{"id":111913,"date":"2017-06-20T08:56:32","date_gmt":"2017-06-20T12:56:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=111913"},"modified":"2017-06-20T11:39:30","modified_gmt":"2017-06-20T15:39:30","slug":"still-baffled-brain-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/06\/20\/still-baffled-brain-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Still Baffled by the Brain, and Other News"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_111914\" style=\"width: 1010px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/reproductin_of_portrait_of_charcot_holding_brain._wellcome_l0015709.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-111914\" class=\"wp-image-111914\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/reproductin_of_portrait_of_charcot_holding_brain._wellcome_l0015709.jpg\" width=\"1000\" height=\"739\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/reproductin_of_portrait_of_charcot_holding_brain._wellcome_l0015709.jpg 3919w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/reproductin_of_portrait_of_charcot_holding_brain._wellcome_l0015709-300x222.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/reproductin_of_portrait_of_charcot_holding_brain._wellcome_l0015709-768x568.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/reproductin_of_portrait_of_charcot_holding_brain._wellcome_l0015709-1024x757.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-111914\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">A reproduction of a portrait of Charcot holding a brain, 1898.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It\u2019s time for our annual check-in on the mystery of human consciousness\u2014have the scientists figured it out yet? Reader: No. No, they have not. The upper echelons of neuroscience remain baffled; the philosophers, also baffled; the unkempt man at the train station holding a cardboard sign that says <small>MICROWAVES ARE BRAINWAVES<\/small>, perhaps less baffled but still not terribly convincing. As the neuroscientist Robert A. Burton writes, every era gets the theory of consciousness it deserves\u2014by using science to explain what philosophy and religion could not, we\u2019re essentially just passing the buck, and soon it will pass again: \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/nautil.us\/issue\/49\/the-absurd\/when-neurology-becomes-theology\" target=\"_blank\">As an intellectual challenge, there is no equal to wondering how subatomic particles, mindless cells, synapses, and neurotransmitters create the experience of red, the beauty of a sunset, the euphoria of lust, the transcendence of music, or in this case, intractable paranoia<\/a> \u2026 It\u2019s dawned on me that the pursuit of the nature of consciousness, no matter how cleverly couched in scientific language, is more like metaphysics and theology. It is driven by the same urges that made us dream up gods and demons, souls and afterlife. The human urge to understand ourselves is eternal, and how we frame our musings always depends upon prevailing cultural mythology. In a scientific era, we should expect philosophical and theological ruminations to be couched in the language of physical processes. We argue by inference and analogy, dragging explanations from other areas of science such as quantum physics, complexity, information theory, and math into a subjective domain. Theories of consciousness are how we wish to see ourselves in the world, and how we wish the world might be.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Danuta Kean explores one of the lesser-discussed joys of reading: discovering typos. In a survey of literature\u2019s biggest typographical blunders, she writes, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/booksblog\/2017\/jun\/16\/misprint-the-legends-famous-typos-from-james-joyce-to-jk-rowling\" target=\"_blank\">One of the best literary malapropisms in print appears in Theodore Dreiser\u2019s 1925 classic,\u00a0<em>An American Tragedy<\/em><\/a> \u2026 Two characters dance \u2018harmoniously abandoning themselves to the rhythm of the music\u2014like two small chips being tossed about on a rough but friendly sea\u2019 \u2026 But the king of all typo-riddled books is Jonathan Franzen\u2019s 2010 novel,\u00a0<em>Freedom<\/em>. HarperCollins wound up pulping the entire first print run of 80,000 copies after it emerged that an early version of the book was sent to the printers by mistake. As a result, the book teemed with hundreds of mistakes in grammar, spelling and even characterization \u2026 The<em> Corrections<\/em> author discovered the catastrophe surrounding his eagerly anticipated book in a brutally public way. Recording a reading for the BBC current affairs show <em>Newsnight<\/em>, Franzen came to an abrupt halt and said: \u2018Sorry, I\u2019m realizing to my horror that there\u2019s a mistake here that was corrected early in the galleys and it\u2019s still in the fucking hardcover of the book.