrito por el investigador español C. Galicia y publicado en una vieja revista, al que hemos hecho algunos añadidos en fotos e imágenes, así como ciertos énfasis y subrayados en distinta presentación.

Mendo Crisóstomo

EINSTEIN, EL BRIBÓN – EL MAYOR FRAUDE CIENTÍFICO DEL SIGLO XX

Por C. Galicia
Los mitos pueden levantarse y crecer sobre la verdad o, por el contrario, surgir sobre la mentira.

Presentado como líder de la modernidad y de los tiempos futuros, Einstein no fue más que un pequeño bribón.

Este último caso es de Albert Einstein. Reconocido hoy por el sistema dominante de valores como el adalid de la paz y de la bondad humana, y reputado por casi todos como el más grande de los sabios conocidos que en el mundo han sido, su aúreo brillo no es más que una vulgar apariencia.

Presentado como líder de la modernidad y de los tiempos futuros, Einstein no fue más que un pequeño bribón.

“Este niño es retrasado”

El dictamen del doctor cayó como una losa sobre la pobre Pauline, madre del pequeño que con cuatro años apenas balbuceaba alguna palabra suelta.

Años después nacería su hermana Maya, mucho más despierta e inteligente, y que llegaría a acomplejarle influyendo notablemente en su carácter retraído y en su gran capacidad de resentimiento, en sus pésimas calificaciones escolares, etc…, pero también, por aquello de la “ley de compensación” de Jung y Adler, en ese deseo íntimo y profundo de notoriedad y afirmación (incluso de revancha) que le acompañará toda su vida, y que siempre tratará de disimular con un forzado aspecto inocente e inofensivo.
Cada nuevo fracaso hará crecer en él su resentimiento y rebeldía.

"Este niño es retrasado" El dictamen del doctor cayó como una losa sobre la pobre Pauline, madre del pequeño que con cuatro años apenas balbuceaba alguna palabra suelta.

Así, todavía impúber, acusará a “la máquina educativa alemana” de haberle engañado con creencias religiosas falsas (aunque tampoco le valdría la fe judía de sus padres), o falsificará, ¡¡¡ a los 15 años !!!, un certificado médico para no acudir a clase, e incluso renunciará a los 17 años a la nacionalidad alemana para eludir el servicio militar.
Ya de adulto él mismo reconocerá “no haber pertenecido nunca a mi país (Alemania), ni a mi propia casa, ni a mis amigos ni a mi familia”, sino tan sólo a la “tribu” (el movimiento sionista), como a él mismo le gustaba decir.

Quizás por ello no le importó dar a su hija mayor Lieserl en adopción, sin volver a preocuparse de ella en todo el resto de su vida, ni abandonar a su hijo Eduard, que era enfermo mental, en un psiquiátrico de Suiza sin nunca más volver a interesarse por su salud o su destino, ni maltratar de forma habitual a sus otros hijos tal y como siempre han reconocido, ni abandonar a su familia tras regalar a su mujer todo un rosario interminable de humillaciones y adulterios, regalo con que también obsequió a su segunda esposa, Elsa, etc.

En fin, quien desee conocer la edificante vida privada del “Genio” leerá con provecho el libro de Roger Highfield y Paul Carter titulado The privates lifes of Albert Einstein.

no le importó dar a su hija mayor Lieserl en adopción, sin volver a preocuparse...en todo el resto de su vida, ni abandonar a su hijo Eduard...enfermo mental, en un psiquiátrico...sin nunca más volver a interesarse...ni abandonar a su familia tras regalar a su mujer todo un rosario interminable de humillaciones y adulterios

El hombre que había cambiado cuatro veces de nacionalidad (alemana, suiza, alemana de nuevo, británica y norteamericana), se lamentaba de la siguiente forma:

“Quizás mi destino es que siempre me presenten como una bestia negra: soy un judío para los alemanes y un científico alemán para los ingleses“.

Lo más triste de todo es que a sus 17 años el pobre Albert Einstein se siente relegado, solo, socialmente inadaptado y fracasado en su más íntima vocación: llegar a ser un músico virtuoso.
A pesar de pertenecer a una rica familia judía que pudo pagarle las mejores escuelas de música de Munich, Milán y Aarau (Suiza), donde aprenderá el elitista método pestalozziano, a esa edad se dará cuenta que nunca pasará de ser un violinista mediocre. Había que buscar otra cosa.
Tenía que triunfar en la vida como fuera. ¡Sí, eso es! Sería un sabio profesor de matemáticas. Y a pesar de los pésimos resultados obtenidos en sus estudios secundarios, logrará al año siguiente ingresar en la prestigiosa Escuela Politécnica de Zurich.

A pesar de pertenecer a una rica familia judía que pudo pagarle las mejores escuelas de música, nunca pasará de ser un violinista mediocre

“Nunca seré doctor”

Pero como las matemáticas no eran su fuerte, se inclinará por la física, logrando licenciarse en 1900 con una nota de 4´91, un aprobado raspado con la necesaria décima por encima del mínimo suficiente para no suspender, siendo su tesina o memoria de licenciatura la que alcance la calificación más baja de todas.
Al año siguiente presentará la tesis doctoral, pero será rechazada. Cambia entonces de tema y se pone manos a la obra, pero resulta otra vez de nuevo un rechazo.

“¡Estoy harto, nunca seré doctor!”, escribía en 1903 a uno de sus amigos.
Sin embargo, su paso por la Politécnica de Zurich no resultará infructuoso. Enseñaban allí, por ventura para él, científicos de la talla de Weber, Wolfer, Hürdwig, Pernet o del gran matemático Herman Minkowski (el compilador de la teoría del espacio cuadrimensional y verdadero autor de la teoría de la relatividad especial). Además, allí conocería a su mujer, Mileva Maric…
Entretanto, Einstein ha comenzado a trabajar en la Oficina Comercial de Patentes de Berna y, aunque sólo lo hace en calidad de técnico de 3ª categoría, eso le permitiría relacionarse con los científicos más importantes de la época y se familiarizará con los éxitos de los nuevos inventos, aumentando su deseo de triunfar.
Al fin, en 1905, consigue ablandar al tribunal con una tesis “breve, anodina y carente del menor interés“ (según comentó uno de los tribunos), titulada Una nueva determinación de las dimensiones moleculares.

¡¡¡ Cinco años para un trabajo de 29 páginas con ideas plagiadas de aquí y de allá !!!
Pero el momento es propicio, idóneo para triunfar, porque el monolítico edificio de la física clásica de Newton se resquebraja por momentos, hace aguas por todos sitios, tocado en su línea de flotación. Además, como él no es nadie, al aventurar hipótesis no arriesga ningún prestigio. Así que, animado por este cúmulo de cosas, el bueno de Albert se enfrasca en el estudio de los grandes del momento: Mach, Lorentz, Weber, Maxwell, Boltzmann, etc., y saca sus propias conclusiones.
Pero a veces la lectura de estos grandes físicos era abstrusa, difícil, cargada de detalles matemáticos. ¿Cómo logró nuestro héroe salir del atolladero una vez y otra careciendo, además, de los conocimientos matemáticos precisos e imprescindibles?

Esta es una pregunta que se han hecho legiones, pero que en verdad tiene una fácil respuesta…

1905, “annus mirabilis”

Año en verdad “milagroso” aquel de 1905 para el joven Einstein. Al menos así lo han calificado todos sus hagiógrafos. Mas, ¿por qué?

Gracias a su relación con el Nobel Wilhelm Wien, jefe de redacción de la prestigiosa revista Annalen der Physik, nuestro genio logra publicar la tesis doctoral antes mencionada seguida de otros cuatro artículos que trastornarán el mundo de la física en particular y toda la epistemología en general.

