[Link: sigmundcarlandalfred.wordpress.com...]
Thirty years ago, on a warm day in the middle of May of 1979, at the end of my freshman year at college, I picked up the telephone in my apartment in Charlottesville, Virginia, and called my grandfather in Miami Beach, Florida, to announce that I'd decided to major in classics.
The news did not go over well.
"Classics what?" said my bemused grandfather, a man whose formal education had ended in 1914, when Austria-Hungary entered World War I; a man who, by the time he was 19, as I was on that May day, had lived through a world war, lost a father, crossed an ocean, exchanged Europe for America, one civilization for another; had, from nothing, made a life. "It's books? Music? Classical what?" he repeated.
"No, grandpa," I said, clearing my throat, my fingers, gripping the plastic receiver, starting to sweat. "Classical literature. "The Classics ... You know, like Greek and Latin." There was only a confused silence on the other end, and so I blurted, rather helplessly, "Plato!"
There was a fumbling noise on the other end of the line, and when the conversation resumed, it was not my grandfather but his wife who spoke--a lady who had been born and raised as what we Jews call a Litvak, a word whose nuances, savoring richly of a world as lost, in its way, as that of Sappho and Sophocles, are inadequately conveyed by the neutral adjective "Lithuanian"; it was, now, my grandfather's wife who spoke vigorously, incredulously, into the phone on hearing that I was going to be majoring in Latin and Greek.
[Link: sigmundcarlandalfred.wordpress.com...]
Accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1949, John Boyd Orr confessed "grave doubts" about his worthiness to receive "the greatest honor any man can get." Accepting the same award ten years later, Philip Noel-Baker said, "What more could any man or woman ask of Fate?" (Both of these laureates were British UN figures.) Writing about the prize in his memoirs, Henry Kissinger, one of the 1973 laureates, said, "There is no other comparable honor." You might expect winners to talk this way: They have won, after all. But there is also the authority of Oxford's Dictionary of Contemporary World History, which describes the Nobel peace award as "the world's most prestigious prize."
Is it also the most famous? Yes, unless that distinction belongs to the Oscar. In a single year, 2007, one man, Al Gore, won both awards. That will almost certainly never happen again. In addition to being the most prestigious or famous, the Nobel Peace Prize could well be the most problematic award. What is peace, anyway, and what kind of behavior advances its prospects? Who deserves to be crowned a "champion of peace", and the world's foremost? Desmond Tutu, the 1984 laureate, has said, "No sooner had I got the Nobel Peace Prize than I became an instant oracle. Virtually everything I had said before was now received with something like awe." That tends to happen, true, for better or worse.
Over the generations, the Nobel Peace Prize has influenced how people think about peace. That is, the relevant committee not only makes judgments; it affects the very basis of judgment on this extremely important subject.
For this and other reasons, a study of the Nobel Peace Prize is a useful exercise. Two of the other reasons are these: Such a study gives you a neat, sweeping survey of the 20th century, for the prizes begin in 1901. And it introduces you to a vast and diverse cast of characters. Remember, this is a prize won by both Mother Teresa and Yasir Arafat.
[Link: sigmundcarlandalfred.wordpress.com...]
Early in my career my father, also a professor, advised me that if I managed to finish my work--whether it was research, teaching, or service--on time and in the correct format, I would have a huge competitive advantage over many of my peers.
I've always found that principle to be correct and have passed it on to graduate students and tenure-track colleagues. I am shocked at how many academics I've met who had a terrific grant proposal but missed the deadline, or who could have published a great paper in a journal but put off writing the "revise and resubmit" version until too much time had passed.
Procrastination is not always bad: Sometimes the work you put off doing is better left undone. And sometimes the best ideas just come late. But perennially postponing everything until the last minute, especially for the doctoral student and the probationary faculty member, can be a career killer.
Luckily, no matter your particular habits of work or mind, procrastination is not preordained. I know many people who manage to get their work done on time, and at a high standard, yet privately admit they are procrastinators who learned to overcome the tendency, at least some of the time. I believe that, within reason, anyone can learn to be a completer, not a delayer.
[Link: www.american.com...]
For the majority of Americans, Memorial Day is first and foremost a three-day weekend. Time to watch the Indianapolis 500 or a baseball game; time to open the swimming pool or have a picnic. The American flag will be appropriated to embellish ads for supermarkets, department stores, car dealers, and home improvement centers. Sales on everything from garden fertilizer to bedroom furniture will be accompanied by perfunctory messages urging us to "remember those who died for our country" as we clip our coupons and make our way to the mall. The nearest most folks will get to any graveyard, let alone a military cemetery, is a file photo in the local newspaper or obligatory footage on the television news.
It is perhaps inevitable that days set aside for even the most poignant purposes soon become mere "holidays." The majority of people observe them as such, ignoring even their rote civic rituals. So it is with Memorial Day. Only a relatively small core of people-veterans, those still in the military, their relatives, a cadre of willing, obliged, or calculating politicians, and those citizens who retain a vestigial sense of tradition or patriotism-plan and participate in its observation.
It is a time to remember that who we are and what we are as a nation unique in history has depended on our sense of duty and its inevitable call to sacrifice.
At our cemetery on the hill above Ligonier, Pennsylvania, the observation has already begun. The folks from the veterans' organizations have walked the rows and planted fresh American flags at the graves of their comrades. You can see hundreds of them fluttering in the sunlight or soaking limply in the rain, and there are thousands more, millions more, in cemeteries all across the United States. And in U.S. military cemeteries all over the world, the marshaled lines of simple stones stand as milestones marking the endless road of duty.
Memorial Day is not about death.
It is about duty.
And about the ultimate limit of duty-sacrifice.
