Fahrenheit 451 revisited (revised)

Since the Islamic State is currently among the limited roster of phenomena that the media follow, we are informed of this:

While the world was watching the Academy Awards ceremony, the people of Mosul were watching a different show. They were horrified to see ISIS members burn the Mosul public library. Among the many thousands of books it housed, more than 8,000 rare old books and manuscripts were burned.

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/02/23/ISIS-Burns-8000-Rare-Books-and-Manuscripts-Mosul

Well, ISIL will do anything for attention;  naturally it was a public holocaust, not covert vandalism: compare the public book-burnings by the Nazis.   But what stands out is this lesser-known fact:

During the US led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the library was looted and destroyed by mobs. However, the people living nearby managed to save most of its collections and rich families bought back the stolen books and they were returned to the library.

Mobs, that weren’t even making any particular political point.  (They also looted and vandalized Iraqi museums.)  

A couple of years ago, during the Azawad adventure in Timbuktu, Salafist takfiris destroyed ancient books, mausoleums, and musical instruments.   And for centuries, the locals have looted archeological sites.

Prior to that, it was the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul, repeatedly looted in the early 1990’s (before the U.S. came in).  Showing how little they cared, the Afghans went on to use what remained as a military base, which was duly rocketed and destroyed.

Subsequently, the collection is being replenished from holdings long faithfully curated in Switzerland and Germany, now donated.

Sculpture from Nineveh,
being taken to the British Museum for safekeeping

[Update 9 March 2015]   Fouad Laroui has just made the same point in his latest radio essay, “On touche le fond”: http://www.medi1.com/player/player.php?i=6397555.  The depredations  of Da`ech "justifient, a posteriori, le pillage colonial".

[Footnote for the young.    The title of this post is a double allusion:  to Ray Bradbury’s novel, and to the Bob Dylan album Highway 51 Revisited.]

[Update]  For our viewing pleasure, Da`ish has followed this up with videos depicting their Art Critic Commandos smashing ancient statues with hammers and electric drills.
In a kind of scholarly pun, IS attackers both destroyed ancient Assyrian statues  from the days of Nineveh, and kidnapped hundreds of modern "Assyrian" Christians (no relation except the name) in Syria.

 Ancient Assyrian lamassu.

This one, at least, is safe in Chicago.

In recent years, there has been much squawking ex partibus infidelium (as well as from American indigenes) about Western preservation of their treasures, demanding the items’ return.   But nota bene:  It is only thanks to the labors of colonialists and scholars, that things like the Rosetta Stone, or  early Arabic manuscripts, or greenfield artefacts, have survived intact.

[Update, 5 Mar 2015]  They're still at it.  Bulldozers this time:
http://www.lepoint.fr/monde/irak-destruction-par-l-ei-des-ruines-assyriennes-de-nimroud-05-03-2015-1910422_24.php

~

A look back, to an earlier post about  the preservation of incunabula:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-cairo-geniza-re-seen.html

For more on Islamist destruction of antiquities -- and the very selective Western response:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/07/on-profanation.html

Further examples of bibliocide and historicide, from Muslim history.

Re the 8^th-century ruler al-Mahdi bi-'llah, and his suppression of the Persian-leaning dualists:

The Caliph Mahdi distinguished himself by an organised persecution of these enemies of the faith.  He appointed a Grand Inquisitor (Sâhibu l-Zanâdiqa … ) to discover and hunt them down.  If they would not recant when called upon, they were put to death and crucified, and their books were cut to pieces with knives.  Mahdi’s example was followed by Hâdi and Hârûn al-Rashid.

R.A. Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs (1907)

In 850, the Caliph al-Mutawakkil destroyed the holiest site of Shiah pilgrimmage, the shrine of the martyr Hussein in Karbala.   Since that time, many other Shiite monuments have been attacked, down to our own day, becoming particularly vicious once Saddam Hussein was removed from power:  he had been a lid on a boiling kettle.

[Update 7 March 2015]  In other news, Satan has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/boko-haram-pledges-allegiance-to-isis-in-video-message-10093568.html

[Update 8 March 2015]  Another day, another atrocity.  This time it’s Hatra’s turn.

The actualités on Médi1 this morning  said that Da`esh was “en train de faire table rase du passé” -- to obliterate the past.

The phrase is striking, for it appears  quite unapologetically  in the anthem l’Intérnationale:

Du passé, faisons table rase,

foule esclave -- debout, debout !

Time was, that was intended to be the international anthem of the entire world (or what was left of it).

 

The French revolution as well  meant to scrape French discourse clean of some of its origins, going so far as to rename the names of the the days of the week, and of the months, with decimal (Primidi, Duodi) or descriptive equivalents (Frimaire, Nivôse) -- not to suppress the pagan reminiscences of the original names (for the Révolution was down on Christianity as well), but for a clean slate (with a decimal predilection). (Today, for example, is Decadi, 20 Pluviôse, l’an CCXXIII.  Many happy returns of the day.)

For the sans-culottes as for the Bolsheviks, the slogan might have been, not “nothing new under the sun”, but “nothing old under the sun”.   ISIL is not like that.  They are, indeed, laudatores temporis acti :  they wish only to destroy the non-Islamic past.

[Update 13 March 2015]  As mentioned, anti-Christian pograms have been raging in the Muslim world for years now, with little concern or even coverage in the West.  Just at present, however, a certain amount of attention is being paid to the latest wave of Christians fleeing Syria in the face of the ISIL advance -- but principally because they are a Christian minority -- the “Assyrians” -- and thus, like the Yazidis, have a certain novelty value for the sentimentalists.    They are fleeing into Lebanon -- years late, alas, since Lebanon has long since been overstuffed with refugees.  At this point,  all that influx is likely to spark yet another Lebanese civil war;   so at least Lebanese Christians will probably welcome the Assyrians, as constituting potential recruits for the coming confessional conflicts.

[Update 16 March 2015]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2997577/Replacing-Christian-crosses-black-flag-ISIS-Chilling-photographs-reveal-Islamic-State-thugs-ravaged-religious-sites-Nineveh.html

http://www.foxnews.com/world/slideshow/2015/03/16/isis-dark-mission-destroying-all-signs-christianity/

Home improvements

[Update 18 March 2015]  These guys just keep coming!

http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2015/03/18/01003-20150318ARTFIG00475-attentat-en-tunisie-la-libye-voisine-est-devenue-l-epicentre-du-terrorisme.php

Some commentators, bemused that a museum was attacked, of all things, hypothesize that the real target was the Parliament building nearby.  But that makes no sense:  Nothing was preventing the attackers from assaulting that; instead, they chose to enter the museum.  And indeed, their target may well have been, in addition to the foreign tourists, the Roman antiquities themselves.

In fact, it may be germane that these are Roman antiquities.   For reasons best known to themselves, ISIL has repeatedly cited “Rome” as among the ultimate objects of their wrath.   What motivates this surprising attitude is surely eschatology and not politics, for Italy has been more than accomodating, bending over backwards (and dropping its drawers) to welcome hundreds -- or rather thousands -- of illegal (and in some proportion criminal) fugitives from North Africa -- fishing them out of their own African territorial waters  au besoin, and ferrying them to olde Italia.   By the time ISIL arrives in Saint Peter’s Square (their express objective), they may find that much of the work of cultural destruction has already been done.

~

In other news … The United States, in view of the mass destruction of antiquities in Iraq, has … shipped some more antiquities to Iraq, ones which had been safely curated here.   Such is the kneejerk of the sentimentalist;  you can kiss those items goodbye.

[Update, 7 Sept 2015]  Actually, if the Salafist iconoclasts would like to do something actually useful, there are gigantic icons  in the public squares of Paris and Versailles, that were more worthy of their axe:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/10/down-drain.html

[Update Jan 2016]  Historical precedents:

Re the Dark Ages following 2300 B.C. (during which, “In India, civilization itself  seems to have been extinguished”), re Mesopotamia:

By no means all temples were sacked. … Most temple libraries remained intact.

-- Gordon Childe, What Happened in History (1942, ³1964), p. 159

Hitler retaliated for the raid on Lübeck, sending German bombers against British cities with medieval town centres.  The raids were known as Baedeker raids, after the German guide books.

-- Martin Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century, vol. II (1998), p. 438

 ~

Cf. the Humean holocaust, with which he ends his celebrated Enquiries concerning Human Understanding (1777):

If we take in hand any volume … let us ask, “Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?”  No.  “Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence?”  No.  Commit it then to the flames:  for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

Word (and walk) of the Day: "Constitutional"

[Note:  The only reason I'm reposting this is so as to depost it from its original URL, where it has become the landing-site of hordes of basement-dwelling richly-pimpled incessantly-onanating spammers (this means U, Acne-Boy).  But while we're at it, let us note that today's title-word is in fact a noun, widely familiar in Grandfather's day, though little-known now (in this healthclub treadmill age), denoting a stroll taken for one's health.
The essay below was originally posted on 30 October 2011.]

~

A bright and cloudless day, following yesterday’s freak pre-Hallowe’en snowstorm.  As on most Sundays, I walked the couple of miles to the library, to pick up any goodies they might be holding for me, and to return books I’m done with, even if they’re not yet due.  It’s that early Jesuit training in deontological librarianism.

The trek takes me down to the lake, around it, past a bower, and then to the playing-fields, which stretch for quite a ways beneath the brow of the library mesa.  A bit behind the interfaith center, there’s an obscure short-cut through a little isthmus of the woods, which I’d never seen anybody use, and cuts about a quarter mile off the journey.  You wouldn’t even see it unless you were about three feet away from it, and where it’s situated, you’d have no reason to suspect that there was anything worth looking at  and so you would never find yourself within that radius of three feet.  The only reason I found it myself is that I’m always nosing about looking for alternate pathways to vary my routes.  Not opsec, really;  just for variety.  Anyhow I was quite pleased to have found this secret passageway, and announced conspiratorially to my wife, before revealing to her this new route, that it was a secret known only to myself and one old elf.  It’s the sort of narrow gap a hobbit might pass through.

About a month or so, though, as I was heading that way, I saw a bevy of squad-cars, two in the road and a couple right up on the lawn.  What -- was this a crime-scene? had a body been discovered in the little strip of woods, pierced by a dagger of rare Oriental design?  But they we just doing casual cop things -- donuts, mostly -- and I never did find out what happened there, since cops don’t like it when you ask them what they’re about.

~

There’s always something interesting to see, whenever you walk out, unencumbered, into God’s green earth.  Today there was a middle-aged couple on a lakeside bench, sprawled together in a dramatic pose, and a young photographer with professional equipment  was snapping shot after shot.  The couple were notably homely -- no celebrities with paparazzi in tow -- and seemed to love each other.  Maybe hired someone to help them with a scrapbook of their marriage.  Well why not.

I sometimes tip my hat to strangers, but of course many people don’t meet your eyes.  Today a couple of people I didn’t know -- a little boy and perhaps his mother -- gave me an unusually prompt and almost effusive greeting.  I Hi’d back, but as I walked on, wondered:  Did they figure I was open and approachable because of my funny hat ??  (Rather sensitive about this, as you may know by now.)  And then reflected, Those things probably do correlate.

Disappointingly, there turned out to be nothing for me at the desk.  The computer had said the item had shipped a day or two before, but they don’t do transfers on weekends, I learned.  So I browsed the shelves a bit and plucked off a big fat Steven Pinker, which you’ll probably be hearing about in these pages before long.  That’s what blogs are for.

~

On the way back, curiosity got the better of me, and I went out of my way to walk up to the shadowed northern entrance to the now-forbidden crossthrough.  The path was blocked by, not one, not two, but three new signs, including one that claimed the area was under continuous closed-circuit surveillance.   To further defend against the anticipated hordes of alpenstock-wielding Alpine-hatted hikers, a metal gate had been drawn across the path, and -- not making this up, folks, go and see for yourselves -- had piled a heap of branches behind it, as though anticipating a siege.   I considered simply walking around it, but quailed at the image of me standing there, with my funny hat and Steven Pinker book, while a SWAT team leaps out from the bushes screaming FREEZE !!!

*     *     *

~ Commercial break ~

Relief for beleaguered Nook lovers!

http://murphybros.blogspot.com/p/read-murphy-on-your-nook.html

We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

*     *     *

A legal footnote, though.  One of the menacing signs specified that the area was a no-go zone because it is PRIVATE PROPERTY (a.k.a., in Proudhon’s formulation, theft).  Only… On this side are the playing-fields, and yonder the interfaith center, both owned by the township: the very township to which we all pay taxes.  So how does this little isthmus become private?  Has Donald Trump taken to buying up tiny speculative properties in obscure strips of random woods?  Where are our rights as a free proud people, the sons and daughters of pilgrims and pioneers?  I ought to write the township about it.  As usual, I won’t.

[For more from this pen:  ]

http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justice.html

.

The Overdue Notice … It Tolls for Thee

Back in my day, we were  as children  given very strict instruction in Library Etiquette.   No more would you raise your voice in that sanctum, in infantile mirth, than you would in church, or at a funeral.   Books were to be returned unharmed and on-time;  the concept of the Overdue Library Book was our first introduction to the notion of having a sin on one’s conscience.

The situation is somewhat reminiscent of that prevailing during Freudian/Victorian times, when children were subjected to overly-strict toilet-training, with odd and lasting consequences. 

In the current issue of The New Yorker,  in a typically witty review of the new movie “Moonrise Kingdom”, Anthony Lane writes, of a couple’s mad romantic encounter, before they go off on their great adventure:

Now they come face to face once more -- Sam with his canoe, gun, tent, and all-around scouting skills;  Suzy with her library books  and a cat in a basket.  [dbj: BTW, note the Harry/Hermione motif].  His most urgent concern, obviously, is the books:  “Some of these are going to be overdue.”

I totally get that.

Digitizing into Oblivion

[Update 15 Jan 2012]
Read it and weep:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/us/politics/mitt-romney-offers-praise-for-a-donors-business.html?_r=1&hpw
Truly, this guy is scum.

[Update 28 April 2012]  No but -- for real.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/28/opinion/collins-a-very-pricey-pineapple.html?src=me&ref=general

~

A new movement  within, or we might say against, education, conveniently combines increased profits for tech companies (and perks for the bureaucrats who award those contracts) with the broader attack against unions in general and teachers in particular.    It downgrades the pesky human factor, and provides students instead with a digital simulacrum or cybernetic prosthesis.   This teaching-style is ideal for raising a generation of autists.  Your can read all about it here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/technology/idaho-teachers-fight-a-reliance-on-computers.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general

A comment on the human costs here:

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/01/word-of-week-to-downromney.html

Now, folks, I am no Luddite.   I majored in math with a minor in physics, and took biology, astronomy, and chemistry-for-chem-majors as well.  While editor-in-chief at Franklin Computer/ Franklin Electronic Publishers, I crafted electronic reference products for schools.  The Web is wonderful;  I burn frankincense before Wikipedia in little jade bowls.   But I sense a scam here.

For one thing, the effects of such technology-driven juggernauts  are visible in my own very large public-sector workplace -- one which is extravagantly well-funded in some ways, unbelievably underfunded in others  -- mostly in ways that inconvenience the workforce . 

Some of these technology ‘upgrades’ obviously waste money and may be the result of sheer inertia or even kickbacks.  As when the old photocopiers that worked just fine (and which are decreasingly needed as the office is now largely paperless)  are replaced by monstrous behemoths, split for some reason into two different units connected by cables that eat up floorspace (itself at a premium  since we're crammed-in like pickles in a jar), and which jam all the time.  Or, thousand-dollar “smartboards” that nobody uses.

Tellingly in this context, one of the (by far) lower-cost items -- books -- have come in for particular budgetary axing, and ideological attack.

Judging by our old holdings, we once had a respectable if not world-class collection  in such areas as languages and mathematics.   (As, a multi-volume masterpiece on Yemeni tribal poetry, written in French by an eccentric Swedish count, based on his travels in the nineteenth century.  Or, the Gesammelte Abhandlungen of Hermann Weyl.)  These treasures were spread principally over three locations:  the main campus, the research campus, and the school.

Then they closed the libraries at the school and at the research facility.  The books went into boxes, maybe some into the dumpster, I don’t know.

Then the remaining library was starved for funds.  It has not been able to buy new books for years; key journal subscriptions have lapsed.

Lost in the stacks

The last time I visited the remains of our main library,  the comfy chairs had been stacked in a corner with a sign “Do Not Move”.   The map-room had been roped-off:  “No admittance”.    And the librarians had a haunted, hunted air -- it felt like Fahrenheit 451. 

Though the fact has absolutely not been publicized, and is to be presented rather as a fait accompli, our last remaining library is in fact scheduled for the chopping block.   The books might just be pulped. (I’ve been working with a sister institution to see if it will house the refugees.)   And a nervous librarian told me that, in the mean-time,  “We’re not supposed to use the word ‘library’ anymore.” 

What, I said, uncertain of having heard aright.  Some new taboo?  That-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named ?

“We’ve been told to say ‘data delivery portal’,” or something like that.  And printed matter (what our grandparents referred to as “books”) is to be replaced by software.   The new system is already in beta, only it’s a strange kind of beta, since none of the library uses are aware of it and hence are not trying it out, and indeed the librarian had been warned that she was not to let people know of its existence.  Feeling as though I had stumbled into some paranoid thriller set behind the Iron Curtain, I followed her as, in a hush, she penetrated to the rear of her ill-lit cluttered office, and she demonstrated how it works.

I wanted to browse recent issues of the American Mathematical Monthly.  The system, it seemed, wasn’t really set up to do that, but you could seek a particular article if you already knew its title and so forth.  We tried a few, and most had only the title and perhaps an abstract, with “Text Unavailable”.  But finally we found one that said Click here for full text.  We clicked.  No text.

I raised a skeptical sexagenarian eyebrow.

She shrugged helplessly.  “That’s what it does.  I’ve told the development team several times, but they say they are satisfied with the way it works.”

Well of course they are !   On-time and under-budget!  The actual utility of the product doesn’t matter -- none of the people who sign off on  or enforce these things  do actual research.

And the kids will look great for the photographers, posed before the rows and rows of screens.

Two options confront us.

(1)  Fight this thing.

(2)  Shut up and drink the Kool-Aid, and sing this merry tune:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXa9tXcMhXQ&NR=1

~    ~    ~

There are many well-thought-out experience-based Readers’ Comments on the NYTimes article.  Samples:

I see that most readers were not fooled by this computer snake oil. I am a former computer industry engineering director, now a college professor and also a faculty advisor for "Mastering Physics" one of the best (the best?) online learning systems for physics. I STILL think the teachers are right. My students do use Mastering Physics, but if I had smaller classes I would use it less. There is something about working with pencil and paper in math and science that involves you with your thoughts in an intimate way that no computer can. The famous mathematician Ramanujan used a slate and chalk because he had no pencil and paper. Our students would probably be OK to use a tablet computer if they treat it like Ramanujan's slate. I agree with others that having a computer on invites multi-tasking and distraction. I also note that my students treat online homework like a computer game. They guess at answers rapidly and see what sticks rather than carefully working out solutions and then entering a final result. The Mastering Physics software attempts to guide them through the solution process, but it is still much better if they can accomplish the work without a guide.

~

I am a former 3rd grade teacher from a low income school in NYC. I was an education major years ago when it really was a serious subject with courses in developmental psychology, philosophy, etc etc. I wanted to teach and took it seriously. Of course we had no computers then, but I know I would have embraced them and used them well. However, I went into teaching because I wanted to help kids learn and they knew that. I became attached to lots of the kids, and them to me.

Many years later, I got a calll from a psychiatric facility that a former student of mine was hospitalized. He told the nurse that he remembered me and that I said I would help anyone of my students if I could. The nurse put him on the phone, and we chatted a while, and he calmed down. What an honor for me (and he was not the only student I ever heard from, there have been many).

Now I know this is emotional and intense but I ask, how many students would remember a computer or an online instructor who never saw them in person, and would have done this??

~

Technology in the classroom is a nuanced issue, and the Idaho legislature has approached it with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. In my experience with technology in the classroom (which includes a high school that required laptops), the results were definitely a mixed bag.

Unrestricted laptop use in class encouraged online chatting, and I can honestly say that I do not remember anything from my two online undergrad courses.

~

There are also a few posts, diametrically opposed, saying, basically, “Gleichschaltung!  Get with the program!!”  But, interestingly, though all the posters’ names are different, they each manage somehow to slip in the name of a certain ostensibly-not-for-profit company (that is for accounting and reporting purposes;  doesn't mean the insiders don't get rich)  that stands to benefit from this scam.  Additionally, since online content increasingly involves advertising, you can figure out cui prodest.  (There is a precedent in Chris Whittle's ad-infested classroom videos.)

~

[Update 5 Jan 2012]

Another pertinent reader comment:

As a proud ex-Boise Brave, a student at the only high school in the state that consistently listed as one of the top 500 (or whatever the listing is) schools in the nation, I have one question:

How is the state with one of the worst internet speeds/cellphone coverages, where apparently BEARS TAKE OUT THE INTERNET, supposed to handle this?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/us/downloads-are-slowest-in-idaho-stud...

Same deal at our language campus:  It was without Internet access for weeks, owing to some stupidity on the part of Verizon (which denied all responsibility).

So, if you use the Web as a teaching auxiliary, fine, wonderful;  but have a back-up plan.  (When I give a talk at work, I always bring paper handouts,  in case the computer doesn’t work, which is often the case.)

[Update April 2012].  Tetelestai.
The volumes have been carted offsite  to what we can only call a Konzentrationslager for books.
The vandals who accomplished this  are hopping about, scratching their armpits, and awarding each other  promotions.

Moral quandary

I -- … That is, I --  … Better to just come right out and say it.  Deep breath.  …  I … --   … -- I --

=>        ihaveanoverduelibrarybookkthxbai

…

(Pause for meditation and spiritual retreat.)

Let’s try that again.

I, Dr J, being of sound mind and in full possession of my faculties, and not writing under any external duress,  do here avow and aver, that on this very desk before me now, there lies an overdue library book.  The facts are not in dispute:  It was due yesterday.   And yet, acting of my own Free Will, that very faculty whereby our Maker distinguishes us from the paramecia, I intend to retain it, all day long, as the big hand and the little hand  sweep the clockface on their appointed rounds;  and not to return it until tomorrow.

You laugh, you scoff.  But library etiquette was drilled into us at a tender age -- it was, in a sense, our first introduction to the larger public morality, outstretching and overarching the little lessons of the home.   Materially, the library fine (a dollar a day) is nothing -- I can easily afford it, and indeed am happy to contribute to our fine and friendly local library.   Yet such fines were our first hint that society at large would hold us responsible for our transgressions.

I log on to my account, and check “Items Out”.  And there it is:  The title, hitherto a soothing blue, now glows an angry red. O-VER-DUE !!!

I picture attending a meeting of ODLBA.

Hi, I’m Tim, and I am a library-abuser.  I harbor a book that has been overdue for thirty-five years.

I’m Bob.  Tim -- that’s nothing.  I have a library book that has been overdue since 1066.  My ancestors brought it over on the Mayflower, and it has been passed down as a family heirloom ever since.

(Confusion among the attendees.)  1066 ?

Bob:  Yes.  It came over with the Conquerer -- and I suspect it had been overdue already for several centuries even then.

Roy (sobbing):  I harbor over sixty-seven thousand overdue library books.  I had to build an addition on the house, to store them all.

I picture St. Peter, when I shall face him at last, having suffered centuries in Purgatory to abye my many sins, stroking his beard before he finally lets me in:  “Dr J, there is still the little matter of that bunny book you borrowed back in kindergarten, and never returned.”

“I--  I lost it…”

“Absolvo te.”

[For a denunciation of the tardy book-returner in wrathful Latin, click here.]