Uno de los artículos (“Un punto de vista heurístico sobre la producción y propagación de la luz”), donde relacionaba la hipótesis de los “quanta” de Planck (aunque sin citarle, como era su costumbre) con el “fenómeno fotoeléctrico” de Lenard, le hará acreedor en 1922, nada menos, ¡¡¡ al premio Nobel de física !!!
En realidad se le quería premiar por otro artículo titulado Cuerpos movidos electrodinámicamente, donde esbozaba la teoría de la relatividad especial, ya antes expuesta y por separado por Maxwell, Lorentz, Kaufmann, Cherenkof, Poincaré y, sobre todo, por Minkowski, su antiguo profesor de Zurich; pero teniendo en cuenta la poca credibilidad de que gozaba dicha “teoría” entre la comunidad científica, y también porque dicha teoría tenía un número indeterminado de “padres” y no podía ser atribuída a una persona en particular, se juzgó más prudente atribuírselo por la cuántica.

Einstein y sus correligionarios de calaña sionista, liberal, capitalista, mundialista y progresista

Aunque el espaldarazo definitivo como “Pontifex Maximus” de la conciencia universal no le llegará hasta el año 1922 con el Nobel, de hecho, aquellos cuatro artículos de los “Annalen” le dieron un “cachet” y una popularidad inusitada. En todos los círculos científicos e intelectuales de Europa y de América no se hablaba de otra cosa que del joven Einstein y de su “teoría” de la relatividad.
Lo más difícil ya estaba hecho. Había dado con la clave de su tiempo; en una época en que los valores absolutos (amor, honor, patria, familia, Dios…) empezaban a cobrar renovada fuerza en la Europa continental, la idea relativista (aceptable en sí misma), derivando hacia el relativismo subversivo que patrocinará con éxito nuestro “genio”, conmocionará las conciencias y se revelará como un filón inagotable, como el deus ex machina de la causa liberal-capitalista y progresista.

Einstein, al fin, había llegado. Ahora le ofrecían explicar la “Teoría de las radiaciones” en la Universidad de Berna. Y aunque no pueda decirse que sus comienzos como profesor fuesen particularmente brillantes (el primer año sólo se matricularon cuatro alumnos en su asignatura y al año siguiente sólo lo haría uno, el lituano nacionalizado alemán Max Stern), no fue óbice para que, de forma inmediata, se le ofreciera, gracias a los oficios de su buen amigo Kleiner, una plaza de “Privatdozent” en la Universidad de Zurich. Después vendrían Praga, Zurich de nuevo, Berlín, etc.
Año “milagroso” en verdad aquel de 1905, pues ni en los años anteriores ni posteriores a esa fecha volverán a tener sus trabajos ni la altura, ni la originalidad, ni la brillantez (ni tampoco, ojo, el estilo literario) alcanzados por esos cuatro artículos de los “Annalen der Physik”.
Mas a nadie se le oculta que detrás de todo milagro siempre se encuentra un misterio.
¿Cuál era, pues, el misterio de Albert Einstein?

Mileva Einstein, nacida Maric

El primero en sorprenderse por la calidad y la originalidad de aquellos trabajos fue Hermann Minkowski que, como profesor suyo que fue, conocía bastante bien las limitaciones de su antiguo alumno. “¿Einstein? Si hubiera sido Grossman -se decía-, o Wegener, o esa chica tan lista de Mileva… Pero Einstein… que se “fumaba” las clases…“

Todo acabó indicando que las "geniales ideas" pertenecían en realidad a su esposa, Mileva Maric