\u2019 \u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A. E. Housman was just <em>so <\/em>British. Seldom has a poet been Britisher. His collection <em>A Shropshire Lad<\/em> has remained in print since it first appeared, in 1896\u2014but though it\u2019s a hallmark of English poetry, its author remains an aloof presence, seldom brought into the light by scholars or biographers. Charles McGrath writes of the gulf between <em>A Shropshire Lad<\/em> and its author: \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2017\/06\/26\/how-ae-housman-invented-englishness\" target=\"_blank\">Somehow, these sixty-three short lyrics, celebrating youth, loss, and early death, became for generations of readers the perfect evocation not merely of what it feels like to be adolescent and a little emotional but of what it means to be English<\/a>. We don\u2019t have anything remotely like it in American lit. Some of Emily Dickinson\u2019s brief lyrics come closest\u2014tonally, and in their mastery of the short, compressed line\u2014but she has never quite attained Housman\u2019s popularity, and the landscape she wrote about, the one inside her own head, could hardly be said to have created a sense of national identity \u2026 There were a number of different Housmans, and how you felt about him depended on which one you happened to meet. He was an adventurous eater and a lover of good wine. He liked dirty stories and flying in airplanes. At high table at his Cambridge college, he could be clubbable and amusing, and might even bend your ear about how much he liked the jazz-age novels of Anita Loos. But he could also be rude, aloof, brooding, and difficult. He suffered fools not at all, and was unable to tolerate a compliment.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Emma Grey Ellis has the story of Ben Garrison, a libertarian political cartoonist whose cartoons are asinine reductions of the headlines designed to appeal to the alt-right\u2014an audience Garrison has courted despite its savage trolling of him. Ellis writes, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/ben-garrison-alt-right-cartoonist\" target=\"_blank\">Garrison&#8217;s cartoons started out as conventionally libertarian, if a bit conspiracy-minded: anti\u2013big bank, anti\u2013Federal Reserve, pro\u2013Ron Paul<\/a>. But internet anti-Semites (or at least people fishing for a reaction) started splicing Garrison\u2019s work together with the work of Nick Bougas, aka A. Wyatt Mann, a director and illustrator responsible for one of the web\u2019s\u00a0most enduring anti-Semitic images \u2026 The more Garrison fought the defamation, the more the trolls\u2014spearheaded by 4chan, 8chan, and an army of extremists commanded by neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin, founder of hate site\u00a0<em>The Daily Stormer<\/em>\u2014smeared his reputation. In their capable hands, the then-unknown Garrison transformed into the most vicious man on the internet, with a long\u00a0list of nicknames. The most popular of these was Zyklon Ben (after zyklon b, the gas used in Nazi concentration camps), but the web is still littered with threads calling him Ben \u2018One Man Klan\u2019 Garrison or Ben \u2018Not White? Shoot On Sight\u2019 Garrison and other bits of jingly hate speech. The trolls even got a\u00a0Fox News affiliate\u00a0to talk about the fictional Nazi version of Garrison by flooding the comments section during the Baltimore riots.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>It used to be easy to spot rich people. They wore fancy shit, drove fancy shit, ate fancy shit. Now their fanciness has gone underground, Elizabeth Currid-Halkett argues, as conspicuous consumption yields to something more nefarious\u2014involving the kind of cachet that oh, say, a subscription to <em>The Paris Review <\/em>might bring: \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/capital\/story\/20170614-the-new-subtle-ways-the-rich-signal-their-wealth\" target=\"_blank\">While much inconspicuous consumption is extremely expensive, it shows itself through less expensive but equally pronounced signaling\u2014from reading\u00a0<em>The\u00a0<\/em><em>Economist<\/em>\u00a0to buying pasture-raised eggs<\/a>. Inconspicuous consumption in other words, has become a shorthand through which the new elite signal their cultural capital to one another. In lockstep with the invoice for private preschool comes the knowledge that one should pack the lunchbox with quinoa crackers and organic fruit \u2026 Knowing these seemingly inexpensive social norms is itself a rite of passage into today\u2019s aspirational class. And that rite is far from costless:\u00a0<em>The Economist <\/em>subscription might set one back only $100, but the awareness to subscribe and be seen with it tucked in one\u2019s bag is likely the iterative result of spending time in elite social milieus \u2026 Knowing which\u00a0<em>New Yorker<\/em>\u00a0articles to reference or what small talk to engage in at the local farmers\u2019 market enables and displays the acquisition of cultural capital, thereby providing entry into social networks that, in turn, help to pave the way to elite jobs, key social and professional contacts, and private schools. In short, inconspicuous consumption confers social mobility.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In today\u2019s roundup: a neuroscientist puzzles over the elusive story of human consciousness; famous literary typos; Housman\u2019s Britishness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2512],"tags":[29242,25894,29243,17377,2589,111,29240,29244,1452,2047,29241,13356,8922],"class_list":["post-111913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-the-shelf","tag-a-e-housman","tag-alt-right","tag-ben-garrison","tag-british-poets","tag-cartoonists","tag-freedom","tag-human-consciousness","tag-inconspicuous-consumption","tag-neuroscience","tag-poets","tag-typographical-errors","tag-typos","tag-wealth"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Brain? 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