How to Kill Science

The clip by seven7lives above is beautiful, eerie, and moving -- truly a gem, obviously inspired by Fritz Lang's masterpiece "Metropolis". Watch it, it is worth it! Then take a look at my interpretation, below. 

The clip starts with a woman facing the firing squad. 

She is Science. She has been humiliated, tied, and blindfolded -- the worst offense that you can do to an entity whose purpose is to see as far as possible. 

Then, we see the girl in the red dress. She is Wisdom. She is the daughter of Science.

And here are the scientists: humiliated, enslaved, mistreated.

They are forced to repeat useless and obsolete work in order to obtain the mythical grants that will allow them to repeat useless and obsolete work. But one of them has seen the light. He will search for truth.

He rebels against the tanks of scientific publishers.

And he is punished for his deed by the masked referees: this is a typical double-blind review

Clearly, the anonymous reviewers are against science, to the point that they line up in a firing squad to shoot Science dead

And Science dies in the arms of Wisdom whom she had begotten.

But, if they can kill Science, they can't kill Wisdom. She takes the red banner of truth from her mother and she bravely faces the masked reviewers.

 And Truth flies free, released to the air by Wisdom.

But who is the evil-looking man in the high tower? The one who seems to be masterminding the whole tragedy?

He is the one who causes scientists to suffer, to lose their creative energies in repeating the same useless research over and over, to be at the whim of their evil masters: the funding committees, the publishers, the referees, the powers that be. He is

THE H-INDEX

Note: if you are not a publishing scientist, you may have trouble understanding the meaning of my interpretation, even though I am sure you can enjoy the powerful symbolism of the clip. But, in case you are curious about the ways of modern science, let me just tell you that this post was inspired by a recent scandal in Italy about how scientists are perverting the various indices that are supposed to "grade" their performance (the h-index is one of them). You can read about this on Nature, and on Science. Basically, not only these indices can be perverted, but they tend to stifle innovation, forcing scientists to plan their careers on endlessly repeating the same useless things. 

I answer to no one but Poseidon

by Donna Shultz

I am a hurricane. They have named me Dorian. It comes from the Greek word doron, meaning gift. I am no gift. My sites are set on the Florida Peninsula. Perhaps beyond.

I wasn’t born into this as powerful as I am now, I had to earn it. I had to work my way up to it. I was born a meager nothing of a wave off the coast of my conception in Africa. I fought through the Sahara’s dust, nursed on warm water, was spun and churned by wind and clouds, grew to the strength of tropical storm. I painstakingly climbed my way up the ranks of the Cats to the top.

Look at me. I keep my inner core tight, well protected and well defined. I flex it as a well-honed muscle, as an elite athlete flexes muscle. I keep it surrounded with strong and organized outer walls, I shed my old walls as a snake sheds its old skin.

I stay my course, my intensions clear, sharp, and single minded. Eye on the prize. I know my intentions. Time will reveal them. I wobble north and then south. I speed up and slow down. I am unpredictable. I will claim what I will.

I slow to a crawl, inch by inch mile by mile, slower, slower, I take my time, building my strength, savoring my strength, I reach tendrils down, down, into the power house of the beautiful deadly sea. I take nourishment from the warm waters of the gulf stream giving me ample fuel, feeding, feeding for my never-ending quench for power. {I have said I am unpredictable}.

The depths of the ocean, is not the only place I feed my soul. I gain strength from the stink of fear, emanating off people, people who scatter like roaches, scurrying about mindlessly grabbing, hoarding, fighting over, their precious supplies, supplies they believe will keep them safe from me. A fool’s errand.

They can never be safe from me.

I play cat and mouse with the people “watching” me, I watch them back just as intently, I point my tendrils to the south, then bait and switch turning north, catching the masses unawares.

I herald my approach over land with thunderous claps, and bolts of lightning.

I bring torrential rain with the winds drilling it horizontal.

I howl with glee in my destruction, and delight in its devastation.

I unabashedly flaunt my power. I relentlessly pound on everything below me. Exhilarated, I engage with the sea, and together we wreak havoc. This…Is…My…Time.

I see fear in the eyes of people as I glare down at them.

I dare those below me to look into my eye, to see the darkness I harbor within my soul.

I will not despair even as my wrath weakens, my strength weakens, and the voice of my winds still as a snuffed-out candle. My legacy lives on. I stand amongst the deadliest of my kind.

We answer to no one but Poseidon.

Medusa and Alita: some themes always return

It is remarkable how old themes reappear in modern movies. And, here, we have again the head of Medusa, that I had seen in Jarmusch's "The dead don't die". Here, we see her in the recent "Alita," Here is the face of an unnamed female cyborg killed by Alita in one of the first battle scene of the movie. Not a great movie, actually a very bad one, were it not for Alita herself -- truly outlandish. But look at how the head of the dead cyborg looks like ancient representation of Medusa!

Kill the Witch, Kill the Spy: Mata Hari and the Hollywood Universe

This is an interview with Maria Butina, alleged Russian spy, released after she spent 15 months in jail in the US. Her case is remarkably similar to that of Mata Hari, shot for espionage in 1917 in France, some one hundred years before. Fortunately, though, Maria Butina was not shot.

Sometimes, it is amazing how history repeats itself. It seems that whatever we do is always a repetition of an old story, that we live in a sort of Hollywood universe, where there exist a limited number of TV tropes, repeated over and over, always the same, just with a few changed details.

Think of Mata Hari: the evil spy. Yes, the one who caused the death of "perhaps 50,000 of our children" during the Great War, as one of her accusers said. How did she accomplish such a remarkable feat? Well, it seems that somehow she was able to understand the French war plans by gathering intelligence while staying in a hotel in the back of the front line. And that the Germans were killing French soldiers because they were told how to do that by an aging Dutch dancer who had styled herself as a Hindi priestess.

Madness? Sure, but she was not shot not because of something she had done, but because of what she was. A foreigner who had made the mistake of accepting the offer of the French secret services to embark on an improbable plan of spying on the Germans. Possibly, it was because she really thought she could help France. But, of course, it could never have worked and it never did. Rather, it put Mata Hari in a very dangerous position. A foreigner, a beautiful woman, and, avowedly, a prostitute, and she meddles with things larger than her. And when it is a question of finding a scapegoat, that kind of women make the perfect target.

Fast forward of a hundred years, and we have the case of Maria Butina. A good looking woman, although not a prostitute. Nevertheless, she went through an ordeal similar to that of Mata Hari, the target of accusations so improbable that you wonder how in the world anyone could even remotely take them seriously. Would you believe that the Russian secret services would gain anything by "planting" a spy in the US in the form of a student of international relations? What could they learn from him or her that could be even remotely important for the current confrontation?

Rather, Ms. Butina found herself in the wrong place, just as Mata Hari had: a foreigner who could be demonized at will. Ms. Butina had made her big mistake with enrolling in the US National Rifle Association (NRA). She believed that the right to bear arms was a good thing that should be adopted in Russia. She didn't realize the danger she was putting herself into. The NRA is notoriously among Trumps' supporters and by hitting Butina they were hitting the NRA and, indirectly, President Trump himself. Like Mata Hari, Butina was meddling with things much larger than herself.

So, we had another variation of the theme of the evil, foreigner female spy. Fortunately for Ms. Butina, she was not shot like Mata Hari, if times had been more difficult, it might have happened. And we keep living in a Hollywood universe where things that you believe are true become true. It is the infinite power of propaganda to create its own reality.

Beheading Women: From Cellini to ISIS

This is an image from Jim Jarmusch's recent movie "The Dead don't Die." A standard zombie movie, but well done and with some interesting quirks, one is the image above. When I saw it, my mind immediately went to Cellini's "Medusa," the piece of statuary still standing today in Florence after it was made in the mid-1500s. Maybe it is the source of inspiration for Jarmusch's scene.

Here we don't have a zombie hunter beheading an undead creature but the hero Perseus is doing something similar by beheading Medusa, supposed to be a female monster. I described Cellini's work in a previous post, but it was not Cellini who invented this theme. It is way more ancient than the Renaissance. It was common in antiquity.

Here is a fresco coming from a Roman villa showing a rather fat Perseus happy to have just beheaded the evil Medusa.

Just to show how common the theme was, here is a cameo, probably coming from early imperial Roman times, with another Perseus holding the head of Medusa in his hand. It is presently at the Getty museum.

And the theme is even more ancient than classic antiquity but, initially, it was more common to show just the head of Medusa or the act of beheading her, as in this relief said to have been made around 650 BCE

So, the idea of the hero triumphantly showing the severed head of a woman is relatively modern and it has something to do with what we call "civilization." It never was among the most popular themes of ancient art, but it surely had its space and a certain dignity that made it acceptable.

In relatively modern times, for instance, the Italian sculptor Antonio Canova (1757- 1822) was probably inspired by Cellini when he reproposed the old theme, as you can see here:

About this piece, it must be said that Cellini remains an unequaled master and that Canova's interpretation of the scene is at best acceptable but has nothing of the inner power of Cellini's work. But so it goes: art is more often imitation than creation.

In our times, the idea that it is a heroic thing to behead a woman seems to have become unfashionable, fortunately. Surely, no one would propose a piece of statuary showing the severed head of a woman to stand in the central square of a city -- as we have in Florence with Cellini's Perseus. But the theme remains alive, it is just that the hero has been turned into the villain of horror movies and dark comics. Here is an example from the work of Johnny Craig.

And here is the same scene in "Scary Movie" (2000)

Many more images of this kind can be found on the Web, but the idea is not limited to fantasy. It is sometimes projected on people or groups whom we perceive as evil. Here is a photo that became viral on the Web.

It is said to depict an ISIS fighter who killed and beheaded a Kurdish female fighter. It is, most likely, a fake and the whole story is mostly fantasy. But it is curious how the theme recurs over and over. It is something deep in our collective mind, probably leading to nothing bad as long as it is fantasy, but in our times of fake news, the line between reality and fantasy is often blurred. And this is how we keep moving toward the future.

The Word for World is Forest

Every book by Ursula Le Guin is by definition the best book by Ursula Le Guin. And there is no book by Ursula Le Guin that's not the best book by Ursula Le Guin. But this one, "The Word for World is Forest" may be even better than that!

I read "The Word for World is Forest" maybe 30 years ago, but when I took it up again, every word in it was familiar to me, as I had dropped it in a drawer just one week before. Each word of it carried the rumble of thunder and the force of a hurricane, the same effect on me of a presentation by Anastassia Makarieva on the same subject, the forest.

Anastassia Makarieva is a scientist, Ursula Le Guin was a novelist. It doesn't matter. There is a thread, there is a narration, there is a story that pervades humankind's consciousness. I can't remember who said that trees are the pillars that hold the sky, but I am discovering it is true. Not single trees, the forest, it is the biotic pump, an incredible machine that works pumping water from the air above the oceans and distributes it for free to every living creature. The ultimate gift of life.

I can't understand how Ursula Le Guin could grasp these concepts by pure intuition nearly 50 years ago, but she did. Reread many years later, this book is a pure hit to the stomach. It leaves you breathless, but in a state of mind as if you wanted to be punched again and again, for the pure pleasure of the action, the movement, the sensation.

In 1972, something about this subject was already known and the destruction of the Vietnamese forests using the infamous "agent orange" reverberates all over the book. The basis of the story is the Vietnam war, retold in a science fiction setting, with the Aliens in the role of the Vietnamese and the Terrans of the Americans. The Terrans want to destroy the forest to turn it into plantations, the Aliens want to save it. In fact, it is the same story as that  of the "Avatar" movie, it is just that Cameron's debt to Ursula Le Guin is not acknowledged.

But the book is not just a political statement, it is much more than that. Read this passage ("Selver" is the alien leader of the story):

"Sometimes a god comes," Selver said. "He brings a new way to do a thing, or a new thing to be done. A new kind of singing, or a new kind of death. He brings this across the bridge between the dream-time and the world-time. When he has done this, it is done. You cannot take things that exist in the world and try to drive them back into the dream, to hold them inside the dream with walls and pretenses. That is insanity. What is, is.

The meaning of this passage may be evident to you, or you may need to mull it over for a while in your mind. But it is one of the deepest statements I've ever read on the predicament we find ourselves in. The beauty of it is that so much hope is embedded in these words: the world changes, ideas evolve, sometimes taking the form of Gods or god-like entities. It is in this way that the world is changed: when dreams become reality. And some dreams are truly beautiful and full of hope, like this one by Anastassia Makarieva

You see, there is a succession process for forest recovery. We first have shrub grasses after some disturbance like fire, then it takes time for that to be replaced by trees. So if we are lucky our grand grandchildren will be walking in such forest, so this dimension should also be stressed. We are working for the future we are not just securing for ourselves some two dozens years of better comfort. Rather, we send a message through centuries such that people will remember us and walking into this forest along the brookes and rivers they will remember us with gratitude for our consciousness and dedication. (Anastassia Makarieva  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZ1UtHRBcG4 - min 30:05))

The Blood of the Whale

When reaching far over the bow, Stubb slowly churned his long sharp lance into the fish, and kept it there, carefully churning and churning, as if cautiously seeking to feel after some gold watch that the whale might have swallowed, and which he was fearful of breaking ere he could hook it out. But that gold watch he sought was the innermost life of the fish. And now it is struck; for, starting from his trance into that unspeakable thing called his "flurry," the monster horribly wallowed in his blood, overwrapped himself in impenetrable, mad, boiling spray, so that the imperilled craft, instantly dropping astern, had much ado blindly to struggle out from that phrensied twilight into the clear air of the day.

And now abating in his flurry, the whale once more rolled out into view; surging from side to side; spasmodically dilating and contracting his spout-hole, with sharp, cracking, agonized respirations. At last, gush after gush of clotted red gore, as if it had been the purple lees of red wine, shot into the frighted air; and falling back again, ran dripping down his motionless flanks into the sea. (Herman Melville, Moby Dick)

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The soldiers therefore came; and they broke the legs of the first, and of the other that was crucified with him. But after they were come to Jesus, when they saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers with a spear opened his side, and immediately there came out blood and water. And he that saw it, hath given testimony, and his testimony is true. And he knoweth that he saith true; that you also may believe (John 19:32-35, Douay-Rheims translation).