Sin embargo, factum est illud, y Einstein era su autor… Hasta que en febrero de 1990, en la reunión anual de la American Asociation for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, Asociación Americana para el Avance de la Ciencia), estalló la bomba.
El físico Evans Harris Walker, de Aberdeen (Maryland), y la filóloga Senta Troemel-Ploetz, de la Universidad de Bonn, analizando de forma separada y bajo sus respectivos criterios los trabajos publicados por Einstein en los “Annalen der Physik” en 1905, así como la correspondencia privada entre Einstein y su esposa Mileva, llegaron a la sorprendente conclusión que, tanto las geniales ideas atribuídas al primero, así como el tremendo trabajo de formulación matemática, pertenecían en realidad a su esposa Mileva Einstein, nacida Maric.
Esto explica el sorprendente “bajón” que sufre la obra einsteiniana, tanto en cantidad como en calidad, a partir justamente de 1919, fecha de la separación del matrimonio Einstein.
A partir de entonces, Albert siempre trabajará asociado con otros físicos (como Podolsky, Bose, Nathan, Rose, De Sitter, Infeld, Hoffman, etc.), dando muestras además de una dependencia continua y manifiesta en lo que a formulación matemática se refiere (matemáticos asalariados que trabajaron para él fueron Grossman, Groumer, Lanczos, etc.)
Ernst Strauss recuerda cómo, cuando no entendía algún desarrollo matemático, solía decir: “estoy convencido, pero no convencido”.
Se podrían escribir miles de anécdotas que acreditarían fehacientemente el juicio de Evans H. Walker cuando dice:

“Mileva era mayor que él e inicialmente la líder en iniciativa especulativa“.

Recordemos cómo, por aquel entonces, estudiaba muy poca gente, pudiendo Einstein ingresar fácilmente y ¡¡¡ graduarse !!! en la prestigiosa Politécnica de Zurich.
Sin embargo, Mileva, a la sazón única mujer del curso, tuvo que “dar la talla”, resultando incomparablemente más inteligente y brillante que él. Ambos tenían en común la afición por los clásicos de la física, al igual que un acusado problema de relación social (Mileva era coja de la pierna derecha), lo cual les acercó sentimentalmente. El bribón de Einstein pronto se dio cuenta de que aquella chica era una mina y que, trasladando sus ideas a otros campos (filosofía y política, principalmente), podían tener un buen mercado.
De esta forma, aprovechado sus relaciones y contactos entre la constelación de grupúsculos y cenáculos sionistas, progresistas y mundialistas a los que pertenecía (“Patria Nueva”, “Amigos de la Nueva Rusia”, “Liga del Padronazgo en pro de un Gobierno Mundial”, etc.), le hará encumbrarse.

Un detalle bastante revelador aportado por Senta Troemel-Ploezt es que, cuando Albert y Mileva se separaron en 1919, el decreto de divorció incluyó la cláusula de que, en caso de recibir Einstein algún premio por los artículos publicados en los “Annalen der Physik”, debía entregárselo íntegramente a Mileva.
Y así fue que tres años después Albert Einstein entregó el dinero del premio Nobel a su ex-esposa. Pero lejos de tratarse de un gesto de la proverbial magnaminidad atribuída a “San Alberto Einstein” por sus hagiógrafos, lo fue en realidad por imperativo legal y elemental justicia, toda vez que, como pudo demostrar Mileva ante el juez, Einstein se había estado apropiando desde el periodo inicial de las relaciones (vivieron juntos cinco años antes de casarse) de todos los trabajos e inventos que ella había realizado, valiéndose para ello de su puesto en la oficina de patentes, para patentarlos con su propio nombre e, incluso, ¡¡¡ a nombres de terceros !!!, sin figurar Mileva en ellos para nada, pues, como solía decir el “Genio”:

“Yo no me imagino a una mujer Galileo, ni Kepler, ni Miguel Ángel”.
Pero este asunto no era nuevo, la doctora Troemel-Ploetz, ha demostrado además cómo todo este “affair” fue ya denunciado treinta años antes por el físico serbio y amigo del matrimonio Einsten, Abraham Joffe (Mileva era hija de padres serbios emigrados a Suiza), en un libro en donde testimoniaba haber visto, él mismo, los apuntes y los originales de los manuscritos más tarde publicados en los “Annalen der Physik”, escritos con la caligrafía de Mileva Maric.

Todo evidencia que algo muy gordo y muy turbio se oculta en el mito de Einstein

El simple hecho de que estos sucesos no afecten a la enmarcable figura de “El Genio”, sino que ni siquiera trasciendan y pasen inadvertidos para el gran público, así como el protagonismo alcanzado en la prensa diaria sólo comparable con el ostracismo al que son condenados los científicos disidentes del Dogma, la complicidad de revistas científicas tenidas por “serias” en este feo asunto, así como las cantidades astronómicas de dinero que se gasta Alemania para demostrar… ¿qué?, evidencian per se que algo muy gordo y muy turbio se mueve detrás del mito de Einstein.
Como dice el profesor Thruillier en la revista “La Recherche” (nº 96, enero 1996, pág. 16):

“Todo acontece como si la física relativista fuera, en un dominio particular y concreto, la realización de un programa mucho más amplio: construir un mundo “suprapersonal”, un mundo situado más allá de nuestras sensaciones y nuestras percepciones, pero dotado de una realidad superior“.
Sólo recordemos el papel que en todo este entramado ha jugado el “Council on Foreing Relations” (CFR) de los EEUU, así como la Trilateral.

“Mein Führer ist Cain Weissmann”

Decía Max Weber en “El científico y el político” que “quien hace política pacta con los poderes divinos o diabólicos que acechan en torno al poder… quien busque la salvación de su alma y de los demás se arriesga por el camino de la política, porque el genio de la política vive en tensión con el dios del amor“.
En relación con esta idea, Isidro-Juan Palacios, en la revista “Punto y Coma”, decía que, “también la actividad científica, fuente mágica de poder, ha sido usada por el hombre como vía de usurpación y de autonomía en relación con el espíritu, y por eso también se ha diabolizado”. Parece como si ambas reflexiones hubieran tenido, consciente o inconscientemente, a Einstein como punto de referencia.
“Einstein -reconoce un relativista como Eddington- abolió el infinito, modificó ligeramente sus ecuaciones para hacer que el espacio a grandes distancias resultase curvo, hasta quedar cerrado“.
Y William Popperll, de la Universidad de Columbia, dice que “la luz es para Einstein el nuevo Único, el Absoluto en un mundo donde todo lo demás es relativo“.
Y recapitulando diremos que puesto que ya no existen ni el espacio ni el tiempo por separado, sino el espaciotiempo, es decir el movimiento unido a la velocidad, éste es el concepto fundamental de la física relativista. Por eso ya no hay en el mundo ni reposo ni paz.(…)
El “Genio” atómico había pedido en una carta enviada a Roosevelt la utilización masiva de la bomba de uranio sobre Alemania insistentemente, y no sólo el 2 de agosto de 1939 (antes del estallido de la II Guerra Mundial) como se ha dicho, sino también el 7 de marzo de 1940.

El "Genio" hizo todo cuanto estuvo en su mano para CONSEGUIR el bombardeo de Hiroshima y Nagasaki: las dos ciudades católicas del Japón

“Sólo el poder organizado -había dicho para justificarse- puede hacer frente al poder organizado“. Exactamente la misma frase (y en la misma lengua alemana) que Hitler había pronunciado seis años antes, sólo que éste, que iba muy por delante en investigación y tecnología nuclear que el resto de los países, había prohibido expresamente su uso.
Cuando Einstein asistió en 1921 a una convención sionista en Nueva York, proclamó ante diez mil correligionarios:

“Mein Führer ist Cain Weissmann. Folge Ihn. Ich habe Gesprochen” (Mi líder es Cain Weissmann. Síganlo. He dicho”).

Como se ve, “todo es relativo”, sólo depende desde donde se posicione cada uno.

