These aren't our old traditions, Toto

What will be the outcome of this impact of a special branch of modern science [modern physics] on different powerful old traditions? In those parts of the world in which modern science has been developed the primary interest has been directed for a long time toward practical activity, industry and engineering combined with a rational analysis of the outer and inner conditions for such activity. Such people will find it rather easy to cope with the new ideas since they have had time for a slow and gradual adjustment to the modern scientific methods of thinking. In other parts of the world these ideas would be confronted with the religious and philosphical foundations of native culture. Since it is true that the results of modern physics do touch such fundamental concepts as reality, space and time, the confrontation may lead to entirely new developments which cannot yet be forseen. One characteristic feature of this meeting between modern science and the older methods of thinking will be its complete internationality. In this exchange of thoughts the one side, the old tradition, will be different in different parts of the world, but the other side will be the same everywhere and therefore the results of this exchange will be spread over all areas in which the discussions take place.

-- Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science (1958)

Rant

Does anyone else feel this dull black cloud of apprehension hanging over the impending political conflicts in the Senate? We have a President who was put into office by a bare majority of Supreme Court Justices, having lost the popular vote and with uncounted votes from citizens in Florida. Now, the President wants to appoint new Supreme Court Justices who would be approved without the normal majority required by the Senate.

It is probably true -- and somewhat heartening -- that this collapse of the seperation of powers could play well to Democratic electoral ambitions in 2006 and beyond; just as the Terry Schiavo case was repudiated so quickly by most Americans. But, at the same time, this will only take place because we will witness such a collapse: the Senate *will* no longer be a minority-rights Body; the President *will* transform the courts even as the conservative Court chose the President in 2000. And it is *our* party -- the Democratic party -- who will be trampled on. Even the one vestige of power we have left, those votes of the 45 senators (who represent, of course, a *majority* of citizens, since they are from disproportionately populous states) will mean nothing.

In the Valley

Poet, be seated at the piano.
Play the present, its hoo-hoo-hoo,
Its shoo-shoo-shoo, its ric-a-nic,
Its envious cachinnation.

If they throw stones upon the roof
While you practice arpeggios,
It is because they carry down the stairs
A body in rags.
Be seated at the piano.

That lucid souvenir of the past,
The divertimento;
That airy dream of the future,
The unclouded concerto . . .
The snow is falling.
Strike the piercing chord.

Be thou the voice,
Not you. Be thou, be thou
The voice of angry fear,
The voice of the besieging pain.

Be thou that wintry sound
As of the great wind howling,
By which sorrow is released,
Dismissed, absovled
In a starry placating.

We may return to Mozart.
He was young, and we, we are old.
The snow is falling
And the streets are full of cries.
Be seated, thou.

Wallace Stevens, "Mozart, 1935"

No Spin Zone

To Dunya and Razumikhin, Sonya's letters at first seemed somehow dry and unsatisfactory; but in the end they both found that they even could not have been written better, because as a result these letters gave a most complete and precise idea of their unfortunate brother's lot. Sonya's letter were filled with the most ordinary actuality, the most simple and clear description of all the circumstances of Raskolnikov's life at hard labor. They contained no account of her own hopes, no guessing about the future, no descriptions of her own feelings. In place of attempts to explain the state of his soul, or the whole of his inner life generally, there stood only facts -- that is, his own words, detailed reports of the condition of his health, of what he had wanted at their meeting on such-and-such a day, what he had asked for, what he told her to do, and so on. All this news was given in great detail. In the end the image of their unfortunate brother stood forth of itself, clearly and precisely drawn: no mistake was possible here, because these were all true facts.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, Epilogue, trans. by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky