Specter of Reason

Does Hamas = ISIS? What does that slogan even mean? Certainly ISIS and Hamas are distinguishable. I don't think anyone is saying that Hamas and ISIS are the same organization, with the same leaders, the same members, or even the exact same ideas. It seems obvious that "Hamas=ISIS" only means that their goals and practices are *similar enough* so that we should treat them the same. On that topic, I encourage you to read this analysis from The Conversation . It provides a good overview of similarities and differences between the two terrorist organisations, if you want to make up your own mind on the topic. It is certainly much more useful than  this opinion piece by Monica Marks , which I believe is representative of the pro-Palestinian movement. My suspicion is that its publication in Time was not based on the merits of its argument, but rather because of the anti-Israel rhetoric it propagates. The inadequacy of Marks' argument is plain as day. While she admits that ...

Professor Jason Stanley. Photo taken from   https://campuspress.yale.edu/jasonstanley/ Approximately a month after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, instigating the ongoing Israel-Gaza war, the Guardian published an opinion piece by Jason Stanley , the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, entitled, "My Life Has Been Defined By Genocide of Jewish People. I Look On Gaza With Concern." Though I had not had any interaction with Professor Stanley in a number of years, I felt inclined to share my immediate reaction with him. After all, we had enjoyed some acquaintance in the past, primarily spawned by my criticisms of his philosophical approach to know-how and his take on Gilbert Ryle. Unfortunately, our heated exchanges over the 2016 Democratic primary led us to lose contact. (Incidentally, I decided to break off contact first, though he might have been considering doing the same.) Unsurprisingly, he did not respond to my initial thoughts on his recent Gu...

Yesterday somebody showed me a mathematical card trick and asked for an explanation. It's a simple solution, but not a very obvious one. This might be fun for math teachers to share with their students. All you need is a normal deck of cards and some very basic algebra skills. Start with a full deck of 52 cards in your hand. Put a random card face up. The value of the card is a number from 1 to 13 (Ace is 1, King is 13). Subtract the value of the card from 13, and then that number of cards (all face up) on top of the card . So, if you put down a King, that's 13. Subtract 13 from 13 to get zero, so you don't add any cards on top of the King. If the card was a seven, you subtract (13 - 7 = 6); so you add six cards face up on top of the seven. Repeat step 2, making as many additional piles as you can. If you end up putting a card down but cannot complete the step, then pick up that pile and keep it in your hand.  Choose three of the piles to keep on the table and add the rest ...

Great films invite multiple interpretations, so it is no wonder my take on Martin McDonagh's masterpiece, The Banshees of Inisherin , is unique. I don't see it as an allegory for the Irish Civil War. I don't see it as an indictment of an insular and parochial way of life. Instead, I see it as an existentialist portrait of the resilience of the human spirit in the face of life's absurd fragility. In fact, the best way to understand the film may be by comparing it to another tragicomic film also set in the early 20th-century--a film that, like Banshees , is about a milkman and a fiddler in a small village trying not to buckle under the weight of cultural strife. I'm talking about Norman Jewison's beloved classic,  Fiddler On The Roof . I have been wanting to write about these two films for some time. Today is the day, in part because the Oscars are tomorrow and Banshees is my favorite for Best Picture, and also because yesterday we lost Chaim Topol, who performed ...

Todd Field's acclaimed and enigmatic  Tár  manipulates sound, images and even time itself in unconventional ways, immersing us in the labyrinthian mind of its plagued anti-heroine. Though the line between reality and perception is blurry, some events seem unquestionably real:  Lydia Tár uses her position to exert a toxic power dynamic over women near her, both professionally and personally; she alienates herself from all the women in her life, including her closest friends, her family and even herself; she spurns one of her closest protégées, a young woman named Krista, who eventually commits suicide; Lydia Tár loses her chance to conduct Mahler's Fifth Symphony, which was to complete the Tár-Mahler cycle and cement her place in music history; and finally, she loses her family, her professional position and esteem, and her self-respect.  That is the broad outline of the layered, complex story, but it fails to capture what makes the film so intriguing and perplex...

I will be the first to admit that  Avatar: The Way of Water  is not a great film, or even a very good one. While the visuals are often stunning, the dialogue and characters are rarely compelling--and sometimes downright problematic. The film propagates patriarchal tropes and appropriates Maori and Native American culture in superficial ways, and all at the expense of character development. To top it off, the plot is full of holes. And yet, on a thematic and emotional level, it sometimes works. At the very least,  the power-hungry, Tulkun-hunting Captain Mick Scoresby (Brendan Cowell)  is set up to become a formidable villain in the next installment. More than that, Payakun may be the most sympathetic adaptation of the character of Moby Dick in film history. (Unfortunately, that says more about the inadequacies of prior film adaptations than it does about Cameron's film.) In the end, James Cameron has established a viable connection to one of the greatest works in Ame...