Anexos al artículo

1) Contumancia einsteiniana
En una jugosa e interesante velada (que Heisemberg nos relata en su libro Diálogos sobre la física atómica) celebrada en casa de Böhr en 1932 en Copenhague, Oskar Klein preguntaba lo siguiente a Böhr:
Klein - “¿No es extraño que Einstein tenga tantas grandes dificultades en aceptar el papel del azar en la física cuántica? (…) ¿La rechaza sólo porque el azar es básico en ella?“

Heisemberg – “…es justamente ese carácter básico el que le perturba. Que no sepamos, por ejemplo, cómo se mueven dentro de un puchero lleno de agua cada una de las moléculas de agua, es algo evidente. Por eso, los científicos tenemos que aplicar en este caso la estadística, de modo parecido a como, por ejemplo, lo hace una sociedad de seguros de vida con sus asegurados… En la física clásica se había admitido que se podía seguir el movimiento de cada molécula y determinarlo según las leyes de la mecánica newtoniana… Pero las cosas no suceden así en la mecánica cuántica. No podemos observar sin perturbar el fenómeno que obsevamos, y los efectos cuánticos de esta perturbación llevan por sí mismos a una indeterminación del fenómeno que queremos observar. Esto es lo que Einstein se niega a aceptar. Él considera que se deberían decubrir en el futuro determinados nuevos parámetros de determinación del acontecer… pero esta pretensión es, sin duda alguna, falsa“.

Böhr - “…no estoy plenamente de acuerdo con eso de que la observación perturba el fenómeno. Más bien debería hablarse de la imposibilidad de objetivar el resultado de la observación, tal como se hacía en la física clásica: distintas situaciones de observación son complementarias entre sí, lo cual quiere decir que se excluyen (o complementan mutuamente), que los resultados de una no pueden compararse unívocamente con los de otra… La complementariedad es un aspecto central de la descripción de la naturaleza que había existido siempre, especialmente en la forma dada por Gibbs, pero a la cual no se había prestado la atención suficiente; mientras que Einstein siempre parte del mundo conceptual de la mecánica newtoniana, o de la teoría de campos de Maxwell, y no ha captado los caracteres complementarios en la termodinámica estadística“.

2) Einstein y la bomba atómica
El Proyecto Manhattan sería el encargado, a principios de los años 40, de llevar a cabo la construcción de las primeras bombas atómicas durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, bajo el mandato del presidente Roosevelt en los EEUU.
Oppenheimer y Fermi serían dos de las figuras de primerísima fila en el proyecto. Todos sabemos lo que ocurrió después: Hiroshima y Nagasaki fueron completamente destruídas y con ese holocausto quedó inaugurada la era atómica.
Pero no todo fue fácil hasta llegar a aquel instante. Momentos hubo de indecisión, parálisis o pérdidas de tiempo. Y fue en ellos precisamente donde la figura de Albert Einstein jugaría un papel definitivo. Viendo que los progresos sobre la construcción de la bomba iban lentos, los científicos Wigner, Szilard y Tiller, los tres al servicio del poder americano, pidieron a Einstein, ya que gozaba por aquellos años de un notable prestigio internacional, que escribiese al presidente Roosevelt instándole a apoyar sin paliativos las investigaciones para la construcción de la bomba, dotándoles de los medios necesarios. El texto de la carta que Einstein escribió el 2 de agosto, y que le fue entregada en mano al presidente Roosevelt el 11 de octubre de 1939, decía:

“…en el curso de los últimos cuatro meses se ha hecho patente mediante el trabajo de Joliot en Francia, así como de Fermi y Szilard en América, que pueden establecerse reacciones en cadena en una gran masa de uranio, de forma que puedan ser generadas grandes cantidades de energía. Este nuevo fenómeno podría también conducir a la construcción de una bomba de una nueva clase y extremadamente poderosa.
Un nuevo artefacto de este tipo que hiciese explosión en una ciudad o en un puerto podría destruirlos completamente. Un bombardeo masivo de este tipo sobre Alemania garantizará a América una victoria segura en una guerra previsible“.

Como sabemos, la guerra en Europa terminó antes de que las bombas estuviesen listas, pero quedaron preparadas para ser lanzadas sobre el Japón.
Sus efectos devastadores fueron de todos conocidos.
Y de tales efectos se sabe que el propio Einstein se llegó a sentir responsable directo. Fue por ello que volvió a escribir a otro presidente, esta vez a H. Thruman, alarmado no precisamente ante el desarrollo de la bomba de hidrógeno por los norteamericanos, sino ante el anuncio de los sovéticos de desarrollar su propio arsenal nuclear:

“La destrucción de toda la vida sobre la tierra ha entrado dentro del campo de las posibilidades técnicas. Todo parece encuadrarse en esta siniestra marcha de los acontecimientos. Cada paso es consecuencia del anterior, y al final de este camino se perfila cada vez más claramente el espectro de la aniquilación general“…

3) Credo científico de San Alberto Einstein
Citas extraídas de los escritos de Einstein sobre sí mismo (Albert Einstein. Correspondencia 1903/1955. Editorial Hermann, 1962, págs. 8, 12 y 13)
“Einstein, ermitaño de Princeton, el físico que marchó a la búsqueda del movimiento perfecto (como Moisés recibiendo las Tablas de la Ley en el monte Sinaí). Einstein, en la cima de la montaña de Dios, os invita a subir por la escala de Jacob que termina a los pies de Dios“

“La persecución del conocimiento viene a ser una especie de búsqueda mística que nos acerca a la Verdad Suprema. El método científico funda la única verdad que puede prevalerse de razón y objetividad. Yo os muestro la única forma indiscutible de verdad“.

“San Einstein es el Genio místico, el Sumo Sacerdote de la física, el Profeta que os conduce a través de su pasión hacia la verdad y el conocimiento, suprema gracia de nuestra religión cósmica y liberadora, estadio supremo de la ciencia. Mi Gran Obra, sostenida por mis catedrales de las matemáticas, debe haceros descubrir el nuevo paraíso. Por eso es preciso que abandoneis al dios personal (“interviniente” en el curso de los acontecimientos) para así poseer la Verdad-Una“.

FONTE

Carlotta Romano
Dal 14 al 18 maggio a Torino, la XXII Fiera Internazionale del Libro che si terrà nella consueta sede del Lingotto: ne parliamo Ernesto Ferrero da anni direttore di questo importante appuntamento.
- A molti la Fiera del libro sembra un ‘occasione confusa’ cosa rispondere?
“Non è confusione, è ricchezza, e nasce dal fatto che la Fiera è molte cose insieme: una mostra-mercato, dunque una immensa libreria di 45.000 mq. Un festival con centinaia di eventi, incontri e momenti di spettacolo. Uno spazio dedicato a bambini e ragazzi, con un suo programma speciale, animazioni e laboratori. Un’occasione di incontro professionale per editori e agenti letterari italiani ed esteri.”

