Epstein and Pinker

Whenever I think reality can’t get any worse, along comes a headline. Like, say, this one from The New York Times: “Jeffrey Epstein Hoped to Seed Human Race with His DNA.” Really. Read if you dare.

An exchange between Epstein and Steven Pinker recounted in this article caught my attention:

At one session at Harvard, Mr. Epstein criticized efforts to reduce starvation and provide health care to the poor because doing so increased the risk of overpopulation, said Mr. Pinker, who was there. Mr. Pinker said he had rebutted the argument, citing research showing that high rates of infant mortality simply caused people to have more children.

I just left a comment at the Times:

It’s striking that we don’t hear Pinker telling Epstein that withholding food and health care from poor people is cruel, immoral, depraved. Instead Pinker rebuts the argument with statistics. The lack of moral outrage here speaks volumes about how Epstein found audiences and allies in academia.

And I have to wonder: what if research showed the opposite, that high rates of infant mortality caused people to have fewer children? Would that make withholding food and health care appropriate? I can only repeat what I wrote in my comment: The lack of moral outrage here speaks volumes about how Epstein found audiences and allies in academia.

Related reading
All OCA Steven Pinker posts (Pinboard)

[Good grief: my comment, five minutes old, is now a “NYT Pick.”]

Mingus and Brubeck

“I see you got here first,” says an unidentified musician. And Charles Mingus replies: “Yeah, baby, and I’ll be the last one to leave.”


[Click for a larger view.]

Mingus and Dave Brubeck appear briefly in All Night Long (dir. Basil Dearden, 1962), a reimagining of Othello. The two musicians are among those gathered to celebrate the first wedding anniversary of pianist Aurelius Rex (Paul Harris) and singer Delia Lane (Marti Stevens). Mingus, who’s there from the get-go, has a few quick lines early on before disappearing from the film. Brubeck leads a small group in his “It’s a Raggy Waltz.” At another point, an offscreen band that might include Mingus is playing his “Peggy’s Blue Skylight.” Near the film’s end, Mingus and Brubeck have a few seconds duetting. I thought they might be improvising on Mingus’s “Boogie Stop Shuffle.” But no — it’s Mingus’s “Non-Sectarian Blues.” The few seconds in the film seem to be from this performance, right down to Mingus’s “Yeah, baby” at the 2:04 mark.


[File under Wait, what? And click for a larger view.]

Elaine has written about the film at greater length. All Night Long is available from the ever-rewarding, ever-surprising Criterion Channel.

Related reading
All OCA Charles Mingus posts (Pinboard)

Sebald exhibitions

In Norwich, England, two exhibitions mark what would have been W.G. Sebald’s seventy-fifth birthday. Lines of Sight: W.G. Sebald's East Anglia has “celebrated artworks, curious objects, archive material and the author’s own, unseen photographs.” And W.G. Sebald: Far away — but from where? has previously unseen photographs related to Austerlitz, source materials for the images in Vertigo, and visual art made in response to Sebald’s work.

Related reading
All OCA W.G. Sebald posts (Pinboard)

College these days

You can find nuance in this piece from The Chronicle of Higher Education if you like, but here’s the bottom line: a professor invited his students to read a book — a “physical book” — for extra credit. With the breathless line “Our students are multitasking masters.” And a takeaway: “Reading a print book, it turns out, is actually enjoyable.”

Books in college? What an intriguing idea! As the poet said, I guess I just wasn’t made for these times.

Not competent, not well

....Don’t watch show, but heard Mika said I asked to preside over their marriage. Not true—does anyone really believe that? They were married by Elijah, King of Baltimore!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 30, 2019

Our tax dollars at play.

I wondered this morning what might happen if network news broadcasts were to devote a chunk of each night’s broadcast to a word-for-word reading of the day’s presidential tweets: no funny voices, just straightforward reading. Would that sober up at least a few people? If you had a close relation who carried on in this way, you’d want to intervene.

Eat a peach?

J. Alfred Prufrock’s “Do I dare to eat a peach?” makes sense as a trivialized version of his “overwhelming question” and as a speculation about transgression and forbidden fruit. “No, thank you, I don’t think I should,” Prufrock might have said to the woman in the garden. And then there’s the messy juiciness of peach-eating, perhaps a painful thought for one who is painfully self-conscious.

But it may be worse than that. Imagine trying to eat a peach, or even an apple or an orange, in the manner described in Mrs. Humphry’s Etiquette for Every Day (London: Grant Richards, 1904):



However sharp or strong the dessert knife might be, this procedure seems (to me, anyway) to guarantee Prufrockian angst. Either that or Three Stooges hijinks.

In 1914, after protracted discussion, Grant Richards published James Joyce’s Dubliners. T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” appeared in Poetry in 1915.

Fast software, best software

Craig Mod: “Fast software is not always good software, but slow software is rarely able to rise to greatness.” Mod praises the Mac app nvALT, “the fastest piece of text cataloging software” he’s used. At the bottom of the heap: iTunes, “the absolute nadir of software clunkery.”

[Found via Michael Tsai.]

“Only one head, his own”

The “woman-killer” Christian Moosbrugger in his cell:


Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities. 1930–1943. Trans. Sophie Wilkins (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995).

Reminds me of someone — I just can’t put my finger on it, or him.

Related reading
All OCA Musil posts (Pinboard)

The Honeymooners and Zippy

[“Meanwhile, at 328 Chauncey Street.” Zippy, July 29, 2019.]

The Flintstones, natch. But Seinfeld? If, as Ralph explains, he’s George, and Norton is Kramer, and Elaine is Alice, where’s Jerry? Down at the Gotham Bus Depot? In Trixie’s arms?

Related reading
All OCA Honeymoooners posts : Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Also saying what must be said

From an opinion piece by Clarence J. Fluker, C. Kinder, Jesse Moore, and Khalilah M. Harris, co-signed by 145 more staff members of the Obama administration. This piece was published in The Washington Post this past Friday, before Donald Trump began telling Elijah Cummings (Democrat, Maryland-7) to go back to Baltimore:

As 149 African Americans who served in the last administration, we witnessed firsthand the relentless attacks on the legitimacy of President Barack Obama and his family from our front-row seats to America’s first black presidency. Witnessing racism surge in our country, both during and after Obama’s service and ours, has been a shattering reality, to say the least. But it has also provided jet-fuel for our activism, especially in moments such as these.

We stand with congresswomen Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, as well as all those currently under attack by President Trump, along with his supporters and his enablers, who feel deputized to decide who belongs here — and who does not. There is truly nothing more un-American than calling on fellow citizens to leave our country — by citing their immigrant roots, or ancestry, or their unwillingness to sit in quiet obedience while democracy is being undermined.