[Link: www.bostonglobe.com...]
When President Obama and Mitt Romney cross swords on defense policy, it can sound like a schoolyard fight: Who loves the military more? Who is tougher? Who would lead a more muscular America?
This is the way we expect candidates to talk about defense: in terms of power, force, even national pride. But increasingly, when it comes to the role the Department of Defense actually plays for the nation, it misses the point. Over the past decade, the Pentagon has become far more complex than the conversation about it would suggest. What "military" means has changed sharply as the Pentagon has acquired an immense range of new expertise. What began as the world's most lethal strike force has grown into something much more wide-ranging and influential.
Today, the Pentagon is the chief agent of nearly all American foreign policy, and a major player in domestic policy as well. Its planning staff is charting approaches not only toward China but toward Latin America, Africa, and much of the Middle East. It's in part a development agency, and in part a diplomatic one, providing America's main avenue of contact with Africa and with pivotal oil-producing regimes. It has convened battalions of agriculture specialists, development experts, and economic analysts that dwarf the resources at the disposal of USAID or the State Department. It's responsible for protecting America's computer networks. In May of this year, the Pentagon announced it was creating its own new clandestine intelligence service. And the Pentagon has emerged as a surprisingly progressive voice in energy policy, openly acknowledging climate change and funding research into renewable energy sources.
[Link: www.usnews.com...]
congressional Candidate Tammy Duckworth triumphed over adversity after losing both of her legs when her helicopter was shot down near Baghdad:
Sometimes a setback is an inconvenience. Sometimes it's a major disruption. Sometimes it's even bigger than that. Severe hardships can be the toughest tests we face in life, capable of neutralizing ambition and wrecking years of careful planning. People who overcome traumatic adversities often do it by applying habits learned through lesser setbacks. In the same way that small triumphs can help build incremental layers of confidence and toughness, overcoming major hardships can generate newfound capabilities that may not emerge any other way.
One day toward the end of 2004, 36-year-old Tammy Duckworth awoke in a hospital room, wondering where she was and what had happened. As consciousness came and went, she heard doctors and nurses talking about a helicopter crash. It came back to her in fragmented, terrifying snapshots. Iraq. Heat. Sky. Dust. A deafening flash. Screeching machinery. Blood. Fear. Something terrible had happened, and she had been in the middle of it. For days, in the hospital, she felt an overwhelming sense of dread as she grasped at comprehension. But over the following months, Duckworth would transform shock, horror, pain, and a crippling new disability into an intensified sense of purpose. Modest goals grew into more ambitious ones. Her pace of accomplishment accelerated. Barriers to advancement that had once seemed imposing no longer got in the way. Above all, Duckworth developed the confidence to try bold and difficult things because the risk of failing no longer intimidated her.
[Link: www.nytimes.com...]
The policeman yanked the black hood over Ai Weiwei's head. It was suffocating. Written in white across the outside was a cryptic phrase: "Suspect 1.7."
At the rear of a white van, one policeman sat on each side of Mr. Ai, China's most famous artist and provocateur. They clutched his arms. Four more men sat in the front rows.
"Until that moment I still had spirit, because it didn't look real," Mr. Ai said. "It was more like a performance. Why was it so dramatic?"
On the morning of April 3, 2011, the policemen drove Mr. Ai, one of the most outspoken critics of the Communist Party, to a rural detention center from Beijing Capital International Airport, where Mr. Ai had planned to fly to Hong Kong and Taiwan on business. So began one of the most closely watched human rights dramas in China of the past year.
China's treatment of social critics has been thrust back into the spotlight by the diplomatic sparring over Chen Guangcheng, the persecuted rights advocate who left here on May 19 for the United States. A blind, self-taught lawyer, Mr. Chen pulled off a daring nighttime escape from house arrest. Like that case, the tale of Mr. Ai's 81 days of illegal detention, recalled during a series of conversations in recent months, reveals the ways in which the most stubborn dissidents joust with their tormentors and try to maintain resistance in the face of seemingly absolute power. No critic has so publicly taunted the Communist Party as Mr. Ai, even as security officers have employed a variety of tactics in a continuing campaign to cow him.
[Link: www.nytimes.com...]
THIS summer the city's Department of Transportation inaugurates a new bike-share program. People who live and work in New York will be able to travel quickly and cheaply between many neighborhoods. This is major. It will make New Yorkers rethink their city and rewrite the mental maps we use to decide what is convenient, what is possible. Parks, restaurants and friends who once seemed beyond plausible commuting distance on public transportation will seem a lot closer. The possibilities aren't limitless, but the change will be pretty impressive.
I've used a bike to get around New York for decades. There's an exhilaration you get from self-propelled transportation -- skateboarding, in-line skating and walking as well as biking; New York has good public transportation, but you just don't get the kind of rush I'm talking about on a bus or subway train. I got hooked on biking because it's a pleasure, not because biking lowers my carbon footprint, improves my health or brings me into contact with different parts of the city and new adventures. But it does all these things, too -- and sometimes makes us a little self-satisfied for it; still, the reward is emotional gratification, which trumps reason, as it often does.
More than 200 cities around the world have bike-share programs. We're not the first, but ours will be one of the largest systems. The program will start with 420 stations spread through the lower half of Manhattan, Long Island City and much of western Brooklyn; eventually more than 10,000 bikes will be available. It will cost just under $10 for a day's rental. The charge includes unlimited rides during a 24-hour period, as long as each ride is under 30 minutes. So, for example, I could ride from Chelsea to the Lower East Side, from there to food shopping, later to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and after that, home. This system is not geared for leisurely rides up to the George Washington Bridge or to Coney Island. This is for getting around.