- Come e quando nasce l’idea della Fiera?
“La Fiera nasce più di vent’anni fa dall’iniziativa dell’imprenditore torinese Guido Accornero e del libraio Angelo Pezzana, che hanno voluto portare a Torino il modello del Salon du livre di Parigi. Alla gestione privata dopo dieci anni è subentrata una fondazione pubblica animata da Comune e Provincia di Torino, e Regione Piemonte, con l’appoggio di due importanti fondazioni bancarie. Presidente della fondazione è un politico colto e capace quale Rolando Picchioni. Oggi ci fa piacere constatare che abbiamo superato i maestri francesi: 300.000 visitatori contro i 200.000 parigini, e soprattutto un programma di incontri incomparabilmente più ricco e spettacolare”.
- Il tema di quest’anno è “Io, gli altri. Occasioni per uscire dal guscio”, un tema affascinante, la scelta ha un motivo?
“Abbiamo scelto questo tema perché oggi l’Io ci sembra in crisi profonda. E’ un Io malato, follemente egoista, autoreferenziale, incapace di ascolto come di guardarsi dentro, che non sa più pensare e progettare in termini di ‘noi’. La crisi mondiale nasce di qui, è morale prima che economica e finanziaria. Abbiamo perso la bussola, il senso del vivere insieme. Partiremo chiedendo ai neuroscienziati come funziona il cervello, presunta sede dell’Io, e agli psicoanalisti quali sono le definizioni che ne danno Freud, Jung e Lacan. Ci occuperemo delle deviazioni dell’Io, dell’anoressia come del cesarismo. Ci chiederemo che cosa significa scrivere di sé, se si tratta di un vero disvelamento o non piuttosto di costruire la maschera che più ci piace. E come si racconta il ‘noi’ della famiglia, e come si può ritrovare il senso della solidarietà e della condivisione…”.
- Quali gli ospiti più attesi?
“Apre Umberto Eco in dialogo con Charrière, lo sceneggiatore di Buñuel, rassicurandoci che quell’oggetto non perfettibile che è il libro avrà ancora lunga vita. Poi il Nobel , Pamuk, Rushdie, Grossman, Deaver, la Gimenez-Bartlett, Pérez-Reverte, Yu Hua, Manguel, Adonis, Vandana Shiva icona degli anti-global… Senza parlare degli italiani, da Claudio Magris, Carofiglio e Erri De Luca alla Mazzantini e alla Loy. E di saggisti come Augias e Scalfari. Ci saranno molti personaggi della musica e dello spettacolo che scrivono libri, da Baglioni, Paolo Conte e Dalla a Franca Valeri, Ascanio Celestini e Lella Costa. E tuttavia un nostro sondaggio volante dice che la più attesa è una ragazza centenaria che qui è nata e ha studiato, Rita Levi Montalcini”.
- Ci sono degli interventi da segnalare, che rischiano di passare in secondo piano?
“Il programma è fittissimo, e bisognerà scegliere, ma va anche bene tenersi delle curiosità per il dopo. Visto che l’Egitto è il Paese ospite, e gli italiani lo amano incondizionatamente, segnalo almeno due eventi: l’incontro con l’ormai leggendario archeologo Zahi Hawass, che racconterà le scoperte in corso, e il narratore Ala Al-Aswani, che con il suo ‘Palazzo Yacoubian’ ha venduto milioni di copie in tutto il mondo. Abbiamo cercato di facilitare la partecipazione dei piccoli editori, che sono il sale della Fiera e molto apprezzati dai visitatori, predisponendo un pacchetto di misure per contenere i costi. Un discorso a parte meriterebbe lo spazio ragazzi, il Bookstock Village, che ha come tema specifico la strada, dunque il viaggio, la scoperta, e riserva una speciale attenzione alla scienza, come è giusto, nell’anno dell’astronomia”.
- Come sta l’editoria?
“Per fortuna l’editoria libraria è uno dei pochi comparti che hanno retto alla crisi. E’ davvero una buona notizia. Vuol dire che dopo aver fatto tanto le cicale, ci siamo resi conto che bisogna tornare ad essere un po’ formiche, metter via per il futuro, guardare più in là del nostro naso”.
- Infine… perché leggere?!
“Perché è il modo migliore che abbiamo per capire qualcosa di noi stessi e del mondo. Perché ci consente di vivere molte vite, di viaggiare nel tempo e nello spazio. Perché ci fa crescere. Perché è un piacere. Perché nella competizione mondiale in corso vincerà chi più sa. E bisognerà sapere molto, moltissimo. Pena il diventare un Paese di serie B, una colonia dei vincitori”.

It was there when I first studied economics. A feeling that I understood microeconomics, but not macroeconomics. Getting old, I think I know why. Micro is built on clearly articulated foundations, but macro had to go through a period around the 1970s when it had to be given its “micro foundations.” Robert Barro and Herschel Grossman even wrote a textbook from that ongoing work, and I was in a class of Brown University graduate students who went through their book in draft form.

But lately it seems that both pieces of micro and macro are groping for “institutional” foundations. An example is Willem Buiter’s recent piece on the state of macro.

For more, see my lecture on the difference between micro and macro.

Frank and Ernest have their own take on the phenomenon of disagreeing economists: